#weirdly enough I never finished the comics like I know everything that happened in them but I think I had like ten issues left

[carlsophialydia]

I need to plan out a time to reread the walking dead and induce the hyperfixation again

[lucky-katebishop]

I spent a month reading harry potter fanfics and here’s what I learned

So for the past three and a half weeks, I’ve been doing basically nothing but reading Harry Potter fanfics and now I kind of just want to talk about them. No one cares but future me will! I tend to get caught in obsessions fairly easily (for instance, two months ago was comic books and last month was video editing and then k dramas). I’m feeling like my Harry Potter obsession is fading which makes me really sad cause it was a fun ride. I went from Drarry to Hinny, time travel to alternate realities, obscuris Harry to Dark!Harry, MCU AUs to Doctor Who AUs. I must’ve read more than 50 fics.

I’ve learned that I hate Dumbledore

Snape makes for a great mentor but I will only like him with proper character development

also where did Snape being Draco’s godfather come from? I don’t think this was in the books? I’m not angry, just confused

I read a fic that was so sad that I was physically unable to finish reading it -- actually I read two of those, one of them was a DID fic and the other Voldemort adopted Harry

the Voldemort one is quite possibly the most tragic thing I have ever read and even though it’s been two weeks I still haven’t been able to recover -- I was only halfway finished too GOOD LORD

another fic I read that was so fucking depressing was a time loop situation where Harry literally couldn’t get out of and it ended tragically

obscuris Harry is interesting but I really only like the ones where Newt is actually involved but I couldn’t find any finished ones

I don’t like it when Harry’s appearance changes, it throws me for a loop

there was this one where Harry got sent back in time and his figure got disfigured and so he didn’t even appear like himself anymore

I just find it odd for Harry Potter not to look like Harry Potter, idk

I also have a headcanon that his hair is very curly rather than shaggy

I haven’t been able to find a fic where Harry goes back in time to the Marauders era and has the right amount of angst but the right amount of fluff

I’ve read some good ones where the Marauders travel to Harry’s time but like,,, it isn’t quite what I’m looking for? I’m gonna have to write it, aren’t I? 

this doesn’t happen with irondad fics, literally everything you’ve ever wanted you can find it there

I read one where Harry did go back in time but she (fem!Harry) didn’t really interact with her parents or the Marauders that much, she became friends with Regulus instead

Regulus should’ve been in Gryffindor

I’ve not only read fics where Draco has been a Ravenclaw, Slytherin, but also a Gryffindor. I haven’t found one where he’s in Hufflepuff

I’ve read fics where Harry’s in every single house - the Ravenclaw one might be my favorite so far, it had to do with him going to a different timeline where there’s another Harry and he’s a major dick

Hufflepuff Harry one was funny, but it got distressing cause Dumbledore didn’t trust him and tried to get him expelled

actually the Hufflepuff one made my heart hurt cause Harry was put in the body of a Harry who isn’t the boy who lived and barely spoke and was basically like an even more traumatized Neville

Slytherin Harry is everything to me and he should’ve been in Slytherin

Ravenclaw Draco is something that can be so personal

I’m tired of reading Year One fics, I get it, there’s a stone, let’s move on

Year Four fics are my favorite however, there was one (which is my favorite) where Harry’s a necromancer and in the graveyard scene he calls corpses from the graves alive to help him get out of there it was so cool

I am partial to Harry/Draco but Harry/Luna is cute

there was a Pokemon Harry/Luna one that’s adorable and I’ve read it twice already

I like when there’s a ton of lore involved

especially Hogwarts lessons - like ancient runes can fucking get it, I love runes fics

there was an MCU AU one where I read Harry didn’t have his magic anymore, not as potent as it was, but he did have ancient runes

LISTEN I tried to get into Dark!Harry but after that Voldemort adoption one I can’t do it anymore, I will start crying literally right now -- he just wants to be fucking useful! He just wants to be loved! Is that too much to fucking ask for? 

however Harry doing dark!magic but isn’t actually on the dark side is cool

Death Eater Spy Draco! It makes me distressed but also I am so here for it!

Jenkins if you’re out there I love you (if you get this reference I love you)

I read a ton of Avengers adopt Harry when he’s younger but I don’t care for younger Harry fics, I prefer when he’s a teenager and I don’t have to read the first few years at Hogwarts, it can get repetitive

Give me all the angst with Harry being a horcrux please, I’m living for the drama

Lily is not a fan favorite weirdly enough, when the Marauders are in fics she’s usually not there which is unfortunate because I just really want a good Harry/Lily bonding moment

one of the saddest fics I read was where harry, luna, hermione and neville find themselves in an alternate dimension where Lily and Remus are married and alive, James is a dick but has other kids, and every single person that had died in their world is alive

I don’t like it when there’s Ron bashing, he’s one of my favorites, but if I have to, I’ll read some of them

there was this Sherlock fic (listen, I went in fucking deep, it’s been a weird month) where fem!Harry is on the run from the Ministry because I don’t actually understand and Ron and everyone is out for blood for her

Eleventh Doctor/Harry is a pairing I was not aware of but I actually kind of love?

Master of Death Harry is fucking OP and I love him for that

mcu aus is something I never knew I needed

Holly Potter and the Midlife Crisis is fucking everything

So is On Punching Gods and Absentee Dads, I realized it was the same author when I read in the author notes that the author was going to some volcano convention thing and I was like this is way too niche for it to be a coincidence

I’ve read Tony is Harry’s dad, Loki is Harry’s dad, Harry is just weird friends with Thor, ones where Natasha is Harry’s aunt

listen everyone is related to this boy

I will not read a fic if it doesn’t involve Harry, he’s my boy, he’s my love, I care only about him and him only I’m so sorry

you know that meme where people say nobody’s favorite character is harry potter, the titular character? Well meet me! He’s my favorite!

in battle of hogwarts fics, Remus almost always dies. Why is that? Why do you guys hate him so much? It’s always half and half for Fred, I never know if he’s going to live or not

In all of the good fics I’ve read I saw in the collections area of ao3 the same collection and I was like! You get me! 

if it says Gammily’s Bookshelf on the fic, it’s gonna be a really fucking great fic let me just tell you that right now

Parseltongue gets me so riled up, I fucking love Parseltongue, it’s so cool

there’s a reason I usually filter out non/c*n but I decided to let it flow and I ran into a few that fucking d e s t r o y e d me why do you guys read shit like this, it broke my heart

that being said I read one that was really nuanced and actually really good but it’ll never be finished and I’m very mad about that

Either we have a better understanding of how goblins could be utilized  than JKR or we’re just ignorant of how powerful they can be

weird coincidence that I’ve read two completely different fics where Harry thought having a threesome meant kissing three different people

Dumbledore’s a bitch and I hate him, every fic I’ve read so far agrees with me

there is a person out there that is CARRYING the bucky barnes/harry potter pairing on their back and I hope whoever that is knows how much I appreciate them

remind me never to click on a fic that hasn’t been updated since 2015 ever again, C’est La Vie I will miss you so

this is just a fucking quarter of the harry potter fics I’ve read but thanks for reading if you did, let me know if you want to know some of the titles

[carriagelamp]

Weirdly enough, I often find myself reading less in the summer, since I have more time than I do during the rest of the year to do other things. Also artfight has been eating up more than a bit of my free time! But here’s a collection a graphic novels I sat around on the hammock reading, and some novels I finished up...

(Everyone go read All Systems Red, holy crow guys)

A Whale of the Wild

The “sequel” to A Wolf Called Wander, though it doesn’t actually connect to the previous novel except in the stylistic/thematic sense. A Whale of the Wild is very much a standalone novel. And a pretty decent one! Personally, I think I liked Wolf more, but this one was a pleasant, informative read, with just the right amount of crushing dread sprinkled in. It’s about a young orca called Vega who is learning to become a new wayfinder for her pod but who still has a lot to learn, especially in an ocean that is becoming increasingly hostile to orcas and the other sealife that live alongside humans. When a devastating earthquake hits, Vega and her little brother find themselves separated from their family, lost in a now horrifyingly unfamiliar environment, and fighting starvation as the salmon that sustain them become more and more unreliable. It’s a desperate fight for survival as they search for food and their missing family. This book is written for a middle grade level, and does a really good job of putting the current environmental crisis into an animal’s perspective while giving the readers something to hope for.

The Adventure Zone: The Crystal Kingdom

Every July I eagerly anticipate the next Adventure Zone graphic novel. This one is for their fourth arc, The Crystal Kingdom, in which Magnus, Taako, and Merle respond to a SOS from a floating laboratory that is gradually being consumed by crystals and which threatens the entire world should it fall into the ocean. Carey Pietsch’s art continues to be absolutely fantastic, so beautifully and hilariously expressive, and this one delivers some great Merle moments, lots of Carey Fangbattle, and, of course, Kravtiz. Kravitz, my beloved…

Anyway, I obviously always recommend these. If you’ve never gotten into The Adventure Zone, I totally recommend either trying these graphic novels — or even better, just go listen to the podcast because it really is both hilarious and creates a shockingly good and heart-wrenching story by the end.

All Systems Red

I’ve seen The Murderbot Diaries on my dash occasionally, and it always looked interesting, but a friend’s recommendation finally compelled me to read the first novella of the series. And holy shit y’all. Absolutely the best book I’ve read this month, it’s amazing. Mind-blowingly good. Also, if you’re like me and want a good audiobook, it’s a nice three-hour listen, very chill!

Anyway, All Systems Red is about a Security Unit, an artificially created being that’s part-organic part-mechanical and all-company-owned-and-controlled. However, self-named “Murderbot” has managed to hack into the system that suppresses its own will, and is now coasting along, doing the least amount of work its job requires not to be noticed, while preferring to spend all its time watching the hours and hours of soap operas it has downloaded into its brain. And it’s a tolerable if somewhat dull life, until the science team that it's currently rented to is attacked and the whole mission goes pear-shaped. Suddenly Murderbot has to scramble to keep its humans alive… while its humans scramble with the realization that their “SecUnit” isn’t actually a mindless robot like they had all believed...

This story is both gripping and hilariously funny. Murderbot has such a unique voice and perspective and it’s an absolute pleasure to follow its story. I reallly need to read the next book...

Asterix and the Banquet

A classic. I was startled when I realized I hadn’t actually read this Asterix story… but hell I’m not gonna complain, it lets me read one of the originals for the first time again! In this Asterix volume, the Indomitable Gauls and the Romans end up arranging a bet — the Romans intend to keep them under siege, trapped in their village, while Asterix is confident that he can easily evade them… and will prove it by going on a tour around all of Gaul, collecting iconic foods from each region in order to return and put on a fine banquet. So we get a fantastic adventure in which Asterix and Obelix run all over the country, pursued the whole way, while making cheerful stops at the various eateries along the way. Also the first book Dogmatix shows up in! All around, a wonderful read, fun like all the best Asterix comics are.

Beauty Pop v4

A less impressive graphic novel. The first Beauty Pop is one of my guilty pleasure manga because… it really is pretty stupid but in the best possible ways. I mean, the whole thing is framed around hairstyling battles, like a shojo sports manga without the sports. It’s bonkers. Unfortunately, the series does not really manage to hold up, and it really begins to feel repetitive and dragging as it continues… as a lot of series like this do. *shrug* Unsurprising but still kinda disappointing I suppose. The building three-way romantic tension is mildly interesting if for no other reason than the main character Does Not Notice and Does Not Care about any of it, which is amusing and refreshing.

FRNCK v5

Now this series only gets better and better as it goes. This is the first book of the second arc, and somehow the danger just seems to be ramping up and up and up. The cavefamily have lost their home… as well as Léonard and Gargouille. Heartbroken, shocked, and angry, Franck is the one who ends up shouldering the blame for their presumed deaths as the others mourn. Things only get worse when Franck finds himself separated from the family, and in the territory of another tribe, this one hostile and cannibalistic...

Haikyuu v5

I continue to read this series because it continues to be charming… though it is beginning to feel, maybe, just a little repetitive. Kind of an inevitability with sports manga. But so far it continues to be good enough to overcome that. I’m not sure what I can say about this series that I haven’t already, so I’ll simply say it continues to be one of the most impressive sports manga I’ve read, and the author does a fantastic job of creating engaging characters, fleshed out teams, and really compelling relationships. I do genuinely adore all the main members of Crows, along with a number of characters from the rival teams as well. And of course it has some kickass volleyball scenes that are just drawn so dramatically they can’t help but take your breath away a little.

M*A*S*H Goes To Maine

Meh. The original book of the series was actually quite good in my opinion. This one… considerably less so. The first part I enjoyed more, since it was about Hawkeye, Trapper, Duke, and Oliver Jones trying to set up the FinestKind Clinic and Fishmarket in Crabapple Cove (which… is just the best premise I could have ever asked for). However, the book spends most of its time describing the quirky lives and times of other people living in the area and I… just… don’t care. It was funny at times but… I just don’t care. I wanted to hear more about the main cast. Also I found this book felt more racist and misogynistic than the first which also put me off :/ Wouldn’t bother if I were you. Go read the first book instead, or better yet just watch the TV show which is an obvious banger.

My Heart’s in the Highlands

I have had this on my “currently reading” list for so long but I’m officially giving up. It’s a really good book in theory but my god I can’t get over the pacing.

It’s about Lady Jane, a woman studying medicine in Edinburgh in 1888, and who suddenly finds herself back in the Highlands in the 13th century. Lost and confused, Jane is now at the mercy Clan Donald’s hospitality while she tries to adjust to this new world and hunts for her broken time machine. Fortunately, this hospitality include a burgeoning friendship with a red-haired warrior woman, Ainslie nic Dòmhnaill, who opens Jane’s eyes to the way the world could be.

Listen. It drives me nuts. This book should be completely up my alley, it has everything I like — IT HAS ALL OF ITS HISTORICAL FOOTNOTES CITED AT THE BACK, LITTLE EXTRA DETAILS ABOUT EVERY CHAPTER. THAT’S MY SHIT RIGHT THERE. DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH I LIKE BEING ABLE TO GO OVER HISTORICAL DETAILS?? AND WELL RESEARCHED FOOTNOTES?? And yet it doesn’t. Fucking. Work for me. It has a kickass Scottish warrior lady as a love interest! It has a badass lady doctor! It has fish-out-of-water culture shock! But it also has a completely meandering plot, no sense of building tension, and a romance that just happens out of nowhere and feels completely unearned and uninteresting.

I would genuinely just rather read Outlander again, which I know has its own host of problems, but at least Outlander felt exciting and interesting and tense and funny. The romance built in fits and starts, it was complicated, and kept me interested. That book had me hooked (and has me hooked every time I reread it) whereas this book I’ve been sadly picking at for months like its a plate of overcooked spinach. This felt like an attempt at a queer, historically accurate knockoff which I would normally be super into but which just could not stick the landing.

Moomin on the Riviera

My first time actually reading anything from the Moomin canon. I have zero idea how to feel about it! It certainly is as feral as I’ve heard described! Overall, I think I enjoyed it but it sure made me feel strange emotions I didn’t know existed. I’m not even going to try to describe it. Read it if you want a batshit insane anti-capitalist comic.

Surviving the City

This was good in some areas, less good in others. It had a very interesting indigenous perspective on life in the modern city, the foster system, and The Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women issue, which I’ve never seen handled in a book before. Something about the pacing did not completely click with me and I found myself getting easily distracted, but it’s definitely worth the read just to experience it and look at the issues it deals with through the characters’ (and author’s) eyes. It did give me a lot to think about and wrestle with, which is sometimes the best thing a book can give you.

Torchwood: Pack Animals

A really fun read, more so than I had ever expected! If you like Torchwood and want more stories about the team before everything goes to shit, this is perfect for that. It includes the entire cast, an interest mystery to be unravelled, lots of slavering monsters, Rhys being really wonderful and sweet (which I didn’t know I wanted until I read this book), and all the humour I expect from Torchwood. I had to send a lot of quotes to my long-suffering girlfriend who a) does not watch this show but b) needs to tolerate it because I find it too funny to keep to myself. It was good enough to make me go out another book of the series since this was the only one my library carried.

[notfunnydean]

Pairing: Dean Winchester / Castiel Warnings: None Word Count: 2.574 Challenge: @sqz-zine Summary: Castiel loves his flower shop more than anything, but lately he can’t stop thinking about a customer. So he sends him flowers and hopes Dean gets what he’s trying to say. Link (if posted on AO3): https://archiveofourown.org/works/31529894

“Dean, come on!”

Castiel looks up when he hears the small bell above the door of his flower shop. There is a tall man standing in the door, with long hair and a deep frown. Castiel looks back at the flowers in his hands, puts them down and then wipes his hands on his apron.

“Yeah, Sam. Chill.” There’s a different voice and then another guy steps into the small shop. Castiel’s heart beats a lot faster at that sight. This Dean looks like he is straight out of a disney movie. Green eyes, dark blond hair. Freckles.

Castiel swallows.

“Hello, can I help you?” Castiel is surprised that he is still able to talk. The taller man, Sam, turns to him with a small smile, while Dean just stares at him. Castiel feels a bit uncomfortable.

“I’m looking for a nice bouquet for my wife.” Sam explains and he smiles at Castiel. That’s like Castiel’s easiest request. They already got some bouquets ready, but some customers wanna decide for themselves which flowers they put inside.

“Sure thing, you got anything special in mind?” Castiel asks him and he walks around the counter. Dean seems not super interested at all and is already on his phone. Castiel tries not to be disappointed.

His job isn’t to flirt with customers.

“Well… a year ago Eileen and I got married, so… I got something special planned for tonight.” Sam says and he looks so in love while he says that. Castiel feels himself smiling at that. Love must be so nice.

“Oh congratulations. Well what do you say Eileen likes? Maybe something traditional like roses or something more wild?” Castiel asks, but he is already picturing a beautiful bouquet in his head.

“How about something like that?” Sam says and he points at the purple hyacinth. Castiel raises his eyebrows, he understands that they look indeed very beautiful, but Castiel speaks the language of the flowers and…

“Purple Hyacinths. They do look very nice, but they stand for mostly sorrow, so I wouldn’t really recommend them for this.” Castiel says and he sees how Sam’s a bit surprised by this.

“Oh well no, that is not what I intended. She just loves purple.” Sam stutters out, but Castiel just smiles. He likes the color purple as well.

“Flowers have meanings?” Dean asks suddenly and Castiel almost jerks, because he hadn’t realized that the other man came back towards them again.

“Uh yeah, it’s the language of the flowers, I learned all about it when I opened this shop.” Castiel says and Dean looks really surprised, but also actually interested.

“Cool. I only ever knew about red roses meaning love.” Dean says and then his smile turns so beautiful, that Castiel has to blink a few times. Dammit. He’s really not good at flirting.

So he just nods and then goes over to some other bouquets. He has some really sweet purple and white combinations that he is pretty proud of.

“So here we got white jasmines, which mean sweet love or amiability. white clovers they mean ‘think of me’ and purple sorrels, which stand for affection. I know they’re not fancy, I do like more natural bouquets and…” Castiel starts to ramble, but Sam stops him before he embarrasses himself even more.

“I love it, it looks very beautiful.” Sam says and Castiel smiles thankfully at him. He takes one of the prettiest of the bouquets and carries it to the check-out when Sam says that he doesn’t need anything else.

While Sam pays for his flowers, Castiel can see that Dean stands at some lovely sunflowers and carefully touches their petals. The sunlight just hits him beautifully and Castiel’s heart squeezes.

He does seem interested in the flowers.

“Do you want some flowers as well?” Sam asks, when he finished paying and Dean is still looking through all the flowers. It’s clearly meant to be a joke but Dean shakes his head and he does seem a bit sad.

“Nah, not like I ever got some. Why start now?”

They leave shortly after.

Castiel can’t get the thought of his head all day. He wishes he could buy flowers. He looks back down at Sam’s contact info that he had left here for any future purposes and nods to himself.

Maybe he should be brave for once. So he calls Sam.

*

“Uhm hello?”

Castiel looks up from his work and his heart almost jumps out of his chest, when he sees that it’s Dean. Oh no, hopefully he hadn’t known that Castiel sent him the flowers.

“Hello Dean.” Castiel says and then bites on his tongue. Oh yeah so not creepy that he knows someone's name after being in this shop one time.

“Hi uh I know this is probably super unusual, but my brother bought a bouquet of flowers here like two weeks ago and you two talked about how flowers… mean something?” Dean says and he still has his hands behind his back.

“The language of flowers.” Castiel says and Dean nods.

“Yeah that and I… Well yesterday I found some flowers in front of my door. They uh got delivered and I wondered… if you could explain to me what they mean?” Dean says then he puts the flowers on the counter that Castiel had sent to him.

“These are white camellia.” Castiel says and he carefully touches the flowers. Castiel had used the most beautiful ones he had.

“And what do they mean?” Dean asks and he takes them back into his own hands. Castiel loves the soft smile on his face, even though he seems a bit nervous as well.

“You’re adorable.”

Dean actually ducks his head and Castiel can see how he blushes right in front of him. It makes his freckles stand out even more and Castiel’s chest squeezes almost painfully. God, Dean is so beautiful.

Castiel would be lucky to have someone like him.

“Uh- thanks.” Dean says and then his eyes widen almost comically. Castiel tilts his head to one side, because he is not really sure if he understands what’s happening.

“Oh my god, sorry. You mean that is the meaning of the flowers.” Dean says and he strokes his own hair, looking so incredibly embarrassed.

“Well yes. But you are adorable.” Castiel says and he has no idea why he’s so brave. Normally Castiel would rather die than admit something like that. Dean’s shy smile is worth it in the end.

“Thank you.” Dean says and he presses the flowers closer to his chest before he leaves Castiel’s shop. He almost stumbles on his way out.

Castiel hums happily to a nonexistent music all day.

*

“Hiya Cas!”

Dean looks happy today, when he opens the door to the shop. The last weeks Castiel had sent him flowers each tuesday and on wednesday Dean would come over and they’d talk about the meanings.

He doesn’t seem to know that Castiel is sending him these, but maybe it’s better this way. Dean is far out of his league.

“Hello Dean, how are you?” Castiel asks and he puts his watering can down. He had a busy day, but he would always make time for Dean.

“Good, thank you. I got new flowers.” Dean says and he grins so widely. Castiel loves to see him so happy. Dean had told him more than once by now how much he loves flowers and that most people would probably look weirdly at him for it.

“I can see that. They do look very beautiful. Gardenia. They stand for secret love.” Castiel explains and Dean’s eyes widen.

“You actually think they love me?” Dean asks and he seems so utterly surprised that Castiel’s heart aches for him. He had learned soon enough, that Dean thinks he isn’t worth anything. especially so much trouble.

“Yeah.” Castiel answers only and he can hear his own heartbeat throbbing loudly in his ears. God, Dean has to be the most oblivious person in the world, because he just smiles so happily again.

“So uhm… how is your garden working out?” Castiel asks because it’s spring and his own garden at home looks really bad. Castiel almost has never time to look after his own flowers at home and his garden is really small, but his landlord is an asshole anyway.

“It looks really good, thanks to you Cas. I planted so many camellias.” Dean says and he winks at Castiel. Camellias were the first flowers Castiel had sent Dean, but he hadn’t known they were Dean’s favorites.

“Camellias are truly beautiful.” Castiel agrees and he hopes one day his garden can be as beautiful as Dean’s one day.

“Why don’t you come over some time? I surely could use a professional opinion on them.” Dean says so casually, but Castiel knows him good enough by now to tell that he’s nervous. Castiel smiles.

“Dean I would love to.”

Castiel knows that Dean doesn’t mean this as a date, but he still couldn’t be happier. Of course at first Dean’s looks had caught Castiel’s eyes.

But the way Dean seemed disappointed that he’d never gotten flowers before, had made Castiel send him flowers.

And he had learned so fast what a sweet person Dean really is. He loves his brother Sam and his wife Eileen and he would literally kill anyone that talks back about his little nephew Jack.

Sometimes Dean spends hours talking about his own dreams. Having kids of his own, settling down, and having someone with him.

Castiel would give everything to be that person.

*

A week later Castiel walks through the streets with a new flower bouquet in his hands. This time they are pink camellias, since he knows now that Dean really loves those.

They mean ‘longing for you’ and that couldn’t be more true. Castiel knows he should be happy that he and Dean are already good friends, but he can’t help but long for something more.

He sighs.

Tomorrow he would officially meet up with Dean at his tiny house. In reality Castiel visits this house for over three months by now to drop off his flowers. He knows when Dean works at the garage by now, so he can easily leave his flowers at Dean’s doorstep without being seen.

It’s raining a bit today and Castiel is glad that Dean’s door is roofed over, so the bouquet wouldn’t be ruined by the time that Dean comes home.

Castiel can’t help but smile, when he sees Dean’s house. It looks so beautiful, he can’t really see the garden from the streets, only a huge apple tree that grows a bit over the roof, but he knows it will look stunning.

Like always he kneels down at the blue front door and puts the bouquet down.

There’s a noise inside.

Castiel’s heart stops.

The door opens.

“Hiya Cas.”

Castiel isn’t sure how he manages to stay conscious, but he slowly looks up to see Dean leaning against the doorway.

“Hello Dean.” Castiel answers slowly and he gets up again. He leaves the bouquet on the ground and he can feel the heat rising in his cheeks. Oh my god, Dean had seen him. Dean knows.

Castiel swallows loudly.

“Oh are those camellias again? My favorite! What do these one stand for?” Dean says and he acts like nothing unusual happened. Castiel needs a moment to find his voice again. Maybe this is a trick?

“Longing for you.” Castiel barely whispers.

“They’re beautiful and I just got the perfect spot for them.” Dean says and with that he turns around and goes back inside his house. Castiel isn’t sure what he should do, but then Dean is already calling for him.

Castiel steps inside and carefully pulls off his shoes, since he had seen that Dean is only in socks as well. He walks towards the door Dean vanished into and sees it’s the kitchen. It looks just like Castiel had imagined it.

Cozy and warm and so full of love. It smells like the apple pie that Dean had set on the counter. And right in the middle of the table, Dean has an empty vase and puts the flowers into it.

“Dean… I don’t think I really understand.” Castiel admits carefully and finally Dean turns back to him. At least he doesn’t look angry or disgusted. Maybe they could still save their friendship.

“Well I’m not the only one with uh… secrets. I know it’s been you for a while now.” Dean admits and he takes a step closer. Castiel feels so embarrassed. Had he been this reckless and stupid?

“Oh.” Castiel mutters.

“Sammy couldn’t hold his big mouth.” Dean says and Castiel chuckles weakly at that. While he had enjoyed gifting Dean flowers and crushing on him, Castiel had never thought about what would happen if Dean knew one day.

“Dean, I’m sorry… I didn’t…” Castiel starts to explain this somehow, but Dean stops him.

“Wait, I uh got something for you as well.” Dean says and he is out of the room again. Castiel hopes he wouldn’t get his ass kicked now, but Dean comes back with another bouquet.

“What?”

“Well obviously I’m not very good at the language of flowers. This is the only meaning I know.” Dean says and then he pushes the red roses in Castiel’s hands, who has a hard time believing that this is really happening.

“I love you.” Castiel whispers more into the flowers than to Dean. The roses are in his shop’s wrapping paper so Dean must have bought it when Castiel wasn’t working, but his helper Samandriel was.

“Yeah I know it’s a bit forward, but I really like you and I thought…” Dean starts but Castiel shakes his head. This time he makes a step forward towards Dean and puts the roses on the table.

“No, I mean, I’m in love with you, Dean.” Castiel says and it actually feels good to finally say it. Dean looks like he’s tearing up and for a split second Castiel thinks he has said something wrong, but then Dean is already kissing him.

Castiel closes his eyes and finally kisses Dean back. His hands find Dean’s warm cheeks and he forgets about the world around them.

When they break the kiss Castiel can’t help the huge smile on his face. Dean’s eyes flutter slowly open and Castiel presses another short kiss to his lips.

“I aloe you very much.” Dean says like the dork he is and Castiel snorts. Well he had known right from the start that Dean is adorable. Castiel would even bet that Dean had practiced this.

“While Aloes stand for affection, they could also easily stand for grief.” Castiel says and Dean groans.

“No, you don’t get to ruin my brilliant joke.” Dean says, but he is laughing and Castiel can’t help but laugh himself. He had never pictured himself this happy.

“It wasn’t that brilliant.” Castiel says and Dean looks so scandalized that Castiel laughs loudly. God he knows why he fell in love with Dean.

“Okay, then I really lilac you.” Dean says and Castiel groans.

“Lilacs stand for…” Dean presses a hand over his mouth and Castiel can’t help but chuckle again. Maybe they’re both the worst.

“Maybe we should stop talking.” Dean whispers and pulls his hands away. Castiel has to admit that he really likes that idea.

He kisses Dean quiet.

[thefoulbeast]

Writers tag game!

A big thank you to @saathiray for the tag! This looks like a really interesting one to do!! :D :D

Alright, let's get into it...

How many works do you have on ao3?

21!

What's your total ao3 word count?

ough.... maths..... if i wrote the numbers down right, then 187 780 words! :D

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

To no one's surprise, most of there are blue exorcist fics haha :,D

1. Clickflight. (71) 2. Ad terram nullium. (61) 3. Oh, my worst emotions. (60) 4. Human(oid?) (59) 5. aranea et flamma (42)

Do you respond to comments; why or why not?

I do! Well, almost every time (but the comment has to rub me the wrong way / confuse quite hard to make me not respond). I don't really know why? It just feels polite maybe shdusdh

What's the fic you've written with the angstiest ending?

I'm not sure any of my fics have particularly angsty endings 🤔 They're mostly ambiguous or menacing in some way hahah... Perhaps Ad terram nullium or Oh, my worst emotions are the angstiest ones. Cor Aegrotum is also a good contender because it definitely ends on a bitter note. :D :D ahh idk lmao

What's the fic you've written with the happiest ending?

Another difficult question. Not sure. Speak fondly upon that memory is probably the most feel-good fic I have so I reckon it has the happiest ending 😂

Do you write crossovers? If so, what's the craziest one you've ever written?

I don't think I've ever written a crossover, no. The closest is a current wip that's like characters from one thing in the setting of another thing? But I didn't keep any characters from the thing I got the setting from, not sure if it counts as a crossover lmao.

Hope this made sense <3

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

No, I have not, thank goodness! Perhaps quite lucky, since I know one of my faves isn't too well liked in the fandom lol. But it's a small fandom, and the character isn't very popular so ¯\(´･ω･`)/¯

Also, I'm not exactly a well known/popular author so. I can just do whatever I want most of the time lmao

Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

I have written smut, various kinds of it. >//-//>

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of. Hopefully not :D

Have you ever had a fic translated?

No, I haven't ^w^ I've considered trying my hand at translating fics on occasion though, I like translating stuff well enough. Not that anyone needs fics translated into latvian much 😂

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Nope! But I think I'd like to try someday maybe, because two authors and friends I look up to a lot (jay & rynoa if u read this ily) collaborate on a lot of fics and they always come out so cool and good and solid and i think that's so neat that creatives can come together like that?? like wow!! truly amazing and beautiful to witness <3

What's your all-time favourite ship?

Genuinely don't know!

I've come back to a specific collection of Tarn/Deathsaurus (from the transformers more than meets the eye comic) fics a whole bunch so I guess that's as close as it gets!

I... have a hard time remembering stuff I like outside of the periods I am obsessed with it, you see. Currently I'm reading a lot of star wars fics so there's a lot of kylux and some gingerpilot?

it's really hard to say, im not sure i have an all-time favourite , more just a bunch of faves i come back to from time to time

What's a WIP that you want to finish but don't think you ever will?

A fic I started about Tarn from transformers getting some kind of head injury and having to re-learn how to speak? I really like the concept of it because his voice is how he kills and all that, but I just don't know what direction it could go in anymore. It's more of a thing I can ponder about privately rather than something I want to bring to a finish and publish, if that makes sense?

Other than that one, I have a whole bunch of fics I started in fandoms I dipped my hands into but never found friends and stuff off who to bounce my ideas so the motivation kind of died. One of those was a thing for Gotham's Penguin - I was going to do like a life story in vignettes but I recognise now I won't finish it :D

What are your writing strengths?

I sort of? Idk how to put this in a way that doesn't sound too self-aggrandizing, but once I get into a character's head, I get into a character's head. Multiple people have praised my characterizations, one even going as far as to say that the voices sound like the canon and that's something I hold really dearly in my heart and which makes me feel v warm inside. ;3; <3 <3 <3

What are your writing weaknesses?

World building and having more than 2 people in a fic 😭 I focus so much on the character I'm writing about that sometimes it's hard to think about everything that happens around them, or to make the other characters have enough depth! All my fics are like... sticking to a single person, deep pov style. I would like to get out of my comfort zone more and try and write fics that focus on more than one character!

What are your thougts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

There's a time and place for everything! Usually I just hope that there's translations in the end notes 😂😂 But it can definitely help in making the reader feel as helpless and confused as the character who doesn't speak the language :D

What was the first fandom you wrote fic for?

Ib, the rpg game, I think? At least that's the first one I wrote fic for on the computer, I think I might have written something like yugioh fanfic in a notepad in sixth grade 🤔🤔 afraid i've lost both, though

What's your favourite fic that you've written?

ahh... difficult question...

I think it's sort of a tie between Somnus and Even a worm will turn? They're both about Toudou and I like them for different reasons. Somnus just came out so beautiful and poetic, I think, a lot of meaning packed into just under 1k words, whereas Even a worm will turn is like a beast full of negative emotions and violence and all the dark stuff and the way the soul blackens as it goes down the slippery slope between what one feels they have to do and what is right that i managed to get out in a weirdly cathartic way... It's really hard to decide on this question hahah...

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

As for tagging my fellow writers and friends: @shiroufujimoto @29rynoah @tonguetiedraven @kugisaki-nobara-rights @yuriotoko @inuyoshie @bluewindfall @emperorsvornskr

[starshine-selfships]

1, 10, 11, and 12 for the ask game ? 😺🙏💟

Hi hi hi!! You're getting long answers to these bc any excuse to talk about this man makes me go crazy stupid 🙌🙌🙌💕

1) What's a Hot Take you have about your f/o?

HE👏IS👏NEURODIVERGENT!! I'm specifically talking adhd, but he checks a lot of boxes for something more ambiguous too. I'm actually rewriting my adhd sh.aiapouf post and I'm gonna put it here too, but the cut time version IS: noticeable hyperfixations/special interests in music and the monarchy, practically no empathy + has difficulty understanding the emotions of others, fast thinking + thinks a LOT, almost weirdly analytical + book smart with little to no interpersonal skills, extreme emotions all over the board, like there's a LOT here and it explains like 80% of why he's Like That 😤

10) How did you feel when you realized "oh of course I had to like That Character"?

Okay I have a lot to say on this one djnfkffk please bear with me as I write a whole novel

✌U_U ✌

Honestly,, , I wasn't happy LMAOOO, around the time I watched the anime for the first time i was actually still pretty into j.jba and unfortunately was really into dio U_U

I was fascinated by pouf as soon as I saw him in the opening, lots of neat ant designs and then this butterfly man?? I need to know everything about him 👀 His intro with the rainbows in the wings, the fairy chimes, the solo violin, all had me like 👁👁 Sir I Am Going To Study You Like The Insect You Are, and then I saw him actually play the violin and was sold lmao. He was funny as far as comic relief went and then? The giant improv ballet breakdown and antagonistic turn drew me in further and then I was invested in a no going back sorta way as soon as he went chibi for the first time, just watching the chaos of the entire scene with this ridiculous huge grin dhjdkxkf every single thing he did was in the extremes and it was like watching a train de-rail in real time, I saw him face down in the dirt at the end of the arc and didn't even feel anything, he was just so WILD

So I finish h.xh not too long after that and texted a friend and was like hmmm. I need to watch j.jba to return to my roots and also to forget that I think I might've accidentally given myself a lil crush on the butterfly man 😳 idk if that return ever happened but I DO remember being frustrated with how pretty he is,, I didn't really wanna shift hyperfixations at the time and also didn't know if it was attraction or gender envy bc. what I would give to simultaneously look so fem and so masc 👁 either way it was a 3 month struggle of "oh no oh my god I wanna kiss a bug so bad?? 😞" and then I caved at midnight in a denny's and was like okay. fine. I'm gay for a bug, I really really like him but *i* don't have to like that 😤

I did, in fact, proceed to like it, enough to make an entire separate blog for him. It was a slow progression of "I mean, I'd share a ballroom dance with him, like a waltz maybe", "hmm okay he's funny but whatever", "oh uh. he uh. I mean he's neat, a lot of people didn't like him but I just think he's an interesting character 😳" and. and then I finally caved and I never stopped talking sjdkfkf though to be fair, I was already talking about him a LOT on my main, I just decided that maybe it would be nice to have a space to just. contain 90% of my poufposting LMAOOO

Final note on this, but I think what really got me is how many characters are in this series and yet I gravitated towards the one no one could stand 😞✌ though to be fair the hatred for him has definitely gone down compared to what I can remember from a few years ago; absolutely does not change the fact that He Is The Way He Is, but I saw the war crimes, malice, potentially treason, and I won't name it but it's by far the most uncomfortable thing to sit through in the arc, I saw ALL of that and still went hmmmm yes I want that one U_U true love huh

11) Do you think it's better to have copious amounts of content for your f/o, even with the risk of finding a lot of ship art, or better to have a lot less?

The art situation with him is strange bc there's a decent enough to be notable amount of art of him captioned with some variation of "I hated him but he had a really cool character design", but it's still content. Surprisingly, I actually don't track the tag for him but take a look at it anyways almost every day and there's maybe one new thing there like once a week, minimal content bc so many people just didn't like him, which is fair!! But also, he was definitely there as a prominent character, I'd just like to see more of him U_U I would put more art here but I'm too conscious of the art ops seeing my bs over here jdkdkfkk

There actually are a handful of ship art drawings of him, which astounds me bc this man wasn't there to make friends, not even with his own siblings :/, but the errant art of him with morel or kite is honestly pretty cute, please just let this man be happy, I love to see him smile 🥺

12) Aren't you tired of being nice? This is an excuse to rant.

He wasn't the worst guard!! All three had reasons for doing what they did and arguably, pouf's motives were the most complex. Yes he did some pretty awful things, but he considered them to be the right thing to do without a doubt in his mind, all his actions were selfish in that they were based off his own feelings, but he did things ultimately for the king, so his actions also had an edge of selflessness to them as well. He was just. so much more than annoying and while his character development wasn't positive, it was still some pretty astounding growth; as an antagonist, he's also fairly plausible 👀 sometimes people just are manipulative, sometimes feelings do get the better of you, pouf just has all those factors amped up to 11 at all times so they're magnified. I have. a lot of thoughts on him, he interests me very much 😞👀🤔👀

[dazais-guardian-angel]

☕️+ what things do you wish they did with descole (because I am weak and he’s my fave)

Apologies for the late reply to this; tbh I almost didn’t want to answer it, cause I feel like nothing I’ll say will be something others haven’t already discussed (especially since I just saw you asked someone else this same question), and also I’ve only ever played the prequels once back when they first came out and I haven’t reached them again in my replay yet, so I’m not fresh on everything done with his character and all the Azran/Targent stuff. But nonetheless:

In general, obviously, I wish Desmole’s character “arc” if you can even call it that as it is now + plot twists/identity had been much more fleshed out from the get-go and consistent with who they ultimately made him be, that is, Hershel’s brother and someone who never should have legitimately wanted to hurt him or people close to him. While I think the worst of this really only comes out in Eternal Diva, where he literally tries to swordfight Hershel to death and kill Luke on one occasion cause he goes insane once Hershel out-puzzles him, there really just should have been more nuance to him in the first two entries especially (and in Miracle Mask too of course, but he’s barely in that game so) where he shows some level of frustration and hesitance to go up against Hershel and his crew, even if he still does so because he absolutely has to carry out his revenge plan. Just SIGNS that there’s more to this guy than just a walking one-dimensional mysterious deadly flamboyant badass, beyond just Hershel going “hm he feels familiar”, like no of course that’s not near enough. Even if Desmole’s true identity still wasn’t going to be revealed until Azran Legacy, there still needed to be hints, breaks in his facade/character, hesitation, signs of remorse, even if some of these hints are not outright foreshadowing to a familial relationship/desire for revenge. He could still lose it in Eternal Diva, but just make it seem more desperate and broken, and less kill-crazy. Give him moments of humanization, show that Descole can be kind, such as around Melina or Nina; what I honestly wanted to see was him having interactions around girls other than Aurora where his fatherly nature might show (not that him and Aurora aren’t great, I just wanted more); he had to have spent a lot of time around Melina while making the Detragan, and the potential for their relationship while she was dying is so much. Hershel should have had more moments of familiarity, and thinking about him when he’s not around, trying to figure him out, demanding to know who he is because he feels like he needs to know for some reason he can’t describe, and Descole’s answers/non-answers are extremely telling/bitter/curious/thought-provoking. And Descole should imo have had a scene to himself at the end of every entry pre-Azran Legacy where it’s increasingly obvious this guy has Angst(tm) and some beef with Hershel that seems personal and not just to do with getting in the way of his plots, along with all the earlier hints obviously (iirc he had a final scene at the end of Last Spector but it was nothing more than showing “hey we’re not done with this guy!!”, so that definitely should have had more to it; at the end of Eternal Diva I REALLY wanted to see how he survived his fall, probably with Raymond saving him, cue more ~mysterious reactions to Hershel~ as he thinks on how Hershel cried out his name as he was falling despite the fact that they were enemies, etc; and then the one at the end of Miracle Mask is okay I guess, but I still wanted more to it, more, idk signs of regret or remorse or sadness from him before he goes after Bronev, and not just “grrrrrr finally my revenge is close I’mma take you down all I have is angerrRRRRR” also for him to not look so damn stupid when all Bronev has to do is knee him to take him down, like this is DESCOLE, THE KING OF BADASS, THAT ENDING IS SO PITIFUL; WE DIDN’T NEED THAT FOR A FAKEOUT UNMASKING SCENE THAT LEADS NOWHERE).

tl;dr, Desmole’s story being planned from the very beginning would have made it possible for the writers to foreshadow and develop him properly before you finally see him as Desmond, and make you attached to and interested in him much more than just as a cool badass you kinda wonder the identity of but mostly just enjoy watching be badass and evil. The PL series had never had an overarching villain in the main trilogy aside from Don Paolo, who was more of a comic relief villain who they could afford to not make up his beef with/connection to Hershel until the final game because it was a very insignificant reason in the grand scheme of things, and Don Paolo just..... wasn’t that integral to the plots of that trilogy, he was more of a bonus background villain not meant to be taken seriously or have any true emotional impact. But then you have Descole introduced as the key threat over the majority of the prequel series (you think it’s the Masked Gentleman this time, but no lol, it’s still Descole!!), and needless to say, “actually the protagonist’s long-lost brother trying to get revenge on their corrupt father, both of which are involved in an ancient civilization that ruined all their lives in multiple ways” is a biiiiiiit more important than... “jealous dead girlfriend rival” lol. And so there’s a jarring disconnect between pre-Miracle Mask Descole and post-Miracle Mask Descole, because the Azran aren’t even a thing until Miracle Mask at ALL, and so in Last Spector and Eternal Diva Descole just seems like this mad scientist with a dramatic flair and nothing more, who mayyyyyyyy be searching for eternal life? Since that seems to be the running theme with the golden garden and ambrosia? But even then literally nothing is revealed about him in that game and movie so who knows (and unrelated but it seems like those two places have literally no connection to the Azran aside from an offhanded mention of them in Miracle Mask? idk man); the point I’m taking way too long to make here is that it’s very clear the writers had no endgame plan for him until Miracle Mask at the earliest, and even then I wonder how much of it was completely hashed out (considering the... sort of mess that Azran Legacy is, I almost wonder if most of it was literally not decided on until then). My guess is that Descole was super popular after Last Spector so they decided to bring him back (his final scene in that game could have just been to show that he survived and was still “out there somewhere”, whether or not he came back next entry), but then realized they didn’t have a backstory or identity for him so they had to think up something way too late; I can’t confirm this though of course.

Then you get to Azran Legacy, and honestly, despite how bizarre and weirdly unimportant and filler-ish 90% of this game’s plot feels, I love the inherent idea of Descole finally coming to Hershel as himself. Hershel always shows up and gets in his way? Fine, he’ll come to him. He always sees through his disguises? Fine, he’ll come to him in the best disguise he has: himself. Ask him for his help in a mission his curiosity won’t let him refuse. Because then, of course, even though Desmond is doing this to further and finish his plot, and use them as tools, essentially, there’s the wonderfully painful obvious second reason for why he chooses to do things this way, and that is he wants to spend time with his brother, whether or not he consciously realizes this. This way, Desmond can be himself, he doesn’t have to hide his appearance or (most) intentions and can freely express a lot of his regular personality while still working towards his ultimate goal, but at the exact same time there’s so much he can’t show, that he can’t reveal or let himself do, and this has to be a hundred times harder than when he’s posing as Descole because now he’s friends with Hershel and the others, and a part of him must want so desperately to just stay with them forever as he spends more and more time with them and grows more attached to them, (again, no matter how much he may realize this). But this is where his “arc” continues to fall flat in that aside from one or two hints towards his daughter and having a brother, there is literally no depth in Desmond’s behavior in Azran Legacy pre-Descole/brother reveal, just like in all the entries before it. He should have shown small signs here and there of something being “off” with him, of sadness, of hesitation, of trauma and mental instability; strange things said to Hershel alone that makes him and the player start wondering things, just like with Descole. Everyone immediately goes, upon seeing Desmond for more than five minutes, “oh that’s Descole obviously” (plus Raymond is just... there lol), but it’s not for the right reasons; there’s nothing wrong with a predictable plot twist, but there needs to be some kind of hints towards it to make you emotionally invested in what you realize is coming, because you’re waiting for it and you know it will hurt but you just don’t know when and how it will happen; not that you guess it for no other reason than “well there’s this new character who isn’t an existing friend of Layton’s and everything is suspiciously calm and we’re 90% of the way through this and Descole has yet to show himself; it’s probably him”. For the record, I actually think Miracle Mask does its predictable plot twist a lot better, even if that game still has issues; I see a lot of people complain about how predictable Randall being the masked gentleman is, and it is, but honestly? The flashback plot mechanic in that game is EXTREMELY effective in 1) making it VERY clear who the masked gentleman is very early on, like they’re not trying to hide it in any way, but also 2) punching you in the gut to maximum effect when you get to the end of the flashbacks and pair it with the present-day plot. Like, they could have just told the player in dialogue/infodumps throughout the game who Randall was and what his connection to Hershel, Angela and Henry was, like Desmond does to Hershel near the end of Azran Legacy, but that would have been tedious and boring and the player wouldn’t care near as much, and the game wouldn’t have been long enough. Instead, you see it firsthand, you experience it with Hershel, and although I’m frustrated at how little is done with masked gentleman!Randall and showing connections/hints to who he used to be (look, my exact problems with Descole) and making Hershel more involved with him at the end, which would have been the icing on the angst cake, the entire flashback half of that game honestly left a huge impact on me and I think that’s why I spend so much time talking about/getting emotional about Miracle Mask despite always saying that Diabolical Box is my favorite, because getting to know Randall and see that friendship and see how it ended just makes it all hit so much harder, as flashbacks should do. The writers knew it would be obvious who the masked gentleman is and they leaned into that, it was a very deliberate choice, what the entire game revolved around, because the point wasn’t that it was unpredictable, but that you would feel for that character and it would hurt so much more. And while I don’t necessarily think Azran Legacy needed full-on flashback gameplay segments for Desmond like Miracle Mask had, I think having vague flashbacks every once in a while throughout that game, vague enough to not directly tell you it’s him or naming/showing Hershel/Theodore much but clear enough that you can reasonably guess it is Desmond, would have done a world of difference, along with all the little behavioral/dialogue hints I mentioned. Similar to the diary entries in Diabolical Box, or if anyone’s ever played Super Paper Mario, the flashbacks in that game after every chapter about an unknown person that it becomes increasingly obvious as you play through the game is the main villain. I just.... really, really wish, out of all the prequel entries, Azran Legacy gave Desmond so much more emotional depth and resonance once we finally see him as Desmond instead of Descole, so many more scenes with Hershel, and to a lesser extent the others, so much more development of his character, so much more of an emphasis put on his prior family and how much he’s hurting and caring and yet at the same time refuses to give up his revenge; all of this, no matter how obvious it made his identity as both Descole and as Hershel’s brother. The brother plot twist, too, feels slightly lame and overdone and out of nowhere, but honest to god I wouldn’t fucking care at all if they just foreshadowed it properly and made it so painfully obvious how much Descole/Desmond wants to be with Hershel and this family and how much it kills him to turn on them all again at the end of Azran Legacy even if he still goes through with it, and how much he regrets everything as he lays dying in Hershel’s arms, but we get none of that goddammitLevel5whydoyoudeprivemeofsomuch-

*ahem* apparently I still had a lot to say. i just wanted so much more for him; he’s SUCH a tragic character... the stupid wannabe phantom of the opera bread man still makes me cry, despite everything, because i am trash. Oh yeah and he should have held Aurora in his arms as she died. And Azran Legacy should have ended post-credits with Hershel opening his door with his hat off (to show that this is after Unwound Future), his eyes widening, then it shows the bottom half of the person’s face, just enough to see the bread hair tips, and the slight sad smile, and then cut to black. level-5 just hire the PL fandom to make the Desmond spinoff game pls

[lu-undy]

Chapter 58 - SBT

Here it is!

"You're alright?" 

Lucien kept staring at Mundy even after they broke the kiss.

"Oui. Let us go and see Richard." 

"Alright." 

A moment later, Lucien pushed the door and entered the tailor's shop. 

"Ah! Bonjour, L!"

[Ah! Hello L!]

"Richard, you remember my dear friend M?" 

"Of course, how do you do?"

Hands were shaken in the quiet shop. 

"What brings you here?" The tailor asked. 

"Business I'm afraid. May we have a look at your collection?" Lucien asked. 

"Oh, what about your friend?" 

"Treat him as you would me." Lucien answered and Richard nodded. 

"Then, please follow me. Paul, tu t'occupes de fermer s'il te plaît?" Richard asked his son.

[Paul can you close the shop, please?]

Mundy was clueless as to what was happening or being discussed. All he knew was that Richard walked to a shelf, pulled something down and -

"Crikey…" 

The wall slid open. 

"Come along, M." Lucien said and the three men entered the secret corridor. 

Mundy kept his thoughts to himself out of politeness as he followed Lucien and Richard to a room full of weapons. They were hung on the walls elegantly or put in display cases. 

"M, have a look and tell me what you will need. I shall have a chat with Richard." 

"Oh, uh, alright…" 

Mundy easily located the rifles and went to observe them while Richard and Lucien had a chat in French at the opposite corner of the room. 

That tailor was something else! He had very fine and modern models. Unlike Eddy's which were hunting ones, Richard's rifles were clearly of military grade. Their style was clear. Mundy inspected the different scopes, the reloading mechanisms, the handles… He spent a few minutes dissecting those rifles with his eyes. 

"So, does anything interest you, M?" Richard asked. 

"Not really… I mean this is very modern, eh?"

"Indeed, we try to keep our merchandise up to date." He walked to the Aussie. 

"Yeah, I've never seen anythin' like those guns, even back in service… Nah, thanks a lot mate, but I'm too used to my old gun to change now." 

"What type of rifle is it?" 

The conversation went on for a few minutes while Lucien grabbed a revolver, a suppressor, bullets and everything he needed for the day's job. He finished with a balaclava as Mundy and Richard finished their chat. 

"Are we ready, Mundy?" 

"Yeah, I don't need anythin' from here, but that's very impressive stuff you have, Richard."

"Thank you." The tailor nodded. "Anything else for you, L?" 

"Non, I have everything, merci. We shall take our leave, I'm afraid time is playing against us." 

"Of course." Richard answered and the three men exited the gun shop to come back to the tailor's. 

"Thank you for everything, Richard." Lucien extended his hand. 

"My pleasure." Richard shook it firmly. "It is an immense honour for me to have the privilege to help the great L, really." 

"Thank you." 

"And good luck to you both." Richard shook hands with Mundy who nodded and both him and Lucien exited the shop. 

"Do we need to do anything else?" Mundy asked. 

"Unless you need to do something now, non. Let us proceed." 

"Alright, to the old sugar factory then." 

"Oui." 

Mundy started the van and drove off. It swallowed mile after mile as they exited the limits of the city through the old industrial area. Once they were out, the desert spread for as far as the eye could see.

Lucien leaned back on his seat after slipping his black balaclava on. He took his cigarette case out and flipped it open next to Mundy, who took one. 

"Thanks, luv'." 

"My pleasure." 

Lucien then lit both their cigarettes.

"Richard called you 'the great L', eh?"

"My reputation precedes me, I'm afraid." Lucien smirked. 

"Yeah… quite impressive." 

Lucien chuckled and puffed on his cigarette. 

"So what's the plan exactly?" The Aussie asked. 

The Frenchman took the file with the photographs that he had left in the glove box again and opened it. 

"We know what route Duchemin will take, so we have multiple options."

"Alright." 

"We get inside and pass as two regular mercenaries."

"We knock two out and get their uniforms, ok." Mundy answered. 

"Then, we go to one of these hangars that he will visit with his guests and we wait for him. Once he gets there, we take him away and hide him somewhere, where we will deal with him." 

"Wow, wait, hold on, what about the blokes that he'll show around? And where are we supposed to take him? The place is in the middle of the desert!" 

"We will strike before he is accompanied by his guests. It is still too early in the afternoon for them to be there and I would imagine Duchemin will want to rehearse his little show on his own first, to memorise the route. We will only have to ambush him in one of the hangars. As to where we will take him, look at this picture…" 

Lucien handed a photograph to Mundy. 

"Yeah, it's one of the hangars I guess, what about it?" 

"It doesn't have any thermal signature on it."

"Yeah, and?" 

"It is not the only one. Look here and here too! Non, Duchemin is not using all of the hangars, which means that we can take him to one of the empty ones."

"What?! You want us to torture him there?! In the middle of the bloody complex?! They'll find us out in minutes!"

"Non, Mundy, not if we give them something more… urgent to chase." 

"Like what?" 

"Mundy this is a clandestine animal reserve, what does it contain?" 

"Animals?" 

"Exactly! And dangerous ones! Say if one of them escaped, what would happen, hm…?"

"Bloody hell, you're a genius!" Mundy exclaimed and Lucien smiled. 

"I do have my moments." He proudly answered. 

"Alright so, we get in there, knock two blokes off, take their uniforms, then we free some beasts up, that will set the goons on a chase. Meanwhile, we catch Duchemin, get him in an empty hangar and kill him. Did I get it right?" 

"Oui, I think that is the plan. But now, you have to think, Mundy." 

"About what?"

"What species would take them the longest to catch?" 

"I wouldn't go for just one." The expert hunter explained. "Whatever the beast you'll put, it'll be outnumbered by the guards and they'll end up catching it or killing it. Nah, I'd go for a few, let them spread and fight." 

"Hm-mh, interesting. Which ones then?" 

"Big cats."

"Which ones in particular?" 

"All of them if we can. They're big, scary and they'll keep them busy for a while."

"Très bien."

[Very well.]

"Now the thing is how on Earth are we gonna break them free?" 

"And not getting eaten ourselves, you mean?" 

"Well yeah, that would help, wouldn't it?" 

Lucien chuckled. 

"Indeed it would. Here, I got these from Richard." 

The Frenchman handed Mundy small spherical objects in his palm. 

"What's that?"

"Explosives." 

"What the hell?! You want me to blow up now?!" 

"Calm down, you won't." Lucien chuckled. "This is the remote." He showed a button on his jacket. 

"Are you serious?!"

"I am."

"That's proper spooky business right there… But what do I do with these things?" 

"When we get there and are in uniforms, we will split up. You will go to the hangar with the felines and place those little explosives on the locks of the cages. Meanwhile, I will make sure that the empty hangar is indeed empty." 

"Ok, alright, then we meet somewhere and wait for him?" Mundy asked. 

"Indeed, we do. When the moment is right, I will detonate the explosives, which are small enough to just blow the locks up. The animals flee and in the panic, we get Duchemin 'to safety'." 

"Gosh that's brilliant…" 

Lucien smiled. 

"And you thought about all of that just now?!"

"More or less, oui." 

"Bugger… If we weren't busy right now I'd bloody kiss ya." 

"You may still do it when we park." 

"Don't tempt me, luv'...!" 

They exchanged a laugh. 

"Good Lord, I'm off to kill a bloke and I'm laughin'." Mundy said.

"Quite absurd, isn't it?"

"Yeah. But nothing really makes sense in this life, eh?" 

"Exactement." 

[Exactly.]

They shared a loving and conniving glance. 

"Ah, how much I love you… You might never know or understand." Lucien said. 

"You're so weird." Mundy chuckled. "We're off to do what we've been wanting to do forever and you think now is the time to get all sappy and lovey?"

"Oui." 

"You're weird." 

"Weirdly under your charm, oui." 

"Pff…" Mundy chuckled. "Alright, look here, we've arrived." 

The van parked and both men slipped out of it. 

"Mundy?" 

"Yeah?" The Aussie adjusted his rifle on his back. 

Lucien removed one glove and put his naked hand on Mundy's cheek. The way he looked up at the Aussie seized Mundy powerfully. 

"I love you." 

"Love you too. D'you want me to-?"

"Please, oui. I need it, I need you." Lucien pleaded with his angel eyes.

Mundy took Lucien by his waist and pulled him closer. Their lips met in silence, under the scorching afternoon sun. 

"When we're done with all that, remind me to continue this where we left off, ok, love?" 

"I shall." 

This time Mundy dived down to Lucien's lips and pulled his waist closer against his. 

"Listen love, when this is all done, I'm takin' you and we're leaving, ok? We'll live a simple life in the desert. I'll teach you how to hunt and fish, and you can teach me French."

Lucien smiled, albeit sadly. 

"Mon amour…"

[My love…]

"Ok?" Mundy insisted. 

"O-oui." 

"Right, let's do this." He put his lips on Lucien's forehead and left a silent kiss. 

"Oui." 

They headed for the complex and found the same entrance they had gone through the last time they had come, the fence that Lucien had cut through. Once they slipped in, it was a matter of seconds before they located two guards. 

Lucien readied his silenced tranquiliser gun and Mundy, his blowgun. They nodded to each other and when the guards passed behind the hangar, out of anyone else's view, Lucien and Mundy shot one each unconscious. 

After a minute, they wore the grey uniform and helmets. 

"Now, follow me, but you will have to do the talking." Lucien said. 

"Why?" 

"The accent." Lucien answered and Mundy's eyebrows jumped.

"Ah, yeah, I forgot."

They resumed their walk, armed with the rifles provided by the guards, which bodies they hid in some bushes. 

"Pst, Lu', there he is…" Mundy was comically speaking from the corner of his mouth, with his teeth clenched. 

"You may speak normally, no one is within earshot and the walkie-talkies are off." 

"Oh, yeah, ok, I tried to be… spooky." 

Lucien smiled under his helmet. 

"Go and place the explosives, I will check on the empty hangar. We shall reconvene here in 10 minutes sharp." 

"Okay, you be careful, ok?" 

"You too." 

They parted ways. Mundy headed for the feline hangar. He entered without too many problems and pretended to patrol inside. On each cage he passed, he put a little explosive, right on the lock. He used them all, and there were more than two dozens. When he was done, he glanced at his watch and exited the hangar to reconvene with Lucien. 

But he got interrupted. 

"Hey!" One of the guards called him. 

"Yeah?" 

"What're you doin' in there?" 

"Patrol."

"Did you fix the light?" 

Mundy tried to hide his surprise. 

"Yeah, nah, I was just sent to get the reference for the light bulb, I'll report it and get someone down here to fix it." He answered. 

"Ah, alright, cheers mate." 

And Mundy turned on his heels, sighing in relief that he passed the test. A few moments later, he was meeting with Lucien again.  

"How did it go?" Lucien asked. 

"Stressful. Had to talk to a bloke. He asked me if I fixed a light in the big cats hangar."

"What did you say?"

"That I was just taking the reference for the bulb?" 

Lucien smiled. 

"Excellent job."

"What about you?" Mundy asked. 

"Hangar A3 is indeed free. It was locked with a padlock but I easily picked it. We should be able to use it whenever we need. I found a few things to help us too, a chair and some ropes."

"Aces. Now, to get the bloke…"

"Follow me." Lucien said and they walked to the front of the hangar. 

Not a minute later, the man himself appeared. Duchemin was impeccably dressed, with a blue three-piece suit and matching dark blue, varnished shoes. He was followed by a few people who were not in uniforms… 

"Oui! I need that to be ready! What am I paying you for?!" 

The little escort of men in suits apologised profusely and went back to wherever they came from, leaving Duchemin alone. 

"Follow me, Mundy." 

"Right." 

Lucien walked close behind Duchemin as he passed them. 

"So first, we go through hangar A1, that's the birds, oui, colours and noises, perfect as a grand opening, then we move on to C5 with the reptiles… Hey! Are the alligators in better shape than last time?" Duchemin stopped in front of the reptiles' hangar and asked a few guards. 

"The vets said they were a bit depressed cause they don't see much of the sun but they should be fine."

"Depressed?!" Duchemin repeated. "What kind of nonsense is that! They're stupid animals, for God's sake!" 

Mundy clenched his fist and gulped down hard, trying to keep his calm.

"Right, let me move on! I don't want to get angry before Rochefort and his friends arrive…" 

Duchemin moved along, Lucien and Mundy still on his heels, on the orange and dusty ground of the desert. 

"The projectors were installed, good…" Duchemin raised his head to the towers with projectors planted at regular distances between the hangars. "At least they didn't mess that up!" 

He went on and Mundy followed until he felt something bump him. He looked down at Lucien and the man under the helmet gave a very slight nod as his gloved fingers slid to the button of his jacket, through the uniform vest that he had opened.

He pressed it and it was a matter of seconds before the guards started yelling around hangar B10.

"What the hell is that racket?!" Duchemin yelled.

One guard came running but before he reached Duchemin, a few wild cats escaped through the door of the hangar, bringing down the guards. Duchemin gasped and started yelling left and right, as more guards poured out to help their colleagues.

"Don't kill them! They are priceless! Put them to sleep! They are worth a fortune! Why does everything have to go wrong now?!" He roared angrily. 

"We gotta take you to safety, let's go." Mundy said, and both him and Lucien escorted Duchemin to the empty hangar. 

"Why are you taking me here? There is nothing in this hangar!" 

As Lucien faked to unlock the padlock on the door, he raised his eyes to Mundy who seemed at a loss as to what to answer. 

"Uh… Well exactly that's the point! We stay in there with you and lock ourselves up until the situation's under control. C'mon, get inside!" 

And in a second, the three men slipped in and Lucien locked themselves up inside the wide abandoned storage area. 

"Mon Dieu, that was close…!" The criminal said. "Argh, I don't even have a phone line installed here to call reinforcements!" 

Lucien had gone further away and came back with an old chair. 

"Y-yeah, take a seat, it could be quite long. We don't know how many more beasts escaped." Mundy said and Duchemin obliged. 

"This chair is the most uncomfortable thing ever…!" The rich rascal said. 

"And it is your last." Lucien answered while removing his helmet, he shook his head left and right. Duchemin's eyes snapped wide and he was about to shout for help but too late, Mundy had a kukri against his throat from behind. Lucien undid his tie  and quickly used it as a gag on Duchemin's mouth.

"Now, let us have a chat, shall we?" 

[fandomlurker]

A Ponderous Rewatch: Prologue

You know, I didn’t think this would happen. I didn’t go into bingeing the 2020 renewal of Animaniacs with the thought “I’m going to watch this and then go and watch the original Pinky and the Brain shorts and spin-off show and do a rewatch and loose analysis on the whole franchise with special attention on queer subtext and themes”. What I initially set out to do was simply watch the renewal and see if it lived up to the show I watched pretty regularly as a kid in the 90s…or at least what I remembered of it through the haze of decades worth of time.

Pinky and the Brain was my favorite set-up on Animaniacs back in the day. Back then I probably wouldn’t even have been able to tell you why beyond “I think it’s funny and the characters are fun to watch as they screw up trying to take over the world”. Other segments were funny to me back in the day, too. Slappy the squirrel was great in that she was basically just like the classic, near-timeless Looney Toons a la Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, but as an old lady toon who’s seen it all and tries to relate to the changing world while proving that the ol’ slapstick ways still work. The Goodfeathers were entertaining despite the fact that I was a literal child and didn’t even know that it was a big ol’ spoof of Goodfellas. Hell, I’ve still never seen Goodfellas, but three pigeons trying to carry themselves like macho tough guy mafia folks while being goddamn pigeons is still funny with or without that context. And as for the Warner siblings themselves? Their skits were pretty consistently great as well. Lots of that Bugs Bunny-like energy of putting terrible folks in their place when they annoy you while coupling it with the dynamic of three child siblings who are very, very active and much too clever for the average person. It was fun!

But as I watched the 2020 reboot with its stripped-down cast now largely consisting of just the Warner siblings and Pinky and the Brain segments for the season (And I’ll be honest, some of the segments from the 90s like Katie Kaboom, Buttons and Mindy, and the Hip-Hippos are ones I’ll be happy to never have return because they were godawful even back then), it brought into focus the strength of those segments compared to most of the others from the old 90s line-up: The strong dynamic and chemistry of the relationships between the main characters of those skits. The Warner siblings are a trio of kids who, despite being truly cut from the same wacky cloth as the most beloved of Looney Toon characters, also very much tap into a very realistic depiction of sibling relationships. Sure, they get on each other’s nerves sometimes. Sure, sometimes they have disagreements on how they view a certain situation. At the end of the day, however, they care about each other more than anything else and work in such perfect sync despite differences in who they are individually.  Sure, Yakko is a talkative theater kid jackass who sasses back at the drop of a dime. Sure, Wakko is kinda quiet and spaced-out and he has the appetite of a garbage disposal. Sure, Dot is adorable and witty and loudly and proudly feminist with an oddly feral streak. But if any one of them is inconvenienced or picked on or threatened in any way by someone, even if that someone is a powerful celebrity of some sort? You bet your ass the other two will immediately back their sibling up and make their tormentor’s life a living hell for the next however long the skit lasts. They’re little gremlin children who love one another, and have a surprisingly tragic backstory that actually speaks to a lot of fans on several levels.

But, okay, the bond between the Warner siblings is great and fun. What about Pinky and the Brain? What makes their dynamic stand out?

Folks, that’s where things get a little more…interesting. To me, at least.

So, watching the beginning of the 2020 reboot got me to slowly remember the parts I loved about the Pinky and the Brain skits from Animaniacs…were actually from their spin-off show. And the things I remembered most clearly from the spin-off were the more heartwarming moments that showed how much they cared about and loved one another, despite Brain being exhausted by Pinky’s dimwitted antics at times. And for a supposedly continuity-light cartoon show, there was a surprising amount of consistency to the main duo and their motivations. There was even a handful of reoccurring side characters the audience was expected to recognize from past episodes, as well, which is a bit strange to have for a show that initially seemed to aim to be strictly episodic. I remembered the odd amount of depth there was to the series. Nothing groundbreaking, mind you, but definitely something more than the average comedy cartoon.

So after watching the first few episodes of the reboot, I took to Tumblr to see if anyone remembered the old 90s show and to see how they were reacting to the new one. In doing so, I came across this post:

“i love that ppl make jokes abt a pinky and the brain version of the destiel confession because that. already happened....... the only difference is that brain pulls pinky out of superhell instead of dying on a barn nail”

Now, look, I’ve never watched Supernatural and only know it through Tumblr cultural osmosis, and at the time we were all riding off the high of the madness that was the finale of that show and the fallout from it. But ANYWAY…

This piqued my interest because 1. I didn’t remember watching an episode of Pinky and the Brain where anything like that happened, and 2. I was already picking up strong gay vibes from the reboot only a few episodes in. So, basically, I just had to hunt down this episode to sate my curiosity and see for myself if there was subtext in this 90s cartoon that I hadn’t quite picked up on as a kid.

I found the episode and started watching it. “Wow,” I said to myself, “this is a lot gayer than I remember…” And after finishing the episode, memories came flooding back to me:

That time the Brain fell for a girl mouse that was looked and acted lot like Pinky.

All those moments where Pinky would wear drag to disguise himself as Brain’s significant other in one way or another to further their plans for that episode, and how I could never remember it being ridiculed.

That one time they accidentally had a child together via a science mishap.

The ending of the Christmas special!...

And as I sat there, dumbstruck and searching Tumblr’s tags to see how far this particular rabbit hole (mouse hole?) went, everything finally clicked in my little bisexual mind.

This was one of the big reasons as to why I loved the Pinky and the Brain skits so much above all the others on Animaniacs all those years ago when I was a kid. It was the same sort of thing that subconsciously drew me to many of the cartoons and anime and media in general I loved as a child, back before I had the proper knowledge and self-awareness to know or express it.

Looking back on my life, I’d always gravitated to and resonated the most with stories and media with queer content in text or subtext. And sure, this cartoon was/is no Sailor Moon or Revolutionary Girl Utena with explorations of gender roles and queerness. It’s no Steven Universe or She-Ra with out and proud queer characters. It’s no The Little Mermaid or The Happy Prince where the stories were made by queer authors and subtextually about queer experience.

However…

However…!

I was surprised to find how deep the gay subtext went with Pinky and the Brain. Hell, I still am. This little Warner Brothers, Looney Toons-pedigree, continuity-light show about two lab mice trying to take over the world in bizarre, hilarious ways has such a weirdly continuous, heartfelt, touching, engaging, and sometimes outrageously raunchy queer undercurrent to it. All done in the 90s! It’s kind of baffling.

This is not to say that the creators and writers of the shows deliberately set out to do this. I don’t believe that anyone involved sat down and said to themselves “I’m going to make this so fucking gay!”. Sure, the voice actors of both Pinky and the Brain have said that they played the dynamic with “the energy of an old gay couple” and they’ve said plenty of suggestive or outright not safe for work things in the character’s voices in interviews and at convention panels. I firmly believe that they’re just having fun as the characters, just as much as I believe the writers were probably just having fun and putting in the gay subtext and suggestive lines as a kind of long running joke and seeing how far they could take it.

(By the time of the Pinky and the Brain comics, however, I’m not so sure. Some of the stuff they got away with in those issues is…amazing, to say the least.)

Regardless of actual intent, I think the writers of Pinky and the Brain (both old and new), have accidentally created a sort of subtextual, yet pretty powerful love story. And you know what? I want to rewatch this story for myself and write down my thoughts as I go along. I tried something similar quite a while back with Droids, and while I kind of ran out of steam as my life got busier and never finished, I have time now for something like this.

I should also say that I’m not out here to, like, convert anyone into shipping cartoon mice together. I imagine most people see Pinky and the Brain as nothing other than very close friends, and that’s a completely valid viewpoint to have. I doubt there will ever be some sort of canonization of a gay relationship between the two, as I imagine most of the writers on the new show (and hell, on the old one) are heterosexual themselves and would view such an idea as “ruining the comedy and the dynamic of the characters” or something similar. I’ve been in the fandom game long enough to know better than to hope and expect any media to sincerely tackle queer relationships in stories that only have the subtext there, especially in comedies.

I guess I’m doing this more to explore something I loved as a child and to see if I can find just as much if not more enjoyment from it as an adult, albeit maybe for different reasons. Hell, it’s also an opportunity to peek into a kind of time capsule from the 90s regarding how far queer subtext could be pushed back then, even when heavily couched in comedy. This is just a little project I wanna do for fun in my spare time. And hey, maybe a few of you out there will have some fun reading it too, who knows?

Either way, see you sometime soon in the new year.

[popculturebuffet]

Ducktales (Comic) Reviews!: Happy Happy Valley!/Fight! (Issue #4)

My first look at the IDW Ducktales Comics! And for a comission by @weirdkev27​! Seriously he’s basically my boss at this point. If you’d like to comission your own comic or animation review just pm me or shoot me an ask to get my discord. Single stories for a comic are 3 bucks, single comic issues and single episodes of a show are 5 bucks with deals on multiple issues or episodes of a show. With my shameless plugging out of the way the stories themselves are:

Happy Happy Valley! (The Comissioned Story): The Main Cast sans Beakly end up stranded at a resort where everyone’s forced to be happy all the time. A classic trope with a twist ending you can’t predict.. mainly because it’s.. 

Fight!: The boys have a garage sale with stuff from the broom closet to raise money for Huey’s woodchuck trip. Naturally this quickly snowballs into a samurai fight to the death. 

Wonders, a full recap with spoilers, and extreme stupidity await bellow the cut. 

After a quick commission break for this week’s episode I’m back in the saddle and back into comics no less! It’s been exactly a year since I’ve done a single issue comic review. Oh sure I looked back on house of x, and will again next year, and I do want to cover Empyre at some point and some other comics, but I haven’t done a full recap of a single comic book in some time. But the first story of this issue  really, REALLY confused and infuriated Kev, and rightfully so, so I got the commission call, and of my own volition I’m doing the second story entirely for free. I just wanted to do both for completion’s sake and because when I did read this comic I remembered the stories not being very long so it gives me more to write anyway. And if your curious yes I would gladly review classic Don Rosa, Carl Barks or really any duck writer’s work on a story by story basis, it just works easier to do the Ducktales issues all in one since their both more recent and I don’t have to go back and do it later if, once i finish seasons 1 and 2 at some point in the distant future, I decide to do this series too as well as the Sound and Fury mini that was clearly used to offload stories they had left over. 

As for my experience with these comics I DID read them when they started out. .but quickly petered off and never even got around to this story, I remember reading page one but never read the rest of it. Part of it is I tend to flitter in and out of comics and part of it was the stories just weren’t that gripping, with the characters often feeling like flatter versions of the far more multi-layered one’s in the show proper and the stories being a bit too short to properly flesh things out like the show, especially since for some weird reason each issue has two stories instead of having one big story on occasion. They weren’t bad and there is a story or two I want to go back to like Lena and Webby being spies together, Fethry and Fenton have a story together apparently, we get an early look at Della, and there’s one where Bradford hints at them plotting against scrooge long before the show revealed it. There’s some interesting stuff I might look at eventually, I just have a LOT of show to get through too, and i’m not going to pidgenhole the entire series as bad or lackluster based on a few early issues.. or one story in this issue. But yeah i’ve held it off long enough.. let’s talk about 

Happy Happy Valley!

First off the titles for these are .. pretty lack luster. Their basically just what the stories are about.. Happy Happy Valley and a Fight, that’s.. about it. I didn’t realize just HOW awesome the show is at titles, making each sound like a thrilling and unique adventure which they usually are, until I got to here. It feels like IDW, and by extentsion disney, didn’t care what the stories were called and just wanted a comic out to tie into the show. Which bothers me when they put this on IDW, clearly having a release platform for disney works.. but didn’t bother to use it for their Darkwing Duck comic continuing from the original, the reprint of the BOOM! Studios comic, or the short lived Star VS Comic Deep Trouble, which I will be covering at some point as it was pretty good. Same with the Boom! Studio’s darkwing, I just want to watch more episodes before revisiting it. Point is the title isn’t great. The story is even less than that. 

We open properly with our heroes.. all woken up from their beds in the middle of the night for an adventure. It’s not a bad start, though Louie weirdly starts in constantly about how Scrooge’s rich and can do this and that and Subtley dosen’t exist in this story does it?  Anyways, later, far away from Louie’s bed.. that’s the caption they go with and I love it, the Sunchaser suddenly stops working and Launchpad’s crashing skills come in handy, 

This isn’t a bad scene as Donald brings up good points and likely has his own “times he’s been nearly sacrificed tally” like Louie.. and Della likely also said “Della’s coming out on top!” when her total went into triple digits. Also  “When your rich you can even buy luck launchpad”

It just.. dosen’t fit Scrooge at all.. granted this issue hasn’t BEGUN to not fit Scrooge at all but let’s save that for the end. Anyways rather than hostile locals they find Gladys Seeya, good pun, an overly smiley woman whose eager to please and just wants everyone to be happy and has them carried because tired people aren’t happy. Yeah it’s suspcious as heck and a well worn trope, really nice place with a dark secret, to the point the series proper would parody it in the Mervana episode, and subvert it by having them turn out to just be very nice hippies who i’m still convinced had a three way with Donald... I mean he could use it, they were really nice, and Donald is probably very generous. That’s something you didn’t want to think about but now you have to and it’s there. If you GENUINELY think that’s bad, then you should hear about Goofy’s sex life. 

See way more horrifying. Now everyone’s miserable! Horay! Moving on, point is Donald had a mer-three way and this is a well worn trope, but it is used in an interesting way.. that’s entirely ruined by the stupid ending, but we’ll get to that.  Point is everyone is soon happy, given a buffet, all the food they can eat, and whatever they want. They just want you to be happy.. no secret plot here.. wink. Louie continues his annoying “Every rich person gets X” schtick which feels forced as hell and gets worse with every line and more obvious. It’s one of the weaknesses with this story. It’s basically the writers constantly elbowing you and saying GET IT.. YOU GET IT.. BEING HANDED EVERYTHING YOU WANT IS ANNOYING GET IT. YOU GET IT.  The problem is.. the Island’s moral dosen’t fit that. Kev  helped here as we discussed the issue once I finished it, as I hadn’t thought of it yet, but the valley isn’t about giving you everything you want.. it’s about just FORCING you to enjoy things. Sure you can be happy off some things like the food but when Donald politley declines to dance because he can’t, which tracks with his life in general, they basically all glare at him to do so. Later they basically force acvitites on them with the ducks only agreeing because clealry they worry about what might happen if they DON’T. Telling someone to smile or enjoy something dosen’t make them enjoy it it just makes them miserable. Problems are 1, the issue very clearly WANTS to have the other moral and 2) the series would do this kind of story MUCH better with “Mystery at McDuck Manor!”. That’s not on the writers fault, as this comic started right before the show premiered and this issue came out before said episode, but it really doesn’t help the show came along with the same exact moral of not forcing your idea of fun on someone else and did it WAY better. It’s the same message, the ducks being forced to endure something only one person thinks is fun, but delivered right and wrapped into a very clever and fun mystery. Honestly I might cover that one this week or sometime soon because it both fits the Halloween season and this issue if nothing else reminded me how good THAT episode is. 

But I’m stuck doing this issue. Naturally, and in one of the issues few clever moments, the Ducks try booking it out of there as soon as they can but find their raft gone, and a ring of sharks suddenly there that weren’t before, and Donald understandably doesn’t want to risk the kids lives with that. Thankfully Webby soon comes up with a plan using the activities, and uses a napkin to get it around. This bit.. is actually clever as they use the various bits to get a plan and even Huey has a really clever bit where he just leaves his hat and shirt behind to go looking for the generator, likely on Webby’s request, knowing his brothers can just play him once in a while to draw suspicion. Also apparently Huey wears a tank top under his shirt, which looks weird on him, as he’s not the sporty type, but does fit his “always prepared” mindset well so I like it.  Using Basket weaving and balloon decorating, they create a way out, and Webby ties up their host while everyone escapes. They nearly don’t fit out but luckily Donald contributes. And again i’ll give the story this: Donald does more in this one story than he got to do in the vast majority of season one.  So our heroes escape with other patrons begging them to take them with them and the stories apparently wrapped up. The generator Huey found was to show the sharks were just holograms which given the science in this world makes sense, as does it jamming the sunchaser. What doesn’t make sense, and what got me my three bucks for this review in the first place is this. I”m putting the full picture there both so you can let it sink in and to let you know, since most of you probably haven’t read this comic, that i’m not making this shit up, nor is it one of my jokes. This .. this is the actual twist for the comic. 

...................................................................................................

 This is probably the thrird dumbest line in comic book history. Before you ask the other two are

And why yes those are both from the series. And why no I will not be covering All Star Batman and Robin unless someone forces me too.  My point is WHAT THE FLYING HELL IS THIS.  I mean this makes NO sense on any level. For STARTERS one of Scrooge’s most well known traits, that’s part of his character in every version is that he doesn’t like to spend money. He will to MAKE MONEY and sometimes grumble about it but if he doesn’t. Even if season 1 had it dialed way back, he still reused his old teabags, charged extra on his in house vending machines and tried to get out of buying burritos for recently freed slaves. Being cheap is an iconic part of his character. Granted the series took out things from the comics and original like underpaying employees, barely paying Donald even though in the comics he supports three children, as well as barely paying those children, and refusing to donate to orphans, but still it’s not THAT so far removed that THIS is remotely in character! He had to either buy this old resort or have it renovated to keep up the ruse, pay for the creepy lady running it, pay for the other guests as actors because otherwise his hired minion KIDNAPPED people who were begging for escape, pay for the activities/escape supplies, and pay gyro to build the GIANT GENERATOR THAT BOTH PROJECTS SHARKS AND MAKES TECHNLOGY NOT WORK. While I do think Scrooge would gladly want to teach Louie a lesson, this is a lesson that at best costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not at least a million to pull off.  And that’s not even getting into how he forced everyone else to go with it, denied them a good night’s sleep and clearly told NONE of them. Beakly not being there actually makes more sense as she would’ve noped out of this horrible horrible idea and bonked him on the head for this. It makes no sense and it’s GROSSLY out of character. And while I’m used ot that from comics, writers often don’t give a shit about the characters their writing, I expect better from DISNEY when it comes to lisencing shit. They’ve done better. I’ve mentioned better and even SINCE this they’ve done better: Christos Gage’s Incredible’s Comics are excellent and I want to read more of them. And the previous run by mark waid is also suitably incredible, if now sadly no longer canon.  And even in this very ISSUE there’s a much better, if not amazing, story we’ll get to in a moment. I get disney’s greenlit weak tie in material before but this is ridiculously bad and shoddy. Shame on them, shame on the writer, and shame on this INCREDIBLY stupid story. We get an everybody laughs ending, who cares. we’re out. 

Final Thoughts for Happy Happy Valley: 

I don’t have much less to say about this story. This about sums it up. 

Fight! 

We open with a samurai.. though it quickly turns out to be Dewey with a mop on his head hitting Louie with a broom while saying Two Damage! Two Damage! and already in one scene this is so much better and feels so much more natural. Naturally this story has a different writer. The artist is different for both too, and the art is good on both though I do prefer the art for “Fight!” more as it’s a bit more expressive. Though it also benefits from having less characters to juggle so that probably helps.  The boys are having a Garage Sale, or Yard Sale as some call it. As a huge fan of Garage Sales, I’ve gotten tons of stuff from them over the years and good shit too like my G1 Snarl, or even just recently a three in one of the first three loud house Graphic Novels for a freaking quarter. You REALLY can’t beat that. It’s why I love these things. So this story already had my money. As for why, Huey needs money for the Junior Woodchuck Camping trip. How else is he going to hold hands iwth Violet and Boyd under a tree. Wait neither of them existed yet.  Damn. Well i’m retconning that in anyway. If they can retcon the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver not to be mutants, which If eel is getting undone VERY soon, or if not Hickman will use that well, I can retcon this to taking place in season 3. Plus i’ts all very wholesome and innocent... their only eleven. 

But yeah Scrooge in a nice moment if an off-screen one gave them the contents of the broom closet.. which is really just a bunch of old used up brooms, some buckets and other cleaning supplies. Probably stuff Beakly rarely uses or has long replaced and if not.. well he’ll have to pay for them himself won’t he. Unlike the above clusterfuck this.. feels entirely in character. Scrooge likely apricates that Huey is working hard to EARN the money for his trip and that his brothers are helping, especially Louie since he gets nothing out of this unless they go over what Huey needs. But also being Scrooge he still only gives them some old Junk.  But Louie, being louie easily scams a guy into paying 15 bucks for a broom. Still this is slow progress and if Huey wants to be with his poly relationship he’s gotta step it up. Luckily, and naturally given this is Scrooge’s closet, they find an old Samurai helmet, which Huey feels could be worth millions. granted...

But eh it’s going to a good cause, tiny children holding hands by campfires, and when has common decency EVER stopped Louie? Dewey though, wants to start a collection of war stuff.. starting with this. It’s part of why I LIKE the story better: not only does it have much better dialouge but it’s actually rooted in the characters instead of “One trait of Louie’s cranked up to 50 and drilled into our heads”. Huey is trying to earn money for the woodchucks, Dewey only wants something for petty reasons and Louie wants money. It feels like the actual characters and not just cutouts and makes me wnat to read more stories in the hopes of finding more like this.  Anyways naturally nothing Scrooge has in any of his storage areas of the mansion tha’ts ancient isn’t cursed, magical or really neat to look at, and the helmet comes to life as they fight over it, and the helmet clints to Dewey, who talks in a deep red voice calling himself Ronnith of the Twin Samurai. The name.. isn’t great but the concept is. Thankfully Huey knows what it is thanks to the guidebook. and just like the Donald bit last episode this one story gets the guidebook better than season 1 did a lot.  Turns out the twin samurai were two brothers who hated each other and always competed for their mothers affection.. their mother was also forced to sell her beautiful sculptures for next to nothing after their father left. Instead of going after him though they both blamed each other as teens when invaders struck and burned everything including their mom I guess down, and fought the rest of their days, and while Ronnith never settled things due to growing too old, his spirit, and his intense hate, went into his helmet which now curses any brothers who fight over it to fight with the looser turning into a statue. 

Naturally no one wants this but Dewey can’t get the helmet off and Ronnith possess him to destroy the guidebook.. though Huey explains it’s his “third backup copy” which.. yeah again like the tank top thing tracks. Ronnith then manifests armor on Louie and we get the image above.. which is really neat. With Ronnith forcing the two to fight each other, Huey searches for a way to stop it. And while he can’t find it he does figure it out and the solution is REALLY clever: Just as Ronnith’s about to kill Louie, with Dewey apologizing.. Huey blocks. And Ronnith is naturally confused and upon finding out there’s a THIRD brother, the curse dissipates and thus everything’s back to normal. And wrapping things up nicely a guy shows up to buy the helmet and while Dewey tries to just give it away Louie says it’s free with purchase of a bucket for 50 bucks so Huey has his money to go on his romantic camping trip.. though he does ask if hte guy has a brother.. best be safe.  Final thoughts on Fight!: It’s like night and day. While the previous story is stilted, has one of the worst endings in duck history and overall is just kind of bland outside of one or two moments this .. is really good. It doesn’t add much to the world or anything, but it’s a fun side story with a clever monster of the week and resolution, some great lines and some good art. This is what should’ve lead the issue, as the main story is again just dreadful. Overall i’d recommend checking this story out.. though maybe get in in trade instead as the A-Story here is really bad, but you can find both on comixology and this issues on comixlogy unlimited if you want to check it out along with a ton of other great comics. 

That does it for this review, if you liked this I do regular coverage of ducktales every week, I JUST COVERED THIS WEEK’S EPISODE YESTERDAY.  So check that out and until next time vote if you can and check your house for Gary Busey!

[cherry3point14]

Stranger Than Fanfiction: Ch 3

Series Masterlist

Pairing: Dean x Reader Warnings: Meta baby. Pure meta. Word count: 2,100. Chapter Summary: Your google search turns up something unexpected. A/N: No author in this one for... reasons. Also this one is kind of short and lame. A means to an end if you will, but trust me, Ch 4 is a doozy. P.S it’s nearly 3am so Chapter 4 will be up when I wake up, ya dig.

Ao3 if you prefer

It’s almost funny how dramatic the voice in your head wants to be about those suited criminals and yet it doesn’t care to elaborate on anything important. Like, say, your imminent death. The mention of it was so casual, calm, but a couple of weirdos want to pretend to be insurance adjusters and suddenly it’s all pretty prose and run-on sentences. Flowery language about broad-shouldered men in roaring muscle cars that are going to change your life. She’d kept going while you’d interviewed Maggie Hall. She’d harped on and on about how you couldn’t stop thinking about them.

Of course, you couldn’t stop thinking about them, she wouldn’t shut up about them.

After an entire monologue about the way the paper felt in your hands and could never be replaced by computers—purists are the worst—you finally get to leave. That's when you get some respite. You’re walking out into the late afternoon sun and thanking Maggie for her time and it's bliss. Maggie's story sounds a little off, after years doing this you have this gut instinct for when you should investigate further. Funnily enough, you have drama in your life that you’ll submit a valid claim anyway. Just so you can get this cursed case out of your hair. You might even hurry it through the system before the thing has the chance to kill you.

You’re still not sure how a case could kill you. You’re a pencil pusher at best and the interview with Maggie is an excellent example of the majority of your fieldwork, obviously excluding the criminals at the start. Unless your demise is death by papercut.

For now, you’ve given up trying to fathom out the voice you’re hearing, especially since she's chosen to once again go radio silent. If she won’t say anything useful, like say how not to die, then you were going to have to figure out how to skip ahead on your own. Since she kept talking about the imposters you’d met that day, they seemed to be an excellent place to start.

CNK 80Q3. Ohio plates. That's as much as you know without google.

That evening you set yourself up in the same way you would to work from home. There's a desk in the corner of your dining room with a chair that offers enough lumbar support for the longest of research sessions. Although it’s your personal laptop and there’s not normally a large glass of wine sitting next to you when work.

After it powers on you’re assaulted by the usual pop-ups; windows you forgot to close last time and your emails. Procrastinating is not a new routine, and you’re on a mission, so they all get minimized instead of closed completely. Then you open a new browser window and a stark google homepage stares back at you. A hopeful new beginning.

CNK 80Q3. You’re genuinely surprised that she hasn’t started talking again to describe the change in the air as you type in the plate number. Or some drivel about the way your fingers emphasize each letter and number. It’s all there happening anyway, making the moment foreboding, but your narrator doesn’t seem care.

The first row of results are images. Weirdly its images of the license plate itself. That doesn't strike you as odd at first glance and then you think about it a little more. Why are there so many pictures of this particular license plate? Who is running around taking these pictures? You're pretty sure if you typed in your own plate number there would be no pictures of it. And then you see some shopping results where you can actually buy the plate. While the online shops might explain the images, it only really poses more questions. Why are so many people buying that license plate? What’s so special about it?

You take a sip of your wine before you scroll further, savoring the taste as well as the way it relaxes your shoulders. You don't own any 'fun' novelty coasters that say it but you're inclined to agree with the statement you've heard before. Wine really does make everything better.

You’re not yet into the murky depths of page 2 but you’re far enough down the page now to make it past the sponsored results. These links come thick and fast from websites that all seem to have one word in common. Supernatural.

Then you see your salvation. A page called Supernaturalwiki—the link is simply titled: Impala—and you stop scrolling, a grateful sound slipping past your lips as you do. Wiki, you know that word. Like Wikipedia. Wikipedia has references and moderators', clear and concise explanations. This was the easy way out you were looking for.

That’s what you hope as you click on the link anyway. Your naivety lasts all of twenty seconds before the page loads. With its stock image of a 1967 Chevrolet Impala, and a quote about it being the most important object in the universe.

Or it's the most important object in some books at least.

Further clicking and longer sips of wine reveal it’s a series of books called Supernatural—with the title of the wiki you should have seen that coming. These were story after story of ghosts and demons and angels? There are pages that describe monsters, urban legends, and two men. Sam and Dean Winchester. They each have dedicated pages with their whole lives mapped out.

Sam and Dean are fictional brothers and apparently the heroes. Each of their respective profiles begins with an illustrated image from book covers, and then a series of quotes that contradict those pictures. Then their lives are intricately detailed, or should you say they are chronologically recorded according to each book. You would read their histories in full if it wasn't for how tiny the scroll bar is, indicating that these profile pages are ridiculously long.

You sit back in your chair and take a deep breath in the hopes of it being soothing. Or answering all your questions. It does neither. You have no answers and more stress.

This went beyond two men pretending to do your job now. Those guys were driving around in a car with fictional license plates. What was this? Some weirdly immersive cosplay? Was that something Sam and Dean did in the books?

Even so, those two guys weren’t roleplaying at comic con, they were actually in that woman's home. If you hadn't arrived they could have done anything. They could be doing anything now.

There's a ding from the kitchen which means the frozen meal you’d thrown in the oven is ready. Not that you stop thinking about this while you go and grab it because the more you think the less sense everything makes. Like why is a narrator who, until now, was obsessed with those guys, so very silent all of a sudden?

Back at your desk with hot food, you head back to google to see if you can buy these books anywhere because knowledge is power. Unfortunately, not even Amazon has copies. It’s only when you add the term “ebook” to your search do you find a Tumblr blog with links to download all the files, split into two categories. Published and unpublished. There are a lot of Supernatural books and from the looks of it there’s an equal amount of drama over how the unpublished ones got out.

You start downloading them without consciously making a decision to read them. Downloading kind of happens because your macaroni cheese is too hot for your mouth to handle yet, and your hands still need something to do. Besides you didn’t necessarily need to read all of them, if they were truly terrible you’d delete the files. No harm, no foul. But if this was the only way to get answers then you and your kindle were going to be pretty busy this weekend.

“Morning Laura.” Nobody likes Mondays, yet you have a little bounce in your step having made your usual green tea, got dressed, and driven to work in complete and utter silence. In fact, you’d heard nothing all weekend. The caveat was that, yes, you’d spent all weekend reading those books.

You liked reading and without discrimination. Trashy romance novels at the airport? You betcha. Fantasy books thicker than your mattress? Sure thing, order a pizza. But a mystery? Well, those were your favorite. Of course, the detective needed some sort of sketchy backstory and there had to be a fishy amount of red herrings. Most importantly there had to be something to solve. It was an elevation of your day to day life and you always get sucked in. In your job, you try to solve the most benign mysteries; people faking insurance claims. More often than not there isn’t even a mystery to solve, someone really did slip and break something. So, a mystery that grabs you out of nowhere is like a promotion for you, a challenge.

That had been how those Supernatural books had dragged you in. Ghosts and ghouls you could take or leave, you might have stopped reading if that’s all there was. Then this Carver Edlund went and put in that damn side plot about their missing father. It was too enticing, addicting. From the cryptic disappearance to the indecipherable journal of clues. John Winchester would be the death of you.

Or case 24-01 would be. The jury was still out on that.

And now it’s Monday. You’ve heard nothing more from the voice in your head—it may have been a low-level case of carbon monoxide poisoning—and the boys are so close to figuring everything out you can taste it. Technically they know John is alive by now, you finished Shadow some point yesterday afternoon and felt yourself choke up at the emotional goodbye with a father they just got back. But they still have no clue what he's up to, which is a hideous funhouse mirror reflection of your own life. Hopefully, by the time they figure out John’s game plan, you'll have your life figured out too. And fingers crossed figuring everything out will involve staying alive as well.

“You look like you’re feeling better this morning.” Laura is her perky self, always a little too happy for this side of 9am.

Oh right, you went home sick on Friday. You should remember things like that. “I think it was a bug or something I ate maybe.”

“Sure, sure. One of those convenient Friday bugs.” She winks at you.

If she accused you of that say, last week, you’d have laughed it off given that's a thing everyone has in common; trying to skip out on work. So, that's what you try to do this side of the weekend. You push out something that hopefully resembles a regular person's laugh like you’re in on the joke. You have to fake it because you’re still thinking about Providence. The book you’d finished that morning instead of watching the news. You’re still wondering if Sam is starting to move on after Jessica. 

Needless to say, you understand now. The many fan blogs and the artwork you’d glanced at before you started reading. All those things that you’d disregarded as an unhealthy fascination for a bunch of books. Now you’re one of them, obsessed. Walking into the office with your kindle tucked in your bag and Salvation just begging to be read.

This goes beyond finding John. That plot got its hooks in you but you’ve known John was alive since Home and you’re still reading. You could also blame this on your general love of reading except it goes beyond that too. Honestly, it’s hard to pick one thing. They’re really great books. Sam and Dean have such turbulent lives but they still have each other. They’re snarky, lost, angry, and caring. They’re both so different but the sibling relationship is so real. And the stories go beyond a new monster every book, there are these huge interesting story arcs that you couldn't stop reading if you tried. John Winchester had been the first example of these addictive plot points, but not the only one.

“Y/N?”

You snap your head up, “sorry, sorry.”

“I was only saying you’re going to be here all day then, lunch?”

Even though Laura must see the decision on your face she still pretends to hope until you start speaking. “Actually I have a lot to catch up on so I’ll probably be working through. Tomorrow?”

She smiles brightly and nods, “sure thing.”

As bad as you feel about lying to Laura she has presented you an opportunity. Everyone thinks you were sick on Friday. They even think you're behind on your work and they don’t know you’ve already conducted the initial interview. Which makes your decision to sit at your desk and prop your kindle up next to your screen even easier. Nobody would notice the difference between you concentrating or reading. If you skip lunch you might be able to get to Bloodlust out of the way too.

Continue to Chapter 4.

5eva tags: @divadinag @darthdeziewok @fluentinfiction @witch-of-letters @supernatural-teamfreewillpage @magnitude101999 @alexwinchester23  Dean babes: @thewinchesterchronicles @akshi8278​ @bloodydaydreamer StrangerThanFiction tags: @jaylarkson

[expolikestoart]

Fam-ILY au headcanons post!

listen I love them a lot and I want to talk about them even if no one else really cares

Character Designs

Sleepover/Movie Night for the boys

The Picani Family

the Picanis have a day once every week where they all watch a few episodes of Avatar together. tis law.

Emile is genderfluid!! So sometimes they're Patton and Dee's dad, sometimes they're thier mom, sometimes they're their ren. Patton and Dee tend to just call them their dad though, just cause it's easier to explain to the other kids. And it doesn't cause Emile any issues so they don't mind. They were a pronoun braclet a lot. (tbh they're really just happy their kids sees them as a role model.) (He/Him, She/Her, They/Them, depends on the day)

Patton likes to play with his stuffed animals a lot!

his favorite blanket is his weighted blanket

Dee is HoH so the entiree family knows ASL and he wears hearing aids.

Dee's very passionate about octonauts and his favorite episode was the coral reef snake one. (his favorite character is tweak)

Patton and Dee are bio siblings but they're both adopted by Emile. Emile had a partner during the adoption but they broke up a few years later and he(the partner) never offically had any custody.

at the start of the storyline (maybe writing a fic) they just moved and Emile and him broke up.

Emile keeps pictures of them in his wallet and Will talk about them whenever someone asks.

Emile is a children's therapist in this AU, and specifically works with kids who deal with learning disabilities.

The Kingsley Family

When Remy was like. 17 he got in a relationship with this one girl and they did the do. When the twins were born, she left. He hasn't heard from her since.

His family wasn't that supportive except his Great Aunt Becca who's a wonderful woman. She lived with her partner for years until she died a year or two before Remy moved in.

So they all live with her now.

Roman likes to sew little costumes for his stuffed animals. Remy helps.

Roman begged Remy to let him join dance classes. Remy doesn't currently have the money to take so he's saving up to let him.

Remus is in that weird kid phase? You know the one where they're weirdly obsessed with like. Death and witches and shit? He's in that phase.

He also makes "potions" and shit outta stuff in the kitchen. 50% of them are probably poisonous. Remy lets him drink absolutely none of them.

Remy's Bi and proud. He hasn't really dated anyone since he was 17 but. He's open to dating again. But only if his boys like them.

Remy works at a few different places. He's the manager at a coffee shop when the boys are at school and at night when they sleep he works at a gas station. Neither has great pay but he's doing his best.

Roman and Remus have very active imaginations. It has led to them waking up Remy or Becca due to monsters in the closet more than they like.

Disney! And! Pixar! Movie! Nights!

Remy and Aunt Becca have most definitely made scrapbooks of the boys together. (even though Remy might deny it to keep up his tough guy image)

The Cogsworth Family

Brian showed the boys some of Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Logan fell in love with the show immediately. Virgil doesn't like it as much but he likes to see Logan excited so he watches it too.

Virgil freaking Loves Gravity Falls though. He likes to try and find monsters in the apartment complex and nearby park. He swears he heard a hide behind once. (Brian played the sound effect on his phone and placed a speaker in a tree to make him happy)

Logan only likes certain textures with clothes so Brian makes sure that when they go clothes shopping Logan feels them first.

Logan has a prosthetic foot (it doesn't show in the family portrait because his socks and shoes cover it up) ((he also has a barbie doll because her leg was a prosthetic))

Virgil likes to draw a lot, especially monsters and stuff that he sees on tv. It's really cute looking half of the time but sometimes it kinda worries Brian.

Brian is Trans! And Aro/Ace. The kids are his. He had them pre-transition. His family wasn't supportive of him transitioning so he doesn't really talk to them. Has been on T for 5 years. (He/Him)

Brian's a bit of a space nerd so he likes to watch documentaries on them and the kids will often curl up on him and watch too.

Brian's compiter has a metric fuckton of baby photos of the boys!

They go to the park because he tries to keep them as healthy as possible and hopefully his kids will make friends. Both are painfully shy.

He's a security guard/Janitor for Walmart's l a t e shifts.

The Sanders Family

Thomas isn't adopted y e t but god is Anton working on the paper work for that because bitch that's their son now and they love him.

Thomas still is the goofy guy we know, happy, enjoys Disney, likes to sing and stuff.

Since Thomas is old enough to join the school choir he did and he loves it.

Anton and Thomas met the others because Emile was Thomas's therapist and once Anton asked Emile the best thing he could do for their kid and Emile commented on how that they knew it was scary, cause they had the same thoughts when they adopted their kids.

Emile is no longer Thomas's therapist due to him no longer being impartial since that's his kids friend and that's kinda iffy so now their friend is.

Anton is nb and pan-romantic ace. (He/Him, They/Them)

Both of them are kinda chaotic at times and sometimes you can find the two of them trying desperately to bake but there's batter on the ceiling and flour in Anton's hair. (they can't bake but anton can cook so it's okay)

When Thomas gets adopted all the others will be invited to see the signing.

Thomas didn't get to watch most Disney movies while in Foster care so Anton is showing him everything.

He also didn't get to see the Barbie movies so guess what else he's watching because Anton insists.

Anton still has an appreciation for fine arts and has a painting hanging up in his Living room framed and right next to it in just as fancy a frame is a drawing Thomas made. (it's a family portrait that Thomas made with stick figures. When he gave it to Anton, Anton c r i e d.)

Thomas has two friends from before he writes to, Joan and Tayln. He writes them letters every few days. They write back and everytime he gets one he's like!!!!!

Anton's the most well off of anyone in the squad so he tends to give gifts to the others when they find something.

All of them

The Parent Group are all very supportive of their kids interests, and also have meetups while the boys have playdates where the drink they're preferred hot drink (Emile likes Tea, Remy and Anton like Coffee, and Brian likes Apple Cider) and bitch about the shitty PTA moms and work (not emile though he loves his job and has patient confidentiality so... no)

Roman and Logan both love Percy Jackson but in different ways. Logan read all the books. Roman read the comic book adaptions and listened to the Lightning Thief Musical.

Virgil and Patton like to hunt for monsters together in the apartment complex and park but everytime it happens they both get a little scared and run if something actually looks spooky.

When all the kids became friends they had Patton teach them ASL secretly for a couple of months to surprise Dee. They showed Dee and he c r i e d. Happy tears of course but he was so surprised that all of them learned that for him.

Virgil, Dee, Remus, and Roman all have the same Recess break on the little kids playground so they play pretend together a lot. Usually it's Roman and Virgil vs Remus and Dee, but sometimes they switch it up.

Patton, Thomas, and Logan are the Big Kids, but also are kinda the weird kids too so they don't have much friends outside of the group. But it's okay, because they got each other and they like to hang out.

Patton has punched some kids cause they made fun of either his friends or Dee or maybe his Dad. He will throw hands. Logan might hold him back. Thomas will hold him back but only after a punch or two.

Remy once joked about having one brain cell in front of the kids and all the kids who weren't his got very alarmed and started to make him realize he was smart but Roman and Remus went: yeah you do. He's never been so heavily burned before or since.

Roman and Remus don't do the weird twins finishing each other's sentences thing but Logan and Virgil do.

Patton still makes puns but not good ones because kid's humor is nonsensical so half of the time he'll go up to Logan and Thomas and try them on them and every time they're both like "???? what did you just say????????"

They will all go and do fashion shows where Roman and Remus will take the others and drape them in sheets and cutains and blankets and have everyone walk the fake runway while someone sits out and judges.

Remus, Dee, and Virgil try to do magic together. It doesn't always go well but they try.

Roman, Patton, and Logan will try to play demigod but Patton has no clue what he's doing.

Roman and Remus showed Thomas some Disney sing alongs he could play on his tablet. Anton thinks their son has a lovely singing voice but also. they doesn't like hearing him sing at 6 am when they're barely awake. Can someone hold a grudge against a kindergartner? Ask Anton.

[letterboxd]

Life in Film: Kris Rey.

As her new comedy I Used to Go Here opens, Chicago-based writer and director Kris Rey talks to Letterboxd editor-in-chief Gemma Gracewood about turning 40, divorce, female friendships, why nobody but Jemaine Clement could pull off a scene making tea, and what we can all learn from Generation Z.

If Kris Rey’s new comedy I Used to Go Here were a typical Hollywood rom-com, it would finish just before Rey’s film starts: with Kate Conklin (Gillian Jacobs) as a newly published author, engaged to be married to a handsome guy. Instead, we meet Kate in a Bushwick apartment she can no longer afford, as her publishing company breaks the news that her debut novel (Seasons Passed; terrible cover art, purple prose) is a failure and the publicity tour is off. That’s on top of the insult that her fiancé has recently ended their engagement.

Kate is given a faint ray of optimism when her creative writing professor (Jemaine Clement) invites her back to the liberal arts college she graduated from a decade earlier, to give a talk to his Gen Z students. Leaving Brooklyn and her pregnant bestie behind, Kate dives into the nostalgia of her old Illinois stomping ground, and I Used to Go Here turns into a low-key, pot-fuelled, intergenerational romp through ideas of success, friendship, creativity, authenticity and idolization.

The film’s fans on Letterboxd include Matt Neglia, who writes: “Gillian Jacobs brings charismatic charm and restraint to her role as a writer longing for a time when we were filled with endless potential without the fear of failure.” Matt DeTurck identifies with this theme: “Relatable for anyone wrestling with fitting the pieces of their life together in ways that feel truthful.”

On the contemporary representation of university life, Alex Billington remarks that “it’s got all the college movie tropes… but it repackages all of these in a smart adult-looking-back indie film package”. Max notes that “the college kids are an invaluable addition and feel like people rather than college or Gen Z stereotypes”.

Kate (Gillian Jacobs) and David (Jemaine Clement) in a scene from ‘I Used to Go Here’.

Your film starts just after the point at which a mainstream comedy about a single white woman in her thirties would end: with Kate’s book being published to no acclaim, her engagement being broken off, everybody else pregnant except her. It runs in opposition to the happy endings Hollywood has made us expect. Kris Rey: Oh god, [that’s] so astute. No-one has said that before and I have never thought of it before, but that’s so true! I think what’s so interesting about the whole journey that she goes on, and all of our own personal journeys, is that you’re used to, like, at the end of the movie, they get married! She gets her book published! And then everything is perfect! And then you realize: ‘Oh. Oh god, okay. How do I move on from this?’ So, you’re right, that is what’s so different about this.

The other thing—and I’m sure this can be said about most films this year—is how the set-up feels weirdly right for these times, which is to say: the widespread derailment of plans that the pandemic has wrought. It’s like we’re in a strange global coming-of-age. Several Letterboxd reviews observe how, for women in their late twenties to early thirties, there’s a second coming-of-age where everything suddenly feels extremely nostalgic. The film dives into that longing feeling by literally returning Kate to her old college. It’s funny, you know, a lot of people have pointed out how this doesn’t quite fit into a category. It’s not a rom-com, it’s not a true coming-of-age film in a sense of what we know that to be. I think that part of it is exactly what you’ve just pointed out, which is that it’s about a unique period of time for women, where you do reach this precipice. Mostly, it comes out of this big ever-pressing question which is “Am I going to have a family or not?”. Not every woman, but most women, have that question in their head until they either have a baby or they reach the age where they can’t have a baby anymore. “Am I going to have this? Am I going to follow this path of domesticity? Am I going to find a relationship that works long enough to have a family with them? Am I going to have to make sacrifices in my career to make room to have a family? Am I going to find them all at once?” Men just don’t have that point, to no fault of their own, but the fault of the patriarchy in general, which is that it has to be a conscious decision for women in a way that everything revolves around that, as we go about our lives at that age.

And you’ve explored that idea in more than just this film. I loved the awkward-yet-sincere moment at the baby shower, when the friends make her hold her book alongside their third-trimester bumps for a group photo. A book is a baby, and its publication should also be celebrated! Scenes like that emphasize how well Gillian Jacobs embraced the role of Kate. What did she bring to it that wasn’t on the page? There’s such a special thing that happens when you cast anyone for anything. It certainly happened with Gillian, but also with everyone. Definitely Jemaine was a big one, which is that I don’t typically write for specific actors. I write a character, I write the dialog, and then when I cast them I think ‘oh, Jemaine Clement is going to be in this role’, so then I go back through and read the whole thing in his voice and think ‘maybe he’d say it like this instead’ and maybe after [a scene we don’t wish to spoil], he would make tea for everyone. Very few, if any, American actors would be able to pull that moment off. That is kind of what I’m looking for: who are they? Are they able to feel like real people? Because so often they feel performative.

Like versions of a person. Right. Like they’re acting like a person! Gillian is very authentic. If you were to talk to her, she would just seem like her real self, and that was what was so appealing about her for me. Gillian just really brought herself, and I learned about her as a person.

As well as great comics like Kate Micucci and Jorma Taccone, there’s a lovely assortment of inclusive young characters who live in Kate’s old student house. Where did you find them? I just flushed them out and gathered them and held them close! There’s a couple of them that I didn’t know but I had seen in other stuff. Josh Wiggins, who plays Hugo, I’d seen him act in a movie called Hellion. Forrest Goodluck I saw in The Miseducation of Cameron Post. He’s incredible in that and I knew I wanted him to play Animal. Hannah Marks was someone that was sent to me, and we talked on the phone and I just knew she would be perfect. She’s such a brilliant go-getter and filmmaker and so ambitious in her own life. Khloe Janel, who plays Emma, auditioned for me here in Chicago and she’s so good. I adore her. I was taking a walk yesterday through the neighborhood and I saw her name on a little sign—she was making these poetry zines! I bought one.

Hugo (Josh Wiggins), Animal (Forrest Goodluck) and Tall Brandon (Brandon Daley) in ‘I Used to Go Here’.

The person we need to know about is whoever the guy is who plays Tall Brandon! Brandon Daley, who plays tall Brandon, is a person that I just knew. He is on the periphery of my social circle and he had come to a few parties at my house. His buddies called him ‘Tall Brandon’, in this very demeaning way! They were of course all good friends. I thought he was such a funny character that I wrote the character based on him. But I didn’t know him. Then he heard that I had written a part called Tall Brandon and he asked if he could play the part. I was like, “I don’t think so, Brandon!”

Was he an actor? Kind of. He’s a filmmaker but he’s much younger than me and he hadn’t done anything besides his own work. But I made him audition for the role based on him! [Laughs] I don’t know, I was just like, it’s a huge role, you know? The last thing you want is someone who can’t act like themselves, which everyone struggles to do. Anyway, he was so good in the audition, so funny, and he just nailed it. He steals the whole movie! He’s just so good.

I Used to Go Here is a long way from problematic college fare like Revenge of the Nerds or the angst of St Elmo’s Fire. It feels thoroughly 21st-century, especially in how the Gen Z housemates take an inclusive, ‘sure, why not’ approach to having Kate tag along with them. What inspired the way you wrote the intergenerational aspects of the film? There weren’t necessarily college films that I was using for inspiration. I wanted the place to feel the same that she left, but I wanted the people to feel different. This is what I’m finding in my life. I’m gonna turn 40 this year, and when I interact with people in their twenties, I’m blown away by the way that they view the world and the way that they view themselves and each other. I’m so impressed by it. And I am on board with a lot of these cultural changes that we’re seeing happen before our eyes, like, the idea of gender identity has changed so much, and so quickly. I’ve never seen anything change like that in my life. The idea of consent. When I first heard it I was like, “What? You have to ask if you wanna touch someone or kiss someone? It seems so lame!” Now, I can’t believe that we ever did that! I’m learning so much. They seem so clear-headed about it all. I just think that we have a lot to learn from that generation.

The movie’s not about that, necessarily, but it’s infused into it and I wanted that to influence Kate, in her life. Some of it is specific to this generation, but some of it is also just specific to being in your twenties. The character April, the way that she thinks about the [publishing] industry and her art, and the way that Kate, who is jaded, is like, “Okay, whatever, you’re naïve, make your little magazine, but you’ll have to follow the rules.” We’ve all been faced with that before.

Kris Rey with her son Jude Swanberg on the set of ‘I Used to Go Here’. / Photo by Blair Todd

So it’s a watershed year for you, turning 40. What would you define success and happiness as now, compared to when you were in your twenties and the ideas you had about the industry then? Oh, god. Okay so I’ve also had a lot of personal growth because I got divorced this last year, which was crazy. I’ve got two kids, a four year old and a nine year old. So I’ve been through so much; it’s been such a huge change for me. I have learned a lot, but one of the things that I have learned so much is that the relationships that matter the most in my life are my female friendships. I’ve always known that, but I’ve never seen it so much as I have in the last two years, both personally throughout my divorce, and professionally through making a film without a romantic partner to lean on. Of course I have male friends that are wonderful and supportive, but my female friends, those relationships are where I’m realizing I wanna put my effort into more than any other part of my life.

Okay, it’s time for a few questions about movies that are important to you. Thinking back, what is the film that made you want to be a filmmaker? Boogie Nights was the first film that I watched when I was in high school that I thought ‘oh, this is a job, and I’m seeing someone make stylistic choices that are interesting and unique’. You can see the behind the scenes in that movie a little bit. I remember watching it and thinking ‘that would be a cool job’. I also really loved the movie Bottle Rocket in high school. I began my filmmaking career thinking that I wanted to make documentaries, and so there’s also a lot of docs that I loved. But those were the early films that made me realize that it was even a job. Unfortunately not any female filmmakers, because I think that was just so rare [then].

What is your all-time comfort favorite film? Sleepless in Seattle, no question.

There’s your female filmmaker! Yes, but with a movie like Sleepless in Seattle, it’s such a mainstream movie that I never thought of it as ‘a job’. It wasn’t until I was in high school that I saw more independent and auteurish works. But Nora Ephron is a genius. That movie is perfect in my opinion.

What’s a film that, as a teenager, felt like a mirror into your soul? That movie with Chris O’Donnell, an Irish film, Circle of Friends. With Minnie Driver! Who is also in Good Will Hunting, another film I saw in high school. I haven’t seen Circle of Friends since it came out, but it felt very real to me, that movie. I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned that movie to anyone!

Gwyneth Paltrow and Joseph Fiennes in ‘Shakespeare in Love’ (1998).

What is the sexiest film you’ve ever seen? Shakespeare in Love! [Laughs.] There’s two movies. One was Legends of the Fall. It was literally the sexiest movie I’d ever seen up till that point. I was very young when it came out and there was this lovemaking scene by candlelight and I was like, ‘oh, that’s what sex is!’. And then Shakespeare in Love. That scene where he’s unwrapping her? So hot.

Who is another director you’d die for? I’m such a huge fan of Nicole Holofcener. I love her films so much. I have never met her. I do know some people that know her and I am honestly so scared to meet her because I like her work so much. She’s probably my favorite filmmaker. I just vibe with everything she makes. I love the tone. I just love all of her movies.

What’s a film that we should watch after we watch yours? You should watch She Dies Tomorrow. It’s so good, and Amy Seimetz is my very, very close and dear friend. We started making movies at the same time. Our movies were supposed to premiere at SXSW on the same day, and now they are being released on the same day, and we’re just in love with each other. Amy and I are— the movies are so wildly different from each other, but her movie is so good. It is really funny, it’s really weird and it’s really appropriate for the times right now.

I feel like some reviews are missing the comedy in it. I laughed so much throughout that film. I agree: people don’t get it! Can I shout out another movie that I watched recently? Crossing Delancey. I had never seen it before and my sister-in-law texted me and she was like, “you should watch this film like right now—this seems like something you would love”. I couldn’t believe how good it was. It’s so great. It feels like it could be shot right now in Brooklyn. All the cool kids in Brooklyn are dressing exactly the same way that all the cool kids in Brooklyn dressed in 1988, or whenever it came out. She’s having a dialog with a friend and the friend is like openly breastfeeding. And the way that they’re talking about romance and all this stuff is so on point. That movie’s great.

And another female director! Joan Micklin Silver. Yeah!

Related content

Dana Danger’s chronological list of films directed by women

Appropriate Behavior: the Letterboxd Showdown of indie, slacker and mumblecore films

Quarter Life Crisis: a list by Mary, and another by Michelle

Follow Gemma on Letterboxd

‘I Used to Go Here’ is now in select theaters and on demand. All press images are courtesy of Gravitas Ventures.

[why-this-kolaveri-machi]

titans 2.01

so i just finished watching the episode in its entirety, and i have this to say right off the bat: our cheesy, scrappy, comic-booky, melodramatic-yet-weirdly-wholesome underdog superhero show is BACK, baby! honestly, this episode was a lot more... clunky than most of last season, but i think it worked well both as payoff to the themes and arcs set up in s1 as well as a set-up for s2. 

(SPOILERS follow)

1. first things first: trigon is a terrible villain on his own merits, sure. one can scarcely believe that this is what eleven episodes of slow-burn, classic horror build-up was meant to lead to. his dialogue was cringey, his mythos made no sense, and he was defeated with little fanfare. 

but you know what? trigon was never the point. just like the nuclear family, or even the phantom batman that haunted dick’s flashbacks, trigon was shorthand for toxic familial relationships, empty authoritarianism, being consumed by your worst self and calling it ‘freedom’. the battle was over the moment rachel rejected trigon’s gaslighting--the moment she realised she could be herself and still be happy and loved. it happened the moment rachel used her powers to give someone else the chance to realise that for themselves. 

once that power has been taken away, what is trigon? nothing. and so he was dismissed by the merest shift in will on rachel’s part. he wasn’t given the slightest iota of sympathy--he was a malignant parasite that fed off the worst parts of others, and he was dismissed as such.

2. there were some honestly breathtaking moments that i believe were beautiful on paper but faltered in their execution. there was so much going on that would’ve looked so much more dynamic and consequential on, say, a comic-book page, with fancy text-boxes to give an insight into the characters’ mind, and a big, wonderful splash-page of the different heroes going ~dark eschewing the need to really build-up to it. on screen, however, there was a lot of standing around stiffly while trigon monologued evilly, and the black eye makeup and the washed-out lighting did them no favours. and remember the moment when dick caught rachel on the trapeze? it’s such a beautiful, loaded moment that i can see working wonderfully on a comic-book page, but comes off stilted on the screen. 

but that’s part of the charm of the show to me, tbh. it’s literally a comic book come to life, with all of its attendant delights and frustrations.

3. i don’t understand why everybody is talking about the titans like they knew about the old team all along when the word ‘titans’ wasn’t mentioned once in s1.

4. dick smiled so much in the latter half of the episode, you guys! it really felt like he’d let a gigantic weight roll right off his shoulders, and his meeting with bruce wayne was everything i’d hoped for--an adult child (i realise that’s an oxymoron, but you know what i mean) returning to reconcile with his father, aware enough to realise the real damage that bruce had done to him, but mature enough to understand where bruce’s trauma ends and his own begins, and to let go of resentment--if not forgive him--and meet him as an equal. bruce isn’t a phantom anymore. he’s a man like any other--a father like any other. dick’s experiences with own fledgling family--his failure with them--has given him this precious, hard-earned perspective.

5. like i always say, don’t let the grimdark window dressing and all the cussing fool you guys--this corny, awkward show can be both ridiculously insightful in the way it seeks to reject one-sided, toxic relationships, and replace them with hard-won, healthy ones. it’s been over a season, and only now the titans are earning the right to call themselves that--because before becoming a team, they had to become a family.

6. all said and done, tho, as an episode of television, trigon is haphazard and stilted, the writing is patchy and the dialogue ranges from anodyne to cringey, and as a result, the acting and the choreography also suffer. i know the show is better than this; here’s hoping this faltering start is because of the production team’s decision to repurpose last season's finale as this one's premiere, and that the season will really come into its own from the next episode. 

[mvssmallow]

Memento Vivere

Part XI

Masterlist

In his Real Life, the one where he lives alone in a high rise apartment that record company money paid for, he’d either wake up alone or with people he has no intention of seeing again, much less make small talk with in the morning. If it’s high profile enough, his manager can threaten them with signing NDAs on their way out. It’s not his problem beyond the doorway.

When he’s hungry, he eats. When he wants to play video games, he does. When he wants to go out, hit a bar, hit a club, he throws on his leather jacket and grabs his credit card. His manager and team are permanently hovering but they know that they go where he goes. It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission and he knows he’s everyone’s meal ticket so what’s the worst that could happen? Nobody asks questions, he doesn’t offer answers.

But that’s not how all the Jiwons live.

Some Jiwons can’t do anything with getting clearance from an entire army of people, including one who can’t even talk yet.

And that’s how he finds himself now, crouched on the floor helping Minji with the velcro tabs on her Mickey Mouse sneakers and trying to figure out why Hanbin’s packing two backpacks for them when they’re just taking the kids to the Zoo.

Snacks. Water. Sunscreen. Money. A spare change of clothes for both kids. All of Jae’s baby supplies and a camera.

Okay, that’s standard.

But then there’s a whole other black backpack with headache tablets, allergy tablets, a small first aid kit, alternate snacks in case the other options get rejected and spare adult t-shirt and hoodie.

Anyone would think that they were going to Antarctica and not a couple minutes into town.

One of Minji’s Snoopy plushies is poking out of ‘his’ backpack and he doesn’t even remember it being there two seconds ago.

“Er, Hanbin?”

“Hmm?”

“Why do we have to take Snoopy to the Zoo?”

Hanbin looks up from where he’s adjusting Jae’s stroller. “Because I don’t feel like dealing with another tantrum today.”

“Will she even play with it-”

“Don’t you remember what happened last time?”

No he doesn’t. He wasn’t even here last time.

But Hanbin continues on, not even pausing for an answer because, he realises with crushing guilt, the Hanbin here doesn’t expect him to remember anything important.

“She got tired and scared from the snake display and cried for like 15 minutes until we got her a new plushy.” Hanbin recounts without stopping his stroller adjustments. “We’re not getting her a new plushy every time she freaks out. She can have Snoopy.”

“Oh.”

Hanbin straightens up and rolls his eyes. “Yeah. Oh. You think she’s not going to try it again? I’ve got this kid figured out.”

“You make her sound like she’s an evil mastermind.”

“And this is why she plays you so easily.”

He feels like laughing at the melodramatics but Hanbin’s furrowed brows, pursed lips and accusatory tone has him thinking otherwise.

“Sorry.”

“Huh?” There’s a surprised lilt and comically big eyes staring at him.

Even when they were kids meeting for the first time, he always thought Hanbin’s eyes got too big whenever he was surprised by something. Not quite doe eyes. Not quite Bambi. But pretty close. It’s memories like that that really punches him in the gut when he least expects it.

“Um, sorry? I guess. I should probably be more tough with her?” His voice is wobbly and unsure, it sounds nothing like how a Dad should sound. Hanbin’s going to figure all his lies out in 3, 2, 1.....

“Yeah....okay.”

It comes out quietly, calmly, appreciatively and relieved. He really doesn’t want to think about how the Jiwon here treats this Hanbin at all. Not when he himself, a total selfish idiot on his best day, is doing the bare minimum and somehow hasn’t fucked everything up. How much worse is the Real Dad Jiwon?

There’s a dark raincloud following him around everywhere here and he’s had enough of it. Just for one second, he wishes Hanbin would be happy. Not Pretend-Happy-for the sake of Everyone else but Real-Happy-Just-For-Himself.

“Isn’t it a bit hypocritical that we’ve got so many plushies for Jae though?” He jokes to lighten the mood.

Please work. Please work. Don’t get pissed.

Hanbin’s face visibly softens and he shrugs, maybe smiling a little. “He’s the baby. He can have whatever he wants.”

Right on cue, Jae babbles out at the mention of his name and the word ‘baby’.

“See? He agrees with me.”

“Of course he would. You let him have everything.”

“As if you don’t.”

“Well, he is the baby.”

“You do this every time.” Hanbin says with an amused shake of his head.

“Do what?”

“Act like you’re surprised about how much baby stuff we need.”

“He’s so small! Why does he even need that much stuff?”

“I don’t know Jiwon, he’s your kid, why don’t you ask him why he needs his bear and duck toys everywhere he goes?”

“Maybe he just wants to be prepared.”

“Because you never know when a bear situation will arise.” Hanbin replies in a mock serious tone.

And then the weirdest thing happens; they both laugh.

It’s nice.

But then-

“HURRY UP DADDY!”

Yeah, okay. Then there’s that.

****

The day turns out nice.

Weirdly, exhaustingly, overwhelmingly nice.

It’s somewhere between the Polar bear enclosure and Tiger cave that he forgets he’s pretending to be a dad and somehow feels like he is one.

“Daddy? Up?” Minji asks, sweet as can be all the sudden, tugging on his sleeve before holding both arms up at him.

As soon as he bends down, she’s already climbing onto his shoulders with practiced ease and a terrifying amount of trust that he really doesn’t deserve from any of them. He grips her ankles tightly as she yells out tiger commentary at the top of her lungs. There’s a young couple next to them smiling and a slightly older one laughing at the, “Look Daddy! The tiger knows how to swim!”

It takes him a few seconds to recognise the warmth in his chest. He hasn’t felt it in a long time.

Pride.

They think Minji is his daughter. But she’s not. Hanbin should get credit for this.

When he looks over, Hanbin is already looking back at him with an easy smile that he wouldn’t mind seeing more often.

Yeah, that’s really really nice.

And maybe because things are going too well, his dark raincloud decides to swoop in again. The building migraine suddenly throbbing behind his eyes and no matter how hard he tries to ignore it, the grimace hits his face at the worst time.

“Hey, you okay?” Hanbin asks him, reaching up to lower Minji to the ground despite her protests. “The tiger’s gone over there now Min, go look.”

It distracts her long enough for Hanbin to peer worriedly at his face.

“I’m...okay.” He waves the concern off, hoping the movement to comes across as casual. “Just a migraine.”

“Okay.” Hanbin echoes, not sounding convinced at all. “It’s probably time for lunch anyway. Let’s go find a place to sit down.”

They end up on a shady patch of grass near the duck pond and as soon as he sits down, Hanbin is holding out a bottle of water and two Advils. He takes them wordlessly, still marvelling at how one person can change so much in one lifetime.

There’s a gentle breeze through his hair as he sits on the picnic rug and when he closes his eyes, just for a second, he can hear Hanbin talking to both his kids in that patiently gentle way that still floors him.

“Oh no, I left Jae’s dinosaur snacks in the car.”

He’s already standing up. “I’ll go get them.”

“No, I’ll go. You’ve got a migraine. Just stay here and watch the kids.”

He shakes his head, the migraine is still there but he could do with a walk right now. “It’s better you watch them. I’ll go, it’s easier.”

And God, he really wishes he hadn’t said that.

Because next to their Honda, was that Angel-Satan guy leaning against a familiar black Jaguar. His stomach drops so fast that he completely forgets about his migraine altogether.

“YOU!” He hisses. “What are you doing here?”

“Welfare check.” The guy says casually, shrugging and adjusting the dark black sunglasses on his nose. “So, how’s things Jiwon?”

Something about the casual sunny disposition irritates him and he can barely hold it in.

“Listen, I know you know something about what’s going on here, so can you just-“

Angel (it’s what he’s started calling this weirdo in his head), just rolls his eyes but stays exactly where he is.

“You like it here?”

“What?”

“Do you like it here? This family little set up you’ve got?”

“Yeah, it’s....alright,” He starts, caught off guard by the question and unsure how to answer something like that now. “What’s that got to do with anything? Just tell me what the hell is going on?!”

“Just alright?”Angel echoes, tone disappointed and condescending. “Typical.”

“What?”

“Are you always this dense? Seriously?” Angel sneers now, crossing his arms in a way that’s threatening despite his smaller stature. “Actually, don’t answer that. I already know you are. It’s the whole reason you’re here to begin with.”

“I’m not dense! I get it! I know this isn’t right!” He snaps, running a tired hand through his hair. “This isn’t even my life. I’m not crazy. I’m a rapper, I live in Seoul, I have-“

“An album coming out, a girl and two guys you owe dates to, a manager who doesn’t really care about you as long as you’re on the charts and a family you rarely talk to. Empty chairs at empty tables and all that jazz.” Angel finishes with a wave of his fingers. “Yeah I know all about your other life, moron.”

He stumbles back, shocked by the truth for some reason, and it’s only when his hip hits the fucking Honda that he remembers Jae’s dinosaur snacks.

“I need to-“

“They can wait.”

“No, I need to get back. They’ll wonder where I am.”

Angel shakes his head, pointing to the very eerily still world around them. There’s a few families in the car park but they all frozen in mid motion.

“What did you do?”

“What does it look like?” Angel says. “It’s just suspended reality. So we can have our little chats without people thinking you’re nuts.”

“Is this real? Is this an alternate reality?”

“Something like that.”

He wasn’t expecting a real answer but that one sounds even worse.

“Why am I here?”

“To fix your mess.”

“What mess? Fix what?”

“I can’t tell you that. You can leave here when you figure that out for yourself. That’s how this works.”

“What about my other life? What about-“

“Suspended, for now.” Angel says, pushing off the Jaguar to stand next to him. “That sad little life will still be waiting for you when you’re done here.”

“What about the guy here? Me? Future me. Is it me right? I’m their dad right? Not some other guy?”

Angel smiles at the sudden panic in his voice. “Yeah it’s you. I mean, have you even seen your son lately? He looked like your twin even before he was born.”

He leans heavily against the Honda behind them, overwhelmed again but not in a good way.

“Do they know? That I’m not their real dad that usually lives here?” He asks quietly, as if the kids could even hear him from here. “Is this gonna mess them up too? Jae’s just a baby.”

“Ah. So now you’re asking some questions of relevance.” Angel says with soft pleased expression. “Too bad I can’t answer it.”

He wants to be angry but now he’s tired, the fight is gone and he just really wants answers.

“You can’t tell me anything? Not even who are you are or why you even know all this about me? No tips? Suggestions?” He chuckles bitterly, hoping Angel might spare him some sympathy.

“Do you really call me Angel in your head?”

“What? How do you know that?”

“I can read your mind, dumbass.” Angel says with a wide grin. “Anyway, No. I’m not allowed to tell you much else but you wouldn’t be here right now if you hadn’t messed up in your real world. Don’t make the same mistakes twice, that’s my tip to you. The rest is for you to figure out.”

Mistakes?

Which ones?

He’s made so many.

“Oh and Jiwon? The name isn’t entirely inaccurate even though it’s unoriginal as hell.” Angel adjusts his sunglasses again and then he’s gone, like a weird memory lost in the familiar roar of the Jaguar.

He’s not sure how long he stands there leaning against the Honda and breathing heavily. It takes a few good minutes before he slides back into the noise and activity of the world around him. It takes him three attempts to unlock the car door and find Jae’s dinosaur snacks.

“Feeling better?” Hanbin asks when he gets back.

It’s just a simple question but there’s Minji in her yellow overalls and Jae reaching for the T-Rex biscuits and Hanbin’s soft concern and a space on the red picnic rug that they saved for him.

This is more than just ‘alright’.

“Yeah, I’m good now.”

And it’s then that he realises: his migraine is gone.

[janabetweenbooks]

Twilight

*no spoilers*

It is currently 3 am and and I have just finished the last ten chapters of Twilight by Stepehnie Meyer. This time I actually took notes when reading it and as I read it as an ebook I even highlighted certain passages that I thought were important or interesting to make up my mind.

First things first: I went into this with very low expectations and an almost comical hate for the movies/books. That is due to the fact that I have this weird thing that I generally hate everything that is enjoyed by the broad masses. Not because I’m tring to be ~edgy~ or a hipster or anything, but because it has proven true that I do dislike these things and don’t want to waste my time with them.

A little backstory here: When the Twilight movies happened I was changing from elementary school to middle school and that was generally a very weird time for me. Every girl loved Twilight and seemed obsessed with it, especially with good looking Robert Pattinson. Apart from the fact that I didn’t understand what was supposed to be handsome about him (spoiler: you’re fucking gay), I was plainly annoyed by the fact that no one around me seemed to talk about anything else. That was, I think, the first time I developed this hate for popular things around me. I did watch the movies, I will admit. But only to prove that they’re awful and god knows they are, I still stand by that.

Which brings us to the next thing: the books. Why did I read them when I hate the movies? Good question actually. I follow a lot of bookstagrammers and several are obsessed with Twilight, during these weird times (COVID-19 related) many rewatched the movies and posted about them in their story. I thought to myself ‘hey, you haven’t watched the movies in forever and you don’t even remember 5% of what happened, just rewatch them and see if they’re still bad, god knows you have the time’. So I decided to watch Twilight. For a reason I’m not going to display here right now I was stopped about ten minutes in and a day later I decided that the movie was just too bad and hey, I had just gotten a new tablet and wanted to read more ebooks, would you look at that it’s only 5 bucks in the kindle store! Before I could really take in what had happened I had purchased the book and was through the first three chapters.

And weirdly enough, I enjoyed it. I was flabbergasted because I went into it with so many prejudices but the writing was actually good. The first thing I realized was that it reminded me a lot of my own writing. I mean, it’s always weird when you compare your own writing to the one of a published author, but I realized that there were so many parallels between her and my own writing, it frankly unsettled me.

Now, I did take notes as I read and here’s my thoughts. The first thing was that I thought the writing was awkward. But you just said it was like your own! Exactly! That is the point! I was caught off-guard by that at first I confused it for being awkward. Frankly, some parts are still awkward and not very well thought out but I’ll give her that because I’m the same. Sometimes I can’t be bothered to further elaborate on some things and then that’s that. Should the editor have seen that and changed it? Probably. But it’s fine the way it is.

Then I found that the actions of some people—especially those of Edward—confused me. Some of the writing was so over the place that in the early stages of reading about Bella and Edward interacting I was more than confused as to what was happening. I suppose that was the intended effect, nonetheless it threw me off and made it a little hard for me to keep up with what was happening.

Soon I realized something, that at the beginning did terrify me a little. Like I had said, I went into the book with lots of prejudices. I was surprised at how genuinely I liked Edward. Book Edward mind you, movie Edward is so awkward that I want to cringe myself out of my skin the whole time. There were times where some of his reactions and especially his words reminded me of Jace Herondale. The sarcasm and the smugness were ever so reminiscent of him. I think that is one very big reason for liking him so much. I watched the movie while I was almost halfway through the book and I could clearly compare book Edward to movie Edward and decided that I very much preferred book Edward.

Then there was a thing that I first couldn’t really categorize on whether I liked it or not but I soon realized that it was actually rather clever. I’m not a fan of info dumps and I try to avoid them as much as possible when writing. I think Stephenie concealed such ‘info dumps’ rather clever. Bella obviously didn’t know anything about the vampire world and it would only be natural for her to pierce Edward and his family with questions. It was a natural reaction to what happened to her and it was a clever way to give us all the information that we needed in a rather short amount of time. I guess it helped that we saw it from Bella’s persepective as well, otherwise it wouldn’t have worked out that well because Edward already knew all these things, obviously.

I was put off by one thing though, I’m still not sure if it was a justified reaction or not. I was a bit confused by Bella’s absolute lack of being scared or repulsed by what she was finding out. She sort of just accepted everything as she went. I know it was thematized in the book that she thought she should be afraid of all that was happening to her and that unnaturally she wasn’t. But I’m just asking myself why. We never got an explanation. As well as the whole thing about Edward watching her when she sleeps. She didn’t even seem much unnerved by it. No normal person would be okay with someone just watching them without their knowledge in their most vulnerable state.

Lastly, I was put off by Bella’s obsession with Edward. They knew each other for half a year and she already told him, and I quote the book directly now, “You are my life”, and she means it. I think that’s a little bit thick for such a relatively small amount of time and for the fact that she’s 17. I think this is the same problem that is always being critcized in fanfiction: that things move too fast, so why is it accepted in this form? Another example: She told Edward that she loved him on the same day they kissed for the first time.

All in all I have to admit it was a very interesting book and I’m definitely going to finish the series, I have already bought the second book and will start reading later today (remember it’s 3am here, well 3:30 by now whoops), after I have watched the movie so I can have something to compare to. I think I would give the book 4/5 stars, which is more than I could have ever imagined giving Twilight. I guess opinions can change and that’s a good thing.

Have a nice day, stay safe and stay hydrated x