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punchdrunkdoc · 1 year

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Chapter 3

Summary: After the events of S3, Matt Murdock is trying to once again balance life as a lawyer and a vigilante. But he’s been scarred by loss and betrayal - will a mysterious new neighbour help him heal? Or will her secrets drag him back into the darkness?

Notes: This is a slow burn romance with an original female character, told in 3 parts. There is mystery, intrigue, action and angst - all the good stuff!

Also available on AO3

Masterlist

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CHAPTER 3

Calina hummed along to the tune playing through her earbuds as she entered her apartment building. Of the hundreds of tracks she’d listened to over the past few weeks, she’d found 46 that she’d liked enough to add to her playlist. And of those 46, this one was by far her favourite.

Her favourite.

The concept was still so new and exciting that it made her smile.

That smile dropped when she noticed the resident of 2C shuffling towards the elevator. When the elderly lady had dropped her bag the other day, Calina's first instinct had been to pick it up and help her, but her years of conditioning had blocked the altruistic impulse before she could move a muscle. By the time she'd shaken off her training, another neighbour had already come to the rescue. Calina had been gifted with a sour look from the do-gooder, and she was left with a feeling of shame and guilt every time she encountered the lady from 2C.

Not wanting to share a ride with the source of that shame and guilt, Calina pushed open the door to the stairwell and jogged up the six flights to her floor.

Where she was greeted with another source of shame and guilt - the petite blond woman leaning against her apartment door.

What was she doing here?

The outfit she was wearing was…unexpected. An eclectic mis-mash of colours and fabrics that Calina would never have thought to pair together. Although, to be fair, like her taste in music, her fashion sense was only just starting to evolve. So far she’d struggled to move away from her usual black, but she had developed a fondness for expensive leather and silk and cashmere - sumptuous fabrics that she loved to run her hands over and which felt decadent against her skin. She carried her latest online purchase under her right arm - a satin camisole and a pair of wool wide-leg pants - and she’d been looking forward to trying them on this evening.

But it looked like her plans had changed.

“What are you doing here?” she asked her visitor.

The clothing may have been different, but the cool, assessing eyes that trained on Calina were very familiar. “What? I can’t come visit my favourite sister?”

Calina rolled her eyes. “I’m not your favourite.” She’s wasn’t her sister either. But the two of them were bonded by something far more powerful than blood.

“You’re my favourite today,” was the reply.

Calina raised an eyebrow. “Which means you want something.”

“Busted.”

“What’s going on?” Calina asked.

“Can we talk somewhere more private?”

As if to underscore the lack of privacy, the elevator doors opened and her neighbour stepped out.

Matthew.

The lawyer.

The very attractive lawyer.

And the blind man who could perceive more than he was letting on.

“Let’s go out,” she suggested to her visitor. “There’s a nice coffee shop a block away.”

“What about your apartment?”

“It’s too messy.”

That wasn’t true. There wasn’t enough…stuff…for it to be messy. But it was her space - a little piece of the world she could call her own - and she was slowly filling it with the things she liked. Making it into a home, and planning her future within its wall.

The thought of her past invading it was…unpleasant.

Luckily, Matthew cut off any objection her ‘sister’ might have had. “Hi,” he said in greeting, his voice warmer that she'd ever heard it. “Are you talking about The Hideout on 10th? I like that place too.”

“Yes,” she replied, grabbing her sister’s arm and practically pulling her down the hallway. “Goodbye, Matthew.”

He tilted his head and she could feel the confusion radiating off him. “Goodbye.”

“Rude!” her sister complained as the elevator doors closed, blocking them from her neighbour’s view. “I didn’t get a chance to say hello.”

And I hope you never do, Calina thought.

———

They didn’t speak again until they were inside the coffee shop. Calina had discovered the place her first week in Hell’s Kitchen and had fallen in love with it. She loved the bustle of people coming and going, the comfy arm chairs by the fire in the corner, the oversized mugs, and the aroma of freshly baked brownies.

But what she loved the most was the feeling she got when she took a seat by the window, sipped on her drink and just watched the world go by. It felt so normal.

She felt normal in this place.

Just a stranger among many, wiling away the hours.

She was loathe to introduce her past to this special place - almost as much as her apartment - but she’d panicked a bit upon seeing Matthew. She was struck by the urge to get her sister - and the secrets they shared - as far away from him as possible. There was more to him than met the eye. And until she figured what it was exactly, she needed to keep her distance.

She took a sip of her foam-topped spiced toffee latte, eyeing her companion as she did the same, curious what her reaction would be to the indulgent drink.

“Ugh,” was the verdict. “How can you like that? It's so sweet.”

“I like it because its sweet,” Calina replied. “Because it’s frivolous and unnecessary and not nutritionally valuable.”

“So its a rebellion.”

She shrugged. “I guess so.”

“I get it.”

Judging by her loud and completely indiscrete outfit, Calina figured she did.

A few moments more passed in companionable silence. It was nice to be with someone she didn’t have to pretend with. Someone who knew her, and everything she’d been through. The weight of their past settled over them like a blanket, one woven from trauma and pain; oppressive and painful, but comforting in its familiarity.

But as the minutes passed Calina started to feel anxiety creeping in at the edges. She needed to know what this visit meant - and what help was needed from her. She placed her drink down on the table and leaned back in her chair. “Okay. Spill it. What’s going on?”

Yelena Belova shrugged and offered her a sad smile. “The Widows need you back.”

———

The emergency lights strobed in flashes of red, and the floor lurched underfoot as the Red Room slowly fell from the sky. But Calina had no thoughts of saving herself. She had been given a command - kill the Black Widow.

The traitor, Natasha Romanov.

Calina spun and kicked at Romanov's legs. The older widow jumped up to avoid the attack, then stumbled forward as Anya landed a punch to her back. The Widows circled her, moving closer. The traitor was outnumbered. She would be dead in moments-

But then...an explosion...a red mist, stinging her eyes...

Calina woke with a gasp, her heart thundering in her ears. She pawed at the lamp on her bedside table, exhaling in relief when she found the switch and light flooded the room.

Light which proved she was in her own bed.

In her own apartment.

Not there.

She collapsed back on the mattress and scrubbed her face with her hands. The nightmare was always the same, her brain tormenting her with the memory of the worst moment of her life. The moment of awakening. The moment when the fog of mind control lifted and she grasped just how violated she’d been.

Used, and manipulated, and sent out in the world to do horrible things against her will.

Again and again and again.

She sat up and swung her legs to the side of the bed. She wouldn’t be getting any more sleep tonight - she never did after one of those dreams. So she padded to her bathroom, stripped off her slightly damp pyjamas and hopped in the shower.

She tried to kid herself that she was merely washing off the sweat induced by the nightmare. But the truth was, she always felt…dirty…after one of those dreams. Like a layer of grime covered her, particles of shame and revulsion clinging to her pores.

The shower helped a bit. But the fresh air and the night sky helped more.

Once dried and dressed, she stepped into the shoes by her door but left her cardigan where it was - draped over the arm of the couch. She loved wrapping herself in the thick, cosy layer of baby-soft wool but not on a night like tonight, when the scorching heat of the day had barely dissipated and a blanket of humid moisture replaced the air.

Pointedly ignoring the dossier that now sat on her kitchen table, she slipped out of the door and up to the roof.

When the comforting skyline of her new home came into view, when the warm breeze danced around her, when she tipped her head back and saw the tapestry of stars overhead…only then did her breathing truly even out.

After deciding to leave the other Widows and go it alone, she’d had her pick of literally any city on earth to live. And she’d opted for New York. She’d had a mission here several years ago and had been seduced by the rich vitality of the place. The way it seemed to have a life of its own that transcended its citizens. She loved the anonymity it afforded, the way a person could get swallowed up and lost among the 8 million other inhabitants. And she loved the way the city embodied the American dream - the notion that a person could make anything of themselves here.

So yeah, choosing to live in New York had been an easy call, for many reasons.

But choosing this particular apartment building, had been down to one reason and one reason only - the rooftop access.

She only truly felt free when she was up high under the vast expanse of the sky, no walls in sight, no barriers keeping her contained. The ability to climb one short flight of stairs and step out onto this roof at any time of the day or night was a gift she would never take for granted.

She breathed deeply as she paced along the length and breadth of the space, the repetitive motion banishing the last lingering traces of her nightmare. It wasn’t surprising that the dream had come tonight. There was usually no trigger for it that she could discern, but Yelena’s unexpected visit had brought everything in her past bubbling to the surface.

The dossier that she’d spent an hour studying before falling asleep also hadn’t helped.

Yelena had handed her the file in the coffee shop after asking her to come back. “It’s only for one job,” she’d explained. “I wouldn’t ask if we weren’t desperate. I know you wanted out.” Her words were tinged with contempt.

Calina sighed. Yelena had never understood her decision, had always made Calina feel guilty for wanting to leave her past behind. “I always said I would help if you needed me. If there was a Widow who needed me.”

“There is. It's Katya.”

“You found her?” Calina leaned forward. Very few of the Widows had been present in the Red Room when it went down. Most had been out on assignment, and Yelena and the others had been tracking them down one by one in order to administer the counter-agent to the mind control serum.

Melina Vostokoff - a former Widow - had created an unlimited supply of the antidote. A way to make amends for her part in creating the mind controlling serum. So now it was just a matter of finding the other women and freeing them. They’d been pretty successful over the past few months, but a few of the Widows were so deep undercover that locating them had proven difficult.

Like Katya.

She had ‘graduated’ the red room in the same class as Yelena and Calina. That hadn’t made them friends by any stretch. They weren’t allowed to form those kinds of bonds - they were too busy being pitched against each other. But they were bound together by shared trauma, and that fostered a certain respect between them. A feeling of solidarity.

It had nagged at Calina that she had left the Widows before Katya had been found.

She would absolutely help get her back.

“We found her,” Yelena confirmed.

“What do you know?”

“She’s embedded with the Japanese ambassador in South Korea. Dreykov was planning to reignite hostilities between the two countries, to weaken their growing economies. Katya’s playing bodyguard, and apparently feeding misinformation to the diplomat and and stoking his latent resentment.”

“She was always good at that.”

All of the Widows had the same basic training. They’d all mastered the same set of skills that made Widows so formidable - hand-to-hand combat, acrobatics, weapons training, espionage and more. But along the way, each Widow found their ‘speciality’ - an aspect of training that they particularly excelled at. Trainers would then hone those abilities and handlers would tailor their missions around them.

Yelena’s specialty lay in killing. She had a sniper’s precision, and a ruthlessness which made her a formidable assassin.

Katya was adept at manipulation. Finding a target’s weakness and exploiting it. Or nurturing it, depending on the objective.

Anya - another one of their classmates - was a computer genius and master hacker.

Calina was an expert at infiltration. Deep undercover work. Her looks were adaptable to multiple different disguises. She was an uncanny mimic of accents and voices. She spoke multiple languages fluently…and the Red Room had systematically and completely wiped her innate personality, until she was the perfect blank slate. A barren field in which any persona could take root.

“What’s our in?” Calina asked.

“We’ve got to hit the ambassador’s house and corner Katya there. It’s our only option - there are too many variables outside. But the place is a fortress with a private army of guards. We need someone who can get in discretely, and then get out again with minimal disruption. If it turns into a gunfight we risk exposing the Widows.”

They were all flying under the radar of the World’s governments. Romanov had kept their existence a secret after the Red Room fell, and now they were operating independently, trying to keep out of reach of the Sokovia Accords.

Sparking off a diplomatic incident would definitely put them in reach.

“So who do you need me to be?” Calina asked.

“Erin Brownly, personal assistant to the ambassador. You’re a similar height and build and we can use the nano mask to match her face. The trick is the voice. She speaks fluent Japanese and Korean, but with a British accent. There are a few recordings on the thumb drive in here.” Yelena dug out a brown envelope from her satchel and slid it across the table.

Calina glanced inside to find a dossier on Brownly and a USB stick. “It shouldn’t be a problem.”

Yelena huffed out a laugh. “Only you would say that. Its why we needed to bring you in on this. But I'm...I'm sorry. For what its worth.”

Calina was surprised. Maybe she had imagined the contempt from before. Maybe Yelena did understand. Or was at least trying to.

Either way...“Its worth a lot. But you don’t need to apologise. I agreed to help when needed - I want to help-”

“But I know you wanted to go and build a boring life-”

“I never said boring,” Calina objected.

“-in your boring apartment, next to your boring neighbour.”

“He’s not boring!”

Yelena raised an eyebrow, and a slow smile overtook her face, making her look almost impish. It was such a change from the steely, cold Yelena of the past that Calina barely recognised her. It looked like Calina wasn't the only Widow who was uncovering her true nature from beneath the Red Room's conditioning.

And Yelena's true nature appeared to be a troublemaker.

“Oooh, Calina has a crush! Tell me everything.”

And a gossip.

Calina groaned. “I don’t have a crush.”

“Why not? He’s pretty cute, if you like that tall, bland and built look.”

Calina held back her instinctive scoff. He wasn’t cute. Cute was for puppies and boyband members. Matthew was handsome. An old-fashioned term, but it fit. He was classically handsome. With his height and his broad shoulders and his sharp, stubbled jaw and his deep, measured voice…

But it wasn’t his features that made him interesting. Good-looking men could be very boring, Calina knew that first hand. It was the other details that she’d noticed that made him distinctly not-bland. “There’s something about him-”

“I knew it!”

“Would you listen!” Calina laughed, and realised she was enjoying herself. When she'd seen Yelena outside her apartment earlier she'd been braced for another lecture. Another guilt-trip.

She hadn't expected to laugh and joke with her. It was almost like they were true sisters.

Yelena smiled in response. “Sorry, go ahead.”

“There’s something strange about him," Calina explained. "About the way he moves when he doesn’t think anyone’s watching. With a confidence and purpose, as if he can see. And the other day, I kind of…reacted…when he got too close, and he blocked my attack. Grabbed my arm as if he knew where it was - and he was strong. He also gets hurt a lot. Bruises on his face, and he holds himself a certain way when his chest or back is sore…”

Calina tailed off as she noticed Yelena’s frown. “What?” she asked nervously.

“You’ve been watching him a lot, then.”

She had. She could admit that.

The first time she’d really noticed him had been the morning his friend - and business partner - had visited. She’d left her apartment for her daily run and had almost collided with the sandy-haired man in the corridor. He’d introduced himself as ‘Foggy’, one of the strangest nicknames she’d ever heard. Then he had asked her if she had a nickname, and it had thrown her a bit. She must have looked like a clueless idiot as she floundered in the conversation - something her trainers in the Red Room would have beaten her for if it had happened on assignment.

She knew about nicknames of course - it was common practice to in Russia for people to call each other by the diminutive forms of their names. But it was something done between family members. Or friends. Or lovers. It was a gesture of affection, the spoken equivalent of a hug or a pat on the back.

There was no affection in the Red Room.

Growing up, when she was called anything besides ‘girl’ or ‘Wretched Failure’ it was always her full name. And after she graduated and the missions began, she was addressed by her designation - Widow 118.

So, no, she had never had a nickname.

And while explaining this to Foggy, she'd heard the light footsteps of the man in apartment 6A. She'd seen his shadow beneath the crack of the door a split second before it opened, so she was ready for it when he pulled it open.

Or so she'd thought. It had taken all her training to remain calm and poised when the unexpected jolt of attraction had hit her.

For the first time in her life.

To the old Calina, men were simply targets. Names in files. Existing solely to be used, seduced, killed - all on the orders of other men. The men who controlled her life.

Men had never been objects of beauty that she just wanted to look at. But to the new Calina - the one slowly trying to find out what she liked and what she wanted from this life - Matthew was a man she wanted to look at.

All the time.

So...she did.

She started pacing the end of her morning run to coincide with him leaving for work; she would slow to a jog on the opposite side of the street and watch him as he turned left out of their building and guided himself down the street with his cane. She would wait in The Hideout for him to pass by on his way home, or time her daily mail collection so that she could occasionally ride in the elevator with him.

And during the course of those sort-of encounters she had started to notice things about him. Things that only someone with her training and observational skills would detect.

Like the way he would tighten the muscles of his arm, drawing it to his side as he passed someone on the street, as if he knew they were about to bump into them. The way he would suddenly cock his head, as if picking up something no one else could hear. The way his mouth would open and his tongue would dart out, as if tasting the air...

Slight movements.

Subtle. Almost innocuous.

Unlike the incident with the boxes. That had not been subtle. And it had been the biggest clue yet that there was something different about Matthew Murdock.

She’d known he was in the mail area with her - she had timed her arrival home on purpose. But something about the way that he had suddenly stepped close behind her, his arm outstretched, had triggered her instincts. And she’d reacted without thought to the feeling of threat.

And he’d responded in kind.

He’d been quick. Accurate. And strong.

Really strong.

Not wanting to give him an opening to ask her how or why she had attacked him, she had ignored the evidence of his own training. And in the elevator afterwards she had deflected his questions, not feeling confident enough to keep up the charade of her cover story.

Something else her trainers would have punished her for.

Severely.

“Is that a bad thing?" Calina eventually responded. "Keeping an eye on my neighbour? I need to know who I’m living next to.”

“That’s sensible,” Yelena agreed. “But don’t get too close. I’m worried you could get hurt. You were always more…sensitive than the rest of us.”

Thinking back on the conversation from the safety of the rooftop, Calina was touched that Yelena apparently cared about her - if a little insulted that she was viewed as ‘sensitive’. The way Yelena had said the word sounded like a weakness.

But Calina wasn’t weak. She had survived every bit of the same training as Yelena.

And more.

Besides, she wasn’t looking to get close to anyone. Not when her life was so uncertain. And definitely not when she was about to undertake a dangerous, diplomatically fraught mission on foreign soil to rescue one of her sisters.

She couldn’t afford to be distracted by a handsome lawyer.

A handsome lawyer…who was standing behind her on the rooftop.

----------

CHAPTER 4

So I hope Calina’s slightly strange actions in the first couple of chapters make more sense now! Did anyone guess her secret? And how do you think Matt will react when he discovers it...?

Taglist: @hollandorks, @yanna-banana

If you’d like to be added, let me know!

#Daredevil #Daredevil fic #daredevil fanfic #daredevil fanfiction #daredevil x original female character #matt murdock #matt murdock x original character #Tabula rasa #myfic

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unethicalexperiments · 3 months

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oh now that dragula s5 is over i can do my writeup on that too. spoilers for the whole season (and probably show) below the cut

i guess i'll kinda go episode by episode for this.

ep 1: fun way to start off, love when they make them walk around in the woods n shit in full drag. everyone meeting for the first time was fun as well big personalities right off the bat. correct winner and correct bottom 2. i loved the extermination challenge on this one, hardcore as fuck.

ep 2: i will say i am not a fan of contestants (of any show) returning for no real reason. however i very much enjoyed jay kay on the show so i can't say i'm too mad about it. VERY correct winner, throb nailed that floorshow. i do not remember if cynthia deserved bottom2 off the top of my head but correct extermination. unfortunate because onyx is a cool performer just a little too... shy/quiet/etc for the show. there is no amount of money you could have paid me to do this extermination i do NOT do bugs </3 but i do love a gross one.

ep3: this was the ghost episode which was fun. by this point this season had already surpassed s4 for me. loved jay kay's bellhop look, deserved the win especially after the rough start. i remember throb doing really well this one too. as for the bottom 3 this ep. clearly there is something about orkgotik's drag that i just do not get. the entire time i thought their looks were messy and i didn't get the concepts but they were PRAISED by the judges (up until here) for it all. like ep1 when they were called to stay on stage i legit thought they were bottom 3 not top 3. obviously this is just a me thing bc other people online seem to really like them too. i forgot about satanna so i'm assuming her going home here was right. another good extermination with the rats but fuck that looked miserable. i would do it but i would not be happy about it LOL

ep4: ok it seems like the fanbase doesn't care for monsters of rock but i LOVE monsters of rock, and having this broken up into 2 episodes felt like a bonus for me. fantasia absolutely deserved the win here, she really is an excellent performer. i know a lot of ppl thought the whole time she wasn't giving monster (myself included at a few points) but you cannot deny her stage presence at all. jarvis and jay kay definitely did deserve bottom 2 and jarvis did lose that lipsync which was unfortunate but jay really beat his ass lol. jarvis's death scene may also have been one of the best in the show so far.

ep5: part 2 of monsters of rock. ok so i enjoyed this half less LMAO i do not care about songwriting on the show/rpdr, most of the time its mid at best; but i do get that its also how a lot of artists make money. but then again not every drag performer should be a recording artist lol. ANYWAY on to the actual floorshow. orkgotik's band NAILED it and they def deserved the win. fantasia's band was for the most part pretty good (or at least fantasia herself was good LOL) but man... you could tell niohuru had never performed like that before. i also forgot anna was on this season and it was way past her time to go. i like the tattoo exterminations, but it is pretty clear they use those to get rid of whichever contestant they want to get rid of. i think anna held her own in this extermination comparatively speaking between the two tattoo designs. i liked the tattoo challenge from s3 the best where they got to pick a tattoo for the other competitor.

ep6: i BARELY remember this episode oop. had to go to the wiki to get the synopsis of what happened. i thought it was strange the boulets said the floorshows weren't "what they were expecting". ok if everyone "missed the mark" then clearly your instructions weren't good enough. i remember the looks being cool but the actual "selling" being kind of.. forced? idk. not as much fun as i was hoping it would have been. i do not remember anyones looks this episode, but i do remember blackberri's win being deserved. i do not remember if fantasia deserved bottom but jay kay definitely did, and he gave up in the extermination! so yeah! its just pregnancy simulators that shouldn't be that difficult especially when you have contestants bungee jumping and eating maggots.

ep7: oooohhhhhh mygod. this was a great episode. i know they also said the runways "weren't what they were expecting" again but like i said before that's on them. i thought these runways were cool as fuck. blackberri and throb had really cool looks but hooolllyyyyyy shit niohuru. niohuru blew me the fuck away with that floorshow. i literally sat there eyes locked on the screen jaw open. she deserved to win the season on that alone. holy fuck. cynthia and orkgotik were definitely deserving of bottom 2 but man i loved cynthia she was so much fun even if her runways weren't the best. personally would have sent orkgotik home here but like i said i'm clearly missing something about their drag that everyone else loves.

ep8: this one i didn't care for but it certainly wasn't a bad episode. i think i'm just unfamiliar with the floorshow theme and that's probably why it didn't impact me the same. again i would not have given orkgotik the win here, i would have given it to throb. the extermination challenge for this one was fun i like it when they let them straight up fight. this was unfortunately fantasia's time, but i think she did better than a lot of people expected, i think she showed she has the versatility to be any kind of performer.

ep9: last supper, which is always a good time. loved whoever it was pulling a vape out in the middle of the episode fgfhjdsk i do not care for on-screen relationships but i know a lot of people wanted a clearer answer wrt niohuru/orkgotik.

ep10: ok so finale. i have to say i did NOT like final 4 last season and i did NOT like it this season. there is no reason to have 4 out of your 11 contestants as potential winners. i would have cut orkgotik or blackberri (but really orkgotik) and made it a final 3. i also hate that they went in a different order (filth/horror/glamor as opposed to glamor/filth/horror) bc seasons 1-3 went in the same order. i also have to say i wasn't particularly blown away by anyone's finale looks. i thought throb did a good job overall, if we were picking a winner based off the final floorshow alone it would have been throb. i thought niohuru's and blackberri's looks were all around kinda mid, niohuru's takeout look was very good though. i actually liked orkgotik's horror look for this one! only took me to the finale to get on board with them then the boulets immediately turn around and say they didn't like that one dfgfhjdksa either way, niohuru was the clear winner of the season and she definitely earned it. its also nice to have a non-american, asian trans woman in the winner's circle.

overall, i would rank the seasons 2 > 3 > 5 > titans > 1 >>>>> 4 at this point in time (i had a lot of issues with season 4) but its also been a minute since i've watched season 1. not ranking these on performers but in terms of how the season was produced. i think they've improved a LOT since season 4/titans alone, let alone season 1, but i think there's still some room for improvement. and now i'm getting bored writing this so i'm ending it here lol

#talking to myself #dragula #the boulet brothers dragula

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h4rringtonsworld · 2 years

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is there someone else? | steve harrington

steve harrington x (f)mech!reader

summary : you were the it girl in hawkins high but you also loved working with cars. it was an honour working with eddie, and also an honour when steve harrington comes in, in need of a little car fixing.

wc : 2.1k

warnings : angst (a little), fluff, jealousy, cussing, this happens after s3 and before s4!

a/n : thank you @lovingtheresidentfreak for this idea! inspired by the song is there someone else by the weeknd (kinda), eddie and steve are already friends, okay thank you

~~~

you knew you had a reputation in hawkins high. you’re the smart girl, the pretty and nice girl, every girl was jealous of you and every guy would ask ‘would you like to go on a date with me?’ but you were never interested. all the guys who asked you out so far were just sleazeballs and you never really cared about your ‘status’.

you were glad to be friends with chrissy though. she was sweet and eventhough she was in the cheer team, she was not your typical mean girl. you weren’t on the cheer team though, its just never been your thing. one downside of being friends with chrissy? she was dating jason carver. the biggest dick in hawkins high, well not literally. he’s never been really a problem to you personally so you just minded your own business.

you did have one tiny secret though, in school you were this sweet and proper looking girl but you loved being a mechanic. your dad had always asked for your help in fixing his car and that sparked your interest. the way a car works, the different types of cars, how does one part affect everything else. it was fascinating. you took up a job working at a car shop alongside eddie munson. he was, to say the least, interesting. he was shocked the first day you came in and said you were here to work.

‘y/n? you? here? to fix cars and shit? are you sure? i think you need to pinch me because i must be dreaming’, he was in a black metallica shirt with the sleeves cut off and his overall straps were off his shoulders and his hair was in a low messy bun. he wipes his forehead which was stained with grease. he was shock to say the least. what was a girl like you doing at a place like this.

‘you need to close your mouth before a fly comes in munson. yeah, its my first day, don’t have to look so shock’ and that was a beginning of your friendship. at first, he was hesitant but after seeing how fast you fix cars, he was impressed. you guys constantly hung out when no customers were around or even after work for a quick beer or smoke.

today though, you were late. you got held back by your history teacher asking if you could do an extra assignment. you quickly ran to your car and began driving to work. you were glad you had your overalls in your car so you could just throw them on and tie your hair up. you see eddie already getting started on…steve? steve harrington’s car?

‘eds, shit man i’m so sorry im late, mrs click had me stay and listen to her rant for like 15 minutes’ you rushed out your car, trying to catch your breath. you went to give eddie a quick hug.

‘chill out y/l/n, today’s a slow day, i got it, anyways…y/n, steve. steve, y/n’, you didn’t need any introducing. steve harrington. ah king steve as they say. you knew who he was, he was once a less shittier version of jason carver. now, i hear he hangs with some girl name robin and some kids. pretty cute to me.

steve did not need introducing either. he knew who you were. popular girl, friends with chrissy cunningham. he did take his time looking at you though. overalls over your sweater and white reeboks with your hair in a ponytail. pretty, really pretty, he thought to himself.

‘hey steve, looks like your car is making weird noises’, you laughed. a blush rise up to his cheeks. he was embarrassed for some reason. ‘yeah its been like this for a few days and instead of getting used to the noise, i thought i should bring it here.’

‘you know, steve and i here are actually pals, right stevie?’, eddie nudges steve. steve rolls his eyes, he hates that nickname and now you know what eddie calls him and you might start using it too. ‘okay steve, you can just sit over there and i’ll get your car all good to go in 10 minutes’.

steve sat and looked at you and eddie. you were throwing your hands in the air talking about something that pissed you off while eddie was laughing. hmm, they look really close but steve could not be thinking about a girl right now. he had to go back to family video, take care of dustin and the others, think about college. no, a girl is not what he needs right now.

‘so…do you like steve?’ eddie whispers as you bent down helping him. you were not expecting that. ‘um yeah i guess, he seems nice’. you shrugged your shoulders, not really knowing what else to say.

‘not what i mean, he looks like he has a little crush on you huh? what do you think? think you could tap that ass?’ you shoved eddie at the inappropriate comment. ‘y/n! this wrench could have dropped on my face, jesus’ eddie rubs his face putting the wrench back in the toolbox. to be honest, you were scared. dating in hawkins is almost impossible and most of the guys here only want you because of your status and looks. you tried going on dates but it just didn’t seem to work out.

‘i have officially known him for about 5 minutes. i cannot decide on shit eds’, you helped eddie clean up the area. ‘just so you know, if you ever do decide, i can be the best wingman ever’ eddie winks while washing his hands.

he walks to steve who has been doing nothing but bouncing his leg while looking at his fingers. ‘hey, your car’s all good man. let me know if anything is wrong, me or you know, y/n can help you’, eddie emphasising your name, grinning widely. steve furrowed his eyebrows and hands eddie the cash but eddie pushes it away ‘you’re a friend, its all good’.

‘thanks eddie, i’m going to head off now, i have a shift and if i don’t arrive on time, robin will not let me hear the end of it so bye eds, bye y/n!’, he takes one last look at you before waving and driving off. he will definitely come back again.

~~~

he does come back again. and again. and again. whether if its a small noise his car makes or when his car gets smoky. one day though, he was so desperate to stay longer at the shop that he took his car and hit it against a lamp post so the rear view mirror would break or would come off completely. he smiled to himself. was he crazy for doing this? maybe but he just wants to see you so badly.

with steve coming in so often, you learnt so much about him. how he became best friends with robin, how he suddenly had 6 kids to take care of, how him and eddie became friends and his job at family video. it was nice, having meaningful things to talk about. this made you wary though, you could not let yourself get attached too quickly so you vow to yourself that if steve came in again, eddie would be the one attending to him instead.

‘stevie, he-, what the hell? how did your rear view mirror come off like that? were you going over the speed limit or what? didn’t take you to be such a daredevil harrington’, eddie smirked while inspecting the car. ‘you know i need to charge you for this’. eddie snatched the mirror away from steve. there was no sign of you until he peek over eddie, he sees you cleaning equipment and tools.

‘hey y/n! how are yo-’, but before he could finish his sentence you turn around the corner and disappeared. ‘is she okay?’ steve furrowed his eyebrows trying to find you. ‘yeah i hope so, just take a seat man, it’ll be awhile’.

after about 5 minutes, you came back and helped eddie out. steve watched you from afar, you looked more beautiful each day. he thought to himself, if beauty could kill, he would already be six feet under by now. then he sees how you interact with eddie, throwing your head back as you two exchanged fits of laughter and you two would get so close. steve unconsciously clench his fists. damn munson, why you gotta be so charming.

you knew steve was watching so you made it a point to be a little flirty with eddie. touching his biceps, laughing more loudly than you should and leaning in closer. eddie caught on to that and he played along. it was wrong. you knew that but it was better like this, to distance yourself away from steve.

‘hey i’m gonna grab late lunch nearby, munson, you want anything? steve?’ steve perked up at the mention of his name, caught off guard. both eddie and steve shake their heads.

as soon as you drove off steve comes up to eddie, ‘hey man, whats up with you and y/n? you two going out or something’, he didn’t mean to come off rude but he needed to know.

‘someone’s jealous. so what if i was harrington?’ eddie smirked taunting steve and that made steve roll his eyes. he was tempted to throw a punch but retracted his fist thinking of the consequences knowing its not worth it.

‘steve steve steve, you are so oblivious’, eddie shakes his head and pats steve on his shoulder. steve was confused. what was he clueless about? ‘and for the record, i’m not dating her. she likes someone else’ eddie winks and gets back to work. could it be that the someone else is steve?

when you came back, steve was still there. you sighed internally, not knowing how long you can ignore him. steve walks up to you, ‘y/n, can i talk to you? just five minutes, please?’, he pleads looking at you. ‘i’ll excuse myself, give you guys some privacy’ eddie put his tools down and went around back for a smoke.

once eddie left, you two stood there awkwardly. steve broke the silence, ‘i, um, heard from eddie that you have a little crush on someone’ steve moves closer as a smirk grew on his lips suddenly gaining confidence. ‘and? what makes you think he’s telling the truth?’ you look up at him while putting your hands on your hips.

steve moved even closer now and you can feel his breath on your skin. your whole body tensed up at that feeling. ‘because of the way you’re reacting right now’. you moved away from him, suddenly feeling the heat disappear and the air around is cold now.

‘you don’t know shit steve. now what do you want from me’ you cross your arms over your chest. ‘i want you to say it y/n, tell me eddie is wrong, say you like me’. he walked closer until your back hits a wall.

‘steve, i- i- i don’t know what you’re talking about.’ you tried pushing him off but he stayed planted on the floor. ‘y/n…i just need you be honest because… i don’t want to be the only one’ he huffed.

you finally look up at him, ‘the only one? what are you talking about?’.

‘okay, i know this may sound silly but i- i like you. i like you so much. i come here every week just to see you. your beautiful smile, your melodious laugh, your lame jokes, everything. it feels like i can talk to you for hours and we’ve not even known each other for that long. i want to take you out on a date. i’ll guarantee you have a good time’, he lightly laugh. you were flattered. its been long since you’ve been on a date and now the steve harrington is asking you?

maybe you were still a little afraid of dating but you can’t avoid it forever, ‘i would love to go on a date with you, stevie’ damn he knew that nickname would come back and bite him in the ass. ‘eddie told me you hated that nickname’ you giggled.

‘are you two done making eyes at each other? there’s still work to do you know’ eddie came in dramatically closing his eyes with his hands.

‘don’t be so dramatic eds and…thanks…for you know all this’, steve took your hand in his. ‘told you i’m the best wingman y/n. you guys can go on your date later, y/n has work to do and steve your car is all good’ eddie points to a customer waiting while walking steve to his car.

‘sweets, i’ll pick you up at 7pm? there’s a drive-in movie happening’.

‘i love a good movie, now let me work, i’ll see you later’ you giggled and walked towards the customer waiting.

‘see you later beautiful’, he waves, driving off to get ready for the best date of his life.

~~~

#jealous steve harrington #friends to lovers #jealous steve #steve harrington #steve harrington fluff #steve harrington one shot #steve harrington x fem!reader #steve harrington x reader #steve stranger things #steve x reader #steve x mech!reader

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tuiyla · 1 year

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it's always seemed obvious that SOMETHING happened in the writer's room around Quick in S2. They were promo'd as if they'd be a main couple right next to Finchel. But then all their scenes got cut, Fabrevans happened. And I just refuse to believe this was all solely about Chord and Dianna having chemistry. Something changed even before that, imo. I used to think maybe they were getting inklings that something was off with Mark, but foisting him on Idina in S3 kind of kills that theory. So I just have no clue how they went from the obvious, bordering on Finchel-level of endgame foreshadowing in S1 to the absolute ugliness of S2-3. I mean, S1 Puck was a dick, but it was at least teenage boy thoughtlessness, not the deliberately awful stuff like humiliating Quinn with the Lucy reveal, or brutally rejecting her in S3 just to then turn around and use her after Shelby rejects him, or him having absolutely zero connection to the plot where she almost DIED, etc. Part of me kind of wishes there was more Quick fic out there just so I could see how people tried to make sense of all of it.

I think you're onto something there but I'd say that even in season 1B there was a shift. I found it so weird that I could just not tell what Quick's relationship status was in the back nine at all. There's a sense that they're sort of together and Quinn is living with him until Mercedes takes her in, but by that point Quinn has completely given up on Puck. He clearly still flirts with cheerleaders and quite explicitly still hooks up with Santana. He goes after Mercedes shamelessly in Laryngitis and Quinn doesn't care about it as far as her relationship with Puck is concerned.

That, to me, is in stark contrast to how season 1A sets them up because you're right, they're poised as a second main couple after Finchel. This love square very much gives the impression that despite alternate pairings the endgames will be Finchel and Quick. We spend much time on Puck pining for Quinn and trying to be the father to their kid Quinn doesn't want him to be, plus scenes like the baking one and the overall vibe that Quinn is into him beyond status, unlike with Finn. And it's kind of a shame that was all dropped because, honestly? In season 1A I kinda dig Quick. Puck really is trying and I just get the vibe that they're destined in the same way Finchel is signaled as destined to be to us. Even Hairography implies, imo, that though it will be a journey because Puck is still young and stupid and flirts with others, they have a real shot at it together. Idk why that wasn't the trajectory they followed but it seemed to be that Santana was destined to be an obstacle that they'd eventually overcome and Quinn would further be contrasted to her as the cheerleader who got redeemed and gets the boy. I'm not sorry Santana wasn't a part of Quick's story after this but I don't get what changed.

Puck became a complete dick to Quinn in season 1B and even their Beith scene in 1x22 implies more of a quiet defeat than hints towards a future for them. Like you say, season 2 just drops them entirely and then season 3 comes back with a vengeance and all its messiness. It's like they wanted to reintroduce Quick in season 3A and changed their minds twice, leaving another Quick moment to the very end in 3x22. Which I hate very much btw thanks for asking. But who could ever ship them by this point, after season 1B and the nothingness of s2 and the pure ugliness of s3. But then... season 5 pretends episodes between 1x14 and 3x22 didn't happen. And omg you're right Quinn almost DIED and Puck didn't have a single reaction. Not even a "that's rough buddy." He only cares about Quinn when it's convenient for the plot. You know what it is, they weren't a Finchel roadblock in s1B anymore so who gives a shit and Puck was with Lauren in s2. Beyond Finchel they're an afterthought.

All this to say that idk what happened but it's weird. Whatever I'd say about the behind the scenes stuff would be conjecture and I have no idea if something similar to the supposed reason why Pucktana stopped having scenes together happened. As far as I'm aware, that wasn't the case. I don't think anything we know for a fact explains season 1B and how they went from hinted endgame couple to "we only tolerate each other because of the baby." Surely the writers should have cared more about them even after Fuinn was over. And n season 2, okay I get it Chord came in and they wanted Fabrevans to happen and then Pizes was a thing, but they were back to being so awful in season 3. It was so all over the place and based on season 1A you wouldn't guess how they were treated. Show someone just season 1A and their reunion in season 5 and they'd think they probably had a nice enough slow burn will they won't they going on for four seasons.

I'm just so confused about Quick. Something happened. They could have had a perfectly fine, even endearing story. When Rachel realizes in Mash-Up that Puck does Glee to be closer to Quinn, I feel her. I agree with her. I see that quiet devotion in Puck and I believe that he genuinely wants to be with Quinn. But then he blows it, and then we see Beth's conception, and he treats her like shit in season 3. When they're not being actively bad as a couple, they fully ignore each other. What am I supposed to make of that? How am I supposed to find reunion triumphant?

#quick #and also i guess #anti quick #they genuinely had something there #but then... yeah #and idk why we'll probs never know why #maybe it was just that they didn't give a shit #i don't think it was anything to do with bts 'drama' or m*rk #glee asks #quick asks #anon

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stagefoureddiediaz · 2 years

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But what does it mean that buck's hair is also a little bit 'messy' at least for buck standards he always has his hair combed back and the other time it was messy was when he refused to leave his apratment after the embolism and the other times it was styled curly

Nonnie, Bucks hair is such an interesting one and my current read on it is actually that he wears it all coifed and primped when he's putting up a front - hiding himself behind it being super styled - its kinda like he's uncomfortable, but more of a emotional discomfort if you get me. It's when he's figuring out who he is and when he's not really comfortable in his own skin - the fact this style disappears when he's working through thing in therapy is so telling.

We saw his hair in that straightened style in s1 and s2, it's a little less tightly styled at the beginning of s3 before reverting back when the lawsuit arc starts - it's starting to loosen off again by the end of S3. Season 4 we get a bit of a covid cut going on - grown out and a bit floofy but still styled straight, then towards the end of 4 we get the gelled curls - which disappear in s5 (post shooting!) we've maintained the straightened style through 5a and the fact that we seem to be getting both the straightened at the beginning of 5b and heading into more floofy curls towards the end of 5b - is like music to my ears because if you look at the times when its more curly - its when things are going well in Buckley-Diaz land - when Buck and Eddie are in sync with each other once they've established the bond - basically from the beginning of 3.

This is a bit general at the moment and I dont have the time to sit and go through to document every Buck hairstyle episode by episode but the fact that he's had over coifed hair for 5a while he's been with Tay Kay is so telling and the fact that the curls are coming back later on in 5b suggests to me that she is gone and we're going to see movement on the Buddie front - because Buck is moving forward!!

does this even make sense - it does in my head!!

#kym answers things #Bucks hair #we love that the curls seem to be making a comeback!#911 on fox #911 spoilers #911 speculation #buck hair theory #911 #911 fox #911onfox #evan buckley #buck #anti taylor kelly #not really but to be safe

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pynkhues · 3 years

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Please recommend some of your fav Rio fics!

Of course, anon! Since you asked for Rio fics, I'm going to guess you meant Rio POV fics? If not, I'm sorry, haha, because that's what I've collated, but I hope you give these a shot regardless! They're all fics I think are pretty great. ;-)

Below a cut, because this got long.

But when he does reappear at the store—she still doesn't hear him coming, she needs to work on that—she's wearing a fuckin' dress, and he's glad she hasn't seen him yet because he can't stop himself from grinning.

Maybe it ain't for him, but given the fact that he doesn't think he's seen her legs since he came back—aside from that one night at the bar when she was definitely feeling herself—it seems like this is an intentional break in the pattern. Either way, he fuckin' loves the idea that she's been dressing up all week, not sure if he's coming but wanting to be ready if he does.

Now Use Both Hands by ms_scarlet / @mego42 6k words. Explicit. Beth x Rio. S3 canon divergence.

Ooooof, this fic causes me physical pain, but I love it a whole lot. Meg really captures Beth and Rio at their most acidic, their most sharp edged, while also managing to balance that with the feelings they desperately don’t want to have. It’s a bit magic, and the fact that she follows this up with another fave, Listening Through the Air Shaft is *chef’s kiss*.

- - - -

When he wakes, he's in a hospital bed, mouth dry as bone and he can taste blood, stale and metallic, on his tongue. The pain in his chest has been dulled by the drugs, but it still lingers, a persistent ache that spikes with every breath.

By all rights, he's a dead man walking.

Ten hours, they had him in surgery. From the look of his chart, he'd flatlined twice, and he can feel the consequences of that, see it in the bruises on his chest, the exhaustion lining the faces of his family. He'd woken to a little hand in his, Pop's cheeks damp with tears, and shit, it'd been close. Too close.

Bury a Friend by @ejunkiet >1k words. Mature. Beth x Rio S3 canon divergence.

Pivoting from 3.01, this fic is a wonderful, quiet character study that looks at Rio in the aftermath of the shooting before he explodes back into Beth’s life. It pulses with emotion and with the promise of catharsis, and it’s just a really special little fic. The Rio voice is terrific too.

- - - -

He finally gets what he needs one day when Elizabeth’s wearing this tight black sweater with a keyhole that shows off just enough to make Rio’s jaw rock. It’s so out of the ordinary, so unlike her ugly li’l sweaters or her surburban mama button-ups, he does a double take, head whippin’ around so fast that she catches it immediately. Then she catches where his gaze lands, where it keeps landin’ through their whole stilted, irritated conversation, and he sees her chest pinken til he can count her freckles. He sucks his lower lip into his mouth, and her lips fall open just the smallest bit, and then she looks up at him.

Eyes locked on each other, Rio takes a step closer. Elizabeth doesn’t back away.

I Will Collect You and Capture You by @foxmagpie 17k words. Explicit. Beth x Rio S3 canon divergence.

I feel like I've recced this fic 1,200 times at this point, haha, but it really is one of my favourite fics in the fandom. It has this sort of grip on you as a reader that almost embodies Beth's grip on Rio in the story, and the way it builds and builds and releases only to build and build again is really delicious, affecting writing.

- - - -

“Com’n her and her lady friends were shakin’”

“Shakin’ about the lemon on the fuckin’ granite, sure.”

They chuckled as the car rolled on, the suburbs slipping away with the sun.

“Think they’ll pay up?”

There was a groan as Rio shifted in his seat, flexing his fingers along the dash.

“Neighborhood like this? Everybody knows someone who knows someone with a trust fund.”

Mick’s lighter flickered, followed by long, rasping inhale. “And a boat.”

Smoke swirled lazily through the open window up into the purple sky.

“And a boat.” Echoed Rio.

Drivin' through the Suburbs by gangfriend / @00gangfriend00 5k words. Teen+. Mick + Rio friendship, Beth x Rio. Canon compliant.

It takes a lot to make me laugh out loud in a fic, but this one does multiple times. It's just insanely fun, and captures Rio and Mick at their most boyish in a way I find utterly charming. It's really, really delightful.

- - - -

She’s got her crimes wrapped up and categorized in folders with labels and post-its. Wrapped up in gift paper with a big blue bow on it. And she’ll probably ask Turner do you want freshly baked cookies or some shit when they go raiding her kitchen.

Rio should really get it under control. Her, get her under control.

She opens the door and slumps onto the front seat, her eyes set angrily on him. Nineteen voicemails and she’s still got things to say: he sees it in the twitch of her hand, the restless, frustrated pattern. Any minute now she’s going to settle on new words to voice her complaints like he’s here to listen. Like he’s got the time— like he cares. Like he’d better.

It’s a Work Thing by isoldewas >1k words. Mature. Beth x Rio. 2.12 canon divergent.

I'm a bit of a sucker for a good canon divergent fic, and this one pivots the car break up in 2.12 in a smutty way that just works unfairly well. It's such a great little fic that really settles well into Rio's headspace during the messiness of s2, and I love it.

- - - -

They settle in their respective places and Rio takes the opportunity to give Elizabeth the same once over that asshole did. Her ass really does look great in those pants and she could fill out any shirt. Her eyes linger over him too, tracing his skin, the bar tattoos peeking out from under his t-shirt that she’s seen a million times but she devours at every opportunity. Then her eyes meet his and she gives him that small, crooked lil’ smile.

He’s not one for religion, but every so often he takes his mom to Spanish mass. All the viejitos and pious Catholic types think he’s a banger but his ma’s still excited to show him off. He sits with her in the pew and when the priest asks for the congregation to give thanks to God, he says a prayer for the riches that have come to him, the health and brilliance of his son, the vitality of the other little ones in his life now, and Elizabeth. And when he thinks of her in those moments, he sees her in his mind’s eye with this exact look on her face.

A Bit of a Stretch by @septiembrre 5k words. Teen+. Beth x Rio. Established relationship.

Beth and Rio do a yoga class together! There’s such a lived-in feel to this fic that it feels impossible not to fall a bit in love with it – their relationship is explored in a way that feels true to who the characters are, while sanding down the edges to create something that feels sweet in the way they usually aren’t in canon. It's a great fic, but more than that, it really just works in a way that's a lot more complicated than it looks, and it’s all the more charming for it.

- - - -

He’s happy to keep kissing her like this. To savour it. Realises she’s undone the last few buttons of his shirt at some point as she shoves it down his shoulders. Doesn’t have a second to think about his ugly scars pressed to her skin. Can just feel her little hot palms snaking up his back and grippin’ him tight. Refusing to let any light between them as they kiss for what feels like hours.

He realises these are the lips he’s been tasting. Searching for in other women when his night’s got too unbearably quiet, hunting for an echo of the thing he really wanted. Comin’ up short every damn time. Sweet and soft and lethal. Unique to her.

It’s longing in a way he’s never felt. This is the taste of it.

As Good as This by @riosnecktattoo 5k words. Explicit. Beth x Rio. 4.05 canon divergence.

Okay, I know I just said how much I loved canon divergence fics, but it bears repeating – I love canon divergence fics, haha. This is such a great alternate take on how the wire scene in 4.05 goes down, and it simmers with tension from the opening line. The way it escalates as Rio navigates this newest betrayal works really well too, and it results in a pretty sexy and surprisingly emotional sequence. Magic!

- - - -

“Do we have a deal?” She asks.

When he turns to look at her she’s smiling, and that’s when he realizes he’s absolutely fucked. He’d just fucked himself out of almost a quarter of a million dollars. He lets his eyes drop down her body, licks his lips and nods.

“I choose the place,” he says and turns on his side to face her. “You owe me half - with interest,” he says and slides a hand into her hair. She’s damp, the sweat slowly cooling.

“That’s not what - “ she opens her mouth to protest and he takes that opportunity to slide his mouth across hers and lick into her mouth.

Long Nights by zetuslapetus / @querenaxx 2k words. Explicit. Beth x Rio. S3 canon divergence.

Rio and Beth bone while negotiating a deal! What's not to love, haha. This has such a fun checks and balances feel to it which just makes me want to peel my skin off, it's so good. It's exactly the way I like my Beth and Rio - hot and snarky and constantly trying to get a leg over the other, literally and figuratively. It's the best.

- - - -

He should go out and find someone to fuck. Maybe text one of his hookups. See if Jen’s working. He has options.

He knows what he should do.

But it turns out fucking other people is a worse hell than the one they create when they’re together.

And now that he’s yielded to this wicked ecstasy, he knows he’ll do anything to keep sitting in the fire with her.

To Sit in Hell with You by @daydreamstew 2k words. Beth x Rio. Explicit. s4 canon divergence.

Canon-divergent from 4.06 – Beth and Rio keep hooking up after the time at his grandma’s place. It’s fun and sexy while also keeping the complicated push-pull and lack of communication at the heart of them. Deeelightful.

- - - -

“Does it make it easier?” Maddie asks him once they’re spent, maybe emboldened because he has already brought her into their bed. Which may be unfair, because Lee had been in their bed from the beginning.

“What?” He seems lost in his thoughts, his arm behind his head. In a few minutes he’ll get up and get ready to get back to the factory. Like always, she’ll be looking for her keys so she won’t be late for work.

“Getting it out of your system before you see her.”

Rio glances at her. “I don’t always see you when I see her.”

It’s so rare for him to explicitly mention this woman, however tenuously, and Maddie waits for more. Rio’s gotten like this about a few women in his life but it doesn’t happen often.

Sure am Using You by aniara 2k words. Explicit. Rio x OC, Rio x Beth.

It's not for everyone, but I absolutely love fics that feature characters with other people in ways that tell you something about the characters' feelings about somebody else. In this fic, Rio's fucking one of his childhood friends, but it's all about Beth really, and the way both Rio and the OC negotiate that is really compelling writing, and feels so in character for Rio. I really love it.

- - - -

Rio dreams of her that night, again. It’s irritatingly pedestrian – Elizabeth’s kissing him deep and then, ah, suddenly his gun’s in her hand and she shoots him, with a double encore. It’s always variations on the same futile theme. When he wakes it’s not that he’s freaked, unaware of reality or his whereabouts. But he’s been soaked in anger for so long. He can’t think straight, not on her. It’s honestly terrifying. Cos stubbornly keeping his head on right is – that’s him. Maybe her entire raison d’etre is destroying every single one of his attributes though.

He ain’t sure if his subconscious is desperately screaming that he’s made the wrong move, letting her live. Or if it’s the total opposite. Could be fucking neither. It’s not – it’s not getting any easier. And that main reason for not biting the bullet, that he’d be mad as hell for being mad as hell at himself over killing her, it's not smelling any less idiotic.

Climbing up the Walls by s_t_c_s / @sothischickshe 8k words. Explicit. Beth x Rio. S3 canon divergence.

Another canon divergence from 2.13 and an interpretation of how s3 could've gone, and another one I really love. There's a throughline of chaotic frustration to this fic that rings true to Rio's character for me, and the way that that reverberates through his moments not just with Beth, but alone and with other women, feels really textured and interesting and real. It's pretty great.

#this was fun to put together #so many good fiicccss #truly a blessed fandom #beth x rio #beth boland #rio #nbc good girls #gg fic #fic recs #welcome to my ama

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lesbianrobin · 3 years

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What do you think are the good and bad aspects of each season of ST?

ok 1. thank u for this question omg and 2. this answer may or may not be a mess, but either way it’s long (almost 7k words lmao) bc i’m insane, which is why it’s under a cut. it’s still by no means an exhaustive list but these are the things that just kinda came to mind.

also i realize you asked “good and bad” and i wrote this whole post as “strengths and weaknesses” which um. is not Exactly what you asked. but close enough <3 i also ended up including a lot of au ideas ksjdckmn bc like i personally hate when people say a certain plot or whatever was bad without suggesting anything that could have improved it yknow so whenever possible i tried to provide Some idea for fixing the issues i had with the show!!

season 1

strengths (this is probably gonna be the longest section but that’s because a lot of these strengths also apply to s2/s3 by default)

nostalgia and authenticity

this one’s pretty simple, but i think that season one did a good job of blending classic eighties media homages (such as the many many e.t./el parallels) with explicit pop culture references (such as mike’s yoda impression, mentions of the x-men, etc) to create a show that’s essentially dripping in early eighties nostalgia without it feeling too forced. before st, i think the most popular depiction of the eighties in mainstream media was that overly exaggerated neon scrunchie aesthetic from the mid to late eighties, and it was usually done in a comedic sense first and foremost. st took a different approach, instead focusing on the early eighties, a time that’s often ignored in favor of going either Full Seventies or Full Eighties, and i think that this choice likely resonated with adults who lived through the eighties and hadn’t yet seen something that felt quite so accurate to their own adolescence. a lot of young people who watched st were totally unfamiliar with this period of time, unfamiliar with books/movies like “stand by me” that st borrows from heavily, and i think st lent more seriousness to the eighties than most young people had experienced so far, and this was refreshing and interesting!

the use of dnd in the show is also quite genius in a way i’m not sure i can articulate?? it isn’t something Everyone would have played at the time, but it’s something that existed within a different context back in the eighties than it does today, and it really lent a sort of authenticity to the naming of the show’s sci-fi elements. like, of course these kids would name parallel dimensions and monsters and superpowers after these similar things in their favorite game! it just feels so real and it grounds st in our reality moreso than you might expect from the typical sci-fi or horror universe.

utilization of existing tropes

almost every single character in st clearly originates from some popular trope. the plot itself is riddled with classic eighties movie tropes. almost every single element of stranger things can be clearly traced back to some iconic eighties film or just to, like, overused horror/sci-fi/mystery/coming-of-age movie tropes in general. this might sound like a bad thing, but it really works in st’s favor! starting off with familiar tropes gives st the ability to easily create a lot of complexity and make a big impact by selectively deviating from those familiar, comfortable tropes!! while el’s whole plot, hopper’s character, etc, are all examples of this in action, i think the steve/nancy/jonathan plot is the greatest example. even from the start, the fact that good girl barb dies while nancy is off having sex with her asshole boyfriend is an incredibly thorough inversion of the most well-known horror movie trope in the book. how often do girls in horror movies have sex for the first time, walk home alone in the dark of night, and live to tell the tale? nancy and jonathan’s dynamic at first glance is a sort of classic “good girl meets boy from the wrong side of the tracks, discovers he’s actually got a heart of gold” thing, but instead of following this well-trodden path, st diverged. nancy is brash, impulsive, and at times downright insensitive. jonathan is angry, bitter, and actually a bit of a creep at first. while they have the capacity to emotionally connect and support one another, they can also bring out each other’s darker side, which is not what we’ve come to expect from that initial tropey dynamic.

in addition, steve, the popular rich asshole boyfriend, is actually... a human being! unlike the cartoonishly evil jocks that we’ve come to expect (especially from eighties movies), steve has complexity. despite his initial immaturity and selfishness, he’s also kind to barb, he backs off when nancy says no, he’s gentle and sweet when they sleep together, his first big Dick Move of the season is in defense of nancy, he realizes the error of his ways after the fight and does what he can to fix it, he’s worried about nancy when he sees that she’s hurt at jonathan’s house, and to top it all off, he ends up saving both nancy and jonathan’s lives when he could have just walked away, and the three of them all work together to fight the demogorgon. like... steve began as the most stereotypical character of all time, and by the end of the season, he had one of the most compelling and unique arcs among the whole cast!

finally, at the very end of the season, instead of dumping steve for jonathan as expected, nancy ends up getting back together with steve, and they’re both on friendly terms with jonathan. i realize that i just kinda. summarized s1. but my POINT is that i don’t think the dynamics between the monster hunting trio would be nearly as fun and interesting had the characters of nancy, steve, and jonathan not been set up to follow certain paths that we already had charted in our own heads. like, within the first couple episodes of s1, it’s pretty obvious that nancy and steve are gonna break up, nancy will get with jonathan, and steve will either die or go full evil or just never be seen again. like, duh! you’ve seen this story a million times! you know that’s how it’s gonna go! so, when the story DOESN’T go that way, the impact of each character’s arc and the relationship dynamics become stronger due to their unexpected complexity and authenticity.

distinct plotlines separated by age group

this one’s rather obvious, but the way that the adults in s1 were essentially in a conspiracy thriller while the teens were in a horror flick and the kids were in a sci fi power-of-friendship story and all three converged at the end... wow. brilliant showstopping etc. not only was it just really well done and unique, it also gave stranger things near-universal appeal. like, there’s genuinely something for pretty much everyone in season one!

casting

obviously this applies to every season sorta by default, but when i think about what made season one So successful, i always think about the cast, and not just winona ryder. yes, she’s absolutely amazing in the show and it’s very doubtful that st would be as big as it is today without her name being attached to it from the start!! however, i think the greatest determining factor in st’s success is the casting of the kids, particularly millie bobby brown. like... el is just absolutely incredible. she’s amazing. this has all been said many times before so i won’t harp on it, but millie and the other kids are all So talented and charismatic and i think their casting has been instrumental to the show’s success.

strong visuals

the way that multicolored christmas lights which have been around for decades are now kinda like. a Stranger Things thing. jesus christ. those lights are probably the biggest stroke of stylistic genius on the show.

atmosphere and setting

this is probably like. the least important one here for me sdjncdsc because i think s2 and s3 both had like Even Better atmospheres and shit but s1 was good too and it laid the groundwork!! i know a lot of people would have preferred st be set somewhere more Spooky with lots of fog or giant forests or whatnot, and while i do enjoy thinking about alternate st settings and how they might alter the vibe, i think hawkins indiana was a good choice. as the duffers have said, placing stranger things in a fictional town allows them more flexibility than if they’d gone with their original plan of using montauk, new york. besides that, i think the plainness and like... flatness... of small-town indiana just Works. like, the fact that hawkins is never really scary on the surface is a big part of the horror in the lab’s actions and their impact. hawkins isn’t somewhere that people just disappear all the time. it isn’t somewhere known for strange occurrences (prior to s1, that is). it isn’t somewhere shrouded in mist and secrecy. hawkins on its surface seems like the sort of place with no secrets and nothing to fear, and that’s the point! the lab is out in the open! it’s right there! everything is so close to the surface, yet so far out of the public eye, and i think that really works.

the byers family’s whole deal (specifically the joyce/jonathan dynamic)

this is going here bc i miss it so bad in s2 and s3. i’m not one of those people who believe The Byers Are The Whole Point of the show, because st is and always has been an ensemble, and el, hopper, and the wheelers are just as instrumental to the plot as the byers, but ANYWAY, i do think the byers were one of the most interesting aspects of s1. joyce’s difficulties with supporting her sons as a poor and (implied mentally ill) single mother, jonathan’s stress as a result of having to earn money, care for his brother, and keep the house in order when his mother is unable to do so, and the resulting tension between them when will’s disappearance and supposed “death” brings the situation to a tipping point? holy shit! it’s so good! that argument after they see will’s “body” is just incredible and gut-wrenching. their relationship feels so real and messy and i think it’s just... good. also winona ryder REALLY acted her heart out and she carried a lot of s1 which i think people often forget to mention so i’m saying it here.

weaknesses

pacing/timing

ok so pacing is probably going to go in each season’s weaknesses, to be honest, because i think they all had a blend of some good and some bad pacing. good pacing is invisible pacing, though, so i probably won’t be putting it in any of the strengths sections and will only be focusing on it in the weaknesses. i’m also probably not going to talk about weird day/night cycle things, just because i don’t want to get nitpicky on timelines because that would require going back and rewatching things to double check timing which i don’t wanna do at the moment lmao. anyway, when i think of bad pacing in season one, i primarily think of two things: nancy’s little trip into the upside down and subsequent sleepover with jonathan, and the sort of staggered nature of the climax in the final episode. the latter is simple so i’ll explain it first: while i understand that each group’s respective climax is like part of a chain reaction and that’s why each big moment happens separately and at different times, i think that st is strongest when the whole group is together, and i think that makes the stakes feel higher too, so i’m not In Love with the way s1 separated everyone and gave each group their own climax.

okay, now on to the nancy/upside down thing! idk if i’ve ever talked about it before, but i think the worst decision made in s1 by far is the inclusion of nancy’s brief trip into the upside down, wherein she dives headfirst into another dimension with absolutely no backup, watches the demogorgon chow down, freaks out and runs around for a minute, and then leaves. like... what the fuck? even putting aside what an idiotic decision this was (because i do think nancy’s tendency to rush into things headfirst is an intentional and consistent character trait), it just kind of destroys any remaining suspense surrounding the demogorgon and the upside down, and it accomplishes basically nothing besides scaring nancy enough to have jonathan sleep over, which is lame. i will break it down.

like, first of all, nancy just getting to waltz in and out of the upside down and get a good, long look at the demogorgon makes the entire thing far less mysterious, and by extension far less scary. like... before this scene, we the audience haven’t got a good look at the demogorgon. we’ve seen its silhouette briefly and we’ve seen a blurry picture of it, but nothing more, and i think that is far more effective at building fear than this jaunt nancy goes on which gives us a full view of the thing and makes it into less of a horrifying nightmare and into more of a humanoid animal. like, maybe this is just me, but i found the demogorgon far less intimidating after that scene than before. it also lets nancy and jonathan know For Sure that they’re right without providing any crucial information that they need to fight the demogorgon (aka it’s unnecessary to the plot), which removes a very compelling story element (the faith nancy and jonathan need to have in order to keep going against a vague and poorly understood enemy, the doubt they might have about each other and their own sanity, the possibility that they might be wrong, the trust they need to have in each other) a bit earlier in the plot than i believe is ideal. at the end of episode 5, nancy goes into the upside down and jonathan doesn’t know where she is and it’s intense!!! you’re thinking like, oh fuck, not only is nancy missing and fighting for her life now too, jonathan might be implicated in her disappearance!! some people already think he’s the one who killed will and people know that he took creepy pictures of barb and nancy before they both disappeared, maybe this is gonna cause some serious problems for him!! maybe nancy will find will in the upside down and she’ll help him survive!! fuck, maybe she’ll actually die!! this is huge!! and then episode 6 starts and they’re immediately like oh nevermind jonathan found the tree and got nancy out and she’s fine. my point with all of this is that nancy entering the upside down could have done A Lot in the grand scheme of the plot, but all it did was just... get jonathan to sleep over so he and nancy could have some awkward romance moments and steve could see them together and pick a fight. which could have honestly happened at Any point while nancy and jonathan were working together to hunt down the demogorgon, without ruining the demogorgon’s and the upside down’s mystique. so yeah <3

weird behavior and dumbass decisions that make no sense (aka the whole camera thing)

gonna go off about the teen plot again sorry but: why was nancy so unbothered and quick to forgive jonathan for taking those pictures? girl what the fuck are you doing? why wasn’t that a bigger deal? why was jonathan’s motivation for doing it so weak and why did they just kind of forget about the whole thing? why did nancy TRACK HIM DOWN AT THE FUNERAL HOME while he was PICKING OUT HIS BABY BROTHER’S CASKET to be like hey can you tell me what’s in this creepshot you took? it’s insane. it’s so insane. i mean i think the funeral home thing is hilarious and i don’t mind it being in the show necessarily but like my point here is that i think a lot of character decisions in s1 just kind of.. happened because they Needed to happen for the plot. like, they wrote this plot that required jonathan to be secretly taking pictures of the party and required him and nancy to work together after seeing something odd in the pictures, but they didn’t like... really consider what that event would mean for their characterization and relationship. the whole thing was sort of just dropped with minimal discussion and i think it did both nancy and jonathan’s characters a disservice and was really mishandled.

lighting and saturation/color grading

i am literally begging horror/sci-fi shows to let me see shit. i GET IT okay i understand that when you’re doing cgi effects it helps to keep the lights down and i’m not mad at any of the lighting in the demogorgon/upside down scenes!! i’m really not i think the demogorgon scenes in s1 all look sick!! but like... dude. the colors. where are they. why does everyone look like a vampire. i know blah blah this was probably an intentional stylistic choice intended to mimic film at the time blah blah but dude a lot of old movies are very colorful!! please just let people have color in their faces so everyone doesn’t look like a sheet of paper!!! also i’m white and not a professional lighting designer so yknow grain of salt but i think lucas was kinda poorly served by the lighting sometimes in s1. not Hugely so, not to the degree that i’ve seen poc be poorly served by lighting in other shows, but there were some times where it felt kinda like the lighting setup was just not designed with darker skin in mind.

horror

i just personally don’t find s1 very scary like... ever. i don’t think they were really Trying to be extremely scary yknow so i’m not counting this as a big deal, but i do think that each season has improved on the horror aspects. i think s1′s horror lies more in the mystery and the unknown than in what’s seen onscreen, and as i’ve said already, i think s1 kind of fumbled that suspense ball.

season 2

strengths

the possession plot

i’ll warn u rn this whole s2 strengths section is probably gonna be really short bc idk like. how much there is to really say i feel like it’s all so self-explanatory skjncmn. anyway yeah the possession plot!! eerie as fuck, and noah OWNED. so did winona tbh and finn and sean etc but like. noah. wow! i think the possession plot helped the show maintain a good amount of tension and suspense throughout the season, and a lot of scenes with possessed!will are flatout disturbing to watch. in a good way. i think the mindflayer and will’s possession were far more genuinely frightening than s1′s demogorgon, and it provided a new layer of depth and intrigue to the antagonist besides just “bad monster want eat people.”

tone and aesthetics

halloween season... literally halloween season. halloween season. that is all.

actually i will elaborate a bit and just say that i think s2 did a good job of having the sort of foreboding vibe that s1 was often going for, but without the annoying darkness and desaturation. so points for that.

also st2 is like one of the best Autumn pieces of media ever like it just. like steve and dustin on those train tracks with the fallen leaves all around them.... god. god the vibes are unparalleled. all of the halloween stuff also really contributes to the nostalgia st runs on yknow it makes you think about childhood and trick-or-treating and you kind of get transported like damn... i remember going to the rich neighborhoods to score the good candy..... idk i just think the whole thing is incredibly effective.

“babysitter” steve

by sending nancy and jonathan off together, the show created a problem: what to do with steve? this problem pushed them to create the unconventional and unexpected duo of steve and dustin, and the world is so much brighter for it. seriously though we all know steve and dustin are great i don’t need to argue that point. all i’ll add is that i think allowing steve to grow in this way, serving as a mentor figure and becoming genuine friends with someone so unexpected, really took the originality of his character to the next level. no longer content just to defy his archetype, in s2 steve begins branching out in ways that never would have been considered in s1, creating an incredibly complex and interesting person from the sort of character that most shows would have simply written out or killed off for convenience’s sake. and it works and steve and dustin are such a joy to watch and i love them. <3

the lucas/max plot

so first of all max mayfield is the most perfect baby girl on god’s green earth and idk what i would do without her but anyway. i think lumax is the best romantic relationship in the show and not just because they’re the only ones with like an age-appropriate approach to the whole thing. it’s also because their relationship accomplishes more than just putting the two of them in a relationship!! lucas and max spending time together motivates billy to do his evil shit, providing more conflict in the narrative, and it also helps establish max as part of the group in a relatively natural way while giving both her and lucas a great subplot. lucas (and dustin) has a crush on the new girl, they start spending some time together, and lucas ends up needing to decide whether he’ll keep the secret of the upside down and lose her, or risk both of their lives by telling her the truth. that’s a pretty big, character-defining decision that he gets to make!! max has to choose whether to trust this boy she barely knows and endanger herself, or to walk away and stay safe, yet another great character-defining choice that also contributes to the sense we get as an audience of max as somebody who’s incredibly lonely and desperate for love and connection. this post is way too long already and i have a ton more to say so i’ll stop now but yeah i think lumax really Works in the show without ever distracting or detracting from the overall plot and narrative in the way that some other ships (coughjancycough) often do.

balance between the normal and abnormal

s2 i think did a pretty solid job of melding daily life with more fantastical sci-fi horror elements. i enjoyed seeing so much of the kids at school in the first few episodes!! you really get a strong sense of where they’re at in life, what their daily lives are like, and you get a sort of gradual shift into madness that makes everything feel more grounded than i think it would if they had just leapt straight into the horror shit, yknow?

the el and hopper dynamic

go back and rewatch s2 and tell me that’s not one of the most moving portrayals of parenthood and trauma and growing up that you’ve ever seen. you can’t. or well you can but i won’t listen. i really can’t imagine stranger things without el and hopper’s relationship, and it’s my absolute favorite part of s2. their whole dynamic is so beautiful and complex, and gives them each amazing personal arcs in addition! the black hole scene is literally one of the show’s greatest moments of all time. any given scene between the two of them in s2 is just guaranteed to be heartwarming as well as heartbreaking, and i think that makes for an incredible show.

weaknesses

flashbacks

okay this applies to Every season they All have too many flashbacks but in s2 specifically... please stop showing me shit from season one. i watched it. i know what happened. you don’t need to spoon feed everything to me!! flashbacks can be a really helpful way of delivering information to an audience, but st has a bad habit of not only being kinda demeaning in how often they flash back to shit that the audience already knows, but they also have a bad habit of using flashbacks almost as a crutch to avoid having to deliver information subtly and naturally.

you know i gotta say it... the lost sister

this is so sad. the lost sister really is like a great concept for an st episode, and i’m not mad about the idea of st taking a break from the normal action to focus on one story for a full episode, but the execution of it was just dreadful. kali and her crew feel very over-the-top and stereotypical, and its placement in the season totally kills the tension and excitement that was built in “the spy.”

i think the lost sister honestly could have gone over far better, even with the stereotypical fake-feeling gang kali has, if they had just swapped it with “the spy” like... ok, the end of episode five has el setting off to find kali and will collapsing on the ground seizing. right? imagine if, instead of immediately following will to the lab, we’d followed el. we don’t know what’s happening with will, but it’s a very simple cliffhanger that leaves us on edge without making us feel cheated by the show cutting away. we follow el on her little journey, everything happens much the same as canon, and then at the end, el sees hopper in scrubs. she sees mike, screaming, sees that they’re both in danger. holy shit!!! what the fuck!!! what’s happened since we left will seizing on the ground??? we feel el’s fear and confusion. she decides to go home. and then... boom. “the lost sister” is over. now, we rewind, right back to will seizing on the ground, and “the spy” commences. we learn how they got into the danger that el saw in the end of “the lost sister,” and we sit on the edge of our seats all through “the spy” and “the mind flayer,” KNOWING that el is on her way back to save them but not knowing when she’ll arrive!! idk i don’t think that would have necessarily saved lost sister but i think it may have alleviated some of the issues that i and many others have with it, timing-wise.

the nancy/jonathan sidequest

once again, the idea of nancy going off on her own little mission to find justice for barb after s1 is like. amazing. genuinely i love that plot for her and i can’t imagine anything better for her to have focused on in s2. unfortunately though i think her and jonathan’s little trip to see murray was just kind of... lame. the whole thing just felt like an excuse to get the two of them alone together, yknow? which is fine i guess people contrive all sorts of situations to get characters alone together for romance reasons but in this case i think it just really doesn’t work for me because of what it’s juxtaposed with. like, will is POSSESSED, and jonathan is just off on a mini road trip and sleeping with his bestie, and jonathan never seems to communicate to joyce/will that he left town, and joyce never like... thinks to tell him that will is like sick and fucked up and they’re looking at him in the lab??? like it’s so weird i know joyce always forgets about jonathan when shit’s happening with will but jfc you’d think at some point in that like... 72-ish-hour period where jonathan was out of town she would have thought about him. like at least once. maybe i’m forgetting something and she mentioned him sometime and i missed it but even still, i hate the juxtaposition of nancy and jonathan just like cheers-ing at murray’s place and sleeping together and whatnot while everyone else is dealing with possession or trying to hunt down dart yknow? it feels really boring in comparison and i think it could have been done far better. like it was SO insanely easy for them to get into the lab and get an admission of guilt and escape with it!! i think it might have been a lot more engaging if maybe someone from the lab tailed them to murray’s place and they had to like lose the tail and race to get the recording out to as many news outlets as possible before they got caught, or something like that. the tension in their plotline is completely resolved in episode four!! episodes five and six are just them screwing around and addressing envelopes. while there were a lot of strong ideas in this plotline (i really enjoy nancy going out of her way to get justice, and the fact that they have to water down the story to make it believable), i just think the focus on nancy and jonathan getting together hindered it a lot without adding a ton to the plot or their individual characters.

season 3

strengths

starcourt mall as a setting

while i don’t think the mall was utilized quite to its full potential (something i could make a separate post about if anyone’s interested), i do think that starcourt was a genius addition to the series. i’ve said this before, but building a new mall is a literal Perfect in-universe justification for a significant leap forward in fashion and aesthetics, and it provides a great location for characters to just... be characters. idk how else to articulate this i just think that the mall is a great setting to let people interact with each other and to bring people together who may not have been otherwise (i.e. scoops troop). not to mention how sick it was to see the mall get wrecked toward the end kdjncdkm like they were able to do so much more with the mall in terms of like The Finale than they could with just the byers house or the cabin or the school or even the lab. i love all the back tunnels they run through it’s such a fun like acknowledgement of how this glitzy eighties mall is just a real place where employees get shipments and take out the trash and shit idk it’s all about the perfect facade and what’s hidden what’s underneath what’s hiding in plain sight etc etc i’m just saying words now. anyway.

willingness to experiment and go against expectations

gay robin. neon aesthetics. giant fucking meat monster. i know some people hate both the neon and the meat monster but i personally think they were kind of amazing and like. yknow regardless of personal tastes i think it’s impossible to deny that s3 had a lot of incredible visuals, and they’re all visuals that just wouldn’t have been possible if the show were too afraid to stray from its s1 aesthetic. robin being canonically gay (and her resulting friendship with steve) and the season’s striking visuals are two things that most everyone (besides like homophobes skjncdknm) can agree were great, right? and they were both departures from where the show began and what we all expected!! so yeah i think while some of the experimentation in s3 wasn’t ideal it was also that experimentation that allowed for some of the season’s strongest elements to come about.

the hospital sequence (and the season’s action/horror scenes in general)

this one is fairly self-explanatory. while they may have underutilized the “body snatching” element of the season, the hospital sequence with nancy and jonathan fighting off their possessed bosses did an amazing job of building tension and creating a genuine sense of really intense and personal danger.

in general i think that s3 melded action and horror rather well, particularly in the sauna test, the hospital, and when the mindflayer busts through the roof of hop’s cabin. horror can come from many things, and in this case, st elicited horror largely from the feeling of helplessness, and it was really effective for me personally. i think it worked better for me than s1′s brand of horror because it doesn’t rely so much on a lack of knowledge or a sense of suspense that inevitable disappears upon a second viewing.

the body horror we got in s3 was also really fun! that’s it i just think all the blood and guts and slime were fun and i would like more of them. once again, the impacts of body horror are less dependent upon the viewer being in the dark or unsure as to what’s happening, and as such i think it tends to be a little more effective at eliciting reaction in the long term.

timing and mechanics of the battle of starcourt/finale

i think the battle of starcourt is just fucking awesome, and beyond that personal opinion, i think it’s the most high-stakes and intense finale of all three seasons, and this is for two main reasons! 1. el is out of commission, and 2. (almost) everyone is in the same cental location. this means that (almost) everyone is in danger all at once, and they are all working together at the same time to fight the same threat. s1/s2 have their groups more fragmented for the finales, and while i understand why in each case and i wouldn’t call either season’s finale necessarily weak, i do think the centralized nature of the s3 finale just Works on another level. in s1 and s2, large segments of the cast are already perfectly safe by the time el dispatches the primary threat. in s3, however, everybody save for dustin and erica is still in danger up until the last moment, and el is seemingly (you can def debate how much power she still had in her when she peeked into billy’s mind and whether the memory broke the mindflayer’s hold on him or if she was actually controlling him to some degree) completely vulnerable. this increases the tension and raises the stakes, making the finale a real crescendo to fortissimo as opposed to a series of little mezzo forte moments. i hope everyone reading this knows music idk how else to phrase that my brain is stupid.

emphasis on friendship and adolescence (but in a different way than s1/2)

this is definitely a controversial one but i think that s3 really did like... show a side of friendship that had been more or less unexplored thus far in the show. el and max were amazing, and i think it’s really nice that we got an opportunity to see the kids have some growing pains as well as see them support each other through Normal Adolescent Stuff like boyfriends and breakups instead of just like. death and trauma. this is maybe just a personal preference, but i think it can be really enlightening and provide a lot of depth when you get to see how characters respond to normal everyday conflict and not just how they respond to giant world-ending conflict!! letting el use her powers for goofy teenage shit like spying on boys and messing with mean girls at the mall is not only fun for her and the audience, but it also really emphasizes just how much those powers are a part of el, making it that much more devastating when she loses them at the end of the season.

weaknesses

tonal dissonance

so this is like. obvious. but it must still be said! i won’t go on and on about it since we all know this so i’ll try to like talk about it from an angle people don’t usually? anyway. it seems to me like they were maybe a little worried about s3 being too dark. while the choice to really lean into humor was definitely driven by the sorts of eighties teen films from which s3 drew inspiration (like fast times at ridgemont high), i think it was also done in an attempt to alleviate the more troubling implications of some events in the season, particularly the russian bunker plot. like, yeah, st can be incredibly dark, but if they’d played the whole “children being stuck inside of a foreign military base, tied up, tortured, and drugged” thing completely straight without the humorous elements that exist in canon, it had the potential to be like... disturbing on a new level. steve and robin don’t have powers like el yknow their kidnapping/torture doesn’t have any sci-fi elements to sorta soften the blow. they’re just innocent teenagers being brutalized and traumatized by grown men. so anyway yeah i think maybe the writers were concerned about this storyline coming off as too dark and they wanted it to be a little more whimsical but they ended up pushing way too hard in that direction and creating extreme dissonance at times. this goes for joyce/hopper/murray/alexei too, but to a lesser extent. i think the ridiculousness in that group felt a lot more like... realistic. but still.

newspaper plot

once again i feel like i don’t even need to say this skjdncmn we all know it was insane how the show basically ended up delivering the message “while misogyny is a serious problem poverty and classism are not” and i’ve said it on this blog a million times so i don’t need to repeat myself. i’ll focus on another weak point of this plot: the fact that it completely separates nancy and jonathan from everyone else. once again, the show’s preoccupation with j/ancy held them back! like... can you imagine a version of s3 where nancy and jonathan both worked in the mall? i have a lot of ideas about this possible au and like how the plot could play out differently if they worked in the mall but first of all it’s just more realistic, second of all it further utilizes the mall as a central setting, and third of all, it would bring everyone together. as it is in canon, nancy and jonathan were unnecessarily isolated from the rest of the group, and this isolation was detrimental to both of their characters. like, they only ever get to interact with each other! if they’d gotten summer jobs in the mall, they could have had more interactions with the kids/steve/robin, and they absolutely still could have had a similar argument! maybe in this case, nancy notices the rat thing (or something else odd) herself when taking out the trash behind the mall, and she wants jonathan to ditch work with her to check it out bc she thinks it may be related to the lab. jonathan doesn’t want to ditch work because he needs his job, nancy argues that they’re working shitty mall jobs anyway and who cares if they get fired, and we get more or less the same thing as s3 without the cartoonishly over-the-top misogyny. i mean honestly i think the rat shit could have been cut entirely it didn’t rly... accomplish much of anything. in my opinion. like imagine s3 without the rat plot you literally would not be missing anything except it would be more surprising when the dudes melted into goo at the hospital. so yeah i think it would have been better if nancy and jonathan had jobs at the mall, weren’t isolated from everybody else, and were maybe absorbed into the party’s plot or the scoops troop’s plot from very early on, allowing them to interact with more characters and have a less... dumb.... plot. like god splitting up nancy and jonathan between the party/scoops troop would have been So Much better i just. sdkjcnksdmn anyway yeah.

briefness of group reunion/separation of groups

remember in s2 at the beginning of “the gate,” where mike and hopper had a confrontation and max and el met for the first time and el hugged everyone and steve and nancy had their sad little moment together outside... where’s that energy? obviously the s2 reunion wasn’t that long either, but it made space for some significant emotional moments to take place. s3′s reunion had some hopper/el/mike resolution, but besides that... there was nothing, really. i just think that the whole group getting together in s3 was SO exciting and powerful the way they did it (with both the scoops troop and the adults having their own Big Moment reconnecting with team griswold family), but the emotional potential was more or less squandered.

i also think in s3 at times they were really stretching to keep everybody separated even though it made no sense. and like... in s1 the separation worked bc nobody else knew that (x group) was experiencing weird shit too, and beyond that, each group (as i mentioned in the s1 section) was sort of operating within their own genre and bringing something unique to the season. they’ve stopped doing that though! now, the groups aren’t separate bc each plot is tonally/structurally different, the groups are just separate bc... they need to be, because it’s a big ensemble cast and you can’t just have them all be together for a whole season or it would be way too difficult to coordinate things and keep the show dynamic. all this is to say that i’m excited for s4 because the location differences make it so there’s a Reason for each plot to be separate at the beginning, and i think that’ll work better.

general ridiculousness

i dont mean like i think it’s bad that they made jokes this is just me lumping in all the dumb shit like hopper not worrying about el and not wanting to check on the kids, him and joyce bickering long after they both know they and their children are in danger, max seemingly forgetting that billy is a racist abuser, etc etc. i think many of these are just a symptom of the show 1. trying desperately to keep the groups split up a certain way even though it may not make any sense, and 2. trying to fit into a certain genre/trope mold when their actual characters are more complex than the tropes they’re imitating. this is so fucking long already i am not gonna elaborate further rn but i trust u all know what i mean.

soooo... yeah, that’s about all! i mean it’s not all there are definitely many more things i could talk about and i know i focused sorta disproportionately on the teens which is my bad :/ but i’m done for now. thank you for asking, and apologies for the delay in responding!! i’m sure some people reading (if anyone read this far) will disagree with some of what i’ve said and that’s alright like i’m not The Authority on st or anything i’m just trying to talk about like my own thoughts yknow? so yeah luv u all i hope someone enjoyed reading this!!

#asks #em talks #lesbianrobin.canon #stranger things #if u actually read all this i love u and im sorry #these r just my opinions!! and im sure i misremembered some shit my brain is swiss cheese #i did my best tho

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bestworstcase · 3 years

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To be honest tts had many characters who had their emotional and mental trauma handled horribly, they deserve better exploration on how they healed and what they went through. Tangled The Movie did a better job of handling these mature themes but why couldn’t tts?

ok so tbh i don’t agree ajklsdlkjf

like! ok to start with. tangled (2010) is kind of interesting to me in this regard because it does such a good job illustrating gothel’s emotional abuse and the harm it does to rapunzel but it - like, at the end of the day It Is A Disney Film. it spends almost all of its running time meticulously building up this very complicated emotional trauma for rapunzel, and then the resolution is like—BOOM!—she has a tearful reunion with her parents and they pull her boyfriend into a group hug, cue ending narration about how they got married and ruled corona and lived happily ever after. to me tangled (2010) feels like it runs off a cliff at the last minute because. lmao.

leaving an abusive parent is the easy part.

which is not to say that it’s easy! but once you hit that emotional point of “i cannot have you in my life anymore” and cut them out... now you have a heap of maladaptive coping mechanisms and psychological scars and inherited behaviors that you have to deal with. you can’t just *flaps hands* cut off your abusive mother and skip off into the sunset with your long lost real family and new boyfriend whom you met three days ago and everything’s gravy. kskjdfjk it doesn’t work like that!

tts on the other hand - absolutely, there were clear limitations on how far they were able to go, and absolutely the plot-driven writing was a less than ideal vehicle for telling a story about recovery-from-trauma. but also like fundamentally tts is a story that is interested in recovery from trauma in a way that i don’t think tangled (2010) was. rapunzel has nightmarish flashbacks to gothel in s1, struggles because of her sheltered upbringing, expresses behaviors that she clearly learned from gothel and internalized as normal, flounders when she is handed responsibility because she is not used to making her own choices, and has complicated, messy feelings about her tower and gothel herself! there is a whole episode dedicated to exploring rapunzel’s ambivalent feelings about her new life in corona through the lens of her suddenly-fraught relationship with pascal. one of the emotional linchpins of the entire show is the moment in RATGT where rapunzel screams “enough, cassandra!” in a direct parallel to the way gothel yelled at her in the film, and while tts ultimately shied away from exploring that on rapunzel’s end, we got multiple episodes following up on how badly this damaged cassandra, eventually culminating in her villain arc in s3.

likewise with cassandra - tts devotes two whole seasons to meticulously building up cassandra’s very complicated trauma, then allows her a whole season in which to have a messy, anguished, enraged breakdown because of it—and then her happy ending is *leaving behind* the toxic situation she was trapped in in corona to venture into the unknown and figure herself out, which is imo a lot more in scale and realistic than rapunzel’s happy ending in tangled (2010).

likewise with varian - in QFaD he is badly traumatized, and the remainder of s1 examines how the failure of his would-be support network to actually support him leads to his continued downward spiral and eventual violent breakdown; when he is punished for this that explicitly makes everything worse both for him and for everyone else, and after his redemption he features as a deuteragonist in what is essentially ptsd flashbacks: the episode. etc.

so my overall impression of the many places where tts *failed* to adequately examine characters’ trauma is very strongly that - they wanted to and they were capable of doing so, but there were disney executives going no, that’s too heavy, that’s too dark, you can’t portray the disney princess with serious deeply-entrenched flaws, you can’t have the disney princess be the one who’s in the wrong in her interpersonal conflicts, blah blah blah. s3 in particular just reeks to me of executive meddling and executive sanitizing of the intended plot. i’m honestly shocked that tts got away with going as far as they did, especially with rapunzel’s and cassandra’s childhood traumas, because frankly it spits in the face of the squeaky clean happily ever after Disney Princess Brand aljsdjfk.

(also as an aside - one’s personal reading of the text is imo a big deciding factor in how unsatisfying the handling of trauma is, bc - i think there is a tendency in some areas of the fandom that are centered around varian and/or eugene for fans to go “they should be more traumatized than they are and it’s bad writing that they’re not broody and angsty about xyz” and like -

the impression i have from being on the sidelines of this discourse is a lot of people have one specific model in their heads of what “trauma” looks like and that model is essentially “miserable and brooding and needing to be comforted” so when we get things like eugene coping with awful shit by cracking jokes about it or not having ptsd flashbacks to gothel stabbing him that gets interpreted as the narrative not taking him seriously as a character, whereas to me it reads as “eugene is a psychologically stable person who has the emotional resilience to cope with horrible events relatively unscathed”—

or this vibe of varian isn’t brooding and angsting all the time so obviously tts is ignoring his trauma, when my reading of him overall is that he’s the kind of person who deals with trauma by throwing himself into work that makes him feel better - like in CR he’s working in the demanitus chamber, surrounded by amber, but he’s doing dumb chemistry experiments he enjoys and over time that’s gotten him to a place where being around the amber is no longer triggering for him, he’s healed enough to have conquered most of that fear.

and obviously all of this is a matter of interpretation and this is not to say that, like, fans who wanted more of a raw exploration of these characters’ fear and sadness and struggle with trauma are wrong or like invalid for wanting that, it’s more - like, i personally choose to take the text more at face value and interpret the behaviors i see on screen as telling me something about how the character responds to trauma instead of as the narrative ignoring that they have trauma altogether. which leads me to “eugene is emotionally resilient and humor is a key feature of his resilience” and “varian copes by working on stuff that is intellectually engaging or just makes him happy in order to tackle his fears head-on” and so forth. and one consequence of that is i don’t really walk away from the text feeling unsatisfied with the way tts handled its character traumas, except insofar as i’m like “wow i wish disney had let them go even farther!”)

#rta #tts #Anonymous

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miggydiaz · 3 years

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For the salty ask 1, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 14, 16, 20, 22, 23 and 26 for cobra kai pretty please

My answers are so long, so I am putting this under the cut @wonderwolfballoon! Also I just noticed your Daniel icon I SWEAR I’M NOT DRAGGING HIM TO BE MEAN!!!

1. What OTPs in your fandom(s) do you just not get?* My biggest IDGI ships for CK are probably Elimetri or Kiaz. I’m not here to yuck other people’s yums or anything, but I do think there is something to the idea that Migueli isn’t popular because it’s a ship predicated on mutual respect for one another. Kiaz has the obvious enemies to lovers vibe and I just generally don’t sail those ships. Elimetri has... its problems, IMO, most especially around the idea that Demetri has to like... save Hawk from himself? Idk. I just like romances that I feel are based on love and mutual respect and not ...tropes.   I am also not a Lawrusso shipper although I have a lot of those on my dash and you all are great! Again, not yucking yums! Daniel just makes me want to head butt him too much to pair him romantically with anyone 😂 I don’t even want his wife with him. He needs to self reflect~   4. Do you have a NoTP in your fandom? Are they a popular OTP?*   I once saw someone ship Amanda and Anoush and I noped out of that so fucking fast I almost tripped over myself. I’m not sure if they’re popular. I just think some people feel the need to get Amanda out of the way to sail their ship and stuck her with Anoush which... no. Just no. Let Amanda be a messy single queen with a martini hobby, thanks!   5. Has fandom ever ruined a pairing for you?*   Not in CK. I’m lucky because I pretty much stick to my little Migueli bubble and I’m okay with that? Lmao lord knows the Squad on my dash is all about the DISCOURSE™️ so idk if I just don’t feel the need to get sucked into the wider ship wars because we have good healthy debates, but so far, so good.   6. Has fandom ever made you enjoy a pairing you previously hated?*   I never hated it... I just didn’t have many feelings on shipping with this show in general at first. Then I was in the CK tag one day and I saw Migueli fan art. Then I discovered @afurioushawk‘s falconry series and it was all over for me after that! So fandom DID make me love a ship, just not one I hated.

9. Most disliked character(s)? Why? Oh boy. How much time do you have? In some instances, it’s a good thing season 3 happened because otherwise, this would be a multi-page essay on the problems with race and class privilege as it pertains to Sam LaRusso and just some... generally not nice comments about Demetri that I’m conflicted about because I’m not sure if the writers are intentionally trying to write him a specific way and it’s just not translating to me or what. But season 3 revamped both of their images with me a lot. I’m way more flexible in terms of Demetri, but lmao I was the number one Sam LaRusso hater for a minute there (or maybe number 2, I can think of at least 1 other person who was in that boat with me back in like... August/September, but I won’t call them out because I don’t want them to get hate...) However, I have grown a bit in my opinions of Sam, and even though I still think she’s responsible for a lot of shit she NEVER gets held accountable for, I also think that’s a reflection of the adults around her too, and this includes my otherwise unproblematic queen, Amanda.

But honestly, my most hated character (other than the obvious villain that is Kreese) is Daniel. No matter how handsome Ralph Macchio looks in cable-knits, because Daniel has always been a sanctimonious, shit starting drama king and I say that about KK Daniel too. I’m not saying Daniel was the ~true villain~ or anything, or that Johnny was innocent -- I can only drink so much Red and Yellow Kool-Aid -- but Daniel’s always been annoying to me as a protagonist, and turning him into a smarmy wealthy car salesman who is also a class traitor did not do him any favors in my book. I will say, I also like Daniel more in season 3 than I have in previous season, but since he is the adult, I will be mad at him longer than I will be at the kids, ya feel?

10. Most disliked arc? Why?   Johnny’s entire season 3 storyline. The sheer level of REGRESSION at every turn drives me bonkers. It’s like watching him go through all of the stumbling blocks of season 1 all over again, but without the “he’s learning! He’s going to make mistakes!” free pass that I was willing to give him the first time around. He regularly jeopardizes Miguel’s recovery and it’s played for laughs. He fucks up on every level with Robby. He spends most of his time running away when things get hard or too real. He drops the ball completely with Hawk, and like, not to put too fine a point on it, but a lot of Hawk’s issues are because Johnny put Hawk on this ‘flip the script and be a badass’ path and then offered him no guidance for how to walk that path and instead left him in the hands of Kreese. And then he has the nerve to go to Hawk and basically be like “I made you what you are!” lmao yeah Johnny, you sure did, that’s why he’s breaking peoples arms, hoss. And then all of the nonsense with Ali and Carmen, like... if you were planning on teasing KK fans with Ali and him getting back together, why write her as married in the first place? Why even tease the idea of Carmen and Johnny until after you were sure what you were going to do with Ali as a character? Instead, they do what they did in season 3 and it makes him look like a colossal jerk. So yeah. Literally every choice they made with Johnny this season, I hated.

14. Unpopular opinion about your fandom? People who hate Tory are not valid, sorry not sorry.

16. If you could change anything in the show, what would you change? I would have kept Miguel entirely out of Tory and Sam’s beef. Or at least not directly inserted him into it like he was with the kiss. I know the writers thought it was necessary to push Tory to the point of inciting a fight at school, but I am just so exhausted over girls being unable to fight about anything but boys. Also I would bring Aisha back.

20. What is the purest ship in the fandom?   I am probably biased, but I still maintain it’s Migueli. Look, Miguel stood up to Kyler for Eli and Demetri both. Hawk joined CK because he saw what it could do for some skinny nerd who was getting his ass kicked. And he took to CK, really took to it! Even flourished before he started getting mixed messages. And he and Miguel were pretty much inseparable after that. They coordinated their wardrobes ffs. Hawk dubbed him El Serpiente and no one else calls him that — it’s Hawk’s nickname for him. Miguel confides in Hawk only secondary to Johnny, who is like a father to him. The entire Coyote Creek exchange shows they can fight and disagree but... well, to use the cliche, they don’t go to bed angry, you know? They’re square the very next day. Hawk is the first person at Miguel’s side when he gets kicked over the balcony and the LOOK he gives the second floor where Robby is? That boy is out for blood immediately to avenge Miguel. So much of his s3 behavior is fueled by that need for vengeance because MD is wholly responsible for what happened to Miguel. And Miguel is so confused and betrayed by Hawk’s shift in behavior, and yet still holds out hope that Hawk will see through Kreese’s BS and come with him to The Dojo I Refuse to Name. And when Hawk does make that deflection finally, he shows up at MD with Miguel. There’s so much more that I know I’m missing but whether someone ships them or not, that is a tried and true love and respect for one another, a willingness to fight for and defend one another that you don’t often see in TV friendships... or even in most tv relationships. And I just think that’s the best ❤️

22. Popular character you hate?   Daniel, hands down. I mean... I don’t even necessarily hate Daniel, you know? I just think it’s really, pardon the pun, rich that a guy of immense wealth and privilege can’t get a therapist or turn to his far too patient wife for help with his existential crisis over his high school bully opening up a karate dojo to make some money and help a kid who is getting the crap kicked out of him. I get that Daniel’s narrative is necessary for the rivalry, but it does nothing to make him sympathetic as a character.

23. Unpopular character you love?   Tory, definitely! Everyone hates her and then there’s me and the Squad over here banging away on our Coors Banquet cans yelling TORY RIGHTS! Seriously she catches so much flack for a teenage girl who is... the sole income provider for her family? At 17? While caring for a sick mom and a little brother? And fending off a creepy landlord? Tory has it so rough and then she meets a cool girl at her dojo who asks her to hang out at some fancy ass country club which is probably the nicest place Tory has ever been in, and then she gets talked down to and accused of being a thief and has another girl lay hands on her, only to find out that same girl is her new boyfriend’s ex and... ugh. I HATE that Tory gets shit all over when Tory and Sam wouldn’t even have beef if Sam had apologized to Tory as she SHOULD have. Tory isn’t innocent, but damn, I’d be pressed too.   My other unpopular character I love? Nathaniel. Seriously that kid is THE best. He’s a literal child but is out there like I WILL FUCK YOU UP, even though he’s MD. Honestly, his Cobra Kai energy is so ferocious I won’t be surprised if he moves back to CK eventually. Anyway, I love him. 

26. Most shippable character?   Miguel, hands down. It’s because he’s so affable and sweet overall. And because his hair is so fluffy and pettable that no one can resist touching it. I like to imagine that one day he and Hawk are talking about their hair and Hawk makes a joke about how Miguel’s mane is getting so long that it’s going to be bigger than his own, and then he reaches out to ruffle it and internally has a bisexual meltdown because oh no IT’S SO SOFT AND NICE. But uh... anyway, yes. Definitely Miguel.

#ask game #cobra kai #sorry y’all I gotta tag #uh #anti Daniel larusso #anti lawrusso #anti Kiaz #anti Elimetri #it’s not *really* anti those ships but uh... tagging for the culture???#plz don’t flame ship who you ship!!!#Migueli #i hope this is tagged appropriately if you need something else tagged lmk

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tibby · 3 years

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hello dearest tubular tibby. this is a big question but when do you think glee went wrong? like, what was the point of no return? and what would glee have been like if it was written by you? i would pay a lot of money to see glee: a tibby production and i dont have a lot of money. Sending you lots of love!

a year ago, i probably would have told you that it went downhill after season one, but revisiting season two has made me a lot of fonder of it than i was ten years ago. i still prefer s1, but i do think s2 - for the most part - does manage to keep the campy charm of season one, while balancing it out nicely with more serious topics. most of the musical numbers are good (rocky horror is one of their best, if not THE best theme episode they did), it has some of the standout episodes of the show (the substitute, furt, the sue sylvester shuffle, silly love songs, blame it on the alcohol, sexy), the cast were solid all around, and ryan murphy’s favouritism towards lea and darren had yet to impact the show too much. i think some plots weren’t handled as well as they should have (as a quinn stan, i have a lot of feelings about how all of her storylines could have been written so much better, but the lucy stuff would have been such a good way to delve more into her insecurities/body issues/obsession with perfection - instead, it was just a weird fatphobic mess), but i think stuff like santana’s sexuality and burt’s heart attack were pretty decent for glee. like, yeah, burt’s near death is intercut with finn singing losing my religion over a sandwich, but the weird mix of heart and humour is what made glee work, and you can’t expect more from a show that often covered hot topics with all the subtlety of a hand grenade.

and i’m an unapologetic riverdale stan, i love that show because it’s ridiculous and dramatic and over the top and illogical. because riverdale is self aware about that. and glee, for all its many flaws, was pretty self aware about that too in the beginning.

the problem started when the show got too caught up in its own fame.

season three continued to bring us ridiculous plots mixed in with serious ways, but it was no longer a perfect balancing act. it no longer felt as if it was fun but also touching, it just felt....messy. i’m not sure if i could pinpoint the exact moment it fell apart, because s3 was just a disaster that i erased from my memory as much as i could...but, i don’t know, maybe on my way? shoving regionals, karofsky’s suicide attempt (intercut with blaine singing cough syrup), finn and rachel’s near wedding, and quinn getting hit by a truck into 42 minutes was just...Bad. and it’s the kind of thing glee s1 might have just managed to pull off, but in s3, it just meant all the plots fell flat and lacked the emotional punch they could have otherwise delivered. no longer did glee have that spark that made us willing to overlook stupid plots and contrived relationships. it suddenly just became an overly complicated disaster that tried to shove as many social issues as it could into every episode to get people talking. also, if you didn’t care much for blaine/klaine and rachel, then every episode started to feel like a marathon. characters who had been there since the start were pushed aside, and boring/tacky/underdeveloped characters like sugar, the irish guy, and the christian guy were shoved in.

but i STILL think glee would be looked back on fondly had s3 been it. it absolutely was beginning to fall apart, and a lot of us fell out of love around this time, but their final few episodes made us love it again. paradise by the dashboard light is hands down the best new directions performance, and their overall nationals performance gave everyone a chance to shine. plots were wrapped up, the glee club won, and we were treated to an adorable montage set to tongue tied by grouplove. everyone was happy, they had their futures ahead of them, and people were teary eyed at the thought of saying goodbye to our kids. curtain call, fade to black, play them out. a ridiculous teen drama that existed in the only years were it really could have to make the kind of impact it made and get away with the stuff they did. nothing else like it, let us cherish the memories we made.

but then it continued. and nearly every new character felt like cheap replacements of the original cast, and plots were handled with less care than ever before but things were more serious, they ran out of songs to cover, there were constant and needless guest stars...it was no longer a show about a group of underdogs triumphing over adversity by singing avril lavigne songs. it was a shoddily stuck together mess of recycled storylines, unhealthy relationships, increasingly bad song choices, and matthew morrison’s greasy hair. glee, put simply, was no longer fun. and it didn’t have enough heart to redeem the lack of entertainment. we stopped tuning in, and those who kept up only did because of characters they had fallen in love with during season one. it had become exhausting, and we decided to cut our losses from one of our first big show betrayals and leave.

(sidebar: i do think that the quarterback might be the best episode of the entire show, but i think it’s an outlier and really...can’t be counted with the rest. it exists solely because of a real life tragedy, and real life emotions were going to make it entire something else entirely. it can’t really be included in the chart of “good glee” and “bad glee,” because it wasn’t about the show. it was about cory, and i don’t think it should be included in my overall opinion of when the show jumped the shark.)

i’ve tried watching some of the “better” episodes of the later seasons to see how i felt, but that charm was long gone. no matter which characters they brought back, or what plots took place, there was just no more enjoyment in glee. the spark that made season one shine despite everything had completely gone out. it had dimmed a bit over season two and three, but could still shine through sometimes. not anymore.

all that said, i don’t think i could ever write a show like glee, let alone glee itself. glee was not a show that could have been made before 2009, and it isn’t a show that could be made now. RIB’s insanity and jackassery might have brought about the show’s eventual downfall, but it’s also what made it work at the start. too much of a good thing - or rather, just enough of a bad thing. glee influenced riverdale and riverdale influences me (SPRINGFIELD, coming soon!) but that show was one of a kind. if i were in charge, but the general tone and vibes of the show got to remain the same, i guess my biggest thing would be less of blaine and rachel and brittany and kurt, more of quinn and mercedes and tina and santana. both as characters and their various dynamics. but that’s also just my personal character/ship preferences at work, as opposed to anything constructive. glee: a tibby production, would just be a lot of quinn character study (because she will always be my number one) in which her family, body image, religious guilt, relationship to motherhood both as a mother and child, sexuality, view of sex, etc were all properly explored.

but that’s a whole other thing.

#i don't think this actually answered your question. sorry.#thanks for letting me ramble though MWAH #ask #Anonymous #suicide ment //

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luulapants · 4 years

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Digging into the Teen Wolf credits

So I fell into a bit of a rabbit hole researching the shift in writing and directing credits in Teen Wolf, trying to find some explanations for the lack of continuity, whiplash change of directions on storylines, and the messiness of the later seasons. A lot of people (myself included) tend to focus on casting issues and Jeff Davis as the be-all-end-all of these issues, but here are a few interesting things I’ve put together:

1. Waning involvement from the original producers/directors -

Russell Mulcahy was a producer/exec on all 100 episodes and directed 39 episodes, including every season finale and all but one season premier (5a). He was a big-shot music video director in the ‘80s. According to his Wikipedia, “Mulcahy's work is recognisable by the use of fast cuts, tracking shots and use of glowing lights, neo-noir lighting, windblown drapery, and fans.”

Tim Andrew came on as a supervising producer and progressed to executive producer, holding a producing credit for all 100 episodes. He directed 35 episodes, including some of fan-favorite suspense episodes like Night School, The Girl Who Knew Too Much, and Riddled.

While their producer credits stayed steady, it’s the director credits that interest me. Between the two of them, they directed 75% of S1, 100% of S2, 83% and 75% of 3a and 3b. S4, it drops to 58%. Back up to 70% and 90% for 5a and 5b, then plummeting to 60% for all of S6. It’s worth noting that S4 is the first season where we start to notice that whiplash effect, not really sure what characters’ motivations are. In one episode, the focus seems to be family financial drama, and then we forget about that and focus on Lydia’s powers. Then the focus is assassins, then Kate Argent - and what the hell is up with Peter?

It’s hard to say for sure, but one could draw the conclusion that the decline in director credits from Andrew and Mulcahy also suggest a decline in interest from them in maintaining the show’s storylines.

In fact, in 5b and season 6, you see a third long-time producer, Joseph Genier, step in to direct a few episodes: the rather sloppy Maid of Gevaudan, Blitzkrieg, and Genotype. We can’t give him too hard a time over it, since his only other directing experience ever was a 2016 Netflix horror movie The Secrets of Emily Blair, shitty even by Netflix standards. He also has some late-season writing credits, but we’ll get to that later.

2. The curious case of Angela Harvey -

In order to understand the writing on TW, you need to know Angela Harvey. She climbed the ranks from personal assistant to writers’ assistant, then, starting in 3a, staff writer.

A staff writer is a salaried, stable figure in the writing department, who works with what is often a rotating door of producers and head writers. They’re usually not the “ideas” person and don’t get the final say, but they help the head writer work through the story and stay on track. Most larger shows have a whole team of staff writers. TW never had more than one at a time.

Shortly after her promotion to staff writer, Harvey got her first full writing credit for Frayed, which is a controversial episode! It’s both praised and detested for the non-linear storyline, the sometimes confusing flashbacks, and Allison’s emotional hallucination of her mother.

After that, she went back to staff writer and was a rock for the show for all of S3 and 4. In S4, she got full writing credit for I.E.D. and Time of Death. Both got mixed reviews on-par with the rest of the muddled mess of S4, but I will note one thing: the human factor. I.E.D., for me, was the first episode that really gave a more rounded picture of Liam, who until that time felt very much like a new puppy coming in to replace our favorite old dogs that went to live on the big farm in the sky.

S5, Harvey gets a promotion to ‘story editor,’ which is pretty much just a title and pay promotion. She wrote A Novel Approach and Strange Frequencies, two more mixed-bag sort of episodes with some golden moments and some crippling larger-story issues. Then she writes the slightly stronger The Sword and the Spirit and...

Gone. She vanishes from the credits for the rest of season 5. I haven’t been able to find any specific explanations, but I did find a rather telling quote from her in an article about how black writers get hired but not promoted in TV: “I repeated staff writer four times,” she said.

Harvey then returns for 6x2 with a shiny new title: executive story editor. I can only draw one conclusion from this sequence of events, which is a contract dispute. Harvey demanded a promotion (as she should have, given her longevity on the show!), was denied, and walked off. The show floundered in her absence and begged her back with the new title.

She got full writer credits for two more episodes for S6 but left the show for good after the second, After Images.

To me, it seems clear that they had a strong, stable voice in Angela, but her commitment to the project waned as she realized that the show had no commitment to her. She may not have been the strongest head writer, but she was an essential core, a beating heart of the show. Her contributions were undervalued and, ultimately, the show suffered because of it.

3. The rotating door of writers -

It’s not unusual for head writers to come and go on shows. Then again, most shows have a stable core in the writers’ room to host those head writers. TW had Jeff Davis, who has frequently been acknowledged to be overly hands-on with the writing (even in episodes he did not take writing credit for), and a single staff writer: Angela Harvey and, before her, Andy Cochran (who was staff writer for S2).

S1 did not have a staff writer, but that was because Jeff had a very firm grip on the story and also because there were only four writers other than Jeff Davis (and the original Teen Wolf movie writers). Interestingly, none of those 4 writers ever returned to the show after S1. This would become a theme for TW writers.

Jeff kept even tighter control on S2, writing 8 of 12 episodes with the help of Cochran. Other than them, there were four other writers, two of whom were a writing team.

Jeff wrote 15 of 24 S3 episodes and brought in 6 new writers and one S2 writer, Christian Taylor who also produced and directed. Of the new writers, only Ian Stokes, who wrote The Fox and the Wolf would become a regular writer afterward (though Alyssa Clark did write two more episodes in S4). Stokes wrote three S4 episodes and three for 5a.

Jeff wrote 6 of 12 episodes in S4, 5 of 10 in 5a, 4 of 10 in 5b, and then did not write again until the series finale.

Starting in Season 4, the writing credits are all over the place. Most writers come in for a single episode and never again. The few notable exceptions are:

Eric Wallace, a later seasons producer

Will Wallace (not sure if related) who was a writers’ assistant that seems to have been randomly granted writing credit for 5a’s Ouroboros, despite having no other writing credits to his name previously. He got writing credit for 4 other episodes in S5 and S6, plus a random staff writer credit for 6a’s Ghosted.

Lindsay Sturman, a lalter seasons producer who now writes and produces for Supergirl.

And producer Joseph Genier who, as he had been allowed to direct later seasons with no previous directing credits, was also allowed head writer credit with no previous writing credits.

What can we divine from this? Chaos, honestly. An inability to resist the uninformed and careless whims of the producers. The lack of lower-level writing staff, who are usually the ones there to give stability and cohesion to the story, meant that every new writer brought in new and contradictory ideas of what the story was about and where it should go. Looking at these credits, I can’t tell if the problem was that everyone wanted to write and writing spots were being given as thank-yous in exchange for producers laying down money or if they had such a difficult time finding quality writers willing to work in that environment that producers had no choice but to step in and write as well as they could given a lack of resources.

4. The vanishing first assistant director -

Compared to the other issues, this one seems minor. However, it seems like TW gave up on the position of ‘first assistant director’ at some point. This position is essentially the right hand of the director, making sure that set runs smoothly and the director has everything they need.

James J.D. Taylor held the position for 50 episodes, including all but 4 episodes in S1-3a. In the first 3, Jeffrey January filled in. For the fourth, Eric Sherman, who would come to be Taylor’s backup, it seems. For 3b and the first half of S4, Sherman and Taylor traded off every other episode. Taylor tried his hand at directing for S4′s Monstrous, at which point Sherman started trading off episodes with Matt Rawls.

Taylor went back to first assistant director for S5, but intermittently and with no backup for his position. 8 of 20 episodes in 5a had no first assistant director. Taylor directed 6x2 and was first assistant for 6x4 and 6x5, but 17 of 20 episodes of S6 had no first assistant.

Sure, there were second assistant and second second assistants, but it seems very odd to neglect such a pivotal position. What is especially baffling is that 6b had first-time directors Tyler Posey, Linden Ashby, and Joseph Genier all working without a first assistant director. To me, this speaks to staffing issues and difficulty organizing a show that was clearly on its last legs.

In summary -

Where the early seasons had focused attention and investment from the original core producers, directors, and the show runner, clearly their attention and care for the project waned over time. They failed to promote the show’s most valuable workers and failed to bring in lower-level staff to do the grunt work in the writers’ room. Instead, they pulled in more and more higher level executives, who tend to have lofty ideas about where a show goes but no willingness to dig into the nitty gritty details. Film schools could make a study of Teen Wolf: “How to run a show into the ground.”

#teen wolf #teen wolf meta #tv industry #screenwriting

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capricornsicle · 4 years

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I have a feeling your ask box and I are going to be familiar. You might be hot-taked out after that killer Satomi discourse. But whenever you’ve got it in you, I’d sure love to hear what you think about Kira and her Jeff-deemed-absolutely-necessary departure.

Oh, definitely. And I do love content, so...

Kira Yukimura was done so dirty by the writers and Jeffrey “I’m not racist I’ll prove it by arguing to poc calling me out for it on twitter” Davis. Her treatment was racist, tokenizing, and it wasn’t even high-brow racism. It was sloppy and lazy. If you’re gonna write all your characters of color off the show, commit to it. She went to the desert like 5 times before she stayed. Cowards.

Kira was only meant to be on the show for the Nogitsune storyline in 3b. However, fans liked her so much that, as with Theo in season 6, she was brought back for more episodes. The difference is that Cody Christian is white-passing and male and Arden Cho is not. Female characters don’t exist on Teen Wolf without a relationship to a male character. Hayden existed for Liam. Tracy existed for Theo. Melissa existed for Scott and Argent. Allison existed for Scott. Lydia, the female character with the most screentime of all of them, spent a lot of her time existing in relationship to Jackson, Stiles, Parrish (shudder), and other male main characters. Women on the show were reduced to love interests and mothers more often than not, and Kira was the same.

I loved her character. I loved her arc. I loved Arden Cho, who in real life is as sweet and kind as her character. I enjoyed her parents, both Noshiko, who’s surprisingly funny and a total badass, and Ken, who’s the most wholesome man in the universe. The only straight man we stan. I love him.

Anyways, Kira was getting a fun arc outside of being Scott’s girlfriend, with her parents and her powers and all, and then wham, white-passing boy shows up and no more main character status for Kira. Guess there wasn’t enough room to keep the only interesting plot line of all the ones happening in s5. Personally, I would have chosen Kira over the Marrish garbage fire of underage relationships, but that’s just me.

Then. The Skinwalkers. I could write a whole essay about them, but this is a Kira post, so I’ll limit it to her. At least Luther got sent to the moon for a reason. Kira got sent to the desert for “rEaSoNs”. There was no indication that her power was out of control, but every indication it wasn’t. She was growing and learning. Then, suddenly, she was “too powerful” so she had to go to the desert and disappear for a few episodes and then go back and forth for a while before they wrapped up sending Theo to the upside down or wherever he went and she could finally go... hang out with the people who we were told could help her control her power but who only threw spears at her and gave her a season finale ex machina. Then back to the desert with you!

You can tell something was going on backstage in her treatment. Arden Cho wasn’t informed she was being cut, she had to be told by fans. Her departure was carried out as swiftly as possible, and not for any real reason. Kira would have been tremendously helpful against the hunters and in a lot of later scenes, against the Ghost Riders (and let me remind everyone that KIRA WAS THE ONE WHO TOLD LYDIA ABOUT THE WILD HUNT), against pretty much anything. Immune to electrocution? Don’t help with the hunters who love electrocuting people. Sloppy writing through and through.

And what’s more is that Kira was cut just in time for the Scalia thing, which was so fucking rushed oh my GOD nothing has ever been less natural- this is a Kira post, calm down capsicle. Anyways, Kira got replaced as Scott’s love interest and not much else by a white girl, no hate on Malia or Shelley but much on the writers. I loved Malia and Kira’s friendship, and if anyone should have gotten with Malia, it should have been Kira. (The first time I saw Malia I wondered if we were getting another ambiguously brown character, actually, but no, just Georgian and well-tanned. But I bet not all my followers knew Tracy was played by a Chinese and Cherokee actor. Or that Nolan was played by a Mexican and Caxcan actor. Or that Theo was played by a Penobscot Native actor. The list goes on of white-passing POC who got to stay marginally longer than Black or brown characters.) The “Scott ends up with a white girl he has no chemistry with” threw me for many loops, especially after I was surprised to find myself liking Scira, even though I’m usually bored by straight relationships because of their one-sided focus and nonexistent chemistry. Kira got to be a character outside of Scott, and I liked their romance better for it, and then desert for a thousand years!

TLDR on the canon end of things is that Kira and Arden were done dirty by a group of powerful white men who wanted to tell a cishet white story.

Now, on the fandom end of things, I’m stepping into the real hot water. It’s safe to say that Kira’s story was sloppy and Arden didn’t deserve that ending, but it’s less safe to say that this fandom doesn’t treat her that well either. Here’s the most popular x Scott ships on Ao3, under the Teen Wolf tag with no other filters.

Scott and Allison. Scott and Stiles. Scott and Isaac. Then Scott and Kira, in dead last. Scott and Malia don’t even make the top ships list, probably because of how rushed and sloppy it was, but I digress.

People love Scott and Allison a lot, and I get that. I liked her too. I was also sad when she died. But, unlike a lot of sentiment I see in this fandom, I don’t think she should have been brought back to fight the beast in season 5 and get back with Scott. Not only do I think bringing characters back to life without very good reason and explanation (which they wouldn’t have, come on) cheapens their death, and that bringing characters back to life is weak storytelling in general, but let’s recall that Scira is still a thing in season 5. They’re still madly in love when Kira leaves. Allison should not have come back and love-triangled so Kira could be written off for a different white girl or so the massive amount of young white girls in the fandom who love Allison would be angry at Kira for breaking up their OTP. That would have been the one thing that could have made season 5 worse. (Well, they could have made Marrish a thing or killed Mason, but Jeff Davis thought about it and a shiver went down his spine because the ghost of Christmas future hears my name in its nightmares.)

Even if people aren’t “bring Allison back” campers, they largely ignore Kira’s entire existence. People who post gifsets and posts about Allison or Lydia don’t give anywhere near the same amount of attention to Kira. I see more Malia posts, actually. And while all of them had more runtime than Kira, none of them paired with Scott quite as perfectly, or had such strong independent storylines. Lydia almost did, but it kept petering out and she kept going back to main plot only. I see lots of appreciation posts for Allison and Lydia and Malia and the men, obviously, but NOTHING for Kira or Arden Cho. We all know what happened backstage because we read the same post in 2016 or whenever and then we all stopped talking about it.

Even the racism in this fandom skips Kira. Scott antis, I’m looking (controversially) at you. I’m glad Kira isn’t the subject of a bunch of obvious racism (as much as “bring Allison back!” makes it subtle), but not because she’s a forgotten side character. Kira made the main credit sequence! She has a sword! What else could you all POSSIBLY want?

And here’s where I burn at the stake: Kira was written off her own damn “look Fun Japanese mythology” storyline half the time so it could center around Stiles. A white boy. There were numerous issues with the mythology before that — “Oni” means demon, not “firefly samurai ninja”, and it refers to a similar mythology as the western “fae”, a large collection of creatures benevolent, malevolent, and in between, with different traits and origins. Kitsunes are meant to be red or white, not gold, and they’re foxes, not cats, animation team. “Nogitsune” refers to the malevolent class of “low” Kitsune, or “wild” Kitsune, who didn’t align themselves with the goddess Inari and do divine and pious work. There are many of them and the most they really do is harass people at shrines, not murder indiscriminately for funsies. They’re only malevolent in that they like doing bad deeds, not that they’re serial killers. And they’re not one of the usual 13 low Kitsune, two of which are bad of their own accord! (Spirit and Air. Google it!) They are meant to be dealt with by Inari-aligned high Kitsune, not your average tricky fox. Among other things.

So Stiles. Outside of the Kira storyline, he’s used in a lot of fandom discourse about racism and sexism. And queerbaiting. Y’all love a scrawny white boy. Anyways, Stiles gets possessed by the Nogitsune (that’s NOT how that works but okay Jeffrey) and suddenly s3 is about him. Kira’s not evil, now let’s look at Stiles being tired and messy and killing people. Dylan #1 did a great job playing that part, no hate on him, but the fact that a white boy became the main character in a Japanese (or Korean, if you’re Jeff, same thing) girl’s storyline is. Hmm. How do you call it? Blatant racism. And erasure. Which is racism. YIKES, Jeff. There is so much wrong with Stiles being the Nogitsune and controlling the Oni and his whole story (and oh my god the other guy who got possessed was also a white boy instead of a Japanese character played by the same actress Jesus fucking Christ). I’m not going into that, because that’s its own essay.

Anyways, because of how much this fandom loves Stiles, it’s easy to ignore how Kira and Japanese characters were treated. People project onto Stiles with glee. He’s white. He’s awkward. He’s (supposedly) not super attractive. (Yikes.) He’s ditzy and bouncy and all that fun stuff, but he also always saves the day. He got written off for most of 6b and he still saved the stupid day. And hey, dark!Stiles (let’s not get into calling him dark instead of Nogitsune that’s just too much wine we’d have to crack open to say it) is a fun trope and people like posting and creating about him. Except that he’s the white boy who took Kira’s storyline. Her independent story about Kitsune and the like was all given over to him, not just by the show, but by the fandom. So now every post about Kitsune is a Stiles post, even if it started with Kira. And because it’s Stiles, and this fandom loves him, and is easily offended by people leaning too hard on the glass house around them and him, Kira gets forgotten and swept aside. Everyone would rather talk about Stiles. Who is incapable of bad. Or cultural appropriation. But if you attack him you’re being ableist because he has ADHD. This is why I relate to Nolan for anxiety feels instead.

TLDR on the fandom end, y’all don’t treat Kira better than the show did. I see a few posts here and there from some dedicated users — typically the same people posting about Boyd, Deaton, Morrell, yeah that’s it I’m the only one posting about Kali. (Un-fun fact: Kali was not played by an Indian actor, but by a half-Black actor. Jeff Davis, when called out on twitter, said “wow ok idiots we tried to find an Indian actress but it was hard actually SUPER hard so shut up and stop telling me how to write MY show”, which is paraphrasing with intent to make fun, but exactly what he said.) Y’all who know about Arden and Kira should diversify your blogs to include more POC, especially ones where the actor AND character were rudely sidelined for vague white people reasons. Post gifs of Kira along with Allison, Lydia, and Malia. Post ship stuff of Scira too. Post about kitsunes, the origin story of the Nogitsune, when you post about the white boy who became the main character of that arc. Call the show out. Call the fandom out. Stop making every bit and piece of her story about Czechoslovakia White Boy. Demand Kira in any future runs of the show, if season 7 or whatever does happen. Include her in your fanfictions, in your headcanons, in your art. You don’t have to love her, but you have to remember that she’s as there as any of the white characters are.

This take is very hot. If I receive racist asks and/or messages about this, I’m going to make fun of each and every sender.

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getreadytosmash · 3 years

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well NOW i need to hear your Thoughts about skaar and hulk finding out things 👀👀

@mistyflame1

Sjsjsjjs w.well....if u say so sir 👉👈😳

Takes place within the end of my s3 ideas

A lot of gamma mutates have been appearing and fighting by now and this is during the point that Betty Ross and a collection of other people have slowly gone missing over the season as well as a bunch of mysterious gamma related attacks

Leader is hesitantly shifting onto their side but isn't quite with them??? Still off on his own and researching and overall very standoffish still since he knows whose related to it all still

Skaar's probably been suffering some odd dreams at this point and I wanna relate them to prophesies since Sakaar was quite connected to them within the comics

Probably something cheesy like uh "when green was torn away we wept. And while you fell as the sun falls from moon, she has cried and she has wept. Face your destiny, Sakaarson, and reignite what was once one." Or smth that's all I got at the top of my head rn

And yeah, Skaar wants to go and has a brief fight over it with Red who thinks it's stupid to go catering off into space just because he dreams of talking rocks

But Hulk points out the fact that they're needed on Earth right now, to figure out what's going on and how to help people, even though humans are disrupting them more and more

And Skaar can see how tired Hulk looks, how he's trying so hard and how even the mention of space settles something on him and Skaar can't make his family go through any of that again. Can't make them ensure that hopelessness of dying in a metal can in a place where most of the world would think they deserved to stay after simply trying to help. Making them all go would just be selfish.

So. I mean. Its not selfish to drag Leader on a trip to Sakaar. Is it?

And yeah this is where it gets a bit blurry cause I imagine Skaar is somehow stuck there for a few days and a lot of cut scenes between him exploring Sakaar culture and Hulk worrying so much and now trying to get to Sakaar.

Its messy for Hulk. Because a part of him fears space now but Skaar is up there. And space and fear is only something you ensure for so long until you reach something grounding and solid again. It'll be worth it if he can get to Skaar again and to help the younger hulk and keep him safe.

Hiro-Kala...I definitely think yeah he's settled as some sort of bad leader and I don't mean as in "he's a shitty person!!" But he's away from Caiera and alone so that makes a lot of his decisions panicked and bad and he can't rely on anyone for help

And now suddenly he has someone with a similar tattoo that isn't fully complete (because yes I use physical symbolism) and now Skaar is putting what he's learned from Hulk to use while searching for the source of the voice that rings out to him across a galaxy.

And I want this to be a thing where it cuts and shows how Hulk worries and becomes rough in his decisions because he only does that when it comes to family! And I want it to show examples of how Skaar has come further now, become someone who could lead and shows examples of what he's learned in comparisons from flashbacks!!

Like...one flashback of Hulk teaching Skaar an important lesson and it cuts to Hulk completely disregarding while Skaar follows it perfectly? It has a good view of how they are and the way their relationship has developed over the past year and a half.

I haven't got all of it but I definitely picture the big moment when Skaar eventually unlocks what's hidden within Sakaar and Hulk and the rest of the Smashers arrive and its absolutely some of that shit that cuts between Leader and Hiro-Kala yelling at Skaar to stop while Hulk rushes to find them before a giant blue and white light cracks between the ground and makes everything go black at a cliffhanger

Tbh I kinda want Caiera to be a villain at first? But more of uh...that scene in Moana where the goddess is angry because she got locked away by the Red King??? Yeah that. And with Cai's emergence, all of these MEMORIES about her come spilling out, a bit like Lup and TAZ

Hulk remembers. Remembers a mission where he got stuck away from the Avengers for a month and a half and how he met this woman who made the Earth move and at the time, had been the only one who matched him in strength that either wasn't his baby cousin or Ben Grimm being a good friend

Remembers the thrill and taste of revolution. The joy of being seen and accepted by someone for bother sides of himself and how Caiera would call him "Holku" with that same smile and eyes that struck his heart and make his stomach clench funny

And its easy and hard to remember the quick vows they made before the king was defeated and Hulk decided to go back. Before the King turned out to have survived and locked Caiera away after she gave birth to the most powerful twins on Sakaar

And the memory is there. The clarity is there. Skaar was his son and Hiro-Kala is his son. One got forced to fight and tortured and mind washed and forced to fight his own family in order to claw for any sense of self while the other had been left to fend for themself and they had to find their way and they hadn't done a good job and that just makes it sting more because Hiro-Kala had tried their best but it just wasn't the good type of best.

Big fight. Just. Big fight. Lots of pain and screaming and both of his parents going out of control before Hiro-Kala calms Caiera down and Skaar calms Hulk down. And tbh hell fucking year im picturing ur art here now where they hug and cry because it fits perfect.

Hulk and Caiera...soft moment with their children before finishing what they started properly and killing the Red king. Well. If it was proper HatAoS they would seal him into the Earth instead of Caiera but I mean. Kill.

And after that there's still a lot to be done and the others need to go back but Caiera and Hiro-Kala take over at royalty with the rest of the Warbound being part of the palace and tbh this is mostly so we can see the relationship develop more over the next season and stretch it out a little more?

Hulk and Caiera agree to pen pal while she fixes Sakaar and he fixes Earth. Maybe a bit of a shippy moment ;) and Skaar... hm. Probably stays on Sakaar for a little bit and I like how it gives him a taste of his home and ultimately would mean that he decides whether or not he wants to be Heir Skaar or Smasher Skaar

And while this happens I'm totally picturing cheesy stuff on Earth where all of the Smashers have a moment of missing Skaar and overall needing a fifth member and the fact that Hulk has growing issues about the fact that he has two sons now and he's...kinda failed them both horribly.

What a time for his daughter to make her first appearance by attacking them and kidnapping Jen eh.

#ask #mistyflame1 #headcanon #uhhh idk what else to tag #gonna stop here cause hoo boy that's a lot and my fingers hurt #so uh. what do u think? I've never really shared my reboot feelings apart from that big idea list but that wasn't detailed

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sam-roulette · 3 years

Text

rip to the alt Sasha survives s3 “the slaughter ritual is a battle of the bands wherein one of the 4 main mechanisms albums has the key to ending the world” crack au for being quite literally impossible to write

so here’s how it was meant to go down:

- Jon gets kidnapped by Alfred Grifter himself and when he’s returned to the archives he has all 4 Mechs albums and also punches Tim in the face in a slightly slaughter-induced haze

- Jon immediately snapping out of it and being so apologetic he tells Tim to punch him back so they’re even. Tim, tiredly, tells him that no. He is not going to punch him back. “You don’t have to worry about if it hurts,” that’s. Not The Point.

- there’s some slaughter juice on the albums so everyone starts getting a little bloodthirsty, a fact that becomes apparent as the Archives splits along party lines- Jon is convinced High Noon Over Camelot is the world-ender, while Sasha insists that it’s The Bifrost Incident. Tim’s on Sasha’s side; Martin says he’s impartial but implies Jon may have a point, and only chooses Once Upon A Time to keep up the veneer of not being biased.

- Sasha manages to convince Tim to grab Ulysses Dies At Dawn so that none of the other possible combatants have it Just In Case that’s the one that ends the world so that she can stop him. Tim questions who’s gonna stop Sasha if he can’t get close once Red Signal starts and she says not to worry, I’ve got a plan

- the plan is she gets Not!Sasha out the basement to be her bandmate, promises it that it can eat her after the competition and (it can’t because of ) threatens it with a suspiciously high voltage taser. She has no plans to let it eat her later. She is a liar

- Tim, predictably, does not take this well. Sasha tries joking that he doesn’t get her “artistic vision” and Tim says he doesn’t know what he’ll do if Sasha gets taken again. The argument gets more heated from there.

- Turns out, things between Sasha and Tim didn’t get magically better once Sasha was spat out the table at the start of s3

- and in fact Tim has been more distant and unsure of how to act around her, since even if she’s His Sasha, he has NO memories of her- just what Sasha says and vague half-recollections that he can’t tell if its something the Stranger put in him or if its the hazy remnants of this woman that he loved once.

- Sasha finds herself being treated like a stranger by Tim, and while it’s not really bad per se- Tim isn’t cruel to people- it still Hurts when she tries to reach out to him, when it looks like he’s obviously hurting, and he just. Doesn’t Open Up. It doesn’t help that he can’t be in the same room as Jon for long and that he can’t look Martin in the eye, and it doesn’t help that it’s only after Literally Threatening To Leave that Jon cracks and admits everything that happened in s2

- The day of the contest is getting nearer. Martin is suddenly very suspiciously good at the violin despite never having lessons growing up, which he jokes is a “natural affinity for strings”. He’s been on the phone a suspicious amount.

- The day before the contest and tensions are high in the Archives. Jon’s locked himself in his office to do “vocal exercises”. Martin hums everywhere. Tim and Sasha are coordinating on The Bifrost Incident, but Tim keeps it strictly professional and terse, and it’s slowly driving Sasha up the wall.

- Finally, Tim says, “During this... we won’t hurt each other, right? While we’re in there- we can keep our heads on straight.”

- “Of course not.” Sasha replies, immediate. “You’d never hurt me.”

- “... Right.”

- The day arrives and it’s revealed that Jon, Martin, Sasha, and Tim are the Only combatants. It was Grifter’s game to get them to fight each other the entire time, in a strictly organized battle-like way. Not!Sasha gets a pass as Sasha’s “pet” and Sasha very quickly steps on its foot to keep it from saying anything that might disqualify them.

- Listen the actual battle itself ? Is messy as fuck to figure out. like we never actually properly figured out the rules. we have a spreadsheet of like which number placement every song in all 4 albums were and everything and while some combinations would’ve made for some SICK turn based combat would’ve been an absolute Nightmare to actually carry out

- each song actually has an effect and transforms both the stage and audience as the show goes on- so there’s a bit where Jon has The Hanged Man Rusts and that garners complete silence as it accidentally prophesies the rest of the story, Thor causes Sasha to actually begin to spark with lightning, cool stuff

- the only truly comprehensible bit was round 4. Hellfire, Sirens, Cinders’ Song, and Sigyn.

- Hellfire sees Jon give into the Slaughter energy more than any other point as the entire audience starts fighting each other in religious ecstasy, the other stages where the assistants are isolated beginning the melt and warp. Sasha helps Tim back up just before he slips into the flame below and Martin tries to climb higher as the hands of congregation reach for him, or past him, or to grab Anything

- Sirens cuts through the last bit before it all goes truly to hell as Tim picks up a guitar and starts lulling everything down to a sense of normalcy. There’s a moment, at the intersection of when Jon stops trying to scream the last dying cry of Gallahad’s maddened ramblings and the audience returning to their seats and his voice acapella filling the hall- we can chase away your worries- where there is Perfect Clarity. Tim could stop after this moment. Before the end of the verse, he could stop, and maybe it’d put an end to this.

- His eyes land on Sasha. Before he can stop himself, the verse is finished. Sleep in peace and serenity. Then he can’t stop singing anymore, and Sasha watches the drowsy smile suddenly bloom across Tim’s cheeks

- It’s when Martin, never once looking in Jon’s direction, jumps from his platform to Tim’s that Sasha knows something’s wrong. Because she wants to do the same thing. So she takes a page out of the real Ulysses’ playbook- she has the Not!Them tie her to one of the beams on her stage and promise, no matter what she says next, to never untie her. Not until someone else starts singing

- Just as Sasha predicted, she starts getting odd herself. Tim is looking in her direction, so longingly as he sings that she Knows it could only really be for Her, that he wants her to just lay in his embrace and be well taken care of- and she stops wanting anything beyond it. So she struggles. She hisses and bites and kicks and screams to try and break free of the rope while Tim smiles, beckoning, so they can finally have that reunion they’ve both wanted. The one where they hold each other and say that it’s okay, that they have each other, that it’s Safe

- Someone unties Sasha. It feels like Tim’s arms around her and she melts, no longer recognizing the pretty man singing on stage. Not!Tim looks back at Tim from across the gap, holding Sasha tenderly, and grins. Tim stops singing, for just a moment, surrounded by legions except for the sole person he wants to see most in the world, in the arms of something that doesn’t even look remotely like him

- The moment’s enough and, as Martin sees Jon looking strangely adoringly at Tim, he realizes that wait a fucking minute. And immediately gets so jealous he hijacks Tim’s spotlight and restores actual equilibrium with Cinders’ Song. Tim is once again left alone on stage, strangely desolate against the large setting.

- Sasha regains her balance and tries to answer it all with Sigyn, but the Not!Them refuses to stop looking like a mockery of Tim. Jon is kind enough to take Lyf’s narration while Not!Tim is “kind” enough to take Loki’s lines. Sasha tries to appeal- why back away? This time I’ll stay; come stand at my side as we make them pay...

- When she sings “remember your wife!” Not!Tim says, “I don’t recall,” playfully, mocking. He mocks when he says “She’s still enthralled,” one part disgust for Sasha’s feelings and one part gleeful accusation to Tim- look what you did to her. She still feels the effect of your song, even now.

- anyway long story short everything gets more and more screwy as everyone is magically made to forget that they’re supposed to be stopping this thing and start only wanting to be the one to get to their finale quickest. Blood and Whiskey sees Sasha nearly lose an ear from a bullet. Underworld Blues has Tim nearly causing hell to freeze over with his chilling plea as Orpheus. No Happy Ending signals the first of the audience member deaths.

- It also signals when Grifter leaves weapons on the stage and has the team go at it. It’s not really so bad, at first- Jon and Martin forget about fighting somewhere along the way and kiss, Sasha is knocked out for a few seconds and is somewhat conscious, which is Not a good state to enter Red Signal in, and Tim is trying desperately to figure out where to go next

- Tim has Ties That Bind as a last attempt to gain control of the situation and very nearly manages to snap Sasha out of the absolute maddened hell state she’s about the enter. If only he could find it in himself to omit some lyrics- if only he could find it in himself to be less bitter when singing I was betrayed by the one I was to wed.

- There was no more love there - my heartstrings long since cut...

-There was no more love there.

- “Ah.” Is Sasha’s last coherent thought, “I see.”

- “So that’s how it is.”

- Martin’s mic cuts out. Jon’s mic cuts out. Tim’s mic cuts out on the last line.

- Sasha picks herself off the ground, slowly. Far more slowly than the words falling out of her mouth. Not words- an incantation. A Chant.

- y’ai ngah Yog-Sothoth...

- turns out Jon’s not the only one who can do a mean incantation. And unlike Jon, Sasha’s had some vocal training at some point in heavy metal. Make of that what you will

- The guitars kick in at the end to dive straight into Ragnarok I and Alfred Grifter announces that the winner is Sasha James amidst the screaming and destruction of the roof caving in reverse, showing a blood red sky. The Not!Them has disappeared, presumably already running into the faceless crowd to find a new body for the incoming new world Jon’s trying to get to safety and Martin’s begging Tim to hide, that there’s not gonna be getting through to Sasha now

- But Tim knows the album because he worked with her on this. For this scenario. Just in case. He knows it’s safe enough to move when Sasha-as-Sigyn questions I know this man, why is he here...? Knows to hold still, make himself as small as possible, when she begins Ragnarok II. The crowd isn’t so lucky and they melt into each other, a mosh pit of rock n roll violence that flashes and gleams with pocket knife and piercing and heels and nails. Just barely manages to make a run for it as Sasha takes on the final lines as the Void.

- Envy your dead for now unfurled / this madness follows to consume / your world.

- Tim is just close enough in ear shot to yell, not even attempting to sing at this point with a throat as dry as his is, “You- don’t I know you?” The world tries to skip Ragnarok III to get to IV. Tim tries to be louder even with the rubble giving way under his hands, “Weren’t we friends?”

- The gentle piano kicks in instead. Tim could nearly cry with relief when Sasha turns his way and, even if she doesn’t look like she fully gets it yet, answers, “Once- I remember. And now, when it ends...”

- In harmony. The first they’ve managed in a long while. Where are you going?

- “For vengeance...?” Sasha left uncertain. Answered in a songbird lilting voice, “For love.”

- There is no mention of death. Only an immediate harmony as they both sing Perhaps that’s enough!

- The guitar that comes on isn’t the end of Ragnarok III. It’s the lonely riff of Thor as Sasha hauls herself up with a drum mallet she steals from the broken down remains of backstage. Sung, almost like a tune a soldier marches to, fury like thunderbolts burns in my veins...

- She smashes Grifter over the head and feeds him into the mosh pit to be torn to shreds. As his shriek of laughter echoes off of the walls, she takes the mallet to the lonely speaker at the back of the hall, playing the final riffs, and destroys it.

- The world stops ending. Everyone is left in the wreckage, passed out and bloody. Jon pokes his head out from a trap door in the ground. Martin mutters from offstage somewhere. Sasha is heaving out breaths as she stares at the broken equipment, still clutching the hammer she threw in the works.

- Cue the moment where she finally turns to face Tim. They look at each other. Then, they’re grinning, and they’re starting to run. They end up toppling onto the ground together, laughing with wild relief, arms tight around each other the entire way through as Tim’s the first one to let loose the first catharsis tears.

- Tim tells her that was the coolest damn thing he ever did see. Sasha says she’s sorry for almost ending the world to have him see that, and Tim’s just going are you kidding ??? This was the best way this could have ended up!

- And Sasha says that it wouldn’t have happened if not for Tim stepping in like he did. And Tim says he’s sorry too, for everything. For the way he acted, and Sasha says that none of them were in their right minds, but Tim still insists that being in right mind or Not, he made some shitty choices there-

- and of course Sasha kisses him. Tells him he was simply brilliant. And Tim grins and kisses her and tells her that no no no SHE was absolutely brilliant, she had TRUE star power-

- and it’s not like before. Tim still can’t remember everything, and the memories Sasha has of the Archives before the Not!Them leave a sour taste in her mouth after she’s released. Tim is gonna need a long time before he can really go back to being his cheerful self, and Sasha needs time to come to terms with missing so much of her own life. But

- But at least they can lay together at night and find a little peace and serenity in the interim.

#tma #man we had so much planned it felt like a waste not to tell anyone #use this idea if youd like i guess but also hgvjb good luck doin it buddy #also ev erything's below the cut bc there is truly. So Much oh no

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