#gotta start somewhere and it's the first thing chronologically so. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

oraclebabsday · 4 months

Note

um hello!! im very new to comics, but of the characters I’ve seen so far, I really like Barbara and I was just wondering if you had any comic recommendations on where to start..? its very confusing trying to get into it all, but I’d like to be able to hold a conversation about someone I find interesting with my boyfriend so I can hear him info dump on me more cus he’s deep into dc so :)

Hi!!! That is so sweet omg 😭 Welcome to the weird wonderful world of comics!!! and also i’m so sorry for what I’m abt to throw at you lmao

Since you’ve sent this ask into an Oracle-centric blog, I’m gonna keep this rec list Oracle!Babs-centric (& also encourage my fellow mods to add on if they also have some recs!) I actually don’t have a whole lot of recs for Batgirl!Babs anyways, but I’ll be tagging my gen dc blog at the end in case you’d like to talk abt those or any other characters!

Also before I get Into the recs, I wanna give you some words of encouragement: there’s no right or wrong way to read! You’re also likely gonna have some well a lot of confusion at the beginning, esp bc there will be Events™️ that have ramifications™️ and you’re not always given full context of what’s come before or what’s happening concurrently with what you’re reading. I’ve been doing this for awhile and if I’ve learned anything, it’s that the more that you read & explore, the more fun you’ll have & the more things will usually start to make sense! But it’s all gotta start somewhere first! :D and you’ve def chosen a great character to be your launching point!

Im gonna be hopping around a bit in my recs here but I’ll try to keep it mostly in chronological order. That said, first up:

Suicide Squad (1987) - she appeared semi-regularly starting in #23! This was also her debut as Oracle! I really enjoyed the overall run & would normally highly recommend it, but also want to warn that it’s a pretty heavy read in terms of content itself (canon-typical violence ofc esp for a SuiSq comic, discussions of suicide ideation, period typical stereotyping/‘subversion’ of said stereotypes, but that’s a deeper discussion for a different blog) For that reason, I don’t necessarily recommend it for a first-time reader, esp if you’re wanting to solely focus on Babs. Team books usually aren’t super great when you’re reading for an individual character, in my experience, esp in a case like this where the character isn’t always necessarily part of the team or appears sporadically enough to disrupt the flow of following a storyline.

Birds of Prey (1999) - This team book breaks that prev rule tho, bc Babs is the leader & is in Damn near every issue of this run 😂 There’s several smaller team-ups before the main ‘99 run (BoP:Manhunt, BoP:Wolves, etc), which are also good as a prelude before the main run itself. This will be the longest thing that will give you a LOT to parse through & ymmv with a lot of it. (Dixon & Simone are the most prominent writers for it & without getting Into It they each have their Issues™️ & Crimes™️) It also crosses over with a few events/references others. Imo it’s a good window into what comics are like overall, esp when you get into a longer run with multiple writers at the helm. But it has an added bonus of keeping a pretty small cast at its forefront (for about half the run, it’s solely Babs n Dinah!) It also has a follow-up run in 2010 which is broken up by-

Oracle: The Cure - (technically a 3-issue mini-series but!!!) this one’s a culmination of Oracle & Calculator’s (it’s not rivalry? That can’t be the right word… Uhhh, nemesis-sitch?) from BoP & leads right into bringing Babs back to Gotham in Steph’s Batgirl run as well as the next BoP run I mentioned just a sec ago. It’s what I like to call connective (t)issues lol. Ymmv I think depending on if you’ve read BoP ‘99/TT ‘03 beforehand, but I hadn’t read a lot of TT before reading it at the time, and I enjoyed it a lot!

A couple individual issues I wanna suggest:

Batman Chronicles #5 - Oracle: Year One!!!!! Cannot rec this one enough!!! In lieu of reading Killing Joke (which really only serves Bruce, Joker, Jim Gordon’s characters) read this!!! LICHERALLY her origin in coming into her own as Oracle!!! This one is THE place to start, actually, before you read anything start here 😂

Batman: Gotham Knights #6 - okay, this one is admittedly a self-indulgent rec. Without spoiling the plot, it’s CLASSIC soap-opera level shit. The TENSION at play & the layers of Bruce & Babs dynamic, the messiness of the batfam!!! 👌 *chefs kiss* GK as a run in general too was a LOT of fun for me & Babs is a pretty prominent player in much of it, but this issue rlly takes the cake for me ngl

And to tie it all together for an extra couple of Important Event recs that you’ll run into esp if you pick up BoP first:

Batman: No Man’s Land - okay, this event was a Behemoth. It’s a LOT to read, but it is REALLY good imo as a launching point for where Bat-comics were at the start of the millennium. Babs takes the narrative role SO many times throughout & she rlly comes into her own by becoming a linchpin for the info system she builds for the batfam. Again, I don’t wanna discourage you when I say it’s a Long read, bc it’s well worth it imo, but also 100% okay to skip when you’re just starting out! It’s a big time sink!

Batman: Officer Down - okay put away the meme forJUST A SEC, our old friend Jim Gordon’s been shot & it’s up to Batma- oh wait bruce sulks by Jim’s bedside while Babs rallies the troops and GETS SHIT DONE to find who shot her dad? INTERESTING 🧐 In all seriousness tho, & compared to NML, this is a much easier bite-sized event that can give you a taste of what Event/crossoverComics™️ are generally like 👍

Bruce Wayne: Murderer?/Fugitive - okay so, take that same energy of the batfam having to Put In The Work to help Bruce out & flip it around bc now Bruce is the Main Suspect. The drama, the Intrigue™️. Pretty much everyone in the fam gets a moment to shine & this is def peak of how Babs fits into the fam during this era. This one runs a bit on the longer side & babs is again, more of a support role here, but god damn I loved it a lot!

I feel like I’m obligated to at least Mention Batman: War Games, mostly to note that it finally shakes the foundation of Oracle being the batfam’s main support (her CLOCKTOWER gets nerfed in this event 😭) If you read all of BoP and skip over this event & then are confused abt why Babs is suddenly being ejected from Gotham, just remember that her clocktower gets blown up, Steph dies, Bruce n Babs have a falling out & that’s basically why Babs starts flying around the country & settles in Metropolis for a bit instead of going back to Gotham. I reread this event at least once a year bc it gave me brainworms, I can not in good conscience recommend it to anyone bc no one understands her (War Games) like i do 💕 Godspeed if you decide to read it o7

Other recs/mentions:

Batgirl (2000) - okay if you end up reading NML, you’ll be introduced to Cass in it, & this run picks up with her. Babs is in it a LOT at the beginning as supporting cast to Cass (up to War Games ofc, but I won’t say much more abt that lol) I’m ngl, when I was trying to get more into comics, this run was what HOOKED me

Batgirl (2009) - so in a similar vein, Babs also features as a support for Steph too in her batgirl run. It’s… different from Cass’ run, but I also rlly love this one too. And also am forever bitter that the Batgirls run didn’t realize their potential BUT WE’RE NOT GETTING INTO THAT HERE.

Gonna mention Batman: Gotham Knights one more time bc again, while Babs isn’t a main focus, I think it’s rlly good at tying the batfam together during that era & giving a reader glimpses into other characters/dynamics. I think I got more out of it after I had read a few other runs from this time period (namely Robin, Azrael & some prominent stuff with Huntress), but can also see it as a potential launching point for new readers too 👍 if you wanna get more into the batfam/Batman but are intimidated by the Big Runs, this can potentially be a good bridge!

Gonna rapid fire mention that Babs as Oracle has a lot of appearances in Robin (93), Nightwing (96), JLA (96), Azrael (95) and obvsly Batman/Detective Comics from the 90s into 00s. I’ve read a few of these runs, and ymmv depending on how attached you may get to certain characters. But that’s what comics is all about! Getting attached and exploring other characters n teams n stuff!

A Gen note that I wanna end on: I wasn’t exaggerating when I said earlier abt how the more you read the more you’ll have fun. I can’t even begin to count the number of times that I’ve read something from a 90s/00s comic & was essentially jumpscared by a sudden Oracle cameo that I wasn’t expecting! She pops up in so many things throughout the universe at the time!!! She was THE info broker for all the supers!!! It makes me so insane that DC threw that all away to magi-cure her and demote her back to batgirl when she had grown so much 😭

anyways I hope you have fun!!! And again if you’re ever looking for other recs my more Gen dc blog is @dyketectivecomics! If my fellow mods or anyone else have some recs to add or to dispute haha, I’ll be tagging this so others can see/rb/reply to add their recs too 👍

Okay! \o/ that’s all I got for now! Happy reading anon!!!!

#barbara gordon #oracle #oracle day #birds of prey #reading rec #~randy #added a cut bc length 👍 and to add a warning that this isn’t just a list #I wanted to include some commentary bc having a reading list is good sometimes #but also having a Guide™️ is what I’m ultimately aiming for when I’m curating my lists now in 2024 #esp bc I’m gonna be revamping the duke list soon but THATS a convo for the duke blog 😂#okay enough tag rambles. I hope this helps anon! sorry it took a Hot Sec!#you sent this right as the holidays were swinging at me full force 😭

13 notes · View notes

valkyrie-of-the-rising-sun · 1 month

Note

Giving you full reigns to ramble about ur rejuv au :3

Hey R!!! :0

So for your ask, I'll talk about what's changed since the rejuv 13.5 update. I know I said that I wasn't planning on retconning stuff for the chroniclerverse with v13.5 update but... it's honestly just so good that I have to retcon the new lore into it. I will regret it for the rest of my life if I didn't.

Now the chroniclerverse has a time loop, separated into major and minor cycles. Major cycles is comparable to the game's version updates, and including 13.5 there are a total of fourteen major cycles so far. Minor cycles are like when we start a new game to make a different set of choices, and this one we have no way of keeping count because there's just too many of it. After the disastrous end of the thirteenth cycle, Hauyne gained some control over the time passage of the minor cycles, allowing her to turn back short periods of time at the cost of her stamina. As of the end of .karma files (paragon), she can reverse time back a week at most for three times before collapsing from exhaustion.

Hauyne also has some retcons in design, now including the scars on her left eye (her backstory was revised too) and her physical age has now increased from 16 to 19. She still has the 16 year old look during the thirteenth cycle (aka the first versions of her design that you all are familiar with) because of some things going wrong when Crescent resurrected her into the Black Box vessel, causing her to regress physically in order to conserve her strength. This problem is not present in the fourteenth run, so she was able to regain her original appearance as a young adult instead of the child-like appearance she has as a 16 year old.

Not only that, Hauyne used to have hosts in the previous runs up to the thirteenth, which is when she had enough strength to retain a body of her own instead of having to borrow her deceased classmate's. The first two runs, she had Aevis as a host, then Aevia for the third and fourth, followed by Axel in the fifth and sixth, Ariana in the seventh and eighth, Aero for the ninth and tenth, and finally Alain for the eleventh and twelfth cycles. Only in the thirteenth cycle did she have enough influence on the world for her to keep her own body instead of possessing someone else's. It gets wacky since she also inadvertently inherits the memories of her hosts, which also stacks up with her own extensive memories considering her chronological age is currently somewhere in the 650s if you include the time gap between Storm-9 and the events of rejuv.

Aaaand... in the fourteenth cycle, Crescent is a Cresselia. I know people are going to kill me for this, especially with her backstory reveal in .karma files paragon, but honestly there's a reason why I made Hauyne's story into an AU and not a canon rewrite/divergence.

Also, there's way more lore about the aura wielders now, and I'm hoping to explore that side of the AU with sleepy in rp sometime soon. Gotta love a cousin bonding session where they re-discover their ancestral roots sjdkfhksjfhkdsf

#ask answers #tysm for the ask!#hi r! ik it's been too long since we last chatted about fangame stuff but i'd be down to catch up in discord if you're fine with it :D #i see you have a lot of new ocs and i really want to hear about them more :)

4 notes · View notes

recurring-polynya · 1 year

Text

Writing/Art Update 3/14/2023

So. The fanfic.

Man, when I started writing fanfic, I would just think up a story and write it, no plan, only write. It was fun. I think most people write fanfic this way. Anyway, I don't know if my brain broke, or if I just used up all my good material, or what, but the more fanfic I wrote, the more work it takes. I am now a regular outliner, even though I hate it. Anyway, I have reached a new level of Using Things I Learned in English class, in the sense that I think I'm going to actually make a second (third?) draft.

I hate this for me.

Anyway, the upshot is that I've got, like, 90% of the scenes written. There are still 4 that need endings (including the final one), and I think I might need a few more scenes, but I'm not sure exactly what they should be. I have some notes for what they might be. I realized while writing this that the penultimate scene/chapter of a fanfic is often the most important one, and I'm not happy with the one I have, so I gotta figure that out.

In any case, though, the problem I have at the moment is that, partially as a consequence of writing this thing one sentence at a time, is that it's not necessarily coherent. The first thing I need to do is actually read it, top to bottom. Some of the scenes need to get moved around chronologically (I knew this when I wrote them). I need to figure out if this thing has any sort of trajectory or arc to it. If I can do that, I think it will help me figure out what scenes I still need, and how to end the ones I need to end. I am mildly embarrassed, but I think I am going to start yet another doc for this, but maybe if I call it a "draft", it won't be so bad.

I feel like once I get to the other side of this process, I'll have the end in sight and I'll feel a lot better about this thing, but it's very intimidating at the moment. Among the worst writing feelings I have is "there is something wrong with this story and I don't know how to fix it" and I know I have to pass through that valley.

Weekly numbers: Current word count is 15,457 (which includes a few hundred trash words). I guess I didn't write down my exact word count last week, but that somewhere on the order of +2000-2400. I guess that also includes some that were pasted over from the original doc. It doesn't really matter, a lot of those words were hard fought, and I feel okay about the amount of effort I put in this week, especially considering I had other stuff going on. I also wrote 500 words on the spicy fanfic.

I said I was going to draw this week and I didn't do a lot, but I did do a couple of Mike Mignola skull studies. Little P said these were "some cool skulls, Mom", which was nice, since she hated my Menos ("I don't like the hands. I don't like the witch nose. I don't like them.") Anyway, a lot of improvement between sketch 1 and sketch 2 and I finally found an excuse to use my "photocopy error" brushes. Gonna try to do a few more of these, maybe even see if I can manage to do an actual drawing in this style.

Hrrrnnnngggh, did I promise you a preview this week? This would be easier if I had already read the fanfic, the thing I have been dreading.

UGH, brb.

Okay, I'm back, I found one that'll do. If you missed it last week, this story is about the time Rukia and Renji spent at the District 70 Consolidated Shinigami Recruitment Station, trying to get pre-approval to travel north and take the Shin'ou Entrance Exams. The title is either going to be Go Places or Stay with Me, Go Places, I haven't decided yet. Either way, it's after the New Pornographers song that I listened to incessantly while writing this.

They have each been given a set of practice clothing-- sturdy cotton kimonos and hakama. Even though she’s wearing the smallest set Mr. Mochida had, Rukia’s hakama are pulled up under her armpits and still drag on the ground. This is somewhat humiliating.

Renji, on the other hand, looks perfect in his, like whoever invented hakama did so with him in mind. Furthermore, he’s holding an actual wooden practice sword like he died with one in his hands. Renji has been habitually picking up sticks and swinging them around the entire time she’s known him. It is obvious to Rukia that he belongs here, that he was meant for this. His face looks like all his dreams have finally come true.

Mr. Mochida holds his own sword expertly and calmly. “Go ahead,” he says, patiently.

Renji runs at him swinging.

Mr. Mochida blocks the blow, pushing Renji off to one side. He shakes out his sword arm. “Good. Again.”

Renji has no skill at swords, but he has a lot of enthusiasm, and he has a lot of strength. Mr. Mochida doesn’t seem to have even broken a sweat by the time Renji is panting and exhausted, but he claps her friend on the shoulder and tells him he has a lot of talent.

Don’t tell him that! Rukia wants to scream. He’ll be unbearable!

“You’re next, Miss Rukia.”

Renji comes to take her place on the sidelines as Rukia takes up her own sword. It’s puny compared to the one Renji carries, and it’s still too long for her.

“You can do it,” he tells her. “You just have to push part of yourself into the sword, make it stronger.”

She nods, as if that makes any damn sense.

Rukia tries to imitate Mr. Mochida’s stance, knees slightly bent. She contemplates the weapon in her hands. It’s not a rock or a shard of glass or even a shiv. It’s just for practice, but it’s the size and shape of a weapon and you can certainly hurt someone with it. You and me, Rukia thinks at the sword. We can do some damage, you and me.

Push part of yourself into the sword. Maybe that’s not such nonsense after all.

She charges.

#writing update #art update

20 notes · View notes

insecateur · 2 years

Note

Ok I heard you say somewhere you also like professor birch so i'm very curious to ask your opinion on the mainline pokemon profs

Also damn you, you are lowkey making me want to practice my french again

yes!! birch is my favorite pokémon prof actually :^) i haven't drawn him in so long i would like to draw him again at some point... and maybe write something about him also...

i'm so sorry that i'm inspiring you to get back into the cursed hell language that is french. i'm (somehow) picking up writing in french again and remembering all of our nightmare tenses is filling me with dread

opinions on mainline pokémon profs (chronological order)

putting it under a cut just so it's not too annoying LMAO

oak: i like him a lot!! i love that he has such a stocky build... he's so THICK in pokémas it's so funny. he's the OG obviously so you gotta respect that but i do just like him in general.

elm: he was actually my favorite pokémon prof as a kid... i loved him in the anime, there was something about him being so tsundere about oak lmao. i like that he is a nerd and i like that his area of expertise is pokémon eggs, i think it's cute!

birch: MY BELOVED... i think birch needs more love... he is My Type. (beard. kind of a mess.) i find the way he seems to get attacked by wild pokémons a lot very moe. my headcanon is that he was apprentice pokémon prof alongside sycamore and maybe... they had a thing together... (i would like to write about it someday perhaps...)

rowan: oji-san... i like his mustache... obviously he's augustine's mentor so i like him. if i were learning to become a pokémon prof under prof rowan i would simply have a crush on him... it's inevitable... also i like that he's very outwardly stern and serious which contrasts with the previous profs who are more chill.

juniper: my gen5 knowledge is lacking bc it's the region that interests me the least but i do like her! her area is interesting and i like that her dad is also a pokémon prof. i remember liking her when i played bw (did not play b2w2 sadly)

sycamore: nasty man. never seen this guy in my life. would not trust him ever. j/k I WAS VERY NEGATIVE ABOUT HIM AT FIRST... he kind of checks all the cliché french guy boxes which annoyed me at the time LOL but obviously i have Come Around. i like the subtleties of his personality! i wish he had played a bigger role in the games tbh

kukui: my second favorite... i drew SO MUCH art of him when sumo was first announced. i like that he is basically the chillest guy but also very dedicated to what he's passionate about, which funnily enough is opposite to what sycamore is into (i.e. battling) HIM LIKE... letting pokémons use their moves on him to study them. absolute chad. also he's hot

magnolia: i'm so sad she's basically a non-entity in the games lol we finally got a new female prof and... well. i know it's because she's basically About To Let Sonia Take Over The Mantle but it makes me sad... i feel like pokémon has a bunch of older ladies and i wish they could get bigger roles!

sonia: idk if she counts??? she's listed as a mainline prof on the bulbapedia page so i'll say she counts. i like her! i actually really liked the whole storyline where hop realizes he wants to become a pokémon prof and he starts studying under her etc... it was very sweet. also i like her design. her 6* EX in pokémas looks gooood

laventon: I LOVE LAVENTON SO MUCHHHH HE'S SOOO CUTE i love his bobble hat... i love his fashion sense... legitimately one of my favorite PLA characters i've been meaning to draw him for ages and still haven't because my brain is too busy rotating the two same french men over and over

cannot really say much about the new profs for the next gen because we don't know anything about them LOL i love the past/future theming though. they are both hot and i appreciate that. i like that turo is wearing a futuristic skin-tight suit—

#la réponse d #idk if this was satisfying anon LMAO it was fun though!#also here's my bonus opinion about prof willow from pogo:#i understand why people are into him bc he's basically an outdoorsy dad type but i wish there was more to him than that tbh

14 notes · View notes

forabeatofadrum · 1 year

Note

You know what fuck it actually, answer all the writers asks that you haven’t already answered yet PLUS another #25 if you have already answered it bc you can be proud of multiple scenes HAPPY EL WOOWOO WEDNESDAY

I should've seen this coming. I am putting this under the cut because this got long. Again, I should’ve seen this coming.

I’ve already answered 5, 8, 9, 13, 18 and 25.

1) is there a story you’re holding off on writing for some reason?

I MEAN... look at my many, many WIPs. I think the main reason for holding off a fic is because I got stuck, or because I want to prioritise other fics. I’m trying to not take on new projects, but instead focus on older ones (famous last words, probably).

2) what work of yours, if any, are you the most embarrassed about existing?

Anything written pre-2015, unless I have rewritten them (like This Charming Man or the SBL/Glee crossover). That, except for JTWLYT, even rewritten it’s bad. I don’t mind, You gotta start somewhere, right? Because otherwise I don’t really mind any fics. Like, I wrote a Glee/Animal Crossing fic once and it slaps.

3) what order do you write in? front of book to back? chronological? favorite scenes first? something else?

Mostly chronological, but it doesn’t really matter. So yeah I write what I have in my mind. For example with Ljubim te, I of course knew there were going to be 24 chapters since it’s the Advent, so I plotted out a little bit what happens in all chapters and by now each chapter has at least something.

4) favorite character you’ve written

Jack motherfucking Zimmermann, even though I have abandoned my boy and I haven’t written proper Check, Please! fic in all of 2022. I want to finish two Zimbits WIPs this year, though. Maybe the attic vs. roaches debate breaching containment will bring me back to this fandom. Aly, what would you rather have? A person living in your attic, or 1000 roaches living in your attic?

6) something you would go back and change in your writing that it’s too late/complicated to change now

Oh I change things without shame. I do point it out in the author’s note, in case someone notices.

7) when asked, are you embarrassed or enthusiastic to tell people that you write?

This is a difficult question. WAIT NOT ALY THIS IS ME AFTER POSTONG THE ASK I FORGOT TO ANSWER THIS ONE I WILL DO THAT LARER CAUSE I NEED TO GO TP UNI NOW!!

OKAY ALY I AM BACK (and also hello to others!)

So, this is a difficult question because I have the Fear of Being Perceived by people I know IRL. Not necessarily because I think they will judge me, but this is just something I’ve ever had. This is also why I am not going to karaoke night tonight. As a result I do not tell people I write, but not because I am embarrassed. I have just always kept my online and offline lives separately, you know? And this has only grown over the years. I have, like, one person I know IRL follow my personal blog and I created this blog because I do not want him to see my stuff. It’s literally in the bio of this blog. This is also why my name isn’t on here, although I do not mind when people use it in asks or replies. It’s not foolproof, I am aware, but it’s how it is.

But I am also fucking proud of my work and I an enthusiastic. This is why I love ask games like this or communites on Discord. I put a lot of time and effort into my work so of course I love to blabber about it. The person I mentioned above? Yeah, he knows I write fic. But I made him promise to not go look for it. Now I did meet some people who unabashedly talk about what filth they post on AO3. And I told these people I write fic to. But I am always feeling that hesistant feeling. I told them vaguely about Bakery fic and So Much Better, but I am never going to send them the link so if they want to find it, they can, but I will not be the one giving my AO3 away. (Rip. I never kudo their fics either for this reason, cause my AO3 account will pop up).

Aka it is just kind of weird.

10) write in silence or with background noise? with people or alone?

I CAN NEVER WRITE WITH PEOPLE AROUND. This is why, when I visit my parents’ house for the weekend, I write less. I recently told Jenna (@thnxforknowingme, not Ushkowitz) that I am shook that she can write at work. I cannot relate.

I don’t like silence in general. I always have sound on, but it doesn’t really matter what. I am currently listening to The Last Five Years lockdown version, but I also just put on video essays that I have seen before, or gaming music, or YouTuber content. Only when I have a specific song/playlist for a fic, I tend to actively choose what I put on, like the playlist for River fic was on repeat during the writing. And Nothing Matters When We’re Dancing is my song for “damn Baz, you live like this”/Time After Time. That kind of stuff.

11) what aspect of your writing do you think has most improved since you started writing?

Uh. Everything. But I am also not too harsh on myself. I was 13. I am 24 now. And my English has improved. Fun fact, I did not know the difference between make out and break up for a very long time.

OH AND I LEARNED HOW TO DO PROPER PARAGRAPH BREAKS

12) your weaknesses as an author

Movements. Setting. That kind of stuff. When two people are in a scene and talk, I love the dialogue but I am constantly like “oh God, what else is going on in this scene?”

I am writing a scene for Ljubim te with Kurt and Sunil in a restaurant and I am constantly like “DON’T FORGET THEY NEED TO EAT!!!”

14) do you make playlists for your current wips?

Not right now. I don’t make playlists for my fics that often, unless I want to integrate the music into the fic (again, see River fic). Or I make a playlist AFTER I am done, like my Myosotis playlist.

15) why did you start writing?

Fanfiction? When I first read Harry Potter when I was around 11, but I used to write stories before that. Shout out to TEENZZONE and my first ever gay character that I made when I was 10 and then I got scared cause oooooh homosexuality scary!!! ooooh taboooo!!!! and erased it and made him marry a lovely woman named Daisy but then years later I was like “fuck it he’s bi then”

16) are there any characters who haunt you?

Oh, uh? The first ever gay now bi character from TEENZZONE I guess. Fuck, was Danny his name, or was Danny the guy who came before Daisy? Look, I was 10. Ik zat in groep 7, of misschien zelfs 6. It’s been 14 years.

17) if you could give your fledgling author self any advice, what would it be?

It doesn’t have to be perfect. I am not a published author. This is all for fun. Besides, I read a lot of fic that maybe aren’t “that good” in the eyes of whoever decides what’s good, but I still enjoy them and that’s what matters in the end. I write for me and me alone and hopefully people like it too and we will all have a banging time.

19) when it comes to more complicated narratives, how do you keep track of outlines, characters, development, timeline, ect.?

Not

Jk jk

I often have a little section in my doc with “Information”, like a timeline or people’s names or what is happening when. The one for Ljubim te has the names of my OCs and the street names of where Kurt and Blaine live. I am thinking of also making a timeline, because there are some time jumps between chapters, although I also try to point out what month it is in the chapter itself.

20) do you write in long sit-down sessions or in little spurts?

Depends on how inspired I am. I write when I have an idea. Sometimes things snowball from there, sometimes it’s to only add one line.

21) what do you think when you read over your older work?

Define older. As I said, everything before 2015 I pretend I do not see, but after that I actually reread a lot of my stuff. Hence the “I write for me and me alone” mentality. I reread Mendacious this week. And I haven’t read the Anyway series in years and I kind of want to.

22) are there any subjects that make you uncomfortable to write?

There are too many to list, but from the top of my head: non-con/dub-con, detailed slavery or kidnapping or something like that, graphic violence, MPREG, fic with one being a minor other an adult.

23) any obscure life experiences that you feel have helped your writing?

GIRL MY MAIN STARTING POINT FOR KLAINE FIC THESE DAYS IS “WHAT PART OF MY LIFE CAN I LIFT FROM??”

Mendacious: a conversation I had with one of my friends about internalised homophobia

River fic: lol (my broken friendship) (it’s almost Real Blaine’s birthday) (ah, then it will have been 4 years since I last saw him)

Ebb & Flow: my love for Splatoon 2

Bakery fic: me being obsessed with a documentary about rich people in Dubai

Ljubim te: I miss Ljubljana

So yeah, sometimes it influences the plot (Mendacious and River fic) and sometimes it is more a starting point for me to build upon, but it’s my liiiiiiiife it’s not or neverrrrrr-

Also, okay, I am writing this Snowbaz fic called Just Some Guy from an outsider POV and that is coming from me very much believing that Baz is not that hot. Simon is just in love with him. Sorry Baz fans.

24) have you ever become an expert on something you previously knew nothing about, in order to better a scene or a story?

Expert? I wouldn’t say that, but I do learn about obscure things like Broadway orchestra subbing. And of course I had that entire chapter about neurobiology in Myosotis sylvatica. But I can’t say I am an expert on things.

25) copy/paste a few sentences or a short paragraph that you’re particularly proud of

You can get some All the pretty things lore as a treat.

“As if in every lifetime you and I have lived, we’ve chosen to come back and find each other and fall in love all over again, over and over for all of eternity. And I just feel so lucky that I found you so soon in this lifetime because all I want to do, all I’ve ever wanted to do is spend my life loving you.”

This is how All the pretty things ends. Obviously it is not my writing. This is a direct quote from Glee. I may hate the proposal but they went hard with the speech. But I knew I needed to end the fic with this quote, since it actually inspired the entire premise of the fic. They hop through all these dimensions and in every one of them they find each other to go on to the next. And they grow stronger in the process. I do not know if this fic would be this fic without this quote.

For my own writing, I am really happy with the “emotional climax” of Paradiso 1 and Time After Time, but shhhhh spoilers, you gotta read that for yourself. But a shareable part that I am admittedly obessed with is from The Naked Truth:

We’re acting like a bunch of hormonal teenagers, but I don’t care. We’re high on energy and love. The moment we get to my flat and I close the door behind us, I press him against it and he laughs.

Again, there’s so much laughter.

Is this what love is like? Endless exuberant laughter? I revel in the sound of his joy.

I wrote this because I used “he laughs” or “I laugh” or “we laugh” A LOT in this fic up to the point that it was making me wonder if it’s bad writing, so I just put it in the story. Hooray.

ALY I FUCKING DID IT.

#ask #blurglesmurfklaine

4 notes · View notes

sit-down-and-shut-up · 3 years

Text

time- a. hotchner

SUMMARY: you get kidnapped lol

WARNINGS: kidnapping (duh), some injuries but everyone lives, aaron being m a d, and reader being a freaking baddie

WORDS: too many 6604

A/N: sorry that it’s been a hot minute since i posted, im lazy

Aaron glanced up as the workday finally drew to a close, watching you wave goodbye to the team and stroll towards the unit chief’s office, just in time to see JJ as she ascended the steps on her way to the room as well. You started to wave, but JJ murmured something you couldn’t make out and you stopped. Aaron’s blood ran cold, and he mentally cursed himself for being naive enough to believe that things would work out for once. He turned to look at Emily and Morgan through the blinds, who’d been talking near Emily’s desk, and saw their eyes trained on you and JJ. Emily swore under her breath, then headed to the conference room with Spencer and Derek not far behind.

+++++

Aaron sat down next to you in the conference room, meeting your eyes and giving you a halfhearted smile. You returned the gesture and went back to scanning the grisly photos before you. He zoned out as JJ spoke, giving the rundown on each of the girls that had been abducted, then murdered mere hours later. The murders seemed somewhat random, with the exception that the victims were all girls in their upper 20’s. In fact, they were all 29, just like you were.

Something clicked in your mind, but you didn’t want to jump to conclusions. You could feel Aaron’s steely gaze on you, and you wondered briefly if he could tell what you were thinking. You were lost in your thoughts, to the point where you didn’t hear Aaron’s deep “Wheels up in 30.” After everyone had left the conference room, Aaron turned back to see you still staring at the photos, searching for something you couldn’t quite name among the blood spatters and empty faces. He walked over to you and gently tapped your shoulder, causing your head to whip up to face him. Realization washed over your eyes, and you mumbled an apology.

Aaron shook his head in response, saying “I’m sorry. I was hoping we’d actually get to go out tonight.” You sighed, then replied.

“Who knows? Maybe the unsub will be caught by the time we get there and we can go get dinner or something.” You laughed as you said it, but your laughter was tinged with a resigned sadness Aaron despised, wishing he could take you somewhere you’d never be forced to feel this way again. Aaron watched you for a few seconds longer, as your face darkened and you grabbed your files and left the room, heading to his office, where both of your go-bags were. He wanted to tell you so much, but wasn’t sure how to start. He wanted to tell you that he’d been planning to propose this evening, that he wanted to be with you forever. But he couldn’t.

+++++

Aaron noticed you lost in your thoughts again on the plane ride while the rest of the team went over the case. The sheer amount of bodies was enough to give someone pause. In addition, the unsub took a girl each Thursday, but never kept them for more than a few hours. Why?

The plane ride felt fairly short. You were hit with a wave of nostalgia as the plane touched down in New York, where you’d gone to college years earlier, and worked before you were transferred to the Behavioral Analysis Unit and moved to Quantico. As you walked into the FBI field office with the rest of the BAU, you couldn’t stop your mind from remembering the last time you’d been in the building, when working a terrorism case alongside Agent Joyner four years earlier.

She’d been killed immediately by a bomb in your SUV, and metal had been lodged in your left leg, cutting the femoral artery and nearly causing you to bleed out. If not for your Aaron, you would’ve died there, on the cold pavement. When Aaron came to visit you while you recovered from surgery, you managed to slur out that you loved him. At the time, he blamed it on the drugs you were on, until he showed up at your hospital room again a few hours later, to drive you home. You’d suffered hearing loss as well, and coupled with your leg injury, you couldn’t go in the field or on the plane for a while. As he helped you up and handed you the crutches you’d be relying on for nearly a year, you met his eyes and said confidently, “I meant what I said earlier.”

He’d paused for a second, before his lips spread into a rare smile, and he said, “I love you too.” You’d always known the relationship wouldn’t be easy, considering his recent divorce and your unconventional jobs, but you were fine with it. Being with Aaron was good enough.

Present-day Aaron subtly placed a hand on the small of your back, a sign of encouragement he’d adopted over the years. You glanced up at him and nodded, silently letting him know you were okay. He dropped his hand, and held it out to the new director of the New York field office: Agent Milenka, an enthusiastic but imposing woman you’d met at the Academy when you were younger. You caught Morgan glaring at her for a second, reminding you that Morgan almost got that job. Still, you knew that Morgan loved you all too much to leave the BAU for a job directing the New York field office. The team was his rock, the weight that tethered him to reality when he was at his lowest. Aaron introduced Milenka to the rest of your team, until she cut him off when he got to you.

“I know her,” she declared loudly, “I was her firearms trainer at the Academy, but she had to show me up and be better with a gun than I am.” Spite dripped from her words, but the mischievous smile on her face told you she wasn’t really upset. Aaron nodded slightly, caught off-guard by her remark, then interjected to ask where his team could set up.

Agent Milenka led all of you to an empty conference room, with the case files already arranged neatly and a blank evidence board at the front of the room. She turned on her heel and stared firmly at the team. If you hadn’t known her for years, you’d assume she was going to attempt to assert control over the case, but instead she said, “My agents have come to see this office as a family, and probably won’t take too well to the fact that I’ve called you in. If any of them give you hell, tell me, and I’ll make the devil look like a cuddly teddy bear.” She pivoted on her heel to leave, then turned back around. “Agent L/N, my office.”

+++++

You were shocked, to be honest. This woman could bring grown men to their knees, and now she sat in front of you, spinning in a swivel chair, teasing you over your obvious infatuation with Aaron Hotchner.

“Really, Milenka, I gotta get back to the team,” you sighed, rubbing your temples.

“Fine”, she grunted, making a shooing motion with her hand. “But here’s what I meant to tell you. I’m guessing you and your team want to know why it took this many bodies for me to call you in. I mean, I’d be wondering that, too. The bodies were all dumped two days ago, even though they’d all been dead for various amounts of time, so I’m guessing the unsub wanted to make sure I had to call you guys. Keep that in mind. He knows how this works.” The humor and mischief was gone from the agent’s voice, and in that moment you knew how she’d risen through the ranks of the FBI so quickly. Something about her made you want to do everything you could to solve the case as quickly as possible. She wasn’t someone you could let down.

You grimaced, then nodded, unable to say anything, and left her office, getting coffee from the espresso machine for you and your teammates as you walked back to the conference room. As you passed around the cups, Aaron watched you expectantly, obviously waiting for you to relay whatever information Agent Milenka had told you, and so you did. The reactions among the team members were the same, set jaws and darkening eyes. You didn’t know where to start with the case, until you remembered the idea you’d gotten back in D.C. You leapt from the black desk chair you’d just sat down in and practically ran to the evidence board, grabbing a red dry-erase marker and organizing the victim’s pictures from the first to the last to be abducted. You circled the eyes on some of the pictures, the hair on others, the widow’s peaks on some, and other various defining features.

“He’s working up to someone specific,” Spencer muttered as you worked. You whipped around, pointing a finger at him and downing the last of your coffee.

“Yes! Okay, so, look at this: The first and last girl are wildly different, but when you look at the chronological order of the victims, each one gains another characteristic that the next one didn’t have, like he’s working up to getting one specific girl, and kept killing those that looked increasingly similar to his real target!” You blurted the words, and watched as your teammates looked on in a mix of awe and horror, at both the board and a piece of paper Spencer had messily written on. Aaron, who was usually so emotionless, looked especially horrified, and scared. You shot Spencer a questioning look, and he held up the paper he’d shown the rest of the team. He’d taken the first letter of each woman’s name, and when lined up, they spelled out a message.

Your name.

+++++

“You’re off the case.” Aaron said, crossing his arms over his chest as you paced around the empty office he’d practically dragged you to.

“What? If some psycho is after me, I want to be the one to catch him!” You spoke firmly, almost yelling but not quite.

“If some psycho is after you,” Aaron started, sounding much calmer than you had, “I want you to be safe. Sending you out to hunt him down isn’t keeping you safe.”

You scoffed, then yelled, “As long as he’s out there, I’m not safe! If you let me help, we’ll find him faster. I can’t- no, I won’t- just sit here doing nothing while this man kills women just because he’s got some sort of vendetta against me!”

Aaron’s resolve broke down. You could tell from the way his back slumped and he pulled you into his chest. You wrapped your arms around him, basking in the feeling of calm it brought. Your anger dissipated when he held you like that, and he knew it.

He murmured, “I can’t lose you,” into your ear, and your heart broke from the way his voice cracked from fear and sadness. Aaron pulled away far too soon, and gave you a look that you knew meant to stay put, and pulled out his phone to call Penelope Garcia.

A few moments later, Spencer walked in, hands in his pockets. He looked unsure of himself, and you couldn’t figure out why until he said, “Hotch wants me to drive you to the hotel.”

You stared at him silently for a second, then mumbled curses under your breath and stormed out of the room to find your bag. Spencer put an arm out to stop you, then said, “He said he’d bring it for you tonight.”

You glared at him for a moment, before averting your gaze to the suddenly interesting polished linoleum beneath you. “I’m sorry. This isn’t your fault. I shouldn’t be mad at you.”

Spencer gave you a small smile, and replied, “It’s okay. You’re stressed. We all are. Hotch just wants you to be safe.”

You nodded, and he led you from the building to the shiny, black SUV parked outside. Aaron jogged out of the building towards you, and grabbed the handle of the vehicle before you could. You met his eyes, and he murmured, “I know you’re mad at me, but I need you to stay in the hotel room, okay? Lock the door, and I’ll be there tonight with your go-bag.” You nodded, and he paused a second before saying, “I love you.”

Your pride got the best of you, and you simply muttered, “I know.”

+++++

You’d been sure that the SUV’s tires were full when you’d arrived in New York, but the flat passenger tire begged to differ. Spencer pulled into a nearby gas station to fill up the tire, something you were fairly sure he’d never done before. You couldn’t help but laugh when he called Morgan to ask what to do, who responded that it would be easier for him to come fill up the tire himself. You mouthed that you had to go to the bathroom, and Spencer nodded as Morgan’s laughter came through the phone. You stifled laughter as you walked into the gas station, grimacing at the smell of sweat and cheap hot dogs.

+++++

Aaron wasn’t sure if he’d ever been so mad. No, mad wasn’t the word. Was there a word that could encapsulate the unadulterated fury coursing through his veins? He paced the conference room like a caged lion, practically screaming at Spencer and Derek through the phone.

“What the hell happened?”

Spencer was crying, he could tell that much from the muffled sobs, and Aaron couldn’t help but think that he might never see you again. He slammed the phone onto the table with nearly enough force to break it, and looked up to see Emily, Rossi, and JJ already halfway out the conference room, before he’d told them what happened. The four of them slid into the two remaining SUVs. Aaron screeched out of the parking lot, gripping the wheel so hard his knuckles turned white. Rossi kept shooting him worried glances he pretended not to notice.

“We’ll find her,” Rossi said, “But you need to stay calm for us to do it.”

Aaron nodded. He didn’t trust his voice to work right now. If he tried to speak, he knew he’d probably cry. He pulled into the gas station just before Emily and JJ, and a voice in his head reminded him that this might be the last place you’d ever see. Rossi hopped out of the car, giving Aaron a sympathetic look as he did so.

+++++

The team had been at the gas station for almost three hours, interviewing customers, collecting evidence, and talking to workers. Multiple people reported seeing a woman similar to who Aaron described enter the bathroom, but no one saw her leave.There was a window in the girl’s bathroom that had been broken from the inside, with blood on both the window and the glass. The forensics team ran the blood, and it was all from the same person.

Aaron didn’t need to hear the results to know whose blood it was. Spencer tried to help, informing him that she hadn’t bled out because women had approximately 4.5 pints of blood and that was at most half a pint, but Aaron cut him off. He couldn’t hear it, couldn’t listen to everyone talking about his girlfriend, the love of his life, as though she was already dead. He knew the odds, knew that she was almost certainly going to be dead within the first 72 hours, considering how the unsub had killed the other women.

He was going to find you alive. He knew it.

Because he wasn’t sure what he’d do if he didn’t.

+++++

Everything was fuzzy and painful and oh my god what is that stuff coming out of your side and out of your hand and holy crap you can’t move you’re tied up what are you tied to what’s going on and-

“You’re even prettier than I remember.” The voice sounded familiar, but the only thing your brain could fully focus on at the moment was the excruciating pain. You felt a hand on your side, and then a searing pain that was somehow worse than the pain you’d already been feeling.

“You got a piece of glass in your side. I’m getting it out.”

You felt pressure on the spot, and forced your head to move so you could see what was going on.

He was wrapping your waist in some sort of bandage to staunch the bleeding. You forced yourself to look around the musty room you were in. You were seated in a chair, with your arms tied to the back of the chair by a coarse brown rope and a metal chain and heavy shackle attached to your left ankle. Your eyes followed the chain, to where it connected to a silver hook jutting from the wooden floor, which was coated in a layer of dirt.

Dirt.

You must be in a barn, or shed, or something. You definitely weren’t in New York City anymore.

You vaguely remembered what had happened in the gas station bathroom. There’d been a man waiting in the first stall, who jumped on you, shoving your head against the mirror hard enough to crack your skull. You figured that you’d blacked out, and he’d jumped the window with you in tow.

Then another memory washes over you like a tsunami, flooding you with regret.

Aaron said he loved you, and you didn’t say it back. Now, you might never get to tell him that you love him again.

+++++

Aaron removed himself from the case, leaving Rossi in charge. He knew he’d only slow everyone else down with the torrent of emotions dancing inside his skull. So now, he’s resorted to sitting in your hotel room alone, wishing he hadn’t told you to go to the hotel. He’d been crying for the first time in years.

Aaron had no clue what to do, and it gives him newfound respect for the families of abducted victims that he speaks to. He pulled the sparkling diamond ring he planned on giving you tonight out of his bag, staring at it and imagining it on your ring finger. It doesn’t make him happier, instead it just turns the steady stream of tears into a storm.

+++++

Morgan, Rossi, JJ, and Emily, seated at the silver table in the conference room, were going over every last piece of evidence they have, while Spencer made a map of the abduction sites as Agent Milenka told him the addresses. They already established that the victims were high-risk due to their above-average athleticism, and each victim was taken from a high-risk location. Spencer looked for any sense of a pattern in abduction sites, but couldn’t find one. Eventually, he sat down next to Morgan and Emily, defeated.

“So all we know is that he’s obsessed with Y/N, and that he wasn’t remorseful about the murders of the other women.” Derek sighed, leaning back in his chair.

“Well, if he was able to subdue her, he most likely had the element of surprise. So, he probably isn’t physically strong, and needed that advantage to knock her out.” Rossi added, and Derek nodded.

Spencer looked up from the crime scene photos. “There’s no ligature marks.”

Derek nodded. “Yeah, we went over that. So?”

“Why knock the women out and transport them if you’re just going to kill them immediately instead of holding them somewhere? Why not just kill them wherever they already are?”

Emily’s mouth fell open. “Practice. So that when he had Y/N, he knew exactly what was going to happen. But he didn’t want to ruin the rest of the fantasy by taking someone else where he’s planned to keep Y/N. He wants that to be special.”

“So we know he’s going to be holding her somewhere secluded, then,” Milenka chimed in.

After a few moments of silence, the phone rang in the center of the table, and the team members all stared at it for a few moments before Derek turned to the computer next to him, where Garcia was currently on a video call with the team.

“Can you trace this call, babygirl?”

Garcia nodded. “I don’t have a trap and trace set up yet, but I can get one, honey. Just gimme one second.”

Derek’s hand hovered over the button on the receiver to answer the call, and when Garcia affirmed that she was ready, Derek pressed the button. Instantly, a somewhat timid male voice filled the room.

“Where’s Agent Hotchner? I want to speak to him, not any of you.”

The team shared a perplexed look, and Emily asked, “How do you know who is here and who isn’t?”

“The window’s open.”

JJ ran to the window, then turned. “He’s there,” she said, pointing to a man directly underneath where the conference window was with a phone to his ear.

The rest of the team sprinted down the stairs and out of the field office, with JJ not far behind. By the time they got to where the man had been, he was long gone. No one near the area said they’d seen him, either.

Derek turned and punched the wall out of rage, while Emily cursed loudly. The rapid darkening of the sky didn’t help with trying to catch an unsub, either.

Dejectedly, the team returned to the conference room, where Garcia excitedly said, “Your man forgot to hang up for a few minutes! I don’t know entirely where he went, but I know the direction he was headed!”

“Where, Garcia?” Spencer asked, desperate for a lead.

“Straight west.”

Spencer looked to Emily, who said, “Let’s go.”

+++++

The team knew the unsub needed somewhere secluded to keep you, but couldn’t figure out where. He’d been on foot when they’d seen him, so it had to be somewhat close. Or maybe he’d had a car in a parking lot somewhere? There were too many variables. They needed Hotch.

+++++

“Drink.”

The man held a cup to your lips, but you kept them closed tight. After trying to force you for a while, he gave up. Sighing, the man ran a hand through your hair, forcing your head upright. For a serial killer, he was surprisingly gentle.

“You need your strength,” the man murmured, but you looked away when he picked up the cup again. He set it down, shaking his head, then pulled a knife out of the back pocket of his blue jeans. You knew better than to scream. It was likely that he craved your pain, so allowing him that satisfaction would coax him to continue. He walked behind you, to where you wouldn’t see him. You closed your eyes, praying for a quick death, praying Aaron would find you, praying you could see your team one last time.

But you didn’t need to.

The man cut through the rope binding your wrists, then left the room. He was rarely in the room with you, and you wondered what he was doing outside of it. For the first time, however, he came back within a few minutes of leaving. You could theoretically move if you wanted to now that the rope was gone considering how long the chain attached to your leg was, but you were weak and hurting. The last thing you saw before your vision went black yet again was the man standing above you with a syringe.

+++++

Aaron was with the rest of the team, visiting each abduction site for something, anything to help the profile, when the unsub called him.

“This is Hotchner.”

“I have her, Agent Hotchner, and I treat her better than you ever could. You think what she needs is a big strong man to control her,” he mocked, “But you don’t truly love her. No one could, except me.” Although the man’s words were confident, he sputtered out the words like an old truck engine. It sounded like he was reading a script, as though he’d had to plan out what he was going to say beforehand. As soon as the unsub finished speaking, the tell-tale click of the phone hanging up sounded.

Emily, who’d been walking next to him, stopped, pulling out her phone to contact Penelope.

“Can you get the rest of the team on the line? I think Morgan and Reid are at the Central Park crime scene, and JJ and Rossi are probably still by Times Square.”

Emily could practically hear Penelope’s smile as she responded, “Can do, gorgeous.”

A few keyboard clicks later, Penelope stated, “You’ve got me, Morgan, Rossi, Reid,and JJ.”

Emily took a shaky breath before saying, “We think Y/N knew the unsub.”

“What do you mean, knew?” Reid’s voice sounded.

“He claimed that he loves her more than Aaron ever could. He thinks he knows her better than us, so he probably knew her when she used to live in New York.”

“She went to college here, didn’t she?” JJ responded.

Penelope chimed in, exclaiming, “She went to John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Graduated top of her class.”

Morgan cleared his throat, then added: “Maybe the unsub didn’t know her, but thought he did. He could’ve been stalking her when she lived here, then kept tabs on her when she transferred to the BAU years ago.”

“He probably found out about Y/N’s relationship with Aaron recently, and that’s his stressor.” Rossi added.

Emily stared into the distance. There was something off about this. The theory made sense, but at the same time, it felt, well, wrong.

Agent Milenka, who’d been surveying the crime scene Emily and Aaron were at, sauntered over.

“I know who did this.”

Aaron met her firm gaze, confused and intrigued.

“Who?”

“There was this guy she met at John Jay, didn’t talk much, but he ended up applying to the FBI just because she did. He made it in a few months after her and got a job as a forensic analyst at our field office here. They worked together pretty often, and he was never too strange, but you got the feeling there was something off. He started acting weird after Y/N’s transfer to the BAU. I ordered another psych eval for him a few months ago, and he failed. I fired him, and I haven’t seen him since.”

Aaron and Emily shared a look, both hopeful and sad.

“What’s his name?”

“Ian Foster.”

Aaron nodded, murmuring a quick thank you, then turned back to Emily.

“Call Garcia. We need all the information we can find on Ian Foster.”

+++++

Your head hurt. You were somewhere different now; the dirty brown floor had been replaced with plush white carpet, and the chair you’d gotten used to was gone. Your left leg was still shackled, but this time it was attached to a shiny metal spike in the center of the room. You surveyed your surroundings, noting the vast difference between your current location and your past one. The chain attached to your ankle was long, probably meant to give you full access to the room you were in but keep you from leaving. The walls were white and spotless, along with the queen-sized bed behind you and the dresser and vanity along the far wall. You knew you must look out of place compared to the neatness of your surroundings, with your frizzy, dirty hair and torn, wrinkled, and stained clothes. You realized that you’d never checked your holster for your gun, and in doing so, found it empty.

Great.

Sun shone through the window on your right, and birds chirped happily, as if mocking you. They were telling you that they’re free, while you’re locked in this stupid white room.

Your captor walked in soon after you woke up, and you knew he must be watching you through a camera hidden somewhere.

“Drink.”

Your eyes searched his face, trying to understand who he was, now that you had enough light to see.

“Foster?” You managed to croak out through your parched throat.

Ian nodded, then grabbed your face with one calloused hand, forcing you to open your mouth so he could pour water in, which you promptly spat into his eyes. Instead of causing him to stumble, all it did was make him laugh.

“I see you’re still as fiery as ever.”

You clamped your mouth shut, pursing your lips and staring him in the eyes until he left. After he was gone, you tried to move your arms as much as possible. Your limbs felt heavy, like you were attached to weights, but moving was somewhat possible, a little bit at a time.

For now, that would be enough. You just had to pray that Aaron could find you.

+++++

Ian Foster’s paper trail was a series of dead ends, but Penelope Garcia, being the lovely omnipotent being she is, was able to find two properties owned by his dead uncle in upstate New York that he was likely using to hold you.

Aaron couldn’t describe the relief that wrapped itself around him, like a soft blanket, when Garcia chirped that she’d found where he was. He’d refused to allow himself to think that you might be dead, and the knowledge that now he had your location was sweeter than any candy could ever be.

He wiped a tear from his eye that threatened to fall, and cleared his throat, nodding at Emily and Agent Milenka, wordlessly signaling her to join him as he ran towards the SUV they’d been using. Emily followed, calling JJ and Rossi to give them the address as she ran. The first property, an old farmhouse, was about 40 minutes away from their current location, while the second one, a pretty two-story house, was about three hours away. Hotch, Emily, and Milenka, being farthest from both locations, were driving to the house, while the rest of the team would check out the farmhouse first then meet them there.

+++++

There was this feeling, blossoming in your chest, comforting you, whispering that Aaron was on his way. You’d learned over the years that your instincts rarely lied to you, and you hoped to whatever God there was or wasn't, that this wasn’t one of the times they misled you.

So you knew what you had to do.

You acted nice every time Ian came to visit, roughly every half hour.

Then, after five visits, you drank the water he offered willingly. Gently, Ian helped you up off the ground, a gesture that would’ve been comforting had he not been a serial killer. He moved his hands until they were lightly situated on your waist, and gazed into your eyes with the crazed fanaticism of a deranged man. He leaned in for a kiss, and the second he closed his eyes, you drove your right knee directly into his crotch.

Serves him right for being dumb enough not to fully restrain you. While he doubled over in pain, stepping back, you set up for a roundhouse kick that you placed to the back of his knee, knocking him onto the ground in an ungraceful heap. While he was on the ground, you punched him in the throat with enough force to knock the wind out of him, leaving him gasping for air on the ground like a fish out of water. Sending another kick to his temple for good measure, rendering him unconscious, you searched his pockets for anything that could remove the shackle from your leg. Eventually, you settled for a wire cutter that you used to cut off the attaching chain, but your clumsiness left an angry gash in your leg in the process. Limping from exhaustion, you ran from the room as fast as you could with the pain in your side from the glass that had been lodged there and the blood from the cut in your skull dripping down your face and neck. Your head felt fuzzy and faint, and you knew you were likely to pass out from blood loss any second. You repeated Aaron’s name in your head like a mantra, telling yourself that you needed to get back to him first, then you could pass out from pain. Every part of your body ached, screaming at you to give up as you stumbled down the creaky carpeted stairs, leaving a trail of blood in your wake.

As you neared the foyer, you heard the engine of a car, along with footsteps. The door flew open, with Aaron directly behind it, followed by Morgan, Emily, Spencer, Rossu, and a few agents from the New York office. Aaron’s eyes scanned the room before settling on you, bloodied and bruised, and he ran to you, gathering you in his arms while you whimpered like a child. He whispered things in your ear that you couldn’t make out as you let the blackness at the edge of your vision take over.

+++++

Lights. Murmuring voices. Were you still in that house?

You opened your eyes to see two people, one man and one woman, leaving the room you were in. There was a pressure on your hand that scared you, and slowly, you turned your head to see the source of the sensation, and you were greeted with what was quite possibly the best view you’d ever laid eyes on: Aaron Hotchner asleep at your side, desperately clutching your hand.

“Aaron?” You murmured. He was a light sleeper, so you knew the sound would most likely wake him up. When it didn’t, you squeezed his hand while murmuring his hand again. His head jerked up, and his tired eyes met yours.

“Y/N.” His voice was filled with so much anxiety, grief, and regret that your heart shattered, as he reached up to ever-so-gently caress your face, then kissed you softly.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you.” His words took the broken pieces of your heart and smashed them again with a hammer, until you were sobbing against Aaron’s chest. He held you, and let you cry, becoming painfully aware of his inability to help in times like this. His specialty was catching criminals, not helping people through the trauma, and he entertained the thought of asking JJ to talk to you for a fleeting moment, before deciding that he couldn’t let you out of his sight for the time being.

After a few minutes, you sniffed and lifted your head to wipe away your tears, but Aaron did it before you could. You stared down at your side for a moment, watching the blood that seeped through the bandage every time you took a breath, while you gathered enough courage to speak without your voice wavering.

“I’m sorry. You told me you loved me, and I didn’t say it back, and that could’ve been the last-”

Aaron cut you off with a kiss, murmuring against your lips, “You have nothing to be sorry for.”

You sat in silence with him for a while, leaning your head against his shoulder as he stroked your hair. Eventually, Aaron broke the silence.

“I saw what you did to Ian.”

You choked out a laugh despite the pain that ripped through you while doing so. “Yeah, I left him in pretty bad shape, didn’t I?”

Aaron nodded, smiling. “I’m proud of you. Most people wouldn't be able to escape a serial killer.”

“Well, I’m not most people, Hotchner.”

“That’s for sure.”

+++++

The rest of the team left for D.C. the next morning, but Aaron stayed to drive you home once you were discharged from the hospital. First, however, he dropped you off at the FBI field office to talk with Agent Milenka while he called Jessica to ask if she’d mind watching Jack for a few more days, explaining what happened to you. She practically viewed you as a sister, and after recovering from the initial horror, was happy to agree.

“Hey, Y/N! You’re alive!” Agent MIlenka called brightly as you limped into her office, bumping your crutched on the doorframe.

You chuckled. “Sadly, I am. Aaron told me it was you who figured out Foster had taken me. How’d you know?”

Milenka shrugged. “I may not be a profiler, but I sure as hell can tell when someone’s not right. The guy went almost crazy when you left New York. It just made sense.”

“But if that was his stressor, he would’ve started murdering earlier.”

“We thought at first that finding out about you and Agent Hotchner might’ve been the stressor, but it was impossible to tell when he’d found out, so we switched gears. I fired Ian a few months ago because he’d just been getting worse and worse, and eventually was a liability on cases. The last straw was him failing his psych evaluation. Maybe he felt that losing his FBI job meant he lost his last chance to be with you if he’d been hoping to transfer to your unit someday.”

You nodded slowly. “That’s around the time the kidnappings started, isn’t it?”

Milenka nodded. The two of you stood in her office in comfortable silence for a bit, until she stood up from her desk, crossing the distance between you and engulfing you in a nervous hug. She pulled away fairly quickly, most likely out of fear of hurting you, and awkwardly patted you twice on the shoulder. “Take care, Agent.”

“You too, Milenka.”

You turned to go, but stopped when you heard Milenka call, “One more thing.”

“Yeah?”

“Hotchner’s a good guy. Don’t let that one get away.”

You merely offered her a smile, then strode out of her office as elegantly as one can with a limp.

+++++

The ride home was nice, full of easy discussion, laughter, and a few guilty looks that Aaron snuck at your stitched-up side, wishing he’d listened to you.

You made a joke he didn’t hear, and leaned over in your seat so you could wave a hand in front of his face, calling his name in a sing-song voice.

“Aaron, you good?”

Aaron shook his head slightly, rubbed his eyes, then turned towards you. “Yes?”

“Is something wrong?”

“No, I’ve just got a lot on my mind.”

You hummed in affirmation, then turned towards the window. The rest of the drive was spent in comfortable silence, until you arrived at Aaron’s house. You spent practically all of your time there. Honestly, you couldn’t remember the last time you’d stepped foot into your apartment. Aaron helped you into the house and to your shared bed, where you passed out immediately. You vaguely heard a soft whisper of “sleep well” before you were out cold.

Aaron watched you for what felt like hours, feeling pent-up stress and anger roll off of him in waves as he silently stroked your hair, grateful beyond words that you’d lived. You murmured something in your sleep that sounded suspiciously like “I love you,” before rolling over to curl against his chest, nuzzling your head against the crook of his neck. And for the first time in days, he allowed himself a smile. Aaron basked in the rare feeling of relaxation, thinking about how nice it would be to bottle up this feeling and keep it forever, until sleep finally pulled him into its soft clutches. And for once, with you safely nestled into him, he slept easily. He still hadn’t proposed, but that was okay. Now that you were safe, you two had all the time in the world.

#aaron hotchner #aaron hotch x reader #aaron hotchner x reader #crimnal minds #criminal minds fluff #aaron hotchner fluff #aaron hotchner smut #Penelope Garcia #spencer reid #emily prentiss #derek morgan

536 notes · View notes

marmolady · 3 years

Text

Back to Reality: What Came Next (N*SFW)

Book/Series: Endless Summer

Main Pairings: Estela x (f)MC

Summary: Rourke Ending. Taking up where 'Back to Reality' left off. Taylor and Estela have had a rough old day in the Rourke-verse, and take comfort in one another... in a way they haven't done since their world was a very different place.

Word Count: 1824

Warnings: Smut. I've not written anything as smutty as this before, so probably also need to stick in a warning here about potentially not-great smut. But hey, gotta start somewhere! Very N*SFW.

Chronology: Directly following on from 'Back to Reality'. Read that one first! Or, well... skip to this one if you're just here for the sexy-times.

Tagging: @saivilo, @edgydepressedchoicesthot, @sceptilemasterr, @greengroove @mauvecatfic

Estela reached behind Taylor’s neck, her movements slow, deliberate, as she travelled downwards. She felt the curve of shoulder blades, arching into Taylor’s upper back. The skin so soft, unblemished. She paused over the clasp of the bra, her eyes flickering to her love’s face. Is this all right?

A second pair of hands guided her, and the garment fell. Eyes dark with desire, Estela couldn’t look away. Her hands roamed to Taylor’s breasts, thumbs tracing over nipples which stood firm at her caress. The sensation beneath her fingertips was electrifying.

“…Estela…” Taylor breathed. If only she knew how much she’d missed her touch.

“God, Taylor, you’re beautiful.” Estela’s voice was a low growl at her wife’s throat. And then she kissed, working over the delicate neck and jawline, feeling her own urgent need growing with the pooling of heat at her core.

Taylor’s heart thundered in her ears as she felt a nip at the base of her neck.

“Are you sure this is what you want?” she asked, even as a soft moan escaped her.

Without stopping to look up, Estela continued her fervent trail of kisses, her hands roaming down her lover’s body. “Shhhh… Taylor, put your hands on me. I need to feel you.”

How could she argue? Taylor’s fingers dug into that strong, scarred back as she responded to the breathtaking touch, and she caught a smirk on Estela’s face as she glanced up momentarily. She kissed down into the valley of her wife’s breasts as she reached behind to unhook the bra --unwanted and most certainly getting in the way. As the bra fell aside, she took a nipple in her mouth, teasing it with suckling kisses and grazing with her teeth.

Estela exhaled sharply, momentarily too dizzied to keep going. Taylor took the opportunity to tug her down onto the bed, leaning against her, mouth and one hand working over Estela’s chest, while the other traced a path down, down, then slipping into her underwear. Another gasp from Estela as she squirmed beneath her.

“… you’re getting a little full of yourself…” Estela hissed.

“I’m sorry, do you want me to stop?”

“Don’t you dare…”

Taylor resumed the stroking of her fingers over Estela’s wet folds, responding to a needy whimper.

“More.” Estela bucked her hips against her wife’s hand, and moaned with sweet relief as those talented fingers at last found her clit. “Taylor…” She tipped her wife’s chin with a trembling hand, forcing eye contact, then grasped a fistful of blonde hair, anchoring their bodies in place. But all too soon, her lover was pulling away.

“--hang on--” Taylor muttered, and she extricated herself just enough to fumblingly take care of both pairs of underwear, clothing she’d deemed to be nothing but a hindrance.

Estela’s gaze was intense, fiery in her hunger. “You’re just so fucking perfect…” She grasped Taylor’s ass and tugged her onto her. She just had to feel her… every goddamn inch.

“…You…” Taylor buried her face once more in her wife’s chest, slathering messy kisses to those humble breasts, sliding downwards until her mouth was working against an exquisitely toned stomach. Oh, how those muscles quivered beneath her kiss… “Estela, you are a goddess…

Leaning deliciously close to her lover, Taylor kept eye contact as she stroked a finger over Estela’s entrance, inciting an exhilarated shudder that shook them both. Carefully, she eased in a finger, then two, crooking them so that they pressed against the sensitive spot with every pump in and out. Her thumb resumed a swirling dance around the small nub, and Estela gave a trembling moan. Strong fingers clawed into Taylor’s back with every moment; it hurt, but it felt so good.

With a loud, shuddering exhale, Estela found her release, holding Taylor ever tighter as she writhed through waves of bliss. Slowly, she regained her breath and sank into the mattress, still seeing stars.

“Joder….”

With a light-headed giggle of self-satisfaction, Taylor pushed herself up so that she could properly admire the happily flushed face of the woman she adored. How she’d missed this. This bit especially. The look on Estela’s face… as though she were floating on a cloud.

“I love you,” she breathed, and eased herself back down, Estela’s hand now idly, lovingly tracing swirls over her shoulder, making her heart flutter and skin tingle. “My starlight.”

Once again, they were kissing. Slow and deliberate, catching one another’s moans as they trembled against their lips. Estela’s arms around her, their legs tangling, Taylor let herself to be rolled onto her side; held and caressed and kissed as if there were not another damn thing in the world that mattered. Just that moment between them. Taylor’s eyes scrunched closed, prickling with tears. She’d waited a long and lonely time to kiss Estela like this… to be kissed back, so loved.

“Oh, querida, it’s okay…. Shh, shhhh….” Fingers cradling her wife’s face, Estela laid kisses up Taylor’s cheek to her forehead, where she lingered. “I’m yours now. And you’re mine. I’ve got you now.”

A tear rolled down Taylor’s cheek onto the duvet. Goddammit, why now? That lump in her throat was getting bigger…. “God, ‘Stel…. I’ve missed you so much.”

“I know, I know….” Estela murmured. Her breath shook, then she spoke fiercely. “And I’ll fight ‘til my last breath to make sure you never have to miss me again.”

Taylor spluttered out a few sobs, and hugged Estela all the tighter. She shivered. The hell were we thinking? You put on the heater, and then you go for naked sexy time. She supposed that coming in from outside, this was considered relatively warm when they’d first trudged in. A chatter of her wife’s teeth against her cheek made her laugh-- and then choke on her tears, and then laugh some more.

“You wanna take this under the covers, my dearest love?”

“P-please.”

Estela cocooned herself in with Taylor, hoisting the blankets up around their faces. “When we live in San Trobida, there will be none of this fucking cold. And we can be naked together all the time if we wish, without getting frost-bitten tetas.”

Taylor snorted. “Oh, babe. That’s the dream.” She hummed contentedly, the sadness of what had been fading in the soft glow of what was. This was now. Estela was holding her, and they were warm and safe. She let out a long exhale, and anchored herself in the present.

“Do you… do you want to keep going?” Estela asked tentatively, her dark eyes searching Taylor’s face for confirmation that she was all right. “We can just cuddle…?”

“I’m okay,” Taylor assured. “And I want more. More you.” She grinned and looped a leg around her wife’s long, toned one, grinding against her with a quiet moan. Fuck, she’s got nice legs….

Estela smirked. “Well, if that’s what you want….”

She captured Taylor’s hungry mouth in a deep kiss before ducking down, disappearing beneath the heavy covers. The heat of Taylor’s body, the scent of her… of her heady need, Estela was enveloped in it, and the soft blankets surrounding them, and it took her to a place where she was untouchable, bulletproof. Estela breathed it in, and her body shuddered with desire. She felt Taylor tremble at the touch of breath on her skin, goose-bumps already rising that had nothing to do with cold.

“’Stel, please….”

The muffled voice egged Estela on, but she was unhurried. She dipped her head, and ran her tongue languorously over the sensitive skin of Taylor’s stomach. A sharp whimper from above, a twitching buck of hips beneath her… oh, it was a kind of satisfaction Estela could bask in for days. She trailed kisses and licks and sharp nibbles in a meandering path across Taylor’s wonderfully soft inner thighs.

“You’re so…. Fucking…. Beautiful….” she breathed against them, punctuating her words of praise with kisses of escalating fierceness… and spurring another whimpering moan.

“God, Estela….”

With a moment to catch her breath-- the cover of the blankets, though warm, was stifling-- Estela brought her hands to her wife’s sensitive place and gently stroked. Even if the darkened space she could see the glistening wetness of the twitching folds. Another deep breath, shuddering with her own want, and she brought her lips to Taylor’s clit, sucking softly.

The effect was instant. With a sharp gasp, Taylor bucked her hips wildly, clocking Estela in the face. Giggling, Estela dipped back down and licked, alternating small, gentle, and long, hard strokes of her tongue until Taylor’s body was fluttering along with her heart, helpless in her wake.

All too soon, though, Estela really needed to come up for air. She emerged from the covers to Taylor’s face aglow with a pink flush.

“I love you… I love you….” Taylor panted, reaching for her lover’s face, delighting in the feeling as Estela took her fingers in her mouth and nibbled.

“Didn’t I say I wouldn’t let you miss me?” Estela smirked, and crawled up a little further. Her eyes never leaving Taylor’s face, she leaned down into her, and swirled her tongue over a heaving breast, taking her time and teasing the nipple with gentle flicks.

Taylor arched her back, pressing herself up against Estela with everything she had in her-- quite a feat as her body, by now, had gone to jelly.

Then Estela moved up even further, her lips caressing a trail up Taylor’s neck, rising in intensity as she reached her jaw. As Taylor’s breath hitched with a high-pitched squeak, Estela settled in, letting her hand find its place where it was wanted most.

“I--I’m so close…. I’m so close, ‘Stel.”

“Mi amor,” Estela purred against her lover’s throat, “let me take care of you.”

A few deftly placed strokes of talented fingers, and Taylor’s hips were bucking wildly, her hands grasping at Estela’s back as if for dear life, and a great cry of release escaped her lips.

As Taylor’s frantic moaning subsided and her body shook, Estela caressed her… her sides, her breasts, her face, through her hair… and kissed her again and again, sweet and gentle.

“Hey?” she asked softly. “Was that okay? Are you…?” Her dark eyes searched Taylor’s brilliant blue ones, and she saw only euphoria and love.

Taylor was smiling so hard her face ached. Her body tingled with warmth… it was as if she were alight. “My starlight….”

She pulled the covers up to both their chins, snuggled in against Estela, and kissed her… hoping with everything in her that she might somehow share some of the sheer happiness that coursed through her now-spent body.

When she came away, she was once again breathless. “Does that… does that answer your question?”

Estela giggled quietly and nuzzled in. “Yeah. I think it does.”

The cruel world had fallen away. Wrapped up in their shared duvet, their hearts thundering together, Estela and Taylor had found their sanctuary in one another.

#endless summer #playchoices #n*sfw #wlw #wlw smut #estela x mc #estela montoya

28 notes · View notes

doctors-star · 3 years

Note

lister/rimmer for “Oh no, I feel bad- SYKE, no I don’t.” pretty please

“You’re being weirdly helpful today. What do you want?”

Rimmer opens his eyes parodically wide, fingers splayed against his sternum in an elaborate moi? gesture. It is an appearance of surprise and hurt so manufactured that Lister almost wants to applaud the performance, bow at their audience of stars, and abandon the bastard to his machinations. But unfortunately, Lister has been granted prophetic visions of the future and knows with deep and terrible certainty that, were he to do so, he would spend two minutes wandering the empty decks, trip over Kryten’s best mop, slide on one of Cat’s abandoned silk cravats, and go and find Rimmer to bitch about it and hope that he’s doing something more interesting. So, given that interstellar travel is remarkably exhausting, it’s far better to cut out the middleman and instead lie here on the sofa and watch Rimmer direct scutters to haphazardly clean the living quarters inch by mind-numbing inch. They’ve even got little white glove-fingers on their claws, so that Rimmer can demand that they swipe something to test for cleanliness and then bawl them out for miniscule specks no-one else can see. Once, Rimmer had conjured up a white glove for himself and gone round doing the same thing, but when Lister had pointed out that he couldn’t pick up dust and therefore was imagining things, Rimmer had only doubled down harder - so hard that he’d worked himself into a real tizzy about going video-blind, or being permanently stuck with dust on his finger for all eternity, or dying, again, and had needed to go and have a lie down in the dark for a bit. So this is - debatably - an improvement.

Normally, Lister wouldn’t give a toss about Rimmer bossing the scutters about on yet another mad powertrip, but he’s going too far. He’s thrown out all Lister’s mouldering dishes, professing concern for Lister’s health but probably just trying to irritate him, and he’s cleared out the space in the corner of the bunkroom that Lister had hesitantly earmarked for the crib - and in doing so, had thrown out Lister’s third-worst t-shirt, the one with the curry stain vaguely resembling Maggie Thatcher, and which he likes to keep around in order to spit at it every now and then. The final straw, however, had been when Rimmer had nasally informed him that he was getting in the way of the scutters’ gruelling floor-cleaning regime, and that he had better go and put his feet up instead - to keep out of their way, of course.

“When have I ever tried to manipulate you to get what I want?” Rimmer says with a voice which he probably thinks is sweet and just makes him sound like a particularly jammy and unpleasant used-car salesman trying to get off with the seventeen-year-old girls coming in for their first Fiat 500.

Lister narrows his eyes. “Do you want that alphabetised or chronological?”

Rimmer blinks at him balefully, still very much putting it on. “Can’t I just do something nice without an ulterior motive?”

He considers this. “A person could, even if they never have before. You, though, I genuinely think the shock of it would kill you.” Lister spreads his hands invitingly, obligingly lifting one foot out of the way of a scutter before letting it once more dangle over the side of the sofa. “So, out with it.”

Rimmer shifts nervously from one foot to the other, inventing something at speed as though he never expected Lister to call him out on this - in which case, he’s a moron. More so than usual. “I don’t want the twins sleeping in our room,” he blurts out all in one rushed go, and Lister raises an eyebrow. “They’ll - they’ll cry, and keep me up, and I’m not giving up my Learn Esperanto discs for rodent-sized versions of you.”

Lister makes a game show-style incorrect noise and blows a raspberry, just to watch the left side of Rimmer’s face twitch in irritation. “Nope, not happening. They’ll cry so’s I know they need me, so I gotta be here to hear ‘em. Anyway, I wouldn’t make you give up your Esperanto discs - they’ll be better at it than you in a few months.”

Rimmer makes a sucked-lemon face at him. “Your spawn is not piggybacking my learning, the little parasites,” he says sternly.

Lister cups a hand around his ear exaggeratedly. “What was that, little-Listers? Ni estas tre lertaj? Yes,” he says to his still flat stomach in a very gooey voice that makes Rimmer clench and unclench his fists like a prize fighter, “you are very clever!”

Rimmer wrenches one hand up and points at him viciously, the other fingers curled in so tightly that his knuckles go white. “I forbid it.”

Lister sticks his tongue out. “Move out. Anyway, that’s not the reason - you cleared the space for their beds yourself. So, what is it?”

Rimmer narrows his eyes. The scutters start inching towards the door and effecting their escape. “I want to pick the film tonight, and it won’t be Fast and 14ious again,” he says carefully, feeling his way into the lie.

Lister pulls a sympathetic face and makes his game show noise again. “Oh, too bad,” he says, “you know well it’s Cat’s shout tonight so helping me won’t do anything. Anyway, 14ious is the best one.”

“It’s scratched to hell,” Rimmer points out. “We have to make up our own dialogue for the entire second act - last time, Kryten had the central car chase pivot around a shipment of mopheads and got disturbingly into the sex scene immediately following.”

Lister winces briefly at the recollection, but shrugs. “Exactly, it’s the best one. Right, contestant, last chance, remembering that you still have your lifelines: ask the audience, fifty-fifty, phone a friend-”

Predictably, Rimmer frowns. “Phone a friend?”

Internally, Lister pumps his fist. “Sorry contestant, that’s wrong too - you don’t have any friends.” Rimmer offers him a truly poisonous look and Lister nearly falls off the sofa snorting with laughter.

Rimmer folds his arms. “Well, if you know so much,” he sneers. “Work it out for yourself.”

“Nah, ‘cause you’ll just say yes to anything in the hope I’ll shut my gob,” Lister says without taking offence, and Rimmer looks vaguely exhausted. “Come on,” he wheedles, “tell me what’s eating you.”

“Nothing!” Rimmer snaps, unfolding his arms in a jerky motion and stalking off to fold himself into his bunk so that Lister has to awkwardly lean his head over the back of the sofa to see him. “Maybe I just want to live somewhere with basic standards of cleanliness.”

“Yeah,” Lister allows, watching Rimmer rub at the webbing between thumb and forefinger obsessively, as though seeking comfort. “But usually you yell at me until I do it. This,” he says, gesturing at the hard work of the scutters, “could be interpreted as nice, Rimmer, so you’d better do something selfish before the Playboy cover designers get in touch and make you every Miss July for the next century, or something else equally unlikely happens.”

“You’re an unbearable goit with all the standards and appeal of a mangy, leg-humping jack russell.”

“That’s the spirit. Now, explain yourself, you uptight lunatic.”

Rimmer makes a face at his own knees, then looks up, sees Lister watching him, and makes an even unhappier face. “Well,” he says, and then Lister has to wait and listen to nothing but the noise of deep space and Red Dwarf slowly falling apart around them for a good minute. “We ought to be ready for the babies, when they arrive,” he says suddenly, addressing the starched creases in his trousers.

“Which will be in about seven months,” Lister prompts gently, turning around to lean his chest against the back of the sofa and watch Rimmer better. He rubs the back of his neck carefully, tugging at the baby hair under his dreads. It’s not that he doesn’t want to be prepared, but - seven months is a long time, in the depths of space with sod all else to occupy them. Rimmer seems oddly hung up on it. The thought occurs to him like a lead weight in his stomach. “Look, man, I know we never asked for ‘em, but they are coming, so even if you don’t want them around you’ve-”

“No!” Rimmer says sharply, and when he meets Lister’s eyes he knows Rimmer is entirely serious, even though he still doesn’t understand literally anything else about the situation. “It’s not-” he waves a hand at Lister dismissively. Then he fixes his gaze on his hands, and addresses his remarks to those. “Pregnant people are supposed to rest,” he says sternly, “and be undisturbed by - by mess, and noise, and small children.”

Lister feels a frown settle on his brows, and a worry settle in his gut. Rimmer swallows hard, adam’s apple moving like a yo-yo. “Why’s that?” he murmurs gently, as if - if he could only be quiet enough - the question wouldn’t spook Rimmer out of his honesty.

Rimmer shrugs one shoulder. “Stops the baby growing up strong,” he recites oddly. “Mummy said she’d spent so much time running after my brothers that she was worn out with me, and that’s why I was slow.” He sniffs. He looks horribly lonely, and a hundred thousand miles away, and it’s like there’s a fist around Lister’s heart slowly constricting. “And that she might as well keep focussing on them, since I was never going to catch up.”

Lister shakes his head slowly. “Rimmer,” he says, “you’ve got more hang-ups than Elton John’s feather boa rack. I’m not raising the kids like your parents did you, and I’m not going to lie on the sofa for the next seven months doing sod all.”

“Whereas normally you’re such a ball of energy,” Rimmer snipes, but his heart’s not in it.

“Yeah,” Lister agrees calmly, “I’ve a strict schedule of slobbing about in different places and I’m gonna stick to it. Rimmer.” Rimmer flicks his head up guiltily and Lister offers him an exhausted look. “You can’t just decide to only care about my health when it suits your trauma and really annoys me, alright?”

Rimmer frowns. “Why not?” he whinges - which is a surprise, because Lister was anticipating him latching onto the caring thing, and not getting much further.

Lister spreads his hands. “All or nothing, baby,” he says firmly and with cheer, and then shoots Rimmer a wink - which reminds him of the aforementioned caring thing, and sets him off sputtering.

“And - and I don’t care,” he manages in the end. “Watch me not caring, you odious toad.”

“Uh-huh,” Lister says, and then, when Rimmer chances a glance his way, blows him a kiss to make him go all red and cross. It’s really ridiculously endearing.

“This,” Rimmer says, pointing at him, “is a manifestation of my dreadful upbringing, and, and Stockholm syndrome, anyway.”

Lister manages a grin, and lets it go. As he slumps back into the sofa, he can’t help but wish that Rimmer wasn’t probably right - and not just because the man is obnoxious and intolerable on a good day, when he’s wrong - and failing that, that this Stockholm syndrome, this resolute and unbending care that humans apparently manifest for one another despite literally everything when there is nothing else in the universe except a few creeping lifeforms and the persistent love they put out like radiation from a life-destroying nuclear incident, touching everything and making it all complicated - he cannot help but wish that it wasn’t there, or that it was there more, or something. That Lister loved him less, or that Rimmer loved him more, or that there was anything, anything at all, that Lister could do to change that.

But there isn’t, and he hasn’t got a hope in hell of Rimmer ever acknowledging affection without yelling got you afterwards, so he’d better just - stop bothering, really. Lister sighs, and smoothes his shirt over his stomach. He doesn’t care that Rimmer doesn’t want to care. He’s fine about it.

He hears his own brain make the game show noise. In a fit of pique, he removes one vile sock and throws it into the cleared space designed for the cots, and tries not to think about the hair-pulling sense of satisfaction he gets from listening to Rimmer yell at him.

#apologies for the delay! as ever i am working on it all slowly #thanks for the prompt anon! hope u enjoy this slightly loose interpretation thereof #red dwarf #rimster #this is your captain speaking

32 notes · View notes

selenitawars · 3 years

Text

Pressentimento

Never Be The Same - Part 7.

Pairing: Sam x Daughter!Reader, Dean x Niece!Reader, Castiel x Platonic!Reader.

Summary: To save Dean’s life, Sam changes a big part of his past, hoping that he’d only forget memories with his college girlfriend. But, not only he changes his life, he also creates a new one.

Word Count: 2332.

Warnings: None.

A/N: Yes, I’m back after over a year and a half. I know I’m a dumbass for making y’all wait for so long, but, honestly, I want this to be a fun writing, so I try not to pressure myself. Won’t make promises. Either way, always love to know your opinions. Hope you enjoy this comeback haha!

Pressentimento masculine noun 1. act of feeling in advance, more through emotion than reason, the occurrence of a future fact; suspicion. "I have a p. that this will not work" 2. knowledge of what will happen, obtained by intuition; forecast, hunch, omen.

You still hadn't explained everything to your father nor your uncle. Cas remembered one of the episodes that occurred with you when you were younger, around ten or so. It was hard for you. Every time you tried to explain yourself, things were hard to explain. All the time, something blocked you from exposing the fear inside you, the fear of letting things out.

The way their "new" memories came to them didn't help. It was so unpredictable. Cas remembered you praying first and then, mixed memories, tiny ones, which made him assume a lot about you already; and worry as well. Dean remembered more, like the time Sam was soulless and you lived with him for months, you concluded he was remembering things by the impact they had in his life. As for Sam, well, apparently things were coming more chronologically for him, but a little late, since he also had a lot of Camila to remember.

You tried to think how to talk to them about your crisis. The big ones. It was so complicated. When it started happening, you had your godmother to help with calming down and understanding how sensible you were; but even Vanessa had to talk with the Winchesters to fully understand what made you so much stronger and sensitive. Anyway, she wouldn't help you now that she was in the list of people to whom you never existed.

Oh, and your mother...

Looking at pictures of her nowadays became an addiction. You couldn't sleep before searching a little more about her, not that you've been having much sleep or any of this helped. You wish so bad you could talk to her. And now that Sam told ya you reminded him so much of Camila, you really studied her, trying to find the resemblance.

How would you tell them there's more? More of you to worry. You wanted to wait for a time when the memories hangovers weren't so heavy on them. They were all trying to act normal, but it was obvious - you've never been at home for this long, they were never so quiet. Dean wasn't even drinking, to make sure he wouldn't be more confused.

You were lying down on your bed, trying to ease the headache. It was normal to have a day just to be tired, but after the all day just resting you still got a headache by night. Went to get a pill to make it better and when you swallow it, you realize something.

"I don't exist." You whisper to yourself.

For the first time in that day, you felt useful. Even with the headache, you got in front of the computer and started to do your thing. For some reason you got happy when you confirmed your theory.

"I was never born."

"You gotta stop thinking about that." Dean warned you.

"No, I mean... I don't exist."

The three men stared at you with confusion, you repeated.

"I don't exist."

Still nothing. The room was filled with silence while you hoped for the clicking in their minds. It never came. You sighed.

"I never existed! Never did anything!"

Sam looked at you like he was starting to worry, while holding a bowl with cereal. Just like Dean, who chewed his, probably thinking you've gone crazy.

"I don't understand why you're so excited saying it." Cas finally said.

"Isn't it obvious?" They once more, didn't react. "There are no records of me, at all. Nobody knows about me. I only left the bunker once."

"What's your point?" Dean asked.

"We should keep it that way."

"What? Why?" The brothers said together.

"Well, if nobody knows I'm here, we're in advantage. It's always good to have a secret backup, right?"

"Like... as a surprise element?" Castiel suggested, you nodded. "Y/N, you don't truly expect us to treat you like a secret weapon..."

"Hell no." Dean agreed.

"It's not like it."

"Well, I don't see your point." You father stated. "I know this seems messed up, but, we can fix it. Don't worry."

"I'm not worried, I'm thinking!" You made them quiet. "C'mon, think with me: I barely left the bunker, how could anyone know about me?"

"We know about you." Dean answered.

"But you've seen me. And your memories, are just yours, this doesn't mean the world knows about me."

"Ok, but you'll need to use an ID sometime. Or will you live forever here, inside the bunker?"

"Dean, you should know it's easier to make a fake ID look real if there isn't a real one to prove the fake one as fake."

Sam took a deep breath.

"Ok, so we leave it as it is. How much long do you think it would last?"

"Not much, I know. But at least, for a while it could be useful."

"I don't see how, Y/N. I'm not using you as my secret-spy-soldier or whatever."

"Sam is right. It's not worth it."

"Castiel?" You looked at him, only to find the agreeing look. You looked down.

"Look, how can you be sure nobody else remembers you?" The angel tried to clear your mind.

"For most people I know, I never happened. And the others, will probably only remember me when they see me, if they do. Until then..."

"That's not right." Sam interrupted. "I had this feeling about you, before we arrived on that day; like I left something behind, but I couldn't remember why."

"So did I."

"I got one your prayers for not getting news from us." You stood there, silent.

"That's it? A feeling you forgot something?!" You left for your bedroom, a little ofended they didn't listen to you. Your idea was good, logical. You genuinely thought they would see it as a good thing out of all this.

Reflecting on it, you finally notice: you may not know your family as well as before. At first it sounds crazy, but this is all crazy, ain't it? And after doing their exercise for a couple hours, thinking about your childhood, the events that crossed it and when it all began, you got yourself some questions.

You fell asleep while still thinking, trying to find logic somewhere and always getting to the same point, a lost point. Somehow while sleeping, you had no dreams, didn't wake up once; not even the fact that you were with a jacket bothered you.

"Hey, man. You good?" Dean noticed Sam squeeze his eyes.

"Yep. Just those flashbacks. I hate to have them by day, but I can't sleep no longer."

"Like a constant hangover, thank God it's not a heavy one." Sam did not answer. "Sam?"

"Right..." Sam stared at the floor, seeing stuff in his mind. He blinked multiple times after a little.

"You all right? You seem shocked. What did you remember?"

"It's just... Y/N's suggestion."

"Dude, that was today."

"Very funny!" Dean smiled a little to ease his brother. "It got me thinking. Why would she want that?"

"Honestly," Castiel entered suddenly. "I think she is trying to get something good out of this."

"Good? I see her point, but..."

"Not good." Cas interrupted, correcting himself. "Useful, at least."

"It's not as useful as she thinks." Dean says as if it's obvious.

"It's the only thing she has to offer." Castiel putted it in a weird way, but made sense. They silented for an instant. "Still, how does that has to do with your flashback, Sam?"

"I thought that maybe I should listen to her. Maybe there was a point."

"You, Sammy, considered the possibility of being saved by her?"

"Obviously not. I wondered: what if her non-existence helped her get away from this craziness. Like, she could get to any school if we put some effort."

"You concluded it fast." Cas commented.

"Well, yeah. Then I... questioned." Sam felt the gazes at him. "How did she get dragged into hunting in the first place? Why did I not stop it? And one more thing popped up: why did I leave college?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Dean couldn't understand his brother.

"Dean, if it wasn't for my anger towards Jessica's death, who knows..." He explained. "So why I left Stanford, making Camila stay behind and after weeks drop out too?"

Castiel took a seat.

"Why did you?"

Sam opened the door, showly. You were in your bed, far from his atmosphere, enjoying a rest you needed. He passed the door carefully, took a look at your room and turned the lights off. Ever since that hunt days ago, when he saw you sleep at the motel bed while he was reading about the case, the day he woke up before you and as you slept in the car coming back home, Sam felt peace as he watched you.

It was the moment he could breath easily and a little relaxed. You were resting, next to him, nothing could hurt you in your sleep. There, you were safe and wasn't leaving soon. So he couldn't help watch you once more; just stood by the door for a couple seconds, smiled at the taught of you having a break from this madness for some hours. Grabbed the door and heard your move, turning to check if he had woken ya.

"Sorry."

"Don't be." Your voice sounded lazy. "I have a light sleep."

"So do I." You nodded. You knew it. He regrets commenting it.

"What is it?"

"Nothing. Go back to sleep."

"No, tell me." He understood you couldn't sleep anymore.

"You don't want to talk now."

"It's about earlier, I know." You said while rubbing your eyes. "Just spit it." He gave in and sat in your chair.

"Why do you wanna do it?"

"Why don't you?"

"Why would I?"

"You've always wanted this." He gulped.

"What? No!"

"You never wanted me to be in risk, you hated the fact I made you all vulnerable, now nobody knows I'm here. I know this isn't permanent and things can change, but for now, you could finally be at peace. Nobody knows me, none of you have to worry."

Samuel digested everything you said and got his answer prepared fastly enough.

"For a long time I asked myself if Jessica never died, would I be here? And you know, as things turned out to be, as I found out more and more throughout the years I got the answer." He paused. "I would. Because if it wasn't Jess, it would be Dean or dad, or a friend."

"What do you mean?"

"I left college for revenge." You got surprised. "It wasn't Jess. Not anymore." That sounded weird. "I made a choice and I know now that somehow, at some point, no matter how many times... I would make that choice again. As soon as somebody I care about got in danger. So I left college. For you."

Sam got back from his first hunt after two years. Camila was waiting. They talked and she was serious when she told him to call Dean. Leave as soon as he could. She said she had a bad feeling, he had to find his father. Was something repentine, fast and clear - the fear in her voice stopped Sam from questioning.

"The way she talked to me... her eyes, getting sudden tears. At first I tried to calm her, jokes on me, I blamed her hormones. Camila proved me wrong. I knew she had that sometimes, like with tests or bad decisions, maybe something simple like knowing staying in was better than going to a party. She was always right. If not totally right, fast enough to avoid regret." He looked down as her voice came to his head and repeated her words. "'This is your family we're talking about, Samuel! Your child's grandfather.' She screamed. I was scared." You two laughed a little. "She begged. Aggressively. But, I didn't leave because she did."

"Why then?"

"I called Dean to get back there and pick me up because once we talked, I got that bad feeling too. And was suddenly afraid. Afraid something would happen to either of you." You stayed silent. "I hoped things would be more simple, soon I'd be back and things would go back to normal. You would be born and grow up, normal. We would be a family..."

"Please, don't say normal." He smiled.

"Your mother's bad feeling... I don't know what is was about exactly. She got scared too in that moment and it was the only time I saw her that scared. But I know that mine became true. Only, it was even worse. There was no blame. Of all things that happened in those months, how worried I was with my father, you, Camila and even Dean... The hunts, the confusion and overwhelming information all at once. The fear. Your mother's death was the most sudden and painful." You saw a tear run down his cheek, followed by a couple more. Sam had more to say but you spoke before, in the heat of the moment.

"She knew." He looked back at you, now with red eyes. "I think she knew something bad was going to happen."

"She knew we would be in danger." By we, he meant himself, his uncle and your grandpa.

"No. Not that. She knew that something terrible was happening already and would get worse. But she didn't tell you to go to stop it." His tears froze, lost in your words. "Like you said. Camila was always right about this bad feelings. She was certain." You were sure thanks to your own experience with it.

"About Dean needing me more than her?" You denied.

"About you needing the rest of your family once I was born."

#sam x daughter!reader #dean x niece!reader #castiel x platonic!reader #sam x daughter au #dean x niece au #castiel x platonic au #dad!sam winchester #uncle!dean winchester #uncle!castiel #winchester!reader #winchester!daughter #sam winchester x daughter!reader #dean winchester x niece!reader #supernatural imagine #supernatural au

74 notes · View notes

pallasperilous · 4 years

Text

Funny Bone

The other day Supernatural9917 threw out this meme as a cracky Halloween Dean/Cas prompt and I was SO MAD, because I then had to write it:

And so here it is. Goddammit.

Funny Bone

https://archiveofourown.org/works/26761150 Words: 4930 Castiel/Dean Winchester Fluff and Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, Skeletons, Bad Pick-Up Lines, No Angels AU, Men of Letters Bunker, Mild Gore Mature (mentions of lewd acts, canon-typical violence, and some truly horrible pickup lines)

It wasn’t even a particularly creepy skeleton; it was in kind of a “just chillin’” pose on the floor. One ankle was still locked up in a heavy iron cuff, at the end of a short chain leading back to the wall. Snoresville, as dead stuff goes; Dean’s seen worse at Disneyland. It was the skeleton’s comment about Dean’s ass that really livened things up.

Discovering the bunker in the first place was a helluva surprise. The whole facility is legitimately batshit; Dead Guys of Letters knew how to live (and, apparently, die. All at once.).

But after plowing through a dozen rooms worth of priceless treasures and crusty boobytraps, even Sam was looking kinda full up on shock and awe.

“We can hit the basement tomorrow,” he said. There was a big smudge of dust across his nose and some cobwebs in his hair.

“Nuh uh,” Dean answered, kicking the door shut with the toe of his boot. “If there’s shit still kicking down there, we gotta clean it out before it cleans us out. It’s that or we’re sleepin’ in the car.”

“Ugh,” Sam said, as if twenty minutes ago he hadn’t been losing his mind over a rare book about werewolf hemorrhoids.

So discovering that the basement included a no-shit actual dungeon felt more like an unanticipated bonus, and stumbling across a skeleton while exploring it barely even registered. Skeletons and dungeons! They go together like rama lama lama ka dinga da dinga dong.

It wasn’t even a particularly creepy skeleton; it was in kind of a “just chillin’” pose on the floor, inside a big circle of greasy black ash. It looked a little mildewy in in places. One ankle was still locked up in a heavy iron cuff, at the end of a short chain leading back to the wall. Snoresville, as dead stuff goes; Dean’s seen worse at Disneyland.

It was the skeleton’s comment about Dean’s ass that really livened things up.

“Welp,” Dean had said, holstering his gun and wiping his hands on his jeans. “We’re all clear. Let’s head back upstairs, salt the shit out of everything, and then we can pick up some groceries.”

“Do I get to buy a vegetable that doesn’t fit in a bun, or are we still in the refractory period?” Sam snarked from the corridor.

“I don’t see you cookin’, “ Dean started, shuffling back towards the hall, and that’s when the skeleton butted in.

“Are those astronaut pants?” it asked. “Because your ass is outta this world!”

Dean absolutely did not scream, but it’s possible there was a yelp.

He almost unloaded a clip into it – unclear what that would’ve possibly done, but it’s good to start with the simple, available solutions. Next he nabbed the lighter fluid off of Sam and dumped out half a pound of kosher salt as a chaser and set the fucker alight.

This does not have the intended effect.

“Baby, I’d like to put my meat on your grill,” the skeleton says, greenish flames dancing between its ribs, “because you’re hot, and I’m smokin’.” Then it sits up a little, just enough to shoot Dean some finger guns.

“What the fuck,” Dean says.

Sam makes a little evaluatory noise. “Sexually harassed by a skeleton,” he chuckles. “I think that’s a new one. Even for you. Is that a new one? I know a lot of strange shit went down in Purgatory.”

The skeleton perks up even more at that, grungy eye sockets sweeping up and down Dean’s body. “Are you a time traveler?” it asks. (Maybe he asks, because the voice is pretty deep and dude-ish, although possibly just on account of its vocal cords being leather shoelaces.)

“Wh…no, I’m not a time traveler,” Dean fibs. He’s more of a time trafficking victim, anyway. “Oh, wait, god,” he says. “Please don’t tell me you’re asking that because –“

“– I can see you in my future,” the skeleton finishes, eagerly, and Dean really wishes this thing had eyebrows so he could tell if they’re waggling.

“Yeah, okay. That’s enough for today,” Dean groans. “I need a drink.” He starts to back out of the room as a pre-emptive strike against Bones commenting on how he hates to see Dean leave, but loves to watch him go. Dean��s working on stumbling back again Sam’s left shoe when the skeleton pipes up one last time, this time with a husky, anxious edge.

“I realize that Purgatory isn’t accessible through a simple chronological shift,” it says, teeth chattering. “But it does require travel between modalities, and if you’re capable of that, I would very much like to speak with you again.”

Dean and Sam’s heads slowly swivel back towards the skeleton, like two little pizzas on the same Lazy Susan.

An hour later, they’re still in the dungeon, working on dousing the skeleton with every possible anti-bad-stuff solution they’ve got, just in case he’s a vampire skeleton or a ghoul skeleton or a witch skeleton or maybe just a wendigo that’s incredibly bad at its job. In between progress reports, he’s still hitting on Dean.

“Dude, don’t you have an off switch somewhere?” Dean asks him.

“Well, Dean, you certainly make me feel like a light switch,–“

“– because you turn me on,” all three of them say in unison.

The skeleton looks a little embarrassed, which is kind of impressive when you think about it. “You’ve…heard that one before?” he asks.

“I spend a lot of time in bars,” Dean deadpans. “Okay, sage is a no-go.”

Sam strikes a line off on the clipboard he found upstairs. “Is this part of a curse or something?” he asks, glancing up at Bones. “Like on top of being a sentient skeleton, you can only speak in horrible pickup lines?”

The skeleton shakes his head, which produces a sound Dean recognizes from his kneecaps on cold mornings. “No, the spellwork allows me to speak freely on most subjects; except who I am, or how to free me. But it’s helpful to use language modern humans can easily understand.”

“Huh. Well, in a way, it is Dean’s native tongue,” Sam says, smirking.

“You shut your face,” Dean hisses.

“When I first saw you, I lost my tongue. Can I try yours on for size?” Bones asks Dean.

“Buddy, I don’t know where you get your information from, but nobody actually talks that way,” Dean tells him. “Nobody sober, anyway. Who isn’t a virgin.”

The skeleton slumps. “I learned from my last visitor. He tried to release me on several occasions, but he either died or abandoned the project.”

Dean arches a brow. “The project being…you?”

“I would be very valuable under the right circumstances.” The skeleton shrugs and casually holds out an arm for Dean to scrape at with the demon blade. “He gave me lessons in modern vernacular as a way to pass our time together.”

“Sounds like a peach,” Dean says, before he can catch himself. “If you have a peach-related pickup line in there, man, you’d better just sit on it.”

“That’s what-“

“I will smash you with a hammer,” Dean barks.

The skeleton relents, but with obvious reluctance.

They call it quits before Kansas rolls up the sidewalk for the night and leaves them stranded with nothing but two Clif bars and a gross of septuagenarian cans of franks ’n beans. Bones shifts nervously when Dean leaves – “Which is better, pancakes or waffles?” he asks.

“Pancakes,” Dean says, with a sense of grim duty.

“Because I’d like to know what you’re making me for breakfast,” says Bones, his voice trailing off as Dean books it down the stony corridor.

By lunch the next day (bologna sandwiches, so sue him, he’ll make something good later) they’re pretty sure that Bones doesn’t pose any known, immediate threat – other than to Dean’s sanity – so they switch gears to springing him. Maybe he will be worth something, or maybe he’ll crumble into dust and Be Free, or maybe he’ll just stop being chained to the basement wall, in which case he can become their skeleton butler or something.

There are weird runes on the ankle cuff, so Sam snaps some quick photos and heads upstairs to feel up the library. This leaves Dean in the basement with Bones, some good old-fashioned power tools, and Bones’s ex-suitor’s gross sense of humor.

“You know I can understand you just fine when you’re talking normally,” Dean says. “You’re just reciting some prehistoric shit that idiots say to girls to get a pity-laugh, hoping it leads to a pity-fuck.”

“What’s a pity-fuck?” Bones asks, all mildewy innocence. Dean’s pretty sure the grunge in his eyeball sockets is dried eyeball.

“Pretty much what it says on the tin, my guy,” Dean answers, and reaches for the acetylene torch.

“Enochian,” Sam says, when Dean surfaces for another sandwich and possibly a beer. He’s really disappointed about the torch.

“Gesundheit?” Dean replies, around a mouthful of bologna. Like everything else here, the kitchen is pretty schwa, although the inside of the fridge required three exorcisms and half a jug of bleach.

Sam paws around the smelly old book in a way that makes Dean feel sorry for the girls Sam dated in high school. “The symbols on the cuff. I think they’re Enochian. It’s a fake celestial language made up by some sixteenth century con artists.”

Dean coughs up a bit of Wonder Bread. “I respect the hustle, but what’s it doing on an ankle cuff in a dungeon younger than Mickey Mouse?”

Sam frowns. “Well, it could be for show. But just because some nutbars made it up doesn’t mean it’s totally powerless. Maybe it does have some kind of…heavenly mojo.”

“Liwl probbem,” Dean observes, finishing off his sandwich. “Def nuh heggen.”

“Huh?”

Dean takes a swallow of beer. “I said: there’s no heaven.”

Sam shrugs. “We didn’t think there was a Purgatory, either.”

“Okay, but if we find out angels are real,” Dean snorts, “then Bones can fuck me in the ass.”

Sam reports his findings to Bones, who sits placidly on the back of his pelvis, carpals splayed out on his kneecaps. What’s even holding him together? Dean can see what’s left of his ligaments, but they look like petrified gas station jerky.

“Do you know what they mean?” Sam asks him, pointing at the sigils.

Bones’s jaw creaks open a little, then closes again, and then he shakes his skull (something rattles inside.) Finally he makes a little frustrated noise and replies – “Baby, are you a book? Because I’d like to check you out.”

“Hey!” says Dean. “Keep it in your pants, man, I’m right here.”

Sam squints. “I think…Dean, I think he’s trying to tell us something, but the spell on him means he can’t say it directly.”

Bones clenches his fists, releases them, clenches them again.

“Yeah. Keep him talking. Let’s see how close he can get.”

Clack clack clack.

“Uh,” Dean says, rubbing the back of his neck. “Okay. Do I need to, like. Give you some kinda opening?” he asks Bones.

“Sweetheart, I’d like nothing better,” Bones answers, then clacks his knuckles on his brow with exasperation.

“Sorry, Christ. Hit me with your best shot, buddy. Dealer’s choice.”

Bones clears his…ghost throat? and tries: “Tell me, Dean…did it hurt?”

Dean blinks. “When I…fell from heaven?”

Sam claps his hands. “Fucking knew it. It is Enochian, and it does have something to do with this. I think he wants me to check the library for another book. Maybe there’s one misshelved or something that I can actually use to translate. Or I can Google around, maybe there’s a subreddit.”

Dean’s pretty sure Bones has never heard of a Google or a subreddit (for that matter, does Dean actually know what a subreddit is?), but it seems like there’s a glimmer of hope deep in those scum-holes.

Sam gets translations for a few of the words – “obedience” and something he’s fifty percent sure means “millstone” – but the rest is still gobbledygook, and he hasn’t come down with another update in hours. The dungeon is pretty roomy, but it’s not like there’s a foosball table or a cable TV pickup down there, so Dean and Bones wind up lying on the cold-ass ground, staring up into the dark reaches of the ceiling together and, like. Chatting.

Occasionally Bones goes quiet and Dean glances over at him. He really could just be a totally normal, completely dead dungeon skeleton. A good power washing and the right mounting hardware and he’d be ready for a high school biology classroom.

“So if these runes are a celestial thing, does that mean you’re some kinda demonic...thing?” Dean asks. “Cause I gotta say, you’re a much less of a douche than the demons I’ve met.” He snorts. “I know you probably can’t say.”

Bones sighs (how? With what lungs?). “The last person who tried to free me was a demon.” He shifts a little, maybe surprised that he can say this out loud. “It had been so long since somebody had spoken to me…I’m afraid I came close to actually enjoying his company. But he was no better than his kind usually are.”

“Don’t suppose you caught his name? Maybe Sam or me killed him for you already.”

“He called himself—no, I can’t say it.” He makes a sound resembling a harumph.

Then his skull creaks over to look at Dean. “Does your name start with ‘C’?” he says, very deliberately.

Dean is momentarily puzzled, but he works it out by the time Bones wincingly adds “…because I’ve got a D that wants to come behind you.”

There aren’t too many demons under the “C” tab in Dean’s blood-stained mental rolodex, and when he says the name out loud, Bones makes a sound like an entire set of dominos being thrown down a spiral staircase.

Crowley is pretty pissed, which is fun.

It’s nice that the dungeon floor already has a perfect trap on the floor; they don’t even have to hit up Ace Hardware for paint. A damp shop cloth and a little nail polish (Wet ’n Wild in “Red Red,” don’t leave home without it) brings it right up to working order.

“Why does it smell like a nail salon fucked a bloody wine cellar?” Crowley says, after he’s settled down a bit. He manifested right in the creepy torture chair (in the shackles, even! What service!) and he made some escape attempts followed by angry noises about rust stains. Now he’s recovered his dignity and has kicked back a bit, legs crossed, fingers steepled, oozing maximum levels of 2 cool 4 school.

“How do you know what a nail salon smells like?” Dean retorts.

“I get a monthly mani-pedi. There’s no shame in a little self-care, boys.” Crowley’s eyes trickle down to their feet. “Imagine what fungal horrors those work boots must conceal.” Then he squints, and looks up, finally taking in the whole room. “Could swear I’ve been here before. Little upscale for you, isn’t it? Did we splurge for a vacation rental?”

“Crowley, why don’t we roleplay Titanic?” Bones growls from the wall behind him, and Crowley’s face goes slack. “I’ll be the iceberg, and you can go down.”

Crowley swallows and slowly twists back, as far as the shackles let him. “Feathers, is that you? Well, as I live and breathe.”

“You do neither,” says Bones, with so much gravelly contempt that Dean suppresses a little shiver.

“Oh, I still breathe now and then, when the mood takes me. I’m a sentimentalist.” Crowley cranes his neck a little harder and squints into the dim. “Goodness, you’ve dropped some weight since we last spoke, haven’t you. Finally let go of all that pesky soft tissue?”

Bones tilts forward and kind of clatters onto hands and knees, then tipsily begins to rise up to standing. Dean’s a little concerned he’s gonna topple right over and they’re gonna spend the next two hours collecting him in a basket, but when he moves to help out, Bones waves him off. After a couple false starts he makes it up onto his feet bones and then shuffles out to the end of his chain, right under one of the overhead lights. He’s still a good couple feet off from Crowley, but Crowley looks like he wouldn’t mind a few extra acres.

Bones sways a little bit, just enough for Crowley to wince. “You didn’t come back.”

“I got busy.”

Sam shifts impatiently. “What is he?” he snaps, gesturing at Bones.

“Exceedingly dull,” Crowley says. “I should’ve guessed you were friends.”

Dean uncorks a fresh bottle of holy water.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Crowley amends, quickly. “And even if you did, you wouldn’t know what to do with him. It’d be like giving a laptop to a pair of howler monkeys.”

Dean puts his thumb over the mouth of the water bottle and holds it over Crowley’s head. “Try me.”

Crowley scoffs, rolls his eyes. “It doesn’t matter what he is, since he’s useless as long as he’s chained up. And I wouldn’t have left him down here if I had a single clue how to smuggle him out. I haven’t even been in here since the Bay of Pigs; I’d worked a loophole in one of the defense spells here that let me in. When it broke down, I lost my exploit. Wasn’t worth the bother after that.”

Dean slides his thumb a millimeter north of a perfect seal, and a fat drop of water busts its ass open on Crowley’s forehead and sends up a thin line of steam. “Good thing I’ve got a limitless supply of bother,” Dean notes. “Sam, we still got those syringes in the trunk?”

Crowley snarls. “Go ahead and melt me like the cartoon shoe in Roger Rabbit, it’s not going magically make me come up with a solution.”

Bones grunts and rattles his leg chain. “Do you speak Spanish, Crowley? Because you look like the Juan for me.”

“Did I teach you that one? You absolute xylophone.” Crowley glances back at Dean. “Do your worst, Squirrel, I deserve it.”

Sam frowns. “He uses the lines to get around the spell’s speech restrictions. This is something about speaking languages…were you able translate the Enochian symbols on his cuff?”

Crowley blinks. “What symbols?”

After a whole lot of faffing around with mirrors and terrible cellphone photography, they confirm that Crowley can’t see the symbols at all.

“More demon-proofing. Clever little buggers, those Men of Letters,” Crowley sighs. “A real shame they were peeled and eaten like bananas.”

Finally Sam just hunkers down with a pencil and pad to transcribe the entire ankle cuff, and Dean awkwardly holds up Bones’s ankle, like he’s being sized for a glass slipper. When they shove the results in Crowley’s face, Dean watches his eyes dart along the words.

“Well, it’s your lucky day, boys. Along with the usual wankery, there are instructions on how to release the cuff. I can translate it,” he finally says, with an unusually low inflection of bullshit, “but I’ll thank you to release me, first.”

Dean is flummoxed. “What, you’re not gonna haggle for a cut of the profits or anything?”

“Activating the release mechanism will free him completely, and restore his…restore him. I’d rather be at a safe distance.” He glances back at Bones, looming in the shadows. “A continent or three should do the trick.”

“If it doesn’t work–“

“I’d be more worried about what happens if it does,” Crowley sighs. “But feel free to summon me back for tea and sympathy. Here, I’ll even give you my number. But please, no personal photography. I pity you enough as it is.”

Crowley finally smokes out, and Dean has a beer to celebrate while Sam looks over the list of what they need and Bones clatters his fingertips like castanets. The ingredients are (as always) larded with shit that’s exotic and expensive; Sam is looking crestfallen at some of the items. “I’ve heard of all of this, but I’ve only seen maybe half of it for sale anywhere.”

“Baby, are you a yard sale? Because you’ve got some serious junk in that trunk,” Bones monotones. He’s back to lying on the floor.

At least it’s getting easier to translate this shit. “They’ve got all the ingredients here somewhere,” Dean says. Sam looks skeptical. “C’mon, Sam, no way these dudes would use a lock when they didn’t have the key.”

The ensuing scavenger hunt takes a few pints of elbow grease, but at least by the end they’re both familiar with the Bunker’s floor plan, document filing system, and inventory records. They find virtually everything in-house, though they do end up driving to the nearest farm stand for some hen’s eggs and rosemary (and heirloom tomatoes, because they look bomb).

Dean christens – or maybe exorcises – the kitchen range with some red meat, and they fuel up with burgers before taking the plunge. Dean’s still licking the ketchup off his fingers when Bones pipes up one last time. “Can I ask you something?” he says.

Dean and Sam brace for impact.

Bones sighs. “That’s not the start of a pickup line. I genuinely have a question.”

“Shoot.”

“Why are you so intent on freeing me? You could have just left me down here. I’m not a threat this way. You only have Crowley’s word that you might profit - or suffer - from my release.”

Sam gives Dean a look; it’s the look that says I sure hope you have an answer, because I think this entire thing has been dumb as shit and half as necessary. It’s a look Sam uses pretty regularly.

“Uh. It’s the right thing to do? As far as I can tell, you haven’t hurt anybody or done anything else to deserve being down here. We went through all those records upstairs, and there’s no note that says ‘by the way, that skeleton downstairs eats babies for breakfast.’ This place is cool, but the dudes who built it were obviously shady as fuck.”

“I see.” Bones sounds a little disappointed.

Sam fake-coughs into his hand, and Dean sets down his paper napkin. “Also, you seem cool. Like, you’re easy to hang out with. Other than the stinky one-liners, and we’re gonna wean you off of those.”

Bones straightens himself out a little. “Thank you, Dean. You know, on a scale of one to ten, I’d rate you a nine.”

“Okay, okay. Why not a ten?”

Bones sets his chin on his knuckle bones with a tidy little clack. “Because I’m the one you’re missing.”

Dean groans, but he thinks the guy might be smiling, somewhere behind that skeletal grin.

By hour two, Sam’s pretty tuckered out from pulverizing a billion and three mummified dove livers while reciting nonsense syllables, and Dean’s right arm is about to fall off from holding up this giant silver swizzle stick that’s either a really weird short sword or a decorative javelin, but Bones has never looked perkier. He’s lying on a nice white bedsheet and looking fresh as a recently exhumed daisy.

“Okay,” Sam rasps. “Light the candle and we should be good to go. Any last words, Bones?”

“Are either of you religious?” He crosses his arm bones over each other.

“Fuck no,” Dean answers, before Sam gets a chance to launch into it.

Bones shakes his skull fondly. “You should reconsider. Because you’re the answer to my prayers.”

Dean makes a gagging noise and lights the candle.

What happens next (well, after the cuff pops open) is some of the freakiest shit that Dean has ever seen, and his Freaky CV is pretty fucking impressive, thanks. Bones tells them to avert their eyes, “just in case”, but he takes a peek between his fingers anyway, because he’s an idiot.

For a second Bones is just lying there, and Dean has a second of real disappointment that maybe he’s Moved On Past The Veil or something, but then he starts…foaming. It starts out kind of uniform and colorless, but then it really picks up speed and volume and starts to separate into swaths of distinct and horrible colors and textures. He closes his eyes again for a second to give his stomach a chance to reboot, and when he looks again the foam is gone, and instead there’s a whole lot of angry jelly trying to form into organs.

Just as the jelly is really getting its shit together and looking more like lungs and intestines and stuff, the heart-jelly pulses once and sends out a fistful of big squishy vines…veins? and a fat white worm of nerve scrambles down the spinal column and starts putting out franchises. This is followed by some disturbingly tasty-looking red sheets of muscle that swiftly sheathe over all the whole scene, and then the muscles start sweating out fat and cartilage and this is the point where Dean decides that looking away is actually definitely one hundred percent for the best. Even then, the sounds are tough to handle.

Kinda wild: he’s seen people taken apart, but watching one get put back together is somehow gnarlier. Well, if this guy is even a person. It’s a human skeleton, sure, but god knows even Mickey Rourke has one under there.

Finally everything seems to have quieted down.

“How you doin’ over there, Bones?” Dean asks, and dares to take a peek.

Bones is crouched down in front of them, fists balled up in the bedsheets (it’s a relief that the bedsheets didn’t get accidentally sucked into the muscle layer or something, like one of those surgeons who leaves a sponge behind). Dean sees white guy skin and some dark messy hair and gets the gist of a decent build.

The face slowly cranes upwards, and Dean is really truly ready for anything here; tusks, fangs, Klingon forehead ridges, gingivitis. Instead he gets a faceful of hot math teacher. Bones’s eyes are still closed, but he’s frowning like he’s mentally reviewing his strategy to explain the quadratic equation to a roomful of horny teens.

He slowly rises to standing (yikes! Naked! Dean is a Moderately Bad Man, so he glances, but just long enough to register “nice), uncurling slowly and carefully.

Then he’s all the way up. Bones squares his shoulders and straightens the last kink in his spine, and the frown resolves. Dean’s about to say something, when his eyes snap open, and this cold white light absolutely blasts out of them, and fuck, Crowley wasn’t kidding: this guy is definitely A Thing. The whole room flattens and distorts in the light. Shadows race up the walls like they’re looking for a way out, then snap together into the shape of enormous ragged wings, stretching thirty feet higher than the actual ceiling clearance.

Then the light dies down; the wings fade into regular-grade shadows. Instead of a terrifying unearthly avatar of Oh Shit, Dean’s looking at a buck naked thirty-something math teacher. Who happens to be an unearthly avatar of Oh Shit. And has nice eyes.

“My name is Castiel, angel of the Lord, Seraph of the First Shield,” the avatar says, in a piss-shakingly resonant version of Bones’s voice.

Then: “Do you speak English, Dean?”

“Yes?” Dean fumbles.

“So do I,” says Castiel, and smiles.

Then he makes finger-guns.

Castiel sticks around for a grand total of five minutes before he’s suddenly gone again, because angels are (a) real and they can (b) teleport? at (c) any moment because (d) fuck you, then he reappears six hours later (clothed) standing over Dean’s bed, having apparently forgotten that humans like to sleep; this time Dean does shoot him, but luckily he doesn’t seem to take it personally.

“I located Crowley,” Bo- Castiel says. The silver sword-javelin thing is sitting on the kitchen counter in front of him; apparently it’s an Angel Blade and it lives in Castiel’s coat sleeve and can vaporize demons. It doesn’t look like it has any Crowley on it, but maybe it’s self-cleaning.

“Did you kill him?” Dean asks, now that he’s semi-coherent and wrapped around a cup of coffee in the kitchen.

“Not this time,” Cas answers. “He did help, after all.”

“Sure,” says Dean.

“You don’t need to let me fuck you in the ass, either,” Castiel says, and Dean honks some coffee up the back of his nose.

“Oh,” he gasps. “Okay. Cool. Thanks. Didn’t realize you could hear that convo all the way down there.”

“Angels have excellent hearing. Mine wasn’t impacted by the spell.”

Dean can think of at least three very private moments Castiel almost definitely could hear every instant of, and longs for death. Or maybe not, since apparently this guy lives in Heaven and could hear him there, too. “Great. Good to know. Noted.”

“But…” Castiel looks wistful.

“What?” Dean nudges him. Dean Winchester: angel nudger.

Castiel frowns. “If I said…” he stops himself. “This is…what I want to say is very irregular, at least between angels and humans.”

“Jesus christ on a goddamn pogo stick, man. It’s three in the morning, some of us have a circadian rhythm and a limited lifespan. Say whatever it is you gotta say.”

Castiel looks up and drowns Dean in his swimming pool eyes, which Dean has learned belong to a radio ad salesman in Illinois, who Castiel possessed a few years back before jumping several decades into the past to run some errands and getting rope-a-doped by the Men of Letters and then warehoused in their basement; after they all spontaneously bought the farm, he just slowly ran out of the power reserves needed to keep his vessel from turning to mush and hey presto, talking skeleton.

Classic story, really.

“If I said you had a beautiful body, Dean,” Castiel says, solemnly, “Would you hold it against m-“

Dean doesn’t let him finish. {AO3 version}

#spn fanfic #destiel #deancas #profoundnet #prompt fic

140 notes · View notes

queer-disabled-activist · 3 years

Text

Jon Cain: Journey songs about being a bad bf/very soppy masterlist

I got the idea last night of making this list and I think it is genius. Jon Cain is the ballad and soppy songs royal. Before he came into the band they wrote sexy songs, when he arrived it became ballads and songs about Jon being a bad boyfriend. I will explore in chronological order from “Escape” to “Arrival” I haven’t familiarised myself that much with “Revelation” and “Eclipse” yet, and after all; 5 albums will give us a lot of material of soppy and Jon complaining about being a bad boyfriend. I will find key lyrics, kinda to prove that Jon is the soppy, bad boyfriend royal complainer. This will be the longest list yet. Except for “Faithfully” Jon didn’t write the songs alone, will list the songwriters to each song as well, but you can tell that he has the most influence. My opinions about how I interpret the song is my own, you may feel otherwise; music feels different to as all after all. Lets start, and enjoy!

Escape

- “Who’s Crying Now” (J Cain/S Perry)

One of his first soppy bad boyfriend songs.In this one he made his girlfriend cry then he also started to cry, I imagine it was bc he wanted sympathy. The song is okay, but not my fave; none of the ballads really are. Key lyrics:

“One love, feeds the fire One heart, burns desire I wonder who's crying now? Two hearts, born to run Who'll be the lonely one? I wonder who's crying now?”

- “Open Arms” - (J Cain/S Perry)

This is Journey’s highest charting hit, peaking at nr. 2 at the Billboard Hot 100, can you believe? Because I can’t. It is soppy. It’s about Jon and his girlfriend who has drifted apart, he wants her back of course, for his own selfish reasons I bet. Girl please, don’t go back into his “Open Arms”. Key lyrics:

“Living without you, living alone This empty house seems so cold Wanting to hold you Wanting you near How much I wanted you home”

Frontiers

We have arrived at the sexless album. There is no sex here, only Jon being soppy.

- “Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)”(J Cain/S Perry)

This is one of their heavier songs, but it’s still full of the soppy and Jon assuring that he will be the best bf ever this time around, don’t believe him. Key lyrics:

“Someday, love will find you Break those chains that bind you One night will remind you How we touched and went our separate ways

If he ever hurts you True love won't desert you You know I still love you Though we touched and went our separate ways”

- “Send Her My Love” (J Cain/S Perry)

This as “Faithfully” is basically the same songs with some different wording. This woman was smart enough to break up with him because he was on the road and not there for her though, which I applaud. Key lyrics:

“The same hotel, the same old room I'm on the road again She needed so much more Than I could give

We knew our love could not pretend Broken hearts can always mend”

- “Chain Reaction” (J Cain/N Schon/S Perry)

One of the heavier songs again, make no mistake though. In this one he’s blaming a woman for the chain reaction at that she made him go through all these changes, like bitch; that is your own responsibility Jon.

“In motion, it's on her way The red light Somebody's got to pay Those changes She put you through Long, long distance You're overdue”

- “After The Fall” (J Cain/ S Perry)

In this one he atleast admits that he’s been a shitty boyfriend, which is a first, but he also wallows in self pitty. If you cannot make time to send your gf a Valentines card when you’re out on the road there’s something wrong with your priorities Jon. Key lyrics:

“But a head strong stubborn man Only works it out the best he can Valentines he never sent There's not enough time he's a working man

Can't stop falling Heartaches calling Finds you after the fall Saints or sinners Take no prisoners What's left - after you fall No not much no”

- “Faithfully” (J Cain)

The soppiest song of them all. It’s Jon complaining about being a bad bf bc he’s out touring all the time and he tries to assure his woman that he is faithfull, which is probably true because Jon is not really a catch. Jon wrote this song entierly on his own, it shows. That is also why I cannot get myself to listen to this song. Key lyrics:

“Oh, oh, oh, oh Faithfully, I'm still yours I'm forever yours Ever yours, faithfully”

Raised On Radio

- “Girl Can’t Help it” (J Cain/S Perry/N Schon)

This song is about a girl needing more than her man (Jon I pressume) I do not blame her. Key lyrics:

“The girl can't help it, she needs more He hasn't found what he's lookin' for They're still standing in the rain He can't help it, and she's just that way”

- “Positive Touch” (J Cain/S Perry/N Schon)

By the title you might think that the man is talking about his gf’s positive touch, but no. Cheating is not cool Jon. Key lyrics:

“Emergency breakthrough There's no way to reach you There's somebody else I'll turn to

She (she's) has got the positive touch (touch) She's bringing love back to me, yeah, back to me. I said-- She, (she's) to me means so much (much) She's saving it all for me, yeah”

- “Suzanne” (J Cain/S Perry)

This was on the sex mentions list, but it deserves a place here to. This is about Suzanne who has become famous and the man wondering if she still remembers him. Let it go Jon, she has gone on living her best life. Key lyrics:

“Remember...our last September... Suzanne, so far away Remember Suzanne, those summer nights with me Suzanne, don't walk away, I love you Suzanne I'm still callin' you Suzanne...no no no no no remember Those summer nights with me, those summer nights”

- “Once You Love Somebody” (J Cain/ S Perry/ N Schon)

This is about love and how hard it can be. Jon sops over that it can hurt, so, so much. Key lyrics:

“How can lovers just turn and walk away Loneliness is an edge that cuts both ways So easy to fall So hard to get over”

- “Happy To Give” (J Cain/ S Perry)

Jon is complaining about heartache and that he needs someone who will be “happy to give”, don’t give it to him, he will hurt you. Key lyrics:

“ Where is the one, someone who's happy (happy to give) Happy to be with you, it's where you belong, with someone Who's happy (happy to give) happy to give you love”

- “I’ll Be Alright Without You” (J Cain/ S Perry/N Schon)

Jon has been a shitty bf, the woman has broken up with him and now he’s complaining. Key lyrics:

“I've been thinking 'bout the times You walked out on me There were moments I'd believe, you were there Do I miss you, or am I lying to myself again I do these things (It's all because of you) I keep holding on, but I'll try (Try not to think of you) Love don't leave me lonely”

- “It Could Have Been You” (J Cain/S Perry/N Schon)

Another song where the gf has broken up with him to go on and live her best life, he is once again complaining. Key lyrics:

“We were so close yet so far away I'd reach out, you'd be gone Moments that still talk my breath away There's so much more to life than loving you You don't need me, no...”

Trial By Fire

- “Message Of Love” (John Bettis/J Cain/S Perry/N Schon)

He is ready to give his all to a woman. He is complaining, trying to send her his message of love, also he wants to die apparently. Key lyrics:

“Why, have I waited so long to be there...for you Now, now I'm ready to give everything...to you Now love's here, where are you?” and “I hear...but I never listen I see...and still I'm blind All alone...lost in the silence, I'm dyin' Baby can you hear me Can you hear me callin' Baby can you hear my Message of love Baby can you hear me Can you hear me callin' Baby can you hear my Message of love”

- “When You Love A Woman” (J Cain/S Perry/N Schon)

This song is a good lind of soppy and I love it. It’s about praising the woman, I am here for it. Key lyrics:

“ When you love a woman You see your world inside her eyes When you love a woman (Well) You know she's standing by your side A joy that lasts forever There's a band of gold that shines Waiting somewhere, oh, yeah”

- “If He Should Break Your Heart” (J Cain/S Perry/ N Schon)

This is about Jon still being in love with a woman that has moved on to another man, good for her. He wants her back (don’t do it) and proclaims that he will be there if he breaks her heart. Apparently they were also in a room together and he has very lonely hands. Key lyrics:

“Is this right I don't care I'm alone with you Here we are, once again you've got someone new Lonely hands, please don't do what you want to do

If he should break your heart I'll always know where you are If you should fall apart I'll be there, I'll be around”

- “Forever In Blue” (J Cain/S Perry N Schon)

This is about Jon falling for a woman that already has a bf, he is heartbroken and complains. Key lyrics:

“And on the night she told me that She had another I was broken by the truth I discovered, I knew oh I knew

Two hearts, reach for each other Once chance, she's like no other I'm lost, lost in the dream of you 'Cause it's true oh I'm forever, forever in blue... in blue”

“Don’t Be Down On Me Baby” (J Cain/S Perry/N Schon)

This is about Jon cheating and complaining that his gf blames him, blame yourself Jon. Key lyrics:

“Those little things, you say I do Well they might be true Tell me what good does it do When things go wrong, I'm the first you blame I try another way, still someone's gotta pay

Don't be down on me baby Down on me girl I get lost sometimes In my crazy world”

- “Still She Cries” (J Cain/S Perry/N Schon)

I love this song with a passion, but it’s still very soppy. He remembers when times were good, and then when times were bad when she cried, bet he hurt her somehow. Key lyrics:

“I wish I could forget I hear her voice in the night, cries of joy We were good, good, good, I still recall how we'd touch, how we'd fall We were good, good, good

Still she cries Somewhere, still she cries No one knows when lovers will walk away”

(I’m hopping over “When I think Of You” bc that’s about Steve’s mother)

- “It’s Just The Rain” (J Cain/S Perry)

This is about touching, but apparently not in a good way bc their souls are dying, they are blaming it on the rain, also it isn’t love it’s the rain that makes them crazy touch; ok. Key lyrics:

“Inside you keep on lyin' Inside your soul is dyin' You still can't hold back Still you can't say good-bye Touch me, touch me crazy How your kiss betrays me It's not the love, it's just the rain

Two broken hearts But not in vain No reasons why, no one's to blame It's not the love, it's just the rain It's just the rain, It's just the rain, It's just the rain, It's just the rain Falling, falling, falling It's just the rain”

- “Baby I’m Leaving You” (J Cain/S Perry N Schon)

This song is shady soppy. He is complaining, she wants to get married, he does not bc he likes the simple things and the moonlight. It’s also suggesting that she’s a hoe anyway bc boys she knew before comes knocking at her door. Steve and Neal has written a song before that suggests that the girl Stevie was dating was a hoe, so that is definitley their doing (”Where Were You”) Key lyrics:

“I like moonlight, simple things Now you want a diamond ring I got news for you Baby I'm leaving you

We both want a love that last Girl you're moving away too fast I live for your fantasy A real love is what I need”

“I Can See It In Your Eyes” (J Cain/S Perry/N Schon)

Jon is mad bc the girl he used to love is sexy. How dare she? She apparently needs to get a life bc she’s sexy. If she’s sexy and has the confidence to strut her sexy legs she’s already living her best life, yes work it gurl! Key lyrics:

“ Baby..Too bad...I used to love you girl I..Don't care..No more about your face No you..Make me mad...The way you cat around With your lips, your legs And all your sexy ways Do you got another lover now Do you think it's me you're foolin' now No..No”

and

“ Oh you...never hear A single word I say No you..turn away Where do you disappear Oh I've had enough You need to get a life It's all..so tired I think I'm out of here”

Arrival

The first album so far with a new lead singer. I adore Steve Augeri and his voice. He’s incredibly talented and has nothing to do with the bands drama. He got an oppurtunity to sing with Journey and he took it, good for you babe. (“Higher Place” is a kind of a soppy track, but it’s one of the only songs on this album that Jon doesn’t have any writing credits on, it’s written by Neal and some other guy, so leaving that out for now, we are here to focus on Jon.)

- “All The Way” (J Cain/S Augeri/N Schon/Taylor Rhodes)

I think this song has sex as a subtext without really mentoning it. He wants her to open up, not pull away or hesitate so he can take her all the way, I assume that means an orgasm. Can you believe? Jon in on writing a sex song? This is unbeliveable. Key lyric:

“Speak your heart and I will listen Don't hold back we'll find what's missing I'll take you all the way Close your eyes and think forever If you believe we go together I'll take you all the way

I'll take you all the way I'll take you all the way”

- “Signs Of Life” (Elizabeth Cain/J Cain/N Schon)

A woman has broken up with a man. He is devestated, sad but also wants to move on. I actually find this to be a good lyric. He is reminising about the good times, accepting the pain and wants to move on, good. Key lyrics:

“Lyin' next to me Were you ever mine Just wasted love and wasted time Did you ever find what you were lookin' for, The nights you took my breath away I'll miss your love Miss your touch, but this holdin' on it hurts too muchNow it's my time to walk away I'll be okay

Tryin' to not think about you I'm not a dead man walkin' without you You know I'll be alright I'm showing signs of life You left me barely breathin' I've had time for the healing Now I've opened my eyes I'm showing signs of life”

- “All The Things” (Andre Pessis /J Cain/N Schon)

This is a good kind of soppy and I really enjoy this song. It’s praising a woman and basically listing up all the things he loves about her. The writing style is still very soppy, but I enjoy it anyway, that his whole world revolves around this woman is a bit creepy though. Key lyric:

“ My while world revolves around you Changing colors with the moon Keep amazing me I never get enough

You twist the truth still your're sincere To get your way you'll shed a tear Don't need a reason when you're beautiful”

- “Loved By You” (Cain/Hyler/Tribble)

A song about loving a woman in a very soppy way. He is thanking the world, hoping that if he dies the last thing that is said is her name. It is romantic soppy and way over the top, and yeah; it’s a ballad. Key lyric:

“ If I should die before I wake I'll go into the night whispering your name If lying in your arms is the last thing that I do At least I know that I'll be loved by you In about a hundred years from now When all of my love letters are found And someone reads these words I've written only meant for you They'll know how forever came true”

- “I Got A Reason” (Jack Blades /J Cain/N Schon)

He got a reason to feel alive because of a woman, apparently laying all the happines he has in her hands. She is his reason to live. Also there’s some sex her. I think Neal got some out of him, not bad. Key lyric:

“I got a reason to feel alive You put the smile on my face There'll be no more lonely nights in this town Oh no... no... 'cause I got a reason Oh no... no...I want your love... want you to stay... oh yeah You know you got me night and day Every day...”

- “With Your Love” (Elizabeth Cain/J Cain /N Schon)

This is basically a song about the same as in “I Got A reason” and “Loved By You” with different wording, there’s definitley a theme here, and “Arrival” is very ballad driven, Jon is an incredible soppy man and I am starting to get enough. Key lyric:

“On my own I searched for something more In your arms The kiss I've waited for I was lost for words To say what's in my heart Just to be close To the beauty that you are If someone could see To the end of our lives I know they'd find me there By your side”

- “Lifetime of Dreams” (J Cain / Kim Chadwick Tribble/N Schon)

Basically the same as any other ballad on this album, it has the same theme and the same meaning. Jon and Neal really went on the soppy train on this album and Jon is apparently unstoppable. Key lyric:

“When I look in your eyes baby I see a lifetime of dreams come true And I want you to say, that you feel the same Way too The stars in your eyes tell me All my tomorrows will wait for you You're all of my prayers answered My one saving grace is you”

- “Nothin’ Comes Close” (N Schon/J Cain/S Augeri)

Nothin’ comes close to your kiss. What more is there to say? It’s a song about kissing. Key lyric:

“I've been around the world, ain't much that I've missed It don't get much better then this...Oh baby Nothin' comes close to your kiss I've thought I felt it all before One taste and I want more...Oh baby Nothin' comes close to your kiss”

There are more soppy songs on this album that aren’t written by Jon at all, so those we are dropping.

Conclusion: Jon is the soppy master, the bad boyfriend master. I am up to 31 soppy and/or bad boyfriend songs. The count is much higher of course if you add the songs from “Revelation” and “Eclipse” but this is more than enough. I crown him to the bf/husband you never want to have

#Journey #journey band #Neal Schon #Jonathan Cain #steve perry #steve augeri #escape #frontiers #raised on radio #trial by fire #arrival #albums #list #masterlist #ross valory #steve smith #deen castronovo

15 notes · View notes

popculturebuffet · 3 years

Text

The Legend of the Three Caballeros: Dope-A-Cabana Review (Commissioned by WeirdKev27)

Salduos Amigos! Since i’m covering a full series, i’d like to welcome any newcomers to the first part of the epic final stretch of THE RIDE OF THE THREE CABLLEROS! For those of you just joining us, a few months back WeirdKev27, easily my biggest supporter as the only one who comissions any reviews from me, asked if I could do a big project for him: a comission of EVERY major american apperance of those three happy chappies in matching serapes. Give i’ve ALWAYS loved the boys ever since house of mouse and had been sitting on Legend of the Three Cablleros for far too long, more on that in a minute obviously, I happily agreed. Plus the rather nice influx of cash from the comissions was very welcome. If your intrested in comissioning your own, hit me up via my direct messages. It’s 5 dolalrs an episode, though I do do discounts on orders of 3 or more, and 10 for a movie, with again discounts for orders of more than one. And yes that plug was very shamless, but again I have no other job than this. Back to the point these reviews have taken me on a wonderful journey: I got to rewatch the movie and revel in the fun songs, acid trips and super horny Donald Duck, got to both revisit one of Don Rosa’s best story and read another all time classic from the man I hadn’t before, took a trip back to the house of mouse to hear some great songs and see some great cartoons.. and some not so great ones, took a small detour to Mickey and The Roadster Racers to be baffled and annoyed though I am proud to say it was my first review back after I came down with Cornovirus and lost a week of work time. And finally I covered the town where everyone was nice, and got to see the boys have a joyous reunion with Donald and be lushly animated while.. Dewey jackassed around in a B-Plot and Webby resisted the urge to throat chop him. It’s been a long ride and you can find all of it is so far RIGHT HERE IN THIS CONVIENT LINK ! CLICK IT NOW IF YOUR CURIOUS. Point is while this was well paid for.. it’s easily one of the projects i’ve been most proud of and while i’m sad to see it winding down, i’m proud of what i’ve done so far, and I just wanted to heartily thank Kevin for the ride and for being so generious as to fund the whole damn thing. Your a good dude man.

Which brings us here, to the grand finale. The Legend of the Three Caballeros! As the boys first starring roll as a group since the movie, there was really no other way this retrospective could end, and since I have a terrible problem with procastination and really hated this series version of daisy I just kept pushing back watching the series until now. I’m not proud of it but I am happy to correct it and hope you’ll all come along with me. Before we get started I could not find much background on the show. It was directred by Matt Danner who was the character designer for the utter classic Xiaoilin Showdown and currently works on the Muppet Babies reboot, so i’m happy he’s still getting work. Otherwise I couldn’t find much. The most I could was on tv tropes, claming the series was orignally meant for Netflix.. and while I have no proof and this could easily be conjecture.. i’m inclined to belivie it. The series was apparently done long before the Ducktales reboot, to the point Frank Angrones was only vaguely aware of it and it didn’t even remotely impact the series, with Panchito and Jose only debuting in Season 2 because the original idea for bringing them in was scrapped. So while I don’t have proof.. I’m inclined to belivie it since it makes sense: Disney DID have a healthy relationship with Netflix once, setting up the MCU shows and likely being happy there.. but eventually they wanted their own corner of the sky, and likely didn’t want one of their shows bolted to the network like all their marvel shows were. The problem this created though is Disney was CLEARLY left with a show they no longer had a place for. But even with that the show was still done, they COULD have put it on the Disney Now app or just aired it on the Disney Channel. See if there was any fan intrest in season 2 or throw one into production to at least beef up the episode count. I mean the Cabs have a built in fanbase, kids would likely love it... it’s the logical choice. But this is Disney. They’ve had to be drug kicking and screaming into representation, to the point they had to be fought for the gay romance subplot in owl house to happen, try to hide that the Sparkshort “Out” is about a gay man struggling with coming out despite having you know reams of content on the service with either gay subtext or out and out gay characters, and their attempts at doing representatoin to score points in other little ways.. have been pathetic, easily missable bits in movies that could , and have been, edited out in more homophobic countries. My point is yeah i’m still sore about how they and a LOT of the animation industry have to be dragged into doing the right thing over profit, and they often make very stupid decisions for seemingly no reason. They are a good company a good chunk of the time.. but Disney has done fucked up quite a bit. This is one of those times. Instead they dumped the show on the Disney Life app in the phillipines and slowly some other countries, basically the Disney Now equilvent over there, and then just sort of forgot about it until Disney Plus launched. And given how many shows they HAVEN’T put on the streamer for again, seemingly no reason, it is a nice suprise the show finally got a release on there in the US. But before that, and proving what a massive mistake just abandoing the show was, the show did gather a massive fanbase via people uploading the episodes online. So yeah the show was treated REALLY shittily for stupid reasons, but thankfully it still has a fanbase to this day and said shabby treatment, as it always does, just encouraged fans to support it harder. So naturally i’m more than happy to give the series some spotlight as fanbase or no, it badly needs it and Disney sure as hell dosen’t want to do it. So if somebody’s gotta do it, might as well be me. This is the Legend of the Three Cablleros. We open on some narration from Xandra, Goddess of Adventure. Granted she hasn’t been identified yet, and won’t be till next episode.. buuuut it’s easier on me to not have to dance around her name so your learning it now. But Xandra narrates that long ago there were epic battles against the good and the evil and all that by epic heroes, and it’s all cumilated in the Legend of the Three Cablleros. Post title drop we’re treated to the boys, in cool looking armor and with neat weapons, fighting a purple monster man as you do in an really beautiful and epic sequence As this scene illustrates the animation for this show is GORGEOUS, a lavish update of the standard disney style with nice use of shadows. It feels almost film quality in it’s work, and it’s an utter treat to watch and opening at the end was a good call: it both ratchets up excitement and allows the first ep to have some action since this one, as part of a two part premiere, is mostly setup. It’s eyecatching, exciting and makes you want to know what the hell is going on. And since Xandra realizes MAYBE starting the story at the climax was a bad idea, she takes us back a bit.

Okay maybe not that far. No we open properly at Donald’s house, where it’s his birthday! And like the movie, it’s Friday the 13th, an excellent call back. Donald’s making his breakfast, boliling some tea and.. talking with the weird foced warped refelection in the kettle who can apparently only say “right back at you handsome, wink”. Seriously I have so many questoins and all of them are about what this guy is, why is Donald so calm about all of this, and is he still alive after Donald destroys his tea kettle later. Donaldo gets a call from Daisy, whose visting to spend the day with him and is waiting patiently int he bad part of town. I didn’t know Duckburg had a bad part of town but given Glomgold has to get his sharks and bombs somewhere, i’m not surprised. Unless he special orders them, but even then what if he needs a shark or a bomb in a hurry? He’s gotta get them somewhere and now we know where. So there’s that. So all’s going well until Donald’s asshole boss calls and forces him to come in despite Donald having the fucking day off and it presumably being on the schedule. So Donald rushes to work, and we do get some great gags but as you’d expect for Donald it goes poorly and he botches a kid’s haircut despite the mother being very rude.. and also a female version of pete. LIke.. did he remarry after the divorce from peg or is that his sister? Does that mean PJ and PIstol have a cousin I never knew about? I want answers dammit.. and picutures of spider-man. Not for any slander job I just really like spider-man.

Eh it’ll do.As i’m doing a full series this time i’m stopping to talk about the main cast as we go soooo.... Tony Anselmo is naturally Donald, even pitching in to consult the crew on Donald’s characterization here, as really what better expert is there? He’s voiced Donald since the original Ducktales and has stuck with the roll since, only taking a break for Mickey and the Roadster racers and that’s likely because between finishing up this series and the Mickey Mouse shorts, and moving on to Ducktales 2017, he likely simply didn’t have the time for it. Granted given how little he was used in the first season of the show, he probably still could’ve done it but regardless, he’s a legend. Daisy is voiced by Tress Macneile, who not only has voiced the character since House of Mouse and is easily the best voice for her, but is also one of the most storied and legendary va’s in the buisness, having been at this since the 80′s with zero signs of stopping. Just to name a few of her more notable roles, in chronological order; Gadget Hackenwrench, Babs Bunny, Agnes Skinner, Charlotte Pickles, Dot Warner (Which as of last year she’s picked up again and will do the same for Babs, just in case you thought i was exagerating on the “zero signs of stopping” thing), Pookie from Hey Arnold, Mom, Hoodsey Bishop, and Queen Oona among MANY, MANY smaller rolls. I didn’t even realize Charlotte or Hodsey were here, she’s that talented and deserves all the praise.. and way better rolls as Daisy than this one but we’ll both get to that and thankfully much like with Tony, the reboot’s giving her character some depth to work with so she gets to reallys tretch her chops. The woman turns 70 here, will likely keep going until she dies, and is wonderful and deserves more respect.

So because this is Donald, life wont’ stop punching him in the face and it turns out his house burned down, the fire people are destroying everything because their assholes, seriously they destroy both a family heirloom and a picture of his parents despite not being on fire. I’d be genuinely suprised if their general strategy wasn’t scremaing “fire, fire fire” and then going “rock rock rock” while they throw rocks on it. Super brucey bonus prize for the first person who gets that refrence and comments on it. I’ll get back to this in a second but SOMEHOW, beisdes loosing his home, all his possesions and his job... it gets even WORSE and Daisy calls, refuses to listen to him despite him having VERY valid excuses and breaks up with him. Oh and then the fire fighters gladly talk about going home to their in tact houses and partners.

So yeah let’s talk about this. This first 6 or 7 minutes.. is why I didn’t return to the show for a while. My brain has a bad habit of glomming onto certain parts of things, so it remembered the rough to sit through and not very funny first act.. and not the rest of the episode which is very good and likely more indiciative about how good the series is. Thankfully it does get better but this first act .. frames things like it’s DONALD’S fault somehow. I mean yes he did burn his house down.. but even that really isn’t his fault. He was called away suddenly, wasn’t thinking and made a mistake. Hell he proabably woudl’ve had more left if the fire department hadn’t gone crazy with the axes. His being called into work? He took the day off, and his boss was just a dick. His screwing up at the job? he was genuinely trying his best and doing his best and the client was just wholly unresonable. Donald did nothing wrong but the episode WANTS to frame him like some sort of screwup.. which he is, it’s Donald.. but not in this case. It was just a string of uncomfortable to watch bad luck that cumilates in him having nothing left. It’s not funny, it’s jsust really sad and it’s REALLY hard to tell the tone their going for as they seem to awkwardly bounce from jokes to Donald being utterly devistated and alone.

And the worst of this.. is Daisy. Daisy is EASILY the most infamous part of the show, as their portryal.. is pretty bad and apparently gets worse. We’ll see as we go but yeah.. her screaming at and breaking up with her boyfriend without listneing to his side and giving the claim we only have HER word on that he’s always screwing up, ON HIS BIRTHDAY no less, when he’s done nothing wrong, does not make a good first impression nor the fact the show seems to AGREE WITH HER. And look Donald is a trainwreck, this is true.. but the show dosen’t remotely portray him as one until AFTER this scene. As I said nothing that happened was his fault. Donald isn’t irresponsible or a screwup or dating a high schooler or anything. He isn’t Scott Pilgrim. He just has really bad luck. Again, we do see some foibles in the scenes to come.. but we don’t see any that would justify her claims, especially since she seemed perfectly happy earlier with him. Now if she’d say brought up some screwups in the first scene, and gently at that, then this would’ve worked.. but as it stands she just comes off as MASSIVELY unsymapthetic.. especially since Donald later calls her nieces over for help, which is objectively weird not gonna lie.. so she now KNOWS he had to move to a new house and his likely burned down.. yet still apparently has nothing good to say about him.

It didn’t help this rubbed me the wrong way in a very special way. As i’ve made plain before I don’t like THIS version of Daisy, the nagging, selfish, vindictive asshole who will gladly try and cheat on donald, dump him at a moments notice and you know PUNCH HIM IN THE FACE. Which just in case you think i’m exagerating...

She fucking upercutted him..and like here for something that isn’t his fault. I mean this Daisy isn’t physically beating Donald.. but that’s a VERY low bar to clear. And emotional abuse is just as bad, so there. My point is too often in the comics when written poorly, Daisy is a pretty terrible person and I REALLY didn’t want a screen adaptation of this form of Daisy. It took a WHILE to recover from not liking daisy over this version, with help from remembering house of mouse, some good barks story with her and the AMAZING Ducktales version and the suprisingly good Quack Pack version.. I did. But yeah.. this is not a good sign of things to come for the character in this show.

So yeah Donald’s heart is in the basement and his week is at an all time low when a post man shows up and gives him a letter.. well puts it in the box for a good gag but semantics. But the letter turns around as his ancestor Clinton Coot left him an inhertance for his 3Xth birthday: a house of some kind in the swanky neighboring town of New Quackmore. And i’ll also say.. it’s REALLY nice that for once, we focus on the Duck side of Donald’s legacy, or rather the coot but semantics, instead of the McDuck part. Don’t get me wrong, I fucking love the clanmcduck, always will and I love Ducktales exploration of it.. but it’s still nice to acknowledge Donald comes from two sides and while one of those may be humble farmers, they still accomplished a lot, including founding Duckburg in most continuities including presumably this one. It’s also a good way to seperate thigns from other properties including the reboot: focusing on a part of Donald’s lineage that isn’t usually touched on and making THEM just as badass as the other side.

So we get a quick montage as Donald takes a cab there and takes in the rich and fancy sights. It’s also a brilliant way to set up New Quackmore and it’s attached instutite as a fancy, upperclass place.. and thus perfectly clash it with Donald. Donald ends up getting dropped off at a big mansion.. which is not his , but belongs to the insittutes head, Baron Von Sheldgoose, played by WAYNE KNIGHT.

Hell. Yes. I freaking love Wayne Knight. In case you don’t know who the man above is, or at least don’t recognize his face, Wayne Knight is a very funny and talented actor and voice actor with a lengthy career primarily in side rolls, with the rolls that he broke out with being loveable asshole and Jerry’s enternal nemisis Newman on Seinfeld and Dennis Nedry, aka “that guy who got sprayed acid in his face by those horrifying frilled dinosaurs that will never not haunt my nightmares”. Seriously that scene fucked me up as a kid and I could not watch that part of the movie. For the most part he’s been a side character man but he has done a LOT of voice work, most notable Zurg in Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, Dojo for the aformentioned and excellent Xiaolin Showdown, and Mr. Blik for Catscratch and I wish he’d do more. He also recently voiced the penguin in Harley Quin so when I get to that you better belivie i’m looking forward to it. Point is while he may not always get the glory, and had to settle for starring in a mediocre tv land sitcom to get a steady paycheck once, the man is VERY talented, very funny and perfectly cast here.

So Donald makes himself home, finds out it’s not HIS home and gets thrown out by the snooty rich asshole’s bodyguards. As you’d expect. Donald does find HIS home, a run down cabana next door to the mansion with caution tape all over. Still Donald takes it best he can as it’s better than no home at all> What he doesn’t take well is finding out from the executor of the will that he’s not the only one inheriting the house... which is absolutley fair. The guy just had the worst day of his life, and this lady didn’t bother to put in the letter to any of them that they were sharing the house. The Sheldgoose thing was just an average Donald screw up. This is just this lady going...

youtube

But yes we meet our boys.. and the introductions are naturally given this series is about them the best we’ve gotten so far: Jose is thrown off a bus, having ran out of fair, and having wooed all the ladies on board, and quickly charms the executor and is perfectly cordial to Donald, while Panchito parachutes out of a plane and marvels at how he went from nothing to having two new best friends, a run down shack and a sleezy lawyer! In short the two make a great first impression, helped by wonderful casting. Jose is voiced by Eric Bauza, a talented voice actor whose had WAY too many roles to list here, but two of the most notable are being the current voice of Bugs and Daffy, and his most notable role outside that recently has been playing Splinter in Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. But the guy is endlessly talented, seems really nice, and is easily one of my faviorite Jose’s so far after just one episode. He just.. gets the character perfectly and is thankfully NOT another white guy stepping into the role, so that’s nice. He easily oozes the charm and layabout nature Jose and was a natural in the role and i hope he gets to take it up again at some point. Speaking of naturals we have Jamie Camil as Panchito, who easily steps into the guys boundless energy and the sterotpical bits are swapped out for making him a cloud cuckoolander instead, which I genuinely love and fits the character perfectly. He’s best known for CW Soap Jane the Virgin, where his charcter Rodrigo just sounds like a delight, but has recently picked up a pretty good voice acting career, vocing Don Karnage in the Ducktales reboot, Globgor in Star vs the Forces of Evil and Todd’s Stepdad George in Bojack Horseman. I only hope he gets more voice work as he’s really damn great at it and it’s wonderful to get to see him in a role that’s not limited to a few episodes at best for a change.

So Donald’s less than happy about this, again it’s hard to really be that mad at him when he’s had a really, REALLY bad day and wasn’t told about this, but it’s kept to just the light level of grumpy as to not make him unlikeable. Granted after that intro it’d take a LOT to make him unsympathetic, but after their version of Daisy I really dont’ want to test this series. Our boys also find out they have a groundskeeper, ari, aka THE ARCUAN BIRD! He’s just a delight any time he pops up, doing his usual “ya ta ta ta” bit, and being adorable and hilarioius as always.. and also hilariously failing to fix the boys door. So Donald ends up just accepting he has roomates now, nothing he can do, and the three explore the house finding all sorts of cool old artifacts, feeling they’ve stumbled onto something specail. And you know what that means: YARD SALE! Seriously it feels like a bit out of Wet Hot American Summer or Stella, a series from the same creators you really should check out and that is high praise, trust me.

youtube

I wish this series was streaming somewhere.. I mean we finally got Clone HIgh streaming Viacom, get on that. Anyways, it’s just.. fucking hilarious, and a LOT of this episode is once we walk back from the writers kicking donald in the junk and acting like it was his fault. Once Donald gets his inhertiance, the episode picks up immensley and we see the shows real charm and hilarirty fly, with jokes coming at a rapid and wonderful pace. The show really did impress me with the second half and made me utterly excited for tommrow.. or I guess today’s, look at the follow up. But we’re still in this episode and being a rich asshole, Sheldgoose isn’t happy about a yard sale, though given this series standards, we not only get some great deliveres from Knight of an outraged “A YARD SALE?!”... but a wonderful gag where Sheldgoose out to white guy it up and yell at them over this..accidently takes a wrong turn in his massive house, and turns around, not loosing how upset he is once. Meanwhile, we meet.. April, May and June. Yeah apparnetly Della isn’t dead or lost in this continuity, so the boys are MIA, and are instead replaced by Daisy’s Nieces, who I hope show up in the reboot before it ends. Especially since the show makes them WAY more tolerable than classic huey dewey and louie and instead enjoyable like Ducktales HDL. While not as indvidual as those three, the three are still idendtical outside of outfits, their voice actress Jessica DiCicco uses her consderiable talents and experince to give each one a unique voice, so while they all share a voice actress, none of them sound alike. And to round out our main cast for now, as our last members will be joining us fully next time, let’s talke about Jessica DiCicco. Jessica is a very talented and increasingly prolific voice actor and if you haven’t heard of her, and you probably have, you’ve defintely heard her voice. Starting out with Disney, hence why the probably called on her for this, she did the voices of Maggie for the Buzz on Maggie and Melina for Emperor’s New School before breaking out as Flame Princess on Adventure Time, whose both one of my faviorite characters from the show and one we’ll be digging into starting next month. And not one to rest easily she picked up a second set of iconic rolls vocing Lynn and Lucy Loud on The Loud HOuse, and funnily enough using those voices for two of the girls here. And along with Loud House she’s also currently starring in it’s Pony and is int he main cast of Close Enough as Candace. My point is she’s exceedingly talented.. as is this whole cast, as it’s a DAMN excellent cast and just further sells that this series deserves better. We’ll get into the girls more next time as they don’t do much here other than get called in by Donald for help, with what I saw of episode 2 fleshing them out more. Point is Sheldgoose offers a million dollars for the cabana and all it’s stuff and the boys are glad to sell.. they just have to find something Sheldgoose desperately wants, a mysterious golden atlas encrusted with Jewels. Our heroes head in to find it with Panchito finding it, and being very specific about it. We also get a nice call back to Ari destroying the door as Jose cleverly calls on him to destroy the lock. So our heroes open the book... and a goddess pops out and threatens to kill them all.

Final Thoughts: Dope-A-Cabana is a decent intro the series, but as i’ve said it’s heavily hampered by a weak and mean spirited first act. But once it gets going it REALLY gets going and as part 1 one of a two part pilot, it does it’s job well once it does get going: introducing our three boys and one of our antagonists well and setting up the side cast and preparing for our last to major additions Next Time: The Boys go on their first adventure, Sheldgoose finds a boss and the girls find their voice. Thanks for Reading, Goodbye, Goodbye, Goodbye.

#the legend of the three caballeros #The Three Caballeros #donald duck #Jose Carioca #panchito romero miguel junipero francisco quintero gonzalez #panchito pistoles #xandra #april duck #may duck #june duck #baron von sheldgoose #daisy duck #pete pete #disney plus #disney channel #animation #disney

27 notes · View notes

anistarrose · 4 years

Link

Summary: Stan finds a recording from a fateful puppet show, a few disjointed memories fall into place, and the Pines family has some tense conversations.

Relationships: Ford Pines & Stan Pines, Dipper Pines & Ford Pines & Mabel Pines & Stan Pines

Characters: Stan Pines, Ford Pines, Dipper Pines, Mabel Pines, Bill Cipher (posthumously)

Set in early September, probably a little less than a week after Dipper and Mabel went home.

(It felt good to write some Stangst again! Title is from Monster Town by Go! Child because when I can't think of titles on my own, I go to my GF playlist for inspo, and that song jumped out at me today)

***

“We should probably bring a backup camera on the boat,” Ford mused, in a tone that made it impossible to tell whether he was talking to Stan or just to himself. “Maybe even multiple backup cameras. There’s no telling what the Arctic climate could do to their circuitry, and people hardly take cryptid reports seriously even with photographic evidence, never mind with just an eyewitness account and an excuse about a broken camera —”

“Easy, Sixer.” Stan set down his fully-packed suitcase at Ford’s feet, satisfied with its contents. “I’ve got a camcorder up in my room, or maybe in — actually, I can’t remember where I decided to keep it, but it’s probably still in the house somewhere. If I can find it, you can add it to your camera horde.”

Ford zipped open Stan’s suitcase, revealing hand-knitted sweaters and Hawaiian shirts in approximately equal numbers, and sighed. “Some brave wardrobe choices you’re making here. Or have you forgotten that the first beach we’re stopping at is in Alaska?”

“Well, someone’s gotta lead the fashion revolution in the Arctic Circle, and it sure ain’t gonna be you,” Stan called as he headed upstairs, provoking a resigned “hrmph” from Ford.

Stan decided to look for the camcorder in his bedroom first — because while his memory still had some scattered gaps, his gut instincts rarely lead him astray, and checking his room had been his first impulse. Sure enough, he found it sitting on a shelf and covered in slightly less dust than the adjacent stack of magazines, just as he ever-so-vaguely remembered it.

“Better make sure this thing works, before Ford declares it too unreliable for yeti hunts or whatever,” he muttered to himself, leaning back onto his bed and fumbling for the power button. The camcorder blinked to life, presenting an interface that was probably hopelessly outdated — but Stan didn’t care, while Ford would have no way of knowing what modern Earth technology looked like.

What’d I even record on this thing anyway? He selected a random video from June, was greeted with his own voice singing the first line of the Stan Wrong Song, and immediately deleted the recording. With a sigh and silent vow to never let Ford learn of the song’s existence, he moved on to a video from July.

Once again, it was Mabel’s handiwork — heh, no wonder I couldn’t remember what I used this thing for, since the kids were always borrowing it from me — but this time, Stan himself wasn’t in frame, though the craft supplies strewn about the living room were enough to stir dormant memories.

“Dipper! Puppet Dipper! Smile for the camera!”

Dipper yawned, then somewhat half-heartedly mimicked the motion using the sock puppet on his hand. “Puppet Dipper’s not really feeling up to it this morning.”

“Did Puppet Dipper stay up too late trying to solve a mystery? Bwap!” The footage blurred as Mabel nudged Dipper with a sock puppet of her own. “Do I need to make him a little puppet-sized pillow?”

“How about… some puppet-sized sunglasses, for a puppet detective?” Dipper suggested.

“Good idea!” Mabel agreed. “Then no one will notice when Puppet Dipper falls asleep standing up!”

Stan shook his head and smiled.

Man, I wish I’d found this back when my memories were still a mess — Mabel kinda skimmed over the whole puppet saga in her scrapbook. Wonder what else got recorded from that week…

He selected the next video chronologically, noticing that it was also the final recording on the device, and the smile vanished from his face.

“You can’t stop me!” It was Dipper’s voice, yet not Dipper’s voice — all fury and arrogance, and the camcorder’s cheap speaker crackled with static, like the voice was too much, too wrong, too alien to properly record and then replicate. “I’m a being of pure energy with NO weaknesses!”

Without a doubt, Dipper’s body was onscreen, but he was staggering towards Mabel with arms twisted at impossible angles. He lunged for the journal in her hands, eyes glinting the same gold color as the emblem of the six-fingered hand —

Stan hit the power button, rolled over on the bed, and buried his face in his pillow as the wave of memories crashed into him.

Brushing off Dipper’s sorry state as sleep deprivation, until the kid collapsed on the way out of the theater. Seeing the cuts and bruises all over Dipper’s hands as Stan helped him to his feet, and grilling the kids on what happened the whole drive to the hospital. Not getting an answer beyond “sleep deprivation.”

Not being able to give the doctor an answer beyond “sleep deprivation.”

Telling the twins’ parents it was just “sleep deprivation.”

A tense phone call, assuring Mr. and Mrs. Pines that Dipper’s recovery would be swift and tha Gravity Falls was still safe for their children. Stan’s hands shaking as he holds the phone, having no idea if that’s the truth, if he’s doing the right thing.

Mabel crying over a crumpled-up scrap of paper — a note? — she’d found in the car, and refusing to show it to Stan. Half-overheard secrets, whispered between the younger twins when they think Stan isn’t paying attention — apologies, worries, and murmurs too soft to be in any way decipherable.

Dipper, still with bags under his eyes, spending the next few days doing almost nothing but looking over his shoulder and burying his head in the journal. Stan pretending not to notice, but secretly finding it far too familiar for comfort.

Later memories, too — memories of demons, and handshakes, and feeling his body go numb. Memories of a voice, a furiously shrieking voice — both terrified and terrifying, but more than anything, alien.

Now, far too late, Stan recognized it.

***

“We’re calling the kids,” Stan barked, barging back downstairs, and Ford jumped.

“What’s wrong? Are your memories —”

“Better than they’ve ever been, actually.” Stan stormed directly to the living room table, flipping open the laptop on loan from Soos and clicking the video chat app. “Good enough to figure out something that apparently no one thought it might be important to tell me!”

“Are you sure?” Ford put a hand on Stan’s shoulder. “We can still call them, but let’s talk this through first, make sure you’re not missing any gaps —”

Stan paused, cursor an inch away from the call button beneath Dipper and Mabel’s profile picture. “Did Dipper tell you about the time Bill possessed him?”

Ford started to say something, stopped, and tried again. “I… I assumed you knew. I’m sorry.”

“Did you know I ended up taking him to the goddamn hospital afterwards?”

“No,” Ford whispered, and Stan felt Ford’s fingers dig into his shoulder. “Call the kids, Stan.”

Mabel must’ve been online, because she picked up almost immediately. The video opened with her sitting in her kitchen in Piedmont, Waddles in her lap. “Grunkle Stan! Grunkle Ford! Guess what I —”

The joy drained out of her smile when she noticed her grunkles’ grave expressions. “What’s going on?”

“Mabel, pumpkin,” Stan murmured, trying to tune out the sound of his heart thumping in his chest, “could you go get your brother?”

“I’m here, I’m here!” Dipper slid into view, almost falling off his chair, and Mabel scooted out of the way so they could both comfortably face the laptop. “Is something wrong?”

“Not anymore,” Ford explained, “but Stan and I wanted to talk about… communication, among other things — Stan? Are you sure you’re alright?”

Stan wiped the sweat from his forehead and shuddered, forcing himself to take a deep breath as he stared at the computer.

Dipper’s back home. Dipper’s safe. They’re both safe, and they’ll never have to worry about Bill again.

“Stanley?” Ford echoed, increasingly distressed. “Please, if —”

“I’ll be alright,” Stan managed, because even he wasn’t a good enough liar to convince anyone he was alright at this exact moment. “Promise. But kids, why didn’t you tell me when Bill hijacked your puppet show?”

Dipper and Mabel exchanged a guilty look.

“Was it because you thought I’d take away the journal?” Stan regretted his ‘only self-defense’ stipulation for the third journal more than almost anything else he’d said that summer, because he’d always known deep down that it wouldn’t stop the kids — and in hindsight, he would’ve much rather known what trouble the kids were getting into, not have them hide it from him with their late nights out in the woods and nonspecific excuses.

“At first,” Dipper replied. “But we ended up worrying a whole lot more about you sending us home early —”

“Your parents almost made that decision for me,” Stan admitted. “They were ready to drive up here and come get you when they heard what happened. I dunno how I convinced them to let you stay —”

He sighed. “And maybe knowing the truth wouldn’t have actually helped me that time — but it would’ve been nice to know how big a lie I was telling when I told them this town was safe for you kids, y’know?”

He regretted voicing that thought immediately, but regretted it even moreso when Dipper looked away from the camera, mumbling: “I’m sorry, Grunkle Stan.”

“Stan’s not trying to guilt you,” Ford spoke up, “but we want you to know you can talk about these things honestly with us — and that goes for both of you, Dipper and Mabel. We’d never want to punish you for something that was obviously… someone else’s fault.”

Thank god one of us has finally learned to think through what we say before we say it, Stan figured.

“I’m sorry too, kids,” he added out loud. “For getting angry at you a minute ago — ‘cause I’m not angry at you, I’m angry at Bill for what he got away with right behind my back, and I… I just…”

He brushed a finger across their digital faces, a gesture that no doubt failed to translate to the video feed Dipper and Mabel were viewing, and smiled. “Thanks for picking up so fast, ‘cause I really needed a reminder that the two of you are safe and sound and all.”

The kids smiled back, visible for just a second before Mabel leaned forward to hug her laptop and the screen went dark.

“Anytime, Grunkle Stan.”

***

“Coffee?” asked Ford, ever the early riser, as Stan trudged into the kitchen the next morning. “You look like you need it.”

“Gee, thanks, Sixer,” Stan groaned, slumping into the seat across from Ford at the kitchen table. “I’ve heard of backhand compliments, but now I’ve gotta live with your backhanded coffee offers too?”

“Sorry. I’m sympathizing, not mocking — I promise, when I woke up today, my eyes were just as bloodshot as yours are now,” Ford replied, sliding Stan a mug of steaming coffee. “How are your memories?”

It was a routine question as of late, but Stan still managed to botch it completely.

“Too good,” he muttered under his breath, and earned a quizzical look from Ford.

“Pardon?”

“…Good enough that I can remember all kinda things to feel shitty about,” Stan reluctantly admitted. “Like not even noticing when Dipper was possessed, for one thing. I spent the whole summer worrying about him, except for when he was actually in danger —”

“Oh, Stanley,” Ford sighed, “that’s not your fault. You know Bill was an expert liar; he scammed too many people to count —”

“Yeah, but I shoulda seen through it!” Stan brought his fist down on the table, and the contents of his mug sloshed precariously close to the top. “Of all people, I should’ve known better —”

“Right.” Ford grimaced. “Right. Because no one else who should’ve known better was ever tricked by a dream demon for a whole lot longer than a few hours —”

“Shit. Ford, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean it like —”

With a controlled glowering expression and deliberate motions, Ford stood, marching across the kitchen with all the fury and hesitation of a slow-moving thunderstorm.

“I didn’t mean it was your fault! I’d never — ”

“…I know.” Ford came to a halt at the door, bracing one hand against the frame. “But if you can say as much about me, then… then why can’t you just say that about yourself?”

“What?!”

“You would’ve caught on soon enough, if Mabel hadn’t defeated Bill when she did — I wasn’t there, but I’m sure of that because I know you, and I know how well you know Dipper.” Ford shook his head. “I didn’t catch on to Bill’s lies for years. I gave him free reign to hurt people for so much longer than one evening —”

He crossed his arms, and his imposing silhouette in the doorway seemed to shrink.

“So if you’re not blaming me for anything to happen this summer, then you’d better not blame yourself, you — you knucklehead.”

“Are you kidding me?” Stan leapt out of his seat. “It’s no wonder you didn’t see through Bill’s lies, when your whole life, you had me watching your back — and then I wasn’t there for you, when you needed me more than ever —”

“Because I pushed you away!” Ford shouted, whirling back around to face him. “Do you know what I realized while I was trying to fall asleep last night? That if I’d just stood up to Dad when he kicked you out, if I’d just done the right thing for once in my formative years, then the end of the world as we knew it would’ve been averted altogether! No falling for Bill’s flattery, no arguing over the zodiac, no Weirdmageddon! We could’ve had it all, but we just couldn’t live in that better world, all because I convinced myself you were suffocating me —”

“But it sounds like maybe I still am, huh?” Stan growled. “If all I do is just make you furious like this —”

“No,” Ford gasped, all the hostility in his voice and his glare immediately melting away. “No, no, absolutely not! I’m not furious at you, Stan, I’m…”

“Furious at yourself,” Stan accused, “for being even worse than me?!”

“No! Don’t even say that!”

Before Stan could process what was happening, much less protest it, Ford was hugging him, burying his face in Stan’s shoulder.

“Maybe — maybe I am angry at you, after all,” Ford admitted, “but you’re my hero, Stanley. My inspiration. If am angry with you, it’s — it’s just because you’re too damn stubborn to forgive yourself…”

Stan gingerly placed a hand on Ford’s shoulder. “…Yeah, and you’re one to talk.”

“I won’t deny that,” Ford mumbled. He went quiet for a few seconds, and when he spoke up again, his voice was quieter, yet slightly more composed. “Maybe we need to just… call a truce. Find something positive to agree on. We’re both too stubborn for this argument to end with either of us admitting we were wrong —”

“At least for give-or-take the next forty years,” Stan interrupted, punctuating his words with a bitter laugh.

Ford barked out a laugh of his own, loud and cathartic, and withdrew from the hug, removing his glasses to rub his eyes. “If Dipper and Mabel were here, they would have told us to stop being stubborn old men a while ago. I wish they were here.”

“They’d probably also tell us it’s more Bill’s fault than either of ours,” Stan added. “And… I guess they’d have a point.”

“I can see the logic in that.” Ford smiled faintly. “I’m sorry for making this about me, by the way. You opened up to talk about your own issues, and I —”

“Hey, I made it about you just as much as you did, Brainiac,” Stan reminded him. “…But damn. You think we’ll ever be able to talk about our feelings without shouting our lungs out at each other?”

“We’re still no good at thinking through anything before we say it,” Ford replied, “though I guess we must be getting a little better, since we didn’t even stop speaking to each other this time.”

“Thank god. I’m tired of not talking to you.”

The two of them settled back into their seats at the table, and Stan reached for the morning paper, but Ford spoke up once more.

“I know forgiveness, especially self-forgiveness, can be… complicated,” he told Stan in a low voice, “so maybe I’m biased, speaking as someone who’d rather not grapple with my own personal guilt — but even more important than whether you forgive or blame yourself, I think, is acknowledging that you made mistakes, yet still deserve good things from the universe. And that goes for you and me both.”

Stan took a sip from his mug, pleased to find its contents were still warm. “Good things like coffee, and adventures sailing around the world?”

Ford chuckled. “My priorities exactly.”

#gravity falls #stanley pines #stanford pines #dipper pines #mabel pines #gravity falls fanfiction #rosalia writes fic

101 notes · View notes