#or were you waiting for me to say something negative or evil first piss addict

[incarnateirony]

Optimism, Nihilism, Absence, Realism.

Alright, so I’ve got time for some real talk here.

By the title you’re probably expecting a meta, but that’s not really what this is. It’s time for a rare post laced with enough negativity to break my mold, but more congealing thoughts I’ve been banging on about in the background since I came to tumblr into a set of realities on my thoughts on the show at large.

Before this begins, this is absolutely not an invitation to come to my wall and start crowing and screeching about your ship, your characters, bagging on the authors or anything else. If you can understand the difference between constructive conversation, and prim word laced unbridled and pointless cynicism and complaining, you’re welcome to engage, but don’t mildew up this post.

But it’s about time we talk about the elephant in the room with the show. And despite this fandom’s gong banging, it isn’t Andrew Dabb. It isn’t MuH dEStiEl. It isn’t muh poor baby (fave char)

It’s SingerBuckLeming.

And I mean, in a way that’s obvious, and I really don’t think everybody has really, truly, wrapped their heads around it because they’ll still come yelling about Dabb whenever anything goes wrong.

But Dabb isn’t the one that’s been obsessed with a psycho dark godbaby story; Dabb’s the one that tried to at least craft it into something fruitful for TFW and subvert it into something more than burning bibles -- it’s SingerBuckLeming trying to relive the Lois and Clark fantasy they were denied.

It’s not Dabb that decided to hard push the AUverse story and all its attached splendors. The idea started as a one-off intro idea for Wayward, but it had to be pushed off a year, and Leming admitted to snaring the idea and, summarily, attaching it to their evil godbaby and making it their plot point.

It’s not Dabb that has an honest to god boner for Mark P and can’t shut his mouth up about him, that’s Eugenie too. It’s not Dabb that obsesses over half crocked characters like Asmodeus and Donatello. It’s not Dabb addicted to big shiny CGI and super saiyan powerups.

You’ll notice how many of these ideas are enmeshed into one giant ball of fuckery that, somewhere along the way, Dabb has tried to groom into having some sort of substance but there’s a very clear line going on here.

“How does this relate to my ship/my favorite character reeee”, why? Because with the amount of weight being tossed around via advantageous nepotism and a different core cluster in the author room quite clearly on a different creative page than everybody else, guess what -- everybody else gets railroaded.

And at times, yes, some presentations are becoming stressed and stretched. They only way to even bring any sort of emotion to the content is by retreading or exaggerating emotional roads, especially at the end of seasons. A season starts strong, and poetic, and then somewhere around or right after episode 14 everything starts fucking falling apart, often with one or two disjointed episodes in advance but strong character driven arcs. Traction and motion are lost. Poetry starts falling into pieces. Superpowers and over the top manpain become the leading thing.

This happens every year, and this year is more vivid than last. I do remind people that the last time we had SingerBuckLeming throwing their weight around on decisions so hard they double-directed-and-wrote an episode was Dark Dynasty, which the rest of the author room was uncomfortable with, even argued about, even lost author heads in the aftermath of. Guess what - we just got our second episode like that. The attempt to work into this weight-throwing by the rest of an author room tends to turn into a lack of cohesive storytelling. S10 turned into a rapid degredation into a benny hill chase for a book. This year - well, shrug.

That’s not to say I agree with every piss and moan about characters being “OOC” as often, in this fandom, the fandom’s idea of “OOC” ends at “things I don’t personally like”. There are differences between OOC and just not really... belonging in the moment. Because they’re often things the character has in their range of potential action, but whether or not the story is cohesively meshed in a way that’s worth a damn is a WHOLE other topic.

And this has just gotten worse. As the writing room gets newer and younger and SingerBuckLeming age older and older -- some of you may have remembered my panic attack realizing BuckLeming were being seated in position to become the next showrunners and Bobo had been bumped back. At the time, even meta bloggers I trust held different opinions that, frankly, I considered daydreamy “Oh don’t worry BuckLeming only handle this but all of the emotional stuff goes through Dabb co” but no, once BuckLeming get their hands in enough of that, the rest ends up on a railroaded crash course everybody is trying to write around to deliver as better than a doggie doo bag.

And I think, honestly, J2M know that. I’m sure a huge amount of their decision was indeed about family time, but the real question is, looking at this show that SingerBuckLeming have been aggressively railroading off a damn cliff while everybody tries to compensate, is it really WORTH negotiating more family time, do they really WANT to wait for it to crash out, do they really WANT to let Eugenie Leming run the show out of gas in the middle of a desert with hew new, bestest idea once Dabb inevitably leaves and she and her baes get full reign to make the endless Lucifer clone fleet and their godbaby powers all going super saiyan? Is that what they want their legacy to be, or would they rather go home, and be with their family instead of propping this up as it continues to veer to the left?

I keep praying SBL disappear for the final season, kinda like Singer buggered off in S11. And it’s kinda sad, because I do recognize that without Singer we wouldn’t have the show at all but somewhere along the way, he lost his nut, he lost his directing skills, he lost common sense and he let his seniority get to his head, probably in tandem with bringing his wife back in and getting to be a power unit which is just WOEFULLY unadvised to be honest.

This is so far beyond how anyone’s ship or favorite character is treated. It’s about the internal war in a writing room that’s as clear as plain day that’s causing a deterioration of the show that Dabb has DESPERATELY been trying to curtail into SOMETHING of note only to catch shit from people who can’t do a little bit of common denominator searching into events even before his showrunning time that just keep getting louder.

Right now I’m at a point where I’m just begging for cohesion and emotional worth from the final season. For something that BuckLeming aren’t just throwing off the cliff like a sacrifice to their new, bigger, dumber idea once S14′s Jack Course reaches its cap. And honestly, I’d hope that’s everyone’s primary concern rather than circular bitching about whatever element they’re hyper fixated on because this is an issue that spreads well and far beyond whatever singularity you choose to scream about. And most people just blind sweep in rage at the first name that’s easy to pick out that they feel is responsible. But this has been going on. FOR YEARS. It’s just getting louder.

I try to not be negative about the show in general. I do appreciate Dabb, Berens, Yockey, Merecuda, and to some extent Perez (though I still hold he’s the least artistic of that bunch.) I’m still in love with Sgriccia and Wright and Showalter. I still love this crew. But I’ve never been shy about pointing out BuckLeming problems and at this point, it’s just THE problem, to whence nobody is even realizing where they need to set their sights and complaints at. Everything else is an emotional or continuum casualty in their fuck offs to the new shiny idea. Or, in cases of the Lois & Clark godbaby, their old AF tarnished idea.

Some people may remember me saying that without Dabb converting Jack into being a TFW mirror for catharsis, Jack’s only individual arc is that of a villain, and here we are swinging around full force with BuckLeming sinking in, waiting to see how Dabb may subvert that in the final episode. 

“I’m losing faith in Destiel” “I’m mad about Sam/Dean/Cas” “This plot is dumb” ultimately all fall down into the same goddamn railroading that habitually, like clockwork, louder each year, fucks up the end of a season and I just want them to disappear before the final season, but I doubt I’m going to get that. Maybe, just maybe, they can be staved knowing they won’t need the new ultimate escalation to carry on the show yet-again. Fingers and toes and arms crossed. 

That said, this vivid repeat of S10 author room shift should also, hopefully, give at least some potential hope to meta authors who at least remember that S11 was recoverable and was in fact recovered, and also had final season plans afoot. It was on the table, at least, in thought in early concept, just not without the true bang announcement to promise it through. So I’m going to hold out some hope that this is going to shape up fine in the end.

But don’t expect me to humor your bitter bitching about your ship or favorite character of choice. You wanna bitch about the strokes Singer seems to have had that have stripped his directorial gifts, or Eugenie’s obsession with SSJ archangels and Mark P, by all means. They’re major culprits in everything else being flattened on the way with an author room y’all are bitching at trying to make it at least vaguely cohesive.

I’m a natural optimist experiencing distinct nihilism at the absence of any sort of respect for the show or J2M going on with SBL right now, and as ever a realist looking at it in the frame of what’s going on beyond our surface level issues, and what I can hope to maintain to roll back around to the optimism part. Ouroboros. Hopefully ending at the start of the journey and not to loop back through the nihilism by next season.

Can they just retire? Please?

Dump Mark P. Dump Donatello. Hell, dump Jack at this point with as much as they’ve fucked that off again. Dump the AU. Dump the Drama Coffin. Dump the instaboop angels. Just dump all of their dumb ideas and let the final season roll out without the resulting tire fire of all of their ideas and suddenly, the show is infinitely cleaner. Don’t think this is all their bullshit? Literally follow their episode impact in reverse the last few years before you come at me. It’s literally all their bullshit.

I really don’t give a shit about fandom drama around Mark P’s opinions. I get it, but I don’t care. What I care about is his unwillingness to look at his character and refuse a contract for any sort of integrity, doing literally anything to pull a goddamn paycheck out of milking this show. His character, formerly one of the most inspiring renditions of an overshadowing idea of good and evil and biblical scale, has turned into a toddler throwing tantrums on the floor of mcdonalds, begged for redemption that underscores the entire point of the hero’s journey, splattered in remnants of Hallucifer that wasn’t even the original character, and just won’t go away.

And antis can say what they want about, say, Misha or Castiel, but his character at least has a solid direction, and growth, and a real hero’s journey. It’s not just vomit splatter on the wall of whatever he can be niched into like Not!Lucifer. Mark S at least had the dignity to leave when he saw shit degrading for his character.

Oh yeah a lot of that was BuckLeming too. The plotholes in Crowley’s story he called out were BuckLeming, who summarily pitched Rowena. And I love Rowena and Ruthie and wouldn’t undo it for the world but GODDAMN am I glad Yockey basically adopted her. She was turned into something past their basic dumb ideas and, as of yet, BuckLeming has yet to unravel that like they’re proactively doing with Jack after Dabb and co put so much effort into him.

Like literally the fandom’s collective bitchfits have a very common denominator and nobody’s willing to suss out why.

SingerBuckLeming seem to have had a collective stroke and still think they’re creating for Lois & Clark in the 70s and not Supernatural as made manifest into absurdity by 13.23; and several people like Mark Pellegrino refuse to have the basic decency to say, you know what, pass. I had my show here, it’s been good. They feed it. But it still falls back to SingerBuckLeming in the end at the heart of it. 

Not enough for you? Still think it has nothing to do with J2M or Mark Sheppard’s choices? Don’t even just listen to the scalding tea, look at the post-engagement between Jensen and Mark S.

They need to go away.

[charmingturkeysandwich]

I Could Use a Love Song - Ch 1: givin’ up on love, hey love’s given up on me

Summary: Emma Swan, small town orphan and up-and-coming country singer, is known for her voice, her penchant for leather, and her overall (earned) anger toward the world. She’s had a rough go of it – rough enough that every single song of hers is angry or sad – but on the road something (or someone) happens that might change her tune.

(Spoiler Alert: it’s Killian. Cue the gasps of shock.)

Also on AO3.

---

The upside to a truly shitty adolescence? Lyrical inspiration.

Emma Swan grew up a little bit all over the place, but primarily in a small town that was most definitely above the Mason-Dixon line and yet half its population spoke with some kind of southern-esque drawl. Confederate flags were common on Chevy trucks. Friday nights in the Fall were dedicated to high school football and absolutely nothing else. Their town’s only radio station was country, though it played seven different church services on Sunday mornings. To say that the whole town’s dynamic read like a cliché country song… it was more obvious than Emma’s bright red leather jacket in a crowd of cotton camo.

So no one was particularly surprised when the beautiful, damaged orphan with the voice of a (really pissed off) angel hit the road with a country band.

They might not have been surprised, but oh did they talk. After her falling out with the pastor’s son and her quick escape to Pittsburgh, she was every negative stereotype of famous in a small town you could conjure. Lily, the closest thing she’d had to a friend outside of Neal, son of Pastor Gold, would keep her updated on the rumors and the hearsay. Not that she wanted to know, necessarily. She’d rather imagine that her name had simply fallen out of the collective memory of that god forsaken town. But it hadn’t. Her story was on the tongues of every bar patron, Baptist, and boy scout leader north of I-80.

It wasn’t her story, though. Not really. The tales they told of Emma Swan always somehow ended up with her as the villain and not the fairy tale princess, the lost girl with no choice but to suffer at the hands of assholes.

Her parents had been shit. Drug addicts, apparently, and she’d been taken from them. She’d been passed through the foster system from ages 3-12, the best foster parents mostly ignoring her and the worst… well, she couldn’t afford the therapy to even attempt to go there.

She’d wound up with an OK but definitely half-crazy woman by the name of Sarah just before she turned 13 and that’s where she’d stayed, that hick town that just couldn’t get enough of her little sob story. That’s where she’d met Neal, the charismatic son of one of the town’s pastors. His dad had seemed nice enough, did a lot of community work and even owned several businesses, boasting of his commitment to boosting the local economy. For once she’d thought she’d found some people who didn’t suck who might make her life at least somewhat normal.

She, as usual, was wrong. Pastor Gold was… well, off. Way too angry for a dude preaching the New Testament each week. But at least he’d never hurt her. No, that privilege was reserved for Neal, who would beat her to a bloody pulp and then tell his daddy’s flock all about saving his sweet girl from a drug deal gone wrong (poor thing ended up like her parents despite the best efforts of the system, you see).

It was pathetic. And after she went to jail for having the gall to defend her own life from that sociopath, well, that was it. She dropped out of high school during the homecoming pep rally and hopped a bus to the city.

That had been years ago now, of course, but it was her origin story, as they say, and something very important to her on-stage personality. And her internal struggle.

Life had fucked her over and she was pissed. And so for five years after leaving that sleepy, secret-filled little town, all she ever really focused on was her anger. She’d write lyrics on truck stop napkins and sit in a half-stranger’s basement strumming chords on the guitar she’d stolen from the church rectory (she wasn’t sorry). She started out performing at open mic nights and then somehow found some of Her People, those who loved country music but maybe hadn’t grown up in a Dixie Chicks song (if only she could have Goodbye Earl’ed that son of a bitch high school boyfriend of hers before he ever laid a hand on someone new…).

(At least he ended up in prison. You know, eventually.)

(And, hey, her rage got her out there and selling records. But that was on her, not him. Nobody saves me but me, she always said. And she wasn’t about to thank a monster just because she survived slaying it.)

Tonight’s show was in a dive bar in upstate New York and Emma was so damn ready for it. She and Ruby had done a few shots of tequila before slipping on their tight jeans and leather jackets, and David had just finished setting up their brand new sound system that made them sound like they could actually be on CMT and not just playing from someone’s garage. David and Mary Margaret, they were like Johnny and June with their sweetness and Emma could hardly stomach it. But they were her friends, her actual honest-to-god, wouldn’t-rat-her-out-to-the-forest-service-for-underage-drinking friends and she loved them. She loved them and Ruby and even Graham in the only way she knew how: teasing insults, cases of beer, and not running away in the middle of the night even when she was feeling like her whole world could crash town with one wrong word from herself or anyone else.

(She really did need therapy beyond the catharsis of angry singing to half-drunk strangers. Someday, maybe.)

Friend love was a strange, but manageable thing. Well, mostly. But romantic love? Absolutely fucking not. After she left Neal and that town, after she drank away the pain and the frustration, well she thought maybe she’d give romance another try. Turned out the next guy was even worse, somehow, leaving her bruised and bloody when she turned down his marriage proposal at a fancy restaurant in Cleveland (yeah, those exist). The physical pain she had been used to, but the emotional… he called her every name she didn’t deserve and a few that she probably did, and when he finished her off with a few choice comments about the baby she’d lost after Neal threw her out a moving car, well she was done. For good. Never ever would she trust a man again. Preacher’s son or furniture salesman – they were all just… evil. She couldn’t ever again take that chance.

But tonight – tonight she wasn’t thinking about romance or even the past, not beyond the bits and pieces that had made their way into her songs. She was happy, buzzed, excited. Their little tour bus (well, van) family was rising in the ranks and soon she could move far away and get her own apartment overlooking the thriving streets of Nashville. Soon she would be so busy with interviews and music video shoots that she wouldn’t have a single second to spare a thought to those who had hurt her. Soon she would be so rich she wouldn’t ever feel lonely because she’d always have male company in the form of all her Benjamins she’d backstroke through like Scrooge McDuck.

The previous night Mary Margaret had tried to set Emma up with the singer of their opening act, a guy they called August who carried a typewriter instead of a guitar (who she’d definitely seen leaving with a drunk after she’d turned him down, by the way), so Emma had already had her monthly I Don’t Want Love chat with her hopeless romantic friend. Meaning today she was free and clear to just… enjoy this new life she’d spent years building on the bones of all the good girls she could have been.

She high-fived Ruby and David kissed her on the cheek as they took the stage, starting the guitar riff as Emma sauntered out to the opening words of the song. This was one of her crowd favorites, a good one to set the tone for what kind of show to expect, and she was melting into her confident, badass, devil-may-care persona easily by the time they hit the first chorus.

I’m goin’ home, gonna load my shotgun

Wait by the door and light a cigarette

He wants a fight, well now he’s got one

And he ain’t seen me crazy yet

A few people in the front row were singing along and her heart was bursting with pride that she was on this road, that she’d turned such a goddamn nightmare of a life into something positive and productive and while overall it still wasn’t healthy… she damn well was on the road to actually being someone. To finally shutting up the idiots back in Pennsyltucky who were convinced she wasn’t going to amount to anything but a statistic just like her parents (despite having never even tried any drug beyond alcohol and nicotine, the judgmental fucks).

One thing that entertained her beyond reason was listening to Mary Margaret sing backup vocals on the songs Emma wrote. Emma liked to call Mary’s on-stage persona Snow White Trash and Ruby insisted that be the name of the band’s first mainstream album when their big break finally came and Emma actually fucking laughed in the middle of performing her angry song that night because she couldn’t stop thinking about the mismatch.

So when the song was over she apologized to the crowd, told them how much she loved her band and her friends, even the hilariously innocent of them, and asked someone to pass her a beer so she could stop the chuckles from trickling out during the next song.

Next on their set list was one that had been co-written by Emma and Ruby, two girls from two very different small towns, who still had so much shared experience. It used to hurt her to sing it, the depressing nature of where she came from threatening to swallow her whole, until Graham came to her one night after the show, quieted her tearful sobs with a kiss and told her to just pretend it was a movie. She was just telling a story. It wasn’t her town or Ruby’s… it was nothing but fiction.

And that’s how she belted it all out totally devoid of those pesky feelings that made her wish she could just crawl under a rock rather than relive her trauma for the seventy third time this fucking year.

If you ain’t got two kids by 21, you’re probably gonna die alone

At least that’s what tradition told you

This song was a lesser known of theirs so they don’t have as many mouthing the words back, but the energy in the crowd is still so high, despite this song being a little more bummer than banger. So she scans the crowd, watches the faces of the drunk, the joyful, the brooding, and best of all, those who understand.

Off to the left, just at the edge of the stage, she saw probably the hottest man she’d ever seen in real life. Black leather jacket, artfully mussed hair, a smirk that could charm her pants right off if she let him.

It’s not that hot guys didn’t come to their shows. They definitely did. But they were usually more the Jake Owen or Luke Bryan type, the ones that look like they were ready to meet your mama by the third date. This guy, he didn’t seem the take-home-to-parents type (just the kind for her, having no parents and all).

But there was something else different about him. Standing just off stage, standing alone, glancing toward David every so often. He looked a bit too confident, comfortable, like he already had some kind of connection to her makeshift little family, and that set up some red flags.

She was not accepting applications for any new friends at the moment. Or maybe ever.

She’d been staring just a little and people tended to notice stuff like that so of course he eventually locked eyes with her, for just a fleeting moment, and there was something in that one glance that told her he knew what she was singing, how she felt, on a level that most others just… didn’t.

So naturally she broke the gaze and didn’t look back.

Jack and Jill went up the hill.

Jack burned out on booze and pills.

Mary had a little lamb.

Mary just don’t give a damn no more.

From there, Mary Margaret had taken over lead vocals, her cover of Strawberry Wine a nice balm to the mood-dampener that Merry-Go-Round always was. And every show without fail, she always took that transition to gloat about how she’s most definitely not the Mary from that song because she has David and loves him so much and Emma almost always makes the universal gesture for “gag me” to the crowd eliciting laughter and a few errant woo’s.

She didn’t tonight.

First taste of love, oh

Bittersweet

And green on the vine

Like strawberry wine

(sorry Deana Carter, but there wasn’t always some sweet.)

They closed the show with Kerosene, like they always did: high-energy, twangy, and true-to-form for their actual fans. The whole bar was on their feet, jumping and swaying and shouting and spilling their $4 beers on the guy beside them but no one really cared because they were sharing a moment, Emma and each of them, singing out their anger and sadness and ten years of life’s-not-fair.

Crazy how a three minute song could effectively patch the wounds of a whole life.

And, yeah, maybe it wasn’t really patching anything. Maybe it was just distraction. Maybe she was just as much a drug addict as her parents, but her drug was the stage and the music and the connection she shared with every other person in each and every bar who didn’t get the benefit of a first love like any kind of wine.

She sang her song from the diaphragm – broadway voice – but it was like it came all the way from her toes. It was always her anger that defined her, drove her, made her feel alive.

Why not lean into it?

I gave it everything I had

And everything I got was bad

Life ain’t hard but it’s too long

To live it like some country song

Trade the truth in for a lie

Cheating really ain’t a crime

I’m giving up on love, cause love’s given up on me

Songs sung, merch sold, and bar tab closed, Emma headed toward the crew’s van, ready to sleep off the liquor in the third row seats while the lovebirds took the hotel room above the bar and Ruby and Graham found someone’s bed to put their boots under for the night.

It was odd, feeling like the fifth wheel when truly there was only one couple in the band. But Ruby and Graham, they were so in sync with where they were in their life – jand it was just not what Emma was looking for – that she still ended up left out.

Which was fine. Everything was just fine.

Until her path to the van was obstructed by the most gorgeous man she’d ever seen in her life, the smoldering-eyed, confident guy who’d nearly made her forget her own lyrics before she’d promptly remembered to forget him and any other person who might possibly hold the potential to make her heart skip.

(Hearts aren’t meant to skip. That’s not love; it’s a trip to the cardiologist.)

He was definitely about to annoy her, so shouldn’t he look properly… annoying? Not like a goddamn model. That was distracting her from her annoyance and inevitable hate. Because a girl like her? Every song lyric and leather jacket was a clear message: leave me the fuck alone.

He clearly wasn’t receiving the signal.

“Swan, I presume?” he finally spoke, her eyes certainly glaring daggers at him despite her tiredness and BAC.

“Uh, obviously? What do you want.” (It wasn’t a question.)

“To introduce myself, of course! Killian Jones, at your service.”

She stopped a few feet from him, one hand on her hip and the other reaching for the cigarettes in the back pocket of her jeans.

“I’m not interested in any services beyond handing me a lighter. Can you manage that one?”

He smirked at her and reached into his jacket, the click of the zippo lighter in his hand echoing off the brick alley the van was parked in. With a quick flick of his thumb there was a flame and he offered it to her, his eyes burning with something other than the reflection of the fire.

“Ah, yes, that’s something even a one-handed bloke like me can manage.” He clicked the lighter closed and deposited it back in his jacket, only to reveal his left arm – ending at the wrist – from where it had been tucked behind him.

Emma deflated a little, some compassion left inside her despite the unwanted nature of his approaching her. “OK, Captain Hook, what exactly do you want from me?”

(She had compassion, but also very little candor. For the record.)

“Ah, yes, I’ve never heard that one before,” he muttered, rolling his eyes and finally looking like he was receiving her please-go-away signals, but he still soldiered on. “I was meant to be here before the show started, but I had some trouble finding this hole-in-the-wall. I presume by your attitude that Dave didn’t warn you I was coming?”

“You presume correctly. Can you please get on with whatever garbage is happening here? I swear if they put you up to asking me out or something I’m going to kill them. Mary Margaret especially. Because we just talked about this and I know that it’s not your fault that they’re such meddlers but I swear I’m pretty much the same girl who sings on stage in real life and I absolutely want nothing to do with men. Or women, for that matter… I’m not a person who dates and if they thought..”

“Love, please stop. No, I’m not here to ask you out. Believe me, I know I’m not what you need. I mean, technically I am, but not in the romantic sense.”

He paused and waggled his eyebrows and Emma was too tired to roll her eyes so she just closed them, willing the moment to pass. “I’ve been hired to work for you. All of you. Roadie. Can’t play notes on a guitar anymore, but I can haul them in and out of these dumps you lot perform in.”

Ah. He was the guy David had suggested they hire but the group had then rejected the idea and apparently David decided to overrule them all because why would Prince Charming listen to a democratic band vote, anyway? (Ugh.)

“Can you maybe stop insulting the patrons that pay us since that same money is going to be what pays you?”

Drunk laugher and electronic music pulsed out of the back door of the bar they’d played in not long before. Almost closing time now. Emma needed to get out of the open before she had to break someone’s wrist for drunkenly groping her. Again.

“Ah, of course, love,” he replied, finally seeming to be at least somewhat chagrined. “Now if you could point me in the direction of our sleeping quarters, I’ll leave you to your business.”

“First of all, I am not your love. We’ve covered this already and I need you to keep up. Second, do you really think we make enough to have quarters? I’m not entirely sure how we’re going to both pay you and eat. So.”

“So, what exactly does that mean for you or I, Swan?” he emphasized her last name in an effort to prove he was capable of using titles other than ridiculous British terms of endearment.

“Well, Jones, that means that either you go shack up with David and the missus (10/10 would not recommend; Mary gets very horny while drunk and her voice carries), or you do like Graham or Ruby and find a local to make gross sex noises with. Or whatever they do. Don’t know, don’t ask, don’t care.”

“And you, princess?” His tone was a challenge. He wanted her to object to the sickly sweet nickname. And she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction.

“I sleep in the van. And I do not cuddle.”

“Oh, it’s not cuddling I’m looking for,” he purred, waggling his stupid eyebrows again. (This time she did roll her eyes, annoyed enough to expend the limited energy she still possessed.)

“Then go find someone willing, buddy. Like I said.”

He shook his head and laughed, already turning back toward the van. “Damn. David said you were difficult, but I wasn’t expecting this. I’ll sleep wherever you don’t. Unless you snore?”

“No, I do not snore!”

“Great. Then we’ll get along just dandy.” He waited next to the van until Emma pulled out the fob to unlock it, sliding open the big door a second after the beep-beep to signal entry. “After you, not anyone’s love.”

“Thanks, Captain. I’ll be in the back. Touch me at your peril.”

They each crawled into the van and settled at opposite ends. Emma tossed Killian a blanket and Killian tossed Emma a pillow that had been lodged in the front seat and they both drifted off to the sounds of Garth Brooks on the Pandora radio Ruby had bought her to ward away the nightmares that inevitably accompanied the silence.

[mcrmadness]

Movies, I love movies...

Okay, it's happening again. Getting addicted to thing, I mean. And wanting to share my addiction and shout it to the world but not having even friends to open up to... So, Tumblr, here I'm again, basically talking to walls I guess but it's okay 'cause I've got used to it. (Basically my whole life has been that idk.)

I've had flu for the past 4 days so I've just stayed at home watching tv all day. Yesterday I started feeling like watching those (newer) Marvel movies that I haven't watched before so yesterday, I started with Iron Man 2 (which I also have had on dvd for years but have never watched that) and watched couple of movies I hadn't seen yet and now I'm pissed because I want to watch more and on Netflix (Finland at least) there's every Captain America movie but I really don't want to watch the third one when there's two other movies between them BUT THOSE ARE NOT ON NETFLIX and I don't know what I'm gonna do with my life. I want to watch more but I just hate to do things in "wrong order", no ocd here (at least something that ISN'T mental in my life wooohoo), but it's just something I like and what makes me happy. But also annoyed sometimes. You know, I have the second Thor on dvd (I might have a little obsession with pairings and I regretted buying that dvd but I did it just because of the pairing, now how pathetic is that? :DDDDDDD) but I don't have the first one. And every time I see that dvd at supermarkets I just WANT to buy it so bad because it looks stupid to have only tje 2nd in my shelf but I don't want to buy it because only thing I like in that movie is Loki and, yeah, I don't want the DVD but I want it. Struggle is real!!!!!!!!

...so I need to see more but I guess I have to start searching for the missing movies as DVDs in order to watch the rest if the movies on Netflix 😐 (One day, I swear, I will buy that first Thor dvd so it doesn't look so idiotic to have just Thor2 next to Iron Man and Iron Man 2 dvds hnnnnngh---)

Also I struggled because I felt like watching all of the movies in order but I didn't feel like rewatching some of them and I couldn't stop thinking about how this comes after this which I have seen but a long time ago argh what am i gonna do??? Well ended up just rewinding them to see if I remember everything and to see if I had watched through the end credits too.

[[[HERE I NEEDED THE READ MORE LINK BUT FORGOT HOW TO ADD IT ON MOBILE??? Or did the app just change?]]]

About the Marvel movies overall... Well I grew up with "superhero movies" and I'll always be tru Batman fan and I'll avoid this reboot of the DC franchise as I'm this stupid avoid-all-what's-mainstream kinda person who loves to stick to the "old stuff", and I've also watched lots of Marvel movies and have collected some of those on dvds as well.

I'm proudly one of those who love the original Spider-Man trilogy with Tobey Maguire. For me it's special because I was 13 or so when I first saw it on tv and it touched me because I was heavily bullied and rejected at school and it just made me feel better to see someone going through bullying and then finally defending themselves.

X-Men was also another trilogy that I used to watch and that I liked a lot and I still do. I have each of them on dvd. X-Men are still my favorite from Marvel and I grew a huge obsession to Deadpool a while before his first movie and there's no turning back, I'm still a huge fan and can't wait for the second movie and if had to talk using internet slang, DP would probably be my spirit animal. I'm still annoyed he has to be just a comic book character but fortunately we have Ryan Reynolds there somewhere which is almost like having the real DP in this world.

With the newer movies... Idk why they never got me. Maybe it's the same as with Batman: I love the Batman universe but I act like no other DC universe existed and I ALWAYS hated Superman (Lego Batman would be proud wait what?) when I was a kid so I guess it was same thing with the X-Men for me. And Spider-Man. Actually I think it's this my issue with not being able to adjust to new things that easily that made me not to be interested in those newer movies and I just stuck to the X-Men franchise and spent my energy for new things with Nolan's Batman trilogy.

I don't even know why and when I got that Iron Man dvd but must have been my first newer-Marvel dvd. I guess Robert Downey Jr. was the biggest reason and honestly, I still don't know if I like Iron Man because of Iron Man or because of Robert Downey Jr. 🤔 Anyway, I like Iron Man best from all these and I actually have liked all three movies too. For me they've been more interesting than... the rest? (of what I've seen so far.)

At first I was also annoyed by Captain America's character and I don't even know why. He seemed so negative for some reason - remember that at that time I had seen him only in the Avengers movie - but actually both of what I watched today were pretty interesting. (And I found a ship and can't see anything from behind it anymore. Probably the reason why these movies got so much more interesting so fast..... Sorry, can't help myself.)

I guess the only movies I didn't like that much were both Thor movies and Avengers. Why? Thor is basically a love story and I can't stand love stories and I can't understand love or romance. So I'm just fed up with all that cheesy romantic love story that I just wanna puke. I don't remember if the second movie was any better. I've watched it only once. But I rewinded it today and it seemed boring, mainly cause I could remember every scene as I saw the little images. And Avengers then? Well it's okay, I guess I just was so inspired by Loki's "You're free from freedom" speech that it woke up the anarchist in me that I can't remember anything but Loki and how I melted into another identity crisis and started hating society for not having freedom over my own life because some idiot once invented money and rules. (I'm too kind you know...) Otherwise it was bit cheesy and cliché, I was able to "predict" what's gonna happen so I was probably great company while watching the movie because I couldn't keep my mouth shut and kept telling what happens and "didn't I just say???" and kept criticizing everything they did cause HOW MUCH MORE WRONG CAN YOU GET? Like what about CPR instead of watching your friend die who didn't even die, what about pulse or breath, you know?

But I don't think these are that bad at all. It's just. Funny to see how the plots are usually built the same way. Evil vs good, two different plots told to the audience and these plots will be connected towards the end. After watching this many superhero movies you just KNOW who will be the main villain in this particular one because of the way they're portrayed. Either something completely opposite loser-like OR something mysterious and nameless, powerful and feared character whose face is not seen at the beginning at all. Yeah, I hate clichés. Also with Marvel (minus X-Men) everything often seem to be so black and white. Either it's bad or good but there's no in-between and good will get bad when infected or enchanted or manipulated whatsoever and in the end they will always be back to being good. (With Batman I love how psychological everything is and nothing is black and white. Same with X-Men, it's not always good or bad but just people being imperfect and different.)

I think the main thing to inspire me to start watching these was the LEGO Marvel's Avengers game, it was about the movies and the levels were interesting. Also a while ago I saw the first Captain America movie on tv but couldn't watch it then and every now and then I've felt like I want to hear his story so yeah, I watched some of these today and was not disappointed, at all.

DISCLAIMER: So these are all my own thoughts and opinions so please don't get mad. Or do if you feel like that? My purpose is not to make anyone mad but just talk nonsense to myself but as I hate hearing my voice, I rather do that by writing somewhere instead of really talking to myself. I hate fighting (but live a good talk!) anyway so take it as honest opinions, just my thoughts written down. Not all can like the same things nor can all dislike the same things either. Thank you.