#oh what would i give for some more recovered classic episodes

[mothmans-cumrag]

I think one of the funniest things the BBC could do rn is announce that they found intact copies of The Celestial Toymaker a while back and this is what sparked the idea to bring the Toymaker back for the anniversary

[posarmeklen]

A couple of days after Reuben gave birth to his offspring, Shirley and the kids came to visit their weary, recovering, yet relieved manager in the hospital. Apparently, there are two sides to every story.

Indeed, in actuality… Shirley was unexpectedly the one who had to step in and act as chauffeur – she was preparing for a concert alone at home with around a half-hour to spare (Keith drove the rest of the kids to the venue, and Shirley was meeting them, for a plot-irrelevant reason), when Reuben knocked on the door. She was surprised to see him – although he was the family’s good friend and therefore would never truly stay away, he had officially embarked on a leave of absence given by his agency for the last few weeks of pregnancy. (How are talent managers afforded parental leave? Asking for a friend.)

Shirley looked him up and down with a subtle mixture of amusement and empathy on her face. He was dressed casually, in a plain T-shirt, comfortable slacks, and sneakers, and looked bigger than even the last time she had seen him. It wasn’t long following greeting each other that Reuben hissed in pain and pressed his hand to his side. “Oh - what’s the matter?!” asked Shirley, an expression nearly matching his briefly contorting her features. Reuben explained that he had been in intermittent discomfort since last night. “Shirley, on my way here? I almost had to pull over,” he divulged grimly. “Oh?” But soon enough, Reuben radically switched gears to cheerfully inquiring if she was doing anything today. “Yes, we have a concert.” “Today?” “Today. It’s the last one you booked us for before you left.” “Oh, right. Well, you know how it is. One day blends into the next when you’re living on PLST.” “P.L.S.T.?” “Parental…leave…standard time. Heh…” “Well. I don’t seem to remember that term from my days as a new parent. It must be some new-fangled invention from you ‘younger’ set!” Shirley made a mock-grandiose gesture before playfully rubbing Reuben’s shoulder.

She invited him inside while she retrieved some paperwork, the true reason for his appearance (he was tying up loose ends before the baby was born and things would change again). But of course, they got to talking on the sofa, Shirley expressing happily that it wouldn’t be long at all before the birth and going on to ask if he had spoken to his doctor about his recent pain (the answer was no, not yet; this caused him to reveal that there was a “last time” that turned out to be a mere false alarm). Reuben lamented just “knowing” that the pregnancy would last ridiculously long (“pregnant forever” fare – to be clear, he was just a week or two away from his due date) and that the birth would be especially traumatic, perhaps including some element that he suddenly mentioned to be present in his own birth, like the use of forceps, which resulted in him having a mildly “cone-shaped” head in the weeks following the day he was born. Reuben shook his head in disgust, while Shirley grimaced kindly at the unprovoked level of detail. (How can we forget classics such as “my mind was opened when I was nine” from the tag of the sex education episode? “Did I ever tell you about Penny Wentworth?” “Happily, no. 😊” “Well, Penny Wentworth and I…” *saved by an approaching Laurie*)

However, all it took was the most surefire sign of labor (the rather abrupt appearance of a telltale liquid on the furniture…), and the declaration by Shirley that a hospital trip was in order, to cause Reuben’s rapid pivot to “Now, Shirley, let’s not rush into things…” Nonetheless, Shirley was forced to move quickly, trying to keep her wits about her. I think she would be good in a crisis, given her compassionate, understanding, level-headed nature, and she’s of course a mom (she’s been in the other role in this situation more than once) – but that doesn’t mean she’s immune to a panicky surge of adrenaline in the face of a dear friend (who she still didn’t know intimately like that) about to give birth! Plus, she didn’t want to get Reuben more nervous than he certainly was (even if he hadn’t been showing it, it was so natural that she could assume), so she (only semi-successfully) attempted to maintain a composed exterior.

By the way, can you say “Shirley is missing her concert today”? Because Shirley is missing her concert today. My current thought is that her absence would oh-so-coincidentally give a flavor-of-the-week guest star a la Dora Kelly or Lavonne Laverne – this particular one would’ve acted as substitute manager while Reuben was out of commission, only for Reuben to still turn up like a bad penny, providing total backseat driver guidance – or their significant other to live their dream of performing on stage as a replacement (well, the replacement part probably wasn’t included in the dream. I meant the performing on stage part). I’m still working out the kinks (or, should I say, the Kincaids). Of course, Shirley called her children somewhere in the middle of all this, informing them of her whereabouts and the circumstance. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. They expected those kids to perform? After Shirley dropped the dreaded “our manager’s water broke” bomb? Fastest way to get my tambourine to fall right out of my newly cold, clammy hands.

Anyway, back at the house, the phone rang in the quasi-commotion (Reuben managed to confirm with Shirley, “You got that?”, almost a dig at his own sort-of incapacitation), and it turned out to be Bonnie Kleinschmidt, sexy stewardess extraordinaire, Reuben’s four-episode lover, and other parent of his unborn child. After calling Reuben’s apartment twice and receiving no answer, she remembered that she had the Partridges’ number for one reason or another, so she figured she might as well give it a try and ask if his favorite clients had seen him. Bonnie had no idea how in luck she was! Shirley confirmed vaguely that Reuben was actually with her at the moment and swallowed hard when the young woman asked to speak to him. “Bonnie. I don’t want you to be nervous, but I’m going to drive Reuben to the hospital,” said Shirley, and she explained that he was in labor more than once, as the big news was apparently falling on deaf (shocked) ears. “Well, can I talk to him?” Bonnie finally repeated. Resignedly, Shirley outstretched her arm to Reuben, who seemingly appeared out of thin air behind her post-pacing-the-floor to snatch the phone from her hand.

“Bonnie? Yes, it’s me. Bonnie, I want you to know, if anything happens…” Reuben rubbed his temple. “My mother’s gonna haggle with you about the apartment, the car. Maybe even the card table. Well, you heard it here first. I give you carte blanche!” Bonnie nodded once, quickly. “Put Shirley back on,” came the clipped, resolute response. “I – uh, I don’t want a big service.” “Put Shirley back on.” “Enough to fill a small banquet hall would be fine…” The tall, blond man leaned onto the half-wall separating the Partridges’ kitchen and living room, his words mildly strangled. “Reuben, you’re going to be okay. I said to give the phone back to Shirley,” Bonnie said, voice more deliberate and warmer now.

She agreed to meet the pair at San Pueblo General Hospital, and off Reuben and Shirley went in the latter’s station wagon. Reuben sat uncomfortably slumped in the passenger seat, elbow on the armrest and legs stretched out as far as they could go. “Step on it, Shirley…!” he said, momentarily removing his palm from his face to wave his hand in a rushed circular motion. “I’m climbing the walls here.” Later, he had the half-crazed pained hunch that he knew another route that could get them to their destination faster, so he reached across Shirley and moved the steering wheel, just enough for the car to swerve partially into the next lane. “Reuben! You’re going to drive us right off the road!” exclaimed Shirley over the angry sound of a horn, regaining control of the car. “That seems preferable to the current situation,” Reuben grumbled, before Shirley made a poignant clarifying statement that he would drive “all three of them” off the road (not to guilt him, but hopefully to somewhat ground him).

At the hospital, Shirley didn’t stay in the room for the birth (it wasn’t her place 😤), but she was a supportive presence until Bonnie and the formidable Clara Kincaid (btw, in terms of the actors who portray them in the show, both Shirley and Reuben weirdly have Wizard of Oz parents?) arrived. Shirley reassured Reuben that she knew he could pull through, and acknowledged how difficult things were before suggesting it would make him feel better to try to breathe. A short discussion about how it was impossible that he forgot how to do so apparently took Reuben over the edge. “I see your mouth moving, but I don’t know what you’re saying!” he told Shirley.

FYI - Truth be told, in this scenario’s “infancy”, I planned to make Reuben’s birth experience unusually smooth, short, and easy (a sort of subversion of his canon bad luck and harassment – that too made sense somehow), but in the end, I failed to resist the temptation of seeing him freak out in labor… it’s just too good! (Put your worries to rest - the pregnancy is still being cut mildly shorter than expected, and things moved fairly quickly from the arrival at the hospital onward. 😉)

Anyway, Bonnie finally came in the main entrance of the hospital, looking mildly disheveled – she had on jeans and a short-sleeved sweater, curls pulled back in a loose ponytail and messy tendrils framing her face. Asking the receptionist where Reuben was gave her some pause – their relationship was always tempestuous, and due to a multitude of factors (personal differences, Reuben’s commitment to the “bachelor” life and seeming intimacy issues, you name it) they decided to co-parent as single people rather than live as a “traditional” family. (Miss Kleinschmidt actually moved to LA to be closer to Reuben and their child, however, even though she didn’t make an honest man out of him. Also, I can picture the two faced much teasing from the Partridges in the first year or two of the baby’s life, much to their chagrin – ex. “Just get married, already! You guys bicker like you’re approaching your fortieth anniversary” from Keith.) Should she call him her partner? Father of her child? Her ex-boyfriend? “My…Reuben,” she settled on brilliantly.

In the end, it wasn’t until the unmistakable gasping cry of a newborn pierced the air that the medical personnel announced, “It’s a girl!” And you know what? I did some research (because, let’s face it, me and realism… we’re *tightly crosses my fingers* likethis!), and the act of discovering a fetus’s sex through ultrasound was JUST being established in the 1970s, if that. This was 1974-1975, and I doubt Reuben would’ve been on his toes with obstetric advances, so waiting until birth it was. The baby was gently placed on his chest, eliciting an expression of overwhelm and disbelief from him, eyes darting around at first like he wanted to say something.

An interesting tidbit about this baby is that she was granted the surname “Kincaid-Kleinschmidt”. It rolls right off the tongue! Apparently, Reuben had grown enough through recent experience that he was able to forgo some male arrogance in order to concede something significant to someone he cared about (even when he was the one in worse physical shape at the moment, to say the least – this was decided during the pregnancy). “Well, we’re not married, and you’re the baby’s mother,” he had reasoned in conversation with Bonnie. His child’s full name is Cynthia Kincaid-Kleinschmidt. The very profound highly-anticipated reason behind “Cynthia” is that it was a common girls’ name in the 70s and Reuben would probably be conservative with first name choices. He and Bonnie just thought it sounded nice.

This brings us again to the Partridges coming to visit in the hospital. Reuben’s daughter cried in his arms, as babies do. “It’s ok,” Danny comforted her. “I cry too when I see Mr. Kincaid!” All Reuben could do was shoot him an exasperated look, a smile tugging at his mouth. Of course, someone ended up making a crack about the “soiled” couch at home, which Reuben then took as an opportunity to express a more genuine sentiment to the matriarch of the family. “I…I don’t know what to say, Shirley,” he told her. “I’m forever in your debt.” “Well, sure. I suppose I must’ve just not read the fine print about my side of the deal in our contract. Personal driver, midwife…” she rambled on cheekily, before breaking into a heartfelt grin. “It’s no problem, Reuben. I would do it a hundred times over if it meant you and little Cynthia would be alright.”

Reuben would remain in the hospital for around a week after the birth – apparently, in the Partridges’ day, it was customary for people who gave birth to stay for 5-10 days or so (or so I remember reading, as opposed to most cases now, where it’s a much shorter duration), while their rest and recuperation was prioritized and they cared for their baby only during allotted times (for the rest of the time, the staff looked after them). Huh! The more you know! When it came time, his mother drove the new parents and child home, Reuben and Bonnie sharing the backseat with Cynthia. Ahh, happy for those kids.

[alicepao13]

Overall recap and review for S6 of Hudson and Rex:

I have to write this before I completely forget what happened and I require a rewatch.

I cannot emphasize enough how difficult it was for this show to recover from the dissonance of the first few episodes in the eyes of many fans. The worst of all was the first episode, also known as the "Visit Newfoundland" episode or whales episode, which left a very sour taste in my mouth. It was pretty much focused all on Charlie and Rex and yes, that is the title of the show, but when you have spent time establishing the rest of the characters and working towards something of an ensemble, that's not gonna fly anymore, not even with and old Rex franchise fan like I am. Not to mention that their scenes weren't that special either (they definitely had better scenes showcasing their partnership down the road), and let's not forget re-using S3 footage in the scene where Charlie emerges from the water. Then we have all the mention of the whales, and of course we can't actually have the characters interact with the whales, so the whole point was to tell us, hey, we have whales, come visit and see them up close! Understandably, the show needs to advertise the place it's filmed at, the other Rex shows have done it too (way more subtly). It does not need to open the season with that episode, though. This would have been a fine filler somewhere after the first few episodes, not the first episode. Oh, and they need to stop opening with a disappearance case, in my opinion, at least.

The second had more substance and filled some of Charlie's backstory regarding his father and his family's dynamics (his father's fights with Jack), but it still fell on the same motif as the first one. There was no team work. I did appreciate it more than the first one because there were things happening, but it didn't feel like a classic Hudson and Rex episode. The army/navy hype, it doesn't really impress me, especially since I've seen tons of it in other shows I watch, I did like that it brought up somewhat the adjustment issues of people after they leave the service, though.

The third one was a classic crime show trope with a visually impaired witness. I liked that one more than the other two, and it was a good episode overall, more to the tone of the show. The casting was also good, a bad actor can tank that kind of episode, they got lucky with the actress who played the witness. Or, well, this is what happens when you pay attention to who you hire for the job. That's not always the case.

The fourth episode should have been the first one. It still gives Charlie and Rex a chance to work pretty much alone and showcases their partnership but it does also emphasize more the work that the rest of the team does, and gives all of them something extra to do. It showcases Charlie and Rex's partnership and how much in tune they are way better than any other episode, in my opinion. Plus, it gives us some Charah moments, which hey, since you made them a couple, you'll have to write, show. The scene where Sarah questions the bad guy's mother is very nice. The scene where Joe and Jesse get to arrest the mind behind the attack is also nice teamwork. I will never forget Charlie throwing that knife, that was fucking great. I could talk for a long time about that episode, it was my favorite from the first part of the season.

Episode five is a bit silly but so is this show. Again, superhero episode is a pretty standard crime show trope used as a filler. Which it was in this case too. Still, I'd have liked for their fillers to have some more substance, like giving as more character details, which is the original purpose of filler episodes. The one thing I remember it added on was that Joe had been watching the superhero character when he was younger, which was important since it was a black superhero. Even that needed some more detail. In the more positives of this episode, Sarah got a lot of time out of the lab evaluating the man playing the original superhero character, which I assume was supposed to related to the degree she was studying for? And Charlie got tased, so hooray for that whump!

Episode six, I thought that would be more of a Knives Out storyline as advertised but it pretty much was a treasure hunt. Also, so many dogs. You can never have enough dogs. The scene where the new dog owners were trying to untangle their dogs is hilarious. There is more showcasing of how well Charlie handles Rex, and even commands Rex so that he can handle the other dogs. Not much to say about the episode, it was too feel good to pay attention to the plot. Oh, and Jesse officially became a detective.

A pause here for the biggest mid-season hiatus I've seen on this show. It was offputting, undeserved, and got on everyone's nerves, with CityTV being unable to program it in their "insanely busy" schedule. Like, who the fuck do they thing they are? They're lucky part two of the season was good.

And it was, starting with episode seven. Everyone needs to make a Russian spy episode at some point, so that was Hudson and Rex' time. Yay for the first domestic Charah scene of the season. I will forever wonder if episode five had a dinner scene that was cut, by the way. Also, it might be random, but part two was where most Charah scenes were. It's pretty obvious that no one from the production had programmed the hiatus to start after episode six, though, and who knows if this episode was intended to air as the seventh one. Anyway, some backstory about Sarah's dad too here. Bodies dropping, high stakes, I mean for this show anyway, and more Charlie whump. It's sad how they glossed over poisoning from a lethal agent, I mean, normally he would have so many side effects after that and he would certainly not get back up after ten seconds! Let Rex arrest the spy, he can even cuff him for all I care. He already almost administered the antidote.

Episode eight, again a popular crime show trope. I was against having Rex inside the prison, but that was a personal preference, having seen a similar episode in the original. Plus, there is the implausibility of the thing but less so in a show about a superdog. Unexpectedly, Charlie and Sarah had a moment even though they were apart. Well, two moments. Joe also shone as Rex's handler. Again, Charlie whump with the minimum of consequences and aftercare. They aren't really great at the after part, and that goes for a lot more things than whump. But the episode was very good, I liked a lot that they were showing Sarah's worry about Charlie multiple times this season (notable in this episode, some in five with the tasing, in eleven quite a bit, and very much in fifteen), although I did expect more to come of it. Maybe even a fight.

Episode nine, where we realize episode two was a setup for something. Finally, and it makes us see episode two in a new light. That had been my guess initially but you never know with this show. They make Charlie's dad instantly unlikable, not to the point where one has to absolutely hate him, but to the point where one can safely say that there are more issues than what Charlie said about his dad's fights with Jack and him being stuck in the middle. It does seem like his dad spent a lot of time away from his family, and he pretty much considers his soldiers more like a family than his own. Or that's what he initially shows because at the end he does make an effort to reach out to Charlie, even after Charlie has given up on it (understandably). I do like the scene in Joe's office where Charlie confides in Joe.

Episode ten, the golf episode. It's funny that I detest golf so much and they put in in everything. Having said that, the scene where the team plays golf is nice, with banter and everything, although I think it creates a huge plot hole when Joe references the dates when he became a member of the golf club. Of course Rex had to ruin the fun by doing his job. Take some time off! No one likes an overachiever (yeah, we do, I'm sorry I said that). Some minor Rex whump that is also inconsequential to the rest of the season, like all whump is in this show. I'm almost sure they didn't mean to pair that episode with eleven, though.

Episode eleven, I liked the whump part. I will say again that they did some good casting for the creepy lady. Nice scenes with Rex and the horse. Pretty nice to see Sarah's worry over Charlie's head injury and him stubbornly refusing to stay at the hospital (hey, he's got two almost good legs this time, he's not going to stay there while Rex is missing). Rex is shot but is magically healed a few scenes later. Charlie's injuries stay for the whole episode. I heard that unfortunately the horse has passed now. Rest in peace!

Episode twelve, I was hoping beyond hope that Sarah's hostage scene would last more than thirty seconds. Didn't happen. I have found the episode that the folks at Up Faith and Family will hate this season, and will be forced to put up a warning for in their streaming service or whatever it is they do to protect themselves from... trans people? Yeah, families seem in real danger from having an honest conversation with their kids. Did you know that you can *reads tweet* cause a real problem in a parent's house by showing trans people and creating questions for their kids? And wait until they find out that the trans character was played by a trans actor. Anyway, I had to say that. On the actual episode, another cute Sarah scene, although in that scene Charlie does come off as a buffoon when he shows that he doesn't know that while dogs don't see colors the way humans do, they can still see colors. I mean, how has that not come up in six years (or whatever number of years) that he's had a dog at home? Also, did you know that the SJPD has other detectives, who are of course less competent than Charlie? The guy putting down Sarah... instant dislike, obviously. And it went worse for him from there. A good episode, as far as I'm concerned.

Episode thirteen, I think I was heavily influenced by my own perception of what that episode should be to fully enjoy it. But it was okay in its own way. I loved the scene where Rex tried to hide Joe's suitcase so that he wouldn't leave, Charlie's mention of the team being a pack, even though a few episodes made me have my doubts about that and about the significance the writers/showrunners put on these characters and their bond with each other. I liked Charlie and Jesse teaming up too, even though them failing to secure the killer was something that would have made me, if I was in charge, get them through some extra training. I liked Sarah's role in this episode, didn't like how cagey the wife was especially when it came to Sarah. If you see every woman your husband knows as a threat to your marriage, that marriage won't last long.

Episode fourteen was an okay filler. I'd have liked them to do more with that, and also, don't show Rex in risk of getting hurt in the trailer when nothing will come of it. I mean, that was a letdown, I've talked about it before. We see more of Jesse as a detective again, which is cool. And the house, oh, the house. Too bad they installed an alarm and we're spared the unexpected visits, although someone could always disable it, I guess. Rex certainly thinks it's totally unnecessary.

Episode fifteen, my favorite episode of this season, maybe of the past two seasons, actually. I'm a sucker for a bomb threat, and if you strap the bomb on the lead character's chest, even better lol. Even before that, it was already a good episode, because things that go boom are interesting, can you believe it? I liked the character of the minister too, although there is no way someone with that demeanor and those opinions would reach the point where they'd be a candidate of their party, especially if she was a woman. The scenes with Charlie and Rex while Charlie has the bomb vest on are given a huge boost by Sarah appearing and staying with them, something that I honestly didn't expect (I was fully expecting their biggest moment to be something like a phone call). And, of course, who can forget the fanfiction moment where the distorted voice of the bomber asks Charlie if Sarah is his wife. And that it was their anniversary too. They will never get a moment's peace, as it should be.

And absolute letdown that episode fifteen wasn't the last, and therefore the hundredth episode. Even worse because sixteen is an absolute filler of an episode, and no offense to Jesse, but having him investigate his first case solo (for like five minutes because then it turns out his and Charlie's cases are connected) is not what I want to see for the last episode, especially when said episode doesn't have much in terms of action scenes. Its best points was us seeing Jesse handling the procedural part of a detective's job well, singing a few verses, and the fact that the guest stars were pretty good. Also, it has an extra interest as an episode for Kevin Hanchard's directorial debut. This show has a real problem with season finales.

I wouldn't say I disliked many episodes in total. I'd ax or heavily edit the whales episode in a heartbeat if I could, and rearrange a few of the rest, but when you consider the season as a whole, especially with many good episodes in the second part of the season, it is pretty much like a standard Hudson and Rex season. Even after the season has ended, I can't say with certainty that they were indeed going for a more Charlie and Rex season or that it just so happened that the first few episodes had them handling cases that showed them more isolated from the team than usual.

The fact that no one, not from CityTV nor Shaftesbury or the other productions the names of which are always on the credits but never do anything to promote the show, even announced that Hudson and Rex had reached a hundred episodes is very disheartening, and it makes me even less hopeful that they'll even acknowledge the franchise's 30th anniversary this year. I saw two other shows celebrate their 100th episode this year (and one franchise celebrating 1000), and from all of them, Hudson and Rex is the only one that pretended like it was just a random episode. Maybe even they have lost count with the shuffling.

I'm more annoyed with the networks and the productions' actions (or inactions) to this show than anything else. They show a clear lack of interest and a "let's let them do their own thing and stay out of their way" attitude. Creative choices are being made which seem to not need to be okayed by anyone (unless, apparently, you're a lowly background actor). No one seems to check the scripts for errors. How in the world do you end up mistaking what continent a country is when you're trying to correct a racist character about not knowing where said country is? Even limiting the time Charlie and Sarah had severely in the first few episodes, if I was a showrunner, or a producer, I'd be like, wait a minute, these two had a lot more screentime together last season (part of which, understandably, was establishing their relationship and would not be repeated in each season), and they usually do have a lot of screentime whether as a couple or before that, what are we doing here?

One positive continuation from S5, at least Jesse's detective storyline was continued. On the other hand, I feel like we barely saw Joe this season? As for Sarah, some of the character's screentime will be linked to Charlie's now, which has advantages and disadvantages. And what was that storyline with her degree??? This is a real mystery. It wasn't done for either of the reasons I predicted at the start (needing to take a few episodes off, or linked to a bigger storyline, or even leading to her exiting the show, in fact they were pretty adamant about that and flat out had Sarah tell us in a scene). We didn't even see her graduate and I was given the impression that it was something she'd study for a few months only, so we should have seen her graduate by the end of the season.

I will probably write another (hopefully smaller) post about my expectations for season 7.

[pluckysidekick]

I’m back with Part 2 of my playlist of Great American Songbook standards and other classic songs that embody Nace’s journey in Season 4, inspired by @emorfili’s post. Check out Part 1 here. Both posts contain Spotify links, but you can find all of these tracks on Apple Music and YouTube. DM me for a link to the entire playlist. Shall we?

1. Picking up with fan favorite Episode 408, George Benson’s 1976 slammin’ This Masquerade, written by Leon Russell, works on so many levels for this episode: Nancy and Ace having to pretend to be each other in front on Thom, acting as if everything is OK between them, with neither saying what they really feel. “We tried to talk it over but the words got in the way, We're lost inside this lonely game we play.”

2. They Can’t Take That Away from Me is so perfect for the 408 sunset scene when Ace returns Nancy’s necklace, and they seem to come to some kind of peace (for the present). They may not have been able to make it work, but they still have a deep bond that no one can take away. Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong’s duet of the Gershwin classic is the version.

3. Witchcraft - Frank Sinatra’s definitive version works for so much of Nancy Drew, but I picked it for Episode 409 for Nancy and Ace’s twin supernatural storylines, each of them beginning to fall for someone who may not be what they seem, and of course for Bess’s day in court defending the supernatural, and exposing the real history of Horseshoe Bay with witchcraft.

4. Nancy tells Nick in 409 that she wants a relationship that’s simpler than the ‘messy’ state of things with Ace (although note the look on her face as she says it). A Sunday Kind of Love by Etta James describes so well what Nancy thinks she wants in 409 and going into 410. Meanwhile Ace is falling under the spell of his mystery ghost - you could even say he’s Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered (I would). I went with Doris Day’s classic take from 1950.

5. Speaking of 410, I had to give a nod to Tristan Glass with Nat King Cole’s Nature Boy. Poor Tristan really goes through it this season and especially in this episode as he fights for his life when his would-be date shoots him, and from which he recovers only for his parents to kidnap and attempt to sacrifice her. I hope he has a nice life!

6. Episode 411 has Nancy crashing Ace’s Seder and causing a storm inside The Claw when she tries to raise Alice to discover how she died. Harold Arlen’s Stormy Weather sung by Lena Horne really drives home Ace’s stormy emotions, Nancy’s desperation (“Don't know why, there's no sun up in the sky, Stormy weather, Since my man and I ain't together, keeps raining all of the time”) and Alice’s pain that generates the storm.

7. Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea - The tension between Nancy and Ace that spills over from 411 to Episode 412 is all the more shocking because we’re used to them being soft with each other. But once Nancy is hot on the trail of the sin she erased, she’s not going to give up. Harold Arlen’s song, here sung by Tony Bennett in 1964, perfectly depicts that tension as Ace tries to give Nancy the runaround (and of course she isn’t having it): “I don’t want you, But I hate to lose you, You’ve got me in between, The devil and the deep blue sea”.

8. I’ve Got You Under My Skin - The venom that erupts when Ace & Nancy repeatedly confront each other in 412 couldn’t exist without the strong feelings that still run under the surface. Nancy admitting that she hasn’t moved on, and the look Ace gives her - they’ve got each other under their skin. Frank Sinatra’s 1956 gorgeous recording of the Cole Porter tune mirrors the back and forth of the star-crossed lovers throughout the season, but especially as we near the end.

9. “Oh Sinnerman, where you going to run to?” That’s the question this traditional spiritual continues to ask throughout Nina Simone’s 1965 powerhouse of a track. Nancy and Ace are both on the run in 412 — Nancy toward the truth of their sin, and Ace away from it. In Episode 413, they work together with the Crew and Tristan to lift the sin fog that’s infected the town, and discover Nancy’s soul connection to the root of the town’s sin. This legendary recording captures the frenetic energy of Nancy and Ace’s journey toward redemption and forgiveness.

10. The finale quickly moves from chaos to resolution of all of our favorite characters’ futures — and for Nancy and Ace’s relationship. Johnny Hartman’s voice on 1963’s My One and Only Love is simply beautiful, capturing Ace’s emotion as he finally comes back to Nancy, heart in hand. Swoon.

11. It Had to Be You - I had to include this one, recorded by Harry Connick, Jr. for another epic slow burn, friends to lovers romance, 1989’s When Harry Met Sally. Nancy and Ace are the soulmates that chose each other (and their friends), which this song’s lyrics capture so perfectly: “For nobody else gives me a thrill, with all your faults, I love you still, it had to be you, wonderful you, it had to be you.”

12. Cheek to Cheek - We didn't get the 6 minute director's cut of this scene that included a little dance with a dip (grr), but we did get that sense of effervescence once Ace and Nancy have broken the curse. Ella and Louis trading off verses on Irving Berlin's timeless classic is just the mood.

13. Ending on a sentimental note, At Last Nancy and Ace are together, and they and all of the Crew have the next part of their journeys mapped out. This lovely Etta James 1960 track is a perfect ending for this playlist, and for Nancy and Ace, Bess, George, and Nick as they say goodbye to The Claw.

So there you have it, my picks for Nace S4, classic style. Would love to hear what you think! Tell me your favorite pick, what I missed, or what you would have chosen instead. Hope this playlist brings a little joy this festive season - I think it’s the perfect background soundtrack for reading all of the @secretsleuthexchange fics!

[lilalbatross]

What are your thoughts on the latest season of Fire Country? I thought Bode would of been in jail longer than he was and not allowed back out to fires due to his failure at the test. I don't know why but I was expecting his dad and Manny to be trying to find out the truth and figure out how corrupt the system is and save Bode before he gets hurt or taken down for life never getting out or something.

oh man, okay. first off i wanna say i think the writing on FC is always a bit of a mess. i mean that with love cause this show has burrowed way deeper into my brain than it has any right to, but also it's never gonna get an emmy nom for writing, ya know?

I also thought the prison stuff would last a little longer??? not half the season or anything, but at least like...an entire episode lmao. at the same time i get it, cause Three Rock is so central to the show and we need Bode in Edgewater so the plot can turn, but it also made it feel very much like everything in the finale was for shock value in the moment, without the slightest consideration for how it would affect the plot once they had to actually deal with it

but then that's classic FC really (remember that time Eve was an alcoholic for like two episodes and then it never came up again?)

in terms of everything else:

my biases are no secret, but Vince is easily the best part of the season so far. you can feel the claw marks where he's trying so hard to hold everything together, cause someone's gotta when Bode's in prison and Sharon's fucked off doing whatever. Vince is miserable which means Billy Burke's making kicked puppy faces left and right and i'm just gobbling them up. and bitchy 2x03 Vince had shades of Miles Matheson, which is always a good time

2x01 and 2x02 Sharon didn't feel like Sharon. like at all lol. the writers were trying something and it wasn't working for me. 2x03 she's back, babyyyyy. but also why the fuck has she taken like three demotions if Jake now outranks her. and how long does it take to recover from a kidney transplant, considering the first time skip was only five months and she was at the campaign fire for three months????

loving the moments between Manny and Sharon cause they actually feel like friends, instead of last season where they kept saying they were friends but the vibe was fully just "i am sleeping on my boss' couch and this is weird for everyone"

i'm on the fence about Eve. love her to death, but the handling of her Three Rock transition feels clumsy from a writing perspective. but i'll be patient. also give my girl a love interest who doesn't vanish please i'm begging

Jake's plots feel like nothing so far. i'm hoping s2 will give him more to work with, cause in s1 he was either criminally underutilized or set in opposition to Bode when the show wanted you to root for Bode. which. sucked.

Bode and Gabi, together and as individuals, are always the least interesting part of this show to me. Gabi's engaged to a guy she just met. sure. whatever. i guess that's a thing she'd do. i'm already tired.

Genevieve. i was pissed when they teased this plot in the finale, but actually she's perfect and i love her and they've given her a very french name for some reason????? anyway i want hours and hours of her interacting with Vince cause the Scorsese moment was Everything to me. she's precious. this is my daughter now.

[meanscarletdeceiver]

Down the Mine

honestly not as funny as “Off the Rails”

okay no maybe it is

The story is classic, of course, but as far as the TV adaptation goes… ahh, I think they did the blocking on this one too early. It would have been lit if they had re-re-done the whole thing in Season 4, to be honest; I think they had more tricks to draw on by then.

The massive improvement they made in “The Flying Kipper” by portraying the accident with a little more gravity and drama? It could have been done here.

Because honestly the way they blocked it, it looks a bit dinky? Like, Thomas fucked up in a humiliating way, and he’s in an awkward predicament, and oh my God those tears… but, the thing I missed about this story for years, until seeing fanart and also learning about the Lindal Incident, is that Thomas’s situation here was really fucking serious.

Realistically, he and the Fat Controller were probably shouting to each other with Thomas stuck below, not at face level. Also, the rescue operation was not just logistically difficult, it was dangerous. The Fat Controller put himself at unnecessary risk sticking around (this season having already established that he’s useless at pulling). Gordon was also at risk. Once you have some subsidence, you risk even more of the ground giving way. (That happened at the Lindal mines—they recovered the tender and had good hope of recovering the rest of the engine… until the sinkhole abruptly got bigger.) The adaptation does make an effort to show what a feat of strength this is for Gordon but I argue it should be played up more. It’s funny—if Gordon hadn’t been on his punishment work messing around with trucks at Tidmouth, he probably wouldn’t have been on hand midday for the rescue, and it seems plausible to me that none of the other engines would have been strong enough to pull Thomas out. And, unlike the deal at Henry’s tunnel, there was a time limit here; with the whole subsidence risk, they were working against the clock and likely didn’t have time to wait for more engines. These days, I see this story as: If Gordon hadn’t been an arse about that damn special goods train, Thomas would have died (or, rather, a fate worse than death).

Anyway, the illustrator only had so much space to work with and was more reliant on the text. But I feel like, with more time and a bigger budget, David Mitton could have put a lot more interesting visuals “between the lines” of the narration.

And yeah, I don’t like people dismissing Season 1 because of how bare the set is or the lighting or whatever… but I must own, in this episode in particular, the lighting is dull and the sets are quite bare. It’s a bit jarring, especially when the episodes before and after it (“Off the Rails” and “Thomas’ Christmas Party”) are visually so interesting.

‘Course, for all my nitpicky what-could-have-beens, it’s still an enjoyable watch.

Also, amazing detail that I have never seen talked about:

Just as in “Thomas and the Trucks,” when the Fat Controller materializes, his shadow falls dramatically across Thomas’s sidetank.

That’s just one of those many little touches that make my heart burst with admiration for the passion of Season 1. A shoestring budget, still working out a lot of the kinks of this genre they were all but inventing—but damn did they just cram every minute with creativity, style, whimsy, and taste.

[tedturneriscrazy]

Another Saturday, another episode! Let's take a look at Keeping Up A-fear-ances!

(Good lord I'm starting to make myself sound like some sort of content creator)

Oh, okay, we're just starting at that level of intensity, huh?

Chest gem origins

Gwendolyn not being satisfied with managing the curse and determined to cure it? I'm sure this won't be a real world allegory in the slightest.

Oh, so Eda literally just stumbles upon the portal? I could call that contrived, but honestly it's not dissimilar to how Dipper found Journal 3. For that matter, the entirety of Lord of the Rings is predicated on an accidental discovery like this and nobody gave Tolkien shit about it.

Was the eye on the portal cracked in previous episodes? I don't remember.

Seems like Gwen is the "well-meaning but ultimately misguided" flavor of mom.

As an aside, I am now quite curious about how Eda's first trip to the human realm went. Maybe a future episode will cover it? At any rate, I smell a new favorite fic prompt.

The screaming alarms in the Demon Realm will never not be funny to me.

Also, that is a worrying number of hearts. Eda is straight up murdering these poor creatures.

For some reason the gold fang being removable never occurred to me as a possibility, and now I feel like a kid who's discovered that Santa isn't real.

Oh hey, the new outfit! I'm also impressed how close to symmetrical that tearing was.

I need to get a screencap of Luz sleeping on that stack of books because she is adorable.

Also, staying up all night researching? This season seems determined to completely eradicate the notion of Luz being dumb, and I am here for it.

I have a feeling the Hexside mug will be making its way to The Mystery Shack in the near future.

Lilith's first experience with transformation and she seems understandably horrified.

The curse acting stronger when stressed? That seems...important.

Ah, so the dismemberment is from the curse! A surprisingly useful side effect from what we've seen so far.

Can I just say that I appreciate how Eda's reaction to Lilith's first taste of transformation is immediate remedy, explanation, and reassurance? And doesn't make any snarky comments along the lines of "now you know what it's like?" Whatever happened in that week and a half must have been cathartic as hell.

"Always. Always curious." Luz is the TOH fandom.

(Also, Eda, you know she is, considering how much she went on about your "mysterious past" at the Covention)

"Magic bird tornado?!" Luz has a way with words that's just *chef's kiss*.

"Gwendolyn." Eda is already just fucking done.

"MOM?!?!" Jeez, Lilith, you're just now hearing all this?

I was charmed by how motherly Gwen was acting toward Eda, but then she kinda just...dismissed Lilith, and now I'm somehwat less charmed.

(Sweet flea as a term of endearment is kinda cute, though might have some unfortunate implications depending on how you want to interpret it)

"Who knows what they put in those nasty concoctions?" OH WE GOING FOR THE ANTI-VAXXERS NOW YESSSS

Luz and Lilith's reaction to that whole exchange is priceless.

Everyone's perspective here makes perfect sense for who they are and what they've been through.

Poor Lilith. Her cursing Eda is beginning to make more sense.

Ah, thus begins the collaboration.

"We'll be consulting someone very special." Why does that seem so...ominous?

Is there anyone who watched this episode for the first time whose bullshit detector didn't go off immediately when Gwen mentioned finding someone who promised a cure?

Heh, Palm Stings.

Nonbelievers will be blinded by the power of the tome? I'm sure they will be, Wartlop.

I must say, as something of a scientist myself (okay that's not true, I'm a QA tech for a food manufacturer, but I do have a chemistry degree), I am 100% here for the swings being taken at faith healing/"miracle" cures/anti-vaxxers in this episode

Oh, we Wile E. Coyote now, huh?

Also, interesting how much apple blood is being played up in this episode.

Lilith please you're projecting your mommy issues on a literal child

OH WE REALLY JUST WILE E. COYOTE HUH?

You're right, Luz, Gwen's bicep game is goals.

(Somewhat disappointed the scars are from questing and not beastkeeping, but eh)

Why do I get the feeling there's gonna be a future episode where everybody stages an intervention for Eda's apple blood problem?

"Those feathers mean we're driving the beast out" Gwen no

Hooty is holding the brain cell? Oh no...

If that ice cream came from the Night Market it would explain why Lilith sounds drunk.

(Side note: I can't be the only one getting flashbacks to Mermista's ice cream binge, right? Different context, but still)

"Abomi-berry" "Franken fruit" "Key slime pie" These are A+ flavor names.

Oh, there's the transformation...

I must say that whole segment kinda rubbed me the wrong way. The way King's opinion on his dad was changed seemed...I don't know how to describe it. I get that they needed a trigger for Lilith's transformation, but honestly if any part of the episode is contrived it's this.

"¡It really is that good!" So that's what an accent slip in written form looks like. (The upside down exclamation point is used in Spanish, in case anyone didn't know)

I keep half expecting Eda to say "Beep! Beep!" at this point.

Luz is finally asking questions. Took long enough.

Ah, the classic "moving the goal posts to extract more money from a desparate family member" technique.

Luz channeling Scorpion, we love to see it.

There is an exquisite irony in Eda's mom being scammed, I must say.

Ah, so that's where the elixirs went. Dammit, Gwen.

Luz is definitely thinking "Are you fucking kidding me right now?!"

Beast!Lilith is massive.

"Sweet flea?" Gwen just realized she done goofed.

"I can see you still need a little time." God Luz is so fucking smart.

The con revealed.

OH DAMN SCARY MAMA

(Also I am terrified of bees/wasps, so extra scary mama in my book)

The scam is revealed, goblins, getting back into the Wartlop disguise is kinda pointless.

She joined the Beast Keeping coven entirely to cure the curse? That's dedication. A shame you couldn't have spared some of that for Lilith.

Still, I do like badass scary mama Gwen. I'd be down to see more of that.

Owl Beast fight!

I am slayed by the fact that the portraits are now officially a recurring gag 😂

Aw, here's The Moment™️

"My turn to drive" Does this imply cars are a thing on the Boiling Isles after all?

Lilith crying almost immediately💔 She was holding onto a lot of pain.

Yes, King, she was trying to do her best. I mean, road to hell or whatever, but at least Gwen got there in the end.

WHAT?! YOU'RE BREAKING UP LULU AND HOOTCIFER?!?!?!?

Terrace, that's just cruel. (Worthless brownie points for whoever understands that reference)

No, seriously, you can't just give me my favorite inter-character relationship in the series after Lumity and just...take it away like that, come on! 😭😭😭😭😭😭

I know I should remark on how Lilith told Gwen about the circumstances of the curse, how Gwen rightfully accepted responsibility for the whole situation, and how Luz finds the big hair aspirational, but...NOOOO DON'T END THE ADVENTURES OF LULU AND HOOTCIFER WHYYYYYYYYY💔😭💔😭💔😭

"BUT I CAN'T HOLD A PEN!"

I will never emotionally recover from this.

Okay, I think I got that out of my system. Anyway...

Not the only human, huh? Cue the "Belos is a human" theorists going into maximum overdrive.

That said, a tantalizing lore dump.

We certainly do have a lot of garbage. Some of it even holds office. HEY-O!

Setting up the next episode, too. Continuity!

Camp's over, huh? That means it's been three months.

Way to misdirect with Camila, guys. That said, we have now seen Camila cry and I HATE it. (In the right way, I think)

WHAT THE FUCK

HOLY SHIT

CREEPY LUZ IS REAL WHAT

OWJEIWHQGIWWOPQ

(It's hard to keysmash on a phone, even with autocorrect off)

That wraps it up! The flaws in this episode seem more pronounced than any others in the season so far, but the good stuff was really good! Overall a solid episode! I know everybody's looking forward to library Lumity in the next one (so am I), but I'm personally eager to see what they do with Gus. His part is the A plot, after all.

Anyway, I'll be back at this next week! Still hard to believe this is a thing, but that's life, I guess.

[canary3d-obsessed]

Restless Rewatch: The Untamed Episode 05 (second part)

(Masterpost) (Continued from Episode 05 first part, over here)

Breaking News: Zewu-Jun Continues to be Handsome

Just. Look at that man. 

Water Ghost Field Trip

Lans Xichen and Wangji are going ghost hunting and the Yunmeng boys want in. For a simple "can we come?" conversation, a whole lot happens here. Lan Wangji uses his mouth to say he definitely does not want these boys to come while using the rest of his face to secretly beg his brother to invite them.

Corporate recruiter Wei Wuxian advocates for Wen Qing, talking up her skills, and then does the same for Wen Ning.  He pays careful attention to what everyone is good at, and advocates specifically based on their abilities. While Wen Ning makes heart eyes at him.  

That’s my future dark master

Wei Wuxian also promises to protect Wen Ning, which he ultimately does for the rest of his first life. Wen Qing gives both Jiang boys a genuine sweet smile, and dismantles another anti-WWX ward or two, while still being very protective of her brother's secret.

Lan Xichen says yes to everybody. Lan Xichen is that indulgent elder sibling who's just a bit too old to play with you after school, but will take you to the park when he isn't too busy with varsity and debate club. [OP mentally hugs her third older brother]

Back at the Inn

Fastidious local boy dislikes dust; plans to build house on corpse pile

They get to town and Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian check into a room together. LAN XICHEN WHAT ARE YOU DOING? Each of these boys came to this town with his own brother, but they are rooming together, how did this even happen?

(more after the cut)

Does this mean Lan Xichen and Jiang Cheng are rooming together? and if so are they going to have a hot but ultimately meaningless one-night stand while each pines for the person they truly desire? 

Wen Qing is rooming with her own brother, and the other hot girl cultivators stayed back in Gusu. Wen Qing never catches a break.

The innkeeper tells the Hardy Boys cultivators that there’s a shark ghosts in the lake and they’re going to have to close the beaches in the middle of July, oh dear. 

Lan Wangji takes a lingering look at one of the beds and then goes to sit at the desk. Wei Wuxian tries to chat with him, fails, and goes and lies down on the bed.  They’re not quite getting along yet but they’re moving in that direction, like when you bring a shelter cat home and introduce it to your established cat. Wei Wuxian is obviously the stray tabby in this metaphor, while Lan Wangji is one of those stuck-up Blue Russians. 

Physically they are setting the template for many of their future domestic interactions, in which in which Lan Wangji meditates or plays guqin at his desk while Wei Wuxian lays in bed recovering from his latest physical or spiritual injury. 

Walk from Dock to Dock

Instead of taking a boat from the dock directly outside the inn, the cultivators walk through a bunch of random countryside.  How does anyone around here sell their fish, if the lake isn’t next to the town?

Wei Wuxian chats with Lan Xichen, laying out his case for why all the recent weirdness is connected. Lan Wangji, who has been shut out of his brother’s thinking on all of this, listens super carefully. Lan Xichen straight up lies and says “nuh-uh” and then walks faster to get away, so Wei Wuxian tries grilling Lan Wangji instead.

At this point WWX reveals that he, terrifyingly, shares Lan Xichen’s ability to tell what Lan Wangji is thinking by looking at his face.

Lan Wangji distracts him by pouring out his wine. This isn't LWJ being puritanical; he's escaping from the conversation by using the power of pettiness.

This works perfectly, getting Wei Wuxian to completely drop the subject and allowing Lan Wangji to make a run for it.

Note: Lan Wangji may have just now made up the “No Liquor on Night Hunts” rule, because Wei Wuxian asks him “why don’t I know that?” and if anyone knows Lan Clan rules at this point, it’s Wei Wuxian. 

R-A-G-G M-O-P-P Rag Mop

They take a bunch of boats and all stand in the middles of the boats while they use magic, presumably, to move the boats and also to keep from falling the fuck over because you're not supposed to stand up in a boat, assholes.

Cue JAWS music.

Wei Wuxian cleverly spots a rag mop on Lan Wangji’s boat. I would like to know where the Department of Dubious Effects sources their goddamn nerve, because we are in Classic Doctor Who territory with these mop monsters.

Wei Wuxian is out here being impressive, and Lan Wangji is doing his good goddamnest to not be impressed, and to be a sulky bitch while he's at it. He rejects Wei Wuxian’s explanation for why he splashed water on his boat, and rejects this friendly shoulder bump, telling Wei Wuxian to stay away from him.

Look at how Wei Wuxian reacts to that. He is dangerously close to being done with Lan Wangji’s bullshit.

He is opening the fight playbook here. He takes a big ol’ step over the boundary that Lan Wangji just set, which means the first phase has begun.

Let’s take a moment to appreciate the not-at-all suggestive framing and prop placement in that shot.

Lan Xichen is amused at these two extremely deadly extremely horny youngsters getting ready to kill and/or make out with each other.

Suibian

Before this can turn into a fight, the water mops start attacking and Wei Wuxian gets to show off his sword skills. 

Wei Wuxian’s crazy high level of cultivation always makes Lan Wangji weak in the knees, which is part of why it’s so distressing for LWJ when WWX gives up the sword during the Sunshot campaign.  Cultivation is the heart of their romance, and while Dark Wei Ying is also a high-level cultivator, Lan Wangji isn’t ready to share his narrow path until much later. 

Lan Wangji is impressed enough to ask Wei Wuxian about his sword, and is rewarded with the most Wei Wuxian answer ever, as he explains why he named his sword “Whatever.” 

The important relationship being shown in this moment is not Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji, but Wei Wuxian and Suibian. You can see how he loves it and it's like he's talking about his pet. 

And it loves him back, as we later learn. This comfortable symbiosis is part of what he gives up when he sacrifices his core.

Jiang Cheng gets injured by a seaweed mop and Dr. Wen hops over to help him and look at his leg, leaving Wen Ning alone in his boat. This doesn't actually cause a problem for Wen Ning because he's a very strong cultivator. 

Later, as the Ghost General, he's more formidable than any other fierce corpse out there, and he is harder for Xue Yang to control than Song Lan is. Which means he’s right now he’s probably one of the more powerful cultivators of his generation in spite of his youth and his wandering-soul problem. 

Dance of the Water Ghosts

Now things start to get dicey. Wen Ning notices the color of the water is wrong and Lan Wangji correctly deduces what the water ghosts are doing. Then Wei Wuxian correctly identifies the water demon. As a corporate teambuilding exercise this is going very well, but as a night hunt it is maybe a little more dangerous than expected. 

Lan Wangji says everyone needs to ride their swords and all of the actors fling their arms out in a T and pretend they’re not just standing there in front of the camera. It’s so fucking ridiculous I can’t even.

However, it’s even worse when they show them standing on the swords. It’s SO MUCH WORSE when they show them standing on the swords.

Back to Corporate Strengths Finder 2.0: Su She has no strengths, just weaknesses. Instead of riding his sword he wants to take one last swipe at a rag mop. He sends his sword into the water and it loses its bluetooth connection and he can't get it to come back out.

The entire group of Lan clan disciples hop up into the air on their swords and not one of them tries to help Su She, which is hilarious.  

Sweet baby Wen Ning, however, being a good lad, does go help him, and gets possessed, oops. 

Wei Wuxian grabs Wen Ning and flinches when he sees his white eyes, but hangs on to him. 

When Lan Wangji sees that Wei Wuxian is in danger he makes this face and goes and grabs him and Su She.

A hilarious midair conversation ensues, along with some relationship negotiation. Wangji is touch starved and aims to keep it that way. At least in public.

Lan Xichen fires up the battle flute and seals the water demon and oh my god how is he so elegant and beautiful?

What’s Wrong With The Baby

Wei Wuxian back at the Inn is checking on Wen Ning in a genuinely concerned way, having basically signed on as a co-elder sibling at this point, sensing that Wen Ning is broken. Wei Wuxian is friendly with everybody but he's particularly protective of anyone who's hurt.

Wen Qing shows up and tells him quite directly to get the fuck out, but he surprises her by understanding what's up with Wen Ning and making it clear that he's on her side as far as care for Wen Ning goes, while he still knows that she's up to something.

Giving Gifts to Girls, Yunmeng Brothers Style

Wei Wuxian: I deduced that your beloved brother has no personal firewall and can be possessed easily in spite of his high cultivation level, so I used my expertise to make a special talisman that can protect him from invasion by hostile entities. Here, even if you and I are sorta enemies I want him to have this. Also I’m going to throw in a casual acknowledgement of your professional expertise.

Jiang Cheng: I bought you a comb

Squeeze This

Wei Wuxian tosses an approximately testicle-sized loquat fruit to Lan Wangji and Lan Wangji catches it without looking, and an ENORMOUS romantic music cue swells up. 

Then he rejects it and throws it back. He doesn't, of course, just avoid catching it in the first place because that wouldn’t be elegant and pointed enough. In a later episode, when they begin travelling together, Wei Wuxian will announce his presence in this same way, throwing a loquat fruit at to Lan Wangji, who will catch it and keep it.

Wei Wuxian tosses the rejected loquat over to Jiang Cheng, who catches it, not realizing he is going to be Wei Wuxian’s second choice man in every instance from this point onward. 

Outtro

Soundtrack

Jaws music obvs

WuJi aka Wanxian which is playing constantly when they are in the library, presumably this is the sound in LWJ’s head

Lookin’ Out My Back Door by CCR

Nothing, from A Chorus Line

Rag Mop by the Ames Brothers (warning before you google it: this will give you a permanent earworm)

Writing prompt: Nie Huaisang and Jiang Cheng explore Gusu while WWX is stuck in the library  

Restless Rewatch Episode 06 is here!

[etherrealoblivion]

Chapter Seventeen: The Ones We Win

The Final Chapter.

Table of Contents

Fic summary: Owning a bookstore in downtown D.C. came with its fair share of downsides. You never thought that being the target of a serial killer would be one of them. Luckily, a nice FBI agent by the name of Spencer Reid is assigned to watch over you. What's the worst that could happen?

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Reader

Words: 2,700

enjoy!

MASTERLIST

~

You woke in the hospital, unsure of how much time had passed, this time much more drugged up judging by the strangely good mood you were in.

Or perhaps your mood had something to do with the sight of Spencer slumped in the chair next to your bed, a yellow cardigan draped over him, snoring softly.

“Merry Christmas,” although it came out raspy and barely audible, he still snapped awake, rushing to your side and holding your hand like it was made of glass.

“Hey,” his eyes were full of fear and worry but also relief and care. “You’re safe, it’s okay.”

You smiled softly at him.

“No, it’s not.”

His expression shifted, not sadder but more earnest. He knew you were right.

Smiling, he whispered, “No. No, it’s not. But it will be.”

For a while the two of you sat there, holding hands, enjoying each other’s company without having to worry about imminent danger for the first time ever.

You cleared your throat, memories coming back as the morphine wore off.

“Is . . . is Steve . . . ?”

Spencer frowned, looking down at the ground.

“Steve. . . the bullet entered right in his neck …  they-they operated for hours but … he-he slipped into a coma. I’m sorry.”

You nodded seriously, forcing back the tears that threatened to escape. Somehow, after all you’d been through, you’d become numb to such awful news. Although, it could be the morphine.  

“And J.J.?”

“She’s fine. Well, she’ll be okay.”

You nodded again, glancing down at where your hands were joined.

“What now?”

“Well, um there are some things the FBI has to go over with you, so once you’ve recovered a bit more, they’re gonna have to ask you a few questions.”

“Can’t you do it?”

His cheeks went pink and he cleared his throat awkwardly, hand shifting in yours.

“I, um, I’ve been unassigned from the case.”

“Why?!”

“C-conflict of interest.”

“Oh, right.”

Although you weren’t sure exactly which conflict of interest he was referring to. It was either the fact he’d been kidnapped along with you, or it had to with how much he’d told them about what happened at the cabin.

You must have been blushing because he removed his hand from yours and stood, starting to pace, frantically wringing his hands.

“Look, about what I . . . I only . . .” he sighed. 

“You know, for someone who’s constantly talking, you sure do have trouble finding your words,” you smiled at him.

He chuckled, running a hand through his fluffy hair that had gotten much messier since you’d last seen it. There was also a hint of a five o’clock shadow on his jaw. How long had he been sitting with you?

“Y/N, I . . . I meant everything I said.”

You swallowed, feeling the weight of that sentence implied on you.

“That you . . . you—“

“I love you,” the words practically spilled out of his mouth, as if he couldn’t have possibly held them back any longer. 

You beamed, astonished by the admittance. You assumed he would have assured you that any feelings between the two of you couldn’t continue because the lines of your relationship were far too blurred and complicated. Plus, you’d been put in a situation that neither of you would ever forget.

“I want to be with you, Spencer. Before you say anything,” you said quickly as he opened his mouth, “let me just say, I know that this is a really fucked up situation. I know that this probably violates every single FBI code and regulation. I know we’ve only known each other for a couple of weeks. I know that to the outside world, this looks like a classic case of transference or whatever. But really, the only thing I know for sure . . . the only thing I really care about, is that I love you, too. I love you for you.”

His face was impossible to read.

Feeling a surge of disappointment, you glanced away, deciding to give him an out.

“But I know you feel differently. I just needed you to hear that. I won’t be hurt if you decide to leave and never see me aga—“

But you were interrupted by a passionate kiss, his hands gripping your jaw, pulling you into him, holding you as close as he could without hurting you.

You gasped into the kiss, reciprocating the enthusiasm, delving deep into his mouth, tongues meeting in a wonderful blaze of lust and fire.

An eternity passed as you basked in the feeling of kissing someone who you knew you loved, and who you now knew loved you back.

No words could ever possibly describe what you were feeling.

You were brought out of the episode by the quiet clearing of a throat from the doorway.

Spencer snapped away from you, glancing at the door and going bright red. His coworker, Morgan, was standing there, awkwardly looking away with a mischievous smile on his face.

Reluctantly, Spencer looked back at you, attempting to smile.

“Listen, um … would you want to … to go….”

He didn’t finish. He didn’t need to.

“I’d love to, Spencer.”

His face lit up and he pressed a gentle kiss to your forehead.

“I’ll, uh, I’ll talk to you later.”

“Okay,” you smiled, squeezing his hand before he walked out the doorway, glancing back at you before the door shut.

Once he left, you watched him and Morgan exchange a few words, Spencer growing redder and Morgan laughing. Their conversation ended with Morgan fake punching Spencer in the arm and the latter man shuffling off, attempting to hide the smile forcing its way onto his face.

Morgan waved a hand at him, then turned and entered the room.

“Ready?”

You smiled.

“As I’ll ever be.”

~

Four days later

The doorbell rang, drawing your attention away from the pile of messy clothes you’d been attempting to put away.

He was early, of course. After all, it was your first ‘official’ date. It followed that Spencer Reid was punctual.

Kicking the dirty laundry under your bed, you opened the door, greeted by a huge bouquet of flowers over which Spencer’s head popped up beaming at you.

“I didn’t know your favorite flower, so I had them put all of them. I’m, um, I’m just now realizing how ugly it looks.”

You laughed, taking the bouquet and welcoming him in.

“It’s beautiful, Spencer. Thank you,” and you placed a quick kiss on his cheek, a soft blush forming there.

“So,” you called from the bedroom, slipping on some comfortable shoes, “where are you taking me?”

You saw him bounce on the balls of his feet, hands in his pockets.

“It’s a surprise,” he chimed, “Well, it was supposed to be a while ago, actually.”

You practically ran out of your room, securing your earring.

“A while ago? Wait,” you gasped. “Is this the surprise you were going to show me after the restaurant?”

He nodded. 

It felt like so long ago the two of you had been in that alley, pressed up against each other. That was the first time you’d ever fired a gun. Turns out it had been good practice.

Shaking that memory out of your head, you followed Spencer out the door down the stairs and out into the cold December night.

Christmas felt like it hadn’t really happened. In fact, according to your doctor, you had been unconscious all Christmas day, finally waking up on the 27th. You and Spencer had decided to meet as soon as possible, not wanting to be apart for longer than necessary. It just happened that that meant New Year’s eve.

You walked for a while, chatting about all sorts of nonsense until finally, you realized where he was taking you.

“Wait, are we—“

“Ah! Don’t spoil the surprise.”

But within a few minutes, your suspicions were confirmed as you arrived outside of the downtown library, which, thankfully, stayed open pretty late.

He led you in, heading immediately for the language section.

“You remembered?” it was a stupid question and he cocked an eyebrow at you. You laughed, “Okay, fair enough.”

Still, you were touched that he had remembered a detail as small as a section of the library that you wanted to visit but was never able to because of stupid security reasons.

He withdrew the little golden key from your first restaurant date and unlocked the restricted section, leading you into the plethora of dictionaries and research books there.

“Being an FBI agent does have its upsides,” he joked, slipping his hand into yours and letting you lead the way through the stacks.

“This is amazing, Spencer! I've always wanted to come in here but they’d never let me. Some stupid regulations about student access.” You turned to face him, dragging him into a tight embrace. “Thank you.”

You could feel him shiver as your breath hit his neck.

And so you walked through the shelves, stopping when a book piqued your interest and explaining all sorts of rules of language to Spencer who picked it up pretty quickly. It was wonderful the way he watched you ramble, as though he truly wanted to hear more, to understand what you were saying.

It shocked you when the voice on the speaker announced that the library would be closing in ten minutes.

“Is it eleven already?” you asked, glancing around for a clock. Neither you nor Spencer wore watches. 

“Well, I hope you enjoyed the restricted section. Too bad we didn’t learn anything about Nicholas Flamel,” he side-eyed you, tongue in cheek and you beamed at him.

“You read Harry Potter?”

He took a sip of an imaginary cup, smiling and pulling you closer as you walked towards the exit, “While you were asleep at the hospital. It actually took me a couple of days to finish if you can believe it. I just got so invested in the story, I had to slow down to truly appreciate it. Make the experience last longer.”

Pleased, you reached up and gave him a kiss, now just outside the library, all alone.

His eyes sparkled in the streetlight. You could so easily get lost in them. He looked at you in a way no one ever had before. He looked at you like you were something worth looking at.

“Follow me,” you said mysteriously, taking his hand and leading him down the empty street, a wicked smile on your face.

He laughed nervously, long legs able to keep up easily, “Where are we going?”

“You got to surprise me. It’s my turn.”

You halted in the street, the words unconsciously taking you back to the dark metal room. Tom’s voice rang through your ears, “I think it’s Y/N’s turn, don’t you?”

Spencer must have noticed your pause because he was suddenly in front of you, tilting your face up to meet his.

“Hey,” he was so gentle, so sweet, pulling you out of your flashback with his voice. “Let’s go.”

So you led him to your destination: a small park with a little white arch which you stood under, whipping out your phone and tapping rapidly. In the center of the park was a little clock tower, it was almost midnight.

“I used to come here when I needed to clear my head.”

“What are we doing?” he asked, standing across from you, peeking down at your phone, hands in his pockets.

“You went to college at fourteen, right?”

His eyes narrowed, unsure of where this was going.

“Yes. . . ?”

You put your phone on a little bench, music starting to play from it.

“So I’m guessing you never really went to prom?”

His face went blank, realizing what you planned as you slipped your hands up to his shoulders. Rather than reciprocating, he stood awkwardly, clearing his throat.

“While I have been told I tend to sway on my feet when I get nervous, I, um, I can’t dance, Y/N.”

“So don’t dance,” you stared into his eyes, as dark as black holes, “just sway.” And you moved his arms to your waist where they rested lightly, applying just the right amount of pressure.

And, as instructed, he swayed softly with you as the gentle slow song played in the background, barely audible from where you were snuggled into his chest, his chin resting gently on your head.

In that moment, you could see your entire future laid out in front of you. You and Spencer going on scores of dates, getting closer and more comfortable with each other. Your first fight that ended with plenty of “I love you”s. Your first time being with each other, getting to explore one another's bodies in a whole new light. Everything the future held for you, Spencer was there, standing by your side.

The song was over before you knew it. Pulling back, you wondered how long you’d been swaying in silence.

“Hey, Spencer?”

He stared at you harder than ever before, eyes analyzing every part of you.

“Yeah?”

It was barely a whisper as he said it, tilting your face up to his with a finger.

“I asked you how cases like this end. You said of the ones you win, the killer goes to prison and eventually everyone moves on. You never said what happens to the ones you lose.”

He realized what you were asking.

“The ones we lose.... The ones we lose serve as a reminder of how important it is not to fail.”

You nodded softly. Then—

“Which is this?”

Everything depended on his answer. Your future was utterly and completely in his hands. He could say they’d won, signifying that the two of you would move on, forget about each other, or he could say they’d lost, signifying that no matter what happened, neither of you would move on from the kidnapping, making it impossible to maintain a healthy relationship. Either way, you were going to lose him.

But Spencer Reid was a genius. A fact that seemed to keep slipping your mind. 

“There’s a third possibility,” he whispered, surprising you. When you met his eyes, you could see the desperation in them, the fear of saying the wrong thing.

“A possibility where the outcome of the case doesn’t define how we feel about each other.”

You could hear cheers from uptown, the sound of people celebrating and fireworks going off.

The clock tower began to chime, twelve painfully slow strikes signifying that the new year had come as you held each other in your arms.

On the last chime, you practically jumped into his arms, kissing for what felt like the first time, every single emotion behind it conveyed in the way you pulled his hair and yanked him closer until there was no part of you not touching. His arms snaked around your waist, pulling you close to him and deepening the kiss until you were both out of breath.

This felt like love. But how could you be sure?

You pulled back and stared at him.

“Maybe whatever happens to the killer isn’t what determines if you win or lose.”

He waited for you to go on.

“If none of this happened, I never would have done so many things. Shot a gun, been to that library, played strip poker. . . I never would have met you. To me, that sure sounds like one of the ones we win.”

He smiled so sweetly, the light of a thousand suns washing over you.

After sitting in the moment with him a little while longer, you picked up your phone and began the walk back to your apartment.

“You didn’t read The Cursed Child, did you?”

“I read the first two chapters but I stopped because I thought it was a Harry Potter fan fiction,” he said, blushing.

You laughed, clutching his arm.

This was love. And you both knew it.

“That’s probably for the best,” you smiled at him, knowing that although the future was blurry, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was now, you and him walking through the street, arms entwined, utterly in love, the sounds of people celebrating the new year lighting up the path behind you. “I never liked fan fiction anyway. . . .”

 ~

The End.

~

A/N: thank you everyone for reading. it’s been a wild ride. i love you all and there is certainly more to come! <3

~

Taglist: @aperrywilliams​ @mjloveskids666​ @dolanfivsosxox​ @criesinreid​ @fanficsrmylife @racerparker​ @sammypotato67​ @lukeskisses​ @reidcrimes​ @you-had-me-at-hello-dear​ @l0ve-0f-my-life​ @thatsonezesty13​​ @yourmisosoup​ @queenofthebees003​ @pinkdiamond1016​ @eu-solidao @perverted-guardian-angel​ @boiled-onionrings​ @lesbian-emilyprentiss​ @andiebeaword​ @itsmoony​ @cielo1984​ @baby-i-am-fireproof​ @mendesminimuffin​ @fukyouthink​ @addie5264 @gretaamyk​ @sercyan​ @expressiodeppresio @matthewreid​ @rainsong01 @gublergirls

[ftstorm]

My take on 5x10

Welp, that was a big one!

You know, before going into this episode I reminded myself this was the first episode of a new era, the first episode completely made by the new team.

So with that in mind my expectations were "Okay, let's see what they've got."

And oh boy did they surprise me.

DISCLAIMER: this text post is long af, not kidding.

1. THE INTRO SCENE.

You guys have no idea how glad I am that we got Mac doing a usual MacGyvering in his house. It's been ages since they implemented this format of showing his dynamics outside Phoenix and around his house.

I wasn't worried about the proposal thing at all. Guys, you have to accept that MacRiley was always going to happen after that 4x04 episode.

There was also the fact that this was the intro scene (usually the most important plot issues happen in the outro scene), Bozer's weird reaction and the melancholic audio cue.

If that proposal was happening, they would've made it more uplifting.

(I gotta say that watching Monica Marcer and the official MacGyver account making damage control in Twitter 3mins into the episode was a funny experience)

So my initial questions about Mac wanting to propose were: "what are his motivations?" and "how is this not going to work out by the end of the episode?"

The second question we got the answer later on. The first question remains unanswered. If we take on Mac's words, he says:

Mac: Unexpected, I know, I know. But that's why I like about it. You know ever since I lost my dad and Jack I've been thinking about the bigger picture. A commitment to make things work it's exactly what Desi and I need. A grand romantic gesture. *cue melancholic music*

Here we're presented with a bunch of things worth analysing, in my opinion.

He's trying to see the "bigger picture" which, for me, it means he's trying to tackle down different issues from his life with one specific, efficient action [the proposal]. Those issues being:

> his current romantic relationship: make is aware they have an inconsistent relationship > his performance at work: he needs balance between his personal affairs and his work, which is based on saving the world in a daily basis and for that he needs to be focused. > dealing with his past losses: to my understanding, saying "ever isn I lost my dad and Jac I've been thinking about the bigger picture" means that he doesn't want hopelessness to take over him, he wants to keep on moving and being proactive about his life.

So... you have to understand that in some sort of way, this proposal thing is a signal that Mac is healing. In some sort of way, if you were in Mac's shoes you would see that it was a positive thing for him. A step forward.

The thing is, we [the audience] have an extended understanding of the situation and we know that an engagement would be an incredibly rushed decision.

As well as it is that Mac's trying to move forward, he obviously hasn't been able to pinpoint the true issue behind his relationship with Desi. He isn't wrong about them lacking in the commitment department, but forcing the relationship to scalate isn't the right move. He should be asking himself: "Why are we avoiding commitment?"

And that's when he'd find out that they have very deep and important trust and communication issues.

~~~~

2. Moving on. MURDOC.

Russ: I can process it more efficiently by having it all spread out ahead me, you know. I reckon see the bigger picture at once.

This is when I realized that the episode was centered on this whole "bigger picture" idea. Russ struggles to see the full picture until the very end and Mac finds out that he hasn't been seeing the full picture of his life at all by the end of the episode.

Fast forward, the team's in Mexico, Riley knows about the ring already and she has already had the talk with Bozer in which she refers to her feelings for Mac in a past tense.

Then Murdoc appears.

And as if the episode wasn't already a rollercoaster after Mac's reveal, now Murdoc shows up to put everything upside down.

First I gotta say, man Dastmalchian is SUCH A GOOD MURDOC. Excellent actor. The way he delivers his lines, his facial expressions, all of it make an original and very entertaining Murdoc.

He always gives me such a Andrew Scott's Moriarty vibes and I love it.

Secondly, his dynamic with Andrews: *cheff kiss*

I loved how Andrews was so over Murdoc's theatrics, to the point his facial expression screamed "Why did I even reclute this guy" LOL.

Back to the story.

This is something I was hoping it wouldn't happen but at the same time I don't see another way it could've happened which is the explanation behind Murdoc's escape and how Phoenix didn't know about it.

Because what they told us is that the FBI didn't let them in on Murdoc's escape, right? Does that imply that the FBI has a corrupt agent in charge? Does it imply that the order of not letting Phoenix in came from above? Maybe someone with higher clearence than Matty? A politician? Governement conspiracy?

It smells like plot hole, tbh. I feel like the Murdoc's escape is a classic "it is what it is". We'll see if they come back to this in later episodes.

~~~~

3. BIG SECRET REVEAL 1.

By now we're at the point of the rollercoaster where you're going up and up and up. Your tension building more and more as you're getting close to the drop.

Bozer and Riley's audio was the drop.

You know, during this scene I jumped from my seat, closed my eyes, cringed, squealed, my heart accelarated, forgot how to breathe...

As a person who is a little bit bipolar when it comes to romance (I can be very shy about it or very outspoken about it) that scene made me SO UNCOMFORTABLE.

Imagine having your feelings exposed not only to the person you have feelings for but also his girlfriend who happens to be your friend, your boss and the criminal that's threatening to kill hundreds of people.

I was like: "Not like this!!"

And Mac's reaction didn't help because of the lack of it. I don't know what I expected but his slightly monotone reaction broke my heart.

Thankfully, I've recovered since then and I don't mind that it happened that way.

Still, imagine how suffocating it must've been for Riley. That idea was what made me so uncomfortable and I think that's what they were going for. They wanted to make it as straightforward and awkward as possible.

But it doesn't end there. It's followed by Mac revealing the ring to Desi (and Riley). Mac's in "fuck it" mood and Desi kinda panics.

Little side note here, using GUM and a DIAMOND to break a bullet proof glass... BIG YES. That's an intrinsic MacGyverism.

~~~~

4. BIG SECRET REVEAL 2.

Then we get a breather from this drama by introducing another drama, Leanna's death.

Bozer's reaction to the news was heartbreaking for my already heartbroken heart.

I have my suspicions as to why they decided to kill her... The other episode completely made by the new team was the Quarantine one (5x06). During that episode Mac and Bozer bond over Bozer's pain. After learning about Bozer's mom, Mac chooses to share a piece of his own pain with him.

So, hear me out, I think they writers are planning to help Mac process his own grief THROUGH Bozer's grief. Keep in mind that we still have a Bozer centered episode coming up.

This is just a theory. I may be wrong, but I think it may be right too.

Back to the episode.

Once again we see a three dimensional Russ. He does something accordingly to his own judgement thinking it's the right decision [hiding Leanna's death], he realizes he screwed up, he gives Bozer a very heartfelt apology about it.

Henry's acting talent shone with this narrative. Actually, most of the actors had the chance to shine THANKS to the NARRATIVE. Murdoc, Andrews, Desi, Mac, Russ and Bozer... they all had their highlight moments (I'll talk about Riley later).

Parenthesis here... THE NARRATIVE HAS RETURNED THEIR SOULS TO OUR DEAR CHARACTERS!

WOW, they aren't brooding, angry, sad or whiny ALL THE EFFIN TIME. ABOUT TIME!

~~~~

5. LAST ACT.

For the third or fouth time in this episode my heart broke again when Mac was friendly towards Riley, after she explained herself. It really felt like he was friendzoning her.

But here's something to point out. Riley visibly relaxed when he reacted that way. What does that tell us?

> She had been so tense up until that point. Imo, she's on the defensive now. You can even see it in her wardrobe, make up and hairstyle choices. They're very contrasting to Riley's most vulnerable moments in this show (like when Audrey broke up with her).

Riley has had a year to sort out her feelings. We see in this episode that she spoke about them in a past tense. Whether she achieved it or not is unknown. We just know that she has at least tried to move on.

> She was mostly afraid of ruining her close relationship with Mac (who's her only family, along with Bozer) and her friendship (?) with Desi. We've seen it over and over again: Riley DID NOT WANT to get in the middle of them.

Keep that in mind as we go in the last scene.

It took me a while to figure out a possible thread of thought inside Mac's mind. Why did he look at the ring and decided to go to Riley's house? It really didn't make sense to me.

One moment he was thinking about his proposal and somehow that lead to him having the necessity to know if Riley still had feelings for him? Why??

My theory is that he went to her apartment for permission.

His question was a way of asking Riley for permission to propose to Desi. It was a way of reassuring himself that proposing was still the right decision.

In a way, he could also be fishing for an excuse to not do it [the proposal].

Because now he has doubts. He's confused, unsure.

Mac asks:

Mac: Hiding your emotions and letting it pass. Did it go away?

What could her answer have been? Here I wanna go back again to Riley being emotionally defensive, added her strong desire of not wanting to be in the middle of Mac and Desi's relationship.

I think she would've said "Yes, it worked."

Because it also lines up with my idea that the love triangle has changed from "Riley's a better match for Mac" to "Mac needs to win Riley's heart".

Riley's done her job. She worked out her feelings. Now it's time for Mac to sort out his humongously messed up internal self and reignite her spark. That's what I think.

Also, if anyone has any idea on how the song that played in that scene relates with the moment please share it with me because I don't really understand the song choice lol.

~~~~

6. ADDITIONAL COMMENTS

Desi. I'm not sure what's going on in her mind. She seemed stressed out by the ring, very serious about Riley, lenient with Mac... I'm really not sure.

My guess would be that she doesn't want that type of commitment but she wants to be with Mac yet she can't ignore Riley so does that mean she has to end it with Mac? That's the thought process she may have had? Idk...

I'm glad they let her be mature about it, with no overreactions, no whining, no blaming, nothing of that style that we're used to see in her.

I'm also glad about that moment when she defeats Murdoc and Andrews. THAT'S HOW YOU WRITE A TOUGH DESI. It was filmed with such a gracefulness and elegance. I liked it.

From a MacDesi point of view, she's probably being open minded and giving him space and waiting for him to come back to her... but somehow I got the vibe that she's actually... running away?

Lastly but no less important.

THE HISPANIC REPRESANTION OMG. RUSS SPEAKING SPANISH AND THAT CUMBIA MUSIC FILLED MY HEART WITH SO MUCH PRIDE!!! :')

[lils-writes-stuff]

Matthews

Spencer Reid x reader

Best Years Season 2 part six | part five | part four | part three | part two | part one | season one

summary: doesn’t ever drive you crazy, just how fast the night changes.

warning: normal criminal minds things, angst, sadness, gore, fun stuff

A/N: based on season 8 episode 12; uhhh here’s the storm

 The sound of Y/N’s phone vibrating under her hand woke her up. She lifted her head off of Amelia’s bed, not bothering to look at the caller I.D. and answered.

 “Hello?” Y/N’s voice croaked, still full of sleep. 

 “Ms. Matthews,” a distorted voice spoke through the phone. 

 Y/N sat up completely straight in her chair, now high alert. 

 “Or should I say SSA Y/N Y/L/N.” 

 “Who is this?” Y/N asked, standing up from the chair and moving outside of the room. She knew exactly who it was but she needed to be sure. 

 “You know exactly who this is,” the voice responded.

 “Landry Stephenson,” Y/N said with a stern tone. “What do you want?” 

 “Midnight,” Landry replied.

 “What about it?” 

 “That’s what you have till before this beautiful gold ring becomes mine, along with your boyfriend.” 

 The line went dead after that. A small tear of fear pricked in Y/N’s eyes, the phone not coming off her ear as she stood there in shock for a second. She pulled the phone off her ear after taking her second, calling the only person she could think of.

 “I got here as quickly as I could,” Hotch said, rushing up the stairs to his office where Y/N stood. 

 She couldn’t trust Strauss anymore, she needed to go straight to the people she knew would help.

  Her team.

 “What’s wrong?” Hotch asked once he came face to face with Y/N. 

 “I need to tell you where I’ve been,” she said with a shaky voice. 

 It felt as though she was injured, running off of pure adrenaline. And now it was starting to wear off because her voice began to shake. Hotch closed the door to his office and gestured for her to sit down.  

 “Strauss sent me undercover at George Town because they’ve been receiving letters about someone in the BAU being stalked. There has also been a recent string of ‘suicides’ that we thought were connected to the case, now I can confirm it is because one of the girls I’ve become close to was a victim last night…” 

 “Y/N I’m so sorry,” Hotch said sympathetically. 

 “It’s alright, she’s recovering in the hospital, she made it to my office to get help somehow.” 

 She took in a shaky breath and looked at the watch on her wrist. 

 “Okay, I’m going to skip some parts because we need to get the team here as soon as possible. Basically, this girl named Landry Stephenson has been sending letters to us about Spencer and I found out it was her yesterday when I went to Amelia’s dorm to look around and I found hundreds of pictures of Spencer in a small chest. This morning I got a phone call from Landry saying we have until midnight tonight to save Spencer.” 

 “How do you know it was Landry for sure?” 

 “Because she addressed me as Ms. Matthews, that was my undercover name.” 

 Y/N took in a shaky breath and lifted her hand and watched it shake violently. She was starting to have an anxiety attack, she hadn’t had that since the day of the bomb. 

 “Y/N,” Hotch said, making her tearful eyes look at him. “I need you to breathe okay, breath.” 

 She took in some deep breaths and let a few tears fall down her face. Her eyes closed and she took a minute to compose herself, letting all her emotions flood out of her so she could focus on saving Spencer. 

 “Okay, let’s get the team here.” 

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

 “Y/N,” everyone said as they walked into the bullpen, seeing the woman they all missed. 

 JJ and Penelope ran up and wrapped their arms around her, squeezing her tightly. 

 “Hey, guys-” she pulled away from the hug and gave others to the rest of the team- “I wish we had time to catch up but we have a problem.” 

 “Why? What’s going on?” Rossi asked, his brows furrowing in concern. 

 “Wait, shouldn’t we wait for Reid?” Penelope asked, noticing the Boy Wonder’s absence. 

 “That’s why we’re here. This morning Y/N received a phone call from Landry Stephenson, the unsub Strauss sent her to find who had been killing students at George Town and stalking a member of the BAU, that member was Reid,” Hotch relayed the information Y/N had told him to the team. 

 The team had slack jaws at the news. 

 “So, is he okay? Is he in protective custody?” JJ asked, her words quick and strong. 

 “When I got the call, Landry told me we had until midnight to find him,” Y/N said, her voice shaking again. 

 “Oh god…” Penelope muttered, clutching her hand to her chest. 

 “What other information do you have?” Derek asked assertively. 

 “Not much,” Y/N let her head drop in shame. 

 The team stayed quiet for a second, watching as Y/N sniffled as a way to keep in her tears. “I have a wealth of knowledge to be applying to this case right now about behaviors of violent stalkers, tactical recovery strategies-” she choked on a sob at her next words- “victim survival odds, things I know about the unsub. But I can’t keep a straight thought for more than four seconds at a time, so I’m the dumbest person in the room.”

 The team watched in sympathy as Y/N cried during her speech. They knew he was the love of her life and she was his. They were Spencer and Y/N. “The greatest love I’d ever seen,” as Rossi put it. So they knew, this was tearing her apart because she was putting all the blame on herself.  

 “Please-” her voice cracked- “we need to find him.”

 “This technically isn’t our case, but Spencer is a part of this team,” Hotch said as everyone stayed quiet. “This is going rogue not only for Y/N but for all of us, we could lose our jobs. Does anybody want to leave?”

 No one answered.

 “Good, then let’s get started.”  

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

 “Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while deeply loving someone gives you courage,” Y/N mumbled under her breath as she paced back and forth in Penelope’s office. She kept repeating the phrase under her breath like a mantra. It’s a quote by Luo Tzu that she found during her time away. It’s what kept her going from being away from Spencer and only being able to talk to him every so often. 

 “Hey,” Derek whispered, walking into the office that was only occupied but Y/N. 

 Y/N ignored him and kept repeating the quote under her breath. 

 “Y/N.” Derek stepped in front of her and grabbed her shoulders. “We’re going to find him.”

 “Yeah,” she nodded and wrangled her hands together. “It’s just this is all my fault. If I had pushed harder, maybe Strauss would have gotten him sooner or even put Landry in custody and then we wouldn’t be here right now and I could be back on the team and everything would be great and be normal. Spencer and I would be together and would be happy and hopefully engaged-” 

 Y/N’s blubber of ‘what if’s’ was cut off by Derek. 

 “Hey, hey.” He grabbed her shoulder and gave her a slight shake. “Wonder Woman we are going to find him and stop this.” 

 She nodded and fell into his chest, just needing a hug now. He wrapped his arms around her shoulder and held her for about a minute. 

 “Let’s go to the round table room, we got all the letters that were sent from Strauss,” Derek said, beginning to lead her to the door. 

 “How did she take the fact I didn’t come to her first?” Y/N asked while wiping the last of her tears. 

 “Not well at first, but I think she understood eventually.” 

 When they reached the round table room, the team was sitting all around it, copies of the letters that were sent scattered between them. 

 “This is clearly a classically possessive stalker,” Derek said as he finished one of the letters he was reading. 

 “Yeah, one who craves validation and recognition,” Blake added.

 “Yeah, she’s asking here ‘why won’t you see me?’, ‘do you think you’re better than me?’, within the five letters this comes up again and again,” JJ said as she flipped through her copies of the letters. 

 “Five?” Y/N asked from her seat across the table. 

 She had been silent for most of the time in the room. Her knees pulled up to her chest and her forehead resting on top of them. 

 “Yeah, there’s five,” JJ responded showing Y/N the letters.

 “No, no, that can’t be right, when Strauss sent me out there was only four,” Y/N let her feet hit the ground as she reached for her copies of the letters. 

 Sure enough, another latter had been sent since she was undercover. It came in yesterday. 

 “This got here yesterday,” Y/N pointed out. 

 “How do you know?” Rossi asked, flipping to the same letter she had in her hand. 

 “Because this is talking about the attack on Amelia,” Y/N said as she kept reading the letter swiftly. 

 “Who’s Amelia?” Blake asked quietly, not wanting to make Y/N jump at anyone in her frantic state. 

 “She’s a girl I’ve been counseling undercover, we’ve gotten really close, yesterday she was attacked.” Y/N kept reading through the graphic description of the attack, trying to not let it get to her as she looked for ideas where Spencer could be. 

 “Here, here, she talks about how she did this for him,” Y/N blurted when she finished reading over a line in the letter, pointing to the spot. “She was killing these people so that the team would come and investigate.” 

 “Well, we have her motive for the killing, also probably for the suicide she’s also talking about,” Blake said as she pointed out another thing in the letter. “Here it says, ‘when I find you I’m going to kill you than myself’.” 

 “Murder suicides the ultimate ‘I love you’ to these guys,” Rossi remarked.

 “Do you know when Landry started targeting Spencer?” Hotch asked, turning to look at Y/N. 

 “No, no, I just know she was in one of Blake’s linguistics classes, probably saw him guest speak, and…” she trailed off from there, not wanting to say the rest, knowing that the team knew it.  

 “Oh my god guys, I found Spencer,” Penelope blurted when a ping went off on her computer. “Well, not found, but I have video surveillance of him in Union Station last night, being drugged and carted away by the unsub.” 

 The team quickly crowded around Penelope’s laptop and watched the video. Y/N stayed rooted to the ground she stood on, not being able to watch the video.  

 “Alright, Morgan you and JJ go to the station where Reid was taken, see if anything was left as a clue, Blake and Dave, go to Spencer and Y/N’s apartment, see if there’s anything there,” Hotch ordered and the team began to stand up straight and grab their coats. 

 Hotch then turned to Y/N, still rooted in the ground and not moving. “How clear is your head?” 

 “Uh, I’m not sure, not really clear,” she stuttered, eyes staring at Spencer’s empty seat at the round table. 

 “I want to talk to Amelia about Landry but I need you there.” 

 Y/N nodded her head but didn’t move just yet.

 “Y/N,” Penelope said, stopping her as she began to turn. 

 “He wears the ring you know, never takes it off.” 

 “I know.” 

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

 “Amelia?” Y/N asked softly as she entered the hospital room. 

 Amelia looked up from the book in her hand to see Y/N approach with Hotch behind her. “Hi, Y/N.” 

 “Amelia, this is Agent Hotchner, he works with me at the FBI, um he needs to ask you some questions.” 

 “Hi, Amelia,” Hotch said, walking closer to the side of the bed. 

 Y/N took a step back to watch. 

 “Hi,” Amelia responded. 

 “So Landry Stephenson is your roommate correct?” Hotch asked, starting off his questions. 

 “Yes.”

 “Does she have any place she would go beside your dorm?” 

 “She talked about her boyfriend’s place a couple of times,” Amelia answered after a pause for her to think. 

 “What’s his name?” 

 “Uh, I think she said it was Edmond,” Amelia shrugged. “She rarely talked about him, when she did, it was almost like she was imagining it.” 

 Y/N then had a flashback to when she walked into her’s and Spencer’s apartment one time. She remembered looking over to see a boy walking into his apartment a little down the hall, Landry by his side. 

 “Hotch,” Y/N stepped up getting his attention. 

 He turned his head to look at her. 

 “I know where the boyfriend lives.” 

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

 “This bitch,” Y/N deadpanned as she walked up the stairs to the second floor of the apartment building where her and Spencer’s apartment lived. She walked swiftly up the stairs and down the hallway, bypassing her apartment that Rossi and Blake had just been in. 

 “Y/N, slow down,” Hotch said, catching up to her. 

 “She was right down the hallway from us, Hotch, how the hell do you expect me to slow down,” she seethed as they came to the apartment of Edmond Rayes. 

 “Let us handle it,” Hotch put his hand up, stopping her from knocking on the door.

 She nodded, still furious that she was this close to them this whole time. 

 “Edmond Rayes,” Derek said, pounding on the door. “FBI.” 

 Rossi pulled his badge out of his pocket and held it to the peephole. A second later, the door opened and revealed Edmond Rayes, with a stitched up forehead. 

 “FBI?” Edmond asked the common thing most people say when the FBI knocks on their door. 

 “What happened to your head?” Rossi nodded to the large gash. 

 “My ex pushed me into a mirror,” he answered, moving his body open to let the four of them in. 

 “That ex wouldn’t happen to be Landry Stephenson would it?” Y/N asked, speaking up for the first time. 

 “Yeah, how’d you know?” Edmond asked, clearly not recognizing Y/N’s voice from the few times she talked to him. He turned his head to look at her and then he recognized her, “Oh, hey Y/N.” 

 “Hi, Edmond.”

 “Do you know where Landry Stephenson is?” Rossi asked, getting straight to the point. 

 “No, should I?”

 “Well, that’s what we were hoping,” Rossi shrugged. 

 “When did you guys break up?” Derek asked the next question.

 “Uh, about three weeks ago,” Edmond answered, pausing to think of the exact timeline. 

 “And when did you get that cut?” Hotch asked. 

 “Two nights ago, Landry came back ranting about something she left here.” 

 Y/N began to wander the apartment, looking all around at the different pictures and figurines adorning the shelves. She wasn’t listening to the interview going on anymore, it just became background noise as she looked at the walls. 

 But then her ears tuned back when she saw an orange envelope slipped between two books. To the untrained eye, no one would have caught it. 

 “Edmond,” Y/N said, bringing everyone’s attention to her. “What’s this?” 

 Edmond cocked his head to the side as he looked at the envelope with Y/N. “I’m not sure.” 

 He pulled the envelope out from between the books and opened it. He pulled out about twenty photos of Spencer and Y/N walking in and out of his apartment. “I think I found what Landry was looking for.” 

 Y/N took the photos from his hands, flipping through them to see them all. They went back a couple of months. 

 “Y/N,” Hotch said nodding to the door of the apartment. Rossi took the photos from her hands as she walked past and followed Hotch out of the apartment. 

 “This means you’re a part of her victimology now, you know,” Hotch said calmly to her. 

 “Are you pulling me off the case then?” 

 “No.” 

 “Then let me go back in there to work,” she said, trying to push past him into the apartment. Hotch stuck his arm out and held her back. 

 “We will but you need a second,” He told her. 

 “Hotch, I was practically stalked by Caroline for my whole college life, this isn’t new to me,” she reassured him and walked back into the apartment. 

------------  

 “Okay we know numbers on female stalkers are minimal, only ten percent are female,” JJ said as the team sat around the round table again to regroup. Y/N took a seat on the couch behind the table, feeling like she needed to step back to see everything. 

 “All right, what tops the list of motivators?” Hotch asked. 

 “Prior sexual intimacy,” Derek debated.

 Y/N barked out a laugh accidentally at the thought. Everyone turned to her with confused glances. “Sorry.”

 “Erotomania?” Rossi asked, moving past the moment. 

 “Maybe,” Derek said. “You slept with me, I’ve built a whole life with us-”

 “No,” Y/N butted in. 

 “Y/N,” JJ whispered. 

 “JJ I know Spencer, we all do, he would not cheat on me, or-or do anything like that.” They all looked at Y/N sympathetically, knowing she was right but they were just saying all the facts. “What’s-what’s the next one?”

 “Celebrity stalking,” JJ answered. 

 “That one makes more sense,” Y/N said nodding her head. 

 “How? Spencer’s not famous,” Blake said shaking her head. 

 “But she was in your class Blake, and when he came to lecture, she became a celebrity to him,” Y/N said. 

 “That’s a stretch,” Rossi argued. “Celebrity stalkers are usually nonviolent.” 

 “You want to tell that to John Lennon, Rossi?” Y/N said standing up from her sitting position as she got angrier. “What was it that Mark David Chapman said after he shot him? ‘It was like all of my nobody-ness and all of his somebody-ness collided.’ Well, Spencer is somebody and-and this bitch is a nobody!” 

 Her sudden outburst made the room get quiet as she paced back and forth. They waited for a second for her to cool down.

 “I’m-I’m sorry, I don’t know where that came from,” she apologized as she continued her pacing. “My head’s too clouded, I need to leave, I’m not much help.”

 “Y/N, yes, you can be of help,” Derek said, trying to make her calm down. “You have the most communication with the unsub and Spencer.” 

 “She probably revealed details to you of where she would keep Spencer since she knew who you were,” JJ said in a calming voice. 

 “I don’t have a memory like Spencer! I can’t remember every damn word she said to me, how-”

 “Then pick one of us and we’ll go through each moment with you to help you find out,” Hotch cut her off. 

 Y/N stopped pacing, looking at everyone around the table. Truly, she would pick Penelope but that wasn’t a part of her job so she settled on someone else. 

 “Hotch, please,” she said quietly. 

 “Okay, let’s go,” He said standing up and leading her out of the room. 

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

 “This is where you want to talk?” Hotch asked as the two reached the park that had many chess boards in it. 

 “It’s where Spencer and I went on our first date, he tried to teach me chess. I need a spot that reminds me of him,” Y/N said as she took a seat at a table. She really sucked at chess, but she knew how to play because of Spencer, but she never beat him. 

 “Okay.” Hotch took a seat across from her. He then moved a pawn to begin the game. “Try to focus on the board and not my questions, just say whatever comes to your mind.” 

 “Okay.” Y/N moved one of her pawns. 

 “When you first think of Spencer what’s the first thing you think of?” 

 “Home,” Y/N laughed as she moved her chess piece. “He-he makes me feel like home. Warm, cozy, and safe.”

 Hotch stayed quiet as he smiled at Y/N. Of course, he knew about their relationship, the whale team did, but they were very private about it. They stayed professional most of the time and no one would assume they were dating if they saw them on the job. This was the first time he really heard about how she really felt about him.

 “So if this is a case of celebrity stalking, why do you think she didn’t go after you to get to Spencer?” Hotch asked as he made his next move. 

 “I’m not sure, to be honest, I wish she did take me instead of him,” Y/N moved her rook. “Maybe she was devolving and her desire to get to him first was too strong so she just...went for him.”

 “Maybe,” Hotch moved his knight. “But why would she choose Spencer, in her mind, they must connect somehow.” 

 “But how?” 

 “Maybe Spencer said something in a lecture that had her make a connection?” Hotch moved another pawn. 

 “Could be…” Y/N moved her other knight. 

 “When you spoke to Landry, did she mention any of her classes?” 

 “No, she didn’t really talk much, she would answer yes or no to my questions…” 

 “Landry, do you have anyone special going on in your life right now?” 

 “Well, I sent in an article to someone I admire again, and I’m hoping they get back to and like this one more than my last.” 

 “Oh my god,” Y/N muttered as she remembered the conversation. 

 “What?” Hotch asked. 

 “Months ago, Spencer was helping some students with thesis and articles they wanted to be published. He then asked for input on a ‘Journal of Behavioral Psych’ article. This one student sent in a theory that was completely improbable and stupid, but I couldn’t even tell you what it was. But that same student kept sending in more stuff like it, and Spencer kept politely rejecting it,” Y/N rambled. 

 “It was Landry that sent in those articles,” Hotch realized. “She wants to be accepted by him.” 

 “She told me once a couple of weeks ago that she sent in another and was hoping it would get accepted,” Y/N looked up at Hotch with teary eyes. “I didn’t make the connection until now.” 

 “It’s not your fault, Y/N, okay, come on let’s get back to the office.”

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

 “Landry Stephenson, along with being a major in Linguistics at George Town, she was working on getting her psychology degree online,” Penelope said as she pulled up a photo of Landry on the screen. 

 “Do you have the articles she sent to Spencer?” JJ asked. 

 “Yeah, and like Y/N said, they’re waka-doodle,” Penelope answered.

 “Looks like when Spencer rejected her last article, she dropped out of her online classes,” Rossi said as he looked at the papers Penelope handed them. 

 “Correct,” Penelope said, taking a seat at the table. “I also found an off campus apartment that looks like she stays at on the weekends.” 

 “Dave, you, Y/N, and JJ take the apartment. Blake and Morgan, take the campus dorm,” Hotch ordered. 

 “What was the last article about?” Y/N asked quickly before they could leave. 

 “It says here, ‘How the behaviors of cells change when suicide is inevitable’,” Derek read from the file. 

 “There’s her suicidal ideation again,” Blake remarked. 

 “Except that’s not true, why is she so obsessed with it?” Y/N asked. She now understood why Spencer was rejecting her articles, if they were all like this, they were related to her emotionally. 

 S.W.A.T. busted through the door of the apartment, breaking it off its hinges. They walked in quickly, making sure all the rooms were clear before they could relax and begin their search.

 Y/N, JJ, and Rossi began to look around the apartment. Their eyes landed on a wall covered in family pictures and a newspaper clipping about a double suicide. Of her two parents. 

 “Is this a shrine to her dead parents?” JJ asked as she looked at the wall. 

 “Her parents committed suicide,” Y/N muttered and pointed to the clipping. “That wasn’t in her file.” 

 “Uh, guys,” Rossi called from a back room he wandered to. “You might want to come to look at this.” 

 JJ and Y/N walked to the room quickly. When they entered Rossi had pulled open a small closet door, revealing a bunch more pictures of Spencer. 

 “Oh dear god,” Y/N muttered as she looked at all the pictures. If Spencer wasn’t kidnapped by this girl right now, she would probably find this humorous.

 “She’s watching us,” Rossi nodded to a camera in the corner of the room. 

 JJ and Y/N turned to the camera behind them to see a green blinking light flashing. JJ quickly pulled out her phone and called Penelope. 

 “Garcia,” JJ said when she heard her answer. 

 “What you got, Mama Grizzly?” 

 “There’s a webcam in here can you hack the feed?” JJ asked. 

 “Ohh,” Penelope groaned as she tried to hack the feed. “She’s spoofing the IP address and she’s encrypted the feed.” 

 Y/N searched around the room, finding a piece of paper and marker. She quickly wrote ‘me for him’ on the page and held it up to the camera.

 “What are you doing?” Rossi asked as he watched Y/N write. 

 “Making a deal,” Y/N responded, finishing the message. The two agents watched as Y/N held the paper up to the camera.

 Y/N prayed that this would get her in to find out where Spencer was because they were running out of time now. 

 After about thirty seconds of Y/N holding up the message, the apartment phone began to ring. Y/N set down the paper and rushed to the phone.

 “Hello?” 

 “It’s me,” Spencer’s voice said back through the phone. 

 Y/N let out a breath of relief that he was still alive. “Spence, are you okay?” 

 “Yeah, yeah I think so,” Spencer stuttered. “I’ve got a concussion and some bruising, but I’m okay.” 

 “Can I speak to Landry?”

 She heard Spencer take in a sharp breath. “No, she’s listening.” 

 “Good, I need to meet her, I need to talk to her,” Y/N said, hoping she was playing her cards right now. 

 “She has a message she wants me to give to you,” Spencer spoke softly, clearly uneasy as his words were slightly slurred. 

 “What is it, bub,” she hoped using his nickname would give him some strength. 

 “The message is, she left you a present and if you want to find it, it’s easy as pie,” Spencer’s voice was slurred, almost like he was falling asleep. 

 “What does that mean? I don’t get that,” Y/N said, rubbing her forehead as she tried to think. 

 “Neither do I,” Spencer mumbled. “Y/N don’t come, it’s a trap! She’s gonna kill you-”

 The line went dead.

 Y/N thought for a moment, then she had a thought. “I need a map of D.C.” 

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

 When Y/N, Rossi, and JJ arrived back at the BAU, Y/N had plenty of time to think about the riddle and decipher most of it. 

 A map was set up on a board when they walked in. She quickly picked up a blue marker. 

 “We don’t have a lot of time so I’m going to make this as quick as possible.” Y/N took the cap off the marker then began marking things. “This is Landry’s off-campus apartment- this is the nearest tower her phone call to me pinged off of, which means this-” she used a compass to draw a circle around the spots- “is the circle that Spencer was telling me about.”

 “What circle?” Hotch asked. 

 “It was a clue in Landry’s message, finding her would be as easy as pie, but she wasn’t talking about the food, she was talking about the number Pi.” Y/N wrote the first three digits on the board. 

 “Pi,” Penelope said and turned back to her laptop to start some calculations.

 “Why would she give you a clue?” Hotch asked. 

 “Spencer has a doctorate in mathematics, so of course she would use math to lure us in because she wants Spencer to think she’s just as smart as me and him,” Y/N relayed the conclusion she had come up with on the car ride back.

 “All right, assuming that Landry has a secondary location, wherein the circle would she hold Reid?” Hotch nodded to the circle she drew on the map. 

 “She’d need a building that would allow for privacy and control, a closed garage for prisoner transfer…”

 “If she’s trying to insert herself into Spencer’s life, maybe she has it close your apartment,” Hotch suggested.

 “There’s nothing in Landry’s name,” Penelope said after searching with the suggestion. 

 “Try Y/N’s or Spencer’s,” Hotch said, turning around to look at Penelope. 

 “Nope.”

 “What about Landry’s parents?” Y/N squatted down next to Penelope as she typed. 

 “Yes, yes,” Penelope said excitedly as she got a hit. “Landry rented a loft across from your’s and Spencer’s apartment building in her parent’s name.”

 “Y/N,” Hotch said, bringing her attention over to him. “I can’t let you be a part of this takedown.”

 “We don’t have a choice if I don’t go in there. Spence's dead,” Y/N said, her hands moving aggressively as she spoke.

 “And if you do you’re dead,” Hotch told her. 

 Y/N shook her head. “Hotch, we’ve known from the beginning she’s on a murder-suicide mission, but we didn’t stop to ask why she’s on that mission. We know now, it’s because she wants recognition, the type she believes Spencer can give her and if I go in there I can let her believe she is getting that.” 

 “How?” 

 “Because I’m going to break up with Spencer to do so.” 

--------------           

 The team pulled up to the building with the sirens blaring. S.W.A.T. had already arrived at the scene, ready for instruction from the team. 

 The team each hopped out of there respected vehicles, guns drawn and ready to save Spencer. 

 “Hang on, I got a box on the steps,” Hotch stopped everyone, carefully approaching the box. 

 “That’s the gift,” Y/N said, holstering her gun and walking up to the box.

 She picked it up, looking at Hotch to be sure it was alright who nodded. She pulled back the blue lid to reveal a small black velvet box. She pulled it out and opened it, seeing a beautiful ring inside of it.

 “Is that a ring?” Derek asked as he inspected it from a distance.

 “Take your gun and vest off,” Landry’s voice said through an intercom by the door. 

 Quickly, Y/N began to strip the vest off her torso and handed her gun and the ring to Hotch.

 “Now come in Alone.” 

 “Y/N,” Hotch tested, but Y/N didn’t look back at him.

 She opened the door carefully and slowly walked up the small set of stairs to a platform. When she reached the top, Landry rounded the corner and cocked her gun. 

 She walked over to Y/N slowly and grabbed her shoulder, placing the gun to her side. “Walk.”

 Landry pushed her down into a chair roughly. Y/N shifted uncomfortably and took a breath, trying to keep a cool front. 

 When she looked in front of her, she saw Spencer strapped to a chair. “Hi, Spence.”

 “Hi,” he whispered back. 

 “I was hoping you’d figure out my riddle,” Landry said as she moved behind Spencer, laying a hand on his shoulder. “I mean, I knew you would-” she snaked her hand under his shirt- “The fun was just how fast you did it.” 

 Y/N watched as Spencer stiffened uncomfortably under her touch. 

 “It took me a while, if I’m honest, I was kinda distracted by your article you sent in,” Y/N said, hoping she was right about her plan.

 Landry pulled her hand off of Spencer and looked at Y/N. “You read my article?” 

 “I did, the one on the behavior of cells during suicide? I couldn’t agree more,” Y/N lied hoping Spencer, even in his out of mind state, would be able to play along. 

 “Flattery is not going to get you out of this, because I know what’s waiting for me outside,” Landry said, pointing to the window with her gun.

 “I’ve arranged for your freedom,” Y/N bargained, again with a lie. 

 “The feds don’t make deals with people like me,” Landry stated matter-of-factly.

 “Not true, if you have something to help them; Nazi scientists helped with the manhattan project, Mafia bosses are put in witsec, if what you have is valuable enough, they’ll take you,” Y/N corrected her. “That’s why Spencer didn’t want to accept your article because he knew you were right and he was upset he didn’t come up with it first.”

 Spencer’s eyes lit in that realization moment that Y/N recognized. He was catching on to the game. 

 “It’s true after I read it, I was upset I couldn’t figure that out sooner, so I rejected it out of jealousy,” Spencer added, hoping that hearing him say it would allow her to believe it. “And what you have, is valuable.” 

 “And what do I have?” Landry asked, using her gun to make Spencer’s face look at her. 

 Please Spence, please say the right thing, Y/N plead internally. 

 “A brain that doesn’t work with normal societal rules.” 

 Right on the money, good doctor. 

 “I’m here because Spencer deserves someone like you, someone with a brain that’s as big and smart as his,” Y/N said, making her move to get Landry to hopefully let her guard down. 

 When Landry had no response, she spoke again. “Spencer, I’m sorry I don’t love you, I’m breaking up with you.” 

 Even though it was a lie, it hurt Y/N to say those words. It physically pained her. 

 “It’s okay, Y/N, I understand, because I chose Landry,” Spencer played into the lie. 

 Landry whipped her head around to Spencer. “You’re choosing me over her?” 

 “Yeah,” Spencer whispered. 

 “I don’t need her anymore,” Landry said, bringing her gun to Y/N’s head. 

 “Kill her and she won’t have to live with the fact that I chose you over her,” Spencer said, stopping Landry before she could shoot. “Let her live with her irrelevancy.” 

 “Fine,” Landry said, getting ready to push her out of the chair and out of the room. “But I just want her to see one more thing.” 

 Landry walked over, undid the zip ties, and connected her lips with Spencer’s. As best as he could he tried to play into it, but it felt too wrong and he barely even moved his lips. 

 Y/N just hoped Spencer could play it off long enough to where they could get her outside and arrest her.  

 “Liar,” Landry said, pulling herself away from Spencer. “Liar!” She pointed the gun at Spencer’s chest but quickly Y/N stood up and reached around her to pull the gun up as Landry fired a shot, missing Spencer completely. Y/N had got the gun out of her hand and it was thrown on the ground. 

  Landry quickly grabbed a knife off of a table next to her and held it to Y/N’s throat as the rest of the team entered when they heard the shot go off. 

 “Stay back! Stay back!” Spencer yelled as the team entered the room. 

 Y/N breathed in deeply as Landry held the knife to her throat. “Landry, Landry, remember what I said, I broke up with him, he’s choosing you, it’s going to take a second for him to be completely ready to kiss you or-or be with you.” 

 “Landry-” Spencer tried to plead.

 “You didn’t want me!” Landry screeched, the knife coming off of Y/N’s neck slightly. 

 “I didn’t,” Spencer told her honestly. “But we can still arrange for your freedom.” 

 “No, you love her and I’ll never be her.” 

 Y/N quickly reached up and wrestled with Landry for the knife. Somewhere along the line, the knife ended up and Y/N’s abdomen.

 Y/N sucked in a breath of pain as Landry pulled the knife out. 

 A shot sounded off from JJ’s gun and hit Landry in the chest as she turned around. 

 “Y/N!” Spencer’s voice echoed in the room as he ran up to her body falling on the ground.

 “We need a medic!” Hotch’s voice boomed. 

 He caught her and helped bring her down to the ground, hand pressing on the wound on her stomach. 

 “I’m okay, I’m okay,” she whispered, reaching a hand up to caress his cheek. 

 A tear rolled out of his eye, and that was just the beginning of them. 

 “Hey, bub, I heard you wore my ring,” she said, trying to bring him away from the fact she was just stabbed.

 “Yeah, yeah I do,” he choked. He grabbed the hand that was holding his cheek, kissing the back of it, and showing her the ring still on his finger. 

 “I-I think you got me a ring too,” she whispered as she remembered the ring Landry left for her at the front door that she gave to Hotch. 

 “I did,” he whispered back, holding her hand clasped against his face. 

 She smiled softly, beginning to feel her eyes get heavy. 

 “Hey, hey, sweets, keep those eyes open, the paramedics are almost here,” Spencer begged as he watched her eyes get heavy. “I love you.” 

 The paramedics pried Y/N out of Spencer’s arms and brought her onto a board, but Spencer kept trying to grab for her. 

 His sobs racked his body violently as JJ and Derek held him back from running to her unconscious body. JJ shushed his sobs and cries for Y/N as she was taken out of the room and into the hospital.

------------- 

 “Spencer,” JJ’s voice echoed in Spencer’s head. “Spence.” She shook his shoulder. 

 Spencer stayed still, not having moved from his position on the ER bed all night as he stared at the same linoleum tile. Y/N had been in surgery for hours and his physical exam to see his injuries had been long done. He came out with a minor concussion and a few bruises like he thought, but his heart was in need of fixing. 

 He couldn’t move, he couldn’t breathe without knowing if Y/N was okay. If she was alive. 

 JJ kept saying his name but gave up after her fifth try and had no answer. She settled with placing the ring that Y/N gave to Hotch beside him on the bed. 

 He glanced down at the ring in its box, then back up at JJ. His eyes watered and then he let the tears fall as he picked up the box. 

 He needed someone right now to give him a sense of hope, to give him something to hold on to. Because if he didn’t have something, he might lose everything. 

 “I’m scared,” he admitted to JJ in a whisper.

 “Oh, Spence,” she said sadly, wrapping her arms around his shoulder from her standing position. “She’s going to be okay, she’s too strong to die.”

 Spencer let out a sob as he hugged JJ back. 

 In the waiting room, the rest of the team sat anxiously. Derek muttered some prayer to a God he struggled to believe in, in hopes that he might grant some mercy for Y/N. 

 Rossi prayed to a God he did believe in. 

 Blake closed her eyes and just hoped. 

 Penelope sat staring at a random tile on the floor, muttering “She’s gonna be okay” under her breath repeatedly. 

 Hotch paced back and forth in the room. 

 Spencer was told by a doctor he was allowed to go to the waiting room with the rest of the team. It wasn’t really a suggestion though, the ER nurse gave JJ a pleading look because they needed the bed for other patients.

 “Spence, let’s go see the rest of the team,” JJ cooed, coaxing him up with one arm and leading him to the waiting room. 

 When they entered the room, each one of them looked up and gave Spencer a sad smile. 

 Penelope stood up from her chair though, walking over and standing in front of him. She was about to say something, her mouth opening, and closing while she struggled to get the voice out. 

 But Spencer knew what she meant and just nodded.

 Penelope let out a sob and wrapped her arms around Spencer tightly. Her tears were full of fear for Y/N and sorrow for Spencer. 

 “Family of Y/N Y/L/N?” 

 Everyone faced the doctor that walked into the room. 

 “How is she?” Rossi asked, being the only one who could voice the question. 

 The doctor let out a breath that was anything but reassuring. “She coded, but we were able to bring her back. She’s out of surgery now but we don’t know when she’ll wake up.” 

 “But she’s okay?” Spencer asked, needing to hear those words so he could breathe again. 

 “She’s okay.” 

 Spencer took in a breath, finally feeling like he could breathe again.

 “Can we see her?” Penelope asked. 

 “Yeah, follow me,” The doctor said and began leading the group to the room. 

 In the bed laid Y/N, connected to many I.V.’s and an oxygen tube up her nose. But she was there. Alive and breathing. 

 Spencer rushed to her side, grabbing her hand and lacing it with his. Tears of joy escaping his eyes. 

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

 Five days. That’s how long Y/N had been asleep for now. Hotch had given the team time off if needed, seeing as Y/N would need them as soon as she woke up. 

 Each day, a different member of the team would come in and hang out with Spencer. Who stayed there full time. He may have left once to take a shower and a couple of changes of clothes. Other than that, he hadn’t left Y/N’s side at all. 

 Penelope had brought many flowers, balloons, and baskets in for Y/N. She brought her favorite muffins for when she woke up, pink roses which were her favorite, and many balloons. So many balloons that when Penelope brought in more one day, he made her take some out so the new ones would have room. 

 Today was Rossi’s day in the rotation for visitation. He had been there a couple of times before, but only for an hour or two, today was his whole day he got to spend there. 

 “Hey, Kid,” Rossi greeted, handing him a coffee he brought. 

 “Hey, thanks,” Spencer said, taking the warm drink from his hand. 

 “No problem,” Rossi smiled, taking a seat in the chair on the other side of Y/N’s bed. “Has there been any changes?” 

 “No, doctors still don’t know why she hasn’t woken up,” Spencer sighed after taking a sip of the coffee. He looked up to her peaceful face. “I even called London, her best friend who’s a doctor and one of the best hospitals in the US, and she and her colleagues can’t figure out anything.” He took his hand out of her and brushed a piece of hair that had fallen in her face away. 

 Rossi smiled at Spencer’s gesture, hoping that she woke up soon so he didn’t have to watch Spencer torment himself anymore with staying there. 

 “How are you holding up?” Rossi asked, concern for the young man who he hadn’t seen outside this hospital in days. 

 “Alright, I guess,” Spencer answered truthfully.

 When a comfortable silence fell between the two, the sounds of beeping coming from the heart monitor beating like a slow metronome in the back, Spencer began to laugh at a thought he had. 

 “What’s so funny?” 

 “It’s not funny at all actually,” Spencer admitted and kept chuckling. “It’s just, um, on day three of her coma, I got mad.” 

 “At what?” 

 “At Y/N,” Spencer laughed, clearly needing sleep. “I was mad because when she left, she left me a letter and a ring, promising me she would come back safely, and now.” 

 Spencer's laugh soon faltered into a sob. “And now, she’s like this.” 

 Rossi looked at him with agony, he had never seen Spencer like this. So broken, so upset, so..unknowing. 

 “Spencer, I know it’s really hard to think of right now, but you have to push through,” Rossi told him, leaning forward in his seat. “You and I know she’s too competitive to die, she won’t let it beat her. Think of it as a time out in the game, she needs a second to figure out her game plan so she can come back and win.” 

 Spencer smiled at the analogy, reaching for Y/N’s hand again and squeezing it like he had done many times before. What surprised him this time about this time was, she squeezed back. 

 Spencer’s head jerked up to her eyes to see if hers were open. And low and behold, there they were, sparkling like they normally do and making his heart melt. 

 “Y/N…” Spencer whispered, standing up from his chair and sitting on the bed. His left hand reached up to caress her head. “You’re awake.” 

 “She is,” Rossi said with a bright smile, standing up from his seat. “I’m going to go get the doctor.” He reached his hand over the edge of the bed and squeezed her ankle before leaving.

 “Thank you,” Spencer said and turned back to Y/N. He let out tears from his eyes as he looked down at the woman he loved with all his heart. 

 “Hey, don’t cry,” she soothed, wiping his tears away that fell down his face. “I’m okay, see.” 

 “I know, I know,” he laughed with tears. 

 He reached down and let their lips mold together. He poured all the emotion he could into the kiss, letting go of her hand so he could use both hands to hold her face. Her arms reached up to the short distance so her hands could cup his neck. His lips tasted like coffee, but they were a pain killer for anything Y/N was feeling right now.

 “I love you,” Spencer whispered, his forehead resting on hers when they parted.

 “I love you too,” she mumbled with a smile.

 “Marry me,” Spencer blurted, pulling his forehead off of hers. 

 “What?” 

 “Marry me.” He dropped to one knee at her bedside, fumbling with the ring in its box as he pulled it out of his pocket. “I know that we have an inconvenient job, and terrible luck-”

 “We have the shittiest luck,” Y/N agreed with a laugh. 

 “We do. But I believe...I believe that with you, I am the luckiest man alive. And there’s no way I could spend my life without you because you are the love of my life Y/N Y/L/N. Every moment I didn’t know you were okay, it felt like I couldn’t breathe. I-I just can’t imagine me without you.” 

 Y/N had tears pouring out of her eyes now, she loved this man with all her heart and soul. 

 “So, marry me,” Spencer finished, opening the box to reveal the ring Y/N had seen the other night. 

 “Yeah,” Y/N whispered, nodding her head furiously. “Yeah, I’ll marry you.”

 Spencer’s mouth formed a wide smile as he pulled the ring out of the box and placing it on her finger. She reached up, grabbing her face and connected them in a loving kiss full of smiles and tears of joy.

Tag List (let me know if you want to be added!!):

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[greatearthquakestudent]

My Nico Psychological Analysis

I’m interested in psychology, I don’t study but do analysis fictional characters like Nico Kim. Once take you a deeper took Nico’s character, analyzing many serious scenes, you could you have a better understand of this characters 

Nico is a classic Grey’s Anatomy character. I put him in a category for characters who suffer life long of trauma and abuse before Seattle Grace Mercy Death. The others include Jo Wilson, Alex Karev, and Meredith Grey. Characters like Callie Torres, Arizona Robbins, Lexie Grey, Mark Sloan, Amelia Shepherd, the others aren’t in this category because they didn’t suffer life long trauma and abuse. 

Let start the beginning of Nico’s time on the show, to back the episode, season 15 episode 1, With a Wonder and a Wild Desire. When Nico was of the 2 new hot ortho surgeons. The episode where sweet Levi started to fall in love with him. How he got nervous around him. From Joe’s Bar to the odd Ortho case to the kiss the in elevator.

When the poor boy said that was this was his first kiss with a man,  said Nico “ I done my coming out already, I can’t go through this again”. Many people think that this is the same as Ms. Arizona Robbins but Arizona never connected Callie being a newborn lesbian or bisexual to her coming out. This could’ve mean that he came out fairly recently but it didn’t go well. 

Then next, he said this, “ This is exactly what I didn't want, I don’t need the drama, the hurt feeling, the freshly coming out, I don’t need the shame spiral”. Maybe this to could be implied to how he felt himself.  He also said “ Look your sweet, I can’t you guide to of the closet like a gay Sherpa”.  When he said that he can’t guide him out of the closet, this could heavily mean to his parents which he does not have any experience or willingness to do for his.

 Dr. Grey narration are very inspirational. Like where Levi is trying to put in contract, she said this, “we’re afraid of look of not being of tough”. This could mean to Nico too.

 Okay, Nico got mad when Levi didn’t tell his mom but didn’t he never said anything the sounds like push him to come out. Many people understood this said Nico doesn’t want Levi to hidden from his mom. It’s true these thing also depend the type of family you have. When Levi told him his reason Nico understood because the reasons are good.

Just like how Levi collapse when in sight of blood, Nico’s things could two thing could causing patient death like to Josh in one. You could see the fear, the guilt in his eyes. Something like having a nail get stuck in brain, it cause neurological problem. This could mental and emotional problem for Nico.  Dealing with that you he think he’ll okay. The song they delivered the news the Josh’s grandpa, it sang i’m feeling so small, small could mean helpless and weak, something Nico might’ve felt. When  Just like how Levi collapse when in sight of blood, Nico’s could two thing could causing patient death like to Josh. When he could see the fear, the guilt in his eyes. Something like having a nail in brain, it cause neurological problem. This could mental and emotional for Nico. If dealing with that you he think he’ll okay. The song they delivered the news the Josh’s grandpa, it sang i’m so small, small could helpless and weak, something Nico might’ve felt. When told him Levi told him that the saved the dying fire chief life it made how he would react to that. Remembers Levi just surgical intern saved a fire chief life while he, a fellow/attending killed some college student to do the math. 

I don’t Link knows anything about Nico but it seem that Nico needs time to process things. When Helm and Richard made jokes about dude breaking ass, that is funny but remembers that Nico’s did that he doesn’t want to kill patient again. Link mention his attitude it’s there pretty obvious wrong. When was that patient that gain her the ability to move her again everyone was while he lowkey seem  to experience FOMO. When mentioned it to Levi it’s like he never experience the kind of thing his life. Asian including my people, emotionally reserved. While watching that sad movie, he said to your amazing. He finally felt with he wanted to feel. His clearly who strong-spirited told his mom all his own. That cry also guilt being for as strong-spirited as Levi is.

Season 16 has very nice Schmico until the trial. I have this theory reason his was in his phone is because of the text. His parents visit could’ve planned at that point, but since gonna happened later Nico was very loving to Levi. When after his mom house Nico acted little for like off. I would if your parent are coming the boyfriend that they didn’t know. 

When he did told him the truth, the shame spiral doubled he seemed more ashamed now because he didn’t tell him.

He when said his parent are critical, pretty much mean strict, which Nico second thing. That two thing that mention Nico isn’t that egoistical. it’s seem more like trigger effect anything else.

The snowstorm where it all went to hell.  Jo Wilson is kinda of bitch to Levi, Levi tries to patient who could’ve killed someone, and oh yeah, the on-call scene, not a scene to for Nico. Nico just sex doesn’t describe his the depth of his character. Callie also wanted to sex after the plane crash incident while Arizona is still recovering. The family seem to go hell too. People are saying Nico emotion abusing Levi. That talk about like self-worth and if it is emotional how you think Nico would that. Nico probably emotional abuse himself. But he remain somewhat civil even during the break up his words were respectful.

Season 17, he didn’t see much of Nico’s character this season, but had better understand of him. Nico seemed hesitant to talk to Levi. he is always the guilt and fear in him. 

But clearly understood that Levi wasn’t doing well, the closet it was for Levi more and something to him feel better.

The episode things are very awkward, yeah in just blown him, not if he’s proud of that. 

Don’t listen to  Jo she was worst as Nico back in during her domestic abuse drama. Put Jo seem to have impact on Nico. She said might’ve him as in his worth as partner. Seem like he went outside to break things before could get worse. But when Levi made the right decision, seemingly assured the he isn’t a bad partner. 

The day of Deluca’s memorial, Nico said said his go to feelings for things like in numb. Numb means not feeling anything which feel focus habit caused by family or trauma.

Levi changed, we didn’t see much, but how many times have they hooked up? how many time did Levi give a monologue? There could’ve plenty of offscreen character development going. 

When Nico ask Levi move to it’s because he gotten to point Levi made feel comfortable. 

I’m glad Levi chose Nico, he deserves him so much, he deserves ever good and health in life. I hoping Mason Post is gone because having a triangle would break Nico mind and love in million pieces it’s gonna for Levi the get again if  this happened.

[minjoonie-song]

0:00 “Hello! Welcome to Minjoon’s Kitchen.” “Who’s fucking kitchen?” Brandon’s voice off camera startled a laugh out of Minjoon, loud and squeaky; and that was it for the theme of the live. “Welcome to uh... Welcome to Minjoon in a kitchen.” “Welcome to not Minjoon’s Kitchen.” Brandon added, finally coming into view. “Welcome not Minjoon to Minjoon’s Kitchen, not in Minjoon’s kitchen.” “Featuring Minjoon.” “Welcome to Brandon’s kitchen!” “Welcome to Brandon is trying to get his car home because she’s parked in fucking central LA after we went for brunch and had so many mimosas that I legally wasn’t allowed to drive us home.” “Hi MTV. Welcome to Brandon’s crib.” “Look mom! I‘m on MTV and I didn’t have to be 16 and pregnant to do it!” The pair started cackling again, uncontrollably hysterical in their inebriated states. 8:14

“You should make that a thing.” ”What?” ”Not Minjoon’s Kitchen. Once a month you just show up at a random fans house, streaming and giving them no time to prepare for you to cook whatever they have in their house.” ”Absolutely not. You know I like to be organised when cooking.” ”You’re literally squinting at lettuce in the fridge, I think you’re past that.” ”That’s lettuce?” “Oh my god, Minjoon. You can’t cook like this.” “I can’t see properly. I don’t know where my glasses are.” “This is going to be the most disappointing episode of your show ever and it’s live. We can’t cook, it’s gonna be dangerous and messy.” “In the words of the awesome Jake Peralta. Title of your sex tape.” “Oh my god. No, mine would be called uhh.. Put that thing back where it came from or so help me.” “Nope. I already claimed that for mine.” “Joonie! I hate the accuracy.” The laughing continued, even as the pair complained that they couldn’t breathe.

18:58

After they’d finally calmed down they took the camera with them to the couch, after the executive decision that the pair were definitely in no state to try to actually cook anything and a too large order of pizza. “We have like half an hour to kill. What are we going to do now?” “Remember when I asked for a Q&A way back in the past when I thought I’d be sober at four in the afternoon? We’ll do that and then I guess I’m writing a formal apology on my notes app to anyone who was hungry and eager to learn. Just like a real celebrity.” Minjoon fished around in his pockets for his phone, handing it to Brandon once it was unlocked so he could read it aloud. “I just figured out the greeting. Welcome to the last ever episode of Minjoon’s Kitchen.” “My biggest mistake this time was too much Minjoon and not enough kitchen. Some people come just to see my organised spice rack.” “You’ve both upgraded and downgraded to Brandon’s Couch.” “Love it. I’ve re-branded. Put it on a T-shirt. Every episode I’m just going to show you how to order different pizzas. We’re a podcast now.” “You’re a dumbass. Alright! Let’s see what we got. Minjoon.. What is your favorite thing to cook?”  “Everyone I see with how hot I am.” The laughter started up once more, even despite their previous attempts to calm down. “I fucking told you! I knew you’d get that one.” “You owe me $50 for saying it!” “I’ll buy all the pizza you just ordered, how about that?” “Catch me outside?” “Stop! How have you made it this far in life as a meme?” “I wasn’t always like this, it’s part of my rebrand. Brandon’s Couch: Meme edition.” “I can’t believe we failed cooking and now we’re already failing the Q&A.” “No! No, I got this. My favourite thing at the moment.. I love making risotto. Mostly because I get to eat it afterwards and I love eating risotto but yeah! That’s my favourite right now.” “I don’t think that’s really answering.” “It’s my answer. This is still not Minjoon’s Kitchen featuring Minjoon for this last episode. Shh. Next question!” “This one asks if there is anything in particular that gets me inspired for designs? Yes! I love art so as soon as my bank account hits below a mil, I’m like.. Shit! Gotta doodle. No, I find inspiration everywhere. Sometimes it’s just a particular mood I’m in, sometimes I’ll see a net curtain blowing a particular way in a breeze and design an entire dress from how it falls. Sometimes I’ll see a colour that I’ll want to make an entire wardrobe out of. I’ve been painting a lot recently, not designs just.. things I like and I’ve been able to work from those. Gross, I know but yeah. Inspiration is everywhere. Disgusting. Unacceptable. I refuse to be inspired again that was too mushy.”

23:37

The boys were a giggly mess. Almost everything bringing them to hysterics even if it was just something said with the smallest hint of sarcasm, they were grabbing onto the couch and each other’s arms for support as they hiccuped their way through another bout of laughter. “Anyway! Next question is top 5 celebrity chefs. Mine of course is Joonbug and that’s it. Wait, no that dude from that thing we saw in England. Gordon’s friend.” “Oh! With the road trip?” “Yeah, the really funny one.” “I loved that. Mine is obviously Chef Ramsay, Remy.. Gotta give my boy a shout out. Chef Baek Jong-won. Oh! The um.. I discovered that dude during fashion week in London that time. The sciencey one. Hus.. Hes..? I don’t remember his actual name but he made some amazing things. I was in awe. I’m also throwing in whoever invented bulgogi. That’s my top five. I actually met Chef Ramsay recently!” “You did! You called me after. How was it meeting your hero?” “Oh, I cried. Like a big baby. Ugly sobbing and lots of I love yous in the middle of a cupcake shop.” “Classic Minjoon behaviour.” “He signed my T-shirt and I cried some more. I would have proposed through my tears but I was crying too much. Like the shaky inhale, full on breakdown kind of crying? I can’t even be embarrassed because he still talked to me.” “You’re a baby!” “I am a baby! 달콤한 아기. That’s what my eomma and momma call me and then they pinch my cheekies.” “Cute! Ooh! How does it feel.. no, fuck. That’s not.. shut your face. I can read. How does performing feel on stage versus cooking on camera? How did it feel being on stage?” “I refuse to acknowledge what that means. Stage? What stage?” “They’re talking about your big, gay musical re-enactment of your love for me.” “I wish I could use memes like in real life? Just the I do not see meme but my face. Honestly though? It’s different because I can cook. This mess obviously doesn’t count but I can edit everything I post and I know what I’m doing? I’m confident when I’m cooking. I know what I can and can’t do. Being on stage was just.. I was terrified. It was terrifying. I had fun though and I did work hard. Like.. I decided last minute and I had to learn choreo and remember lyrics to things I wrote years ago. I was scared I’d trip up and face plant the whole time. Like the entire time. I wanted to be included though and I couldn’t go to the festival because it was terrifying being around so many people. I just kind of listened from the side lines but it sounded good and you said you had lots of fun being up there.” “I did. You know me though. I’m that one line from that Mike Posner song about needing everyone’s eyes just to feel seen.” “Woah. Hashtag deep.” “Oh my god. You’re ridiculous.” “I did need the entire weekend to recover though. It’s.. it’s a lot to open yourself up like that.” “You mean serenading the town with love songs about me?” “You suck so bad.” “Is that how you talk to the former love of your life?” Minjoon snorted, slapping at Brandon’s arm. “You were so in love with me. It’s my greatest achievement, you know? I put it on my resume under my skills. Has given Minjoon boners.” The reaction was instant, Brandon’s loud laugh failing to cover Joonie’s shriek that soon turned into a laugh but even his amusement couldn’t mask how red he’d gotten. “No! I hate it here! You suck so bad! So bad! I can never show my face in public or make eye contact with another human being ever again!” “It’s a good job I put the age restriction thingy on this stream. I knew I’d be a fucking menace after the second drink.” “You’re not a menace! You’re a gremlin! God, end the stream before you really do end my YouTube career. Goodbye everyone! I’m gonna go eat my body weight in pizza and become a cave hermit.” “Bye little Joonie fans! Sorry about the.. Fuck it, I’m not sorry about anything. Peace out, bitches!”

[duhragonball]

Yamcha if you're still doing the character meme?

I am still doing these, and I’m enjoying it, so keep ‘em coming.   Before I start, let me promote the original post, in case anyone else wants to start their own thing.  I’d link to the OP, but I guess they deleted this from their blog, probably because their notifications went nuts.

Give me a character and I will answer:

Why I like them: Let’s be honest, Yamcha doesn’t get a lot of big “hero moments” in Dragon Ball.   Or Dragon Ball Z, or Dragon Ball GT, or Dragon Ball Su-- Look, you get the idea.   In most arcs, he’s the first one to get benched.   In tournaments, he always loses in the first round.   He spent the King Piccolo Saga recovering from a broken leg.    Against the Saiyans, he was the first one to die.  Against the Androids, he was nearly killed and had to sit out the rest of that arc.   In the Buu Sagas he was retired.    In a number of major storylines, he just isn’t there, because no one called him.

But he remains a fixture in the franchise anyway, because he’s always showing up for more.  Let’s take the Buu Saga as an example.   It didn’t surprise me to find out he had retired, mainly from a dramatic standpoint.    There’s a lot of new characters in the Buu arc, and it made sense for some of the older characters to step aside and make room for them.   But he’s still there, because he wants to see Goku one last time, and he wants to hang out with his friends and watch some of them kick the crap out of each other.   It was kind of sad to see him stay behind while the others rushed off to follow the Supreme Kai, but he’s retired, after all.    Also, they didn’t stop to fill him in on what was happening.    I suspect he might have tagged along if they asked.  

As it was, he still ended up getting involved, and he was with the Dragon Team right up until Super Buu cornered them on the Lookout.     And the next time we see him, he’s on the Grand Kai Planet with Krillin, and King Kai seriously considers sending them in to take on Buu in case Goku and Vegeta can’t get the job done.   

And that’s a big deal, because it even comes up in the anime.   King Kai tells them that he arranged for them to keep their bodies as a precaution, but he’s totally in favor of letting them remain on the Grand Kai Planet with all of the other honored warriors, like Goku.  So you start with this desert bandit, a highwayman without a highway, probably because he’s afraid of all the women that use the interstate.   But he gradually overcomes his fears and insecurities, never completely, but just enough to put one foot in front of the other and become a better man.    And finally he ends up receiving a place among the great heroes of old.  

So why doesn’t that get more attention?   You could make a whole epic story out of that, except it’s not Yamcha’s story.  He’s a supporting character.   So the franchise itself tends to play it down.    Even Yamcha doesn’t really take it all that seriously.   I don’t know if that’s modesty or cluelessness or Big Himbo Energy or what, but that’s why it’s so easy for everyone to write him off as a loser or a failure.   They’re overlooking the bigger picture.

The best way to illustrate this is with this TFS short that serves as an epilogue to their DBZ Abridged series.   Yamcha goes back to playing baseball for the Taitans, only to get fired, because he’s so talented that he’s literally broken the game, and no one buys tickets anymore.    But he gets a gigantic severance package, and he still goes down in history as the greatest ballplayer in history.  What always gets to me is that they have to explain to him that this is actually a win.  As his coach puts it, “you do nothing but win.”   

Like Yamcha himself, we often see him from the lens of these insane Dragon Ball adventures, where you have to have glowy hair and a hot cyborg wife to be considered a success.   But to the rest of the world, he’s a jacked up millionaire with fantastic hair, and he’s a real sweetheart.   Who couldn’t like this dude?

Why I don’t: As you may have noticed, I tend to only use this section to talk about why I disliked the characters initially.   I have to think back to 1999 when I was still having trouble keeping track of who’s who.   In particular, I found Yamcha’s presence frustrating because he looked and dressed almost exactly like Goku, but not quite, which seemed bizarre.    Later, I picked up on the context, and it didn’t bother me as much.  

Yamcha does have a bit of an overconfident streak in some situations, which might look like unfounded arrogance, but I think it’s really just his carefree nature and enthusiastic can-do spirit.   He was confident about their chances against the Saiyans, but I don’t think that was him being cocky.   He just knew they had all trained hard and he was stronger than he’d ever been.    But that’s easy for people to jump on as a reason to hate the guy.  

Future Trunks claimed that he fooled around while he was involved with Bulma, but come on.    Does anyone really buy that?    Besides, at best, that would only apply to Future Yamcha, the one who died in the other timeline.   Once Trunks changed the past, all bets were off.

Favorite episode (scene if movie): I’m gonna get a little nuts here and go with TFS’s playthrough of Legacy of Goku I, where they decided to level up Yamcha and have him solo Broly.

Basically, in an RPG game like this, Wolf Fang Fist can do monster damage, so they maxed out Yamcha’s stats to wreck the game’s hidden superboss.  You have to skip to 1:40:00 or so to see the successful attempt, but I loved this video.   This is where I learned to respect the utterance of “Roga... fufuken!”  Broly probably would have respected it, too, except he died from all those hits he took.

Favorite season/movie: You know, that fight with Tien was a classic.   Not sure it’s in my top ten, but it’s on a lot of people’s lists, and I absolutely get that.

Dumb as it may sound, I enjoyed seeing Yamcha in the hospital, wrestling with his own despair as he recuperated from his broken leg.   And when he shows up at the end to congratulate Tien and accepts Tien’s apology, well, like I said, Yamcha has this great character arc, but it’s easy to overlook with everything else that goes on.

Favorite line: I forget which game it was in, maybe Budokai 3, but one of his pre-fight taunts is “Watch this, Puar!  I’m gonna win!”, which always makes me think of Puar sitting just off-camera, watching the action from a little lawn chair.  

Favorite outfit:

I may take some heat for this, but I like the Androids/Cell Saga version of Yamcha, with the short, spiky hair.  This dude’s long, luxurious rockstar ‘do is a national treasure, sure, but I dig this look more.  

Also, I consider Yamcha to be the only guy from the Turtle School who pulls off the slippers and no-blue-undershirt look.   It looks off when I see it on Krillin and Goku, but with Yamcha it just feels right. 

OTP: This guy gets shipped with a lot of people, probably because he’s one of the major characters without an established love interest.   Folks still carry a torch for Bulma, some people ship him with Tien, Frieza hit on him in FighterZ, and I’m still trying to make sense of that.   He flirts with your character in the Xenoverse games.    Years ago, I considered doing something with that, but I’ve fleshed out my OC enough to where I don’t think that fits. 

At the end of the day, I can only see Yamcha getting together with @cozymochi ‘s OC, Marzi.  

Brotp: Tien, Krillin, Goku.  Hell, I always figured Yamcha was one of the few people Vegeta could get along with to some extent.  

I mean, Tien couldn’t stand to be one the same planet as Vegeta, but Yamcha keeps coming over to have hot dogs at Bulma’s place, long after the Namekians have left.  

Head Canon: He’s Luffa’s type, don’t get me wrong.    I just don’t see any room in my fic for a whirlwind courtship.    The stars just don’t align.

Unpopular opinion: I’m not really behind this notion that they should give the humans more stuff to do in future series.   When it comes to supporting characters, sometimes they get phased out, and there’s no point in phasing them back in unless there’s a compelling story idea for them.   

I think it’s dumb how they teased Yamcha in the Tournament of Power prelude, only to leave him out of the tournament itself.    On the other hand, they put Tien on the team and barely used him, which tells me that even if they’d put Yamcha on the team, it wouldn’t have amounted to anything.   

I get it, people love these characters and want to see them used more, but I’d rather have one strong Yamcha story than a hundred non-starters.  And at this point, I think the only thing anyone can do is rely on fan-created content.    Be the change you want to see in the world.

A wish: Crap, it’s after ten pm.    I dunno, I wish Marzi was canon.  

An oh-god-please-dont-ever-happen: I feel like the character’s already been through worse than I could come up with for him.   

5 words to best describe them: Cat loves food, yeah yeah yeah.   That’s six, but who cares?

My nickname for them: Yeah, I don’t have one.

[mst3kproject]

Dracula vs Frankenstein (1971)

 I’ve been meaning to get to this one for a while.  It was directed by Al Adamson and stars Lon Chaney Jr. from Indestructible Man in his last and worst film.  Also featuring appearances by Greydon Clark (director of Angel’s Revenge), Forest J. Ackerman (the comic book guy from Future War), and Jim Davis (the grandpa from The Day Time Ended, not the guy who invented Garfield), and generally being one of the shoddiest and most confusing movies I’ve ever sat through, it is a mystery to me why Joel chose Carnival Magic and just left Dracula vs Frankenstein sitting there.  Maybe it was the widescreen thing.

It’s hard to say what the hell is going on in this movie but I’ll give it a try.  Under the cover of a carnival freak show, mad Dr. D’Ray is decapitating nubile young women and then sewing their heads back on, because… uh… because.  One night, his work is interrupted by none other than Count Dracula!  The Count reveals that he knows D’Ray’s secret – D’Ray is really the last surviving member of the Frankenstein family, and Dracula has recovered the body of the original Frankenstein’s Monster and wants D’Ray to help him bring it to life, because… uh… because.  Meanwhile, a woman named Judith Fontaine is looking for her sister, Joannie, who was last seen on the beach near Dr. D’Ray’s Creature Emporium.  Judith and her boyfriend Mike eventually find their way into D’Ray’s lair, and the doctor and his various deformed assistants (obviously he has deformed assistants) are all killed as the couple attempt to escape again.  What Judith and Mike don’t know is that they’re not safe yet.  They still have Dracula to deal with!

That outline actually only represents a fraction of the madness in Dracula vs Frankenstein.  There’s a rapey biker gang and a bunch of noticeably over-age hippies who seem to think they’re in a very different movie.  There’s D’Ray’s hunchback Groton and his pet puppy, and Grazbo the Angry Midget. There’s the stunningly unhelpful detective who’s supposed to be looking for Joannie.  D’Ray brings the Frankenstein Monster back to life with the help of a magical comet.  The idea that creatures like Dracula and the Frankenstein Monster actually exist is treated as obvious and commonplace, and the climactic fight between the two is over who gets to feel up Judith.  It’s a mess.

The reason Dracula vs Frankenstein is such a mishmash of incongruous ideas, at least according to El Santo of 1000 Misspent Hours, is that Adamson filmed for a while, then ran out of money and had to set the project aside while he raised more.  During this intermission, he got a bunch of new ideas, and had to shoehorn them in with what he’d already shot to turn his original sex-drugs-and-rock-n-roll film into a monster-versus-monster piece.  It should therefore surprise nobody if the results are about as graceful as a giraffe on roller skates.

The two title monsters are astonishingly shitty. Frankenstein’s Monster looks like the Pillsbury Dough Boy gone horribly wrong.  He looks like his head got stepped on and they couldn’t afford to fix it. The first time you see him, when Dracula digs him out of a cemetery, you can barely tell you’re supposed to be looking at something’s face – it looks like a mass of home-made play-dough that’s been left out in the sun.  He has claws for some reason.  That sequence of similes still doesn’t do justice to just how absolutely terrible he looks, and yet, shockingly, he’s less stupid than Dracula.

Oh, god, this movie’s Dracula.  His face is slathered in Observer makeup (though his hands aren’t, probably because it would have gotten all over everything) and he wears bright red lipstick and fake fangs that don’t allow him to fully close his mouth.  His vinyl cape almost definitely came from Party City. His voice echoes like he’s talking into an empty garbage can, even when he’s sitting in the back seat of a car. He has an incredibly funky goatee and a ring that shoots fire.  Everything he says and does is deeply, self-consciously dramatic and it all comes to an absurd crescendo in the series of priceless faces he makes as he turns to dust in the sun.

On a scale of absurd theatricality, Dr. D’Ray is only shortly behind him.  The mad doctor dresses like Colonel Sanders, has some classic evil facial hair, and spends much of his screen time monologuing… but nothing he says ever makes a lick of sense. The stuff that comes out of his mouth is literally indescribable so I’m going to have to give you some examples:

Rambling in his lab, D’Ray describes his work as follows: “human blood is the essence from which future illusion may be created, but the secret is not to have the blood at rest.  No, the circulatory system must experience a traumatic shock, one that is inconceivable to the human mind.  The idea of trauma is not a new one, but I am sure I am the first such experimenter to incorporate the horror of an actual decapitation into later rejuvenation of a human body!”  This is evidently supposed to be a justification for the sewing-heads-back-on thing – it ‘activates’ the blood and allows D’Ray to make his ‘serum’.  He then injects that ‘serum’ into Groton, who transforms into an axe-wielding maniac.  Later, Dracula claims that the same ‘serum’ would have made him invincible.  I, uh… what?

Sorry, I was talking about D’Ray’s monologuing.  When describing his Creature Emporium, D’Ray informs some guests, “the greatest mysteries in the world are not mysteries at all, unless we take time to become familiar with them.”  Isn’t that the opposite of how mysteries work?  It’s easy to believe in, say, the Loch Ness Monster, until you familiarize yourself with the history of the ‘evidence’ and realize that it’s almost all complete bullshit.

When Dracula shows up, D’Ray declares, “I am too old and too sick to be interested or surprised by anything, but when a man comes into my house and casts no reflection on my mirror, and on his hand wears the unholy crest of Dracula, there is no scientific answer to anything.  Now, what is on your mind, Count Dracula?” Honestly, this nonsense is spoken with such conviction that you almost don’t notice that the end of the sentence has nothing to do with the beginning.

The movie has two things that might qualify as a ‘special effect’.  One is Dracula’s zappy fire ring.  It’s crummy, but you can tell what they’re going for.  The other is the ‘comet’ that is instrumental in giving life to the Frankenstein Monster.  This is represented by a slow pan past a flickering light bulb against a black background.  Even having just heard Dracula talking about the importance of the comet, it took me a minute to figure out what I was supposedly seeing – it’s that bad.  This might be halfway forgivable if the comet were somehow important to the plot… if the Monster, for example, had to complete some mission before it sets or something.  But it’s totally gratuitous.  They could have taken that out, avoided a distractingly awful effect, and made the movie a little bit shorter!

As for meaning anything… Dracula vs Frankenstein does not, and indeed seems to go out of its way to avoid it.  The events that unfold are remarkably meaningless.  Judith finds her sister Joannie, who is not dead but neither is she alive, and then the story just forgets about Joannie and gives her no resolution.  Hippie girl Samantha is saved from being raped by her angry ex and his biker gang, but then she, too, is entirely forgotten.  D’Ray and his henchmen die in a series of contrived accidents that serve no purpose but getting them out of the way so that Dracula and the Monster can fight uninterrupted.  This is particularly anticlimactic because so far, D’Ray has been presented as our main baddie.  Dracula disintegrates Mike with his magic ring and then the movie rushes to its climax without giving either Judith or the audience time to deal with it.  Dracula, the movie’s actual main baddie, just turns to dust in the sun.

There are a couple of moments that are probably supposed to be social commentary, but they have nothing to do with the meandering main plot. One is the scene where a hippie guy says to his girlfriend, “let’s get ready for the big protest tonight.”  She asks, “what are we protesting this time?” and he shrugs and replies, “I dunno, but I bet it’s fun.”  Later we see this protest, which does seem to have a major ‘party’ component and features some very unspecific placards being waved.  In another sequence there’s a druggie bar with the walls covered in graffiti that say things like POT and SOCIETY SUCKS.

Boy, I bet Adamson was really proud of sticking it to those angry young people.

Dracula vs Frankenstein is mesmerizingly bad.  Usually the best bad movies are the kind where you can follow the story a bit, so you aren’t wasting time wondering what the hell is going on instead of appreciating the nonsense dialogue and unconvincing effects.  Dracula vs Frankenstein is a singular exception.  You never have any idea what anybody’s doing and yet somehow it doesn’t matter… the movie gives up on making sense very early, and just forges merrily ahead, dragging you along behind it.  What’s actually happening never matters enough to distract.  I honestly don’t know if this is a point in the movie’s favour or not… but it would have made a hell of an MST3K episode.

[aspidities]

Most of Harley Quinn is great, but parts of it are super anti-semitic. I find it difficult to enjoy the good parts because of it.

Oh I knew this was coming. I’ve seen the posts.

I’ve seen a lot of warnings about anti-semitism about the show and I was concerned enough to look into it myself. And when I watched those parts? Yeah, I wasn’t offended. I was laughing.

See, I’m a Jew and I know anti-semitism real fuckin well. I know it because half of my family isn’t here today because of it. I know their names. I know their stories. They’re listed on multiple walls, in holocaust museums and at memorials. They died at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Ellie, my great-grandmother, she was 48. Her daughters Clara, Mietz and Katie were 21, 17, and 12, respectively. My great-uncle Leopold? He was only 10. Ellie, Clara, Katie and Leopold all died in the gas chambers. There’s not even a record of them being registered at the barracks—they must have gone from the train to the chamber immediately. My great aunt Mietz, for whatever reason, was chosen not to die that day, and went into the camps. She was liberated about eight months later by American troops. She never recovered from the experience and was an emotional, nervous wreck to the end of her days in Berlin, 1992, surrounded by her army of min pin dogs.

My grandfather was studying in the US and had already joined the army as a paratrooper medic by the time they died. He and his brother Walter had been separated from the family since they were sent away to school at 18. He never saw his sisters again, after that. Sometimes he would wake up, even as he lay dying in the hospital in 1999, and call out ‘Clarie, Clarie’—for his oldest sister, who was closest to him.

Why do I tell you all that? Because I’m telling you I know how Jews react to trauma. We make jokes. Specifically, often jokes about our own people. Look at Mel Brooks movies—it’s a long laugh track set to a series of Jew jokes and we all fucking love it. Every Jew I know grows up on Mel Brooks (well, and Woody Allen but we don’t talk about him so much anymore, the daughter-fucking putz) and no one considers him anti Semitic. You know who considered Mel Brooks anti Semitic? Pearl-clutching white ‘allies’. People with little to no experience with the true trauma of Jewish life, the shared horror of our genocide. People who meant well, but undoubtedly did not understand.

That’s what I’m seeing now with the Harley Quinn show. The show has Jewish writers. They’re allowed to make jokes they find funny! Especially if it’s funny to us and not goyim! We are allowed to bring up stereotypes—it’s practically a staple of Jewish humor. I nearly died laughing in the second episode when they made Penguin’s kid have a bar mitzvah and the kid’s friends are all gossiping over whether he fingerbanged a girl. That is classic bar mitzvah life, okay? At my own mitzvah, a kid I knew snuck away and jerked off on someone’s tallit shawl without realizing and then had a spiritual breakdown in a bathroom crying for his mom.

I do, however, understand the systemic problems of anti-Semitic material in television shows, so I understand why people would be initially concerned or put-off AND I do think it’s better that we show more concern over less. I think it’s very valid to complain of representation is not personally what you want to see—I know the humor is pretty ‘old Jew’ which is why I referenced Mel Brooks, and it can certainly be divisive and offensive to some, even in my community. I’m not disputing that. Hell, there are still some people who don’t understand that Blazing Saddles is meant to satirize racism. Not everything is received the way it was meant.

But, that being said, if you are asking for the opinion of me, a Jewish person, who once had a panic attack in because I saw the inside of the recreation of the chamber where my family died, I’m saying I don’t find it anti-Semitic. If anything, I find the show incredibly progressive in not only character presentation, but choice of character goals. I think it’s making strides to be funny from a place of true openness, and sometimes that doesn’t always read as well as it should, but I’m of the mind that we can give them the benefit of the doubt.

If you disagree with me, that’s fine! I may change my mind too, if the writing staff changes, and I reserve the right to do so. But right now? I don’t see any point getting all Cancel Culture on a show for depicting funny Jewish stereotypes when they have Jewish staff members. I think that getting upset on my behalf is not worth it, okay? Let me tell you what I find offensive. Let me tell you how I feel.