#I needed to take a break in 2022 and only came back when last season started

[joeys-babe]

Joey B Imagines: Ruin My Life

————————————————————————-

summary: Joe falls for someone he probably shouldn’t fall for.

warnings: none

pairing: joe burrow x reader

————————————————————————-

(joe’s pov)

she was beautiful.

y/n Brown, the granddaughter of Mike Brown.

I watched her from afar, knowing I could never act on the crush I’d gained on her over the years just because her grandpa owned the team.

it started my rookie year. I noticed this extremely attractive girl, who looked to be around the same age as me, sitting in a golf cart next to Mike one day at practice. she was sitting on her phone and not even paying attention to the practice. I was too nervous to approach her after being told she was the owner's granddaughter so I stayed watching her from three fields over, taking longing glances during water breaks, looking over at her after I made a good play just to see if she had seen it too.

it was stupid of me to think she’d ever talk to me, the only time she did was after my knee injury. still yet, her just asking “Hey, you doing better?” or “how’s your knee today?” in the hallway of the facility only made my crush worse.

all the guys noticed. Ja’marr and Sam teased me about it, finding the fact that I’d still had the crush a year later.

when we won the AFC Championship in 2022, we were celebrating in the locker room when y/n came striding up to me wearing a grin on her face and a championship hat matching mine.

“hey, champ! you did great out there, and I’m proud of how far you’ve come this season. I know last year was hard for you but you’ve come back better than ever. I look up to you, Joe.” - you smiled

“thank you, y/n. it means a lot to hear you say that.” - Joe

she moved to hug me but I stopped her.

“I’m like really sweaty, I probably stink.” - Joe

“I don’t care!” - you hugged him

when she pulled away from me, her arms were still around my waist as mine were around hers.

“Do you really hug all your grandpa's players like this?” - Joe

“not really. just my favorites.” - you grinned

“I’m a favorite?” - Joe laughed

“you are my favorite.” - you

“why’s that?” - joe

“mm, you’re the sweetest player, most genuine, cocky in only good ways, you’ve got the most heartwarming smile, and not to mention the fact you’re extremely cute.” - you

“you know we can’t do this y/n…” - joe

“why not? I’ve seen the way you’ve looked at me since you were drafted here. I like you too, and I really want to get to know you better. I want to see you outside of these walls, I can’t settle for you just being my hallway crush.” - you

“I don’t want to just be your hallway crush either, and I don’t want you to just be mine.. but you’re grandpa..” - Joe

“who cares what he thinks! he raves about you and how you’re the center of this team, if he changes that just because of me then that’s poor judgment on his part. I trust the fact he wants this team to succeed, and they need you to do that.” - you

“you have a way with words..” - Joe

“there’s more where that came from. maybe if we get to know each other better, you can find that out for yourself.” - you smiled

“I plan on it, y/n.” - Joe

y/n looked around to examine the room, the rest of the locker room was celebrating farther away from my corner of and they weren’t paying attention to us. She turned back to me and got on her tiptoes to kiss my cheek.

“congrats on the win, Joey.” - you

“thank you.” - Joe

I was gonna reciprocate the kiss on the cheek before a familiar voice called y/n’s name.

“y/n!” - Mike

“shit, that’s my grandpa. he’s probably looking for me so I gotta go. before I do though, here’s my number. text me okay?” - you

“i will.” - joe

you guys didn’t know, but mike had watched the whole intereaction. he wasn’t mad at all, he was more upset that you both felt the need to hide the fact that you guys liked each other from him. Mike thought Joe was a good person and an even better leader. he had the perfect traits to be a good boyfriend, and he trusted you to do what made your heart happy.

you had found your grandpa just outside the locker room on the golf cart to take you back to your car.

“you okay, pumpkin? you seem flustered.” - Mike

“I’m good, better than I have been in a while actually.” - you

“I’m glad. it’s because of Burrow right?” - Mike

you opened your mouth ready to defend yourself as your eyes went wide, but before you could squeak an excuse out your grandpa stopped you.

“I’m not mad, y/n. Joe’s a good kid, and if he makes you happy then I’m happy. you know what I always tell you...” - Mike

“follow your heart.” - you

————————————————————————-

authors note: this is part 1 to a little tumblr mini series im gonna do!! 😁😁

hope you enjoyed! ❤️

#joe burrow #bengals #joe burrow imagine #joe burrow x reader #joey b #cincinnati bengals #joe burrow fan fic #joe burrow series

[sargeantposting]

Little did he know that Formula One teams had an eye on him. Sargeant did two simulation evaluation days for Mercedes during his time in F3. He impressed James Vowles, who spent over a decade with Mercedes before taking the helm at Williams this year. “I was interested in looking at him because he had performance,” Vowles said, “especially when you go back to his Formula 3 performance in an average team.”

[...] At the time, Mercedes had a stacked driver group, and it moved on. Another team stepped in: Williams.

The call from management came in October 2021, a moment even Jacobs recalls vividly. He remembers looking up towards the sky and “sort of prayed saying, ‘Please, please let this happen.’” Williams — one of the oldest teams on the F1 grid — wanted to fund Sargeant’s F2 career because, according to Vowles (who was not part of the decision then or to bump him up to F1), the team “had deep belief that he was the real deal.”

In Sargeant, Williams’ sporting director Sven Smeets saw a young driver with “enormous potential” despite his taking a step backward. Smeets described the young driver as grateful yet quiet, at least at first, as he observed everything around him. He started going to the factory in the U.K. frequently as an academy driver during his F2 season last year. On the track, his performance continued to improve. As Sargeant started inching higher in the standings, breaking into the top three, Smeets said Williams began weighing whether he needed a second season in F2.

His one-lap qualifying speed in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia caught their eye. An F2 win in Silverstone also stood out. There was only one race they truly felt he made a mistake, in Holland. The others, Smeets said, were “a bad start from the line or the pitstop didn’t go that well.” They began telling Carlin Racing that if he’s still in the top three or four, what more is there for him to learn with another season in F2?

Former Williams team principal Jost Capito announced the decision in Austin during the 2022 U.S. Grand Prix weekend: Sargeant would be part of Williams’ 2023 F1 driver lineup.

Sitting inside the Austin paddock that weekend, it was evident that a wall was up as Sargeant did his first serious media rounds. The driver was reserved but thought through his answers, adding caveats like “not yet.”

Grounded but quiet.

Williams did what it could to ease the pressure. It added practice session appearances, and, heading into Abu Dhabi, simulation work and physical and mental work also increased. Making the jump from F2 to F1 is massive. Along with a more complex car and far stronger competitors, the team itself is bigger, and the media and marketing engagements more frequent and demanding.

“You also saw a Logan that is very, very, very emotional and something which you don’t see much from him,” Smeets said of the moment the last F2 race finished and Sargeant had secured enough points on his super license to make his move to F1 official. “So it became the raw emotion which I saw in Silverstone when he won the race.”

Source: "Why Logan Sargeant nearly had to quit racing — and why Williams pulled him back in" by Madeline Coleman, The Athletic Series: F2, 2021 & 2022

#logan sargeant #year:2021 #year:2022 #series:f2

[reavenedges-lies]

Pens Twitter is really toxic right now, just a warning for all. I came across a tweet by a fan account saying that our current 5-game losing streak is unacceptable when everyone else in the East is winning right now and we we are falling behind fast. And that the game we should've only lost was the Isles game. First of all, again any team can beat anyone at a single night as you'd always say. Last I checked a lot of winning streaks have been snapped recently? Like are they aware things can change really fast in the NHL? Plus it's only January, all teams have not played at least 1 team yet, no major trades yet? We haven't even made it to the All Star break where momentum can significantly change with the mega long break. Wordspill inconing.

The way they talk about the Pens, you'd think all Metro teams are on simultaneous 7-game winning streaks (spoiler: they are not). Even I am frustrated but come to think about it: it is easy to be loud about the your own team's struggles when you just look at the out of town scoreboard every time ignoring other factors like games in hand, strength of schedule, team health. Injuries can't be predicted, so can slumps and hot streaks. For proof momentum matters and nothing is sustainable: remember in the shortened 2019-20 season, the Flyers were on a roll with a 9-game W streak, quickly took 1st seed then the league pause happened? When the bubble playoffs happened 4 months later they were not the same team anymore and were eliminated in R2 by an Isles team that lost 7 straight heading to the pause. The Blues and Bruins both had high odds of a SCF rematch as they were leading the league in March, then things went south at the playoff bubble. As much as we rag on the Oilers, they had a massive losing streak in January 2022 that prompted them to fire their coach and five months later they made it to the WCF.

The Pens won't be losing for this long. We'll be playing some West teams and non-divisional opponents next, our low momentum now can quickly go up. Once we get a few players back for a compressed schedule from January onwards, it can change the way we're playing. All the bounces that didn't go our way now will come soon when we need it the most. After the ASG break, there'll be a lot of team and player movements guaranteed that can change the whole makeup of the league standings. I'm open to the Pens trading for someone to hopefully fill our current needs - but again we have to wait for Sully to make either the right adjustments. Nobody, just no team can only do so well or bad for long. No team will get all the bounces all the time, neither will be this unlucky either. The comeback wins now could quickly become blown leads later. Even the players themselves have already said it's an 82-game season with ups and downs, why not listen to the very people who play the game?

I quickly came to realize there are quite a few types of fans in sports:

Bandwagon or Fair-weather

Ones That Know Everything™

Haters

Fans of the game

No real way to distinguish between them consistently, nor do I really care most of the time. The Haters over on twitter will continue to do what they do, Sports Social Media much like any other form of interaction comes with the caveat that so long as you don't interact with or consume the hateful stuff you can mostly stay away from it. Block what you need to or take a break from there if needed.

Nothing anyone says right now other than the people in that room matters. We cannot fix them as fans, no matter how we wish we could at times. Its all about staying positive and riding the waves the sport throws at you. I know we're all varying levels of upset about this winless streak, but I am firmly in the know as a Jacksonville Jaguars(NFL) and Arizona Coyotes(NHL) fan that the wins will come, sometimes even at the most unexpected of times. You can't always be good, but you won't always be bad. Its the life cycle of a sports team

#anon ask #rea answers #pens opinion piece #thanks for rhe ask lovely!

[callmebrycelee]

THE ROOKIE REACTION

Today's reaction is to the season 5, second episode titled "Labor Day" which originally aired on October 2, 2022. The episode was written by Elizabeth Davis Beall and directed by Rob Seidenglanz. Spoilers ahead!

So, let's talk about episode 2 - "Labor Day". At the end of last episode, we saw Lucy and Tim return to her apartment after their undercover operation in Vegas to find Lucy's boyfriend, Chris (Kanoa Goo) almost dead on her sofa due to his wrists being slit by Rosalind Dyer. Now Chris is home from the hospital and convalescing at Lucy's apartment. Lucy has fallen back into the role of doting girlfriend which means Chenford needs to be placed on the backburner for now. Lucy receives a visit from recruiter Misha Porter (Fiona Rene) and is asked to join one of her classes in Sacramento. Lucy has garnered a lot of experience over the last few seasons working undercover and her hard work is not going unnoticed. This decision should be a no-brainer for someone like Lucy who has been wanting to be an undercover agent for quite some time now but after everything that's gone down with Rosalind Dyer and now Chris, she's feeling a bit apprehensive. She's also feeling guilt because she was so close to taking things to the next level with Tim. 

Lucy goes back and forth trying to decide if this is something she wants to undertake. At the end of the episode, Tim comes by her apartment. Apparently Chris, being such a good boyfriend, invited him over so that he could encourage Lucy to sign up for the school. Lucy tells Tim that she feels guilty about what happened to Chris and how she nearly cheated on him. Tim, being the classy fellow as always, takes a step back which confuses Lucy. Tim knows the only way that Lucy will ever pursue a career in undercover work is for him to remove himself from the equation. As just like that our romantic pairing fizzles before they even have a chance to flame. I have a feeling we will eventually get Chenford on this show but hopefully no one has to get hurt for this to happen and whether you like him or not, Chris does seem like a nice guy. 

Meanwhile, Nolan begins his new role as training officer and his first assignment is none other than Thorsen who is without a training officer due to Nyla being on maternity leave. I'll have to admit, I wasn't exactly a fan of Thorsen at first. A part of me resented him being the de facto replacement for Jackson West (Titus Makin Jr.) who was killed from the show at the beginning of season 4. I do like that the writers went out of their way to make Aaron Thorsen a completely different character than his predecessor much like they did with Nyla when she came in to replace Talia Bishop (Afton Williamson). With that said, we have rarely seen these two particular characters - Nolan and Thorsen - work together and on his first day as a training officer, Nolan is called to the scene where a fellow police officer named Garrett Patel has seemingly committed suicide. After talking to the officer's widow and getting some information from the coroner, the two start to suspect foul play. 

Nolan and Thorsen get Tim and Angela involved and the four of them deduce that Garrett's former partners are involved. Now one thing that tipped me off that the dirty cops in this episode were indeed dirty is when the main guy, Walt Lindbeck (Jesse Luken) used the phrase bad hombres which is something that a certain former president of the United States said when describing Mexicans. These three men were terrible. Not only did they break into Garrett's house to steal evidence, their leader turned a gun on Angela. I was so happy that these two got caught and while this wasn't the main story of tonight's episode, it was great seeing Nolan in a role of authority. I really do think he is going to make a great training officer.

We jump over to Nyla's storyline which involves her preparing to give birth in her new home with her fiance James (Arjay Smith). Nyla has decided that she not only wants to give birth at home, she wants to have a water birth. It was fun seeing James run around taking care of things for her, even going as far to confront their new neighbors across the street who love to play their music at an obnoxious volume. Because James is such a genuinely nice guy, Nyla waddles across the street to handle the decision which only makes things worse. Later on that day, while James is helping her do some baby yoga, she hears gunshots coming from the house across the street.

Smitty arrives on the scene and assures Nyla and James that nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary when he investigated. Because this is Smitty, we can't exactly take his word for it. Nyla, like myself, isn't convinced that something isn't up. She does some Rear Window-esque spying on the neighbors and spots two of them bringing what is obviously a body out the front door of the home. She heads over to investigate and when the two men are in the house, she pops the truck and finds the body rolled up in a rug as well as some chemicals to dispose of it. When she hears the guys coming out of the house, she hides behind a bush but forgets to close the trunk. The men immediately suspect that she's spying on them so James comes out of the house in a towel and feigns looking for a nonexistent cat which buys Nyla enough time to get back to their house.

James rightfully chastises her for going off alone and the two of them get back to prepping for the birth of their baby. While upstairs in the pool she plans on giving birth, they hear a noise downstairs and then the power is shut off. Nyla commands James to get her gun and instead of giving it to him, she keeps it for himself leaving him to go downstairs to investigate with nothing to defend himself. He does manage to find a baseball bat because as horror and thriller movies have taught us time and time again, when it comes time to bash some serial killer or monster brains in, a baseball bat will always be there. James is tackled by one of the two men from across the street and easily subdued. The main guy of the two heads upstairs where he finds the bedroom empty. He checks the closet and the bathroom but there is no sign of Nyla. As he turns his back, Nyla raises up out of the kitty pool like she is starring in the sequel of Tyler Perry's Acrimony and the next thing we hear is gunshots. 

Captain Wade arrives on the scene and takes out the guy wrestling with James. The two of them then race upstairs where they find Nyla in bed, looking perfect and inexplicably dry, with her newborn baby in hand. So yes - you read that correctly. In the time it took for Wade to arrive and save James, Nyla subdued the intruder, delivered her baby, perhaps even cut the umbilical cord, and managed to get changed into dryer clothes just in time for James and Wade to arrive. While this may sound super silly, because it is super silly, this part of the episode was super thrilling and I enjoyed how action-packed and ludicrous it was. Nyla has a baby and it appears that the baby is both hers and James. I had initially been speculating that Nyla's baby would come out half-white because she did sleep with her ex at some point last season. I didn't know if the writers would use that to create a new storyline but it seems that all is well for Nyla and James and their sweet baby girl. 

Overall this episode wasn't exactly what I was expecting, especially after last week's dynamite season opener. However, I wasn't exactly disappointed by this episode either. I love that everyone's storylines are advancing. Nolan is taking steps towards doing what he has always wanted to do. Lucy is finally getting an opportunity to do what she's always wanted to do even if it means that she'll have to let go of Tim. Nyla has a baby now and she seems more determined than ever to do for this child what she failed to do for her first kid. It looks like season 5 is going to be a great season for The Rookie which makes me very happy. Until next time ...

#tv reaction #blw reactions #the rookie #abc the rookie #the rookie reaction #nyla harper #john nolan #tim bradford #lucy chen #chenford #the rookie season 5 #angela lopez #wesley evers #aaron thorsen #wade grey

[jordoalejandro]

The Seventh Annual List of TV Shows I Saw the Past Year

I have once again found myself caught off-guard by this list and the Emmys.

I feel like this year it wasn’t really my fault. It was the strikes. The Emmys were postponed and I hadn’t heard or seen any advertising or talk about them so they were out of mind. And then I remembered, as September neared an end, that this was about the time of the year that they usually happened and also about the time of the year I usually post my list. God knows when the Emmys will actually occur, but as I’ve said before on this page, the List waits for no man, woman, or award show. It must go on.

And so, here’s the list of TV shows I’ve watched since-ish the last Emmys (9/12/22).

42. La Brea (Season 2 - 2022-2023, NBC) (Last year’s ranking: 37) - Look, I’ll be honest, it’s hard to really care about this either way. I was looking at my notes and realized I gave every episode of La Brea this season the same mediocre letter grade. I didn’t set out to do that. I think I just felt the same kind of “blah who cares?” way about the show each time. There are shows that had episodes I rated more harshly (coming up shortly!) but those shows also had episodes here or there that I rated highly. This show just doesn’t make me feel strongly one way or another. Is that worse than a show that I hate most of the time and sometimes love? I guess? Maybe not. But I also can’t muster the will to argue this should be higher than those shows, so here it sits.

41. True Lies (Season 1 - 2023, CBS) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - This show comes nowhere close to the quality of the film. It’s cheesy and ham-fisted. The actors feel wrong. It reminded me of some of the early seasons of another CBS show, MacGyver, which also was a real mess in its first few seasons before it realized that it needed to lean into the nonsense a bit more. MacGyver never got good, but it got to a more enjoyable place. Maybe True Lies could’ve gotten there someday if it could’ve continued to figure out what worked and what didn’t but it was cancelled fairly quickly so we’ll never know.

40. The Flash (Season 9 - 2023, CW) (Last year’s ranking: 35) - Disappointed but not surprised that this is where The Flash’s final season ended up. One good episode in the season, but more misses than hits, including a couple episodes I truly disliked. I’m not going to dive too deep into it but something that has happened the last few seasons is they’ve had these episodes where Flash will take a vacation or find some other reason to not be in the episode to, I guess, give Grant Gustin a mid-season shooting break? These episodes are typically the worst of the season because one, they feature the terrible side characters, and two, they usually try to be the “funny” episodes (especially grating because the writers on this show are awful at writing humor). That held true here: these episodes were painfully unfunny and annoying. It came off worse, though, because this was the final season. And it was only a 13 episode season at that. I respect these shows are a pain to shoot. You have to live in Canada away from everyone for an extended period of time. I accept giving the star a break here and there. But in the final season? 13 episodes? Why are we wasting our time here with bad filler episodes? Not that the regular episodes were that much better. The season as a whole remained plagued by the issues that have hurt this show the whole back half of its run: weak villains, annoying side characters, a dearth of ideas. Sometimes these CW shows are able to rally and go out on a semi-high. The Flash couldn’t.

39. Riverdale (Season 7 - 2023, CW) (Last year’s ranking: 40) - The final season of Riverdale had all the characters sent back in time to the 1950s. There was a reason for this but it’s not great and it doesn’t really matter. The point is, we’re back in the past for the final season. There’s a lot of potential to get wacky there. Wacky in a good way. When this show was at its best… well, it still wasn’t very good, but it was at least doing wild stuff and trying things. Unfortunately, even time travel couldn’t spark life back into it. They went back to the past and then did mostly generic teen drama stuff. Occasionally there were glimpses of something more but mostly it was a lot of stuff about how sexuality was so repressed back then and society was changing and whatever. Kind of a waste. Mostly straightforward and fairly dull and that’s no way to be for the final season of a show like Riverdale. The last couple of episodes were a nice finale though, so it at least had that.

38. Welcome to Flatch (Season 2 - 2022-2023, FOX) (Last year’s ranking: 36) - This show improved ever so slightly. More moments of quality. It still struggles to be funny with any regularity.

37. Abbott Elementary (Season 2 - 2022-2023, ABC) (Last year’s ranking: 30) - Speaking of shows that struggle to be funny with any regularity. Like Flatch, it has its moments. I have four episodes this season rated as solid episodes. The problem is it was a 21 episode season. That’s a lot of misses.

36. CSI: Vegas (Season 2 - 2022-2023, CBS) (Last year’s ranking: 19) - The show did lose something with William Petersen ducking out. He brought a humanity and likeability to things that elevated the show from its Case-of-the-Week crime show DNA and, just like when he left the original version of this show, it more or less devolved into that basic genre fare without him. Which is all fine. It’s not bad if that’s what you want. Just not very inspiring.

35. Quantum Leap (Season 1 - 2022-2023, NBC) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - It’s alright. Like the original, it’s a quasi-anthology show and so some episodes have better premises than others. Some decent ones, some weaker ones. Nothing that really blew me away. The best thing about this show is it makes me think about how shows have changed over the last 30 years since the original version aired. It has all the new stuff that shows need to have these days, like an overarching serialized mystery and secretive backstories and all that -- stuff that takes about three to five seasons to resolve -- but also the goofy “Oops our hero got sent to a different time and now must go through another adventure!” week-to-week structure of a show that debuted in the 1980s and was built to last 200 episodes. The kind of thing where you can almost hear an announcer saying during the end credits, “Well, looks like our hero didn’t make it home this episode. Tune in next week when Ben ends up in the Old West! Same time, same channel.”

34. The Walking Dead (Season 11B - 2022, AMC) (Last year’s ranking: 23) - This was a fine half a season. Serviceable. Which is, admittedly, a little bit of a letdown for a final season. They never really justified why this was the end of the show. The group had faced bigger and more personal threats than the one here so for this to be the big finale made it feel like an ending just to be an ending. All the characters were even acting like, “Well, this is it. The end. We finally won the apocalypse” as if they hadn’t faced similar groups threatening their survival half a dozen times already. They beat those groups only to have a new group pop up almost immediately. Why is this time different? I guess there’s no real way to end a show about surviving the apocalypse other than to suggest the characters have figured out a system to make it work. Or you could kill them all, I suppose. But what downer that would be. And then you can't make spinoffs.

33. The Blacklist (Season 10 - 2023, NBC) (Last year’s ranking: 32) - Another show with a final season that was just fine. It wrapped things up. Did a few good things on the way out but was mostly average. Like the rest of the aforementioned shows on this list going through their final seasons, it felt about time to end things. A general sense of running on momentum and fumes.

32. Bob’s Burgers (Season 13 - 2022-2023, FOX) (Last year’s ranking: 31) - I’ve noted this before but this show tends to put out a lot of average episodes and one or two spectacular episodes every year now. This year, episode 13.10, “The Plight Before Christmas” was a real knockout. Arguably the best episode they've ever done. In an ideal world, I’d like a few more stellar episodes in a 22 episode season, but I guess you take what you can get.

31. Secret Invasion (Miniseries - 2023, Disney+) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - This just wasn’t up to par for Marvel. The action wasn’t great. The writing often felt amateurish (the acting felt that way at times, too, weirdly). The show kills off some interesting, established characters and doesn’t replace them with better ones, which makes it feel like a net negative on the MCU. The biggest issue is really that they’re doing a hybrid old spy / body snatcher type story -- which, within the MCU, has a ton of potential to be great -- and the show just never has the right energy or sense of paranoia that should come from that. It plays out like a standard thriller. All of this sounds more negative than I intended. It’s fine. I’m using that word a lot in this section of this list but that’s what these shows are. They’re fine. It’s just that, given the concept, and the cast, and the MCU-ness of it all, that’s really disappointing.

30. The Walking Dead: Dead City (Season 1 - 2023, AMC) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - There’s a moment I always seem to experience when I’m playing a DLC for a video game I like. I’ll be on a new map, doing something that’s slightly different from the main game but still obviously really familiar, and I’ll think, “This is alright. I appreciate having more content. But this really just makes me miss the main game.” That’s kind of what this show feels like. Like Walking Dead DLC. Like, it’s alright. It’s cool to catch up with the characters and see them in a new map, interacting with new NPCs, getting new missions. But it’s a little watered down and I kind of just miss the original show. (Not the final couple of seasons of the original show. The earlier ones. You get the idea.)

29. The Night Agent (Season 1 - 2023, Netflix) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - When I talk about how Secret Invasion played out like a standard thriller, this is the show I’m talking about. It hits most of the notes you expect. The main characters were sort of bleh. The show needs a serious injection of personality. But, you know, it moves along fine. Has some twists and turns. If a spy thriller is what you’re looking for, this is definitely one of those.

28. Stargirl (Season 3 - 2022, CW) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - The show wrapped up nicely. This was always a show that hovered around good but never really advanced to great. Some fun stuff, some goofy stuff. Enjoyable enough in the moment but nothing that will really stick with you.

27. The Company You Keep (Season 1 - 2023, ABC) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - A decent show about a family of criminals doing various jobs. The episode quality would vary depending on how interesting the job was but there were a few good ones. There’s a longer arc about the main criminal son falling in love with a government agent that worked fine but honestly was less interesting to me. The structure was there for this show to get better in later seasons but it’s already been cancelled so that’s that.

26. Ghosts (Season 2 - 2022-2023, CBS) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - The show didn’t really get funnier but it did drop a lot of the things that annoyed me in the first season (or at least did them with less frequency). I didn’t rate any episode this season particularly highly but on the bright side, I didn’t rate any very low either. I guess it’s a similar question as shows lower on this list face: is it better to be consistent or better to have more highs and lows? Eye of the beholder.

25. She-Hulk: Attorney at Law (Miniseries - 2022, Disney+) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - She-Hulk is sort of the other side of that coin. It had pieces that were clever and that worked and a cast of actors that were pretty good, but also some lulls. Overall, I think the writing was just not sharp enough or funny enough for it to really excel, but it was enjoyable.

24. Family Guy (Season 21 - 2022-2023, FOX) (Last year’s ranking: 17) - Family Guy is kind of the king of the highs and lows TV comedy. A couple of excellent episodes, a few duds. Mostly good ones in between.

23. Fear the Walking Dead (Season 8A - 2023, AMC) (Last year’s ranking: 28) - This is Fear’s final season and it’s wrapping things up in a fascinating way. This show has gone through basically two iterations (seasons 1-3 and seasons 4-7) and it has decided to bring both of them to a close before it leaves. Season 8A was mostly dedicated to wrapping up Morgan’s story. It featured a massive time jump which I will constantly argue almost never works dramatically (and didn’t here) and often messes up character plots (it did here) but overall, it tied up loose ends for the character in a satisfying enough way.

22. The Simpsons (Season 34 - 2022-2023, FOX) (Last year’s ranking: 25) - It remains The Simpsons. Couple of standout episodes. A good “Treehouse of Horror” and a strong season finale.

I’m going to do a mid-list break here to talk about a couple of TV movies or specials or whatever. I think this is how I’m going to handle these going forward because it does feel unfair to put them in the actual list but they are TV. At least, they’re more TV than movie.

Werewolf by Night has a really excellent setting and look, plus some good music. The story is not all there, though. I think it’s more about the Halloween vibe than telling a thorough story and it does nail that vibe. It’s a good watch for the season.

Similarly: The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special. It’s sweet and funny, and, like Werewolf, has the perfect vibe for what it’s going for. Also, like Werewolf, the plot isn’t really there. I do think that’s okay, though, for both of these shorts that come in at under an hour. You just kinda do neat stuff with cool characters for 40-50 minutes and dip out. Again, makes for a great seasonal watch.

Okay, back to it.

21. Mythic Quest (Season 3 - 2022-2023, Apple TV+) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - I mentioned in the season 2 write up of this show that it’s about 90% a good workplace comedy and then one of out ten episodes will be this just wonderful, touching standalone piece. That mostly held true in season 3, though the workplace-ness of it all did take a step back. It was okay but not as sharp as it’s been in the past. The standalone episode this year, “Sarian”, though, was excellent. Far and away the high point of the season.

20. The Great North (Season 3 - 2022-2023, FOX) (Last year’s ranking: 22) - Another solid year for this show.

19. 9-1-1: Lone Star (Season 4 - 2023, FOX) (Last year’s ranking: 20) - It has its highs and lows but this show understands itself and is able to land around here on my list consistently.

18. American Dad! (Season 19B - 2022, Season 20A - 2023, TBS) (Last year’s ranking: 16) - TBS splits this show's seasons up and airs them over entire calendar years, so I’m writing this blurb about the final 14 episodes of season 19 and the first 9 episodes of season 20. Whatever. It doesn’t really matter. It was up to par.

17. So Help Me Todd (Season 1 - 2022-2023, CBS) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - This is, for me, what you want from a weekly, network legal “drama” (labelled a drama because it’s an hour-long show but it’s really more of a comedy), if you were looking for that sort of thing. You get your case of the week. That’s all fine. It works. But the show is elevated by its personality and humor. The characters are good. The actors play well off of each other. It’s snappy. It tips over into too silly or annoying sometimes but I’ll live with it if that’s the cost of spicing up a show in this genre.

16. Gotham Knights (Season 1 - 2023, CW) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - It took me a little bit to get into this show but once it started going it picked up momentum and finished strong. You come to like the characters more and appreciate their relationships. The story got more interesting and built to a good finale. And then it got immediately cancelled because the CW is in some kind of flux state where I don’t know if they’re even making shows anymore. It’s kind of disappointing but given the way CW superhero shows go -- good first season, okay second season, bad third season, resurgent fourth season, bad fifth and sixth seasons, seventh and final season of variable quality -- it’s probably not the worst thing. Go out on a high.

15. Welcome to Chippendales (Miniseries - 2022-2023, Hulu) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - A pretty good true crime drama. It does hit a few lulls though. This is the sort of thing that probably would’ve been a much better two hour movie in the past and is now an eight episode, six hour miniseries. Still, enough interesting stuff to keep you moving through the episodes.

14. Animal Control (Season 1 - 2023, FOX) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - This show is from two-thirds of the brains behind another show I’ve written about on these lists: The Moodys. I’d described that show as “likeable if not particularly funny”. That description more or less fit this show as well through a good portion of the season, though it did get better as it went on. Hopefully it continues that trend.

13. Archer (Season 13 - 2022, FXX) (Last year’s ranking: 14) - Archer has found a good level of consistent quality in its later years.

12. Reboot (Season 1 - 2022, Hulu) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - Another show in this area of the list that started out a little bit slow and got better as it went along, showing potential for future seasons. Also, immediately cancelled, too, like some of those other shows.

11. The Lazarus Project (Season 1 - 2023, TNT) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - Fun and twisty. It keeps switching things up and plays with the time loop story in fresh ways. It has a good sense of humor, too.

10. Ted Lasso (Season 3 - 2023, Apple TV+) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - Someone made the decision to make this an hour-long show and I think that was a mistake. It spread things way too thin. Too many scenes linger. Too many jokes and storylines that probably would’ve normally been cut remain. It almost makes it seem like it’s poorly edited but I think it’s just that you can actually feel it stretching for time. That said, this show still has its plentiful moments of brilliance, in both humor, character, and emotion. It’s just a shame because you can see where these fine hour-long episodes have excellent 30 minute episodes inside of them.

9. The Other Two (Season 3 - 2023, HBO Max) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - It remained a tremendous, frequently hilarious send up of the entertainment industry in its final season. I do think the one issue this show found itself struggling with was when it tried to introduce dramatic stakes. It has actually sprinkled in drama fairly well in the past, but its humor has gotten so heightened (often surpassing even 30 Rock levels of absurdism) that it was giving me whiplash when they suddenly tried to bring the characters back to Earth and have them argue about their relationships. I don’t know if you can have both of those cakes and eat them, too. Still, a good send off.

8. White House Plumbers (Miniseries - 2023, HBO Max) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - It’s labelled as a political satire but it’s more like a screwball comedy. I don’t know how historically accurate it is -- I’m taking everything in it with a grain of salt -- but it’s a funny, heightened look at a wacky criminal conspiracy and if you don’t take it as much more than that, you can probably enjoy it.

7. American Auto (Season 2 - 2023, NBC) (Last year’s ranking: 8) - I’m not sure why this show never caught on the way Superstore did. Very funny. Good characters who played well off each other. Smart plots. Cancelled after two seasons. Seems to happen a lot with NBC comedies these days.

6. Jury Duty (Season 1 - 2023, Amazon Freevee) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - I’m putting this here with extreme reservations. Is this a show? I think in the same way Borat is a movie? There’s obviously a lot of writing and acting that goes into this. And directing. I don’t know. I’m putting it at 6(ish) and if there’s a moral objection from any readers, feel free to remove it mentally. Whatever it is, it is very funny.

5. Andor (Season 1 - 2022, Disney+) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - A strange structure. It’s 12 episodes and it feels like every three episodes the show morphs into a different genre film. There’s the intro one, the heist film, the prison film, then the concluding film. It’s cool, though. It keeps things fresh and moving along. The writing is smart as is the plotting. The acting is strong. It’s a great look at the non-Jedi and Sith heroes and villains in the Star Wars universe.

4. The Mandalorian (Season 3 - 2023, Disney+) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - It does feel like the quality has taken a small hit. It’s a little goofier at times than it used to be but it’s still very enjoyable. It’s like a comfort show. I’m always having a good time while I’m watching it and if I can get eight episodes of fun adventures every year with these characters, I’ll take it as long as Jon Favreau wants to make it.

3. The Last of Us (Season 1 - 2023, HBO) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - I did not care for the game. I didn’t like playing it. I found it frustrating and unenjoyable. But I enjoyed the world the game was set in. And the story it was telling. I liked everything about the game except the game itself. Or, in other words, a TV show is exactly how I’d like to experience this story. This is an excellent adaptation, capturing the game’s story and world and all-around essence. It’s intense and emotional and funny and beautiful. And it also builds on the game in wonderful ways. Episode 1.3, “Long, Long Time” expands upon something you only hear a little about in passing in the game and turns it into this truly wonderful episode of television -- the best of any I saw all year. But beyond that, the show adds these little touches as well. The cold opens of both episodes one and two are brilliant little short films that wouldn’t really have fit in the game but are terrific tone setters for the show. It’s a masterclass in how to adapt a video game.

2. Succession (Season 4 - 2023, HBO) (Last year’s ranking: 3) - They landed the plane with a terrific final season, highlighted by some truly excellent episodes. 4.3, “Connor’s Wedding” keeps you on the edge of your seat the whole episode and is the standout but the final three episodes of the season are all really great as well as the show puts a bow on this messed up family’s saga.

1. The Bear (Season 2 - 2023, Hulu) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - I caught season one of The Bear not long after the last list went up and I really liked it. I don’t think it would’ve been number one or anything, but it would’ve ranked pretty highly. Season two built on season one and created the best show this year for me. It’s an intense show, and a sharp show, but also a kind show. A show that speeds things up on you and keeps you in a state of high anxiety for an entire hour-long episode and then slows way down and gets you to appreciate something so simple as a man receiving a chocolate covered banana for dessert (an unbelievably moving moment). The characters are tremendous. The ways they interact and grow are so well done. The acting is excellent. It’s a great looking show with a great soundtrack. The writing is subtle and smart. It knows when to be funny and it knows when to deliver an emotional knockout punch and sometimes does both back-to-back or even at the same time. It’s firing on all cylinders.

And so there’s the list. The second season of Winning Time and the third season of Only Murders in the Building started recently and I haven’t gotten a chance to watch them so that’s my bad. Those two have rated highly in the past. I’ll try to fit them on to next year’s list. Also, the Daryl Dixon spinoff started recently, too, and while I’m enjoying a little bit more than Dead City, it still feels like DLC. I guess we’ll find out next year if I thought it outgrew that. A tease!

Enjoy the Emmys, whenever they are.

- - - - -

Read More:

Annual Lists of TV Shows I Saw the Past Year

#reviews #Annual Lists of TV Shows I Saw The Past Year

[bo-nilsson-diaries]

Mom

When I was younger I use to apologize by slipping notes under her bedroom door, writing is often easier than speaking, especially when it comes to the truth. When it’s written, you don’t have to see their expression, whether happy or sad. It’s easy. When I was younger, she’d send me letters in return, right under my door, and it would always make me feel better, having concrete proof that everything would be okay. But it seems I’ve outgrown those letters. The last one scent was around a week before my dad died, he was in the hospital for a checkup, and I asked my mom if I could study abroad. I still thought dad had a few more years in him, and I thought if I started to pull away, when my time eventually came, it would be easier on her. But trying to pull away while my dad was getting sicker and sicker just hurt her more. I can see why now, it must’ve felt isolating, and I’m sorry mom. After my dad died my mom moved back to Canada, she took me with her, I was upset. It felt isolating for me, but if I tried I probably could’ve handled it better, I mean, I’ve handled worse, the constant pain, the teasing, the loneliness, I’ve endured so much. Yet moving somewhere with my mom was something I just couldn’t take. Maybe it was the fact that I couldn’t visit his grave, or maybe it was the fact that I couldn’t even sneak into his room and hug his pillow for comfort anymore. Maybe it was the fact I couldn’t visit any of the places we use to go to, or never seeing my favourite teacher again. I was 16, I was still a kid, of course I couldn’t take any of it. But my mom couldn’t either, we should’ve gotten help, counselling maybe, to help with the grief. Instead, we turned to other methods, my mom tried to bottle it up, but I still heard her cry at night. I tried to surround myself with as many people as possible, to drown out that isolating feeling, but it just hurt even more knowing those “friends” didn’t even really like me. My mom knew they didn’t like me, she tried to tell me, I knew she was right, but I couldn’t stand how it felt like she tried to rip everything away from me. We fought often. Eventually I pushed her till all she could do was yell and hit, it seems I’m really good at breaking people down like that. I never can learn my lesson. Right now was when my mom needed me most, I should’ve manned up, I was the only one she had left. But the pain was too much for me, even if I deserved it, the bruises hurt so bad, she scared my dog, it wasn’t a healthy relationship. I loved her, and I know she loved me. But I had to get away, If I stayed neither of us would’ve healed. Recently, I talked to her again, and today I slipped a letter under her door, Im doing much better than I was then. I no longer feel isolated, now I want to help her. I’m sorry I left you mom, I’m sorry I was a bad son, a bad kid. I’m sorry I misbehave, and I’m sorry about that vase I broke. I still love you, I always will, and I promise I won’t leave again. Sometimes it’s still hard to look her in the eyes, not only does it remind me of the pain I caused her, but the pain she caused me as well. But I know that as the seasons change, and spring brings forth new beginnings, I think we’ll be alright. - December 9th 2022

#memories #memory #sweden #mothers #son #apology #mother #im sorry #loss #mournful

[naomixhill]

6 December 2022

19 October 2022

It’s unlike anything I’ve ever felt before. I am screaming on my bathroom floor as blood breaks through the bandages on my freshly shattered foot. I am all but waterboarding the upper part of my body into an ice bath trying to reduce my temperature, but can’t stop screaming, can’t stop bleeding, can’t stop vomiting. You are out of town. I won’t know until months later that you’re in Pittsburgh when you are supposed to be in Cleveland, visiting your grandmother freshly admitted into a hospital. But A, the psychiatrist, my best friend, she is here. And she continues to coo, this pain is temporary. You are safe. It is going to be okay. as I continue to throw up and scream into the night.

The only thing I want is your embrace.

I was only a few weeks out from an NPC bodybuilding competition. I was finally going to be on stage and take back ownership of my body after being assaulted in Arizona. But you don’t know what happened. No one does. As luck would have it, I dropped a 225 pound barbell on my foot earlier today and was hospitalized most of the day. But you don’t know about that, either.

20 October 2022

My parents came to town. My mother’s presence only makes the situation worse, but I can’t turn them away. My best friend, A, she is here; Z, the software engineer, he’s here, too. We planned to have a  family dinner, as in the kind with your chosen family, while you were out of town. Instead, it is spent with my father asking Z about work, admiring him, and asking A about her work in psychology. He hates her liberal politics, but seems to respect her intellect and wit.

Once they leave, A tells me, come on Naomi, we have to get those bloody bandages off you from last night. I try to bargain with her: I will do anything for this foot not to be touched. It is throbbing and I am on opioids and high on marijuana, but can’t mute the pain at all. She encourages Z to sit on rim of the bath tub and hold me back as she unbandages the blood-filled, sopping blood-filled, cloth. They catch on the wounds of my foot, eventually exposing my poorly stitched together big toe. I almost lost it.

Z runs his fingers through my hair and plays my favorite YouTube playlist. He tells me he realizes he’s not you, but he will love me with everything he has because I deserve to be loved. I shriek in pain as blood hits the bath tub basin, and recoil into his arms. I vomit over his lap in agony.

When I come to myself again, we are all laying in Our bed, and A has put on my favorite season of Gossip Girl. Z is holding me, A is holding me. I am squeezed in the middle.

27 October 2022

I am admitted into the Panhandle’s best outpatient surgery facility. You are with me only because someone is required to drive me home later in the day. As the nurse preps me for surgery, you continue to type away on your laptop and take an incoming call from a lender. You’re working hard over there, just having come back from another trip to Cleveland. Needles puncture all of my veins throughout my right and left arms. I am scared, I am really scared; I don’t know if I am going to lose part of my foot yet, but you are somewhere else entirely. I look over to you from time to time for comfort. But you are nowhere to be found.

When I wake up from operation and am finally carted back into the recovery room, I ask you to borrow your phone to call my parents. And there she is: Divya. I have never seen or heard of the name before, but she is there. And you’re talking about having babies with her-- six to be exact. Her message pops up on your phone. But I am on Fetanyl, and I am on anesthesia, and I gaslight myself into thinking it’s nothing.

29 October 2022

I feel like a burden because I can’t do anything for myself. If i need water, I need you to get it. I can’t feed myself. I am in endless agony that no drug is strong enough to control. You mostly ignore me, watching sports and reading Twitter, and passively telling me that it will be okay.

As we go outside to the balcony to smoke a bowl, you mention in passing that you think it would be best for me to stay at A’s while I recover. So I limp into your truck, let you take me there, and now I live in the basement of an aged building with mold on the walls, radon in the air, and cum stains on the carpet. There is no money in psychiatry and this proves it. My guest room is dark, damp, and has only a mattress, a week of clothes, a company computer, my medicine, and my lizard. 

2 November 2022

I am supposed to go to Chicago for work tomorrow. I am only a few days post-op, but the vice president has requested that i speak at a conference there. I look like shit. No one is feeding me. I can hardly bathe myself. So, I do my best to get into a car, and drive to a nearby esthetician to work on my eyebrows. I figure it’s the least offensive thing I can do to look immediately better.

Outside of my appointment, walking back to my rusted Ford in the dark of Tallahassee, a group of men surround me and yell at me for me to give them my wallet. I refuse and they take turns beating the shit out of me. One pulls out a car key and shoves it straight into my cornea.

When it’s all over, I can no longer see out of my left eye from the damage. It feels like shards of glass are repeatedly stabbing me, and I break down crying behind a Publix. It must take me an hour before I can walk again and get to my car.

When I get home, Z and A are watching a film on her new projector. When they see my eye, bulging and red, they immediately ask what happened and I blame it on the esthetician losing her grip and hitting me with her tweezers. There are no noticeable rips or bruises on my skin that they can see. No one knows what really happened.

I close my bedroom door and cry. Z comes in and tries to console me, but it is of no use. No one understands why I am really crying. All I want is to see you.

I text you but you never reply.

3 November 2022

The following day, I have to go to an emergency eye doctor to evaluate the damage to my eye. He tells me that I may lose up to ninety percent of my vision without surgery. He dilates both eyes, and puts a patch on the impacted one. I call you from the parking lot to ask for your help to pick me up. You say that you’re training the new hire and can’t come.

The next thirty minutes are one of the scarier moments of my life as I swerve in and out of traffic with only one dilated eye and one working foot.

4 December 2022

I have seen you only twice in a month. We are at an Indian restaurant when I tell you that my surgical boot is coming off tomorrow, and I would love to come home. I am scared here. I don’t want to be here anymore. I just want to be home with you. In. My. Home. That you kicked me out of. Two days post-op. Mid samosa bite, as I chew potatoes and carrots and fried bread, you tell me that we need to break up. That we want different things.

I suppose I should have seen this coming, but it is still a shock. And it’s a far worse blow to my being than the foot or eye.

6 December 2022

Where are you, now?

#bpd #depression #anxiety #lonely #surgery #npc #bodybuilding #850 #tallahassee #fl #break up #heartbroken #memories #prose #spilled ink #how could u do this to me

[righteousfag]

fuck Spirit Halloween and its lack of care for its retail workers/managers

hi guys! so i wanted to make a pretty in-depth post talking about the shit we dealt with at Spirit Halloween this year. this was my second year working the halloween season at this store, and unfortunately, things have gotten so bad.

preface: Spirit Halloween has gotten in hot water for a lot of its racist/sexist/ableist/queerphobic merchandise over the years, for good reason. this post is not about that, but i don't want that aspect to be ignored.

anyway, here we go!

last year at Spirit Halloween (i worked the whole month of October 2021), things were pretty good. it was a typical retail job, but my coworkers and assistant/store managers were incredible people who all knew how to work together really well. several of them had been working for at least three years in a row at that point, and considering we did a pretty good job of gathering donations for the local Children's Hospital, i felt that i was doing good work. i also loved helping customers put together their costumes with different pieces we had in the store - it genuinely was a lot of fun.

this year (October 2022), we were not able to open a location in the same city, so i went to work across the river at the closest location to my home. this location opened in September (most locations across the US open in mid-August) and had a hard time getting people to apply until October rolled around. i got a message from my manager last year about coming to help out, so i decided to join.

i'll put most of this stuff in organized sections from hereon out, because it's all important to recognize when it came to this particular location and how corporate & our customers treated us.

customer issues

our location was the most successful (i.e. the busiest) location in the state of Nebraska. we were meeting our sales goals every single day until about mid-October, and the only reason we stopped was because we weren't getting anymore merchandise shipments and were selling out of fucking EVERYTHING.

our store wasn't big, but we easily had at least 250 people in the store 8 out of the 12 hours a day we were open

we had a LOT of issues with rude customers on a very regular basis, which, like... yeah, it's retail. but as we started selling out of merchandise, the customers multiplied still, and none were happy about how little we had in stock

for context on how bad the customers were (though i could easily go on with different rude customer anecdotes): i had at least three customers just in the past week take things out of my hands as i was restocking returns on the floor

corporate issues

unfortunately, the way corporate was handling our store was unacceptable.

corporate fucked up from the beginning by not opening a location for us until September of this year and then immediately sending out the same amount of merchandise, leaving our back room full from floor to ceiling with boxes of merch until october, when we finally started getting more associates working. still, wasn't until after my first week that we finally got through all those boxes.

my store manager (who had been working for Spirit for six years) was pulling 60-hour weeks to keep on top of our scheduling minimum. because of this, she had about four days off the entire two months we were open, two of which were because she got incredibly sick with the flu. not to mention, she took a lunch break maybe once a week.

speaking of the flu, ALL BUT TWO ASSOCIATES & MANAGERS GOT SICK DURING THIS SEASON. i was on intense antibiotics while i was working because we didn't have enough people.

one of our associates, a 19-year-old with another job and severe anxiety, had daily panic attacks, yet was also the one associate with the most hours because she needed the money.

Spirit offered an extra $3/hour on top of our normal base hourly pay for store building (before the store officially opened for business), shifts worked from October 27th to November 2nd, and store takedown (shifts worked after the store officially closed, taking down shelving & doing inventory). everyone i'd heard from who helped build the store at the beginning of the season still hasn't seen that extra $3/hour on their paychecks.

most of our remaining staff by mid-October were returning associates/managers who were working their asses off getting merchandise back on the floor, running through as many transactions in as little time as possible to get through our customer lines, not taking breaks just to keep the store running, etc.

and yet, despite us being the most successful store in the state in terms of both sales and donations, my store manager is likely not getting her bonus this year due to arbitrary requirements such as new employee retainment and minimum total scheduled hours for the store.

and honestly, if my wonderful, incredible, baddest bitch in the world store manager doesn't come back next year, i'm not coming back either.

anyway, fuck Spirit Halloween for how they treated us this year. we deserved better.

#txt #spirit halloween #spencer's gifts

[emmaschoutenwrites]

AUTUMN: a Changing of the Seasons novella

She spent centuries in the dark, rotting away half forgotten in a dirty cell only to be taken out by the humans as some disused toy. Her powerful magic was locked away by shackles, the only thing standing between her and her freedom.

But what happens when the shackles begin to crack? What happens when someone helps shatter them entirely?

Autumn isn’t one to forgive and forget. On the contrary, she is one for revenge.

My NaNoWriMo project for 2022 is called Autumn. It is the first in a series of 4 novellas. Each follows the Season it's named after.

The novellas are going to be fantasy themed but I haven't thought much more about it. In fact, I decided pretty last minute to participate in NaNoWriMo. Because I haven't updated this blog in a while, I never felt the need to share on here that I was taking a break from writing. But I did. Somewhere in March I just decided that I needed to stop. I had a streak of daily writing of nearly 900 days! That's more than 2 years of writing every day.

But it felt more like "I have to write" than "I want to write". So I stopped. I didn't write a single word for months. It wasn't until last week that I put pen to paper again, so to speak. It started with a few hundred words a day but it was enough to get my competitiveness back and sign up for NaNoWriMo.

So, here is the project!

Autumn was a story I started before my hiatus and I got about 6 chapters in. The idea came when I was brainstorming a short story to submit for an anthology. It was too big for a 8000-word short story but I stuck with the idea and brainstormed some more.

Since a novella isn't going to allow me to write down 50.000 words, once Autumn is done, I'm going to start on the next stories which will be Spring, Winter, and Summer (in that order).

Hopefully, I will be able to keep updating my progress on here something I failed last year.

#nanowrimo #nanowrimo 2022 #nano wip #nano 2022 #preptober #national novel writing month

[miss-ing-diary]

October 10, 2022

Diary Entry #13

Summary of my fifth week

So, hey! What are you doing? I hope you're just doing fine when you read this. This is the summary of my fifth week at work.

How would I described this week? Hmm... The word that best described it was a DISASTER.

Just like any other day I was in office I experience much stress this week. Since the peak season arrived, there were so many trucks that we should accommodate and papers to be released.

You know what, actually there is nothing wrong with my work for real. The only thing that gave me stress was the CSR. I mean... why we should asked them about purchase order or advance shipment notice when they could've send it on viber. And they should be active on monitoring everyday so that they could give what the documents needed by the truckers that day without the releasing department asking for it. I mean what if we missed? The fault will always be ours to claim? That's unfair especially if we are doing our best at work!

Anyway, we got new hired this week. Two for releasing department. One for load planner department, one for picklist, and one for the invoice department. Due to that we got a little meeting for them to be introduced. We went to the conference room and got a little chit chat when he arrived (as usual late). He went straight to my side (well, at least... Because I was sitting beside his friend. He looked at me and all of the sudden tapped my shoulder three times as if it was a way of his greeting. It was kinda hard so I winced a little. Nonetheless, it seems like forever since the last time he approached me so it's fine.

I swear I can't help but to smile the entire meeting after that. It was a good thing that I had a mask on my face. Yet, I never thought that'll ends there. For when morning comes I made mistake again and one of the factor was with the CSR (See? I should change the S in CSR as STRESS). I caused another trouble and I looked like a fool in his eyes again.

The next morning, yours truly can't even looked at his eyes because of shame. I went straight to help Ate Rea. Since it was time for them to log out because of the shifting, I just took a glimpse of his back and focus in what Ate Rea was saying. Then suddenly he came back and was giving something. I don't understand it since I was listening to Ate Rea. All I knew is he was giving something like a ball pen (I don't even know whether he's talking to me or to ate so I didn't make any response or if that ballpen was mine because I left it on the table behind him). When no one responded he got pissed and just turn his back at us. 😣 Sorry not today 10 percent.

Lastly, I burst out again this week (I hate having a weak heart). I cried inside the comfort room because I can't hold it any longer. I felt like a dead battery but the good thing is my co-workers. They are really supporting. I really felt that. My team lead said I should take a break. Kuya Rocky, Joshua, Princess, Ate Ange and Ate Harriette comforted me. I even sense Ate Baby's care, too.

One thing I'm lucky about in work? My co-workers. I'm glad I met such good people.

#thoughtoftheday #thoughts #miss-ing diary #my thoughts #work diaries #work stuff #work blogging #my work

[f1]

Magnussen will be only Haas driver to use teams major upgrade in Hungary | 2022 Hungarian Grand Prix

Haas will only have one example of the major new upgrade for its VF-22 available for use at this weekend’s Hungarian Grand Prix. The team has chosen to give the single upgrade kit to Kevin Magnussen, who is their leading points scorer over the season so far. “In the end, we couldn’t get two car kits to the race track, so with Kevin being in front in the championship we gave him the package to try,” team principal Guenther Steiner explained. The upgrade was originally scheduled to arrive at the previous race. However Haas’s development programme was held up as it had to produce extra replacement parts following the two major crashes suffered by Mick Schumacher in Jeddah and Monaco. “Unfortunately we had a few delays in the development stage, so we postponed it from the French Grand Prix to Hungary,” said Steiner. “Also, with the spares situation we had at the beginning of the season, up to race seven or eight, we fell a bit behind in production and therefore we don’t have enough parts for two cars. We struggle with spare parts for one car so hopefully we can get it done and bring it to Hungary.” “Everybody has worked really hard – the team and our suppliers – to make this happen so I’m still very happy that we bring it on one car to Hungary,” he added. “We want to get some data before the summer break so we have something to work from when we get back, and if all goes well we’ll have it on both cars.” The team has only made minor changes to its car since the start of the season. Despite that it has continued to race competitively, scoring back-to-back double points finished in Britain and Austria. Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free “As many people know, we waited a bit longer to bring our upgrade to track because I think we still have good pace,” said Steiner. “Now what we want to do is put performance on. Gallery: 2022 French Grand Prix in pictures “What exactly it will do, I don’t want to say because I don’t want to jinx it, but we know what it should be doing from our development. We’ll just have to wait and see what we can get out of the package.” Their performance last weekend was compromised as Magnussen had to start at the back of the grid after changing his engine, and Schumacher was eliminated in Q1 after having his best lap time deleted for a track limits infringement. Both drivers were then involved in collisions with rivals during the race. “We know now where the car can be if we do a good job and I think in France we did a good job,” said Steiner. “Kevin had a penalty with the engine so he started from the back but he showed in qualifying what he could do and Mick did the same, but unfortunately he was a little bit too far out from where you need to be, so we started at the back end but in the first laps we made up a lot of positions. “I think we had a very good strategy, also looking back at it now, and we knew that would give us our best chance at getting into the points but unfortunately the Safety Car came out at the most inconvenient time for both cars so from then on it was downhill. What we can take away is that if we can get the car in the right spot set-up wise, we can compete at the top of the midfield.” Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free 2022 Hungarian Grand Prix Browse all 2022 Hungarian Grand Prix articles via RaceFans https://www.racefans.net

#F1 #Magnussen will be only Haas driver to use team’s major upgrade in Hungary | 2022 Hungarian Grand Prix #Formula 1

[ladyperceval]

New Year's Eve

A/N: Merry Christmas and Happy New Years, I hope that you all have an amazing 2022 and I just want to take this time to thank all of you for making my year so amazing, without any of you, I wouldn’t have accomplished all the amazing things I did this year.

A very special shoutout to my bestie

@shes-unwell-babe , you are my rock and my one and only who is always there for me, lovey this one is for you.

Lando Norris:

Lando was super busy this year and you had struggled with not being able to travel everywhere and see him all the time but now that it was the Christmas break you were hoping for some time alone, especially since you had so much to celebrate with Lando, but when Christmas came and went in a flurry of family lunches, dinners and discussions about the future you knew that a romantic Christmas wasn’t on the cards. So, when you woke up on the 30th to your bags packed and an excited looking Lando you were shocked. "Babe, I just got told that the place is finished, so I thought we could spend New Year’s in Monaco." Lando explains as he watches your face light up with glee at the idea of spending a few weeks in Lando's new place. You leaped out of bed, your arms wrapping around Lando as you smother his face in kisses, your gleeful squeals following you into the bathroom as you get ready.

You arrived in Monaco late in the afternoon, your back sore from travelling and your cheeks sore from smiling. You were hoping to open the door to a furnished apartment but that was quickly diminished when there wasn’t even a chair in the place, Lando was quick to call a friend, who just so happened to be Charles, the air mattress wasn’t uncomfortable but there wasn’t much else that Charles could have given you. You spent the 31st shopping with Lando, trying and failing to keep the style to his unique taste but everything had a touch of you in it. That’s why when you got home and spent the rest of New Year’s Eve busy setting up furniture and putting up decor, you weren’t shocked to see Lando fast asleep on his brand-new couch, you were shocked at the time and decided to prepare a quick supper while you let Lando sleep. you woke him up before midnight, your lips lulling him out of sleep as his arms wrapped around you. The new year looking bright, and it looks even brighter when you went to bed to see the key sitting on your pillow and a handwritten note attached to it.

"Move in with me?"

Mick Schumacher:

You and Mick loved the sea, you were hoping to maybe get a week away during the season, but luck was not on your side, especially with Mick being a rookie and him having so many duties and obligations, you would support him no matter what, but you needed sometime alone with him. You knew family was everything to him and so you decided to keep your needs to yourself, you could wait for Mick to have some time, you could wait until he could focus on you, and you could please him and show him how proud you were of him. So, when the ugly sweater day had passed and you were lying in bed waiting for Mick, the ribbon wrapped around your waist become suffocating as your thought swirled in your mind. You were so caught up in them that you didn’t even notice Mick, he was standing in front of you, hi hands holding a small delicately wrapped box, the messy corners showing that Mick wrapped it for you, but his face was sullen, his eyes full of worry as he watched the tears stream down your face. "Princess, what’s the matter?" he asks, he dropped to his knees, his arms wrapping around your waist as his head buries into your lace covered chest. "Nothing, I just miss you and need to spend time with you" you reply in a mix of hiccups as you try and fail to get it back together. Without saying anything Mick places the gift in your hand and patiently waits for you to open it. You are shocked to find a small shell in the box but soon realize what it means, and within a second your arms are wrapped around Mick as you kiss him and let him enjoy his last Christmas gift. The memory makes you smile as you sit next to Mick on the yacht he had hired. Your hair blowing in the wind as you focus on the night sky. The fireworks illuminating the sky as the New Year is slowly approaching. You grin at the sound of Mick popping the champagne and you smile into the kiss as you focus on being Mick's girl for another blissful year.

Pierre Gasly:

You and Pierre had broken up before the end of the season and although it was a mutual decision, the idea of not having Pierre broke you every single time. So, when your friends suggested spending new year’s away you jumped at the chance, hoping the cold mountain air could make you feel some sense of warmth. You were packed and on a flight before your friend could even tell you where you would be staying. The lodge caused tears to spring to your eyes as you remembered the joyful memories that you and Pierre had created in it. The memory of your first holiday together, first New Year’s Eve and all the anniversaries that were spent there, all the celebrations. You were so lost in your mind that you thought you saw him leaving the restaurant with a group of his friend. "Y/N" your friend shouted, there arms wrapping around you as you allowed them to drag you away to say hello to all of their friends. Their mischievous smirks went unnoticed by you and instead you followed them to the lodge you would be staying in. Your heart breaking when you realised it wasn’t the one you and Pierre had always stayed in.

The next few days leading up to new years were spent with you skiing, drinking warm beverages and enjoying some well-deserved rest but no matter how hard you tried your heart wouldn't let you forget Pierre, so on New Year’s Eve you were shocked at how quickly your friends agreed to let you stay at the lodge while they went out to celebrate. With one of Pierre's hoodies on and a pair of warm socks you sat in front of the TV watching all of his favourite shows, the smile never leaving your face not even when a knock at the door caused you to stop reminiscing. You opened the door and went back to the TV room, just thinking it was one of your friends who had forgot something. "That's not very safe, amour" the voice sends chills down your spine and a smile across your face as you swirl around to see Pierre standing in the doorway, a single white rose in his hand as he just smiled at you.

"It was you" you say, your feet moving you closer and closer to him.

"It was me" he says, his feet moving him closer and closer to you.

"I missed you" you say, your hands on his chest.

"I never stopped loving you," He replies, his hands on your waist as he leans down to press his lips to yours. Fireworks and cheers in the background.

Max Verstappen:

Max had been so wonderful to you this year and although your relationship with him had taken a step back and you were proud of him and his focus on winning the championship, but now you were the one that wanted to surprise him and make him proud. You had found out on Christmas Eve; the sickness having interrupted your mornings but the realisation of how special the championship night was shedding some light on the positive pregnancy test in your hand. The feeling of his fingertips gracing you skin still sends shivers up your arms and a smile on your face. The idea was to surprise Max with it as a Christmas gift, but it felt impersonal and caused you to try harder on surprising your Fiancé with a welcomed changed. The idea of Max being a father had caused your hormones to skyrocket and within seconds of Max coming on home on New Year’s Eve, your hands were all over him, his mouth all over you as you celebrate the new year with the blissfulness of being in your lovers’ arms. his arms are wrapped around you as you reach into your bedside table and give him the most precious picture he has ever seen.

He is confused, his eyes trying to make out the ultrasound but the words on the corner send tears to his eyes and his arms holding you tighter.

"Dear dad, watch out I’m gonna be a world champion. Love baby Verstappen."

Dani Ric:

New Year’s was finally happening. Some People went all out for Christmas or Halloween but for you it was New Year’s, and you were itching to go out and have a fun night out with your friends and with Dani. But on the fateful day it just so happened that Dani had the flu, thankfully it was just the flu but that meant you weren’t able to go out and celebrate. You wouldn’t want to if Dani wasn’t with you, you needed his free spirit to be with you and be a part of the fun. So, you traded your cocktail dress for a Dani shirt and your heels for a pair of warm socks. While he slept on the couch, you dragged the bedroom mattress to the lounge, a bunch of blankets set up for a warm and cosy movie night. You had ordered food from all the takeout places and had set up Dani's favourite movies on the TV. When he had woken up later that afternoon, he was so grateful for what you had done for him and without a second thought. He crawled into the bed, wrapped his arm around you and fought exhaustion as he stayed up to watch the blissfulness on your lips as the countdown began. The glee in your eyes when you looked at him and the laugh when he said his usual line "Let's start this year with a bang" and with that you entered 2022 with a kiss from the love of your life.

Charles Leclerc:

You hated New Years, the idea of going out and watching everyone kiss their love had caused you to despise how single the holiday had made you feel. You were already upset with the horrible year you had, dating in the 21st century had caused your confidence to be knocked and for your emotions to go spiraling into a dark place. So, when your friends suggest a night out for New Year’s Eve you reluctantly agreed, the idea of getting drunk making you crave the night out.

In nothing but a red cocktail dress and a pair of black wedges you entered the club, enjoying the music and the drinks your friends kept on providing you with, but as the clock ticked down the drinks and dancing couldn’t hide the gloom of what was about to come, nor could the feeling of loneliness that was starting to develop as you watched people pair up for the long-awaited new year’s kiss. The feeling sent you to the bar where a cute and contagious laugh caught your attention. The brown hair and grey eyes made your ovaries swoon but the smile he sent you caused you to grimace.

"I see I have a bit of a grinch here" the handsome stranger says.

"What gave it away?" you reply.

"The fact that a gorgeous girl like you isn’t smiling" he says with a wink, his hand brushing against your as you both lean against the bar and watch the countdown reach 5 minutes.

"I don’t have much to smile about." You reply.

"Then let’s change that, I'm Charles." he says with a friendly smile, highlighting his dimples.

"Y/N" you say, a small smile gracing your lips at the sparks coursing through your body from his hand holding yours.

The rest of the night is a blur but the heavy arm on your waist and Charles head buried in your chest tells you that it was a good night and a great start to 2022.

Me:

#charles leclerc #formula one #ferrari #cl16 #scuderia ferrari #cute #f1 #fluff #daniel ricciardo #max verstappen #lando norris imagine #lando norris #mick schumacher #pierre gasly #alpha tauri #mclaren #red bull racing #haas #mick schumacher imagine #max verstappen imagine #daniel ricciardo imagine #pierre gasly imagine #charles leclerc imagine

[unpopularly-opinionated]

I don’t play WoW but I used to play Overwatch and Diablo and this touches on just the general issues that are inside of Activision Blizzard right now regarding the major decline of World of Warcraft and how they’re losing to Final Fantasy XIV, how if the latest WoW expansion or Overwatch 2 flop as they’re projected to do then Blizzard’s most definitely going to pivot almost entirely to mobile games, and how the differences in age demographics are actually dividing the company into multiple camps.

It’s important to note two things: 1) this could be fake but also 2) the link came from Grummz, a former team lead on WoW and producer on Diablo II and Starcraft. It still could be fake despite this, but if he’s sharing it then I feel like there’s at least some measure of truth in this.

Transcription below in case this gets deleted and/or you don’t wanna click the link. Warning, it’s fairly long.

“I’m dropping this here after getting chewed out for three hours over shit the chewee did at work so fuck it. Assume larp and let me vent.”

>Shadowlands is a shitshow. Critical response, Player drop off and just about every engagement metric outside of cash shop have been catastrophic. No higher up expected this because of their “we are too big to fail, if we built it they will come” mentality. They refuse to accept their focus on the world being a begrudged mechanic to funnel players to raiding is not appealing to the player base at large because it appeals to them. They have spent the last 4 months trying to course correct but there is no solid direction and the response to 9.1 has only made things worse.

>Sylvanas is planned to replace the Arbiter despite so many people in the company and god knows how many online saying this would be a total replication of Kerrigans storyline in Starcraft 2 that killed none competitive interest in the brand entirely and you can only go “no, no they WILL like it eventually” for so many real world years before its time to change course. Thus far that has not happened.

>The elephant in the room is FFXIV. To the people in charge they are acting like this came out of nowhere and don’t even seem to understand why its drawing players away in their tens of thousands. We have all tried to highlight things it is doing that are clearly appealing to an mmo audience and not, in my opinion, focussing more on mobile game style retention traps to keep MAU users and habit forming personalities logging in. Its not that they don’t care. They just seem so pig headed and digging their heels in with their fingers in their ears thinking all the problems will go away because WoW is “too big to fail”, there will never be real competition and “they will keep coming back”. But they aren’t coming back anymore. Not in the numbers they used to.

>The people making the spending choices know this. The new model for WoW is market the hell out of a expansion pack for a huge quarter then use 6 month lock ins to pad numbers for the quarters after that. Even if corona had not happened 9.1 still would have been dropping after the initial 6 month subs expired to “keep the chain holding”.

>The mood in the company is tense but also very much “its just a rough transition period”. Activision has been pushing hard for Blizzard to release more regular product and to generate more income per user. As far as i know this is going to be a transition over the next 5 years to a much larger mobile/tablet gaming focus. By all accounts not just WoW but Overwatch was intended to be the moneymaker in the interim but once again someone had the bright idea to kill a game casual players loved on the alter of e-sports hoping for another Brood War. From what i hear the “told you so’s” were loud and a lot of people walked beyond Kaplan.

>The sentiment that was shared quietly in private but being spoken more often is simply that the leadership at Blizzard are not bad people, nor incompetent people but people who had to fill seats left when the old guard jumped ship wether they were suited for it or not. Brack is a genuinely good man out of his depth, Ion is a fantastic raid designer put in charge of designing a virtual world he has no interest or real ideas for and so on. They have been taking form the roles they excel at to be put in positions where they get to do far less of that purely because there is nobody left with the experience to do so and the trickle down is a lack of concrete direction, ambition and focus.

>2021 has seen the playerbase, media and gaming at large “turn” on WoW to a degree i don’t think the leads in their “positivity dojo” bubble considered possible. Its gone from people going “This is how Blizz needs to fix WoW!” to “WoW is no longer salvageable, time for greener pastures” and i think on some level this was never considered as a possibility so there have never been any major plans beyond the usual “try and minimise player drop off by arranging releases around competitors launching updates/products”. The official forums being filled with talk of FFXIV and worse “why do we actually pay a sub?” hasn’t helped.

>There have been some testing the waters lately from certain higher ups if we can remove the line “No King Rules Forever”. Read into that what you will.

>There are still arguments going on about the Kael’thas Voice actor shitshow. I don’t know much about it but i know its heated, wouldn’t be the first time a knee jerk reaction only seemed to generate bad press. We lost a noticeable amount of pvp engagement after the Swifty thing.

>The Preach interview was treated as a disaster and there was talk of more strongly vetting interviewers for “bad actors” and only engaging with a list of questions Blizzard provides. Some pointed out that could just be used to create some form of Fireside Chat akin to the FFXIV “Live letters” but that fell on deaf ears.

>The two sentiments right now among the team are either “we really need a win” or “theres a dedicated cabal of internet trolls out to kill WoW”. Right now we are crunching hard to get 9.2 ready to wrap up the jailors storyline so we can get an expansion out early 2022. If that doesn’t happen there are talks of major shakeups coming down from Activision that have been threatened for a few  years now. Its an all hands on deck feeling thats been around to some degree since the “Is this an out of season April Fools Joke” Blizzcon. A make or break deadline is coming closer and things like Diablo 4 were not planned before then. Blizzard needs a significant win not just in initial profit but consumer goodwill. Nobody likes working at what the public now seems to see as “the bad guy” of the mmo industry.

>This has also made new hires decline. Not significantly but the “you WANT Blizzard on your resume” line doesn’t seem to have the appeal it used to. This has lead to more hiring via friend of a friend, to some rumblings about nepotism, and people severely lacking in experience “because they get great twitter optics”.

>On the topic of Twitter we are not being told to “disengage” from it. Multiple employees like Nervig and Holisky publicly attacking paying customers because they got too heated and couldn’t keep quiet is bad press that could have been avoided. A email reminder has gone around more than once lately stating “if you are not customer relations you should not be representing the company to customers, especially if you cannot remain professional”.

>Lastly the biggest elephant in the room is “yo’ boy” Asmongold. The newer hires cannot stand him. They have used terms like “toxic masculinity” and “dogwhistles to dangerous males” while some of the oldest crowd still remaining have called him “based” or “telling it like it is” which has lead to friction to put it mildly. People are told not to talk about him and the recent FFXIV stuff only made it all worse. The idea that an outside element can have such an effect on the product genuinely upsets people. Like Zach is engaging in some malicious act of cyberwarfare. Many of us have point out the now famous quotes by Naoki Yoshida about understanding that players will drift and we need to make something worth coming back to because they want to but some people for lack of a better word see out customers -or “consumers” as they refer to them nowadays- as some kind of antagonistic relationship where the goal is not being an entertainer putting on a show for a crowd but some kind of game hunter trying to trap a large, profitable kill. I wish i could blame Activision but this is a sentiment from more of the younger crowd than the “tech boomers”. Which personal opinion is probably why so many folks like Metzen and Morheim left.

>Before you ask, yes the topic of “wokeness” has shown up in group talks. Its not all some grand sjw conspiracy, people really do want to feel welcome and represented. However the “we need everything veto’ed by people not working on it to see if its inoffensive and bland enough” rubs some of us the wrong way. Like anything in life you can take something too far and lose sight of the core ideals and with everything gone on since Blitzchung it feels like people are forming little factions to pull people in different directions to decide “What Blizzards identity is now” and how to appeal to new players. There has been some drop offs with “go woke go broke” as the only answer in the survey when unsubbing but honestly we are losing subs in unforseen numbers anyway and still making more money than ever through cash shop “heavy users” so it honestly doesn’t make an impact.

>All in all things are rough right now. Blizzard doesn’t have the love of the customers anymore, is no longer treated as an industry giant and while D4,D2R and Immortal aren’t going to kill Diablo even if they fail the sentiment for World of Warcraft and Overwatch 2 are a lot more tense and stressful. The phrase “it might be good to brush up on your mobile development portfolio if we get another underperformer” has been doing the rounds a lot. If Shadowlands continues its stark decline and Overwatch 2 is looking to underperform like its current projections suggest i think the Blizzard of a few years from now will be imitating King a lot more than trying to learn any lessons from Square Enix’s mmo division.

#random #video games #Blizzard #Activision #WoW #World of Warcraft #Diablo #Overwatch #Starcraft #Activision Blizzard

[higuchimon]

[fanfic] Time Spent Together

Ryou wasn't sure if he really heard anything in the siren cry of Cyber End Dragon.  The more he learned about spirits, the more he thought that he might, but he couldn't be entirely certain if that were because he did or because he wanted to. 

I can't see spirits.  Truth to tell, he wasn't certain if that were a surprise or not.  There wasn't a great deal that he couldn't do it he put his mind to it, but it seemed just thinking hard about it wasn't good enough. 

He did know one thing for certain - he thoroughly enjoyed seeing Cyber End Dragon's Eternal Evolution strike down his opponents.  Especially on those occasions when someone insisted that they'd built their deck specifically to counter his and they would break his flawless winning streak - and he'd really heard that more than he'd ever wanted to.  So far no one had been able to do that, and he didn't expect it to happen any time soon.  Perhaps once he got into the Pro Leagues.  There was always the chance he'd be set against DD, and he anticipated that.  Anyone who wanted to be the Pro League Champion would face DD sooner or later.  And sooner or later, someone would defeat him.  Ryou saw no reason that person couldn't be him.

Another year had to pass before then, however, at the least.  More than that, if he wanted to be truly accurate.  One last year of school and whoever knew how long after that until he earned his way high enough into the Pros.  Even for him that could take a while.

But for now, Ryou didn't have much to worry about.  His final year at Duel Academia wouldn't start for another two weeks and he'd finished all of the extra assignments that he'd requested.  He didn't really feel like going out for any extra dueling - and truth to tell, he missed Fubuki and Yuusuke a little too much today to duel.  Moods like this came on him now and then, and he expected it to be gone by morning.

So until then, he sorted through his deck, his fingers brushing across Cyber End Dragon's card as he did.  It tingled in that moment, and Ryou lifted it up to regard it thoughtfully.

Had he really heard something more than the usual cry when he'd last fought an opponent?  It had felt as if he had, if only a little.  Perhaps his Duel Disk needed to be checked over.  He'd used it regularly for over two years now.  Of course he oiled it on a regular basis and made sure that all of the parts worked, but there were parts that needed an expert's touch.  He could check into that before returning to Duel Academia.

That didn't change the fact that even as he touched the card now, he could feel something tingle inside, and the faintest of echoes of that cry sounded in the back of his mind.  He'd heard that cry often enough to know it whenever it sounded, no matter how faint the thread of the cry might be.  He stared at it thoughtfully.

"Are you trying to tell me something?"  He wondered aloud.  There wasn't any answer, at least not in any way he could be certain of.  Perhaps the card warmed some?  But it was a pleasant warm evening and he wasn't going to rule out the thought it had only been because of that.

He gathered up his cards, tucking Cyber End Dragon back with his other Fusion cards.  Whatever he felt might have been only the product of a little bit of heat, but he could be certain of one thing - he wanted to duel now.  And he knew for a fact that Cyber End Dragon wanted to duel as well. 

And if he heard an extra dimension of life when Cyber End Dragon's Eternal Evolution blasted forth, then that wasn't such a bad thing.  He and the crown jewel of his deck had dueled side by side for years and if he couldn't figure out when his deck wanted to duel and answer that demand, then he'd be a poor duelist indeed.

And regardless, he did enjoy spending time with Cyber End Dragon, and there wasn't any better time than time spent dueling.

The En

Notes: One day I might write something where Ryou can communicate with spirits and actually has a meaningful conversation with Cyber End Dragon and all the other spirits of his deck.

#fanfic #higuchimon writes #ygo gx #gxrarepairsweek #marufuji ryou #cyber end dragon #ryou x ced #ced x ryou

[thecandywrites]

Micro-mermaid Chenera Part 3 Finally

Last and final part. Short and sweet. This was fun. I should do another series for Mermay 2022. Again, sorry Mermay 2021 I was late, by like, two months. But hey, better late than never? Hope you enjoyed reading this. I should have named this series, Against All Odds but it didn't occur to me until I was proofreading this last part. Oh well. Enjoy.

Micro-Mermaids

Chenera

Part 3

A few days later, you were all at the subadult stage to set your permanent adult colors as your parents seemed eager to get rid of their current brood so they could have some peace and quiet and start a new brooding season as Ethel scooped all of you up and put you into the colors tank with the other chameleon beta micros and it was almost instantaneous that your siblings began changing and morphing while pairing up with others from the other pairs and there was something in the water that seemed to accellerate the maturation process as you could feel yourself already start to form eggs within your abdomen as the males were already fighting for the attention of your sisters as your brothers could have any pick of any other female in the tank. Their fancy and flashy colors and bountiful fins were impressive but in your mind and heart, they were no match for Nona.

So here you sat, on the only part of the tank with black obsidian rocks, looking bittersweetly at your tail that still had Nona’s pattern on it and still missing him, and having no desire to ‘pair up’ with any of the others.

“Hey, you need to pair up.” Your sister Dina insisted as she took a break from her many suitors who were trying to playfully chase her around the tank.

“I am not attracted to any of the others.” You argued as you refused to move or even look at any other.

“Chenera, listen to me, if you don’t find a mate in this tank right here right now, you’ll be left as a single, and be sold as a single and put into a single’s tank where you stand a very slim chance of finding an equally attractive mate. And even if you don’t find a mate there, there are other breeders who specifically look for single females just to put them into harems, where you’ll be forced to mate with their males, who may be far more aggressive and mean and cruel than the ones from Ethel’s tanks who have been bred to treat the females with tender loving care. And you’ll have to compete with the other females just to be laid with, and you’ll raise your clutches all alone and your life span will be half of what it can be with a mated pair like this. I know you miss Nona, but he is a guppy micro, you’re a betta micro, a gold chameleon one at that. Your worth far exceeds his and there is no hope of ever meeting him again, let alone ever breeding with him. Betta micros can be two to three times the size of guppies and interbreeding among the different kinds never works, it's been tried and it usually ends in failures. Follow his own advice and let him go completely. If you wish to be all black, then so be it. But keeping this guppy pattern will only hurt your worth and keep the other males away, they're allready calling you "guppy girl" do you really want to be known as that for the rest of your life? You have to know that you're better than that! You have been through more than they could ever dream of, you may be smaller than the rest of us but you're stronger than any and all of us, you're a warrior, you beat up a dwarf gourami for crying out loud! You could bank on that and get that big red male over there instead of moping on this black rock at the bottom. It's either this or the harems by other breeders who would scoup you up in a heartbeat because you're different, but not in a good way. Do you want to die so quickly and so horribly?” She pressed anxiously.

You looked at her and just felt pity for her before you looked out over the tank of other potential mates, and while they did look strong and handsome, they were still no match for Nona in your heart and you just curled in on yourself, hugging your tail that still had Nona’s pattern on it, it was a sorry excuse for the real Nona but it was all you had before you found a cave and hid yourself away in it and dismissed every male that tried to approach, even getting aggressive towards the more insistant ones before all the males bonded to the others instead, leaving you alone completely.

The next day Ethel came back and happily scooped up the different pairs into separate bags for the shop as she counted up how many pairs she had before she noticed there were still a few unmated girls in the tank since these clutches were a bit girl heavy because the ratios were never perfectly equal, which was a good thing because the last batch of betta micros were boy heavy and the boys were getting a little too eager to mate up with a betta woman.

“Ok, all the others into the net now, I’ll put in with the single female tank.” Ethel said before you finally left your cave and swam into the net with the other females and into its own bag before you simply sat at the bottom of the bag, feeling the water shift with the motion of the car as Ethel drove you and your siblings and their mated pairs to the shop before she dumped the mated pairs into their own little tanks as the pairs eagerly hid away in the caves to start the mating process after their first meal in their new enclosures before you were dumped into another larger tank and there was only a pane of glass with several holes that separated the females from the males who were all waiting by the holes to see the new girls that didn’t get into mated pairs as the other girls eagerly swam around to the different holes to meet the guys who were a few to several cycles older than they were but who were desperate and eager to find a mate.

But one look at them and none of them were anything close to Nona, so you ignored their calls out to you as you found a cave-like hide and began digging under it, moving the sand and gravel out of your way to make a crevice like cave under the hide before you got to work, taking your long gold hair and putting it into a bun to collect and tear up bits of foliage to line your new cave with, just like how you used to with Nona and by the time you were done, Ethel came back by and noticed the new pairs and eagerly scooped them up and put them into their new enclosures as you settled into your new cave under the hide as your eggs began to mature, waiting to be fertilized but you kept them inside you and simply re-absorbed them. If Nona himself was not going to fertilize your eggs, you were never going to lay any as you fought with your own instincts to pair up and mate as you stared determinedly at Nona’s pattern on your tail.

Meanwhile on the other side where a line of guppy micro tanks were, Nona was doing the same exact thing, he had been here for over a week, and had dodged and ditched every attempt every female who tried to mate with him, even though his own instincts were screaming at him to try to mate with every mature and available female present, but if none of them were you, he was never going to pair up or mate with any other female as he worked on collecting new foliage for his cave under the hide, which was made a little difficult since he had grown into a pretty impressive guppy micro male. He still sorely missed you, and he had vowed he would keep doing this in remembrance of you for as long as he would live and if he could not fertilize your eggs, he would fertilize no one else’s. And he would continue to live his life alone, but committed and faithful to his memory of you. That sounded better than passing on what little good his own personal genetics had to another guppy woman who would only like him for his flashy colors and handsome pattern instead of his personality. That and no other guppy woman, could come close to your beauty.

“So what’s the story with this girl?” Amy asked as she walked by the beta tanks and saw you instantly dive towards your cave under the hide and noticed your unique coloring and pattern.

“Oh that one, that’s Chenera, she’s actually a gold headed chameleon betta micro- her siblings are all the ones you see with the same gold head and gold hair but much prettier colors. But when Ethel’s house was broken into by fairies when she was a youngling, one fairy yanked her out of her tank and tried stealing other younglings from the odds and ends tank when they dropped her into that tank. A betta micro’s instincts are always to hide, so she hid in a little cave under one of the hides in the tank and she ended up growing up in that tank with guppy micros, dwarf gouarmi micros, molly micros and all that, so that’s why she has that guppy pattern to her because chameleons change to their environment but at a certain stage when you put the sub adults into a brightly colored tank filled with semi precious stones and surrounded by those shimmering fabrics, they change themselves into these gorgeous colors. But she never did. So she’s actually on sale, but I don’t think she’ll ever breed for you because she has rejected every single male that’s ever met her, sometimes aggressively so, I think she’d be best as a pet only.” Samantha explained, repeating what Channel had told everyone at work.

“So she’s been through hell, like me, I’ll take her.” Amy said before she went around the store and bought everything she could for the perfect micro beta tank and all the foods and things she would need, including some guppy flakes because if you had grown up eating some micro fish flakes, you’d probably like to have them supplement your diet and it would be comforting to you as Samantha put a “sold” marker on the tank with your name and description on it and once Amy’s tank had been set up and stabilized, Amy came back and took you to your new home a week later.

The whole way though, you cried because you feared your sister’s words were about to come true but once your bag was put into the water and you looked around the new tank, you didn’t see any other micros in the tank and you didn't smell any other either as you looked from the tank to your new owner in confusion and once she tilted the bag so that you could swim out, you called out to see if any others were in the tank but were hiding before you tentatively explored the tank, discovering it before you realized- you were alone. You were not going to be forced to breed after all which was a big relief for you.

Granted it was going to be a lonely life but you were no stranger to solitude at this point. This tank was perfect. It was larger than your parent’s tank, it had been previously used, it wasn’t a brand new tank either, but it had been salvaged and refurbished and most of the plants had clearly come from some kind of sale since most of them had damaged leaves or broken stalks but in the new environment, they were regrowing and thriving with the proper care now, it had a surprising variety of foliage and mosses and little snails to eat up algae, mostly sand at the bottom, really soft sand too and a few spots of brightly colored gravel and several patches of moss you could lay in and soak up the rays from the lights. It had multiple caves and hides of all sizes and even a really nice amethyst geode, which is what Amy could afford, after she spent what she had on everything else since you had been on sale for such a steep discount and Samantha had given her everything else for practically a song because Amy was “rescuing” you and Samantha got to unload the less “pretty and perfect” items in the shop to help set up Amy’s tank because from a business perspective, you were kind of a “lost cause” but that didn’t mean your story was any less compelling, especially to Amy who was a self proclaimed bleeding heart.

But for Amy, she was used to rescuing those who needed rescuing as she had her fair share of three legged animals or one eyed animals or birds who had plucked out most of their feathers and were now sporting little “sweaters” and micro- mermaids now completed her menagerie.

And with a peaceful heart you realized the special geode that your new owner had bought for you and the way it had been placed in the sand that there was already a very soft cave under the geode, already prepared for you that you didn’t necessarily need to line with foliage to keep comfortable, but you couldn’t help yourself, you still lined it with moss and other soft foliage to make it perfect as Amy took pictures of you and your pattern in your new home as she fed you the special food she had bought you as you happily munched down before she took a chance and fed you guppy flakes as well as you let go of your beta food to grab them as you ate those reverently, remembering how you used to eat those with Nona, having missed the colorful and flavorful flakes more than you had thought you would.

After a couple days and you seemed to settle in quite nicely, not hiding in the cave at all, still preferring to sleep in it though, actually spending your days exploring every inch of the tank and discovering all the fun things about it and enjoying all the enrichment it had been filled with and laying in the soft moss and taking naps, braiding your own hair so it wouldn't tangle, making your new space wholly yours as you rearranged it a little to suit your liking and improving the flow of water and functionality before Amy returned to the store and asked to speak with everyone involved with you and your story before she got a hold of Channel.

“So you’re the one who found Chenera in the odds and ends tank?” Amy asked her.

“Yup, it was quite something…” Channel explained before she repeated the story and remembered the key part, how there was a guppy male that you kept holding onto and kept trying to hide and protect and how once you got into the net, you had camouflaged yourself to his pattern but how you kept that pattern once you were taken out of that tank.

“Can you show me where the male guppy male micro is? Did you sell him already?” Amy asked.

“No we haven’t, he won’t pair up and he hides in caves he makes under the hides themselves, and he keeps lining bits of foliage in them, he’s actually right over here.” Channel said as she led the way over to where his tank was before she got the flashlight on her phone and shined the light into the little cave as he tried to hide from the light but Amy recognized his tail pattern as the same pattern on you.

“He’s actually on sale as a pet only because he refuses to pair up and mate with anything and forcing micros to mate can send them into a depression and they can die prematurely.” Channel explained.

“I’ll take him. I already have the perfect set up for him.” Amy insisted as she showed Channel the tank before you had moved into it as Channel had the hardest time catching Nona and putting him in a bag for Amy.

Amy bought “baby bits” and put them in the bag with Nona who starred reproachfully at the baby food. He had been bought and was going to be forced to mate with a guppy and produce hatchlings despite his best efforts. He was hoping he would have avoided this but it seemed that there was no way for him to keep avoiding it now as Amy happily bought him and brought him home and put his bag into the tank.

When you heard the lid open you came out of your cave from putting new foliage in it but stopped and hid away again when you saw a bag with another micro in the bag as once again, your fear and anxiety that your new owner had bought you a mate and was going to expect you to mate with whatever she bought as you tied your hair up and armed yourself. You’d rather die a virgin than be forced to mate with any other.

Meanwhile Nona stared out into the empty tank in relief that there were no other guppy micro women already at the bag, ready to pounce on him the moment he would be let loose, he’d rather die a bachelor than be forced to mate with another and once the water had been acclimated Amy let Nona go and sat in front of the tank with baited breath as Nona hesitantly began exploring before she saw him call out.

You stiffened in your cave at the sound of a male’s voice as you got a whiff of the water that he had come from that had been in his tank, it smelled foreign but you could smell a male in the water as once again, your body reminded that you had new eggs that were now moments away from being mature and ready to be fertilized as you fought with your instincts once again.

His voice was deeper and much more mature than most others you had heard before as you stayed in your cave, ready to attack if he came near you.

Nona could smell a female in the water though, but it wasn’t quite like anything he had smelled before, it smelled good actually as his own body reacted to it, as his body’s instincts were screaming at him that it was time to find this female and fertilize her eggs that were already at the proper stage to be fertilized. But even though he could smell this female, there was no sign of her as Nona carefully and hesitantly inspected the tank, looking for her and calling out to see if anyone else was there before he followed his nose and found the little cave under the geode hide and slowly approached the mouth of the cave but once he was about to climb in to see if it was occupided, he saw you and froze as you did the same, letting the two pieces of gravel fall from your hands as you pulled yourself towards him and stared in disbelief at a very grown up Nona as he stared at you in the same way, in awed wonder, you had grown and matured and while he could still recognize you, you were even more beautiful now all grown up and mature.

“Chenera?” He breathed.

“Nona?” You asked, almost afraid to believe your eyes.

“Yeah, it’s me, Nona, wow you’ve...oof.” Nona began before you quickly left the cave and tackled him to the floor rolling with him in the soft sand and holding him and kissing him all over his face as he did the same as you were both laughing and crying at being reunited as Amy recorded it and cheered before you and Nona disappeared into the little cave under the geode to continue with your reunion.

“I thought I would never see you again.” You cried happily as you hugged him tight, his now adult size and pattern still of some resemblance of his sub adult pattern that you had copied onto yourself but he had gotten better with age.

“Me either.” He confessed as he happily kissed you all over and held you just as tightly, his heart feeling like it was going to burst with happiness as he recognized his own subadult pattern on you, that you had kept for all this time. He felt that you would have changed like all the others he had seen in their little dishes as other buyers had bought them in pairs along with their clutches of eggs in other geodes and carried them throughout the store, their gold heads and gorgeous colors and impressive sizes still eye catching but his heart hurt too much to see if any of them had been you.

Finally, after what felt like eons of time, you were back together and in a similar place where you had first met, in a cave, under a hide, but this time, under a wonderful geode of your own. And while you were still a little bigger than him, but still smaller than the rest of your family, he was used to the size difference of the females being bigger than the males and while you had gotten used to seeing males with fins twice as big as yours, somehow, Nona’s fins were just to your liking because of who they were attached to.

“Please, I have eggs already, I can feel them and I don’t want to keep reabsorbing them, fertilize them, please.” You pleaded between heated kisses and that was all the permission Nona needed before his cock speared your entrance and he began to make love to you in your little cave curling around you and holding you and caressing you and rutting you so vigorously into the sand underneath you as you found your sexual release and Nona did as you asked and fertilized every available egg in your egg sack, your abdomen getting even larger from the fullness of them before you led him to the geode and together you placed each one, carefully into its socket surrounded by facets of amethyst.

“So this is how beta micro’s lay their eggs, in geodes.” Nona noted as he helped catch each one and put it into its place, already seeing signs that they were fertilized and that the fertilization had taken successfully. Never been brave enough to even dream that this was possible.

“Yes.” You giggled as you did the same. Since it was your first, official clutch. It was rather small, but oh so precious as Amy was once again, outside the tank with her phone, recording it.

“Well, fingers crossed, and they can hatch.” She smiled happily, happy to see such a star crossed lover’s pair be reunited and mate and already get to laying clutches in just a matter of moments.

Over the next several weeks, Nona and yourself took turns waving fresh oxygenated water over the eggs, watching as the little micro-merbabies grow and develop. Feeding each other and even when you had no other eggs to lay, continuing to mate for the fun of it as well as to bond even closer all over your new home as you eagerly awaited for the clutch to hatch.

Then one day, just as the shells of the eggs grew super thin and soft- the babies began to squirm and hatch into your waiting hands as well as Nona’s as you instinctively gave them their first milk and brought them up to the surface so they could get a gulp of air for their swim bladders before touching your head to theirs, the gold transferring to their heads and hair as well as you could already see that the middle of their tails had the same guppy pattern that their father had but otherwise were the perfect mix of you and him as you named each and every one as you helped them eat their first meal, “the baby bits” and after they ate one baby bit, they caught another before Amy put in some baby guppy flakes for them as they all caught the flakes with their other hand and began to congregate in one of the many super soft sand pits, each one with a baby bit in one hand and a flake in the other, taking a bite out of both as you and Nona continued to repeat the process until all of the eggs hatched successfully as the shells dissintergrated in the water completely, before you happily gathered your little family in the pit and began your new lives as parents, and living long, happy lives together. Raising a new breed of micros- betta-guppy micros.

#Mermay #Mermay 2021 #Again #sorry this is so late #But better late than never #slight lemon #little bit of mermaid smut #tasteful amount #Mermaids #Micro mermaids #Micro-mermaids #exo #exophillia #thanks for reading!

[walkwithheroes84]

Lucifer: Season 5, Part 1 Thoughts

Part 1 of Season 5 of Lucifer came out on Netflix on August 21. And you bet your bottom dollar that I binged all 8 episodes. I stayed up until 2 am on August 22, but it was worth it. I’m not sure if the cast, crew, writers, and producers went into this season thinking it was their last (It’s not, Part 2 of Season 5 is rumored to be out in February of 2021, with the final season, Season 6, rumored to be released in early-mid 2022.) or what, but they really brought their A game for the first 8 episodes of the season.

What follows are some random thoughts I have on the season. Yes, there may be spoilers!

- I really like that the last couple of seasons have explored  the supporting cast more. Maze, Ella, Linda, Dan - they are being fleshed out a lot and I am living for it. 

- Seeing more of Linda’s backstory was great. And, I liked the way it tied into Maze’s own feelings regarding Lilith and abandonment. I am here for Linda x Maze, may that be a deep friendship or something more. I always love them together.  

- Speaking of Maze - it is getting repetitive to see her be pissed at Lucifer (who really needs to step up and see that she is her own demon with thoughts and feelings.) or being down on herself for not being able to make solid connections. Maze, you have connections: You have a best friend in Linda, friends in Chloe, Ella,  Amenadiel, Trixie, Charlie. These people are your found family! They love you, Maze. But, Maze has to learn to love herself. Stop betraying them because she’s upset. All that said, Lesley-Ann Brandt always brings her A-game. 

- I didn’t care for Lilith. I get what she was trying to do and that, in the end, she wanted mortally and love, but even she couldn’t find it. But, she abandoned her children. :( I’m thinking her ring will play a key role down the road: either to give Maze mortally/a soul, give Eve immortally (so she and Maze can be together?), make Lucifer human, save Chloe, something! That ring is coming back into play.

-Amenadiel worrying about being a good father to baby Charlie. It was really cute, as is his friendship with Dan. The scenes with Dan, Amenadiel, Lucifer, and Jed trying to calm the baby were comedy gold. I also really loved seeing Amedadiel working a case with Chloe. He’s just grown so much as a character during the last five seasons and I’m here for it. 

- Dan finding out about Lucifer was a bit of a surprise. Poor guy. He’s been lost since Charlotte’s death and all this new age stuff seems to be his way of trying to find meaning in his life. And, now he has to deal with the fact that EVERYTHING is real and his ex-wife/friend is in love with the actual Devil. And, he has this great fear that he’ll go to Hell, because of all he’s done - and knowing the Devil is real - of course that is going to mess with his mind! And, Michael - playing on fears - knew just want to do with that. I’m interested to see where Dan goes during Part 2 of the season. 

-I felt so bad for Ella. She decided that she wasn’t going to go for the “bad boys” and that she was going to look for a nice, normal man for a normal romance and what does she find? A freaking serial killer! Who was using her and planning to kill her! Like, Ella, girl, take a break from dating for a while. She either dates men with no futures, serial killers, or Dan.

- I have to give it up to Tom Ellis in his portrayal of Micheal. So twisted and cowardly and yet weirdly I get it? From what the show has told us or implied - before his fall, Lucifer was one of their parents favorites, made Michael miserable, was a favorite of some of the other siblings. I can see a twin becoming jealous and causing issues. It’s interesting that Michael straight out stated he planted the idea of rebellion in Lucifer’s head. Michael planted the idea of causing Eve to sin. Of coming to Los Angeles. I’m wondering how much of it is true and how much was Michael just speaking nonsense. And, what else has Michael planted in Lucifer (or anyone else’s) head? Did he plant Chloe in God/Dad’s head? Did he pretend to be God/Dad and tell Amenadiel to bless the Decker’s with a baby? Oh, the possibilities. 

-While I didn’t love episode 4 (it felt a bit like filler) - it was so good to see  Tricia Helfer, back on the show. I miss Mom and Charlotte. 

-Chloe finding out she was a blessing/gift from God/Dad? I am so thrilled they didn’t get too angsty with it and played it perfectly. Yes, she had every right to be confused and upset. But, thank goodness they didn’t drag that out! The writers really hit a lot of great beats with Chloe this season.

-  I have read that some viewers were annoyed that Chloe was/is worried that Lucifer doesn’t lover her back - when he has shown his love via actions - but, I get it. Lucifer is Lucifer. He self sabotages, he refuses to deal with issues, and he tends to pull away. He become invulnerable - right after it was more or less agreed by everyone that Lucifer chooses to be vulnerable around Chloe because of his love for her. She might be thinking: “Okay, will he get bored? Is this real? Will something else happen that makes him pull away?” Chloe needs to have a solid talk with Lucifer, and it’s a talk that he may not be ready to have. As a show-runner hinted: “You can’t fully be in love with someone until you fully love yourself.” And, we all know that Lucifer is still working on loving himself. 

- I was really proud of Lucifer during the first half of the season. He stayed in Hell to protect Charlie, Chloe, and the world. He only left to deal with Michael and he was smart enough to leave Amendadiel in charge. He was honest with Chloe, he tried (in his own way and to the best of his abilities) to give her space, he bonded with Dan, he got jealous (that was hilarious), he moved forward with Chloe, he tried (again in his own way and to the best of his abilities) to not freak out over losing his “mojo”, he admitted (to others and himself) that he NEEDS Chloe, he found Chloe. He showed some nice growth. He’s by no means a mature and fully realized “person” yet, but it’s clear he is trying. 

- When Dad/God showed up? I had no idea Dennis Haysbert had been cast in the role, so I was so excited. He’s a great choice. I love that he came down from the Silver City to break up a fight between some of his children. His ex walking around Earth? Demons coming to Earth? A half-angel being born? Eve coming down? Cain and Lucifer fighting? Dad/God’s not bothered by that. He’s not coming down for that. But, his children fighting? Yeah, he’s physically and completely coming down to break that stuff up. I’m excited. 

- So, 5A mentioned the Silver City and some of the other angels often. We learned that many of Lucifer and Amenadadiel ‘s siblings are praising Lucifer for going back to Hell to protect Earth. Something which Michael can’t stand. We also learn that Dad/God has locked himself away and that Michael is the only one he speaks to. You guys - I NEED to see some of the other angels or at least hear about them. Maybe even hints of what the Silver City looks like? Uriel may be dead, but Azrael and  Remiel are still in the Silver City. And, the show has mentioned a Castiel, who enjoys music. We’ve also heard about Gabriel and Raphael, who are apparently proud of Lucifer for being mature enough to return to Hell on his own. I’m actually wondering how many children Dad/God and Mom actually had together? So far we have nine angels/children. Did they have hundreds? Thousands? Just those nine? 

- Let’s talk Deckerstar. If you are a fan of Deckerstar, as I am, then you were loving 5A. There was awkwardness, angst, cuteness, sweetness. They were flirty and playful. When they FINALLY had sex? Linda and Ella weren’t the only one celebrating. And, I loved that it really seemed that BOTH Chloe and Lucifer spent 5A trying to be honest and straight forward with one another. They seem to have realized that they’ve wasted too much time and they have to try and be honest with one another, even if it is very hard. 

- Overall, I LOVED Part 1 of Season 5 and CANNOT wait for Part 2. 2021 cannot come soon enough! 

-And, I’m sorry, but Lucifer gifs are lined up in my queue for days to come. 

#Lucifer #lucifer on netflix #Lucifer Morningstar #Chloe Decker #dan espinoza #ella lopez #linda martin #amenadial #mazikeen smith #Deckstar #tom ellis #lauren german #kevin alejandro #d.b. woodside #lesley-ann brandt #rachel harris #aimee garcia #tricia helfer