#or some silly lore that I suppose all evils know evils haha

[sweetest-honeybee]

Ok this is so weird but I have a theory for how Hels came to be... There was a lightning flash when Wels cloned himself, and Hels owed Evil X a favour, apparently. What if... ya know... Evil X helped Hels get a body?

Had to watch back a few things before I answered this so I got some info straight-

There was lightning, though I think that was Wels’s personal addition editing wise. I think the fact that he was holding blaze rods might’ve had more connection to the fact that it was Helsknight that came of the cloning but Beef was trying something different so who knows

In hels kitchen, Evil X was asking a favor from Helsknight, but as far as I can tell, Helsknight didn’t owe him anything. EX was simply asking for help in his scheme

Regardless, it is interesting. And knowing they ran into each other eventually and knew each other long enough by then that you could consider them friends or even scheming acquaintances where Evil X can actively ask him for help occasionally is also very interesting. So it’s not far off to claim EX has done something for Helsknight before or vice versa

I mean who knows, Beef might’ve been compelled to clone Wels through some strange Evil X influence. But Helsknight does state that Wels having created the clone is what gave him the vessel to come over in the first place, so I dunno 😂

[cemeterywretch]

hey, i wrote a ridiculously long post about some of my personal feelings about bg3. it's stuff that's been on my mind for a while but never really fully voiced. a mutual made a post earlier that got me thinking and talking about it, which made me want to write about it more, and i ended up basically writing an entire fucking essay. sorry. anyway, it's below the break. major spoilers, particularly for shadowheart, and also since i'm tagging this and more than my usual audience of like six mutuals can hypothetically see it, cw for religious trauma and internalized homo/transphobia.

i really enjoyed bg3 while playing through it the first time, like, to a ridiculous degree. i was obsessed, i was entranced. all my free time was spent with it, and any time i wasn't playing was spent zoning out and thinking about going home and locking myself in my cave and playing it for as long as possible (and all this is after having played through act 1 in early access at least twice). and then, you know, i beat it, i started a new playthrough, played that for a few hours and then i fell off of it pretty quick after that. the spell wore off. and then i started really thinking about it and i realized i don't actually think i like it all that much.

i know that sounds kind of silly, and don't get me wrong, i'm not saying it's a bad game, because it isn't. it's a fantastic rpg, i was entranced for a reason. there's just so much about it that rubs me the wrong way. i noticed this at the time and pushed through anyway, but now, in retrospect, i can't really get away from it. and so much of that has to do with the inherent baggage of the world it's set in, fucking Dungeons and Dragons Forgotten Realms.

so i fucking adore shadowheart. like, so much, for a lot of reasons. i latched onto her like a lovesick puppy (haha get it, like that one ambient line she says) basically immediately. since i love her so much, she and her story will kind of be the focus here, specifically due to my personal experience of playing her romance route as a selûnite cleric, which is something i know a ton of people did too and probably enjoyed, but was deeply disappointing to me for personal reasons. of course, given the setting, i don't really know what i was expecting. this is far from being my only beef with the game, but it's the thing i think about the most.

shadowheart starts the game as a cleric of shar, goddess of night, loss, secrets, and forgetfulness. shar is a capital E Evil deity, which means something concrete in Dungeons and Dragons Forgotten Realms, where Good and Evil aren't abstract concepts, but literal cosmic forces. shadowheart, however, isn't very evil at all. she's secretive, standoffish, pragmatic, but not evil. she disapproves of cruelty, she actually generally likes it when you help people even if she's not very enthusiastic about it. if you're familiar with The Lore, this, along with her suppressed memories, is kind of supposed to be your early hint that she's not a "real" sharran, that her devotion is artificial, forced onto her.

this is one of the big things that drew me to her in the first place. i am a transgender woman and a bisexual, and i was raised by highly conservative evangelical christians. basically, this means i was raised to be something that i fundamentally wasn't, and beyond that, i was raised to hate and fear people like me. when confronted with the idea that i was different, that i wasn't what i had been raised to be, i would recoil, get defensive, retreat into denial. i spent my entire childhood and much of my young adulthood deathly afraid, because deep down i knew i wasn't like them. i knew i wasn't straight, i knew i wasn't masculine, and i knew that if these things were true, i would be punished for it, in this life and the next. and i saw a lot of that in shadowheart. shadowheart isn't like other sharrans, but she's been raised to be one. she desperately wants their approval, and the approval of her dark lady. she wants to prove herself, to fit in, so very badly. i couldn't help but see myself in her. this is also why i just cannot get behind the idea of encouraging her to stay a sharran and become a dark justiciar at her big turning point. i simply can't separate it in my head from my own experience. like, yeah yeah, evil woman hot, of course, sure, whatever, but to me, it's just condemning her to a life of losing herself to zealotry and hatred, eternally and irrevocably devoted to the people and goddess who stole her childhood and molded her into something she was never meant to be. i just can't abide that.

but that's not really what i'm talking about, and i'm probably gonna sound like i'm contradicting myself a bit going forward. sorry, just bear with me, hopefully it'll all make sense.

i played as a selûnite cleric specifically with the intention of doing shadowheart's romance plot, and i did that because i thought it might make it a little spicy, throw some extra conflict in. it did, kinda. i've posted before about how she calls you "selûnite" with so much venom it sounds like a slur and it's kind of hot. there's not actually a whole lot of reactivity to it, but you can have a few extra conversations or debates about your doctrinal differences, she taunts you a little bit in the ruined temple of selûne the goblins are camped in, you know, that kind of thing. it's fun, but not game changing. otherwise, the romance proceeds basically the same as it would have if you weren't a selûnite, up until the big decision at the end of shar's gauntlet, and that's where it ceased to be fun for me. i basically did not pick any selûnite dialog options with her at all from that point onward, because it simply felt wrong.

at the moment of the decision itself, i picked only options that let her make the decision for herself, which led her to spare aylin of her own accord. but after that, the options started to feel like the insufferable Definitely-Not-Gloating of a christian who has managed to successfully convert someone. those options basically recontextualized the whole thing in my head, the whole relationship. i went into the thing thinking, you know, "oh wow, two priestesses of opposing goddesses falling in love with each other despite it all, how cool, how romantic, how will they make it work," etc. but like, this is Dungeons and Dragons Forgotten Realms. my goddess is ontologically Good, her goddess is ontologically Evil. again, i don't know what i expected. was i hoping maybe we'd both abandon our churches, or we'd develop some kind of heretical synthesis of the two doctrines? there is kind of a nod to that sort of possibility in dialogue, where you can tell shadowheart in the early stages of your relationship that you're like two sides of the same coin and you compliment each other. but in the end, those are really just utterly silly things to hope for in this setting. there was only a couple of ways it could have gone. either we both succumb to zealotry and kill each other, or one of us converts. and when it came down to it, everything in me was just absolutely repulsed by the realization. the selûnite options made it feel like the conversion was the whole point, that it had been my character's goal the whole time, and i hated it.

i know that sounds extremely silly, trust me! i was talking about how shadowheart staying a sharran is basically her bad ending! but i'm going somewhere with this, and it can all be traced to the setting too.

the thing about sharran doctrine is that there really isn't anything actually evil about it, looking at it for what it is. sharrans embrace loss and seek comfort in darkness, teaching that acceptance of loss is a good thing, and one can come out of loss stronger. it's a logical choice for people in mourning, or after unexpected life events. one can easily imagine a real world polytheist praying to shar or an equivalent after losing someone important to them or losing their home or something like that. but this is Dungeons and Dragons Forgotten Realms, and shar is capital E Evil. in The Lore, shar is a twisted sadist, full of malice and pettiness and hatred, and her church reflects that. they take a predatory stance, preying on people experiencing loss, and aren't above engineering the kinds of events that would draw potential worshipers to her fold, which is pretty much exactly what happened to shadowheart. she was the daughter of a selûnite couple, stolen and raised sharran just to make a point, out of pure spite. selûne, on the other hand is capital G Good, just like her church. she's all about guidance, compassion, moonlit nights. her doctrine is easy, unoffensive (shadowheart loves to point this out and mock you for it), and it draws lots of followers on its own. sharrans and selûnites fucking hate each other, mostly because shar and selûne fucking hate each other, mostly because they occupy opposing roles in the cosmology and that's that. because shar is Evil, her church is also Evil.

i guess what i'm trying to say here is that in my head, which simply does not think that way, i expected nuance that could never have been there. of course my character Saved shadowheart. she's Good and her church is Good, and shadowheart is a Good person who is just misguided, misled into Darkness, who just needs to be shown the Light. what does that sound like to you? why would this leave a bad taste in my mouth as someone with my particular background? the whole thing struck me as insufferably christian, disgustingly evangelical, completely reflective of that worldview and entirely uncritical of it. and like, at the end of the day, this whole setting, and dungeons and dragons as a game system, is built on and wholly dependent on that very attitude.

once again, I Don't Know What I Expected. i went into the thing with unrealistic expectations despite what i already knew about this setting, which i've been familiar with since i was a teenager. that is on me, i'm kind of the idiot here. lots of other people have talked about the problems this setting has since this game came out, especially the infamous case of the goblin children that there are no consequences for murdering (because they're Evil, you see). this is just something that really stuck out to me, personally, i guess because of how much i saw myself in shadowheart. the funny thing that makes me feel especially silly about this whole thing and this whole post is that it all probably wouldn't have even occurred to me if i hadn't been playing a selûnite. if i had been like a rogue or whatever and had let shadowheart come to the decision by herself the same way, i probably would have just felt like a loving partner who could be there for her through a difficult transition (lol hm). but i was the rival cleric instead, and my doctrine, Good and True and Objectively Morally Correct, had won. i'd Saved her, and I hated it.

[i-like-eyes]

meta knight for the ask thing

boop

First impression: When I was just a wee lad my uncle bought me a little indie game called Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Me and my buddies weren't very good at the game because we were like, 10, but we noticed that we would get more kills whenever we played Meta Knight. I had no concept of tier lists or op/broken characters or whatever but everyone knew there was smth up with MK. Brawl is. Not the best Smash Bros. by a long shot but it's got the most personality and MK sure was memorable. Impression now: He's still my favorite character, what makes him work is that for people that normally wouldn't like cutey games he's the Grumpy Bear they can relate to. The poster boy of the old phrase "real men play Kirby". But even then he still participates with Kirby and crew in their silly adventures, like the grown adult playing Kirby he's really not-so-above it all. Favorite moment: It's cliche but I liked the Kirby characters in Smash so much that I got Kirby's Adventure on the eShop. I was fascinated by the candy and the boss fights, but my tiny brain was obliterated when the mask snapped in half haha. Idea for a story: One of the problems with MK right now is that the mysterious aspect is starting to wear thin. The thing about looking like Kirby is interesting and all but we all know it's never going to be elaborated on. For that matter his lack of clear motivations is less intriguing and more frustrating after fighting him over and over. While this will never happen, I think the best approach to MK is that he wants to be strong. We tend to associate things that are soft and cute with things that are weak, stuff that is hard and edgy is considered strong. While Dreamland has accepted Kirby's existence, outsiders like Taranza assume DDD is the hero of the land while Susie and the Mages have trouble believing Kirby is capable of putting up a fight. Point is this seems like a bias that applies to this universe as well. MK knows he can't be treated seriously as a warrior because of his appearance hence the mask and whatnot. Then his fights with Kirby can be re-contextualized as Meta Knight trying to prove his strength. It's still silly when you think about it, but it's a more understanding explanation that he just likes to fight a lot. Unpopular opinion: I don't love this question, what's a hot take in one side of the community is a cold take on the other side. I guess I think that Meta Knight's Revenge should be retconned. It won't be because it's super iconic and everyone's favorite Super Star subgame (I know it's mine) but it clashes with the series current direction for the character and also. Is a literal attempt at a fascist takeover and. Okay when Magolor was crowned with the evil macguffin and turned into a big evil wizard so he can take over the galaxy that was easier to excuse because wizards aren't real. Magolor still did a dick move but at least wasn't anything realistic (also there's the implication he wasn't in control the whole time) whereas the events of Meta Knight's Revenge hit just a little too close to home. Not nearly as badly the events of Planet Robobot do, but man that sure is a thing that. Happened.

Favorite relationship: I don't care for their literal relation, like if they are the same species or whatever, but ofc I want to know what he really thinks of Kirby. Kirby himself I think just doesn't care, no matter who he faces he just =. But MK clearly feels strongly about him for some reason, and I wouldn't care as much if not for Galacta's appearance. Yes in the grand scheme of things it's another Kirby looking Knight who has smth to do with Void lore I guess but I don't care about that. Galacta Knight's original purpose in a meta (heh) sense is that he was Meta Knight's final boss. So they way they went about designing him was making him the opposite of Meta Knight, whose already supposed to be Kirby's edgy rival, resulting in a soft looking knight. Again I don't care for literal relation, I just really like the irony that MK is seemingly self conscious over looking cute but here are these other cute things that exist to kick his ass. Favorite headcanon: While I don't love the takeover part I still like the Halberd crew, again this is kinda canon/theory in that in was implied in game but I like that MK seems to really care for his crew but doesn't know how to express it. He acts aloof because it's a part of his cool persona but also because he genuinely does not know how to properly respond. I didn't shut up about him for the Daroach ask but I think he'd be a little jealous of how much more personal the Squeaks are. For that matter, while he's friends with some of Castle DDD he's not as friendly as DDD is and as such doesn't really know DDD's buddies like Ado, Ribbon, and Taranza maybe let's throw him in.

[myriahkamm]

I live-blogged watching BvS and Justice League on FB earlier; here are my unedited thoughts. :P

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

I'm watching Batman V. Superman (because bad movie night I guess idk), and during the opening scene rehashing the Waynes' deaths (for what feels like the millionth time in cinematic history--seriously, y'all, we can be done with that for a while and definitely don't need a 5 minute slow-motion scene about it), when Thomas says Martha's name as they're dying, I burst out laughing because (i) I didn't remember that he said her name during this scene and (ii) is this supposed to be some kind of foreshadowing for the really dumb crux of the movie where Batman and Superman stop fighting because omg their moms have the same name? I literally can't stop laughing. This movie is such a joke. 🤣

Having the Robin costume in this film with absolutely no context is just stupidly pointless fanboy pandering. Anyone who actually gives a crap about Batman lore should realistically hate that.

Lex Luthor, one of the richest and most powerful men in the world, bitching about not having power is definitely on brand, but I am just super *not* a fan of the quirky, kind-of-nerdy-and-awkward Lex Luthor this film decided to go with. The hardcore businessman Lex Luthor from the 90s and 00s will always be the Lithor I like best. Y'know, the one based at least in part on Donald Trump. That one.

This Jesse Eisenberg version is way too much of a Mary Sue. Businessman *and* scientist *and* awkward nerd? Yeah, Jesse Eisenberg played Mark Zuckerberg, but I'm not sure Lex Luthor should be Mark Zuckerberg.

Ugh, I totally forgot about the Darkseid-foreshadowing dream that's never going to go anywhere because, let's be real, DC is never going to do a live-action film with Darkseid (and it would be awful even if they did). Also, Batman using guns in that dream is a thing I'll never be cool with. I don't care what kind of world he thinks he's living in in that dream; Batman has established principles and pretty much only goes against them in alternate universes.

Jesus, I forgot about the whole Flash-from-the-future scene, too. DC wrote a lot of checks we're never going to be able to cash in this film. Promising an Injustice-esque Superman-is-evil kind of storyline that they're never going to do anything with...why would they do that?

So in the dream, Darkseid-related stuff is going on (which, in Justice League, does sort of happen with Steppenwolf) and Superman says "she was everything to me, and you took her away from me." Then future-Flash says that "Lois is the key". Are they implying Batman has premonitions? Are they giving him a superpower? 🤣

Oh, that's right, they blew up the U.S. Capitol in this movie. 🤣 These scenes that are supposed to be really serious and filled with tension just keep making me laugh.

Why did they decide Batman needed to make a kryptonite spear? I mean, other than plot reasons so they could use it later against Doomsday. Batman uses projectiles and his fists; he rarely uses swords or spears or whatever.

Why did they decide Doomsday had to be created using a mixture of Kryptonian and Luthor's DNA? In the comics, Doomsday is an experimental clone based on ancient Kryptonian DNA. Why (in my opinion) make Doomsday so much more pathetic by adding human DNA into the mix? Freaking weird decision.

"Mm." What a weird quirk to add to Luthor's character. "Mm" every other sentence. What's that all about?

Luthor manipulating Batman into fighting Superman is...so unbelievable. Luthor manipulating Superman to hate Batman, waaaaay more believable. But no, that's not what they went with. They went with Luthor manipulating Batman for two years into wanting to fight Superman. Superman just randomly came to hate Batman on his own and only got manipulated into fighting him at the end. They could have just gone with hey, Batman's suspicious of everyone and would naturally be suspicious of a superpowered alien, especially with the whole setup they did at the beginning that coincided with stuff from Man of Steel. But nope. Nope, they went with the dumber plot.

Doesn't Luthor have way too much info about all these heroes' secret identities? Are we just pretending secret identities don't matter anymore? That's too 90s or something?

Why does the kryptonite spear make an "omg I'm a glowy thing" sound? 🤣

And now we're at the stupid Martha part that makes no sense because if you were about to die, you wouldn't say "save [mom's name]"; you would just say "save my mom!" 🤣

Batman would totally save Superman's mom even if their moms didn't have the same name. It's just such a stupid, stupid plot point and lends itself to endless mockery. 🤣

I *do* like this fight scene where Batman is making his way through the goons to get to Martha. The choreography is really good. Reminds me a lot of the Arkham video games.

Man, this Doomsday just...doesn't really work on a fundamental level. What makes comic Doomsday so powerful and terrifying is (i) it's not just a mindless monster, but is actually intelligent and can plan and strategize; (ii) iwas created through such extreme experimentation that it was repeatedly destroyed and then remade again over and over and over to give it endurance and formidably; (iii) and it's pretty much unstoppable from all that experimentation and uncontrollable because of its intelligence.

Also, what's with this explody thing Doomsday does in this film? A monster can be terrifying without being able to blow up a bunch of stuff. I'm not sure what the point of explody Doomsday is other than lazy writing.

The military hit it once and came to the conclusion that not only does it get more powerful "every time we hit it," but also that it's unkillable? Okay. More lazy writing.

And we're back to one of my biggest issues with Man of Steel: Superman just not giving a shit about collateral damage. Even if the island they're on is uninhabited, that doesn't exactly mean he should just be fine with blowing a bunch of shit up in the course of this fight. Sheesh.

How did Lois know they needed the spear again? She had no reason to go underwater to try to get it. This whole "let's make Lois useless time and again so Superman can save her" thing is really annoying.

Superman's "death" scene carries so little weight if you know (like pretty much everyone should have known, let's be real) that he's not really dead. Like, sure, for the characters it means something because they don't know he'll be back, but for the audience? At least for me, it doesn't make me feel a whole lot.

So all the soldiers at Superman's funeral--do they know they're carrying an empty casket? Just curious.

The dirt rising off the casket at the end for a split second is soooooo dumb. For anyone naive enough to think he *is* really dead, just let them think it. Just let that be a thing. Come on. (Also considering that he doesn’t just come back on his own; it takes a charge from a Mother Box in Justice League for him to come back. That makes this end scene a lie, too.)

Ok, BvS is done. Need another drink and a snack, then I'll move on to Justice League. 😅

Justice League:

Haha, obvious Superman facial CGI right off the bat, omg, I forgot how horribly obvious it is. 🤣

Also forgot that we're starting off with parademons right away. Sheesh.

Do all of Snyder's films have to have gratuitous slow-motion scenes at the beginning? Ugh, dude.

Everyone just throwing Bruce Wayne's name around in relation to Batman all the time. Secret identities are dead, y'all. No superhero can have a real life, I guess.

Ugh, I forgot this film pushes Batman/Wonder Woman pretty hard. 🙄

"It's cool if I show a bunch of Amazons with their midriffs showing as long as they have visible ab muscles, right?" Idk, Snyder, is that how armor realistically works? 🙄 Also, is it necessary for them to have lipstick on? That doesn't even exist on Themyscira, ffs.

The multiple (as I remember; only one so far) innuendo-based jokes really bring this film down, imo. "Clark said you were the thirstier woman he'd ever met." Really? Ugh. 🙄

The plot of this film is so LOTR. Amazons, Atlanteans, and Men all get Mother Boxes, sort of like the various rings of power. There's plenty you can pull from comics, y'all. You don't need to pull from other stuff.

Flash as comic relief I'm okay with. I'm not sure how I feel about *this* Flash's comic relief. I'm not a huge fan of the writing.

Break time because Je'von wants to go out on the balcony lol. 😅

And we're back. So can Steppenwolf breathe underwater? Is that a thing? 

I guess it's supposed to be super funny that everyone disappears except the fastest one of them? Sigh. The writing in this film is just so awful.

Cyborg's CGI also isn't great. I really wanted more for Cyborg because he's awesome. Sigh.

Snyder must have loved being able to do stuff with Flash. All the slo-mo he could want.

I'm not a fan of neurotic Flash, afraid of pretty much everything. He can be funny in so many better ways, but instead let's just have him be afraid of everything and make sexual jokes every now and then. 🙄

"Let's keep having Cyborg wear sweatpants and a hoodie so we don't have to spend so much on CGI. It totally won't look ridiculous." 🤣

Batman making the argument to use technology he doesn't understand to try to bring Superman back from the dead is just so out of character it's not even funny. First of all, Superman didn't need technology to come back in the comics (whether or not his "resurrection" was silly is irrelevant). Secondly, Batman literally has an enemy (Ra's al Ghul) who resurrects himself on the regular, and Batman (i) knows it's a bad idea because it messes with Ra's's sanity and (b) would never consider using the Lazarus Pit even though he has a relative understanding of how it works. This film just literally disregards established character traits in favor of it's stupid-as-hell plot. Ugh.

Superman is vulnerable to magic, idiot writers. He shouldn't be able to fight Wonder Woman's lasso. Uuughhh. Have any of the writers of this movie ever actually read any Justice League comics? 🤦‍♀️

Well, those cops definitely know Superman's name now. Since you all keep saying it in front of them.

Superman hasn't even been gone for that long (seemingly; I mean, it's hard to tell, but S.T.A.R. Labs is still doing research on the Kryptonian ship in the same genersl area as in BvS, so idk), so all this talk about what he does or doesn't remember seems...weird.

Why not wait until you defeat Steppenwolf to let your mom know you're back, Superman? For all you know, you could die again. Wouldn't that just be harder on her after seeing you back?

Why was the lasso just sitting on the Batmobile instead of with Wonder Woman? Plot so that Aquaman could say some *super funny things*. 🙄 That's not even how the lasso works, you dumb writers. Someone has to direct another bound by it to speak the truth. Seriously, do some research. Ugh. It's not that hard.

"So your plan is dying? You really are out of your mind." "I'm not the one who brought a pitchfork." See, the writers prove that they can be actually funny if they try. *If* they try.

The "everyone trying their best to hold off the big bad until Goku gets there" vibe is super strong in this movie. 😑

Part of the reason the Justice League is a thing is because no one hero can do it alone. That means it all shouldn't be riding on Superman's shoulders. If you actually know how to write the Justice League, that is.

Don't know how I feel about everyone getting perks due to nepotism now that they know Bruce Wayne...must be nice to be buddies with the richest man in the world. 😒

The Flash vs Superman race at the end is more pandering. Ugh. It would be better if Flash was less pathetic as a character in this film. Super awkward is just not very funny, y'all. Write actual jokes instead.

Okay, that's over. What a trip. Both those movies are still pretty much garbage. 🤣 The question is, will I ever watch Man of Steel again? Probably not; I hated Man of Steel more than both those movies, actually. Wrote a 3-page rant about how awful it was after seeing it in theaters originally. $3 was still way too much money to spend on that crap. 😅

Oh, side note for the after credits scene: will they ever actually go anywhere with that? They might do an okay job with a Justice League vs. Legion of Doom (or Injustice Society or whatever villain team incarnation they would decide to go with) film. That might not suck.

[twodaysintojune]

Rahab

Supernatural, Debriel, Warnings-Fluff

Created for Round 4 of the @debrielcc Debriel Creations Challenge Prompt: Mythology, Theme: Chaos and Order

One Shots Masterlist, Long Stories Masterlist

Find me at AO3

Dean groaned after he almost missed the steps into the kitchen, he went forward to the cupboard to get a sippy cup and fill it with lukewarm tea. Hopefully Sam and Cas would be back soon with the medicine now that their hunt was over, it had been two days already and he was unable to leave the bunker just like that.

“How’s the runt doing?”

Dean glared at Gabriel who was drinking a milkshake while browsing mindlessly his phone. He didn’t have to say a thing for the archangel to catch his train of thought.

“I’m sorry Dean-o, we’ve talked about this, natural defenses. She has to get over it by herself. Besides it’s just the flu.”

Gabriel also wanted to say something about the fact that Dean had forbidden him from getting anywhere near his child last time they had met but he didn’t want to start a discussion again.

“Well you could still help a little, seeing that you don’t need sleep like I do!”

Gabriel looked at Dean surprised and stood, moving towards Dean he grabbed the sippy cup from his hand and began his way towards the bedroom. There was no way he was going to let this chance slip away. Walls that once had held armory and lore books now covered in stars and plushies and coloring books. A currently empty toddler crib resting aside Dean’s bed. He knocked softly to interrupt the toddler’s half dozed attention over the tv. Immediately the child slightly improved her position in the middle of the oversized bed over the pillows and motioned her arms towards the archangel with a shine in her eyes that had not been there before.

“Gabriel!”

“Hey there Marie! How’s my favorite Winchester doing?”

The girl giggled when the archangel threw himself at her and blew a raspberry on her cheek and playfully pushed him aside. Despite being upset at Gabriel, Dean smirked at the display of affection.

“I’m sick.”

Gabriel magicked a couple of pillows and moved into the bed with her. He passed another pillow to Dean who literally dumped himself over it, laying down and most likely falling asleep almost immediately at the other side of the bed.

“I know, your dad told me. How are you feeling?”

“I hate being sick!”

“Really?”

“I’m hot but I can’t take out the sheet. Dad told me it was bad. And I want Bunny but it’s too hot!”

“So that’s why Bunny is at your bed?”

The girl nodded seriously while Gabriel helped her straight up to drink her tea.

“What are you looking at?”

The girl shrugged. She was starting to get upset once more, now that the novelty of Gabriel visiting was gone and her body was reminding her of the awful uncomfortability of general sickness.

“You don’t like that show?”

“I wanna sleep but I can’t.”

Oh, so that’s why Dean had been in such a bad mood. Gabriel turned off the tv and lowered the light.

“How about I tell you a story?”

“Is it a princess story? I know all princess stories. I want another kind of story.”

“Oh? Well then how about a Sea Monster story?”

The toddler’s eyes sparkled.

“Are Sea Monsters Real?”

“They are in this story. You want to hear it?”

Marie thought for a second and then nodded at Gabriel. The archangel beamed at her and moved her carefully to lay over his chest.

“Long, long ago, there were huge monsters lurking in the sea...”

“What is lurking?”

“Lurking is like when you try to jump scare your dad in the middle of the night.” The child giggled. “So, these monsters were not really good or bad but they were big, way too big to be able to live with humans and so to keep the order of the world, it was commanded that they lived in the depths of the ocean.”

Gabriel moved his hand away from Marie’s line of sight for a moment and produced a plushie sea snake, similar to the Chinese traditional image of a dragon, he began to move it in a swimming fashion towards her. Marie squealed in delight watching the plush in front of her.

“One of them, unhappy with having to stay in the depths of the ocean tried to get away from the law that kept it down there and summoned a terrible being of Chaos to help it, a Leviathan. And the Leviathan told the monster: ‘If you let me in your body, I’ll take you to the world of the humans.’ And the monster said yes and the Leviathan went in but it was a terrible mistake.”

“Why?”

“Because Leviathans are evil. They like to eat and destroy everything and respect nothing. And this Leviathan was no different. Once it was inside the monster, the Leviathan took over its body and raised to the upper levels of the sea.”

Magically, the plushie snake turned so dark in the dimmed light of the room that you could only see it’s white teeth in the middle of its head. Marie gasped in horror.

“The Leviathan ate everything it found on it’s path and when there was no fish dumb enough to get close to it, the Leviathan moved to the shore and found a city filled with humans and began to destroy their ships and eat the people in it!” Gabriel made the plushie ‘eat’ some of Marie’s toys scattered over the bed “And when the ships were not enough, the Leviathan tried to destroy the city itself!”

Gabriel grabbed a pillow that apparently represented the city and tried to attack it with the plushie when Marie placed her hands between both.

“No!”

“This is wrong, isn’t it?”

“We have to help the city!”

“What can we do to help the city?”

Marie thought for a moment, she liked the plushie but it was bad to let it destroy an entire city. The problem was that the monster was not supposed to be in the city at all. Her frown impressively reminded Gabriel of the man sleeping by their side. He smiled fondly and caressed her hair full of love.

“We have to send the monster back.”

“How?”

This time Marie was unable to come up with a way. Gabriel realized this and took over the story once more.

“Back in the day, when monsters showed up, people who fought the monsters showed up too.”

Gabriel appeared a plushie Gabriel in the hand opposite to the sea monster. Marie gasped, she snatched it from his hands and looked at the tiny version of the archangel in awe.

“It’s you!”

“Haha, yeah, it’s me.”

Marie stared at it for a second.

“This is wrong.”

Gabriel looked at her puzzled.

“This one doesn’t have wings.”

Gabriel looked at her stunned. She was able to see his wings? Adding to his surprise, Dean grunted a laugh.

“I knew she could see your wings.”

“You’re awake?”

“Not really.”

Gabriel snorted but still felt his chest clutching for a moment. Naturally Dean was not gonna be able to sleep much knowing that the trickster was taking care of his child. To put wings on the plushie, he made Marie cover her eyes and when she opened them, voilá! There were golden wings on plushie Gabriel’s back. She was delighted with it.

“So, it’s time to fight the sea monster. Are you ready?”

Marie gave him a grave nod and the battle began. Gabriel attacked her with sea monster tickles, until she was laughing so hard he had to give her a rest. Moment that she took advantage of to attack with her plush version of Gabriel. After a heady confrontation between the plushies of chaos and order, Marie won and brought down Gabriel’s sea monster.

“Now the Leviathan is defeated, Gabriel has to send him back to the depths of the ocean.”

Gabriel motioned at the plushie Marie was holding. She took the hint and pushed the sea monster off the bed while Gabriel made the noises of a defeated monster falling into the depths of the abyss. Both Gabriel and Marie cheered.

“That was awesome.” snored Dean, by their side.

Gabriel and Marie shared glances and giggled at Dean’s half asleep state. Footsteps shuffled outside the door and a knock came before Sam stepped in the room. He was surprised to see Gabriel in there but had enough tact to not comment a thing about it.

“Hey Marie, I brought the medicine, you should be able to sleep well with this.”

The girl drank the overly syrupy and sweet concoction from the plastic spoon and drowned it with more tea making odd faces. Minutes later, when the medicine was starting to kick in and Gabriel tried to move away from the bed, Marie held his sleeve yawning.

“Sleep here.”

“I’m sorry little runt, I don’t think your dad’s gonna be too happy about it.”

“He will be, he likes you. I like you.”

Gabriel blushed with the earnest comment of the child and moved back into the blanket. Maybe he was being silly taking the child’s invitation but sharing a bed with Dean at least once and see him wake up the next day had always been in his bucket list and hell if he was not gonna take the chance now that he could.

“Are you sure he’s not gonna kick me out later?” He asked the girl in a conspiratorial hush.

“Won’t. Now shut up and sleep. Both of you.” Grumbled Dean, getting into the sheets himself and pulling the little girl into his arms.

Marie giggled, she finally had her dads together. Maybe for adults things were always more complicated but surely sleeping like this made them a family. Right? She yawned once more but there was something still bothering her.

“Gabriel?”

The archangel switched off the lamps.

“Yeah runt?”

“What was the name of the monster?”

“Rahab”

Dean grunted in that final ‘goddamnit please just let me sleep’ tone all parents eventually learn while dealing with their children. Gabriel turned to look at him surprised. Dean immediately felt Gabriel’s gaze on him.

“How do you know?”

“I remember an angel telling me that same story once.”

Gabriel’s chest clenched, he also remembered telling that story once to a six year old feverish child whose father had been out on a hunt when the fever had hit him along with his little brother.

Looking at these two humans finally drifting to dreamland, Gabriel leaned over and kissed Dean and Marie’s foreheads, careful enough not to wake them up and tucking them neatly into the blankets wondering if this time he could actually be a decent guardian angel and look after their dreams.

[shutupxdance-blog]

THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES! 3

『♬♬♬』

It’s the FUTURISTIC SPACE YEAR OF 2002, and a HIGHWAY TO HEAVEN logo bounces around the sky behind Cíoroc, as pixelated stars shine above a poorly 3D-rendered city. “And in the end, it turns out that all Arno Cyberspace 2, the evil one, ever needed, was to be loved, and also for the evil AI that he made for some reason to be destroyed because nobody had thought of doing that before. But enough about our serious lore, and on to what really matters: the characters. They’re what we’re all here for, after all. That’s what some of our producers forget sometimes, you know? What we’re really here for. Welcome back to another segment of 『THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES!』” He pauses. “It’s a pun this time.”

“When I was younger,” Horang’s, or rather, Chan-yeol’s voice begins in the interview footage, “I would look at kkachi horangi paintings, which were totally weird looking, but fun at the same time. They meant something back then, but I don’t remember what.”  A young boy and his slightly older sister sit alone in the house, while a festival goes on outside. The footage, no longer as grainy as the VHS footage from previous segments but now afflicted by screen tearing, pixelated noise, frame skipping, and a wide variety of other playback glitches, switches to two adults, clearly the parents, gambling away in a smoky room. “Tigers are known to keep evil away and good luck in, which is what I fucking need. I’m not that superstitious,” Chan-yeol continues as the young boy gets older, attending high school, walking curiously down the streets of a red light district, surrounded by adverts for strip clubs and bars, “But taking on the name might give me something at least. Maybe at least confidence.”

“It sounds over the top and glittery,” STELLAR —Seishirou — says from across the table, green hair in stark contrast to Cíoroc’s pink, as a young boy in the low-res archival footage is shoved against a well by a trio of larger boys, a glitch obscuring the screen before he’s left wiping a bloody nose and being comforted by another boy as he cries, “I’m really into that.”

“What’s your price, baby?” Cíoroc asks, voice crisp and clear, winking behind his shades at the unfortunate souls on the other side of the table.

Chan-yeol walks into a cabaret, music thudding, drunk patrons cheering, someone dancing on stage. “The cabaret, as it is. My boss... y’see...” After the show, he approaches the dancer, the words they say to each other inaudible as the voiceover takes precedence, but a few months later he’s back, waiting tables, and even later than that, the footage flickering as it fast-forwards, everything advancing at an incredible pace, he’s a singer up on the stage, getting money and spending it as soon as he gets it, an unending cycle of fluorescent lights and the bottom of a bottle. One day, he comes in, and the man who he talked to on his first night is nowhere to be seen, a number of people hurrying to show him a pile of paperwork left on a table which he stares at with bleary confusion. “He ran away after signing my name under everything. All of it. He was the piece of shit who got me here in the first place and left me behind.” Meetings with unsavory people, men in black suits, midnight drives. “I... can’t keep a whole business afloat and worry if these people are gonna die because of me. I can’t live with that. “

Seishirou’s voice is as calm and conversational as ever, the version of him in the glitchy archival footage studying late nights, getting more and more confident as the years flicker by, the same boy who comforted him by his side the entire time. “Simply put; my medical license.” Seishirou is wearing a white coat and a smile as the voiceover continues, studying even harder. “It was more than just a piece of paper. It was even more than the proof of some years spent at school. I can earn it back if I make it through, of course, but nothing will replace that… physical proof that I survived.” He walks with his friend, the two happily talking, when all of a sudden the boy, now a man, is struck by a speeding bus. As the Seishirou in the footage runs over, forcing his panic aside to begin performing medical procedures, the voiceover is calm, if a little wistful. “That I didn’t kill myself and got to study what I love. The reminder of everything Hideki has done to help me… It meant a lot to me, that silly piece of paper. But Hideki means so much more to me.”

There’s another glitch, strange colours and dead pixels radiating out from the center of the screen, the sound alert of an error message playing over and over again, layering over itself until the voiceover is now Memory’s voice. Meri’s voice, cheerful and lighthearted. “Hmmm....Aha, you caught me there!” A building collapses violently on screen, an accident that must have killed dozens or hundreds and that likely doesn’t cross the mind of the young girl, no more than a toddler, being delivered to the front door of an elderly couple, far too old to be her parents. She doesn’t mourn, she doesn’t cry, she just goes about her life, going to school, talking to her grandparents, and going up to her room to use her computer, a cycle that just repeats over and over again, each brief conversation barely worth a frame of video. “I just thought it sounded cute…but I suppose I could say because I’m very reminiscent of the past, haha.”

A young Meri does make a friend, walking everywhere with a girl, wearing matching outfits, and then one day, she says something, her posture making it clear what it is: a confession. The girl shouts at her, recoiling, and leaves. Meri looks crushed, and the next few years of her life are dull, colours drained from the footage, going by in a low-res blur. The cycle continues, a non-existence, until she starts taking photos of herself in different outfits and a screen tear causes the audio to jump; when the video resumes, Meri is posing for the cover of a magazine. “My medicine. For my illness, that is,” she says, as the magazine crumples and falls out of view, Meri now dressed not in any designer outfit but in a hospital gown. “Haha. It was only important to me...like...physically. To keep me alive. I don’t really give a shit about them. Without them, I’ll probably die way sooner than expected. That’s fine though. I’d rather live a few weeks in happiness opposed to living like this for another miserable decade.” An IV is hooked up to her arm and she lies in bed, checking her phone, refreshing repeatedly before putting it down. “I can’t keep living like this anymore.”

The footage is crisp and clean now, right from the show, ad banners running along the bottom of the screen, and Seishirou, Horang and Meri are talking, laughing together, sharing a moment. A roll of distortion obscures them and then Seishirou is standing over his friend, lying with his eyes closed in a hospital bed, another doctor saying something that can’t be made out, vague electronic beeping the only indication that this footage ever had audio. “It’s nothin’ more and nothin’ less than the knowledge needed to cure,” the doctor keeps talking, and Seishirou’s posture gets tenser and tenser,  “Full body paralysis, specifically, irreparable nerve damage, anything I need to know to prevent unexpected complications. I want to-... I need to be able to do it myself. I can’t fail again.” There’s a skip, another barrage of error messages and for a few moments a frame of Seishirou’s friend lying, against a storefront is interposed on a frame of Meri sleeping in a hospital bed and then with the rapidly flickering images of Horang and Seishirou’s bodies. “Why? Maybe because I’m selfish. Maybe because I can’t let go of someone I care deeply about. Of course, Hideki is the only thing on my mind most of the time, but… That doesn’t mean I can’t keep using that knowledge for good after, right?”

“Everybody wants to feel secure, right? Everybody wants to feel like they can take care of themselves in the future. That they don’t have to spend their rent money on food or lose it all because... ha. They gambled it all away.” That’s Chan-yeol’s voice, of course. The scenes of footage are brief. Dancing. The bottom of a bottle. Singing. Wads of cash, thrown at him. A meal at a restaurant. Gambling. Dates with a number of different people; a graphical glitch seems to blur them all together at one point. “I just want to finally... settle my debt. I want loan sharks off my ass. I want my name off of any papers I didn’t actually sign. I just want to get out of the fucking underground.” The cycle repeats and it doesn’t stop, but soon there’s conversations with shady-looking men, and the dancing and singing are replaced with carrying strange packages, a man in a too-nice suit helping him go over paperwork. “I could... buy back jobs. Build a new cabaret. I could send my sister money. Ji-min... I could fund her whole life for her, if she wanted me to. Fuck, I’ll even send my parents to a retirement home in the future.” The lights of the red light district pulse and throb like the lights of the faerie world. “I just. I just want control, for once. Money has always been control.”

Chan-yeol is sitting in a casino, and then there’s a wipe and it’s Meri in a casino, faeries each jostling for her business, wide smiles and glowing eyes and eclectic outfits. A text box offers GLIMPSES OF THE FUTURE and she smiles at the faerie behind the table, who holds up a deck of cards enticingly. “I don’t actually care about modelling all that much. I just want the fame I used to have before it was taken away from me.” Archival footage is intercut, a girl who looks just a little but not quite like Meri wearing outfits like hers, smiling like hers, on the cover of every magazine. “Everyone who admired me. I want them back.” Back to the show, and Meri is staring into the distance, shellshocked. In her room, she puts on a mask. “I’m scared to die alone,” she admits in the voiceover, as the Meri on screen grips a sword tightly in her hand. “My career...The fame that came with it...it’s the only thing that’s ever made me truly happy. It’s the only thing that made living feel different from being dead for once.” There’s another digital glitch, and Chan-yeol — or should that be Horang? — goes down, blood staining his clothes. “I’ve never felt that before..besides when I found out I was dying and lost all that I cared about. Then dying felt much scarier than living. I don’t want to die afraid and alone.” Seishirou’s eyes widen as he looks at the scene — Meri turns to him and says something, the movement of her lips blurred out by errant slides of colour. “I want to die while I’m still happy. I want people to be sad. I want them to miss me. I don’t want my existence to be forgotten and meaningless.”

She’s talking to Cíoroc in the interview, happy, ready for the show to begin. “After all, I don’t have any family left to carry on my blood. I feel bad that...I don’t miss them like they deserve. I’m rather hypocritical for not wishing the same upon myself, huh?” Cíoroc listens, smile serene and implacable as always. Seishirou, or, well, STELLAR, bleeds out, expression peaceful. Horang lies on the floor.

Chan-yeol’s voice speaks as Horang Lee bleeds out on the floor. “...I visit my sister. I tell her... as much as I can about all the years we were apart. I don’t tell her about this show, but I tell her that some... big local talent show gave me a shot and I won. I tell her something, but bottom line,” and the footage begins to fade into nothing but electronic noise, “I spend the rest of my life taking care of her. I find everybody whose lives I ruined because of the cabaret and send them money. I buy a real apartment. Maybe I’ll get a cat. And I just... live as quietly and as peacefully as possible until I die. That’s my plan.” The lights of the red light district flash and pulse. It’s always the same; prices and prizes.

STELLAR and Meri… well, it’s Memory, right? — talk as the former dies. Instead of their voices, it’s Seishirou’s dub. “Help Hideki. He… Ahah, it’s weird. I know he wasn’t too keen on staying alive, especially the past years. How the tables had turned, right?” He looks serious as he gives the interview answer to Cíoroc. Far away, a man lies motionless in a hospital, hooked up to wires and monitors. “But I can’t… let him meet his end like this. Withering away in a hospital bed. Lucid but immobile. I want another chance at making him happy. Doing for him what he did for me. And, selfishly, I... don’t want to live without him. “ On the stage of HIGHWAY TO HEAVEN, STELLAR breathes his last breath. “After that, well… I just hope we can keep living. Together.”

The rest is familiar. Memory at the trial. The execution. Her smile at the interview table is bright and cheery. A glitch causes another screen tear, half of the pixels of the hospital bed visible onscreen instead of what should be there. “Live for however long I have left. Enjoy the admiration. Die happily and surrounded by people. Be remembered. I don’t care if it’s only a few weeks or so. As long as I...get it back. Hey, even if I don’t win though...hopefully I’ll be remembered- no, immortalized...through this show?”

And with that, it’s back to Cíoroc. He’s still smiling, but it’s a curious smile. It’s not a happy one. Is he, perhaps, actually sad? Nah, that’s impossible. “Hahahaha… it’s a funny thing, right? She’s just like me when I was younger. Oh, the good old days. Who’d have thought old Watershed from season three would end up a star like Cíoroc Mair, huh?” A pixelated portrait of Memory flickers into existence behind him inside an empty Paint window. “Don’t worry, Memory. Nobody’s going to forget a performance like that. Nobody. You don’t get the fame you wanted, but you’re not in bad company there, not with Kleos from season one, Taiyang from season two, Cathode from season five, Divinity from season seven, Gloria from season nine, Starlight from season ten, Parameshwara from season twelve, Sveca from season thirteen, Five from season fourteen, Yeong-gwang from season sixteen, Shirley from season eighteen, Ursula from season nineteen,  Bundy from season twenty-one, Uzuri from season twenty-three, Alexandria from season twenty-five, Glamorama from season twenty-seven, Shrine from season twenty-eight, Takibi from season thirty, Ganymede from season thirty-two, al-Aziz from season thirty-four, Zhuchiren from season thirty-six, and Blue from season thirty-seven!”

Although he names a lot of names, Memory’s portrait remains central, each portrait of another contestant circling hers in a curious sort of mosaic. After a few seconds, Cíoroc reaches out, taps the ‘save’ button, and continues as Horang’s portrait appears. “Wishing for money to get out of their problems we find Scoop from season one, Rat from season three, Cooper from season five, Marie Antoinette from season seven, Flashpoint from season ten, Don from season eleven, Real from season thirteen, Jinzi from season sixteen, Penny from season seventeen, Boxcars from season nineteen, Grendel from season twenty-three, Gatsby from season twenty-five, X from season twenty-nine, Rembrandt from season thirty-four, and Kisamata from season thirty-eight.” With another tap, a portrait of STELLAR joins them. “And wishing for the skills to save a friend or loved one, we see STELLAR joining up with Chaos from season four, Desperado from season eight, Bonnie from season thirteen, Sun Wukong from season nineteen, Gwydion from season twenty-five, and Sancho Panza from season thirty-two.”

He pauses. “This show’s been going on for a long time, huh? Kind of makes you wonder when it’s going to grind to a stop. Oh, wait, that’s right, never! The show must go on, and we’ve got an audience who wants to keep watching, right? Still, the longer we make it, the more it feels like everyone’s moving on. Even the people watching right now, you know? They’ve moved on in their hearts already. Showbiz, baby. It can be tough. See you all next episode, where we’ll be challenging our contestants to survive in the deadly wilderness of an on-studio location with a full camera crew! Constant scenery changes keep things from getting fresh and stale by letting characters interact in new settings, you know? That’s just a little showbiz secret!”

Cíoroc then proceeds to make robot noises for the entire remaining thirty-minute duration of the broadcast.