#ok its telling me in drafts that i can cut it no issue

[psychewritesbs]

even though I do not mind the weekly or bi weekly chapter releases and enjoy them, I kind of wish I would wake up one day and the final chapter of jjk would be here lol

I mean this as like the time left with the series is fast forwarded. I don't like rushing in any context, but I feel like I want to know the ending before I fall out of love with the series. I've enjoyed what gege has given in the story so far, but there is plenty of choices I would say I do not agree with imo. He seems like he has a vision of how things need to go, but getting there seems to have some issues. I also kind of hate it when authors say they want to end the story especially when it feels like it will be rushed, and is JJK's case it's sometimes hard to enjoy the story after its been said bc I'm just wondering if we're spending too much time on one thing before we need to move to the next point, but I'll still try to see the story's good and the bad and enjoy what I can. I'm going to reread the culling game arc soon, but I feel like those first fights were about gaining allies, but I can say I wasn't expecting it to go like that if that was the intention. I don't mind kenjaku having secret plans bc it's obvious when it comes to them, but I feel as though that plan overshadowed the point of the cg?? I thought there would be more focus of to kill or not, etc and I see that the most for megumi and yuji (they had my fav colony battles), and I get it somewhat with yuta, but I dont see it too importantly with hakari or maki. I'm going to reread the arc regardless because I can always be confused or a bit slower in catching on so forgive me if my insight is lackluster. I liked the running themes during yuki vs kenjaku, but her "death" felt very unnecessary because she seemed really important in achieving a curse free world and idk about you but that seems like an important goal imo and yeah someone else could lead that charge but what was wrong with yuki doing that? I don't know, but I can only hope the remaining part of the story alongside its ending is something not only we can gain some satisfaction with, but the author too can look back and say, "hey it was pretty good at least"

Gege doesn't seem to drop the ball too much with Yuji or at least megumi too, and I'm not too worried since they're my characters of interest currently, but I want to reread this story and actually believe it when I say I thought all the cast was good and I believe the writing can be better or can get worse (idk) but time will tell it all. I'm a recurring anon, so I'm sorry if the apologies are constant and sound like emails at the end 😅

Dear Recurring Anon,

HOLA! Thanks for being my recurring anon and reaching out again!

Ok but listen... I’ve been sitting on your ask for a while thinking of what I wanted to say and how to say it. I’ve probably started 3 different drafts for my response. So thanks for your patience!

Truth of the matter is that when I read your words, what it comes down to is that, even though you don’t like the recent direction the manga has taken, Jujutsu Kaisen still holds an important place in your heart. 

So I think the most important question to keep in mind is that, in a story like JJK where the strongest sorcerers have the most overwhelming sense of self... where does your sense of self stand in all of this?

What do you want to take with you from JJK? 

The stuff you didn’t like because it didn’t live up to your expectations? 

Or the stuff you loved even though JJK was incredibly flawed?

Of course there’s more word vomit under the cut lol... you know how I roll.

I’ll start by asking you to forgive me if I’m wrong and you just really needed a container where your thoughts on the current state of JJK would be honored and acknowledged. The truth is that I totally get where you’re coming from. 

I do. 

I hear you.

It’s just that it’s in my perhaps annoying nature to be stupidly optimistic even when I am being a realist. There’s always a silver lining to everything if you are willing to make the effort to find it. 

So, yes, I agree, and I’m also going to challenge you to find a way to continue loving JJK if that’s what you want for yourself.

That said... lets get on with the bitching lol.

Problems with JJK, problems everywhere!

Your concern regarding the pacing in the story is something that I share with you. Most especially the concern that, moving forward, Gege is going to cut corners. I’d also say that at this point this “concern” is factually canon lol. 

I also agree so much with the sentiment of “is he taking too much time on this when he should be addressing this other plot point?” And I think nothing captures that dilemma quite like the Culling Game arc does--ESPECIALLY with the way he handled the chosoyuki ordeal.

Like we got pages upon pages of all of these characters and exposition and dialogue and like... wait, what was the point of the Culling Game again? 

Why has no one died yet?! 

Why is Yuta kissing a cockroach and why are Kashi-chan and Kin-chan trying to see who has the biggest ego (pun intended)? 

Like I swear for weeks I've been like “ok it’s going down!!!! yeah here comes the angst and the deaths aaaaaaand ok never mind then.... maybe next chapter? ok.... next chapter? ok next chapter for sure. no? next chapter?”

FOR WEEKS! It’s all recorded in my chapter liveblogs lol.

Truth is, to me, the Culling Game is a weird arc because I am still trying to understand its significance within the larger Jujutsu scheme of things.

Perhaps he bit more than he could chew with the Culling Game? And as a writer myself I find this kind of relatable. I’m actually seeing what is happening with JJK and taking note of how having too many themes and plot lines can ultimately be detrimental to a story if you can’t, or are unable to execute them all to a satisfying conclusion.

So to your point about re-reading the Culling Game arc... let’s hope that Gege manages to bring it all full circle. But as things stand right now, we’re in the middle of whatever Gege has in mind so it’s hard to see the forest for the trees.

What I’ll say is that I have enjoyed parts of it with reckless abandon...

Literal picture of me reading through the absolutely ridiculous battle between Kashi-chan and Kin-chan:

I also think that, at best, we have gotten in-depth character studies (because Gege is harping on the idea about the sense of self being at the core of power in JJK) and needed exposition. 

For example, even though Naoya coming back was soooooo cringe to me, I can still see the purpose it served in the narrative. Did I enjoy the journey? Not really. Same for Maki’s development.

The thing is that even if I agree with you on everything I just mentioned... I can’t unsee the story written between the lines even if the execution of the panels falls short, because I am always reading at a meta level.

I am passionate about story telling and how stories move humans, so to me, now that I’ve seen and acknowledge these flaws in the work, reading JJK is less about what’s on the panels, and more about the story he is trying to tell on a meta level through the panels.

My chosoyuki meta is a great example of me recognizing the story being told between the lines. And once I went down all of the rabbit holes I went down, even though I agree wholeheartedly that the execution fell short, the story told in the symbols was amazing to me. It honestly made me wish that Gege would have had the patience, time, energy, and space to birth that side story into the world the way it deserved to be told.

To me, I want Gege to be able to ground his vision onto the page, but if he is not able to, I’m still there for the “story” told between the lines because there’s so few mangaka whose imagination has captivated me.

In the end, as you say, it does feel like Gege is struggling to ground his vision into the page. And it kind of does suck because we, as an audience, have to work that much harder to understand the story he is trying to tell.

But the story being told is still there... so now it’s up to you to decide what you want to focus on: the flop, the bad execution, the failed attempt, JJK not living up to your expectations, or Gege, the flawed human behind the manga, trying and showing up.

What is good enough for you? That’s something for you to decide. 

I’m not saying to ignore the execution. 

I’m saying to remember that this is Gege’s first manga and that JJK is not what it started as--but not because it’s gotten worse, but rather because JJK is now more like Gege than it has ever been... because in a story like JJK where the strongest sorcerers have the strongest sense of self... yadda yadda yadda.

Trust the process: life is a journey, not a destination

I think your concern that you want to experience the ending makes a lot of sense and feels very relatable even at this point in my life. 

But the truth is... 

Foregoing the journey in favor of the destination is a recipe for perpetual dissatisfaction. Look at what happened to Denji after he finally got to touch boobs!

Ok yeah, there’s a lot more to it than that in this particular case but the concept still applies.

It also applies to JJK. Again, right now we can’t see the forest for the trees because Gege is executing a complex arc.

The timeline is confusing af, and I think it’s because he may be trying to pull a similar literary trick to what happened in Westworld’s season 1 and 2 where the timeline is scrambled out of order to purposely confuse and mislead the audience. 

Perhaps the timeline is out of order for another grand purpose. Perhaps he just thought it would be fun and wanted to try to execute a fun literary trick.

But we won’t know until he delivers--and delivering is a process, not a destination.

And you know what... if you still get to the end and realize that you didn’t like JJK and the latter part of the story ruined your love for JJK, well...

It’s personal

Dude like... I respect that people LOVE Chainsaw Man, and I also think Chainsaw Man is ridiculously overhyped. I’ve seen countless of videos with people hyping it as the all end be all of manga and that Fujimoto is a genius and...

I. 

just. 

don’t. 

get. 

it.

I am just not a fan of Fujimoto’s brand of navel-gazing existentialism. It feels so anti-climatic to me.

Does that mean that CSM objectively sucks and is bad?! No. It’s personal.

Similarly, I overhype the hell out of CLAMP manga, and I am also aware that people might read CLAMP manga and not like it. 

Even so, to me, the four women behind CLAMP are genius story-tellers.

Shameless Subaru and CLAMP plug because this is one of my favorite Tokyo Babylon panels.

It comes back to personal taste, right?

For me, I love JJK despite the flaws because I still love the story being told between the lines, I find Gege’s brand of ironic humor funny, and I like how the story has progressed. 

Say goodbye to mainstream, Gege’s work might become a cult classic moving forward

Now... I bring up Fujimoto and CLAMP to illustrate the idea that there are people who are going to be dedicated fans of a mangaka and their work, people who enjoy and appreciate their work but don’t necessarily love it,  people who are in it for the hype, and people who don’t like their work.

CLAMP’s Cardcaptor Sakura is mainstream hype. Tokyo Babylon and Clover are what you read when you’re a hardcore fan.

Fujimoto’s CSM is mainstream hype. Fire dude punch something something and Goodbye Eri is what you read when you’re a hardcore fan. 

Watanabe’s Cowboy Bebop is mainstream hype. Zankyou no Terror and Carole and Tuesday are what you watch when you’re a hardcore fan.

Akutami’s Jujutsu Kaisen is mainstream hype. 

Gege followed the Battle Shonen recipe, added his own twists, and created an accidental mega hit. In fact, oddly enough, JJK has always been known as a story that defies expectations and uses tropes in new and unexpected ways.

So what happened? Why are people not liking Gege’s current execution?

To me, there’s something about how JJK is written that has changed, and it has nothing to do with Gege’s ability to write, and everything to do with his sense of self, who he has become in the process of writing JJK, and what he wants to express through his work.

In other words, JJK is more like Gege than it has ever been. Some people are going to like that, and some are not. 

Truth is that Gege is one of the VERY few mangaka who can write beautiful, multidimensional, engaging and extremely human characters who are true to their nature and aspirations.

He also writes on a very meta level and you don’t see that very often... like at all. 

All this to say that I think this is why you see such vastly different reactions in fandom right now. 

Some people still think he’s a fantastic writer and that he’s writing a unique work that has transcended generic Shonen tropes (like yours truly), and some people think that the way JJK is right now is generic Shonen. I don’t understand this last take but...

Who is right?

Who holds THE ultimate truth?

It doesn’t really matter because it’s personal.

All I know is that I am going to keep up with anything Gege publishes moving forward because I like the story he is telling through JJK.

Above all, I’m curious to see what other stories want to be born through him into this world.

Now, I HIGHLY recommend you listen to this 20 minute Ted talk by Elizabeth Gilbert to understand what I mean when I say that Gege is giving birth to stories. Her talk is a mind-opening take on what happens to your sense of self when you accidentally write a mega hit, and how that in turn affects your creative process.

I don’t know that this is how Gege sees his work as a mangaka, but I have to wonder about the possibility that Gege, someone who has very clearly studied the psychology of Carl Jung, sees JJK as an exercise in creative imagination, and/or as a story he’s been handed from the collective unconscious.

His job as a mangaka is to show up and write, to play, to express himself creatively.

That means that sometimes what he writes is going to be magnificent in the eyes of others, and sometimes it’s going to fall short of everybody’s expectations.

And that’s what it comes down to... 

Expectations

I see a lot of people complain about JJK failing to live up to their expectations without acknowledging that their expectations are simply that, expectations.

There’s nothing wrong with having expectations per se, and it is also important to realize when expectations are defining what we think is and isn’t good enough. 

And let’s not forget that you too probably don’t live up to other’s expectations. Does that mean that your effort too isn’t good enough? Gosh now I sound like Lacus.

Again... who holds the ultimate truth?

In the end, Gege is the one telling the Jujutsu Kaisen story. 

I also cannot emphasize enough that Gege is also a mangaka in the very early stages of his writing career. 

I don’t buy that his writing was better in the beginning of JJK. 

Quite the opposite, I see his writing AND art in the beginning of JJK as having followed a recipe: the three man team, found family, the strong mentor figure, etc... all the tropes are there executed in fresh and unexpected ways. 

But that was 5 years ago. Again... in a story like JJK where the strongest sorcerers have the strongest sense of self... what does that mean for Gege?

That said, Gege isn’t following the same recipe anymore, he’s coming up with his own recipe and he’s learning how to write his own recipe.

This is not to make excuses for him, it’s just something to think about because most people aren’t born naturally talented at anything that requires mastery, and writing is a craft that requires mastery through execution. 

As a quick side note, if you read Tokyo Babylon and Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle by CLAMP, the 10+ year gap between both manga shows a marked improvement in the writing. AND EVEN THEN CLAMP MANAGED TO FUCK UP THE TSUBASA PLOT!

In other words, Gege has to fail to get better. 

Now add to that the pressure of a weekly publishing schedule that dampens the creative process with tight deadlines, and then on top of that having to draw the whole thing. I’m exhausted just thinking about it.

Gosh, if I had to guess, I would have to say Gege is ready for an extended vacation. 

But, as you say, I also just want for him to be satisfied with his story. 

As for us being satisfied with his story... well, it depends on what we choose to focus on.

Will you focus on how he failed at executing his vision?

Will you focus on the beautiful story he told between the lines?

Or will you focus on how how he managed to tell a beautiful story despite failing at the execution?

Can you hold the tension of opposites?

Ok SO SORRY this took me so long to get back to you my dear recurring anon. I just had so many thoughts because, like I said before, I agree with you, and I also wanted to challenge you to see things a little differently without being patronizing.

In the end, you want to continue to love JJK, right? 

So love JJK! 

Acknowledge its flaws and be at peace with them for the sake of that love. Nothing is perfect.

Anyways, I love that we can be in conversation about this and that you have come to me to share your thoughts on jjk. 

Merci beaucoup. 

[mallowstep]

What are your opinions on forbidden relationships in Warriors? I've seen people label it as a "trope" because of how common this is. Some find the forbidden romance aspect intriguing, though others find it extremely repetitive and old

I'd like to know your thoughts!

hm. well, it is a trope. i mean, there's an average of one major one a series, right? greysilver, leafcrow (and others, but that's the big one), heatherlion (and implied others), tigerdove, idk i don't remember anything from avos but violetshine luv her but there's probably something, bristleroot. dotc doesn't count bc well it's dotc.

anyway.

definitely a trope.

but that's not a bad thing.

what i think people don't give warriors enough credit for is that these are not all the same forbidden romance. most of them are handled in different ways and bring up different conflicts. i understand why people are tired of them, but let's not discredit one of the only good things in warriors romance: that they make forbidden relationships different.

like, with grey and silver, it's about loyalty and responsibility. leafcrow is just bad idea central, both heatherlion and tigerdove are about responsibilities and young cats, and they have two different answers, and bristleroot is challenging the whole idea from the start.

so like. give credit where credit is due: we're not doing the same (forbidden) relationships again and again. i don't see enough people talk about that.

okay so it turns out i have um. a lot of thoughts about this. idk i just kept writing and now it's over 2k words. so you know. under the cut: matthew does half-baked media analysis to talk about why the code and cats' relationships to it are misunderstood. while actually staying on topic.

anyway from here on i'm just going to say relationship/romance, and understand that i'm generally talking about the forbidden kind. also i'm talking exclusively within the realm of warriors romance, which is, on average, bad. so when i say "X is good," i don't mean "X is good in general," i mean "given what we have, X is good." just to be clear.

right! basically, this is a tool. it creates tension and drama, and that's fine. warriors is a soap opera, remember. soap operas use secrets and relationships and all sorts of plot devices over and over again. warriors is not Serious. it can be dark. it has serious moments. but it is not a Serious Book Series for Serious Kids. it is a soap opera for Future Theatre Kids. yeah?

from that perspective, i'm a-ok with forbidden romance. (also, as a mini-aside, it creates some much-needed genetic diversity when kits are involved.) and again: all of the major relationships are different, so i think that's better than a lot of people give it credit for.

yeah, heatherlion and greysilver and tigerdove are all about the same general idea (loyalty and responsibility), but they all have different circumstances and different resolutions.

so like? yeah. sure. why not?

plus, like, who's reading warriors for the romance? i separate the concept of "romance" from a "relationship" here: i like the relationships in warriors (ivy and dove tension my beloved), but i'm not here to read about tigerheart wooing dovewing. (yes, i do love the tigerdove scenes in oots. no, that's not because i think they're very good at being romantic.)

but i digress.

if warriors was a Serious Book Series for Serious Kids, i'd have a different take here. having been in an IRL forbidden relationship, i have the Personal Insight and Experience to say they're this weird mash of "very much how it feels" and "not at all how it feels."

tigerdove is probably my favourite bc it's the closest to my circumstances, and i think dovewing is a good pov. i like how she breaks up with him because it's a bad idea, but that's not the same thing as not feeling for him.

(heh. twelve-year-old me reading oots like "this will never apply to my life" what did you know)

but to the point, if warriors was serious, i'd point out that the consequences always seem to be internal. we haven't seen characters be punished for their actions. and so on.

but warriors is a soap opera.

and here's my actual thesis: we haven't seen characters be punished for their actions, because "forbidden relationships" are a normal and expected part of clan society.

like no, fandom-at-large, you're kind of missing the point. okay, you know how like. people complain about. idk. ivypool and fernsong being distantly related?

(third aside/very long ivyfern rant, i put a nice big "rant over" after it if you want to skip past it: they're third cousins. they share, max, 2.2% of their genetics. they are fine. do you know your third cousins? do you? yeah. and like. they live in a closed society. there is no one new.

i've never seen someone complain about forbidden romance and ivyfern at the same time, and i do generally agree we should have more mystery fathers, altho for a different reason, but like. idk. this bothers me.

their last shared relative was nutmeg. that's so far back. god. i get it, there was a prophecy saying they're related, but if you remember my rant about how dovewing shouldn't be a part of the prophecy because of how distantly related to firestar is, you know how i feel about that already.

complaining they're related and that's a problem is. deep breath here. it requires demonstrating that warriors has kept track of kinship all the way back to firestar's mother. and even if you wave that requirement, you still have to convince me they would care about that. this isn't a "they're cats, harold" situation, this is a "you would not know your third cousin even if you lived in the same town" situation.

i mean maybe you would. some people do. but my hometown has generations of people who married within its borders. you get as far as "cousin," maybe "second cousin" if you're feeling fancy. i'm not trying to make an always true statement, i just. every time i see someone complain about ivyfern being related, it strikes me as not understanding how extended families work?

i know third cousins isn't technically classified as a distant relative, but you have, on average, 190 third cousins. i feel so strongly about this i looked it up.

like i'm not. okay if you say, "I don't ship ivyfern because they are third cousins and that makes me uncomfortable" you are Valid. in general, you are all valid. i do not think you have to, on a personal level, be okay with ivyfern. you are free to do as you wish.

but. if you want to argue "ivyfern is a Bad Ship because they are third cousins" you have a hell of a burden of proof. simply saying "they share a great-great-grandmother" does not meet that, because like. yeah. we're all pretty damn related.)

(ivyfern rant over)

IVYFERN RANT OVER

right so. anyway. if you remove forbidden romance? you're forcing a lot more of those situations.

i've been messing around with modelling some small-scale fan clan-adjacent stuff to double-check the ratios for wbcd, and it's. it quickly becomes a necessity, is what i'm saying.

but i got distracted like. researching how related third cousins are. my point is not about that, that's like. a different topic. that i crammed into here because i have no self-control.

no, no, what i was trying to get to is: oakheart straight up tells us that cats have half-clan kits all the time, it's not a problem, no one talks about it. and that? that is exactly what we see modelled by warriors.

the only reason greystripe and silverstream have a problem is that silverstream dies and greystripe claims the kits. i feel very strongly that if she had lived, the kits would have been born and raised riverclan kits, that might, maybe, one day, guess who their father is.

we haven't had any half clan kits in a while, which yes! i think is a problem, but like. the fact that the three are medicine cat kits seems to be a bigger issue. which feels right.

and i'm not trying to argue what i think should be, i legitimately believe the text of warriors defends this, even in newer books which throw out a lot of the older world building in favour of more human-like conflict.

as readers, we are naturally following protagonists. we are following the interesting story. but imagine you're just a background riverclan cat. minnowtail, if you will. do you think, do you honestly think, anyone cares about minnowtail?

not in a bad way, just. if she's meeting up with mousewhisker at night, do you think anyone cares? of course not! no one cares. she's not a Protagonist. her kits aren't going to be prophesized about.

heck, finleap switches clans! and it's barely a big deal. it feels like one, but when's the last time anyone bothered dealing with it? that's what i thought.

(also i forgot like all of avos so that very last point might be a bad one if it is my argument stands i just literally do not remember anything in avos but violetshine. none. zero.)

but it's easy to get caught up with characters like hollyleaf and bristlefrost and forget that like. not everyone cares about the code. most of our protagonists do, because it's become mostly equivalent with being moral. and i have an essay draft titled "the code as religion vs the code as law" where i want to expand on this more, but i think like. that idea, that we as readers should use the code as a way of evaluating cats' behaviour, is flawed.

like, i'm not talking about being inconsistent with how that is applied. if you want to say, "the trial leafpool goes through for having half-clan kits is legitimate because of the code," i still think your approach is flawed.

because the cats themselves don't seem to think that way.

the code doesn't, to me, feel like the ten commandments. it does not feel like "you must do this to be a good cat."

rather, it feels like aesop's parables. "here are mistakes cats made and what we do instead of that."

i don't think the cats know the code the way we do. i do not think they memorize a list of rules as kits. i think they know what is and is not part of it, but i imagine they know the stories far more than the rules.

(i'm working on my lore stories to replace code of the clans.)

and even if that's my thoughts, i do think this is supported by the text. no one ever teaches the warrior code, cats just learn it in pieces. "don't waste food because we don't have enough to spare" is taught, not "there's a rule about food and starclan on the code."

that's why the whole arc of the broken code even works: the reason the imposter is able to manipulate things is because cats don't treat the code as a rigid set of rules and commandments, but guiding principles.

the parts of the code that we tend to focus on the most are relationships, apprentices, and battle. or that's my perception. i didn't do a poll to obtain that. there's also the leader's word, but readers don't usually think of that as a good rule, so i'm not including it.

but the parts the cats focus on most are food, territory, and the leader's word. which makes sense: those are basic needs: food, security, and...i don't want to say authority so much as some kind of social system. explaining it would be a whole thing. just trust with me, if you don't mind.

i don't think we have any real reason to believe cats care about half-clan relationships half as much as we do. yes, apprentices are chastized about it, but that's not really the same thing as being punished.

and it's hard to tell, because apprentices being punished has really fallen off, and that's kind of the problem with any argument i try to make about warriors, but.

wow.

i'm actually still on topic? i'm 2k words in and i'm still on topic? a day i never thought would come.

let's wrap this up. cats seem to care about half clan relationships in that: a) they lead to conflicted loyalties, b) they mess with borders and prey, and c) they are in the code as bad. in that order.

and again, if the code was some high and holy religious doctrine, we couldn't have the broken code as an arc. it does not work if the cats are already following it to a t, and know it word for word, because it's signfiicantly harder to manipulate people if they do.

not to the level the imposter does, at the speed he does.

and yes, you could argue that it's more bad writing, but. i think that discredits warriors. yeah, it sure has its fair share of bad writing, but i don't think that's in the way the imposter works. instead, he seizes on a big important doctrine that's nebulous, and uses that to control people.

and that? that feels much more interesting.

so with that in mind, i don't think the cats would care about your typical, non-protagonist forbidden relationship, and i don't think we should, either.

as far as a plot device, i think we're okay with what we have. don't get me wrong, i understand why people are tired of it, but i think we also should remember that warriors is not repeating itself. having multiple forbidden relationships is not repetitive. now, if medicine cats were having half-clan kits every series, i'd make a different argument.

but all of the major forbidden relationships have different outcomes, lessons, and circumstances, and for me, i think that's signficantly interesting.

i didn't really check sources and quotes for this, so like, if you spotted something wrong, feel free to correct me. my overall point stands, but there's a lot of warriors and i have a bad memory, so i could have missed somthing major.

[harley-sunday]

Encore [epilogue]

Summary: The new Disney+ show ‘Encore’ brings together former castmates of a high school musical, tasking them with re-creating their original performance in a high school reunion like no other. Emotions run high as you face faded friendships, long-forgotten controversies, killer choreography, and an ex-boyfriend you haven’t seen in eighteen years.

Pairing: Chris Evans x reader [unnamed OFC, nicknamed ‘Ace’)

Warnings: Language. NSFW

Word count: 3.1k

AN: This is it... The epilogue of Encore’s Encore. What a ride, huh? I had so much fun writing this, diving into this backstory, and making sure these two knuckleheads found their way to each other in the end :) Hope you’ll enjoy the last part, but please let me know what you think! ♥

eL, I owe you something chocolate for all the hours you’ve spend in this daydream world with me. Thank you so, SO much, sweets! 

Masterlist

“Nic,” you answer with a smile, putting your phone on speaker, “we’re almost there.” 

“Ok, good,” she says, “cause these potatoes are done.” 

Chris chuckles beside you, “Two minutes, Nicole.”

“Step on it, Evans,” Nicole groans, “I’ve got two very impatient kids here who, I’m sure, aren’t above killing their mother if we don’t start eating soon.”

“Nicole,” you laugh.

“What? I’m serious,” she protests. “Please tell me you remembered to bring the-”

“It’s in the trunk, Nicole,” Chris reassures her with a smile. “We’re pulling up now, so you’re good.” 

“Oh thank God,” Nicole says as she hangs up.

“I’ll leave the door open for you,” you tell him, before you give a kiss. “See you soon.” 

He winks and sits back, trying to hide from view as you make your way to the front door.

The door opens before you even have a chance to ring the doorbell and you are greeted by two very excited boys who both run up to you and throw their arms around your waist. You run your hands through their hair, “Hi guys,” 

“We’re gonna watch you and mommy on TV!” Robby exclaims, while he takes your hand and leads you inside. Leo’s still wrapped around your waist, his feet on yours, and so you penguin walk through the hall and into the kitchen, where you find Nicole and Keith.

“Hi,” Nicole says with a smile, planting a kiss on your cheek, “you had a good flight?”

“Not too bad,” you tell her as you give Keith a hug.

“How’s the apartment?” She tells Leo to let go of you then, and when he doesn’t listen right away she throws him one of those mom-looks that makes him do exactly what she wants.

“It’s fine,” you tell her, taking the glass of wine she’s offered you, “I’m not sure all my stuff’s gonna fit, but-” 

“I still don’t understand why you don’t just move in with him, I mean-”

“Nicole,” you berate her, one eyebrow raised. “Have you met me and my commitment issues?”

“Yes, I know, taking it slow, blah blah blah,” she says while she pulls a face. “You know you’re just gonna be at his place all the time, right?”

“I know,” you agree with a nod, “but it’s nice to have, like, my own place, at least until he gets back from filming Knives Out, you know? I don’t- It would be weird to stay at his house when we’re not technically back-”

“Oh, come on!” She throws her hands in the air then, “You know what, I give up. Just let me know if you need help decorating the new place or whatever.”

“I love you,” you tell her, making a kissing face.

“Uhu,” she says, trying to keep a straight face but failing. She pulls you in for a hug, “It’s good to have you back, babe.” 

“MOM!” 

“Oh shit,” Nicole curses quietly and lets go of you. “Here we go.”

You pulls up your texting app and hit <send> on the draft you typed earlier, which simply says:

Now.

“Mom, Leo hit me!” 

You follow Nicole into the dining room where you find Robby, a red spot on his cheek that confirms his story, and a very guilty-looking Leo. Before Nicole has a chance to say anything there’s a knock on the front door and you see the confusion on Leo and Robby’s faces when they quickly realize an unexpected guest has shown up.

It’s then the door to the dining room opens and you see the boys’ eyes widen in shock when they see who has just stepped into their house. You throw Nicole a wink and step back, letting your back rest against the wall as you watch the scene in front of you unfold with a smile.

“Hi boys,” Chris says, using the deeper voice Steve Rogers is known for. Holding Captain America’s shield in front of him he salutes them, before he sets the shield down and walks over to where they’re seated, kneeling in between them. 

Leo finally seems to have found his voice again and looks from Chris to Nicole, “Momma! Cap’ain America is here!”

“He sure is, baby,” Nicole says with a smile. 

As if on cue, both boys jump out of their seats and throw their arms around Chris’ neck, giggling when he stands up, carrying them to the living room with ease. 

“Come on,” you nudge Nicole before you set your glass down, “Chris can handle those two, I’ll help you get everything on the table.”

She tells Keith to go take some pictures, maybe even a video so that, when necessary, they can help Leo and Robby remember about the deal they made with Captain America about being kind to each other. Once you’re in the kitchen she lets out a staggered breath, “I really hope this will help with all the fighting.”

“It will,” you assure her, gently patting her arm. “Captain America shows up, you listen, right? Those kids, oh Nic,” you let out a laugh, “they’ll be on their best behaviour from now on, because Captain America will find out if they’re not.” 

After a dinner filled with stories from Leo and Robby, trying to impress Captain America with whatever they can think of, you settle down in the living room, your episode of ‘Encore’ just minutes from airing. 

You and Chris sit down on the couch, Robby on his lap, while Leo snuggles up on yours, but only after both boys agree that Leo gets to sit on Cap’s lap after the second commercial break. Keith and Nicole are snuggled up on the love seat and you watch them out of the corner of your eye, smiling when you see Keith tickle Nicole which earns him a gentle slap on the wrist, followed by a kiss.

The episode starts then, the boys clapping and cheering loudly whenever they catch a glimpse of their mom. You can’t help but cringe when you see the footage of that first day, the awkward hug you gave Chris of course shown in its entirety. That’s the only time there’s any focus on you and Chris, which you’re thankful for, glad that whatever was going between you two didn’t transpire in rehearsals enough to make it into the final cut.

You smile when you see parts of the performance on screen and look away in embarrassment when they show the scene between you and Chris, making out in Kenickie’s car. Keith wolf whistles and Nicole winks at you, while the boys look up at you and Chris, confusion written all over their faces.

Robby, now in your lap, takes the lead, “You kissed Captain America.” It’s not so much a question as it is a statement and you’re not sure how to reply.

Chris steps in, “She did, but it’s super secret, so you can’t tell anyone that you know, ok?”

Robby and Leo nod fervently, excited to share another secret with Captain America.

“So, am I dropping you off at your place, or-” he says with a grin.

You shake your head and laugh, “You can, but then you’d have to drop yourself off there as well and I don’t think Dodger would be too excited to spend the night alone.” 

“That’s what I thought,” he says as he drives past your apartment, speeding up a little to make his point, a cheeky grin playing on his lips. 

You turn towards him in your seat and stare at him for a few seconds, memories starting to flood your mind now that you’re driving through Sudbury again together for the first time in eighteen years. You let your bottom lip roll between your teeth while an idea starts to form.

He looks over at you, “What?” 

You shrug, “Remember that time you took me for a drive and we ended up at Great Meadows?”

“Yeah-”

“Yeah.” You reach out your hand and let it rest on the top of his thigh, “Wanna take me there again?”

He swallows hard, the double entendre not lost on him, and he just nods, gripping the steering wheel just a little tighter. 

You let your hand travel further up his thigh and cup him through his jeans, drawing a sharp breath from him when you squeeze ever so slightly. It’s about five more minutes to the parking you were referring to and you keep your hand in place for every second of them, your thumb rubbing back and forth in languid strokes.

His breathing picks up and you can tell he’s trying to keep his cool, but the way he grows harder under your touch betrays his efforts. He curses quietly, “Fuck, Ace.”

“Uhu,” you reply with a sly smile and another squeeze. 

He pulls up to the parking then, and you’re relieved to find it empty, not sure what you would have done if there’d been other people around. Before you have time to say anything he’s unbuckled his seatbelt and puts his hand over yours, keeping you in place, grinding against your hand.

You take your hand out from underneath his and unbuckle your seatbelt, while you tell him to slide his seat back. He does and watches you intently, no doubt curious to see what you’ll do next. You throw him a wink and move around in your seat, your ass now hitting the dashboard. Planting one feet firmly on the ground, you throw the other over his leg and slide onto his lap. It takes some effort, but finally you find yourself straddling his thigh.  

Your skirt has ridden up and you can feel your soaked panties press against his jeans, a shiver running through you when you feel him flex his muscles. You cup his face and pull him in for a kiss and as you do you buck your hips, sliding over his leg, a moan escaping you from the friction it creates.

“Ace,” he breathes against your lips, his hands on your hips to keep you in place.

You give him another kiss and let your hands fall to his jeans then, your fingers unbuckling his belt with ease before you undo his button and zipper. One hand finds its way into his boxers and takes him out, and you press yourself against his leg when you see he’s completely hard. 

Your thumb runs over the tip, coating it in precum. Pulling back you look at him and you feel the heat rise to your cheeks when you let a bit of spit fall onto your hand, your eyes never leaving his. Both hands are on his cock then, working in tandem, while he grabs onto your hips and helps you ride his thigh in earnest.

It isn’t long before his head falls back against the headrest, his breathing more ragged now, and you can tell he’s getting close from the way he thrusts into your hands. 

“I’m right there with you,” you whisper, feeling your orgasm starting to build. 

He flexes the muscles in leg again and pushes you down harder as he slides you from his knee to his hip and back. 

You keep running your hands up and down his shaft, faster than before, and then you lean forward and put your mouth to his ear, “Come for me, Chris.”

He shakes his head while he tightens his grip on your hips, lifting you up, and you whimper at the loss of contact. He kisses you, hard, and then puts one hand on your lower back, pushing you against him, while the other takes his cock from your hands. “Wanna come inside of you,” he growls, his voice low and dangerous, and you almost come right then and there.

You put your hands on his shoulders and slowly lower yourself onto him, a moan escaping your when he fills you up effortlessly. His hands are back on your hips then, helping you ride him, setting a pace that you know will get both of you there quickly. 

Burying your face in his neck, closer now than you were before, you sneak one hand in between you to play with your clit. You want to tell him you’re about to come, but then he bucks his hips at the same time he pushes you down and the words get stuck in your throat because your orgasm washes over you instantly. 

You feel him come inside of you not much later and he wraps his arms around you, cradling you against his chest and whispering sweet nothings in your ear as you both come down from your high. 

When you wake up the next morning Chris’ side of the bed is already empty and you figure he must have gone out for an early morning run. That is until you hear Dodger bark somewhere on the other end of the house, which is weird, because Chris told you he usually takes his dog along on his runs. You decide you might as well get up, feeling well-rested after your early night yesterday, but still longing for some coffee. 

You start to make your way to the kitchen, but halfway there you are greeted by an excited Dodger, who you give some well-deserved scratches before continuing your mission to get some coffee. Your brows knit together when you see a bouquet of red tulips on the kitchen counter, which you are sure weren’t there yesterday. 

“I was just gonna get you,” Chris says as hands you a plate with two Danish, and a cup of coffee while he pulls a face, “I hate to rush you, but we have an hour before we need to leave, so you kind need to haul-”

“What?” You look at him, shaking your head, “What are you talking about?”

“I can’t- It’s a surprise,” he says with a wicked grin. “So just- Eat your breakfast, and I’ll go take a shower, ok?”

“Ok,” you draw out, even more confused. You watch him walk out of the kitchen and turn towards Dodger, who’s at your feet hoping you’ll drop a bit of Danish, or maybe just both. “You in on this?”

Dodger barks quietly, which doesn’t really help. Still, you sneak him a bit of your Danish before you sit down at the breakfast bar and try to figure out what the hell is going on.

You’re in the car about an hour later and Chris still won’t tell you where you’re headed, but when he turns onto the I90 after twenty minutes or so, you are fairly certain you’ll end up in Boston, even though that leaves about a thousand places he could take you to. 

He’s unusually quiet and so you figure it must be something important but there’s just no way of telling what is happening right now. When he pulls up on Salem Street about thirty minutes later you’re even more confused, almost certain that you’ve never been here before.

When you round the car to join him on the sidewalk, he takes your hand and leads the way down the street until you get to what looks like a barber shop. It confuses you even more, because are you here to watch him get a haircut, or? 

You follow him inside and you’re surprised when the guy behind the counter greets him as if they’re old friends, telling him Dave will be with you guys in a second.

“Chris,” you whisper, gently tugging on his hand.

Before he has the chance to respond a guy walks through the curtains behind the counter and walks up to you and it takes everything you have not to stare at him, because he’s almost twice the size of Chris. This must be Dave, you figure, and you watch as he gives Chris a hug.

“How you doin’, kid?”

“Good,” Chris smiles. He nods towards you then, “This is Ace.” 

You throw him a look because why would he use your nickname, but it’s then Dave gives you a hug and you find yourself a little stunned at how gentle he is for such a big guy. Before you have the chance to ask any questions, Dave beckons you and Chris to follow him through the curtains and it’s there things get even more confusing.

There’s a chair set up, but it isn’t a barber’s chair, and you glance at Chris, hoping to finally get some answers.

“I’ll just eh-,” Dave says then, “I’ll just go grab something from the back,” and disappears through another curtain, leaving you and Chris alone.

Chris takes your hands in his and gives them a gentle squeeze, “Remember when I told you that I got that ace of hearts tattooed on what was supposed to be our ten-year anniversary?”

You nod, slowly starting to maybe connect the dots, but it isn’t until you realize what today’s date is that you let out a gasp, “Oh.”

“Yeah,” he nods and smiles, “Happy twenty-year anniversary, Ace.” He tugs on your hands, pulling you close before he wraps his arms around you, his mouth close to your ear when he says, “It’s time to start fixing things.” 

Dave reappears then and asks Chris if he’s ready. Chris nods and takes his sweater off, before he sits down in the chair and Dave starts prepping his skin. Chris holds out his hand to you and you’re quick to take it, standing next to him and watching in awe as Dave starts to fill in the broken line of Chris’ tattoo, the colour red he’s using matching that of the existing heart perfectly. You give his hand a gentle squeeze to let him know that Dave’s done not much later and let go then, so Chris can get up out of the chair and admire his tattoo in the mirror that’s hanging on the wall.

Dave throws you a wink, “Everything as it should be.” 

“Yeah,” you agree with a smile, for some reason feeling the heat rise to your cheeks, as if the enormity of what Chris has just done only now hits you. You watch as Dave places what looks like saran wrap on Chris’ chest before he hands him a tube of cream and some instructions on how to take care of it the next couple of days.

Walking out of the shop not much later Chris looks at you, a tender look in his eyes, “You ok?”

“Yeah,” you nod, a moment of clarity suddenly hitting you. 

“So,” Chris asks, hesitating a little, “am I dropping you off at your place or-?”

“No,” you say as you let go of his hand and turn towards him. You cup his face ih your hands and push yourself up so your lips ghost against his, “You’re taking me home.”

[wanderchyld]

Final PBIO/IOTNBO analysis and theory

This post is my final analysis and includes some questions I have as we go into the final weekend of one of the best dramas in history. It is VERY long as I consolidate and expand on my previous analysis and theories.

I also lost a big chunk of this post while I was working on the draft just a few hours before posting, resulting to this post as a little inconsistent. Excuse me if my points are messy and some points missing with some issues untouched (because I forgot 😭). I think most points can be linked back to my past theories so you can read up on them if you haven’t.

List of my theories before ep 14:

Do Heejae and the other woman

Moonyoung’s background and Go Daehwan

Head Nurse is NOT Do Heejae, she’s the previous housekeeper

Maybe Head Nurse really is Do Heejae

As usual, please note that anything I quote may be a mix of Netflix’s subs and my translation because I know Korean and Netflix tends to miss nuances sometimes.

Firstly, Park Ok Ran’s dead.

Let’s get this out of the way first. (You can read my first theory on her role in this whole saga.)

“She can’t come anymore.”

Can’t have her exposing Park Haengja. Or plot twist: she is alive and returns to save the trio from the villain 😆

No one’s memory is reliable

Not Kangtae’s as established in ep 6 that he didn’t remember his mother brought them to eat jjamppong because he’s the one who liked it, not Sangtae.

Not Sangtae’s. In spite of his good memory, it was established in ep 10 that he didn’t remember Kangtae saving him, so his memories can be flawed as well.

Therefore, not Moonyoung’s, and definitely not Go Daehwan’s.

There are few things that we can be sure because they are concurrent:

There was a female body in the basement that was disposed or disappeared.

The murderer of Taetae Bros’ mother wore Moonyoung’s mother’s a one-of-a-kind brooch.

There was a body in the reservoir.

Taetae Bros’ mother was the new housekeeper (I saw that some people disagree but here are the supporting screenshots).

There were definitely two women

My theory that there were 2 women in Moonyoung’s family still stands and I’m expanding on it.

Let’s look at the family photos first. There are multiple versions of the family photo, and I suspect they were taken at different times. Here they are in what I think is the chronological order.

1) Photo in the basement: Go Daehwan had full-rimmed glasses, Moonyoung wore a scarf and stood closer to him with his hand on her shoulder, and the lady wore a fully black high neck top with the brooch on the right.

Before the family moved in, on the day Go Daehwan showed the lady around the house, he was wearing the full-rimmed glasses, and the house looked lived in (fully furnished, fully decorated, shelves full). 

2) Go Daehwan’s photo: Go Daehwan had half-rimmed glasses, Moonyoung stood right in the middle and without the scarf, and the lady wore a blazer over a straight neckline blouse with the brooch on the right.

3) Park Haengja’s photo seems to be the same as Moonyoung’s: Go Daehwan with half-rimmed glasses, can’t tell whether Moonyoung was wearing a scarf or not but she sat nearer to the lady who wore the same blazer over a straight neckline blouse without the brooch.

Go Daehwan had half-rimmed glasses when he realised his wife killed Taetae Bros’ mother.

Photos are evidences of relationships. In a group photo, the people who are closer would pose closer to each other. These family photos tell us that Go Daehwan and Moonyoung were actually close, and showed us the progression of Moonyoung’s relationship with the woman.

But why were multiple photos taken? If they were the same woman, why are they still hiding the woman’s face in the photos?

When Go Daehwan killed his wife, he said, “If I die, my daughter will become a monster like you.”

Why was it “my daughter” and not “our daughter?” It’s even odder for Koreans because being a very collectivist society, they don’t claim people or objects as mine. They say “our country,” “our father,” “our daughter” to show unity even when they actually mean “my country,” “my father,” “my daughter.”

Moonyoung insisted she’s an orphan. Technically, when one biological parent dies, the child is an orphan (single orphan). So perhaps Moonyoung’s not wrong. And as explored in my second theory post, she might have been referring to her biological mother. The abusive woman was probably her stepmother.

Go Daehwan told Director Oh that his wife loved Moonyoung “terribly. Very terribly,” and we have Moonyoung who doesn’t want a child to not get jealous over Kangtae’s affection. Judging by the family photos (Moonyoung posing closer to the woman each time), perhaps the stepmother was jealous of the father-daughter relationship and became obsessed with Moonyoung.

Would a child be afraid of their parent because they didn’t want to be hated? I was just afraid my mother would scold me (which was a lot). Right, we can argue that her mother was abusive, but this is something to think about.

Park Haengja: stepmother and crazy aunt

Bluebeard the French folklore, which ep 6 was based on, is about a man who married several times as he killed his disobedient wives. According to Wikipedia, his final wife had invited her sister and others over for a party before she snuck away to explore the forbidden room. Bluebeard found out and was about to kill her on the spot when her sister and brothers arrived to kill Bluebeard.

It was also in ep 6 when Taetae Bros moved in that they specifically had a shot of the dolls in Moonyoung’s old room (the brothers’ new room). I mentioned this previously: one male doll as Go Daehwan, two female dolls in similar dresses as Moonyoung’s mother and stepmother, and one small female doll.

You can see the two dolls behind little Moonyoung in her memory of her father reading her a book.

The dolls are a representation of the Go family in the house because in ep 7, only the small female doll (Moonyoung) was left, and I think there are 2 more new figurines as Taetae Bros on that cabinet but I can’t be bothered to search for a clearer shot 😁

When Go Daehwan strangled little Moonyoung, afraid she would become like her mother, they featured one of the dolls in the shot.

The point of mentioning the dolls is: Moonyoung’s mother wore a similar dress as the dolls in most of the flashbacks.

Ep 13 was based on the Korean folklore The Story of Janghwa and Hongryeon and its popular movie adaptation The Tale of Two Sisters (2003). IOTNBO has more links to this story than “the bystander is worse than the abuser.”

In the movie, Moon Geunyoung’s character frequently dressed in floral patterns (like the dolls’ and Moonyoung’s mother’s dresses).

In both the folklore and the movie, the sisters were named after rose and lotus flowers. In the folklore, it’s the sister that died who was named after the rose flower. In the movie, it’s the surviving sister that was named after the rose flower. The rose is also a motif of Moonyoung’s mother.

The flower language of rose is love and passion. Personally, considering how Moonyoung always thought of her mother when she brushed her hair, and her love for a head pat, I think the rose also symbolises her mother’s "affection."

The movie is a story of two sisters who were abused by their stepmother so badly that one of them died. As it turns out, the remaining sister developed dissociative identity disorder (DID; the same disorder as the patient Yoo Sunhae) with two other personalities: her dead sister (Moon Geunyoung’s character) and her stepmother.

I take this as a lead that Moonyoung has a stepmother, who also happens to be her aunt obsessed with her sister. Wicked Witch of the West (WWOTW) coveted Wicked Witch of the East’s (WWOTE) ruby shoes; perhaps the aunt wanted to be in her sister’s shoes, figuratively AND literally.

Now here’s another “coincidence” from the same:

Left: Moon Geunyoung. Right: Im Soojung (sister with DID).

The story Go Daehwan read to little Moonyoung mentioned a bad wizard that wasn’t invited to the birthday party so he went to the castle.

The story Go Daehwan read to little Moonyoung mentioned a bad wizard that wasn’t invited to the birthday party so he/she went to the castle to cause trouble. 

Glinda the Good Witch of the North described WWOTW as worse than WWOTE.

Go Daehwan, who had recognition and memory impairment, said his wife has an angelic face but a devil lives within. Perhaps he remembers two persons as one.

We learnt from Sangin that 1) Do Heejae came from a prestigious family of medical professionals, 2) she dropped out of 3rd year of med school, and 3) she cut ties with everyone in her family. Could she have a sister in nursing? Could she have cut ties with her family because they cray cray (or the good old "you’ll starve with a creative career")?

Park Haengja has not claimed herself as Do Heejae, and the woman in the family photos are still covered.

Following these, we can assume that Park Haengja’s the bad witch who is neither Do Heejae nor Moonyoung’s birth mother. She’s the stepmother and crazy aunt (I cover more about the sisters in the next section).

There’s always a crazy aunt or uncle.

It’s just too easy if Park Haengja really is Do Heejae. I’d also be disappointed in the writer if she takes this route because it’s cliché villain and this is not a makjang drama with illogical plot twists. It would also be a step back from all the efforts this show has been making to dispel stigma against mental illness.

So they were sisters and...

...one of them died. In water. 

As per my first theory, the WWOTW and WWOTE are sisters in some adaptations of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. WWOTE died under a house then disappeared into thin air, and WWOTW pretended to die in contact of water but she returned disguised as a good person. Sound familiar?

The Story of Janghwa and Hongryeon is a Korean folklore of a stepmother who abused two sisters to their death. She had her biological son push Janghwa the older sister into a pond and she drowned. The remaining sister couldn’t take the abuse any longer and drowned herself in the same pond.

The song “Oh My Darling Clementine” has a few variations but here’s the traditional lyrics (I removed repeated stanzas):

Oh my darling, oh my darling Oh my darling, Clementine You are lost and gone forever Dreadful sorry, Clementine In a cavern, in a canyon Excavating for a mine Dwelt a miner, forty-niner And his daughter, Clementine Light she was and like a fairy And her shoes were number nine Herring boxes, without topses Sandals were for Clementine Drove she ducklings to the water Ev'ry morning just at nine Hit her foot against a splinter Fell into the foaming brine Oh my darling, oh my darling Oh my darling, Clementine You are lost and gone forever Dreadful sorry, Clementine Ruby lips above the water Blowing bubbles, soft and fine But, alas, I was no swimmer So I lost my Clementine How I missed her! How I missed her How I missed my Clementine But I kissed her little sister I forgot my Clementine

These stories are all about 2 sisters and dying in water. Whether they’re sisters or not, a woman died and she’s related to Go Daehwan somehow.

The Murder of the Witch of the West

Do Heejae’s novel hold huge clues. Here’s my translation of an excerpt from volume 9 shown in ep 10.

… __’s scalp skinned with a hunting knife without hesitation. The corpse’s lips sewed in a fence stitch. The body dismembered with a hand axe and thrown into the trunk. Yooyoung persistently as she watched the back of the West Witch leave unhurriedly after finishing the killing and leaving notes.

"Who the hell are you?"

"Why do you choose to kill happy people only?"

But as usual, there was no answer. Was it because of Yooyoung’s tenacity to catch the West Witch? Yooyoung always sees the West Witch at the crime scenes. A faceless woman who always observed Yooyoung work hard on finding the criminal before leaving abruptly. Yooyoung began to look at the crime scene from the criminal's perspective. Why here? Why kill by stabbing this way? As she simulates the crime, Yooyoung finds herself assimilating with the criminal. She felt a thrill from imagining that she stabbed and cut the victim. She’s getting confused. Is she a detective or a murderer?

Around the same time, a murder occurred. The West Witch mimicked a passage from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, everything was in line with the Wicked Witch of the West, right down to the signature butterfly design. However, Yooyoung somehow felt guilty.

...

The suspect was a middle-aged woman in her 40s.

Yeah.

The misunderstanding

Othello killed his wife because he mistook his wife for committing adultery.

Romeo and Juliet mistook each other’s plan. Romeo died from drinking real poison, and Juliet faked her death before realising the mistake and killed herself with Romeo’s dagger.

Janghwa was framed and wrongfully accused by her stepmother for being unchaste. Her father believed it. When Janghwa ran away, her stepmother and stepbrother chased after her, and her stepbrother (under her stepmother’s instruction) pushed her into a pond to drown to her death.

What did Go Daehwan misunderstand? What misunderstanding did his recognition and memory impairment cause? Why was his wife being crazy but looked so shocked when he turned her around?

I do not believe that his memory of killing his wife is a complete memory because it has been mentioned multiple times that his memories are corrupted. I think it’s fragments of different memories pieced together.

What’s going on with Park Haengja?

There are a few possibilities.

Park Haengja is Do Heejae’s sister who coveted her sister’s position and grew obsessed with her sister’s novel.

Do Heejae’s Moonyoung’s biological mother and Park Haengja’s her stepmother.

OR Moonyoung’s biological mother died when she was born, Do Heejae’s the stepmother (abusive but still her mother because she raised Moonyoung), and Park Haengja’s the obsessive aunt.

She got so obsessed she came to believe she’s Do Heejae.

So obsessed she was always keeping an eye on Moonyoung to fulfil the prophecy that is the novel. ("You’re my greatest creation," and volume 3, shown in episode 10 with Park Ok Ran’s copy, has passages that describes episode 3.)

Park Haengja’s the one who killed Taetae Bros’ mother (screenshots of Do Heejae vs murderer below).

She took advantage of Go Daehwan’s cognitive impairment and instigated him to kill the real Do Heejae. She’s the one who saw Go Daehwan kill the woman and hide her in the basement.

Do Heejae wore her butterfly brooch on right, the murderer wore it on the left. Do Heejae always wore red nail polish and a gold rose ring, the murderer did not (although she could have had them removed if it’s premeditated).

Moonyoung’s mother:

Murderer:

Moonyoung’s mother:

Murderer:

Clearly Do Heejae didn’t wear her brooch all the time, so it would have been easy to steal the brooch. However, Do Heejae wore her ring all the time, so Park Haengja can only get the ring after she dies and "truly” become Do Heejae.

End.

I think I recovered most of my points but they’re still feel incomplete 😭

Let me know your thoughts 😊

[brelione]

Ooh congrats on 200 girl!! Can I request something with Rafe please where he slowly falls in love with the reader every time she comes round to tutor Wheezie but she's not interested because of what she's seen and heard about him (non cannon Rafe pls, him just being a rich stuck up dick) so he puts in the effort to win her over and is determined to show her a different side to him!?

Sorry,this sucks lol.

Rafe Cameron,the bitchy,rich,straight white male.He was privileged as all hell and could get away with anything because of his daddy’s money.He did get away with anything,including beating the living hell out of multiple pogues.He was probably the person you hated most in the world and yet you were in his house,being payed with his daddy’s money to tutor his younger sister.You tried not to judge people based on their families but part of you wanted to decline the offer to tutor Wheezie and spit in Ward Cameron’s face.

But of course thats not what happened,you needed money to live and Ward had offered a ridiculous amount.It was your third study session,common core math books and Type Two Writing for Students opened on the table,piles of flashcards and worksheets flooding the marble.

Wheezie needed to go to the bathroom,meaning you were all alone when Rafe came along.Your fingers tightened around your pencil as you went through Wheezie’s first draft,wanting nothing more than to pierce the boys eyeball with the charcoal tip.He stared at you from across the kitchen,looking around with a confused expression. “What the fuck?’He asked.You rolled your eyes,ignoring him. “Who are you and why are you in my house?”He asked,his voice dripping with venom.Wheezie came out of the bathroom,glancing between the two of you. “Shes my tutor,chill.”She sighed,sitting across from you again.The boy glared at you,trying to hide his wonder.

He didnt really know who you were but he was sure he had seen you somewhere.His eyes were focused on your face,trying to figure out if he had seen you at a party or something. “What?”You asked,he shrugged,leaning against the counter and still staring at you.Then it clicked.

He had shown up to a boneyard party,just to be a fucking asshole.He had seen a girl hanging upside down from a tree,talking to JJ Maybank.He could see why he was interested in her,she looked pretty cute,arms crossed over her chest as she swung back and forth.He had always wondered who she was and why he had never seen her before.He thought about her every once in a while,trying to think of why he never saw her again.And here she was,sitting in his kitchen. “You’re a pogue?”He asked,squeezing his cup.You ignored him,tapping your pencil on a word and asking Wheezie what it said. 

“Hey,i asked you a question.”He was closer this time,leaning against the table. “And I ignored you.”You answered,sending a glare his way.He chuckled,shaking his head. “Are you a pogue or not?”He asked.You sighed,looking his way. “Does it matter?Im trying to do my job and you’re being a pest,do you want Wheezie to fail all of her classes?”You asked.He rolled his eyes. “Oh,so you are a Pogue.What does a pogue know that I dont?”He asked Wheezie.You laughed,shaking your head. “We all know you only graduated because of your daddy’s money.You had like...what?A 2.0 gpa?”You teased,gripping your pencil tight.He bit on his lip staring down at you. “Oh,so what’s yours then?”He asked,watching as a smirk came across your face. “4.2,now fuck off.”You growled at him.

Something about the way you told him off completely freaked him out.Most people knew better,especially when they were in his house.He had a habit of sitting on the couch and watching you as you corrected Wheezie’s essays,telling her which words would be better for getting her message across.You would shoot him glares that made his heart beat quicken,making him nervous.Other times he’d see you smile at Wheezie’s progress,his heart beat quickening but for a different reason.As Wheezie put it,he was completely in love with you.He couldnt agree more but didnt want to admit it.He hadnt even talked to you since the first time he saw you.It wasnt until you were packing up your bag and dropped papers that he talked to you again.He had rushed to help you pick them up,handing them to you.

You thanked him quietly,rushing past him.He followed you to the door,working up his courage to talk. “So um...do you have a criminal record?”He asked.You turned,rasing your eyebrows. “Oh,so because im a pogue I have a criminal record?”You asked.He shook his head,mumbling. “No,no not what im saying at all im just trying to make conversation and like….i dont know i just thought it would be a cool question.”He played with his hands,following you outside. “I mean,yeah,I do.I wouldve fuckin gotten away with it too if I was a kook.”You sighed.He laughed nervously,hands shaking a little. “So...what did you do?”He asked.You grinned at the memory. “Vandalism,I used to go around and steal confederate flags and then paint rainbows on their houses.”You answered.He chuckled,nodding.

 “So what did you do with them?The flags,I mean.”he tried to continue the conversation,following you down the driveway. “Burned them.”You answered,turning to look at him again. “Are you gonna follow me home,stalker?”You asked.He blushed,shaking his head. “Um...no,unless you want me too.”He offered.You shook your head,continuing your walk as he just stared at you,jumping up and down,joy washing over him now that he had talked to you without you looking disgusted.He had asked Wheezie to talk to you for him,making her confused. “Talk to her yourself.”She scrolled through her phone.He shook his head. “No,no she hates me I just need you to ask her about like...if shes single,what zodiac sign she likes,what she looks for in a guy.You know what i'm saying?”He asked.She smirked. “You like her!”She exclaimed.He shook his head. “No,im asking for a friend.Please just do this for me,okay?”He asked.She grinned. “So what do I get out of it?I could really go for McDonalds.”She grinned.

“So...what do you think about Zodiac signs?”She asked,writing down some dialogue ideas.You raised your eyebrows. “what?”You asked.She laughed,repeating herself. “Why are you asking?”You asked.She glanced over to Rafe in the living room,the boy twirling his fingers and encouraging her to keep asking questions. “I just think its important that I know.”She mentally face palmed herself. “Ok,Scorpios are superior and Virgos suck ass.”You answered.Rafe’s eyes widened.You had to have known that she was asking for him.You wouldnt have said that if you didnt know he was a virgo. “Ok….what about your ideal first date?”She asked.You laughed,shaking your head. “Keep working on your dialogue.”You told her.

Rafe tried.He really tried so hard.He knew that it was the fact that he was a kook that made you hate him so much.He tried to act more humble,less cocky and tried working on his manners.He went through Wheezie’s instagram followers to find you,cursing when he saw that your account was private. “Wheezie,let me see your phone.”He sighed nervously. “Why?”She asked. “I need to see (Y/N)’s instagram.”He explained,scrolling through your page.You posted pictures of sunsets,your dog and a couple of photos of you holding up peace signs and middle fingers.Your bio made him chuckle. “Fuck the patriarchy and fuck you too.”He went through who you followed,seeing a lot of fanpages and the official Harry Potter account.

That lead him to binge watch the Harry Potter movies,take the sorting hat quiz and order a Slytherin shirt.He purposely wore it when he knew you were coming over,walking into the kitchen.Your eyes fell onto his shirt,laughing. “Oh,of course you’re a slytherin.”You sighed.He grinned. “Wow,thanks.What house are you in?”He asked.He held a long conversation with you as you talked about how much you hate J.K Rowling and how Dobby didnt deserve what happened.He agreed with everything you said,loving the way your eyes lit up.The study session somehow turned into you and Rafe speaking about Draco while Wheezie grinned to herself.

He looked through every single post of yours,every single caption until he learned that you loved horror films.He learned your favorite one,putting it on when you came over.Wheezie didnt even need tutoring anymore,she just liked having you over and you still got payed.You had then become her babysitter because Rafe was deemed to irresponsible and Sarah had a social life. “Dude,are you watching (Y/F/H/M)?”You asked,hearing the dialogue.He nodded,letting you sit next to him to watch it. “I didnt know you liked horror movies.”You sighed,leaning back on the couch.He blushed. “Only this one.”He answered.

It took him three months of talking to you about Harry Potter and horror films for you to stop telling him off,cussing him out and giving him glares.He could feel himself falling for you more,seeing who you were when you werent angry or annoyed.He avoided The Cut,learning that maybe if he let go of his Pogue Beater reputation you’d eventually like him.He tried to be more open,to tell you about himself and have deep conversations with you.He answered your questions honestly,laying his trauma and issues bare and letting you ask questions about the worst sides of his life.He had cried in your arms a couple of times,becoming your friend.He had gotten buried deep in the Friend Zone but he was fine with that,knowing you didnt hate him anymore.You two would hang out all the time outside of babysitting Wheezie,he’d come down to the beach with you to have splash fights.

One night while you were at the beach,the area completely empty besides the two of you as you splashed cold water at eachother.He had pushed you into the water,your clothes,hair and skin becoming soaked.You jumped up,hugging him tight and getting him soaked too.He pulled away,grinning down at you.He didnt know why he thought it was a good idea,leaning down and kissing you.All the three months of feelings spilled out just then,his hands holding your waist tight.You didnt knew what to do,what to think,pulling away. “Um….so you just-what?”You huffed,trying to understand.His bottom lip trembled,his hands shaking. “I just….I dont know.”He mumbled,still holding you.You nodded,finger tracing his jaw. “So you dont know why you did that?”You asked.He looked out at the ocean,biting his lip. “Cause I like you...love you and I just thought….”He mumbled,trying to form words.You rolled your eyes,pulling him into another kiss. “Asshole.”You grinned,running a hand through his hair.

@sexytholland @28cnn  @popcrone818 @fttayla @cherryobx @n1ghtsh4d3-67 @drewstarkeyobx @poguestyleskye @judayyyw @jjtheangel

[fourdaysofrain]

So What?

Summary: Tony and Peter exchange Christmas gifts. 

(This is my Irondad Fic Exchange fic for @iron-spideyson! The original prompt was, "It’s the first time the Parker’s are coming over for Christmas and Tony is stressed over impressing May and picking the perfect gift for Peter. Little does he know that Peter feels the same." I strayed from it a bit, but I hope you enjoy!)

Read on AO3

“What do you get the man who has everything? Might I suggest a gravestone inscribed with the words: so what?”

The air in the cabin still hummed with the energy of the Christmas party. A few hours ago, all the rooms had been filled to the brim with as many superheroes and families of superheroes that could fit. The holiday season made Tony nostalgic for old friends, sue him. It had been hard to believe there was snow building up outside when everyone was surrounded by the heat of the party. 

Now, however, the cabin was empty save for a few of Tony’s closest friends. Most of which were either already sleeping or heading that way. Tony himself was dozing on the couch, a natural progression from when he sat down so Pepper could put Morgan to bed. 

His right arm was dangling from the armrest, the soft amber light from the lamp hitting it in a distinctly artificial way. It was a constant work in progress. Tony had just had another breakthrough with the skin color, but it still wasn’t right. It had too many yellow undertones on the inside of his wrist, and too many pink ones near his elbow. Recreating the texture of skin was a no-go as well: the wrinkling was too artificial. It was fine from a few yards away, sure, but it made people uncomfortable up close. The whirring was noticeable to anyone near when he moved it. Tony could pick it apart for hours. The whole project of making a hyper-realistic prosthesis was an entirely frustrating endeavor. Pepper had pulled him away from its blueprints in the early hours of the morning far too many times. 

Tony woke up from his half-asleep state when he heard the floorboards creak from behind him. He smiled to himself, glad he offered for the Parkers to stay the night. Peter shyly came into his field of vision and hovered by the other side of the couch. He was holding a manilla folder carefully close to his chest, as if he was afraid of crushing it.

Tony’s body creaked as he raised himself into a sitting position. “I was hoping I’d get some one on one time with my favorite intern sometime today. What’d you think of the party?” That was another reason he had invited Peter to stay the night: there had been too many people at the party to have a conversation with someone specific for a meaningful amount of time. Peter barely had enough time to say a jaunty season’s greetings to him before getting swept up into something with Rhodey and Carol. 

“It was really great, Mr. Stark. It was crazy to see everyone in one place that wasn’t a huge fight.” Tony huffed out a laugh at that.

“Times are a-changin,” he said as he looked out the window to watch the snow for a moment, stewing in his thoughts. 

He motioned for Peter to sit next to him. He grabbed a blanket from underneath the coffee table and joined Tony on the couch. They sat in comfortable silence for a moment, both of them basking in the comfortable warmth of the room contrasting against the cool chill from outside. Tony could tell there was something on Peter’s mind. He waited for him to gather his thoughts. 

“I uh… Got you something for Christmas,” he finally said.

Tony peered at him through the corner of his eye. “Is it to do with the folder you’re holding?”

“Ha ha,” Peter deadpanned. He adjusted his grip on the manilla folder. “Uh, yeah.”

Tony shifted his position so he was looking directly at Peter and nodded at him to continue. 

“It’s not like I could buy you anything, because you’re already a billionaire, so I figured I had to make you something. And it took me a long time to figure out what to make, ‘cause I’m too old to just make you a card.”

“There’s plenty of free space on the fridge if you ever change your mind,” Tony quipped. 

Peter just rolled his eyes and continued on. He was barely able to cover up a smile. “Thankfully I’m still young enough I don’t have to worry about getting a present for everyone I know. Trying to figure something out for everyone here would be crazy. I pretty much just got something for you, May, Ned, and MJ.”

“Well, I’m honored. Are you going to keep me in suspense?”

“It isn’t really… normal.” Peter rubbed the corner of the small manilla folder he was holding, on the verge of tearing it open before Tony could even get the chance. 

“Kid, I’m a freshly-retired superhero. I’ve learned to appreciate the unusual,” Tony said as he slowly leaned forward, escaping from the fluffed-up couch cushions he was laying in. His arm clicked and whirred and the artificial skin gathered on the inside of the elbow. Peter forced himself to look elsewhere. 

“Ok, well… here.” He stuck his arm that was holding the folder out towards Tony stiffly. 

Tony took it and slid his hand over the surface for a second before opening it and sliding out the few pieces of paper that are inside. 

“Kid…” His voice was thick, but Tony couldn’t decipher which emotion was at the forefront of his own mind. 

“I don’t want to offend you, but I had some ideas for your arm.” Peter rubbed the back of his neck as he talks. 

“You being smarter than me is never going to offend me.” Tony offered him a warm smile as he flipped through the papers in front of him. There were a few beats of silence as Peter let him look over the designs. 

“Hit me, kid. What’re you thinking?” He put the papers on his lap and looked to Peter. 

“I- uh, I wrote it all out in the papers.”

“Yeah, I prefer to hear it from the source.”

“Well… I think you want your arm to look like a normal arm, which is great!” He took a deep breath and looked at Tony. “But your main issue is always going to be the uncanny valley. It looks so much like a human arm, but there’s an artificial element to it that will make it seem… weird.” Peter’s voice fell flat when he reached the end of his train of thought. He looked over to see Tony scratching his jawline with his left hand, pointedly keeping his prosthesis still so it wouldn’t make noise. 

“Then let’s say I’m one of the most renowned tech geniuses in the world with any materials I need at my disposal, who’s to say I can’t get over the uncanny valley?” 

Tony’s tone was challenging without any heat behind it. He was just testing to see how much Peter thought about this. It was like before the Blip, hours spent in the lab going back and forth at a mile a minute trying to work out some bug in the suits. Back when all of their issues could be broken into two parts- finding out what the problem was and solving it. 

“I’m sure you could, but at some point…” Peter trailed off. 

Tony met Peter’s eyes. He still looked intimidated. If he had a hero complex before the Blip, Tony saving the entire universe only worsened it. He nodded at Peter, hoping his eyes looked kind enough. 

Peter cleared his throat. When he spoke again, it was more confident. “Is it worth it?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean… You can make the most human-like prosthetic, but at the end of the day, you just take it off and go to bed.” Peter’s eyes gained a competitive spark. “Why not lean into the skid?”

Tony looked back down at the blueprints. Maybe he was right. Besides, the kid had style. The arm he designed was clearly based on his suits. It had a red base with gold tracing the joints and a silver stripe from shoulder to wrist. Pretty good for a first draft. In fact, it was a bit too good for a first draft. 

“Kid, have you designed Iron Man suits before?” 

Tony was half joking, but the way Peter quickly looked away made him bark out a laugh. 

“Ned and I were really big fans--” Peter’s explanation was cut off by Tony’s laugh deteriorating into sounding like a tire losing air. 

“Lord, kid, that was better than any present you could’ve given me.”

Peter put his head in his hands and Tony leaned over and nudged him with his shoulder. His movement caused his arm to whir and both men flinched. Tony felt the mood shift. 

“Can I say something?” Peter asked. 

“What’ve we been doing so far?” Tony’s voice was still tinged with playfulness. 

“No, I mean…” Peter looked over, the soft light making his face seem even younger. “Can I say something real?”

“Of course, kid.”

“I think the realistic arm is something… normal. But you’re not normal, Mr. Stark.”

Tony laughed and rubbed the palm of his right hand with the thumb of his left. “Now I see why Rhodes likes you so much.”

“No I don’t mean--”

He waved Peter off. “I’m messing with you, kid. I know what you mean.”

“Like… You saved the whole universe, so it’s not like you can ever blend in, no matter how many hyper-realistic pores you put on a prosthetic.” Some idle part of Tony’s mind made a note of adding pores to the next design. “You need something new, something that shows how you’ve changed. Not just trying to stay the same as you were before the Blip.”

Tony huffed and stretched his prosthetic out in front of him. Kids Say the Darndest Things, eat your heart out. “Wow, and I thought Brucie was my therapist.”

“What can I say,” Peter said. He looked wryly at Tony. “Dying made me more introspective, I guess.”

Tony groaned. “Maybe wait another couple of years before making jokes, Pete.” He paused, then added, “I appreciate this, kid. Takes a lot of guts to call me out, but it should happen more often.”

Tony put the blueprints back in the folder and set them on the coffee table, mentally making a note to pick them up and move them to the lab in the morning. If he woke up early enough, he could probably get it fitted and put on before breakfast.

“Well, you’re not the only one with surprises tonight, kid,” he said as he grabbed a box from underneath the couch. “Had to keep it safe from prying eyes.”

“Oh, Mr. Stark, you didn’t have to get me anything.”

“Don’t worry, it’s nothing big.” He waved a hand non-committedly. “I talked your aunt’s ear off trying to figure out what you wanted. She thought I was joking about getting you an Audi.”

“You didn’t--”

“I didn’t,” he assured. Then he tilted his head and said, “Though all you have to do is ask--”

“Mr. Stark!”

“Hey, I’m kidding.” He mentally switched gears and handed Peter the box. “I didn’t want to embarrass you in front of all the superheroes, so here.”

Peter took his time with unwrapping the gift, making sure to untie the bow and not tear any of the paper. Tony briefly considered poking fun at him, but the moment was too fragile. 

Once he finished unwrapping the paper, there was a photo album left behind. It was bound in a black hardcover and didn’t have any defining characteristics besides a stylized spider design embossed in gold foil onto the lower right corner of the cover. For such an ostentatious guy, Tony was glad he reeled it in for this one.

Peter flipped through its pages and saw pictures of the Blip. Pictures of Tony and Pepper, of Morgan learning to walk, of everything. Eventually he landed on the first page, which was a large print of Tony’s favorite picture of the album. 

It was taken only a few months after Thanos snapped. There had been a memorial set up for Spider-Man in Queens. Tony had been walking numbly through old haunts when he saw it. He didn’t know how, but it had been only a few blocks from Peter’s apartment. 

The memorial was surrounded by flowers of all types and colors. Drawings of Spider-Man, from childhood scrawls to professional portraits, were taped on the wall surrounding it. Candles were set on every available surface. Where there was no space for more, nightstands had been brought out. There were Sharpies of all colors strewn on the ground around it. 

The focal point of the memorial, though, was the wall itself. Someone had written over the white paint of the building in large block letters, “Spider-Man saved me.” Surrounding that, were hundreds of other messages. All from people Spider-Man had affected, describing how he saved them. Tony may have been one of the few left to grieve for Peter Parker, but he was far from the only one grieving for Spider-Man. 

“They uh--” Tony tapped the picture of the colorful wall. “They painted over this after a year or so. Figured you should see it.”

Peter traced his finger over some of the writing. “Wow, this is…”

He looked over to Tony. Neither man was crying, but they were both getting dangerously close to being emotional. Thankfully, it was late enough in the night they could blame it on being tired. 

“I figured you probably felt a little behind,” Tony started. “Five years behind, really. So I enlisted FRIDAY, along with everyone who wasn’t dusted’s phones, and raided their pictures. There aren’t many good ones early on, but y’know. They get better. We never forgot about you. Any of you, really, but you were… the kid.”

He cleared his throat and pointed at the rest of the photo album. “If you look in the back, there’s a little flash drive that has a rundown of all the tech changes in the past five years, if you’re interested. Knowing you, I’m sure you’ll be all caught up by morning.”

Peter flipped through a few more pages and then leaned back into the couch, staring upwards. 

“How’re you feeling, kid?”

“I can’t look at it for too long. I will cry,” he said to the ceiling. 

“Glad you like it.” Tony sighed and leaned back next to Peter. “I was the brains, Pep and Morgan helped me out with the actual ‘asking other people for pictures’ part. You’ll have to include them in any thank you card correspondence.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever written a thank you card in my life.” Peter twisted to his side to look at Tony. “Is that bad?”

“Well, it’s not kill half the universe bad,” Tony admitted. 

“I thought no jokes?”

“Eh.” Tony turned his head to meet Peter’s eyes with a smirk. “They’re funnier when I do them.”

“A man who has everything has nothing if he doesn’t have love.”

Tag List:  @ironfamjam @addi-is-amazing @mysterio-is-a-little-bitch @wellplacedbanana @night0seven @unfathomable-universe​ @bibbidi-bobbity-booyah @spideynamu

[louadorable126]

Demons(you).me - A DMC Cyberpunk AU (Chapter 4)

Click here to Read over on Ao3! :D

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Summary:

In a city controlled by the generally altered race of Demons, Lady's life as a mercenary on the lower floor was never easy. Especially when she ran into Dante. A demon on the hunt for his missing brother.

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Important information!

Fandom: Devil May Cry

Rating: Mature

Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence

Realtionships: Dante x Lady, Vergil x Lady

Characters: Lady (Devil May Cry), Dante (Devil May Cry), Vergil (Devil May Cry) Morrison (Devil May Cry), Nell Goldstien (Devil May Cry) Eva (Devil May Cry), Sprada (He’s mentioned bless him), Mundus (Also Mentioned)

Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, Genetic Engineering, Sci-fi Fantasy, Strip Clubs and Strippers, Dystopia, Seizures, Flirting, Eva and Sprada are alive! :D, Human Experimentation, Cults.

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Chapter 4

“Hey, so what is it actually like working for the demonic military?” Lady asked curiously, as the trio strolled down a familiar alleyway. A gentle morning breeze blowing through the cramped corridor between the large buildings towering above them.

Despite the overwhelming exhaustion she felt from being rudely woken at the crack of dawn by the ghostly Specter of Vergil standing over her in the dark. Seriously, for someone who was supposedly well-bred, the guy had no clue what "personal space" meant! He’d scared the shit out of her!. Then being dragged onto a train to the lower city, alongside an equally sleep deprived Dante - who took the opportunity to loudly vocalise his annoyance at Vergil’s spartan attitude. Lady had to admit that morning walks certainly had a certain peaceful serenity to them.

She had become so accustomed to her busy morning commute to Morrison’s bar - always having people bashing into her as they ran past her, or the sheer overwhelming noise of people’s everyday lives washing over her - that she had forgotten that peaceful silence could exist in the city. This was certainly one of those times. As nothing, aside from the group's footsteps tapping against the concrete floor below them, which even had a certain calming hypnotic beat to it, resounded in the nearby area.

“I’d think it's not much different to your career as a Mercenary.” Vergil said eloquently. Looking over at Lady beneath the shadows of his blue hood.“Every week, me and Dante are given several different assignments to complete by our superiors. We can’t be sent off onto the battlefield for another two years, so our father arranged for us to do peacekeeping at home.”

“Yeah, and we don’t get paid jackshit for doing it.” Dante moaned on the other side of her. "Think of it like annoying homework if anything, babe!”

“Huh.” Lady remarked. Surprised at how mundane they made such an extraordinary job sounded. If these kinds of thrilling adventures were what they did day in day out, it seemed amazing they had time for anything else! "Wait, so did you guys ever go to school? Or are you Demons only taught military stuff?”

“We were formally educated until we were around 16. Unfortunately…duty called for us to depart.” Vergil’s nasally voice began to fade near the end. He grew deathly silent, coming to an abrupt halt as his grip on Yamato tightened; falling behind the rest of the group.

When the pair realised he wasn’t with them, they quickly spun around. Finding Vergil standing there, his body tense as he gazed down at his boots. His pale face was completely obscured by the hood of his coat. It seemed he could sense their concerned gazes, as he quickly looked up again. His regal features schooled into an emotionless facade. Yet, Lady could’ve sworn she saw a glint of insecurity and immense hurt, hidden away in those glacier eyes of his, as he began to walk over to them. Then right past the pair. “Excuse me for a moment.”

Lady watched him hurry off down the street ahead of them. Disappearing moments later, when the tail end of his deep blue coat vanished out of sight behind the building at the end of the alleyway.

“What’s up with him?” She asked, turning her head towards Dante. Confused as to why Vergil would have such a distressing reaction to a rather simple question.

“Oh boy.” Dante muttered to himself. Letting out a long sigh, as he awkwardly rubbed the back of his head. “Well...to put a long story short, Verge wanted to stay on for higher education rather than joining the demonic military full time."

“Really?” To say Lady was surprised by such a revelation was an understatement. She was utterly gobsmacked. Never in her wildest dreams thought the stoic, battle-hardened demon would care for the intellectual. Let alone try to pursue it! He’d seemed perfectly content flaunting his flawless combat ability at every opportunity, from what she had seen of the demon so far.

“Yeah! He’s always been into books and learning since for as long as I can remember, so he wanted to go off and study English. Only issue is Dad’s position in the Emperor’s court meant that we had to go serve in the military as a show of ‘good will’ to Mundus.” Lady could practically hear the biting sarcasm in Dante’s words. “God, you should have seen him when he heard the news! Practically grabbed Dad’s knees and begged him in tears to let him stay on.”

“And he obviously didn’t?” Lady asked softly, just as the pair rounded the street corner.

“Yeah, Dad said his hands were tied and he couldn’t do anything about it.” Dante sighed, shaking his head dismay at the unpleasant memory. “I think Vergil understands now why Dad was kinda stuck in a Catch-22. But he didn’t talk for him for months until he got sent off to Vigrid."

“Wait, so is that why he’s acting like a stuck up prick? Because he’s annoyed at the world?” Lady hypothesised. She wasn’t exactly a psychologist, but she thought it was interesting to think about these things when dealing with people so damn weird.

“Nah! Vergil's always been like that!” Dante chuckled. Patting her on the shoulder like she were his dumb little sister. Much to Lady’s annoyance. “Doubt he’s ever going to change! So you better get used to it!"

“Great.” Lady sighed. It seemed the true nature of the aloof blue demon would remain an enigma to her, for the time being.

The pair soon arrived outside the now abandoned tattoo parlour. It didn’t look all that different since the last time Dante had been here. But, he could clearly see the tale-tell signs of the clean up crews presence here. Mainly, the lack of blood stains, dead bodies, and the distinct chemical smell of bleach in the air was the biggest clue.

From the looks of it, his twin had already gone inside. The front door had been left wide open for a steady draft to blow in black dust off the street, and into the building.

“Well this place certainly looks like a quick way to get blood poisoning!” Lady commented slyly. Peaking through the cracked windows of the tattoo parlour at its shoddy equipment. She began to stroll over to the entrance. “No wonder then cult decided to use it as a front-“

All of a sudden, Dante rushed past her and stood in the open doorway. Stretching his arms out so that he was holding either side of the worn door frame. Blocking her path.

“Hey Lady, can you wait outside for a bit?” Dante asked in a serious voice. Utterly devoid of the usual devil-may care energy it always had.

Immediately alarm bells started going off in the Mercenaries' head. Something wasn’t right here. She’d never seen Dante act like this before about anything they did. He’d never barred her from following him into certain danger. Nor had he ever kept any kind of major secret from her. Which given his current status as a Half-breed he probably should've done. But if anything that clarity between them had been a show of trust! (Ok, that and her stumbling onto that roof. In retrospect, Vergil probably hadn’t meant that little secret for her ears.)

Hell, it was normally her being the one to keep his sorry ass in check, and keeping him from doing anything stupid! And this abandoned tattoo parlour certainly didn’t seem dangerous in the slightest! What? Was she going to get a bruised knee if she tripped up? Maybe a slight cut on a shard of broken glass! She could handle that! She’d certainly had worse in her time! So what on earth was Dante playing at?

“Why?” Lady interrogated coldly, looking up at the handsome face hidden beneath his crimson hood. “Look, if this is because some super secret demon bullshit, I don’t really care. I’m not going to tell anyone-“

“No, it's not that.” The demon said, shaking his head. A few loose locks of flowing white hair falling out of his hood, as a concerned look grew on his features. One which certainly fit Vergil’s identical face more than it did his.

“Well what is it then?” Lady demanded. Growing more infuriated every passing second. She put a hand on his chest and tried to push past him. He wouldn’t budge. "Seriously! Just tell me Dante! Its fine-"

“Lady…when we were assigned to take out the cult's operations here. It was because they were doing illegal demonic conversions.” Dante explained slowly. Cringing internally as he watched the mercenary freeze up, deathly still, at the news. Her heterochromatic eyes blank and emotionless as she seemingly started into nothingness, or perhaps a not so pleasant memory from the past. Her small frame trembling ever so slightly, as she reached a shaky hand up and grabbed a fistful of her dark hair. Clutching it tightly. Rapid breaths escaping her parched mouth.

Dante hated to watch her breakdown. Here he was, standing here like a complete idiot while she suffered. It's what he had been desperately trying to avoid, for crying out loud! All his tact and dissuasion utterly useless in the end. But, he knew there was nothing he could do about it now. The truth was already out in the open now. All he could really do was place a gentle, warm hand on her shoulder and keep talking. Hoping that it would draw her back to reality. “I know your sensitive about that stuff 'cause of what your old man did-“

“I understand.” Lady suddenly responded in a serious voice, tinged with shakiness. She tilted her head up so she was looking at the red demon face on, a determined look to her features. Their eyes met. "I’ll guard the entrance until you get back.”

Wordlessly, Lady backed away from the door without any further argument. She swung her heavy rocket launcher off her back, and then sat herself down on the shop's doorstep. Back turned away from Dante, as her heavy weaponry rested peacefully on her lap. Taking solemn vigil like the original guard who had stood there. Her chestnut hair blowing gently in the wind.

Seeing this as a sign Lady wanted to be left in peace. Dante around turned and took a step forward onto the shop floor.

"Thanks Dante.” Lady called out softly from behind him. He quickly spun back around at her words. Only to find the young woman still turned away from him, as she looked out down the street.

For all he knew he could have imagined it. But something about that voice made him feel all warm and fuzzy inside. He was touched by her words in a way. Knowing that this was her genuine gratitude towards him, untouched by any sarcastic banter that had constituted too much of their short relationship. Dante felt proud that he’d done something to help her, and make up for the mistakes of their first night together.  

"No worries, babe. See you in a bit.” He replied, smiling slightly. Before heading into the building.

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

Click here to read more over on Ao3! :D

[anxiously-going]

Solteria

“Why are we at an animal shelter?” Jim questioned as the car came to a halt. 

“Well,” Len stepped from the vehicle to try to avoid Jim’s questioning look. If this was going to go south, now is when it would happen. “I was doing some research and brought it up to Pike, who helped me draft up a report and brought up to the admiralty-" 

"Bones.” Jim stood next to the car, refusing to follow Len up the sidewalk. “Why are we here?" 

"Most of my report was based on our last mission, I tried to keep as much detail out from your past as possible. I didn’t even go near the redacted pieces, I swear-" 

"Bones,” Jim cut him off again, a little stronger this time. 

“You’ve been granted a therapy dog." 

Jim blinked, trying to process what he’d just heard. "What?" 

"It’s a new program Pike and I are pushing for. He’s getting one too, his is more for medical purposes since he can’t be up and around like he used to, trained to bring him medication, stabilize him in case of a fall-" 

"No, hold on. Back up. Where- where is this even coming from?" 

"There’s years of research supporting the idea that support animals for trauma survivors help the healing process. I- I’m not gonna lie, Jim, you’re the most severe case I’ve ever worked with. Now, don’t get me wrong, you’ve made far more progress than…anything I’ve ever seen. But I still think this could help. Especially…after last year. You’ve still made more progress than anybody in your shoes has any right to make. But I still think you could benefit from it. If things go well… one of the options Starfleet is looking at is starting its own shelter, bringing in rescue animals and pairing them up with cadets from less than ideal backgrounds, getting them the help they need early. If this program works there’s even a good chance we’ll see a drop in drop out rates among cadets. When you look at numbers… most of them don’t come from the best backgrounds." 

"So what I’m hearing,” there was a growing smirk on Jim’s face, “is that you and Pike jumped through a bunch of hoops to get me a dog." 

"There’s a real benefit to it,” Len shrugged. “You’re not mad, are you?" 

"Why would I be mad? Surprised yeah, but I’m not mad, Bones.” Jim moved to stand by his friend. 

“I did kinda go behind your back. I did what I could to just leave it to the basic details, I didn’t use any stories you’ve told me, I stuck to the medical records-" 

"Bones, stop.” Jim put a hand to Len’s arm. “You didn’t break my trust, if that’s what you’re worried about. Ok? You are my best friend and, yeah, I’ve told you a lot that I wouldn’t tell anyone else. But I understand that you’re also a doctor, you are completely within bounds to use my own medical history to assist me in whatever way you deem best. I trust you with that. It’s not like you’re going around gossiping about me, you’re just trying to help. I know you, Bones. You can’t not help people. That’s one of my favorite things about you. So I’m not mad at you, alright?" 

Leonard nodded. "Thanks for understanding." 

"Thanks for getting me a dog!” Jim grinned brightly.

Len laughed and shook his head. “C'mon, kid, let’s go find you a dog." 

___

Jim stopped in front of the kennels. "What about these guys?" 

"Those are some of the German Shepherds,” the shelter manager explained. “They came to us out of some pretty harsh conditions. They’re pure breeds from a hoarding situation, all around six months, but there were many others that we had to send to other shelters to get them the help they needed. For the most part they’re recovering well, still some skittishness and food aggression issues, but we are working to better train them. There are some over here that are a little further along-" 

"What about that one?” Jim pointed to a pup, a little smaller than the others, watching them intently. 

“That is a particularly troubled dog, I’m afraid. She nearly didn’t survive the transition to the shelter. She was severely underweight when she came to us, it’s a miracle she survived." 

"Can I meet her?" 

"Captain, I understand she looks healthy, but she was a very abused dog. I’m not sure she’d be suitable for your needs. She doesn’t take very well to any of our male staff, and refuses to eat at all when any staff are around. When she came to us, we had to separate from the rest of the litter because she would try to attack anyone who came near her siblings. She has made some progress, yes, but she still has a long way to go." 

"I understand, I’d still like to meet her." 

"Of course, Captain.” She opened the gate just enough for Jim to step inside. The pup in question was immediately on her feet, watching him warily. Jim simply crouched down. For a long moment they just watched one another. 

“Bones, hand me one of those treats.” Jim held his hand behind him and Len dropped a couple into his palm. 

Slowly, Jim set a bone shaped biscuit in front of himself, about an arms reach, and waited. 

Equally cautious, the pup came forward  before taking the treat. She took a few steps back before gnawing on it. 

The manager watched in shock. “She’s never sat that close to anyone with food before." 

When her snack was gone, the pup looked up at Jim again. He held a second treat in his outstretched palm. She didn’t move, just watched him carefully. Slowly, Jim lowered his hand to the ground. 

The dog crouched down and crawled timidly to his hand and quickly pulled the treat away. Jim smiled, but tried not to make too much noise as he pulled his hand back.

She stood at his movement. Jim sat motionless as she crept forward and started to sniff at him. It was hard not to erupt into laughter when she poked her nose around his face, but he managed somehow. 

Len couldn’t decide which was more amusing the shock on the woman’s face, or the big goofy grin on Jim’s face. 

"I’ve never seen her do that with any man before,” she muttered quietly. 

Jim offered his hand again, and this time the pup nuzzled her head against it. 

“I think we’ll be taking this one,” Len replied.  

“Yes, I believe so." 

Jim giggled when she pushed a little closer to lick his face. "Yeah, I’m definitely taking you with me.” He stood carefully, still not wanting to startle her and stepped toward the gate. The dog followed right alongside him, tail wagging all the way. She sniffed a little at Len’s leg, but stepped a little closer to Jim. 

“Don’t worry,” Jim rubbed one of her ears. “He only looks mean. See?” He moved sideways a little and put an arm around Len’s waist. 

The pup made a throaty noise and wiggled her way between the men, pushing Jim away just slightly. 

“That is one of those things I wanted to caution you about, Captain,” the manager tried to warn him again, but Jim waved her off. 

“She’ll learn. Besides, everyone thinks Bones is scary when they first meet him.” He reached to pet the dog again and she came up on her hind legs to meet him. “He’s not as mean as he looks, I promise." 

"I’d smack you for that if I thought I could get away with it,” Bones grumbled. 

“He is a little mean,” he said to the puppy sitting happy at his side, “but only when he gets grumpy. Which is a lot of the time, but it’s ok ‘cause I’m his favorite." 

Len scoffed and rolled his eyes. 

"Why don’t we go inside and I’ll get the adoption papers for you?" 

"Yes, thank you,” Jim agreed. 

___

“Have you considered names at all?" 

"I hadn’t. This was actually something of a surprise to me.” He gave Leonard a pointed look before turning back to his new puppy. “Maybe…Solteria." 

"An unusual name." 

"She’s an unusual dog. What do you think, hm? Solteria sound good to you?" 

The pup popped up and put her fore paws Jim’s leg, reaching with her nose. Jim chuckled and stroked her head in response. "I guess that’s a yes. Solteria it is then." 

[irwingiggling]

westbrook | pt. 6

gang!ashton; gang!5sos

[pt. 1] [pt. 2] [pt. 3] [pt. 4] [pt. 5]

[Image credit: @not-grey-enough]

A/N: Wowww it’s been such a long time since I updated this story (yikes!). Some of my breaks from tumblr last longer than others, but I always find myself coming back here eventually. University has been a wild ride for me, but I honestly fell in love with this story and I feel like it deserves to be completed. I hope to finish it for you guys. This chapter has been sitting on my laptop for ages in draft form, and this weekend I finally added some scenes and finished it up for you guys.  No promises on when the next chapter will be coming, but I do have some scenes drafted for that.

Summary: In which Ashton is one of the leaders of the Westbrook Dragons, a gang who often feuds with the Vipers for control of the streets. After hearing of her estranged father’s death, Marina comes to Westbrook to fix up his house and sell it. Coming from a privileged neighborhood, the last thing Marina expects is to move in next door to a gang’s hideout.

Word Count: 4,100+ 

Rating: PG-13 (violence, language, drug references)

The next few weeks after the Dragons meeting were fairly uneventful. Marina and Ashton were still taking things slow, for the most part. Ashton had been busier than usual with the Dragons (some kind of territory issues, that he didn't care to elaborate on when Marina asked). In the meantime, Marina had continued to plunge her time into the house. Of course some things had been delayed, and what was originally a week's worth of work had turned into a month, but the house was now essentially completed. In fact her realtor, Steve, had scheduled an appointment to meet with her one last time before the final round of showings with the most serious prospective buyers.

Marina had an oddly bittersweet feeling about the entire thing. The house was what was keeping her here, with Ashton, but how would things change once it was sold? Would the two of them stay together in this fledgling relationship? Would she move back home? She got a terrible sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach whenever she thought about the possibility of moving back to the life she'd once lived, with her mother's flower shop. The only world she'd ever known, the place that had once given her so much safety and purpose, had now been completely flipped on its head. Her mother felt like a fraud, a sham. Just another everyday flower shop making a modest income, falsely elevated to the level of luxury through the use of her father's drug money. And confronting her mother would only lead to more questions, especially ones pertaining to how Marina had found out the information in the first place.

She felt a sense of security and familiarity with Westbrook that was growing stronger every day. But sometimes she still felt like a stranger in her father's old house.

It was some time in the wee hours of the morning, and Marina was currently sleeping soundly in her bed. In just a few hours she would have her final meeting with Steve, and Marina was getting some well-deserved rest after a busy day of putting up the final touches around the house. That is, until everything changed, and unfamiliar footsteps and voices outside her open window caused her to bolt upright in bed.

She'd had Ashton's number saved in her phone for a while, now - he told her she needed it just in case. This was around the same time he practically accosted her about Steve, when she was getting into her car. Back when she was still desperately trying to convince herself that Ashton was a terrible person.

"Ash?" she whispered. It came out so quiet, she wasn't sure that he even heard her, but she didn't want the sound to travel. She was shaking so violently that she was sure the sound on the other end was all rustled and unclear.

"Yeah?" he grumbled, sounding like he'd just woken up. He probably had, it was 3am after all.

"I think- I think someone's trying to break in."

"What?" he asked, louder and more coherently this time. She could almost picture him bolting upright in his bed, thoughts of sleep instantly vanishing from his brain.

"Ash what do I do?" she asked in a hysterical whisper, flinching so hard she nearly dropped the phone when she heard someone fiddling with the lock to the back door. It was across the house from her bedroom, but in the dead silence of the night, she could clearly hear the lock being jiggled and pried apart.

"Shit, where are you?" he asked, breathing heavily into the phone, sounding like he was running. She heard the slight jingle of keys on the line, and knew he was on the way out of his apartment.

"I'm- I'm under my bed," she said, silent tears now running down her face. She was frozen and absolutely petrified.

"You stay right there, ok babygirl? Don't make a sound. I'm coming, I'll be right there, ok? I promise."

"Ok," she whispered, voice breaking as a lump built in her throat.

She didn't hear any noise for a couple minutes, waiting with bated breath, laying on her side to fit under her bed, knees tucked to her chin, in the fetal position. She desperately hoped the intruder had decided to leave, but she knew the thought was too good to be true even as she tried to convince herself. Soon enough she heard slow, steady footfalls against the floor, making their way from one end of the house to the other. Her throat tightened in terror so much that she could barely breathe. Every breath she took felt like she was silently choking, hands shaking as they pressed into her knees, face itchy and raw as salty tear tracks ran down her cheeks.

"I know you're in here," a deep voice said. A pair of black leather boots came into view of the doorway. The voice chuckled quietly. "You tell your little boyfriend that-"

He couldn't finish the rest of his sentence because another figure came flying in behind him, sending the first man to the ground. The two immediately started trading punches, both fighting to get the upper hand. All Marina could see was a sliver of floor from her position underneath the bed, but she could hear the punches and the grunts as items were thrown around and knocked over. She knew it was Ashton. She saw a flash of his curls one time he got knocked to the ground.

She heard Ashton hiss and her heart leapt to her throat. Was he ok? Shortly afterwards, another pair of boots came into the room, and then another.

A hand reached under the bed and she immediately recognized it as Ashton's.

"C'mon!" he said urgently, and she grabbed ahold, allowing herself to be dragged out from under the bed. Ashton shielded her from the others in the room - she caught a sliver of two figures, black curls and golden curls, standing over another figure, before Ashton pulled her down the hallway, and out into the cool night.

He hopped on his motorcycle and she climbed in behind him, shaking hands fumbling to wrap themselves around his stomach as quickly as possible. As soon as she was secured, the motorcycle roared to life, and Ashton set off at a breakneck speed down the otherwise quiet country road.

---

Ashton helped her into the apartment, shutting and locking the door behind them. He guided her onto the couch and sat down beside her. She was still shaking a little bit, but partly that was due to the thin pajama set she was wearing, just pale pink silk shorts and a matching spaghetti strap top. Ashton noticed this and grabbed a blanket, wrapping it securely around her.

"You're ok," he soothed gently, right hand smoothing her hair. "You're safe here, no one can get you now."

She nodded, wiping her eyes. Finally she looked up, looking at Ashton fully for the first time since the break in.

"You're hurt!" she exclaimed, fingers flying up to inspect his cheek. The gash was shallow, but a couple inches long. Smeared, dried blood surrounded the area. The skin underneath his right eye was red and puffy - she was sure it would be bruised and blackened by tomorrow.

"It's fine," he said, brushing her fingers away. "What about you? Did he hurt you?"

"No, no," she shook her head quickly. "Just shook me up, that's all." She was still shaking, and she put her arms around herself to try and stop it. Ashton noticed and immediately engulfed her in his embrace, pulling her closer so she was sitting on his lap, facing him.

"I'm so sorry," he murmured, rubbing her back soothingly. "I should've thought-" he cut himself off, in annoyance.

"It's not your fault, Ash."

---

Neither of them could sleep fully, instead they drifted in and out of consciousness as they held each other tightly on the couch. Hours later, when the first rays of sunlight began to seep in through the partly closed blinds, there was a knock on the door.

Calum came in, dark curls bouncing on his head. "We got him to talk." The sleeves of his leather jacket were pulled up slightly, exposing his tanned, tattooed arms. His face looked sullen, lips pursed into a straight line. He continued walking, and Ashton and Marina followed him to the far back of the apartment, into the study.

As Ashton closed the door behind them, Marina's stomach twisted - she didn't even want to think about what they did in order to get him to talk.

Ashton gave a curt nod towards Calum and raised his eyebrows, silently willing his partner to continue.

"He's linked to Parsons."

"Fuck," Ashton cursed lowly.

"Steve?" Marina asked, eyebrows raising. "Steve, my realtor?"

Calum nodded, biting down hard on his lower lip.

"Fuck!" Ashton said louder, making his right hand into a fist. "I knew it!"

"You told me about him, how'd you know?" Marina asked.

Ashton shook his head. "Something about him just seemed... off."

"Ok but what was he trying to do?"

"They trashed the house. He's trying to threaten us. I knew he had ties to the Vipers," he spat.

"But what does that have to do with the house?" Marina asked.

"They know.. about us," Ashton sighed, running a hand through his curls while reaching out to thread Marina's fingers in his own. Marina caught his eye, and stared at him, prompting him for more.

"They're trying to send a message. They're trying to scare you, trying to scare me, it's.... bullshit," he finished, looking away and shaking his head angrily.

"Cal, can you get the guys to clean everything up?" Ashton asked, looking over at Calum who had temporarily been forgotten.

"Yeah, course mate," Calum nodded, leaving the room.

"So..." Ashton began, taking Marina's hands in his own. She was sitting on the chair behind the study desk, while Ashton was sitting on top of the desk, facing towards her so their legs were jumbled together. "I think it might be safest if I stayed at the house, for a little while at least, just to make sure you're protected in case they try anything else. What do you think about that?" he asked, keeping his gaze fixed on her hands which he was holding between his own.

"Yeah," she nodded. He looked up at her, meeting her gaze. "That's probably safest," she said, getting caught up in the honey brown of his eyes. "And... I would like that," she smiled gently, moving her fingertips underneath his leather jacket, hugging him close.

Ashton smiled back. He pressed his lips against hers gently, then moved up to kiss her forehead.

---

Marina woke up the next night in a cold sweat, bolting upright as her eyes shot open. She blinked rapidly, trying to adjust to the complete darkness of the room. As her breathing slowed down, her posture relaxed slightly - if she hadn't been stabbed yet, she figured it was probably just a dream.

Just then, warm fingertips touched her skin, as Ashton shifted beside her.

"Shh it's ok Mar, I got you," he mumbled, rubbing soothing circles into her skin with the pads of his fingertips. "Lay down babygirl, it was just a dream. You're safe."

Marina instantly relaxed, sinking into Ashton's grip. She huddled up close to him, pressing her back firmly against his chest. He wrapped his arms around her waist, keeping her there. He leaned over to press gentle butterfly kisses to her exposed shoulder. She held his forearms as they wrapped around her, shutting her eyes before drifting back to sleep, this time to peaceful dreams.

When she woke up the next morning, she was still in Ashton's grip.

"Ash," she whispered, trying to move his arms away. He just mumbled something incoherent and pulled her even closer, nuzzling his face into her neck. "Ash," she repeated, giggling softly as she pressed herself against his arms. "I gotta pee."

He sighed overdramatically, still not even bothering to open his eyes, but he did loosen his grip, allowing her to climb out of bed. Marina was starting to love the mornings - it was the one time in the whole day where Ash was soft and sleepy, the one time where he didn't need to be closed off and hardened by the world around him.

---

"What are you up to today?" Marina asked, stirring her coffee, watching the amber liquid swirling in her ceramic mug, creating a vortex.

Ashton gave a small smirk. "I'm gonna make Parsons pay for what he did," he said casually, eating a bite of toast.

Marina's gaze flicked up to his eyes, the easy nature in her voice immediately dropping. "Ashton do you really think that's the best idea?" she asked in a tone that told him it wasn't.

Ashton looked over at her, studying her. "Yes, Marina I do. He needs to know he's messing with the wrong people. I won't let him walk all over you or me."

Marina sighed, placing her mug down on the table. "I know what he did was wrong, but is violence really the answer? I was exploring some legal routes, in fact I drafted an email to my mother's lawyer already to set up a meeting. Maybe I could get a restraining order, or have him pay some kind of restitution fee or something."

Ashton shook his head. "A fee? Marina he needs to pay for what he did, and I don't mean through money or a piece of paper. That's never going to stop him, he'll just come back."

"Okay but I'm not sure that's the best way to fix this," she replied, sighing quietly in frustration that Ashton wasn't understanding her point of view.

"Well it's not really your decision to make, Marina-"

"What are you talking about, this happened in my house!" she fired back.

"Yeah but it happened because of me! He's trying to get to me by going through you."

"Ashton I don't think you understand-"

"I don't think you understand!" he exclaimed, cutting her off. "This isn't the world of private schools and cheques, Marina. This is the cold, hard, real world. And in the real world, you pay with your body."

"And I'm telling you I don't want you to do that Ashton, just listen to me!"

He got up abruptly, chair scraping across the newly polished floors. "Don't tell me what to do," he retorted coldly, quickly pacing the length of the living room.

"Where are you going?" she yelled, as she watched him make his way over to the door.

"Out," he replied curtly, the door shutting heavily behind him.

---

Ashton had been in fights before, but he'd never lost it like this. Once he saw Parsons he kept punching and punching until he couldn't see or feel anything anymore. A few minutes past the point at which Parsons had been knocked unconscious, Luke and Calum finally had to pull Ashton off of him, dragging him back into the car as he fought against them the whole way, trying to escape from their grasp and run back. At this point he couldn't tell whether Parsons was alive or not and he came to the realization that either way, he didn't care. As the four comrades drove down the streets of Westbrook in a blacked-out car, Michael dialled 911 from a burner phone. Ashton's hands were still locked into fists, steadily dripping blood onto the grey carpet of the vehicle.

---

"I've never... felt like that," Ashton said quietly, 20 minutes later with his right hand in a pail of ice cubes and his left hand holding a glass of stiff bourbon. He stared at the drink as he swirled it, as if it would give him answers as it caught the dim light of the room, glittering gold. When they got back to the apartment he had quickly showered off and changed, but some of his cuts had started bleeding again. He couldn't be bothered to care.

"Because this wasn't really about the house, or the drugs," Calum said, leaning against the faded wallpapered room, taking a long drag from his cigarette and exhaling, the smoke floating around the room.

Ashton didn't reply. He just sat there, letting the deafening silence consume him. The quiet sound of Calum puffing the smoke in then letting it out again was the only sound either of them heard for a while.

After a few more drags, Cal examined his cigarette, then squinted at Ashton. "You love her." He didn't even ask it as a question, it was a statement.

Ashton gulped back the last of the burnt orange liquid, setting the glass down on the table with a sharp clink. He reached over for the bottle but Cal swiped it from him before he could get a grip on it.

"Don't fuck it up with her because of this," Calum said. Ashton just stared at him, eyes tired, one limp curl hanging against his forehead. He held his hand out for the bottle, wordlessly. Calum studied him for a few seconds, before handing the bottle back. But instead of pouring another glass, Ashton set the bottle back on the table. He sighed, rubbing his face with his hands, so wrapped up in his thoughts that he barely even noticed his one hand was dripping wet from the ice water. He sniffed, setting his hands in his lap to examine his right hand. He splayed his fingers out, then made them into a fist. His knuckles were swollen, a slow trickle of blood still coming from the far left one. Then he brought his gaze up, staring hard at the door, jaw set. After a few moments, he got up and grabbed his keys from the table, wordlessly shutting the door behind him as he left.

---

Marina answered the door wordlessly, surveying him. She stood aside to let him in, and shut and locked the door behind him. He bent down to take his shoes off and she took this opportunity to leave, heading down the hallway to the bathroom. He took a seat at the kitchen table while she came back with the first aid kit, setting it down and taking a seat next to him.

She couldn't hold back the sigh when she surveyed his hand up close and personal. She set his hand down on the table and opened a bottle of disinfectant, dipping a cotton pad into it and spreading it over any open wounds. He hissed as the liquid made contact with his cuts, but didn't move. She added some antibiotic cream to speed the healing and prevent infection, and added a few bandaids here and there where they were needed. One of the larger gashes required a butterfly bandage. There was nothing she could do about the black eye that had nearly healed from the first fight, now red and purple again from this new one.

She was quiet, too quiet.

She handed him a coffee, wordlessly, hands shaking slightly as she put it on the table.

"What's wrong?" he asked hoarsely.

"Nothing," she said too quickly, in a voice barely above a whisper.

His eyebrows drew together. "Hey," he said gently, putting his arm around her wrist.

"Please don't touch me," she whispered, closing her eyes tightly, wincing at his touch.

He immediately let go, sinking back as if he'd been stung.

"Babygirl," he said, a pained expression on his face. "Are you... scared of me?" he asked, a lump forming in his throat.

She kept her gaze fixed to the floor, unable to meet his gaze. Her silence was enough of an answer for him.

"Fuck," he whispered, the breath wheezing out of him as the word left his mouth.

When she finally gathered up the courage to look up, he was staring at the wall, eyes glassy. "I would never, in a million years, ever even think about hurting you. You are everything to me. You know that right?" he asked.

She nodded gently.

"But in my line of work, sometimes words aren't enough. Sometimes legalities don't help. And I have to protect the people I care about, if they're ever threatened. He's not dead, Mar. I know you didn't want that. I just made sure that he wouldn't ever come after you again."

She nodded once, in acknowledgement.

"But I'm sorry I didn't discuss it with you, I'm sorry I just left. That was wrong of me," he finished quietly.

She simply nodded again, biting her fingernail absentmindedly. She was wearing a thick cardigan, and her other arm was wrapped tightly around herself, holding the fabric close.

Ashton held out his hand towards her - slowly, gently. After a few seconds, she took it. "C'mere," he whispered. He removed his other hand from his lap and held it outwards, making space on his lap for her. She took the couple steps forward and sat down. He gently wrapped his arms around her and she rested her head against his chest, taking a deep breath. She focused on his heartbeat, clear and strong in her ears, and on the fabric of his soft flannel, the jacket he always wore over top smelling of worn leather and cigars. She felt him kiss the top of her forehead.

"I don't want you to die," she said, in a voice so quiet it was barely a whisper.

"Shhh," he soothed into her ear, running his hand through her hair over and over again, watching the rings on his fingers glinting in the soft glow of the kitchen lights. "That's never going to happen. I promise you."

She shook her head. "I can't do this, Ashton. I can't let you go every day wondering if I'll ever see you again, if you're ok, if one of your deals has gone bad. Every time I hug you I feel the gun on your hip. And I know you said you've never used it, but what if one day you do?"

"Hey," he said, cupping her chin, bringing it up to be level with his. "Don't think like that." He kissed her gently, her bottom lip slotting between his own. He pulled her close again, resting his chin on the top of her head.

"I know I've never said anything like this before but it's been eating me up. I wanna raise a family with you one day, Ash. I wanna have a dog and a fucking sandbox in the backyard. I wanna see you dress up in a pink tutu with our little girl. But I don't wanna worry about holding our kids tighter every time someone passes by, or seeing their chalk hopscotch squares destroyed by graffiti the next morning."

He smiled, eyes getting teary again but this time for a different reason. He was happy, so happy around her. She made him see a life outside of the gang. They would always be his brothers, but he wanted to invite them over for a barbeque, not a break in. She inspired him to be a better person every single day. There was no other way to say it. He knew that Marina's father had started up the business, but one day the time would be right to end it, or at least pass it on.

"I love you," he murmured, staring into her eyes.

She smiled. It was her turn to tear up now. "I love you too." She laughed gently, pressing their foreheads together.

"I promise you we'll get out of here. I'll help you sell this damn house that's nothing but trouble," he chuckled lightly, "and we'll move far away. What do you think about Oregon? I heard it's nice there."

"Mmm," she mumbled, closing her eyes and just listening to his voice. She reached up to cover a yawn with her left hand. After all of this, her eyelids were starting to get heavy.

He chuckled. "Are you getting sleepy, babygirl? Let's get you to bed."

He carried her up the stairs and laid her gently down on the bed. He got in beside her and pulled the covers up around them. She fell asleep less than a minute later, head against his chest. He fell asleep soon after to the sound of her steady breathing.

[hopevalley]

Hi everyone! I hope you’re ready for another Tumblr Special™.

Let’s talk about some stuff that’s been on my mind lately.

I’ve been working on my pet project, When Calls the Heart: Reimagined, and my bud @trash-god has assured me that the current first draft isn’t complete garbage, but the discussion we had eventually led to talking about Mark Humphrey and then character-related stuff and as usual I couldn’t shut up.

Before that, I just wanted to drop the update about Reimagined. I don’t know if that’ll be its actual title or not. It’s hard to title a novelization. On one hand you have the option to title it the same as the show, but it’s not the show, so then you’re kind of stuck feeling like you have to come up with something at least slightly different, but it’s still also technically fanfic, and—

Yeah. There’s also the potential for something like this to really blow up in a big way, at least word-wise, so that makes a title even more important. I’ll definitely be out there barking my wares like a peddler on the street, but like...here on Tumblr and especially on Instagram where there are a ton of fans. Twitter too, probably. Considering I have to type this five billion times across social media to try and garner some attention (and hopefully feedback) for it, I’d rather not be embarrassed by the title, or turn people away from it because they think it’s a regular fanfic and not a novelization of the show.

Which leaves me with very few options.

When Calls the Heart: The Novelization

When Calls the Heart: Reimagined

Some other title with a subtitle of “A When Calls the Heart Novelization”

It sounds simple but it’s not. “The Novelization” makes it sound like it’s following the show super precisely. “Reimagined” makes it sound as if it deviates in a big way. Something else could just be too much to type but at least it implies it’s an interpretation. What if this ends up getting absolutely huge and needs to be split up into parts, though? That makes it more difficult.

I’m getting ahead of myself. I’ve made it about five minutes into the first episode, time-wise, and have four thousand some odd words. It’s not even a complete chapter—more like an introduction and the beginning of the first chapter.

But something I noticed in those first five minutes of the television series is that...everything is so incredibly rushed. The pacing is awful. I think I might have talked about this a bit in my ‘episode write-up’ of the first episode, but even though it works well enough for this series (especially considering its S1 budget and everything) it would all be terrible for a narrative choice.

I mean, sure, the first chapter could start with Elizabeth on her journey thinkin’ ‘bout where she’s going, ruminating on her own hubris, and then BANDITS. Cut out and back in to her arriving in town without much of an explanation or showing how she personally handled the whole bandit thing. Then have Abigail, Cat, and Florence steamroll the heck out of her while the narrative laughs at rich, silly Elizabeth who isn’t afraid of hard work but is scared of a mouse.

But that isn’t what I want. Elizabeth as a character, especially the introductory character we’re going to get to know and love over the course of hundreds of thousands of words (in theory, of course), deserves better than that. The narrative cluster from the TV show served its purpose; it flung us right into the thick of things. Which is fine for TV and less fine for what would essentially be a book.

Again, don’t get me wrong, but I want Elizabeth to be the kind of character we don’t know everything about right away. I don’t want to spill every detail of her life right from the get-go. I don’t want her to come off as too obviously rich, especially in her own narrative. I want her observations and mannerisms and attitude to reflect the fact that she comes from money without stating it outright.

I also feel that Elizabeth as a character lacked a lot of attention in the show that, again, worked okay for a tv show, but would be doing her a disservice in a novel. She needs hobbies, passions, random relateable thoughts, habits, joys (especially the quiet kind), and motivation. Not to be That Person, but she needs a personality. As the main character it would just be completely unforgivable to have hundreds of thousands of words dedicated to a character that is dull to read about. Remember, books don’t give us the visually appealing scenes that the TV show does. Elizabeth’s smile, her hair, her fun outfits and hats... Those things can’t distract a reader from the fact that she isn’t a very well-fleshed out or understood character.

It also can’t distract from an insanely rushed narrative.

Tons of people watch WCtH for Erin’s performance of Elizabeth. They won’t be reading this novelization for that reason, because Elizabeth is not Erin.

(Though of course you can imagine her in the role if you want to and most readers will; it’s just not the kind of thing that can carry a book the way it can a piece of visual media.)

-

Reimagined is, as of right now, just a slight deviation from what we’re used to. Elizabeth has hobbies, interests. She is a passionate teacher who took the position in Coal Valley for Reasons You’ll Read About.

I really liked aspects of the Elizabeth portrayed in the film by Poppy and in the novel by Janette Oke, and some of those tiny things can and will work their way into this version of the story, too. I’m on board with Elizabeth being a writer, but I’m not on board for that being used as journal exposé writing for Narrative Ease and not to really go all-out in showcasing it as something she’s truly and honestly passionate about. If I want to see a movie that did a great job of showcasing a passionate writer, it’s Anne of Green Gables/Anne of Avonlea. Sure, Anne’s flair for flowery writing and drama was embedded into the voiceover bits and had some narrative function, but it was SO clearly a part of WHO SHE WAS that when you thought about who Anne was, you thought, oh, she’s a teacher for her job but she’s a writer at heart—especially when she learns to write from the heart (instead of what she thinks will make her successful).

I don’t expect Elizabeth to be that type of character (she’s far too sensible), but I need her to have a passion. A person doesn’t just take a teaching post in Nowhere Valley, Canada, in 1910 and not have a good reason for it. What drives her? What motivates her? What makes her happy? 

And when it comes to writing...what is it about writing that she likes? Enjoys? What’s the best part of it? The worst? I wanted to like Elizabeth’s writing arc because duh, I’m a writer, but it didn’t spark any joy in me because it was just too flat. If you give me half a chance I’ll tell you all the best parts of writing, and the worst, and the most frustrating, and the most rewarding. I’ll talk about character growth and development. I’ll talk about cadence. I’ll talk about self-indulgence.

Elizabeth’s passion for writing existed for one reason: “she writes in her journal for easy skips in the narrative.” 

I think she’ll keep her writing passion in Reimagined, but she’ll have other things that matter to her, too, and hopefully if it’s consistently presented it won’t feel like it’s there just to carry a plotline (only for it to disappear afterward).

It’s been fun so far! Elizabeth has been surprisingly nice to write. I won’t lie, though; it’s hard to follow the show enough to make things feel like a novelization while still deviating where it makes sense to. One small example is the conversation that Cat, Abigail, and Florence have with Elizabeth when she gets to town; the TV show didn’t do a bad job with it at all, but when it’s written out exactly the same it feels intensely rushed and out of character/unrealistic. Again, it’s something that got the job done in the TV show, but is nigh unreadable in novel format. 

And it’s not the info dumping, either. It’s just the way the characters go about things; it’s not hospitable, it’s not kind, it’s not thoughtful... and we know from later episodes that Abigail is the pinnacle of hospitality and kindness, and Cat isn’t too far behind her! Even Florence isn’t a monster.

So there has been an attempt on my part to twist things slightly, where mayyybe what Florence says that sounds so rude is really just Florence Being Florence (and observing a truth/reality, not always being awful), and where Elizabeth isn’t mocked on top of being doubted, and of course where some concern is shown for her well-being after her stagecoach was robbed and no doubt didn’t show up in town IN THE FIRST PLACE. I mean, how could they NOT know why Elizabeth was late? Being late by a few days or a week was NOTHING back then. It happened ALL THE TIME. (Thanks, weather!)

So yeah! The project is going. I was really getting into writing it last night, and I’d be working on it now, but I’m just too tired to feel useful.

-

For those wondering about Abigail...she’ll be there. I like the original character and I’ll try to move forward with that person in mind.

-

But back to the whole thing with Mark and et cetera. It’s really interesting how many WCtH characters got the short end of the stick when it came to character development. They have too many characters for the amount of episodes they get a season, which resulted in like...everyone dating for absurdly long periods of time (that had nothing to do with character-reasons until they felt they had to add that stuff in there to force it to make sense). It wasn’t just Jesse and Clara, either. Obviously Elizabeth and Jack took way too long to get together...and Abigail and Frank dated for literal years and should have had something related to that being..a plot for them. I think it might have been interesting in ways Jesse/Clara can’t be, just because Abigail had a long marriage with Noah and she’s much older than Clara, so she brings all that into a new relationship. Clara’s got different issues and sadnesses to work through.

Obviously it didn’t just result in characters dating for insane lengths of time; it also gave us a lot of just..nothing. This conversation started with Frank, because we were talking about Mark Humphrey, but he’s just one example of a handful. The series focused a LOT more on plot driven stuff than character driven stuff, which makes sense, but look at Frank’s character. He got an arc, and then when it was over, he just kind of became a very backseat background character. We might as well have named him Abigail’s Boyfriend at that point, because he hardly did anything that wasn’t related to Abigail DIRECTLY. He didn’t even really get scenes with Cody, which...c’mon. We deserved those. (The best we got was the Christmas movie where the peddler has his old Bible from prison but that whole thing was...not nearly as good or meaningful as it could have been, and of course IT DIDN’T GO ANYWHERE.)

But then it also happened to Lee, and Jesse, and Clara, and Carson and Faith and—yeah, you get it. I feel like if we had 20 episodes a season this wouldn’t be so bad (each recognizable character could easily get a two part episode plotline), but it’s a symptom of plots > character storytelling. More episodes won’t fix that if they just dump in even more bad plots.

S6 was a large improvement in many areas but they REALLY dropped the ball with Bill overall (easily one of the worst parts of S6 just because he went from being such an involved character to kind of a joke/rag doll that nobody knows how to include in a sensible way) and the children aren’t characters so much as tiny plot devices...that frankly aren’t even particularly interesting.

I’m really looking forward to seeing what they’ll do with S7. I hope it’ll be good! I really want them to get their footing onto solid ground and do the best they’ve ever done. They have something really wonderful and I want to be able to tell people “this series found its way and is worth checking out even if it’s usually not your speed.”

But it’s hard to do that when the characters always end up feeling secondary to the (poorly constructed, not very engaging) plots.

So we’ll see! These are things I can improve upon in Reimagined, but I’d really like the show to do some of that work, too. (Better late than never, right?)

[comicteaparty]

August 31st-September 6th, 2019 Creator Babble Archive

The archive for the Creator Babble chat that occurred from August 31st, 2019 to September 6th, 2019.  The chat focused on the following question:

How do you personally deal with writing or drawing slumps when tackling your comic?

AntiBunny

Usually? Hate myself.

Ok, really, I don't have any good strategies for dealing with this, and half the time I can't even recognize when I'm in a slump until it's been going on far too long. I'll be very interested to see what others have to say.

Nutty (Court of Roses)

To be honest, I just power through it. If I'm in a writing slump, I have a lot of boring times at work to idly think about the scene; I'll even scribble down notes to use later. If it's an art slump, I'll do a warmup and then power through, knowing that some panels may not be perfect, but as long as it's readable, it's better than nothing.

FeatherNotes

I immediately go to consume other media that either inspired me to make my own content, or something new and fresh to help with ideas. At the same time, I go back to studying things like anatomy , perspective, or draw environments to basically keep me in the creative game. I think it's important to take breaks from your large projects, and focus on something else you could use as a creative outlet! another big thing that gets me out of any kind of slump is to talk about the creative process of others works. talk to other writers/authours and get to know the way they plan a piece/project! I find it an easy inspiration to kick my ass into art mode

authorloremipsum

Similar to feathernotes, and Nutty, if I've gotten in a slump, it's a combination of powering through and consuming something fresh. +Powering through helps you practice staying motivated with projects, and it helps if you don't let yourself think of a project as a chore. Like, "No this is something I enjoy doing!" +Consuming fresh media gives your creative muscles time to rest, and can also inspire you. +On the flip side, working on a DIFFERENT project of some sort, maybe another medium of art, helps me out of slumps sometimes, because then I'm still being creative, but not beating an unconscious horse. (it's not a dead horse, it'll wake up eventually)

MJ Massey

Ha same as you guys, I'll try to read, watch, or play something new to get ideas flowing, though I may also just do a bunch of out there sketches just for me to experiment with new things outside the norm.

But if I'm real bummed out, I usually mope around and try to power through as well, cause sometimes just finishing something can help snap me out of it too

ErinPtah (Leif & Thorn | BICP)

On top of what people have already said, I think it's important to ask...is there a reason you're in a slump? I don't just mean external reasons (like work-related stress or a personal health issue -- though those can definitely affect your creativity, so addressing them can help). I mean about the comic itself. What's the next part you were planning to draw, and is there anything about it that's dragging down your enthusiasm?

ErinPtah (Leif & Thorn | BICP)

Sometimes the slump is your instincts trying to tell you something. Like, if the issue is "well, this part is really tedious, but I next to get through it in order to set up the exciting bit that I want to draw," the next question is, how much setup do you actually need? Can you just...skip to the exciting bit? The buildup should be fun and engaging in its own right. If you find yourself slogging through a stretch that doesn't inspire you, there's a good chance it's not going to inspire readers either, and a lot of them will drift away before you even get to the payoff.

...me, I'm up against a wall right now for a different reason, which is that I'm approaching the Last Chapter. It has to deliver a satisfying payoff on everything that's been set up over the entire course of the comic, or else that's it, time's up, no more chances. So that's, uh, a bit intimidating.

FeatherNotes

@ErinPtah (Leif & Thorn | BICP) that's a reallu good point! Taking that time to do some reflection on your work and the possibility of it's course being what is causing your slump is important! I think that in those cases specifically, having a small community that can beta for you or give you feedback is invaluable

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

I usually fall into just one side of things - either a drawing slump or a writing slump, rarely both. When I don't want to draw, I write, and when I don't want to write, I draw. So... I'm fortunate that way. I find myself being so single-minded in finishing this crazy comic project, I find a way to swap my slumps so I am at least working on something. Maybe I'm setting myself up for a mega-slump further down the line, though... so I'll have to watch out (edited)

snuffysam

For art slumps it's often "i didn't think this scene through, this page is way too complex, why did i include a crowd here", etc. And for that I just gotta power through - I know I wrote the script like that because I liked it, so if I want the audience to like the page I have to draw it the way I originally intended without cutting corners. For writing slumps - what @ErinPtah (Leif & Thorn | BICP) said. If I don't want to write, I probably don't like what I'm writing very much. The big example I can think of is Book 3's script. My original draft was just awful, WAAAY too slow, messed up Mizuki's power scaling, was too edgy, the works. There was a chapter where Mizuki and friends have to sit around in a desert for 80 hours. That chapter alone was going to be over 200 pages long, and involve the gang fighting a sandworm and a reference to Holes. There was a chapter where Mizuki and her friends use their magic to play basketball against one really powerful opponent. I literally never made it past that arc because it was too boring and too derivative. There was one character whose magic ability was demon wings, a character whose ability was Mercy from Overwatch, one whose magic was steampunk aesthetic, and one whose ability was butterfly wings. Their personalities were as follows: none. Book 3 has a group of people who are supposed to be among the most powerful and interesting magic fighters in the comic. One of those people had acid breath that smells like perfume as her magic ability. She's defeated by a character turning into someone so beautiful that she faints. There are like... two scenes that I kept from that original draft (and even those had lines changed). Everything else was completely re-done. And now? I'd say it's honestly my favorite script I've done for any of the books so far. Every minor character is interesting and has a full arc, it's not a million pages long, the fights are good, etc.(edited)

oh and http://sgkdr.thecomicseries.com/comics/ is the link

[deveharrington]

David doesn’t look sad, he is sad. I saw him at his concert and I don’t know, he is trying to show joy, because I think he knows people expect that, but it’s not reaching his heart. He was very nice with fans, though. It’s strange because Monique is there with him and for him. I suppose, she never leaves his side . Yet, something is wrong this time around.

1. 👀!!!!!!!!! OOOOO ANON who i have no way of verifying PLEASE COME BACK n tell me more!!!!!!!!!! 

ok the rest of the response is under the cut and ty anon 👀

2. DIS IS what i’m tinkin!!!! dat he’s tying to pROJECT happiness just like he tries to project fitness or masculinity like… he’s just reiterating what he sees or what he reads or what he’s told as basically what he considers to be “accomplished”, “acceptable”, “powerful”, “masculine” etc. W/E as in it never comes from an honest place and even just copying others can still be honest as long as you are being honest with yourself but basically we have nothing to demonstrate that Dusty is honest with himself……

THEREFORE he is just doing these things for his iMAGE/presence/performance with no integrity to back it up other than he just wants to be associated with ONLY THE GOOD qualities of his behaviours 

HOWEVER, there is always GOOD AND BAD, and yet he always tries to hide the bad or excuse it away….. he can’t accept the consequences of his actions and THATS why i question the integrity of his decision making and therefore his intentions. usually too when you are being responsible you take accountability for your consequences, and that includes NOT implicating others who do not deserve to suffer alongside you just because you are afraid to be alone or even just HAVE AN IMAGE of being alone. it also includes NOT blaming others when clearly the source of your issues is your own poor decision(s upon decisions upon decisions……)

3. this is very interesting to me anon, “something is wrong” ??????? 👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀 just a feeling???

4. “this time around” ??????? 👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀 you’ve seen him in the past and have something to compare to???? 👀👀👀👀👀 

5. 👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀

6. i mean…. his face….. i literally had a “joke” post in my drafts about how he doesn’t seem to notice that despite all the flashy lights and 100000000 band members and squeaky white sneakers uh……. he has a BIG SAD FACE when he performs and it kind of doesn’t blend in??????? maybe its no longer a “joke” but the TRUTH, the integrity coming from his heart???????? 

7. ty !! :-)

[unsolictedisolation]

This one goes out to me

The daily struggle to be the average human when I know for a fact I am not. The intrusive thoughts that I have to always calm down and be rational about, when all I’m hearing is a voice telling me I’m worthless. The evidence my brain lines up to convince me that that’s true, I mean look at how I’ve been treated, abused, neglected over the years, how could that mount up to a person that someone could actually care about. I blamed myself so much across the years, seeing people with similar issues but they’re still not like me, everyone’s better, everyone dealt with their problems and here I am. 

But I think it’s time I cut myself some slack. Yes I’m not your average human, because I’ve witnessed more than the average human and I can only manage to talk about half of it. This silent fight I have with myself every minute of everyday, that no one around me understands, and this bittersweet feeling of not having them understand but thanking God they don’t, cause I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy. 

So, this one is to all the heart wrenching rants that are saved as drafts, to all the hysterical nights and days when no one even knew I wasn’t ok, to all the weeks I isolated myself, spent literally half my day in the bathtub crying, I made it through and it did get better. Its still a struggle, healing is not linear. There are many days that i stick out just for the sake of everyone around me, my parents, my boyfriend, my friends, and I am incredibly grateful to have them, to rely on them, to be my support and my reason to get better, but tonight I’m doing it for my own sake. Tonight I believe in myself, I believe this is not a lifelong sentence I’m serving, it’s just something I’m experiencing, something I’m going through and it will end. I won’t give up on myself, I will keep on working hard to rationalize every last bit of emotion, to quiet down all the voices. For me, ‘cause I deserve better. Tonight I believe that I belong here, and that someday I will be someone.

[scriptstructure]

I see tons of advice for how to write first drafts, but what's your approach for writing second drafts (or third and fourth drafts, for that matter)? How do you turn a mess into something more structured and resembling a proper story? Also, how do you know when something's done and it's time to just stop and send it out? Thanks for your time.

Ok so you’ve done it! You’ve managed to get all the way through the first draft! Congratulations! But the work isn’t over, of course. Now you’ve got a whole pile of words and a whole ‘nother slog to turn it into something comprehensible.

Second drafts (my favourite part of the writing process) are a different type of work to the first draft. The first draft can be described as telling the story to yourself. You need the big strokes, the details of who does what and goes where, and to fumble through the plot arcs from beginning to end. The first draft has a lot of figuring out logistics so that in the second draft you can fill in detail, nuance and so that you can hone things to the best version of what they are.

Much like writing the first draft, everyone is going to approach the second draft slightly differently according to their personal preferences. But here’s how I do it.

Step one: Take a break!

Seriously. You’ve just spent a long time highly focussed on one thing, your brain needs the rest. The longer the piece the more of a break you need. For short stories I take a couple of days to a week, novellas a couple of weeks, novels, you could take a month or so. Give yourself time away.

Importantly, this is time to forget stuff about what you were working on – don’t panic when you read that by the way, you’ll still have all your notes, you’ll still have the broad strokes of what it is supposed to look like, but with any luck with some time away, you’ll have time to forget the stuff that isn’t important and that gives you trouble with the work. You’ll forget which parts you got stuck on thinking ‘I’m not good enough to write this’, or ‘that day I was writing badly, that chapter sucks!’ 

Take the time. Forget. Give yourself room to get excited about the project again.

Step two: Re-read!

Sit down and read the book through from start to finish. Approach it as though you’re reading a friend’s book. Take notes as you go, but only on the ‘big’ stuff. Does the plot hold together overall? Do characters make sense and ‘feel’ right? Are there plot lines, or characters that appear and then aren’t followed through? Are there obvious ‘mistakes’ that you should deal with?

Step three: Re-organise!

You might have noticed things in your read-through that seem out of order, or that if plot points were switched around or shifted on the timeline, they’d make more sense. If it’s a matter of picking up chapter seven and plunking it between chapters three and four, then do that now. 

If not, then you’ll need to do more intensive reworkings. Draw up a timeline of the story from start to finish, and plot out the story in the new timeline, so that you can have an organised plan on how to go in and change stuff around.

NOTE: Do not work over your original files! 

Keep a copy of the original draft. For each change that you make, create a new copy to work on. Keep track of the different versions that you’ve worked on, and BACK THEM ALL UP! You don’t want to set out reworking the whole story, realise you don’t like the new direction, and then have nothing to go back to.

Step four: Annotation! 

When I say the second draft is my favourite draft, this is the step I mean. Personally, I print out the manuscript (A4, double spacing, wide margins), I staple each chapter into a booklet, and I go to town with colour coded pens and markers.

I go through chapter by chapter, and I note down the key point of the chapter, and map out the emotional and character arcs, and I jot down my ideas of how I can refine the execution of those things.

Then I go through each chapter, paragraph by paragraph, and I do the same. 

What is the purpose of this paragraph? 

How can it be executed in a more effective way? 

What can be added to make this paragraph better? 

And what can I cut that is clogging up the story?

Step five: Rewriting!

Open a new blank word document, and retype the story from your annotated copy.

Yes. Rewrite the whole thing.

You’ll end up getting creative with your wording, you’ll make connections that you hadn’t consciously thought of before, you’ll cut stuff that really isn’t important enough to bother retyping but that you would have felt bad about deleting. The rewrite is key.

Step six: Re-re-work!

At this point, you could probably do with another break from the manuscript, you could say step 6.0 is take a break, step 6.5 is re-re-work.

Just like in step one, take a step back, and read your story as though it was given to you by a friend. Take notes on any issues you find, think about how the prose flows, and how the plot works and if the characters are doing the things they should be doing.

You can go back and repeat any of the above steps if you find more problems that you want to deal with, you can even just go through this whole process a number of times until you’ve got something coherent.

Step seven: Review!

Time to get an outside perspective: ask a few people whose opinions you trust to read the manuscript. If there are particular elements of the story that you feel you need to work on more, you could ask them more pointed questions (did you feel like the protagonist’s actions in the middle bit are justified by what they experienced in the beginning? Etc), or you could ask them for their general thoughts and feelings as they read it.

Make it clear that you’re not looking for corrections on spelling, or grammar. Take note on the feedback you get, but don’t take any of it as gospel. What this is, is giving you the opportunity to see what some other people get from your story, and whether what you think it says lines up with what other people think it says, and how you feel about the convergence or divergence of those opinions.

NOTE:

While I’ve written this out as an orderly list, you will probably find that many manuscripts need more of some steps than of others. Some will probably need no re-organising, but will need a whole lot of work on the prose. Some might need complete reorganisation but the prose is fantastic already. You might find that some works need a lot added to them, while some benefit by being cut back severely. Each manuscript is going to be a different beast to work on.

All of this is what would be called ‘substantive editing’, that is, edits that involve content, structure and narrative. While it is fairly important for legibility that you’re working in as correct grammar and spelling as possible, it will not be perfect. 

The second round of editing, once you have the work in pretty much the shape you want it, is line editing. Going through and giving your prose and word choices close attention, making sure that every sentence is pulling its weight.

The next round of editing, when the substantive and line edits are done, is the copy edit. You can attempt a copy edit yourself, but these are more usually done by professional editors either hired by the author, or as a part of the publishing process.

And that’s how I approach the second draft!

I hope that helps!

–

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College basketball’s most important questions as March Madness approaches

Photo by Michael Hickey/Getty Images

It’s OK if you’ve been too distracted by football to pay enough attention to college basketball. We’re here to answer your questions and get you ready for the stretch run.

Have you been so consumed by football for the last five months that you’re woefully behind on what’s been happening in the world of college basketball? Would you like to change that so you sound like you know what you’re talking about once March Madness rolls around in a month?

Once again, we here at SB Nation college basketball have you, the diehard football fan who is finally ready to start paying attention to college hoops now that the Super Bowl is over, covered.

Let’s hear your questions.

So tell me who’s good

Diving right in. All right.

This one is actually a little bit bit trickier than it has been in years past.

Since the first few weeks of November, college basketball’s defining narrative for 2019-20 has seemed to revolve around parity and the notion that there are no great teams this season. Here are just a few of the dozens of fairly ridiculous facts and figures to back that up.

— A total of seven different teams have sat atop the Associated Press top 25 poll this season, tied for the most in the history of the poll, which dates all the way back to 1949.

— With over a month still to play in the regular season, top-five teams have lost to unranked opponents a whopping 15 times. That only happened six times all of last season.

— Top-10 teams have lost to unranked opponents 28 times in 2019-20. It happened 27 times all of last season.

— If you’re looking for a perfect synopsis of this season, look no further than this past Saturday. Nine top-25 teams were handed losses, and three of those losses happened to ranked teams playing at home against unranked opponents. Three ranked Big East teams lost at home on the same day, the first time in the history of the conference that has happened.

OK, but, like, who’s gonna win the tournament?

Well, that’s an impossible question to answer in any year, but because of all the stuff we just talked about, it feels especially impossible to answer right now.

Why don’t you just tell me who’s No. 1 right now and we’ll go from there? Which traditional powerhouse is at the top of the polls?

The No. 1 team in the AP Poll at the moment is actually the Baylor Bears.

You’re shittin’ me.

Nope.

Well are they good?

Clearly.

How good?

Baylor is No. 1 in a season for just the second time in program history thanks to a sensational 19-1 start that includes home or neutral court wins over Villanova, Butler and Arizona, and road wins over Kansas, Texas Tech and Florida. Their only loss came on the first week of the season to Washington in a game the Bears controlled all the way up until a collapse in the final couple of minutes. Also, that game was played in Alaska.

Why?

I don’t know, man. I think Trajan Langdon turned 50 or something.

All that matters is Baylor is very good and is absolutely capable of making its first Final Four run since 1950. Point guard Jared Butler is the name to toss around if you want to make it seem like you’ve been watching the Bears since November. He’s their engine.

So if Baylor is 19-1 and ranked No. 1, I assume there are no undefeated teams remaining, correct?

Incorrect.

The mighty Aztecs of San Diego State will begin post-Super Bowl play with a flawless 23-0 mark. They scored impressive non-conference wins over Creighton (by 31), Iowa (by 10) and BYU (on the road), and have won their first 12 Mountain West Conference games by an average of just under 12 points per contest.

SDSU will be a solid favorite in each of its final six regular-season games. If the Aztecs win all of those and then win the Mountain West tournament, they’ll become just the second team since 1991 — joining 2013-14 Wichita State and 2014-15 Kentucky — to enter the NCAA tournament with an unblemished record.

Steve Fisher, man. I always thought he got a raw deal at Michigan. Guy can flat-out coach.

Fisher actually retired in 2017. His longtime associate head coach Brian Dutcher — with him for a decade at Michigan and 18 seasons at San Diego State — is now the head coach of the Aztecs.

Whatever. So we’ve got Baylor and we’ve got San Diego State in the top five. Who else is there?

This is actually the first time since the 2002-03 preseason poll that the top four teams in the current AP top 25 poll — Baylor, Gonzaga, Kansas and San Diego State — are all schools located west of the Mississippi River.

Hasn’t it been like a billion years since a West Coast team won it all?

Yep. No team west of the Rocky Mountains has cut down the nets since Arizona did it all the way back in 1997. Obviously, Baylor and Kansas don’t fit into this discussion, but Gonzaga, San Diego State, Arizona and Oregon are all teams that have legitimate shots at ending the West Coast’s run of futility.

Louisville rounds out the current top five, by the way.

Yeah I’d forgotten the question. Tell me some other weird teams that are good in this weird season.

How about Dayton? The Flyers have only lost to Kansas and Colorado, and both of those losses occurred in overtime. They have one of the best offenses in the entire country, a leading national Player of the Year candidate in the freakishly gifted Obi Toppin, and a legitimate chance to win the school’s first national championship.

The Flyers are one of a handful of teams that have never won the national title before that seem to have a serious shot in 2020. If one of those teams does win the tournament, it’ll be the first time college basketball has seen back-to-back first time champs since 2002-03.

So how much is Zion dominating this year?

Uhh, well actually he —

I’m just messing with you, man. I know he’s in the NBA.

Ha, ha. OK, good. For a second there I thought I was gonn—

Played his one year at Duke, got that national title, and then bounced.

You know what? Sure.

Who is the Zion of this season?

No individual player this season has or will be able to generate anywhere near the level of buzz that Zion Williamson was able to a year ago. In fact, this might be the strangest season of all-time in terms of college basketball’s relationship with the projected top picks in the next NBA Draft.

LaMelo Ball, a projected top-five pick according to pretty much everyone who does that sort of thing, never set foot on a college campus. Neither did projected lottery pick R.J. Hampton, who spurned Kansas in favor of joining Ball in playing professionally in New Zealand.

James Wiseman, another projected top-five pick, played three games for Memphis before the NCAA declared him ineligible because of a whole deal that we don’t have time to get into. Eventually the NCAA suspended Wiseman for 12 games, and in the middle of serving that suspension, Wiseman decided that none of this was worth it and he would start preparing for the NBA Draft.

North Carolina freshman star Cole Anthony, another potential top-10 pick, has missed more than half of this season with a knee injury. He just returned to the court this past week.

The highest-rated NBA prospect who is currently a healthy and active member of the college basketball scene is potential No. 1 pick Anthony Edwards. The only problem is he’s playing for a Georgia team that is 12-9 overall, has lost six of its last eight games, and seems to have little hope of making the NCAA tournament.

Team relevance is also an issue for potential lottery picks like Tyrese Haliburton (Iowa State), Jaden McDaniels (Washington) and Isaiah Stewart (Washington), who play on teams that are firmly on the wrong side of the tournament bubble at the moment.

The good news for star power in the sport is that it has Toppin. The bad news is that he plays in the Atlantic 10 and won’t be back under the sport’s brightest lights again until March.

Hey, show me some buzzer-beaters.

With pleasure.

Oregon’s Payton Pritchard is another national POY candidate, and he’s made a habit of hitting ridiculous shots in the final seconds of close games this season.

PAYTON PRITCHARD FOR THE WIN! (via @CBSSports) pic.twitter.com/tfP2mjYPk4

— NCAA March Madness (@marchmadness) January 18, 2020

If you’re looking for a true buzzer-beater, how about NC State’s Markell Johnson from halfcourt to beat UNC-Greensboro?

Isaiah Stevens for Colorado State to beat Nevada was nice.

And finally, D’Shawn Schwartz of Colorado at the overtime horn to hand Dayton its second and still most recent loss.

Buffs beat Dayton at the buzzer. This game was awesome. pic.twitter.com/MHC72DFIGi

— Matt Norlander (@MattNorlander) December 22, 2019

There have been countless others already this season, but that should be enough to whet your palette before March.

What about bad-ass dunks? Any of those?

Sure.

Toppin is probably the closest thing this season has to Williamson. He’s been putting on a show since night one.

Washington’s Nahziah Carter can absolutely fly.

Greg Williams of St. John’s showing teammate Mustapha Heron how it’s done was nice.

OMG GREG WILLIAMS ———— Former Lafayette Christian star Greg Williams Jr just DETONATED on a Brown defender @gthemenace pic.twitter.com/cJCRQlpM4I

— FastBreak Entertainment (@FastBreak__ENT) December 11, 2019

Just like with the buzzer-beaters, there are tons more out there.

So even without Zion, is it safe to assume that Duke is still pretty awesome?

Despite an absurd early home loss to Stephen F. Austin, they’re definitely good. The Blue Devils are 18-3 and the No. 2 team in the country according to Ken Pomeroy.

Coach K also recently had a hilarious meltdown directed at the Cameron Crazies that is worth a few minutes of your attention.

Kansas rolling too?

They are. The Jayhawks won the Maui Invitational in November and have just three losses as we head into the final stretch of the regular season. A couple of weeks ago they were involved in a nasty fight with Kansas State that resulted in some hefty suspensions. Those two teams will play again Feb. 29.

And I guess North Carolina is just hammering fools too?

Ummm. Not exactly.

The Tar Heels are just 10-11 overall and a miserable 3-7 in ACC play. Star freshman Cole Anthony missing a lot of time with a knee injury certainly hasn’t helped matters, but UNC wasn’t exactly thriving before he went down. In its first game with Anthony back and available, North Carolina lost at home to Boston College on Saturday. Earlier in the season, they lost at home to Clemson for the first time ever. The Tigers had been 0-59 in Chapel Hill before the game.

Unless Anthony and company do something ridiculous at the ACC tournament, Carolina is going to not hear its name called on Selection Sunday for the first time in 10 years.

Which conference is the best?

In terms of overall quality, it’s probably the Big Ten. Northwestern and Nebraska are both very bad, but the other 12 teams in the league all have very legitimate shots at making the NCAA tournament.

If you’re talking top to bottom, the Big East has a case at well. Every team in the conference is at least two games over .500, and at least four teams from the league have been in the top 25 virtually every week this season.

So does that mean ... Rutgers is good?

It does. The Scarlet Knights recently cracked the AP top 25 for the first time since 1979 and are tracking towards making their first NCAA tournament since 1991. That drought is the longest of any power conference program.

And DePaul!?

Not so much. The Blue Demons had a fantastic non-conference run, taking down Minnesota, Iowa and Texas Tech on their way to a 12-1 start. They’ve since gone 1-8 in Big East play and are once again looking like they will miss the Big Dance for the 16th straight year.

I had so much hope this year.

We all did.

Give me your Final Four.

I don’t really like to do that before we get the actual bracket.

Why?

It’s a totally pointless exercise to pick a Final Four when so much of who makes up the Final Four is based on tournament draw. If you pick four teams right now, two or three of them might end up being in the same region on Selection Sunday.

Well I’d stay away from Virginia. I always forget what happens a few months after March, but the one thing I ALWAYS remember is that Virginia chokes.

This all feels like it may have been a massive waste of time, but yes, you’re probably going to be OK if you don’t have Virginia in your Final Four this March.

That’s all I needed to hear. Much appreciated.

Anytime.