#i take it back. that one single plotline was good and fucked up and threatening.

[quietwingsinthesky]

THE PEOPLE WILL NEVER KNOW ABOUT THAT TIME I LET AMARA EAT ALL THE SOULS IN PURGATORY

#i take it back. that one single plotline was good and fucked up and threatening. #distinctly remember a fic about the rest of tfw going down to purgatory for #Reasons. and the vibe just being. a dead and utter silence. blanketed the entire place. #you know how forests are always noisy and thats how you know a forest is working as it should. that its alive. #yeah. not a sound in purgatory. not a footfall. the darkness went to where the hungriest beings in all of creation were. and she ate them #all up.

[thenugking]

multiples of 5 for Val?

5: Dark Urge or no?

Nope, they’re my first BG OC and I wanted to get to know the game before playing Durge.

10: Are they proficient in playing any instruments?

Not in game, but I headcanon they have some skill in playing the piano, due to their mum getting them lessons in it when they were a kid. They despise it, like the good little Rebellious Goth they are.

15: What NPCs do they like? Which ones do they dislike?

For NPCs they like: Val loves kids and tried to adopt pretty much every orphan they met in the game. They adore the tiefling gang, Mol especially (biggest disappointment in the game was the end of her plotline being cut, I had to make up some stuff myself). They pretty much adopt Yenna instantly. I think she officially becomes their kid at the end of the game, along with Mattis and Silfy and maybe a few more of the tieflings, and travel to the Underdark for their Next Adventure with them. (Mol doesn’t, she and Val might think of each other as family, but she has Things To Do in baldur’s gate and is too independent to just follow Val around. She makes them promise to come back soon though.)

As for non-kid NPCs… The tieflings from the Grove, Isobel and Aylin, and Hope all kind of feel like family. And Arnell, Emmeline and Nocturne, because while they don’t know them well, anyone who’s Shadowheart’s family is Val’s family too. They liked the Emperor for a while, before it became too much of a manipulative dick.

NPCs they hate: For someone who tries their best to get along with everyone they meet and avoid conflict when possible, it’s a pretty long list.

Obviously they’re Not A Fan of any of the villains who hurt their companions (Cazador, Viconia, Gortash, Vlaakith). They fancied Orin to begin with, before she kidnapped Lae’zel. At which point, oh this is personal, get fucking dead, asshole. Slavers can also all go die.

Withers has not been welcome in their camp ever since “Arabella needs to go off by herself and not get any emotional support after the death of her parents, it’s Fine actually.” Fuck Kagha also for threatening a child like that.

Val maybe doesn’t hate Duke Ravengard, but they are not a big fan of him. Which… they legitimately don’t like how he treated Wyll, but they’re also projecting a load of their own father issues onto that relationship. They… would not have been upset if Mizora had killed him.

The character they loathe the most is Araj Oblodra, because they’re worried about being her themself. They liked her during their initial conversation. They had a nice little conversation about how weirdly into blood they both are, and yes, being bitten by a vampire is incredibly hot. And then Astarion was uncomfortable, and Araj was acting like his feelings didn’t matter, and Val was suddenly reevaluating every single interaction they’d had with Astarion, and deciding that they absolutely didn’t want to be this person ever.

20: Would they destroy the elder brain or control it?

Destroy. Earlier in the game, they might be tempted to control it, but by the time the endgame comes around, Val’s had so much bullshit thrown at them that they’re just, “I have had Enough, we are getting RID of this thing, I don’t want to fucking deal with anything else.”

25: What arcana major best represents your Tav?

I know nothing about Tarot but going off this website, (https://www.biddytarot.com/tarot-card-meanings/major-arcana/ ) they feel most drawn to the Devil. 

Val believes, at the start of the game, that being half-drow makes them half-evil. Growing up as an unwanted bastard in a family of humans and your only knowledge about drow being what other surface races tell you sure can give you a load of internalised racism! Except that Val’s twisted this round in their mind to make it mean that they don’t have to take responsibility for any selfish unpleasant actions they take. It’s not their fault, it’s just inherent to their nature--they don’t want to be a bad person, but there’s nothing they can do to change it! They learn to let go of their shitty internalised beliefs and start taking accountability over the course of the game.

(Also they did make a deal with Raphael and end up trapped in the House of Hope for a while at one point, so That Fits Too.)

30: What’s your favorite thing about your Tav?

Oh man, it’s so hard to choose just one favourite thing about the Current Brainrot OC. They give me gender euphoria, but that might be more of a favourite thing about Baldur’s Gate because, I mean, I’ve had nonbinary OCs in Dragon Age and Elder Scrolls before, but not one the game would actually accept as nonbinary. It’s so good not to be cringing constantly when an NPC uses the wrong pronouns for my character.

For Val’s actual personality… hmm. I love that their default mode is a charming and easy-going people pleaser, because life is just easier when people like you and think you agree with them. But when push comes to shove… when kids are being hurt, or Araj is like that about Astarion, or when they’ve reached their very last straw with Raphael’s bullshit, the charm drops away, and Val will tell you exactly what they fucking think of you.

#val rosebrook #marsh ocs #baldur's gate 3 #thornfield13713 #asks post

[doodlebloo]

📓 please u are my favorite dsmp writer every single daydream u have will be amazing

Augushd this is so sweet. Ok this is the outline I HAD for my "cTubbo rescues Michael_B and revives cRanboo" fic. I don't feel like I will ever write it BUT just in case pls no one steal this lol. Essentially this is how I would write the current plotline :)

I actually already have the first chapter written LOL but I doub I will ever finish it. This is the outline I had tho. ALSO this was written before the Saving Michael lore so the reason cEret doesn't save Michael w them is bc I had no idea that would be canon. Also this is messy so sorry abt that

It's been a week and a half since Ranboo died and Tubbo is sick of waiting around. He runs off to find Jack Manifold. They have a long talk where Tubbo tries to convince him to give up his keycard, but Jack doesn't want to, ESPECIALLY when Tubbo starts alluding to possibly taking himself out with the nukes. Eventually Tubbo trades him Manifork for it and then heads off to his shift at Tubburger. It's mind numbing and tedious and he hates it and he gets a lot of thinking done. He and Quackity have a chat, and when he shift ends Tubbo says a very vague and worrying goodbye to Q insinuating that he may not be coming back, Q seems as worried as Q could be while still being in character, and gives Tubbo possibly misguided but well meaning advice before he heads out.

Tubbo expects it to be a lot harder to get Techno to come w him to get Michael, but Techno's pretty much immediately ready to go. He admits that he has a pearl stasis chamber ready to go just in case, but he DOES offer to let Tubbo make one, too. Tubbo declines but Techno reassures him that he wouldn't just leave for no reason even if there's danger. Tubbo asks if Techno would teleport back even if he were holding Michael and he says yeah probably which is good enough for Tubbo. Along the journey it's good old fashioned Bonding-Ish (as in Holding Techno Accountable type bonding) till they get to Sam's island.

Tubbo is short with Sam, angry, ready to threaten, but Sam is just sad. He gives Michael back without much resistance, and he tries repeatedly to tell them what Ranboo has done. It definitely gets under Tubbo's skin, but he ignores it bc of course he does, excusing Ranboo's actions away like he always does. He and Techno get back to Snowchester and have an Awkward but sort of sweet goodbye where Techno offers future protection if Tubbo ever needs it, and Tubbo just... Revels in Michael being back for a bit.

He knocks on the door of his old house a day or two later, because if PHIL is the only one who knows where Tommy is, then things MUST be bad. Tommy invites him in, and then cClingyduo cClingyduo cClingyduo. Barest hints of healing, hushed conversations about why Tommy finds Tubbo's house safe, Tommy doesn't like Michael at first but we already see him start to grow on him by the end of the convo. Cliffhanger ending where Tubbo offhandedly mentions "finding where Ranboo respawned" bc he can't be dead and Tommy's like "I'm... Pretty sure he's dead" and Tubbo's like "Well I don't believe that. I got no proof, no body, and there's not even a ghost" and Tommy's face falls and he's like "Oh Jesus" and Tubbo's like What and Tommy's like "Tubbo... Have you not met Ranboo's ghost?"

And then hard cut to next chapter he meets the ghost of all places in the fucking Crater. And he's short with him, reminisces about the bee dome, he's polite but he pretty quickly realizes that this just Isn't Ranboo. The ghost taunts him a bit without even really meaning to and Tubbo stops being able to handle it so he just heads into his shift. He practically begs Tommy to watch his kid, and Tommy is SO reluctant at first but Tubbo needs him so he caves. Tubbo goes to work and it's raining in LN (snowing really, more like sleet) so Quackity chills inside and Tubbo chats idly with him and casually brings up necromancy and they have a tense but seemingly nonchalant convo about revival and suddenly Quackity gets serious and he's like "Tubbo you don't want to mess with this stuff" and Tubbo's like "You know about this stuff, then" and Quackitys like "No, I know how hard it is to figure it out. If I knew it I'd have at least offered you a trade offer to help revive your husband. Damn, I'm not a monster." And Tubbo is stricken by how sweet that is but anyway they keep talking and they're both really vague but eventually they trail off and Tubbo's like "Hey big Q. Where's that slime fellow." And so Quackity is still vague but he reveals Some stuff and Tubbo only half manipulating him convinced Quackity to reveal any hints he has from cDream and Quackity doesn't like doing it but he realizes that Tubbo NEEDS this. And Tubbo thanks him sincerely and Q tells him to keep in touch and that he'll murder cDream for coming near him or Tommy and that he's sure Sapnap would help him but his voice catches on the name and Q follows it up with "And I won't say I told you so if it turns out your partner is someone you don't want back." And Tubbo isn't even mad over that, he just feels SEEN, so he thanks Q for the books and disappears into the sleet of night.

Tommy and Michael are beginning to grow close, because Tubbo will only come out of his lab to feed Michael and tuck him in at night and Michael gets bored with his same old toys and coloring books sometimes and Tommy doesn't like being completely by himself, so he comes over to sit in the lab sometimes and feels safe with the extra security layers Tubbo has put up (and as Tommy tells him one night over potions, it's quite nice to hang out with Tubbo again.) Tubbo works and works and works until he finds an old sticky note from his dead husband reminding him to take a break and after that blow he couldn't keep working even if he wanted to, so he takes a walk outside as a breather and just sits and reminisces and thinks. The ghost finds him. And it sits and reminisces with him and then it asks him to STOP, tells him it doesn't want to not exist and asks Tubbo not to kill it. The ghost tells him exactly what he doesn't want to hear: that Ranboo hid things from him, that he'd hurt Tubbo before and had plans to do it again, that his skewed worldview was worse than Tubbo thought, that he'd known he was bad and asked to be locked up. And Tubbo lets that sink in... And then he's like "You say he wanted to be locked up to protect me. That sounds like something my Ranboo would do. And maybe I don't know everything about him, but I know he'd never hurt me." And the ghost tells him some of the things Ranboo has done, finishing with "And the rest I shouldn't say", and when Tubbo denies it, the spirit slips him a memory book and floats off, seemingly happier than before (likely proud of himself for preventing Ranboo's revival and his subsequent "death"). Tubbo cracks open the book and begins to read.

Tubbo hasn't seen Tommy or Michael in days. He's just been processing. He's made a little grave for Ranboo, then torn it down to make a better one, then torn the better one apart in a hurt rage, and now he sits at the quaint memorial he's made in he woods behind the mansion. He talks to the grave, as if Ranboo an actually hear him, and he talks about how maybe His Ranboo isn't even the Real Ranboo, and maybe everyone has been right about Ranboo being terrible, and that maybe Tubbo will revive him and Ranboo will stab him through the heart. But, Tubbo finishes, even if it ends up being the death of him, he cares too much for Ranboo to leave him to rot in limbo, and he's had enough of leaving his friends to die. Tubbo sends a VERY worrying comm message to Tommy, looks up at the forming clouds, and heads off to get the body. Sam grimaces when he sees how terrible Tubbo looks. He offers help, Tubbo refuses. Tubbo asks for the body. Same leads him to Ranboo's makeshift grave. He tells Tubbo about why he'd killed Ranboo, how it had gone wrong. He tries to tell him what Ranboo has done, Tubbo just responds "I Know." He hauls the coffin into his boat and doesn't respond when Sam tells him to be safe.

In his necromancy tower, Tubbo cranks the lever to raise the open coffin up to his lightning rod, reading out spells and channeling magic and tryin mg everything he can at once. He prays aloud to Channel Membership, to lady Prime, to the Goddess of Death and the Goddess of Life, and a crack of lightning strikes the coffin. It's raining hard through the open tower and the coffin is smoking and Tubbo worries his husband will get wet in the rain and he rolls down the coffin only to find a charred mark on Ranboo's chest and a lifeless corpse. Which... Doesn't make sense, because this ritual SHOULD revive someone, and... How had Wilbur been revived? And then it hits him. He has to kill the ghost.

Tubbo finds the ghost in the stupid Outpost. He's been looking for hours, and when he finally stumbles across the thing, it's singing and placing grass blocks and it's so Ranboo and so Not Ranboo that Tubbo almost keels over. They sit, and they have a long talk about the past and the present and the future, the cookie outpost and how Ranboo felt about things and how Tubbo felt about things, and it's basically every bit of cBeeduo catharsis that cTubbo needs to hear. And then the ghost sighs and it says "You're here to kill me, aren't you?" And Tubbo is like "Yeah. Yeah, I'm afraid I am." And the ghost half-heartedly tries to convince him not to, warning him about who Ranboo really is in a VERY self deprecating way, but Tubbo needs his husband back. And the ghost is like "Well, this was fun while it lasted, right? I had fun, at least, and I'm sure you had at least a little bit of fun without him." and Tubbo's like "Y'know? I actually really really didn't." And Tubbo's like "You wanna go say your goodbyes to people?* And The ghost is like "No, that's okay." And then a pause, and then "I'm sorry I wasn't him, and I'm sorry I couldn't give you whatever he gave you" Tubbo at the last second is like "I'm not sure I should do this." and the ghost smiles and is like "Then I'll do it for you. He's been itching to come home anyway." and the ghost walks right out into the rain and melts in front of him. And Tubbo is baffled for a bit, crying in an emotionless sort of way, before his brain goes FUCK FUCK FUCK RANBOO RANBOO RANBOO, and he takes his trident (Ranboo's Trident that he stole because Ranboo always let him do that fuck he misses Ranboo) and makes a mad dash for where he knows Ranboo will respawn - the prison. And when he gets there Ranboo is under a tree, confused and disoriented and gasping for air and Tubbo crouches down to look at him and Ranboo flinches away from his eyes before he meets them, "Tubbo?" and Tubbo goes blank. He picks Ranboo up and offers him his own armor, it's not waterproof but anything helps, and as Ranboo puts it on he whimpers and whines about How is he back, did Dream revive him, is Michael okay, and instead of speaking Tubbo grabs his hand and tugs gently, and he and Ranboo emerge from the tree they'd used for cover and start sprinting down the path towards Tubbo's old house, and Tubbo can't help but smile despite everything because RANBOO RANBOO RANBOO and Ranboo starts LAUGHING and it's all just perfect enough for Tubbo to ever so slightly cry. And they get to Tubbo's house and Tubbo gives him some of Tommy's clothes, Ranboo dries himself off and they sit in front of the fire. And it's deathly quiet for a good bit as they sit shoulder to shoulder until Tubbo opens his mouth to say something terrible and ends up just going "I Missed You." And Ranboo's like "Yeah God I missed you too, more than anything, actually. I still don't understand how I'm back." and Tubbo's like "I brought you back." And there's a bit of Ranboo being in awe and Tubbo acting like it's NBD, and then it gets quiet and Tubbo's like "I thought about not bringing you back." Barely above a whisper. And Ranboo's like "...What?" And Tubbo's like, "Ranboo, I know what you did to be put in the prison. I know everything you've done." And Ranboo blinks once, twice, before his eyes roll back and go purple. And Tubbo frowns, "Ranboo?" But before he can do much of anything, Ranboo is standing up and leaving, saying something in a language Tubbo doesn't understand. And Tubbo tries to stop him, to the point that they lightly tussle and fight, but Ranboo rips himself away and speaks in perfect English, "You need to let me go. I dont want to hurt you any more than I have. This is for your own good." And he walks out of house, leaving Tubbo alone in the pouring rain calling out after him.

Tubbo informs everyone that Ranboo is alive. He then informs them all that he's missing. Tubbo can tell that Techno is a bit angry with him for losing Ranboo, but they both agree to keep each other updated and look everywhere they can think of. Tubbo messages Sam, something to the effect of He knows that Ranboo has to be locked up if Sam finds him, but Tubbo would still like to know that he's been found at all. Sam agrees.

Tubbo and Tommy and Michael sit holed up in the house again, because Tommy has been getting letters sent to his dirt hut, with nothing but a smiley face printed on them, and his paranoia is so bad that he'll barely go outside.  It's just Tubbo thinking and lamenting and when Michael talks about how he's convinced that a dream he had about seeing Ranboo was real, Tubbo leaves him with Tommy and decides he HAS to take a walk, has to get away from his darling boy who he's failed. Tubbo wanders out as far as his feet will take him, paying barely any attention to where he's headed, travelling in and out of the nether and tridentine whenever he gets the chance and eventually he's walking through the woods and he hears something crunch and turns around and there's fucking RANBOO. And despite everything, he somehow looks awkward. And he vwoops out a hi, then coughs and says it in English. Tubbo is shell shocked. Ranboo starts backing away, and Tubbo rushes him, using his sword to pin Ranboo's tie to a tree. And he's like "You are not going fucking anywhere," and they fight because Tubbo knows what he's done and knows he's working with Dream, and Ranboo INSISTS that he wouldn't have used the TNT on the prison if he knew it'd kill Tommy, insists that he knows what he's doing and that it's actually DREAM that's helping HIM and that if Dream actually tried to hurt anyone he'd stop him, and Tubbo fucking explodes. He starts screaming and crying, telling Ranboo that he's an idiot if he thinks he can stop Dream on his own, that nobody can stop him, that Tubbo had worked so hard to bring him back and missed him so much just to bring back someone who doesn't care about him at all, tells Ranboo that if he's ever cared about him he'll turn around and come back home and see their son right now. And Ranboo wipes his tears away, not even flinching at the burn, and "Oh Tubbo. If you think I haven't seen Michael yet, you overestimate how easy the castle is to break into. And if you think I'm gonna hurt you, why did you marry me?" And Tubbo pulls himself back and he's like "I guess I didn't know." And Ranboo's like "I guess you didn't. You will, though. You'll see what I have planned. And it'll be good for us, and no one will ever fight again, and we'll get to be happy." And Tubbo's like "Ranboo, I don't know that you've ever known what would actually make me happy." And he takes his sword and sheathes it and walks away.

He doesn't tell Tommy what happened. They stay in the house, and Tubbo keeps Michael with him all the time instead of letting Eret babysit, literally not letting the kid out of his sight. Tubbo has been throwing himself into making traps, as many and as brutal as he can craft them, all to ignore how SELFISH he'd been to keep Ranboo to himself, how Michael hadn't even gotten to see his father for what may have been the last time ever because Tubbo wanted his husband all to himself that night, selfish and stupid and idiot. And it's a Misery chapter, Phil coming by to check in quickly and Quackity calling them both to make sure they're okay (maybe Sapnap is on the line with them), Eret stops by with food and an apology for the castle being broken into, and then eventually Eryn convinces Tommy to go on a walk, to get out and see the sun and shit, and Tommy agrees. Tubbo stays home and talks with Michael and apologizing for not believing him. And then Tommy messages Tubbo frantically, GET HERE NOW NOW NOW NOW (spam), Tubbo comes RUNNING with Michael tucked close to his chest, he bumps into Eret on the path on the way and just shoves the kid into his arms and takes off running, he skids to a stop and Tommys house is burning and ruined with a chest and a compass just like it was for the disc finale again and Tommy's on his knees and Eryn is grinning, saying something about how Tommy will have purpose again, and Tubbo trips over his own feet and vomits right into a flower bed and the world tilts on it's axis, and he and Tubbo curl up in the grass. They stay there for far too long until Tommy eventually forces himself up and offers Tubbo a shakey hand, and Tommy reads the note informing them that they have one week to head to a set of coords, and when Tommy turns the letter around it's in Ranboo's fucking handwriting.

They go to Philza and Technoblade. Tubbo doesn't want to, he begs not to, pleading with Tommy to leave it be, but Tommy insists. Tubbo pays Eret handsomely for babysitting (after all, he won't be needing money where he's going,) and heavily insinuates that Eret may be raising his kid after he dies, and Eret's insinuation in return is that he'll tell Michael stories about his parents and their adventures and make sure that he grows up knowing who they are. Eret ventures as far as a hug, and Tubbo allows himself the briefest moment to lean into it before becoming a Soldier again. Tommy and Tubbo hold hands on their way through the nether, Tommy hates the whole journey and Tubbo has to help him breathe once they get through the portal, Tubbo cracks a joke and Tommy tells him how much better he makes things and then they both get sick from deja vu. Phil is there when they arrive, they ask for Techno and Phil says he'll message and tell him to head back to the base, but he's been out looking for Ranboo so he's fairly far away. They sit with Phil and explain everything they know, and Tommy says they want help, and Phil... Basically just says it's up to Techno. Techno comes in, Tommy gives the same spiel, and when Techno starts with like "Look, I-" Tubbo interrupts, and gives the most genuine bit of emotion he's shown to Technoblade so far, and Technoblade is like "Well... I owe Dream a favor. And I can't go back on that favor. But! If you guys think Ranboo is there, I'm coming with, because I want my friend back. And if I have to fight Dream to get him back, I will fight Dream to get him back." And then he breaks and says some shit about maybe Dream and Ranboo are just hanging out and they're all gonna be interrupting, but he makes it clear that he at least wants to TALK to Ranboo. And Phil is like ah, are we gearing up then? And so Technoblade offers Tommy and Tubbo a gapple each and instructs them to be ready to go early.

Tubbo says Goodbye to his things. He says goodbye to Snowchester, to several graves, to the crater. He says goodbye to Michael, writes a note for Eret that Michael is supposed to read when he's older, texts Quackity and JM goodbye, all of which while still maintaining the false positivity that they'll make it out alive. Tubbo has no intentions of making it out alive. He thinks if he has to die to bring Michael's dad home, he will, and he thinks it's about time anyway, because his friends seem to die all the time and Tubbo never does. So they head off, and the coords lead to a weird portal that looks like Technoblade and Phil's table. And during the fight Ranboo will be purposefully not hurting them but not letting them hurt Dream either, and then Tubbo will get hurt and he'll flip like a switch and help them kill cDream. And after that there's obviously peace, because cDream is finally gone, and because cTubbo apparently knows how to revive people now (although I'd like to say that once cDream dies, the server starts running on an infinite lives system where the only death that could count is old age or something like that.)

What were Ranboo's motivations? I have literally no idea. Thats honestly probably why I didn't write it <3

and this time it isn't a mountain, but a cave. And so they travel down the darkness into this cave, and Tommy hugs Tubbo quickly and wordlessly before they go in and they hold hands all the way down, and Tubbo hopes that  Tommy looks away when he dies. And eventually they get to a strange set of corridors, stone brick hallways that sometimes lead to dead ends, sometimes empty jail cells, a maze of different passageways before they eventually find a table. In the center of the table

#asks #this is sosososo long! #also if you see any of these concepts recycled in future fics NO YOU DONT look away !!!!!!! (/lh)

[asterekmess]

what scott did to derek in the season 2 finale wasn’t a violation, it was poetic justice and derek’s well deserved comeuppance for being an inhuman, incompetent flop as a an alpha, werewolf and person. derek knew he deserved it, that’s why he accepted it and never held it against scott. not to mention that by inconveniencing derek for a few seconds, scott single-handedly defeated gerard and the kanima and saved derek’s and everyone’s life at the warehouse. plus, he made derek a better person

Look. I know you like Scott. But I need you to understand that what you’re saying is not only factually incorrect, but the implications of it are really hurtful.

Scott suffered a lot because he was bitten without being given a choice. Peter attacked him and turned him into something he never wanted to be. That is horrible for him, and I feel for him. What frustrates me so much is that he had his autonomy taken away from him, he suffered a huge injustice, and instead of protecting other people’s rights to choose, he decided to take away their choice the same way it was done to him. He shamed and insulted Erica and Boyd for their decisions to take the bite, completely negating their abilities to make their own choices. Derek didn’t attack them. He told them the risks, he explained what the bite was and what he expected back from them if he gave it to them. They asked for the bite. That was their choice, not Scott’s.

First off, Derek did not deserve what happened to him. A rape survivor who lost his entire family in a brutal fire that his rapist set and had his big sister murdered by his own uncle, did not deserve to have his body used without his consent to give what he considered a gift to the father of the woman who assaulted him, and it in no way made him a ‘better person.’ No. You need to be more careful about the things you say, because sexual assault survivors shouldn’t have to read horrible things like what you just typed out and sent to me. I should not have to read it.

Second, Scott’s motivation behind what he did was not justice. It was pride, a disregard for Derek’s bodily autonomy, and maybe even an actual urge to help with the Gerard situation. You could even add revenge to the list, since Gerard threatened Scott’s mom. And I have to point out, if Scott is really the amazing person that you’re claiming he is, then ‘poetic justice’ should never be something he is aiming for. Good people don’t do the thing that is the most ‘poetic.’ If Scott were as empathetic and kind as people claim he is or the show tries to tell us he is, he never would have done that to Derek, no matter how much he disliked him. There was no reason why he couldn’t have told Derek what he had planned and gotten Derek’s permission to do what he did. Scott kept the secret from him because he felt like he had the right to make decisions about Derek’s body without Derek’s consent. He did it because he wanted to be the one with the secrets for once. He outright admits that he kept the secret “Because you may be an Alpha, but you’re not mine.” He wanted to prove that Derek couldn’t control him, by hurting Derek and forcing him to give what Derek considered the greatest gift a werewolf could bestow, to the father of the woman who murdered Derek’s family. That is cowardly, childish, and apathetic, and it directly contradicts the idea that Scott is in any way True Alpha material.

Third, nothing he did was single-handed, because Derek isn’t an inanimate object or a tool. He’s a person, and without him, Scott’s plan wouldn’t have happened. Without Deaton, Scott’s plan wouldn’t have happened. Scott did not act alone.

Fourth, Derek didn’t accept what Scott did, and he did hold it against him. He felt so unsafe with Scott that he didn’t even tell him about the Alphas over the summer, didn’t ask for his help to find his Betas, because he didn’t think Scott could be trusted. Scott had already sold him out once and Derek had every right to believe Scott would do it again. (Which he then did at the end of S3A when he went to join Deucalion and left Derek unconscious in an elevator, in a hospital about to be swarmed with cops.)

Fifth, everything you are angry with Derek for, Scott did as well. So if you’re saying that Derek is ‘inhuman’ and a failure of an Alpha/werewolf/person, then you must be saying the same thing about Scott. Yes, Derek threw his Betas around and injured Isaac. Scott also threw Isaac into a wall twice (without even the pretense of training him) and dug his claws into Liam’s (I think it was him) neck without his permission. Yes, Derek chained his Betas up on the full moon. Scott abducted Liam and duct-taped him to his bathtub without explaining anything he’d done to him, and I’m pretty sure (though I don’t remember it well) that he was involved in Liam getting chained to a tree at one point. Yes, Derek kept secrets from his pack under the pretense of ‘protecting’ them. Scott also kept the truth about how Allison’s mom was bitten from her, letting her believe for months that Derek brutally attacked her mother for no reason, and lied to Kira about her losing control of her kitsune (though I also don’t remember a lot of that plotline). He also lied to Stiles about whether Lydia liked him, after making out with Lydia (who currently had a boyfriend) in the coach’s office, which is just a dick move, whether it was the full moon or not. Derek told Erica to seduce either Scott or Stiles? Scott told Allison to go on a date with Matt and KISS HIM. Derek scared Isaac away by shouting at him? Scott shouted at Allison for doing something she’d already told him she was going to do, and for telling her parents something she’d already warned him she was going to tell them, and told her to stay away from him. Derek shoved Scott against a wall? Scott shoved Stiles against a wall on his first moon! Oh, Scott was scared/frustrated/having trouble with control? Well, Derek’s sister had just died and Scott was about to expose the entire supernatural secret to a lacrosse field full of people.

Sixth, Scott didn’t defeat Gerard or the Kanima, and he definitely didn’t save the warehouse full of people. Gerard wasn’t dead after getting the bite from Derek. He had enough energy left to tell the Kanima to kill everyone in the room, and escape while no one was looking. The Kanima wasn’t defeated by Scott, it had Allison by the fucking throat and it only backed off when Stiles hit it with his goddamn Jeep and Lydia came out to face Jackson. Scott had nothing to do with that. Lydia is technically the one who saved everyone in the warehouse, and Stiles was her ride. Scott’s contribution was negligible. It was a time waster. He could have accomplished the exact same thing by just standing there and talking to Gerard until Stiles showed up with Lydia.

Seventh, Scott’s behavior was indeed a violation. And I don’t just mean the bite he forced Derek to give Gerard. He didn’t just get revenge on the guy who’d been rude to him and arguing with him for the last few months. He lied to Derek, over and over (while also avoiding ever technically lying, in much the same way Deaton often does, to avoid being caught out by his heartbeat). He learned Derek’s plans and where Derek was hiding, insinuated that he wanted to be part of Derek’s pack (knowing how important pack was to Derek), and outright yelled at Derek for supposedly keeping something from him (Which he wasn’t. Derek canonically wasn’t holding back any secrets from Scott at the time, unless you count the fact that Peter was alive, which Derek had every right to assume Deaton had already told him) all while he was the one working for Gerard. (That is literally gaslighting. Like, literally.) He exposed Derek and his pack to Gerard, feeding him information on the same kids that he insisted were ‘his responsibility’ that probably helped Gerard get ahold of Erica and Boyd to torture them. It was a violation of Derek’s consent. A violation of Derek’s trust, of Erica and Boyd and Isaac’s trust. And a violation of Stiles’ trust as well, since Stiles had no clue what Scott was doing.

You came to my ask box after seeing the various posts that I’ve made, with documented moments from the show and well reasoned arguments and frustrations with Scott McCall’s character. Are you seriously telling me you didn’t think I’d have a comeback?

#personal #go for it #Meta ramblings #anti-scott mccall #hate mail #rant #I had to completely rewrite this because tumblr is stupid and deleted my response the first time #apologies for no 'read more' i'm too frustrated to put it in #i'll add one to the next long post #Anonymous

[pochapal]

I hate doctor 11 but ive never been able to explain why in like words lmao. He feels like such a mary sue character imo and like theres something about his characterisation that was always just really ineffective (like the stuff about fishfingers and custard or whatever it was). Imo i'd love to hear you give top 5 worst things about the 11 era because i rlly just love when it gets torn apart

i hold nothing but a seething contempt and loathing for that man. every time he appeared on screen i felt ready to snap like a riled up chimpanzee in my enclosure. i am frothing at the mouth and overcome with a desire to start flinging heavy objects. this might be incoherent and inconsistent but i started this rewatch in feb 2020 and only finished this week so i got through 11′s episodes last august/september time and i refuse to revisit it to jog my memory or fact check anything i’m saying here because this man does not deserve the space in my mind for that.

the first thing is i can’t fucking STAND the quirky whimsy timey wimey bit he has going on all of the time. i can’t even say this is because this is a kids show and i was a teen and then adult when i first properly watched him but actually!! when i was eleven years old i’d sleep over at a friend’s house most weekends and it always coincided with the airing of a new season 5 episode and i remember we watched the finale with the dumb time hopping to get out of the box prison that was never explained and didn’t make sense and i thought at the time “this is really stupid”. and before that my only other doctor who exposure was watching the david tennant christmas specials with another friend and throughout childhood my only opinion on doctor who was “this is a tv show that is not for me but is one that all the boys i am friends with like so i will put up with it to maintain our friendships” but at least those episodes were both suspenseful and engaging enough to keep me watching all the way through. like who the fuck does an end of the world sci fi plot and approaches it with an “oopsy woopsy i am a funny little alien man who is going to stop you all by making you do a hecking silly” like it’s unneeded and self-parodies an already cheesy show to the point where it becomes unwatchable and makes it impossible to ever take this man seriously.

next thing that downright sucks ass so badly is the stupid fucking overwritten constantly escalating plotlines. like everything from season 5 up until his regeneration at the end of season 7 is meant to be this grand interconnected cosmic plot about how...the doctor trying to bring back his planet will end the universe or something so all the top powers across all of reality tried again and again to stop him from doing that except he doesn’t know what’s going on so he keeps thwarting these people who supposedly mean good?? i mean i sure don’t fucking know what they were trying to say!! like for some reason we never get the doctor suddenly becomes this superdemon that threatens everything so these people (whoever they are) decide to, in sequence: suck him through a time rift to erase him from existence, trap him in a prison and remake a universe without him, take his companion’s baby and turn her into a perfectly trained doctor killer, form two(!!) secret societies to hunt him throughout history that are only stopped by his companion splintering herself across his personal timeline to protect him, and repeatedly cause reality collapsing events because it’s a kinder outcome for the universe than what he will do. this grand and terrible event turns out to be...he spends a few hundred years chilling by a rift that leads to his home planet and protects a few generations of children from monsters which convinces them to give him infinite regeneration power then fuck off back to their pocket universe. and it’s like!! what is the point of anything that happens in this man’s era when everything is always “the darkest moment” or whatever the fuck!! i don’t care!! we never get a compelling reason to believe this bumbling clown of a man could ever be a universal threat!! the whole thing is so dumb i hate it!!!

thing number three i hate is how the eleventh doctor is ALSO characterised as this abrasive egotistic male supergenius to the point where he becomes genuinely indistinguishable from bbc sherlock. genuinely who enjoyed seeing this guy constantly tell people their tiny human minds can’t comprehend what he’s doing and then basically just wave his magic wand to solve whatever problem each episode is facing. 2012 is the year of human sin because this fucking shitsmear character archetype somehow became both a redditor role model AND a tumblr sexyman and it’s like!! nobody is enjoying this stop making this seem cool! him saying timey wimey thing any time he does anything is frustrating and dumb and locks the viewer out of giving a fuck about anything that is happening! smartest man in the room syndrome is a disease and the eleventh doctor is terminal with it. like remember how they established river as an accomplished scientist (when she wasn’t being a child soldier or a time paradox or whatever the fuck) and every time that came up mr doctor eleven man was like “oh this thing is obvious because i’m a genius and you didn’t realise because your brain is tiny so get out of the way and let the grownups think” or that time it turned out amy had been replaced with a slime clone for half the season and the doctor chewed rory (audience surrogate) out for somehow not realising this fact we didn’t know right from the start and like. this served no purpose other than to draw into severe question why the doctor is also this super beloved magical figure implicitly trusted by all children everywhere like. mr steven moffat is totally allergic to writing and solving mysteries in his tv show and fuck you for wanting to figure things out as you go along based on the new evidence you uncover at strategic plot intervals just let this asshole man use magical thinking to reveal he knew the answer all along and you’re a fucking idiot for not also realising this thing which had no basis or precedent anywhere else in the show.

speaking of dumb things let us not forget the absolute shitshow that was minority representation in this era. i’m not even talking about the low hanging fruit of how genuinely unironically sexist amy and clara were written where each episode moffat either seemed to loathe them or was incredibly horny over them and they had no character growth or arc or fucking anything. i’m talking about how fucking shit terrible the incidental representation was. god remember how every single fucking gay person who appeared in this era was written as one incredibly fucking stupid joke and how the women were all either sexy dominatrix, feeble girl in love, or Mother (or all three in some really terrible cases) and i’m not qualified to talk about this but also how incredibly white this era was and how on two separate occasions we had monarchs reimagined as sexy girlbosses with a gun played by black women who the doctor leched over. nothing about any of this was good ESPECIALLY coming off the back of rtd who was surprisingly forward thinking for 2005 and did a really good job of positing travel with the doctor as queer allegory. in comparison moffat gave us THE MOST heterosexual shlock i’ve ever had to endure. amy and rory could have been interesting characters were they not hemmed into this domestic bickering young straight married couple bullshit that was in no way changed or altered by traveling with the doctor except for the quasi incestuous river song reveal that was dumb and bad and stupid.

the last major mega gripe i have with the series is moffat’s fucking jingoistic boner for british military aesthetics. this carried over throughout his entire tenure as showrunner but was super terrible vomit inducing in eleven’s era. the unironic admiration for ww2 britain and winston churchill is downright wretched. are you incapable of telling a second world war story outside of churchill’s london and plucky blitz fighters. shit gives me hives so badly. and then!!! that weird church owned army that features in the future that end up being bad not for the concept of what basically amounts to an imperialistic intergalactic rendition of the fucking crusades but because they’re part of the nonsense go nowhere puzzlebox narrative that says the doctor is a not good man who will do bad things to the universe :(. remember how rtd’s doctor was a freshly traumatised man hot off the war criminal press who time and time again vehemently refuses to engage in military violence, but who tragically inadvertently turns every one of his companions into soldiers in his own personal army, and he has this moment of complete horror at the realisation and it is this which causes the downward spiral that ends in 10′s regeneration. and then how there’s this cringe line about how there’s a force of people who are “the doctor’s army, always ready to fight his battles when he’s not around” or some shit and then it turns out this is actually massive literal military operation and we’re meant to celebrate this. fuck off.

bonus round because this needs to be said but i have never hated anything like i hated that fucking human tardis episode. everything about it induced violent anger in me from the sickening overindulgence of that softgoth dark whimsy helena bonham carter tim burton aesthetic to the bafflingly terrible evil carny stereotype of those junk scavengers to the overblown sudden tragic shipbait romance of human tardis and the doctor. every word out of her mouth was trite shit and the fact that the death of her body was presented as this super emotional dramatic scene despite there being no buy in or incentive to care and the fact that every single person on tumblr in 2012 ate that shit up like it was fucking gourmet. i loathe every single thing about that episode so much.

#Anonymous #hi bestie here's 1500 words of me getting mad about the worst television experience i had in my life #why the FUCK was this man tumblr's favourite back in the day. what the fuck did anyone see in any of this shit #i never want to think about dr whom ever again

[st-just]

Semi-coherent thoughts on The Way of Kings

So clearly Sanderson improved significantly as an author between series, or possibly I just clicked with this aesthetic more, but either way I liked this book a lot more than Mistborn. (Though I still don’t think any single book really needs to be 1300 pages). More in the back-half than in the front, admittedly, but even the table-setting was interesting. The final climax to the War plotline was really well done, if a bit Hollywood (but then, I suppose that’s not really something you can sit down to a multi-thousand page heroic epic fantasy series and complain about). Though honestly by the end I was nearly as invested in Shallan’s plotline - the final reveal with the parshmen was really well done, though gonna try real hard not to think too deeply about the subtext there. But still, the entire climax just made me grin like a fool, and the epilogue was a legitimate surprise, in a good way.

But, like, so the Parshendi are clearly, self-evidently in the right as far as the war goes, right? Like, there were plenty of humanizing hints through the book and I’m really hoping that they weren’t just a red herring for the leadup to the big reveal. And, semi-related, but I feel like I have to say – ‘docile, perfect slaves who will just sit until they’re killed by the elements without instruction, distinguished from real humans primarily by their bizarre skin, turn out to be the remnants of some ancient evil who, under the right circumstances, will rise up in revolt and slaughter the masters who foolishly let down their guard.’ C’mon man. Really?

Anyway, given the impression I’d gotten of Sanderson – both from people online talking about him and from reading Mistborn, I am really pleasantly surprised how, well, magical the magic felt (well, less so in Szeth’s POV, but even there to an extent). Kaladin’s gradual (via other people repeatedly pointing it out to him) was especially great. Though on that count I probably like soulcasting rather more than binding or whatever it’s called, entirely because of all the weird associated mysticism, and also because it seems to be very nearly FMA-alchemy.

Of the three main POVs, I’ll admit Dalinor’s was the least interesting to me by some margin (and I honestly can’t even remember how to spell his son’s name. But, like, the jock prince even less so). Still, the ending where he launches a coup d’etat and forces the king to declare him Shogun after credibly threatening his death was great. Although, yes, if I was the king I would probably be a bit paranoid in the situation where I have no land or power of my own, my bodyguards are entirely loyal to my uncle – one of the great landed magnates, suffering from messianic delusions/visions, not even hiding his relationship with my mother the queen dowager, just forced me to sign a deeply unpopular order granting him control of other nobles’ armed retainers – and will do absolutely nothing if he beats me half to death to make a point. Seems, uh, less than ideal.

I’ve been repeatedly told that Kaladin is basically the book’s main character, and that me getting more invested in his arc than the others is basically things going as intended. So, well, that pretty much worked. Though I’ll say right not that I do not remember a single name of any of his bridge-buddies. They’re fine as quirky supporting cast, granted, but that’s about it. Syl’s great though, easily in the running for best non-POV character (the spren generally are a really interesting bit of worldbuilding). I’m sure it’s just because I read Mistborn so recently (and, honestly, because both their names start with K), but he remained me of Kelseir to a certain extent. The same arc of ‘embittered cynic learns that not every privileged noble of the horrifying oppressive system he suffers under is evil, merely the vast majority’, anyway. That and the fact that he also seems to have a cult now, though I guess he got his by accident.

Shallan’s arc really grew on me once we got back to it in part three – and I’d always liked it to begin with. Partially because intrigue and conspiracies are generally more interesting than action scenes and this had one without the other, and partially because Jasnah is the other candidate for best supporting character (sorry, I’m obligated to love the insufferably too-smart-for-her-own-good atheist historian, its in my contract). Though I am looking forward to Shallan’s next conversation with her brothers “Bad news, I do not have a soulcaster. Good news, I’m now an apprentice wizard. No, I will not be coming home.”

I am more than a bit confused about the exact timeline of all this mythic prehistory, though I’m sure that’s at least partially intentional. Still, very curious if God’s death (or, well, I suppose Ahura Mazda’s, given the whole dualism thing) is the cause, result, or unrelated to all but one of his immortal hero-saints deciding to say ‘fuck this’ when it was time to go back to being tortured/fight in hell for another few (decades? Centuries? Millennia?).

Also unclear on what sort of timeframe all this is supposed to have happened in. Hundreds of years ago? Thousands? Tens of thousands? It seems like it went ‘mythical dawn kingdoms’ ---> ‘global theocracy’ ---> ‘current setup’, which doesn’t seem like much change. But, like, it’s a thousand page high fantasy book, political situations persisting for thousands of years wouldn’t exactly be surprising.

But yeah, anyway, good book. Will need to grab the sequel sometime soon. Though I should really take a break with some nonfiction first.

#books #the way of kings #stormlight archive #cosmere #brandon sanderson #in this essay I will #this is theoretically a writing blog

[bewareofchris]

LET’S TALK ABOUT BOBO DEL REY

Now friends, as you have UNDOUBTEDLY noticed, I have been on a fucking journey with this show.  But no character has put me through as much hardship and heartache as the one and only fantastic bastard himself, Bobo Del Rey.

Look at this man:

THAT IS THE FACE OF AN ASSHOLE.  I’m just saying I started this journey very, very simply.  While I have had heard that some people love this little drama bean as soon as soon as they slap eyes on that beautiful roadkill coat, I was not among them.

In fact, when I was first forced to endure the Drama Fire Circle:

I basically almost died.  Do you see this?  This is the most well-thought out but Over the Top display of... I don’t even know how to explain it?  Who is he showing off for?  Does this happen a lot?  (The drama fire circle happens twice in the first season alone so I feel like it’s a A Thing and he has specially selected revenant friends to hold those torches for him.  Maybe there’s auditions?  Maybe not but I feel like there is.)  I want to say it’s a display of masculinity.  He just rips off his coat like GRANDMA IT’S ME ANASTASIA and everyone just gasps quietly to themselves like: my god he’s been to the gym.

But, maybe he’s got an exhibitionist kink?

Maybe he’s just peacocking for Doc.  (LOOK AT THIS FIGURE, DOC HOLLIDAY, LOOK AT IT.  I AM A POWERFUL MAN.)

Point is, at this point I am Not In Love because Bobo is ever so slightly ridiculous.  I don’t dislike him.  I’m just over here eating my popcorn being like: ok, ok, what’s he going to do next?  

But the problem with keeping Bobo in any one singular category is that he doesn’t fit there.  

Is he a little bit ridiculous?  Yes he is.  But why is he a little bit ridiculous?  Because he’s maintaining control over a bunch of demon-adjacent outlaws masquerading as people in a small town mostly comprised of reminders that Wyatt Earp did a thing there once.  Can you imagine how awful it would be to be trapped in a tourist sinkhole filled up with the reminders of the dude that shot you?  I would also lose my mind.

Bobo’s over the topness serves a purpose and even if it didn’t?  Dude’s been to hell and now he’s a feral cat herder so, do your ringleader shit, bud.  We’re here for you.

WHAT GOT ME THOUGH, was when Constance “Bad Touch Witch” Clootie kissed him in that shed (barn? building made of wood) and he just rolled his eyes.  In fact, Bobo seems very ambivalent in general toward women and sex.  Dick-eating vampires also aren’t his type?  He shows up to be like: Oh hi Willa remember me? But then he’s also kind of fed up with her a little too.  (I mean I was fed up with Willa on sight.)

Bobo wants out.  Out of the town.  Out of the curse.  Out of the circumstances and he’s been sitting around for 130(ish) years taking whatever blame, sludging through whatever bullshit waiting for his chance.  Which even if you knew nothing at all about him, makes COMPLETE SENSE.

But then there was season 2.

Then there was Plaid Baby Robert Svane and the Single Greatest Act of Unfairness ever presented to me in fiction.

Look at that man in plaid.  He’s practically a newborn kitten.

What you find out about Robert Svane, the man destined to become Drama Peacock Bobo Del Rey is:

He was nobody’s first choice.  It’s never outright said in canon but the fact that we see Wyatt “Tiny Limp Dick” Earp all but begging his actually dying friend to go with him to Purgatory suggests that a dying Doc Holliday > a perfectly healthy Robert Svane.

He genuinely was there to do the right thing.  Out of all of the people involved in this Demon Killing Excursion, Robert appears to be the only one that has absolutely no outside motivation at all.  He’s not some kind of random angel that didn’t want to get in trouble with his boss.  He’s not a demon wife who wants vengeance for the death of her babies.  He’s not whatever we’d qualify Savior Complex Wyatt Earp as.  He’s just a dude, that knows a bad thing is happening, and is there helping out because you do.

HE SACRIFICED HIMSELF.  I cannot stress enough how traumatized I am by the fact that Robert Svane, who is only there to do the right thing, for real told a man to shoot THROUGH him to kill a demon?  He was right there, ready to die, because it was the RIGHT THING TO DO.  

He was betrayed and abandoned.  Look.  Look.  I’m emotional about this.  Robert got shot through the chest, but he was still right there in the mix of shit, doing his part to seal up a demon that was dead but not really, really dead?  And his pal Wyatt who was supposed to be there to finish this off himself, must have left town the very moment he shot Robert and Clootie because he’s had enough time to write a ‘sorry you’re fucked I’m looking for my real friend lol’ letter to let Robert know he could just hurry up and die because NOBODY CARED ABOUT HIM.  But it isn’t even just about Wyatt?  Constance was there just grinding salt into that fresh wound, reminding Robert that he was going to hell and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.  And why was he going to hell?  Because he was a bad guy?  Because he’d made the wrong choice?  No, because he trusted an angel, a demon wife and Tiny Limp Dick Wyatt to hold up their side of this bargain.  And not one of those three did a damn thing to help him.  NOT ONE.

Robert Svane did not deserve to go to hell.  He didn’t deserve to be brought back when Wyatt died.  He didn’t deserve to be hunted by the Earp heirs.

But he’s out here, CONSTANTLY being bad-mouthed and threatened and belittled by the “Good guys” who have no idea that this Over the Top Drama Peacock is the PRIMARY reason they’re all alive to start with?  That if they’d just slow the fuck down and ask, Bobo knows everything?

There’s not one single plotline in all of Wynonna Earp (the show) that Bobo doesn’t know the answer to.  What is the curse?  Bobo knows.  Why did it happen?  Bobo knows.  Who is the demon?  Bobo knows.  What are the seals?  Bobo knows.  Who are the wives?  Bobo knows.  How do you trap them?  Bobo knows.  How do you kill Bulshar?  Bobo might know but he definitely knows who knows.  Who is Waverly’s dad?  Bobo knows.  What is Peacemaker?  Bobo knows.  Why was Doc put in the well?  Bobo knows.

The point is, I love this stupid, stupid man and I just want him to be able to rest.  I want him to see the ocean.  I want him to do anything he wants to do.  And I will never, ever, ever be over the injustice that was done to him.  How dare you torture this man for three seasons and then give us that finale?

HOW DARE.

(send me your thoughts.)

#THE DRAMA OF BOBO DEL REY #cry with me friends

[couldnt-think-of-a-funny-name]

Could we ever see a concept from you on how OUAT could have been a better show?

alright, fair warning, I haven’t actually watched the show in a while so my memory might be a little spotty, but off the top of my head-

Don’t kill Neal. He was at the heart of the plot, which started to unravel the second he was gone. Don’t sacrifice a clear plot line you had planned just because the fans really like Captain Hook oh my GOD

Stop having everyone discredit Regina being Henry’s mother just because they don’t like her. OR, have them do that but have Henry defend her. Their relationship was too back and forth and we never had anything to tell us she was a bad mom to him before he found out about the curse...like, if you found out your Nice and Normal Mom was allegedly an evil witch, wouldn’t you...I don’t know....defend her a little? So either commit to having her be a shitty mom and then she has to make up for that, or have Henry fully torn between both sides of his family. NOT the mess we got on the show where she had to earn his trust back because of things she did like 30 years before he was even born

Stop dropping plotlines. I understand they had an issue of actors getting jobs in other franchises, like Sebastian Stan and the guy who ended up in 50 Shades, but either stipulate something in the contract that they need to make time for a certain amount of episodes when you sign them, or just recast the actors. Don’t wait three years before Little Red Riding Hood can pop back up for an arc. Oh my God.

The Peter Pan arc happened way too soon- Neal needed time to build relationships with everyone else, specifically with Henry, his father, and Emma. Think about how it could’ve been if he’d patched things up with Emma quicker and they got in the groove of parenting Henry, only for Regina to still have her reservations about him because of her history with Rumple- only for Henry to then be kidnapped and the three of them have to become and Iconic Parent Trio to get him back. Hello. 

Henry should’ve learned magic way before he became the Author. He is a True Love Baby who’s also related to three extremely powerful magic users and making him the damsel in distress every single season finale got old very fast. How about- after the Peter Pan arc, Rumple starts teaching him magic behind his parents back, because 1) he isn’t sure how they’d feel about it since Tensions 2) with all the shit in this universe Henry definitely needs to know how to defend himself, and 3) AFTER SEEING HIS FATHER ALMOST STEAL HIS GRANDSON THE SAME WAY HE STOLE HIS SON I FEEL LIKE THAT MIGHT HAVE AN EFFECT ON HIM EMOTIONALLY???? They never bothered to develop a real relationship with Henry and Rumple, every now and then he’d be like ‘oh yeah that’s my grandson’ and like...that was it. it was WACK

It also could’ve lead to some low-level comedy drama with David fretting about not being the ‘cool’ grandpa anymore lmao

The whole thing where Emma and Henry got their memories erased for a year while the others got sent back to the Forrest....it literally didn’t make sense for Neal not to go with them I’m still screaming. They literally said the only reason Emma and Henry could escape was because they weren’t effected by the first curse....literally neither was Neal??? Oh my God

So you could’ve had it like...they patched things up faster, and they weren’t back together but they weren’t Not back together, and they had definitely gotten a decent co-parent situation down, so he chooses to stay with them because he doesn’t want to abandon Emma again and he doesn’t want Henry to grow up without his father like he did. The dramatic goodbyes are for their parents and Regina. A year later, Hook choses to warn them about whatevers happening on his own free will, beginning a redemption arc that is NOT tied to Emma. He’s trying to protect the family to make up for what he did to Neal in Neverland

idk how I truly felt about the whole dead/resurrected Rumple situation but if we keep with it, BELLE is the one who resurrects him- and NOT with a spell that will kill her, but with DR. FRAKENSTIEN WHO FUCKING EXISTS ON THE SHOW AND THEY ONLY MENTION HIM ONCE IN A BLUE MOON ARE YOU KIDDING ME THEY DIDN’T USE HIM FOR A RESSURECTION STORY ARC

The whole Frozen arc shouldn’t have happened- I didn’t hate it, Emma and Elsa were sweet, but overall Elsa, Anna, Kristoff and Hans felt very shoehorned in and didn’t really mesh well with the rest of the story. 

I DID however like the whole bit with the Ice Queen trying to adopt Emma when she was younger, and I think they could’ve used that to build onto the dark Emma storyline- the Ice Queen’s prophecy or whatever could’ve been referring to her, Emma and Zelena. That way it’s not Ice Queen trying to convince two powerful light magic users to go dark (and also not two ice power types and one Whatever The Fuck Type Emma Is)- it’s two powerful dark magic users trying to sway one woman who’s still trying to get a grasp on magic. Rather than the whole Dark One nonsense. Henry saves the day using his magic to subdue Ice Queen and Zelena the best he can, and convincing Emma she’s a good person, similar to how Regina chose to stop being dark for Henry. She snaps out of the hold the other two have on her and kicks ass. Hello.

The whole Author plotline was a hot mess but I’m still down for Henry taking over the position, it made sense for the story.

If they absolutely needed to do a new dark one plotline...NEAL. COME THE FUCK ON,

AND THEN HE MANAGES TO SUCCEED WHERE HIS FATHER FAILED WITH IT AND MAYBE THEY MANAGE TO KILL THE DARK ONE SPELL ALTOGETHER. TRUE LOVES KISS WITH EMMA OR HENRY WHO BOTH HAVE INCREDIBLY STRONG LIGHT MAGIC WHICH IS THE OPPOSITE OF THE DARK ONE. HELLO.

Maleficent’s Daughter Lily should’ve...stayed on???? Fully mended her friendship with Emma??? Iconic girl team??? Hello??? 

Belle gets to be an actual character instead of a character so underused that it becomes a running joke on the show that she asserts she’s cable of defending herself and then Doesn’t. Someone please teach this bitch to swordfight or something

It can be part of Hook’s Not-Emma-Related redemption arc maybe- instead of him using and threatening her. Or Neal can do it so they can bond. Or David or Snow decides to be nice it doesn’t actually matter please just make her a capable person I’m screaming

Henry should’ve kept in touch with friends he made in (Tallahassee) Boston for the year he lived there to uhhhh give the kid some concept of a normal reality and experience talking to people his own age. Also it could’ve been a super funny running gag to have a friend face time him and ask him what’s up and Henry’s trying to hide a dragon and magic spells off screen like ‘uh nothing just some family drama’

They needed to stop being so inconsistent about magic- first it was ‘magic can’t work outside of storybrooke’ but then Zelena was like ‘I’m going to magically transform into a different person in the middle of New York’ and ‘Wendy’s Brothers won’t age even though they aren’t in storybrooke’ and then it was like ‘magic can raise Robin and Hook and Rumple from the dead but it absolutely can do nothing for Neal, sorry’ like what the hell...please just some consistency 

Make Snow like....35% less annoying 

Don’t let Emma get lost in the story so much like at some point she really stopped being the main character and it was annoying as hell

that whole thing in one episode where David and Snow saw through a portal to young Emma and David wanted to go through to her but Snow was like ‘no we can’t change her past’ was some PRIME BULLSHIT. We already brought time travel into a fairytale show! nothing matters anymore bitch! let him hug his daughter!

Really thought they could’ve been like...they weren’t allowed to permanently change the past but they could’ve gotten a letter or some shit through to her...come on

alright this is all I got right now but like....genuinely a lot of their mistakes were so easily avoidable. it’s still truly baffling that the show went so downhill. rip

#once upon a time #ouat #emma swan #neal cassidy #henry mills #asks #molly mumbles

[clansayeed]

Bound by Circumstance ― Chapter 10: Smoke and Mirrors

PAIRING: Nik Ryder x trans*M!MC (Taylor Hunter) RATING: Mature

⥼ MASTERLIST ⥽

⥼ Bound by Circumstance ⥽

Taylor Hunter (MC) has made it good for himself in New Orleans; turns out moving to a new city fresh out of college to reinvent yourself isn’t as hard as people make it out to be. Things only start to get confusing when he finds himself the target of a malevolent wraith. Good thing someone’s looking out for him though — because without Nighthunter Nik Ryder as his bodyguard he definitely won’t survive long in the twisting darkness of the supernatural underworld he’s tripped into.

Bound by Circumstance and the rest of the Oblivion Bound series is an ongoing dramatic retelling project of the book Nightbound and the rest of the Bloodbound series. Find out more [HERE].

Note: Circumstance only loosely follows the events and plotline of Nightbound, and features a separate antagonist, different character motivations, and further worldbuilding.

*Let me know if you would like to be added to the Circumstance/series tag list!

⥼ Chapter Summary ⥽

Taylor and Vera reunite just in time for a stand-off between hands, guns, and a little too much screaming. He’s really starting to think he’s not cut out for this ‘main character’ gig.

[READ IT ON AO3]

Taylor recognizes the restaurant when a waiter exits the kitchen with a large silver cart laden with all the materials for their specialty flaming bananas foster. Peeks as best he can, standing on the tips of his toes, to see the bustling front of the gilded establishment before one of Smoke’s henchmen catches him looking and shoves him forward with a grunt of warning.

As if he wasn’t seriously dejected at the fact that he’s already having to miss out on the promised onion rings.

“What — is Smoke gonna make us clean dishes as punishment?” Cal sneers. The comment earns him a smack to the back of the head but even with a werewolf growling in his face the other suited guard doesn’t even blink.

Four men in mobster-movie suits ushering five unusual-looking characters around the back walls of the five star restaurant should raise more than a few alarms but you wouldn’t know it based on the staff’s reactions.

How they purposefully look away and give their entourage a wide berth; some even moving aside to take the long way around to where they need to go.

If they were actually being held captive and against their will it wouldn’t be any use to try and beg for help. Every waiter, cook, and busser knows to keep their attentions on their jobs. Whether they’re bribed or threatened into silence is the only question but ends in the same answer.

They’re on their own.

The journey ends in a large chrome door. One of the guards reaches out but jumps back as a broad-shouldered woman exits with a wooden crate of vegetables.

Not a word passes between them. Part of the deal no doubt.

He holds the industrial freezer door open and jerks his head. “In.”

“Yeah… not gonna happen.” Ryder gives them a look of ‘really, like we’re that stupid’ but then again they did all agree to join Cadence for his not-so-friendly meeting with Lady Smoke… so they very well may be.

Well; no. Cadence agreed — which automatically implied Katherine would join him. And the startling revelation of Lady Smoke’s real name meant that Taylor was either going to go at their side or find a way to sneak in on his own — this was just easier and less likely to cause injury.

And where Taylor goes Ryder is never far behind. Cal, too, apparently.

Not that the Shift trio didn’t try to tag along — but they already looked like an ambush waiting to happen. Probably best not to actually be one.

“Funny you think you still got a choice.” But before Ryder can call his cocky bluff one of the armed men whips out his gun and smashes it into the Nighthunter’s shoulder without warning or hesitation.

Taylor throws away any consideration that those around them might be getting paid off. Only fear would keep any decent person from helping the way Ryder cries out and buckles to his knees.

His assailant stows away his gun almost too slowly — like he’s ready to use it again; but just ready but eager. “Get in the fuckin’ freezer. Or else.”

If he felt useless before Taylor’s glad he’s suddenly too cold to dwell on how he feels now.

He blindly grabs for the nearest thing — a potato of all things — and holds it against Nik’s throbbing injury while helping him up.

“Are you okay?”

“Aw, Rook, I didn’t know you cared.” teases Ryder; probably to hide the wince in his smile.

“Not funny.”

“Admit it; a little funny.”

The three mortals are already shivering when two of the guards step inside with them. The click of the freezer door locking them inside definitely doesn’t help matters.

“Step back —” says the apparent leader, actually shoves Katherine into Cadence who holds her close and looks ready to add ‘asshole bodyguard’ to the restaurant specials for the night, “— I said back!”

So they press themselves against the shelving on the walls and watch — with some interest, but mostly spite and murderous intent — as he reaches behind hanging garlands of herbs and grabs for something blindly.

With a metallic thunk the back wall — no, the back hidden fucking door — loosens enough to be pushed forward and open. Revealing a set of rickety and definitely code-violating wooden steps that lead down into a no-less frigid abyss.

Before the guard has the chance to bark another order Cadence steps forward with hands raised. “Let me guess; in?”

The guard’s upper lip curls. But all it takes is a flash of the vampire’s true face for him to back off and mutter under his frosty breath.

Down, down they go one at a time with their new friends at their backs. The only consolation being, what, that it’s slightly less cold? Sure he can’t see his breath anymore but that doesn’t mean he’s not already a Taylor-sicle.

Cal arrives at the bottom first; opens the door to some kind of back office. Like a security room, only… underground.

A similarly-suited woman looks up from a row of fuzzy monitors as they start to crowd inside. It’s not a space meant for this many bodies especially when one of them is a broad-shouldered wolf and the other is a vampire too-damn tall. Judging by the abandoned snack wrappers and the digital solitaire game on her screen this isn’t a post that ends up with many guests.

She leaps to her feet; chair rocketing backwards on rickety wheels to collide with a small space heater loudly. But after catching sight of their captors before she can reach for her holstered weapon — she relaxes.

“The hell, man,” she yanks her chair away from Cal’s mere vicinity. Might be in the wrong business if that’s how she reacts to a wolf, but it’s not his place to comment. “You were only supposed to bring the fighter.”

He pushes between Ryder and Taylor — and Taylor swears he hears something like “you try arguing with these crazy bastards” under the man’s breath — to the only other door at the far end of the post.

“Fuck off.”

“Hope for your sake she’s in a mood for company.”

“I said fuck off.”

Good to know witty workplace banter applies to all occupations; even those of the hired henchman variety.

“Now listen here,” it takes him a second to realize he’s talking to them, now; and beyond monosyllabic orders — it’s a Mardi Gras miracle, “none of you are guests here. So don’t touch nothin’, don’t even look at nothin’. One toe outta line and it won’t end pretty for you.”

He looks pointedly at Cadence then. “No wards to protect you now, bloodsucker.”

But if he hoped to instill some kind of fear he’ll have to try a bit harder. Afraid seems to be the last thing he is — especially when he casually, almost coyly tucks his hair behind his ears and looks at the mortal man over the top of his glasses.

“None to protect you, either.”

And hopefully those threats won’t really be held up because the moment the door opens to a luxurious — and warm, thank the heavens warm — casino floor Taylor looks at every single thing he can. Blatant disregard; living life on the edge.

But who could blame him?

It’s not the same glitz and glamor of Persephone’s main atrium but that doesn’t make the underground treasure any less glittering. Lady Smoke’s Den is swathed in rich violet velvets and polished golden trim; every gemstone in inky black bright enough to catch the reflection of whatever passes nearby.

From the black iron of the gambling tables to the uniform designs on the back of each deck of cards in play there’s no denying the wealth it takes to wind up down here. Where the underbelly of Persephone was filled with rusted metal and bloodstained concrete this place undoubtedly hosts the cream of the crop.

Whether that specific crop is of the poisonous variety, though? Well Ryder is still using a semi-frozen potato as an ice pack so that pretty much says all that needs to be said.

He came here to meet Lady Smoke — without a doubt in his mind she must be some relative of Vera; even in New Orleans their family name is too unique; too ethereal.

But by some twisted hand of fate he doesn’t even have to go that far. Not when he recognizes a sleek pair of black satin gloves nursing a cocktail at the black diamond-encrusted bar across the room.

Two steps forward but someone yanks him still by the back of his collar. Turns to see Cal’s eyebrows raised in incredulity.

“Just ‘cause this place doesn’t look as dangerous as the fights doesn’t mean it ain’t, Taylor,” but his hard, stern tone quickly melts into just plain concern, “come on — you know better than to wander ‘round a place like this.”

“I — I’m not.” Taylor keeps looking back to the bar; keeps his eyes on Vera’s turned back. Refuses to have a repeat of last night at Persephone’s — refuses to let her slip through his fingers again like… like smoke.

“Then what the hell’re you doin’ Rook?” Ryder joins in but it’s hard to take him seriously with his spud pack. Even he looks at it like it offends him — makes quick work of disposing it on a passing silver tray of empty champagne flutes. “You asked me to follow ya on blind faith but the more I’m doin’ that the closer an’ closer I’m gettin’ to taking an injury I ain’t comin’ back from.

“So no more wandering off — not until you come clean about what you and Lady Smoke have in common.”

It’s been fifteen whole seconds and he’s terrified he’s lost her. Or maybe that she was never there to begin with. But even with Ryder snapping his fingers in Taylor’s face to draw back his attention he risks a look — exhales in audible relief when he catches her face in profile as she smiles and makes casual, inaudible conversation with the bartender.

“Her.”

In a reversal of fortune — and while Nik looks up to find just who he’s talking about — Taylor pulls at the side of the leather coat and digs around for the Nighthunter’s phone. “Hey — what — watch the coat!” But he steps just out of arms’ reach protests aside.

Luckily Cal’s on his side; stops Ryder from yanking back what’s his as Taylor quickly dials and holds the phone up to his ear; turns to watch intently as the metallic dialing starts chiming.

Across the floor decked in a rug more expensive than his theater company’s entire yearly budget the tiny digital first keys of the AME theme begin playing. Loud enough to draw an unimpressed frown from the bartender and a look of horrible realization from Vera.

The three men watch as she fumbles around; digs through the inside pockets of her black leather blazer. She procures Taylor’s phone from the left side and looks at the screen of dancing lights like she’s never seen such a miraculous and terrible device before.

Taylor ends the call by flipping the phone closed with a little too much force. At the bartop, Vera’s relief is short lived as the music ends and the screen goes dark. But the shudder that rolls down her spine is large and all-consuming. Makes her look around practically petrified when her gaze finds home on Taylor and his definitely not impressed frown.

“So that’s the girl who has your phone, huh.” Ryder doesn’t have to say it; they both know. She was there. She was there that night, and she ran away, and whether or not the Vera he saw in Persephone’s betting crowd was real she’s very much real here and now.

“What’re the odds?” Cal gives a surprised little laugh. But it’s not his fault; he doesn’t know the whole story.

Taylor, though — he’s starting to think nothing in this town is ever by chance anymore.

“Really, really likely.”

And it’s good to feel like he has support as he marches straight the-fuck up with a werewolf and a Nighthunter at his back.

Where were Cade and Katherine? Okay — okay — one problem at a time.

Only now what’s he supposed to do? Because he kind of wants to slap her — but that isn’t happening. One of those things that’s supposed to stay in the back of the mind and no further.

He could shout; make a scene. But that would make all their pushing and shoving and freezer-standing for nothing. And eventually they will find Cadence and help him out. So… no to that, too.

And it’s all so complicated and hard and makes his stomach twist and turn so finally Taylor just thinks fuck it and says the first thing that comes to mind. Turns out to be something a little more heavy than he’d anticipated but no less important.

“You knew about all this,” he jabs his finger into her shoulder, “about… about everything —”

“Tay, I didn’t —”

“And even if you didn’t know exactly what was happening you had some frickin’ idea.” Now that Vera doesn’t argue against — though she’s only barely biting her tongue and he can see it.

“You did; you had more pieces of the puzzle than us. And knowing that you… you let Krissy and I jump over that wall and to our own damn deaths.”

There’s a startled noise from Cal but that’s all. Taylor can’t quite care in the presence of all the frustration building up; bubbling over.

There’s been a nagging voice in his subconscious threatening him not to cry but Vera’s choked out words make that impossible.

“Is — Is Cookie dead, then?”

Taylor finds himself torn between wiping the tears before they can fall down her cheeks and telling her every. gruesome. detail just to make her cry harder.

“No —” — Vera claps her silken palms over her mouth to stifle a soft sob — “— no she’s not dead. Not yet.”

But she is in a coma; or probably worse. She’s in a strange hospital room in a strange city and she’s suffering untold horrors from that awful grotesque creature’s wicked touch and her two best friends in the entire world are in the same city and still haven’t gone to see her.

They are officially the worst people in this world and the other, preternatural world that borders theirs on the head of a pin.

“I’ll take my phone back now.”

She offers it like an olive branch; maybe he gets a little satisfaction from yanking it from her and shoving it in his jeans.

Then, because he’s mad but he’s not cruel; “I’m glad you’re safe Vera, really.” He opens his arms slightly but waits for her permission for an embrace — remembers what Kristin had said about Vera liking her personal space.

Now though he’s not so certain it’s that simple. He knows a lot more than he did when they first met.

“A-hem.”

They pull apart. Ryder stands with his arms crossed and an expectant tap to his boot. “Are we mad at her or not?”

“We’re…” Taylor and Vera exchange looks and there’s no doubt in his mind that her remorse is genuine. “We’re getting over it.” We, he thinks with a laugh. But doesn’t dare mention it lest Ryder close up more than he already is in this place.

Like he is right now.

“Good. Then maybe you can give us a proper introduction.” He’s zeroed in on her gloves; Cal too, he notices. Whatever has them on edge its more than a simple case of being protective of him. As if they didn’t have enough problems — and enemies — already.

Taylor clears his throat awkwardly; gestures between the meeting of two worlds who seem not to want to meet. “Uhm, okay. Vera, this is Ryder, my, uh, my bodyguard — don’t ask,” thank god she doesn’t, “and this is Cal; he’s a friend. Cal, Ryder; this is —”

“Vera, yeah, we got that,” interrupts the hunter lowly, “though how you came to be so buddy-buddy with Lady Smoke’s kid is my problem at the moment.”

And while Taylor’s brain is still turning rusted gears and starting to smoke with the sheer what the fuckery of Ryder’s accusation — Cal pipes up; “Smoke’s runaway kid, if I’m gettin’ my stories straight.”

Is he getting his stories straight, the look Taylor gives Vera — eyes so wide the whites go all the way around and jaw on a broken repeated hinge of not-quite-open and not-quite-closed — asks.

But that’s nothing compared to the look of utter shame that darkens Vera’s expression; to the way she looks around for listening ears and prying eyes.

“Keep your voices down.”

Ryder sees her buttons and, in classic Ryder fashion, pushes. “Yeah you ain’t gettin’ outta talkin’ that easy.”

She looks around with worry etched into her forehead. Finally lands her eyes on an empty poker table about as far out of the way as possible in the intimate space; half-obscured by a black-tile fountain where water the color of lavender fields bubbles and streams in arcs around an indiscriminate figure. “Fine, fine. Just — not here.”

And the Vera he sees now is definitely not the same young woman he’d met previously. She takes charge easier — less of a babysitting role and more of a… a woman who knows what she wants and asks for it unabashedly. At her call the bartender summons an attendant with bright, catlike yellow eyes that narrow into slits when she’s told to set them up a game at Vera’s preferred table.

Just like at Persephone they stick out like sore thumbs — but unlike at Persephone it doesn’t seem to matter. The attendants are ready to turn their noses up and away but the sight of Vera — the sight of her gloves like some status symbol — has them smiling, crooning; offering hors d'oeuvres more expensive than Taylor’s rent and drinks of all kinds. Even ones Taylor can partake in much to his surprise.

So they may look like they’re engrossed in a game of poker but one would be surprised to discover naught but a clever ruse.

Or at least a ruse on his end. Taylor’s got no living clue what he’s doing. But the cards are nice.

"Was it really you I saw at Persephone last night, Tay?” asks Vera. His nod earns a low whistle. “I figured I was just seeing… well, that you were a spectre of some kind; a manifestation of my guilt in leavin’ you and Cookie high and dry. And you really knew nothing about the supernatural world before y’all were attacked?”

“Since Twilight doesn’t count, yeah — er, no. I didn’t know a thing.”

“When you go in, you go all in, huh?”

If she means it as a joke it doesn’t really come off that way. Just makes him look down at his fancy deck and shrug. “Not exactly by choice.”

“Right. Of course. I’m sorry.”

“For what, though,” pipes up Ryder after downing a long gulp of his beer, “are you sorry for bringin’ it up like a joke or for leavin’ him utterly defenseless?”

“Christ, Nik.”

“Am I wrong, Miss Reimonenq?”

Something tells him the glare exchanged across the cards isn’t the first, nor would it be the last between them.

But Vera takes him by surprise when she shakes her head dejectedly. “No, no you’re not.”

Like a nervous habit Vera tugs at the edges of her gloves; hikes them up higher over her elbows. Cal physically shifts his chair over as she does — like she’s hiding knives and guns in the skin-tight fabric.

“Okay,” Taylor tosses his cards — it was probably a shitty hand anyway — and looks between the locals one by one by one, “usually this is the part where something weird or coincidental happens and I don’t end up having to be the one to ask the stupid questions. But apparently not this time.

“So either someone starts telling me what the heck is up or I start doing dumb shit until my answers come to me freely. And Nik — you know I can do some dumb shit.”

Taylor only adds emphasis because of the hesitation clear in Nik’s frown. The way he looks at Vera as if to get her to do it instead of his usual bravado-riding explanation train.

But neither of them say anything. So Cal leans back and nurses his whiskey with his words.

“Lady Smoke ain’t your average mafia boss, Taylor.”

“Yeah, yeah I got that part. Your brother was in a cell, there were death fights. The guns aimed at us at the Shift. I was there.”

The wolf gives him a little smirk. “Thanks for the reminder. But it ain’t just guns and suits and shady deals with Smoke.”

“Underground casino notwithstanding?”

“Let him finish, Tay.” mumbles Vera; the look she gives Cal is a grateful one. Taylor holds his hands up — mimes zipping his lips.

“The Reimonenqs are an old Quarter family. Y’all’ve even got Laveau on your tree, right?” He nods to Vera. “Certainly been ‘round as long as the Pack, and the only ones older than that are the Lamrian folk.”

“— Local fae colony,” interrupts Nik lowly, “we’ll talk about it later. Just know it was here before the city was even settled.”

“So you’ve got roots here, is that a big thing?” Taylor asks — would rather hear it from her than yet another secondhand account of something else. He’s getting far too many of those.

When Vera finally answers her hands are folded in her lap. The picture of politeness if not for the shining fear in her eyes.

“What you need to understand, Tay, is that the Reimonenq name used’ta belong to all who practiced under the coven. Eventually the coven became jus’ family so it didn’t really matter, but you won’t find anyone born and bred here who doesn’t know the name — and fear it.

“And she’s used that her whole life — my whole life — to build this awful, cruel mockery of an empire.”

“‘She’ being Lady Smoke?”

“Yeah.”

“Lady Smoke being your mother.”

“Yeah.”

“Your mom; Lady Smoke. The big bad everyone talks about like she’s a boogieman story — the woman who sent what basically amounted to hitmen to kidnap our friend for standing up to her and keeping Cal’s brother from getting mauled.”

He’s not saying it to be cruel, though Vera winces at every injustice like she personally signed off on it. Taylor’s just… a little out of his element. More so than usual.

“How many times does the girl gotta tell you, Rook? Yes.” Ryder’s knee knocks against his under the table. It’s enough to draw him from his factual-overload stupor; only just.

“So she’s — what — a witch? Wait — does that make you a witch?”

Witches, werewolves, and vampires; oh my.

Before Vera can open her mouth to answer their game is brought to a halt by the arrival of a familiar suit-clad asshole. And he’s got friends. This time Taylor pays close attention and watches the pain Vera stomachs in order to put on a brave, almost commanding atmosphere.

“We’re a little busy here. And we’d like some privacy.”

The henchman’s upper lip curls at the sight of Ryder — a grimace he only barely tosses aside as he answers Vera; “You can finish up your game of Go-Fish later. Lady Smoke requests your presence, Miss Reimonenq. And the presence of your… guests.”

“She can’t just summon me. I’m not one of her lackeys.”

“That may be — but you are under Lady Smoke’s protection. Or did you forget what you agreed to when you broke onto the floor last night?”

Taylor’s teeth grit painfully. “Back off, you soggy cockwaffle.”

“Tay —” her touch on his arm is gentle; appreciative, if concerned, “— hon’… he’s not wrong, okay? No matter how much I wish he were.”

“So much for bein’ the runaway…” Cal mutters under his breath.

“Lady Smoke doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”

And he probably can’t pull his bully-type shit with Vera, not without some serious consequences whether there’s family tension or not, so there’s no missing the sick sense of satisfaction he gets in yanking Taylor’s chair practically out from under him.

Lucky him that Taylor isn’t unfamiliar with childish bullying tactics. He just expected people to grow out of them once they left high school.

Unlike before their goon leads the way rather than corralling them at the back. Gives them the chance to talk in hushed and hurried whispers because they’re being led fast.

“Magic — real magic — is something we’re born with; a gift we can’t give back no matter how badly we want to.” Vera continues hastily; “Yes, I’m a witch. And I ain’t proud of it, not like my mother is. I’ve spent my whole life tryin’ to get away from her and our curse.”

“And that meant running away to New York.”

“I could have run farther but… I refused to let her dictate where I was going to be. How I was going to live my life.”

That’s something he can definitely understand — but Vera’s actions are singing a different tune than her words. “If you hate her so much then why are you here? Why’d you go to her?”

“Because —”

“Because whatever was huntin’ you guys that night scared ya enough to look to the most powerful woman in the city for help.”

Nik doesn’t interrupt with a question — sounds so sure of himself. But Taylor’s ready to hear Vera out, really he is, until she suddenly can’t look him in the eyes.

It had been a whole other side of her; but Taylor had chocked it up to fear. Fear could make people do crazy things — like hide in walled-off cemeteries.

Finally Vera chokes out wetly; “Yes.”

The suit stops them in front of a closed door.

Nik reaches out and grabs Vera — holds fast despite how she jerks away. Leans in to whisper something so quiet Taylor has to step in himself in order to hear it.

“You know what it was, don’t you?”

“I-I —” stammers Vera.

“What was it?”

“I don’t…”

“This ain’t just about you anymore. Now quick, before they —”

“In.”

It’s too late. Judging by Cal’s look of apology he tried his best to give them as much time as they could but the door’s open and they’re out of time.

“We’re not done.” Ryder growls into Vera’s ear; lets her go before the suit decides he doesn’t want to ask a second time. The touch he lands on Taylor’s middle back is far kinder, coaxes him forward and through the awaiting doorway.

He doesn’t have much of a choice but to follow. Still throws a look back to Vera as she wipes away the smallest tear and puts up all the walls she needs to follow them inside.

“You didn’t need to be so harsh.” Taylor hisses at him.

“Sometimes there ain’t much of a choice.”

There was this time, Taylor’s about to say, when the literal fog obscuring the room beyond clears as though it’s been waiting for their arrival to part. Lady Smoke’s a witch, he remembers.

So maybe it was.

The ambiance of the back room is the same as the front — the only difference being the smoke that clings to their ankles and obscures the rug at their feet.

Off to one side a large couch curves in a wide semi-circle. Relief washes over him at the sight of Cadence and Katherine sitting close together with drinks in their hands; the honey-amber of Katherine’s bourbon catches the light in a way the contents of Cadence’s tumbler doesn’t. He’s content not to think too hard about what’s inside.

But for all their supposed relaxation the pair are stiff — tense. Their ease and touching outer thighs more about keeping close for safety rather than enjoyment. Katherine’s smile isn’t her usual teasing; instead rather strained. A grimace wearing an ill-fitting mask.

At the other end of the room rests a large desk — the kind Taylor might imagine a CEO would buy never to use and only to show off. But the papers and folders spread in a kind of organized chaos across the finished wood tell a different story; one of a business that never stops working.

The woman in the high-backed leather chair behind it is Lady Smoke without a doubt. Not just because he can see the resemblance to Vera — a family chin, the creases in her forehead decades ahead of her daughter’s; a living vision of what’s to come — either.

She emanates power in the way Kristof did. Control, dominance by birthright without mistake. The aura of someone who was meant for powerful things from the moment they entered the world; where the only thing left up to choice was how they planned on using it.

The gloves are pretty much a dead giveaway, too. Black lacework on golden fabric. She matches the den outside the way the sun matches the solar system; she sits at its heart and lets the rest revolve around her because it has no choice.

An unnervingly familiar wheeze of a voice catches him off-guard; probably for the best with the way he was staring.

“Well well well, justice for Meerl!”

Meerl cuts a scrawny figure between them and Lady Smoke. Tap-tapping his long claw-like nails together with the same smarmy grin as last night — only this time with a harsh red line of purpling pressure around his skinny throat.

Beside Taylor, Ryder’s laugh is nothing short of utterly shameless. “Nice choker you got there, Meerl. It’s a great look on you, really.”

His laughter incites a bloated face of rage in the con-goblin. “You mock Meerl?!”

“Was I not bein’ obvious about it?”

“Pissy—pissface—pissant Nighthunter! Meerl will—!”

“He will do nothing until he is told.”

There’s a touch of gravel to Lady Smoke’s voice. She doesn’t shout because she doesn’t have to — because the moment her lips part the only thing that matters is what she has to say.

Especially to Meerl given the way he backs off, cowers like his nightmares are coming to life.

It must be a reputation thing, Taylor concludes. Because she’s definitely the more-badass-and-less-fictional version of Don Corleone — no doubt. But for nothing but a sentence to get that kind of reaction? It’s almost satirical.

“Meerl apologizes, Lady Smoke,” the urchin cowers with every word, “the Lady knows Meerl does nothing Meerl is not told to do.”

But he might as well be talking to thin air the way she addresses him. Not at all. Because he’s no longer important to her — for the moment at least. Not now that Vera steps up from behind Taylor while the door closes behind them.

Immediately Smoke’s face softens; a shine in her eye, what she probably thinks is tender warmth in her half-smile. What people who can’t love must think love looks like as an expression.

“Vera, baby girl, you —”

The nickname makes Vera cringe. “I told you not to call me that.” She’s probably the only person who could get away with interrupting the mob boss and leave alive.

“Vee —”

“No, mother; no names but my own.”

Smoke’s brow twitches but her frustration is well-corralled. “Very well, Vera.”

“Where do you get off on demandin’ to see me like this? Or makin’ your wardens bully my friends into coming with?”

“Why didn’t you tell me you were friends with the troublemakers at Persephone?”

There’s nothing familial about their exchange but Smoke still manages to make Vera feel like a scolded child. Ducked head and eyes searching for a spot on the carpet — but hindered by the fog.

“You know I don’t like non-answers, Vera.” Smoke presses, but Vera doesn’t yield. Earns them all a heavy sigh while Smoke leans forward and folds her hands together atop an open date book. “Lucky for you, girl, I know all I need to on account of how helpful our friend Meerl has been.

“See, he knew I’d take care of everything — but I can’t fix what I don’t know is broke. And would you believe he was the only one to tell me about the unfortunate situation of the fights before morning?”

The goblin practically preens — likely taking her words as praise.

“The Lady knows Meerl only wants what is best for the Lady’s business, of course.”

“Especially if it keeps his ugly hide from getting flayed alive?”

The haughtiness of Ryder’s tone doesn’t have an ounce of remorse. Not even when it drags the almost golden-yellow of Lady Smoke’s eyes to him. Resting with the full weight of her frustration just below the poised surface.

“You never cease to surprise, do you Mister Ryder?” she croons.

“‘Dunno what you’re talkin’ about; predictable’s my middle name.”

“If that were the case you wouldn’t have been waist-deep in my affairs at Persephone.”

“And here I thought I was building a reputation for stickin’ my nose in other peoples business.”

“This ain’t just anyone’s business, though, is it?”

It hasn’t occurred to Taylor until just now that Kristof and the Jensen Pack may not be the only big-wigs in New Orleans that Ryder has crossed. Luckily it seems like a distant familiarity though. A mutual respect; and an unspoken threat on both sides to stay out of one another’s way.

And now Ryder’s gone and drawn first blood — er, well, metaphorically speaking.

Oh this could be bad. This could be very very bad.

Only the ice in her tone seems to have the opposite of the intended effect. Makes Ryder stand up straighter with his jaw clenched tight, his words a snarl that makes even Cal blink in surprise.

“If I’d a’known you were in the business of pimpin’ out kids for your cash fights, Smoke, I would’ve gotten involved a lot sooner. You can bet on that.”

The color drains out of Vera’s cheeks. Catches her torn between looking at her mother for any kind of denial and, finding none, unable to face the truth without feeling like she’s about to wretch.

“Momma, you didn’t…”

“Don’t you start that now, Vera.”

“But a kid?”

Smoke stands with her fingertips spread and pressed into her desk. Her sigh carries a visible weight in her shoulders. It’s heavy for sure but if it isn’t the burden of guilt then whatever she’s feeling means fuck-all to him.

“The Lowell boy was betting with money that wasn’t his. On top of that — he thought he could swindle my hard-earning regulars without consequence. Sometimes they have to learn young.

“You’d know that, baby girl, if you hadn’t left.”

Tears well up, misting over Vera’s eyes. But its an incredible feat of willpower that keeps her from shedding them — that lets her choke them down. Certainly not the first, and likely not the last.

“Don’t you dare play it off like you were trying to parent my kid brother.” Only then does Lady Smoke actually notice Cal. Cal with his face flush with fury and canines bared; Cal with his eyes as yellow as the gold the mob boss wraps herself in.

“Mister Ryder; I suggest you rein your feral friend in a tad.”

Nik throws his hands up. “No way.”

There’s a very well in the roll of her eyes. Has her walking around her desk with a lush black velvet cape trailing at her modest heels.

“You must be Cal.”

“What the hell gave you that idea?”

“Then I will tell you the same thing I told your fledgling con artist brother. It’s an old saying — perhaps you’ve heard of it. Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.”

Smoke stands there, haughty and higher than them all — even as Cal roars “You callous bitch!” and makes for her ready to draw blood. And a lot of it.

Whatever witchy-mojo she has must be fucking powerful even if Taylor can’t feel it. All it takes is Smoke’s raised hand and even Nik holds his breath.

“You had posters,” the wolf seethes, “locked him in a cage like he was an animal!”

“Your brother had racked up quite a debt.”

“He’s just a boy!”

“Enough!”

When the gloves come off — literally in Lady Smoke’s case — all hell breaks loose.

Taylor looks around wildly, feels himself being pulled back on two sides — catches the first and likely only time Vera and Nik are of the same mind. Backing him up against a wall-length bookshelf so hard he knocks a few volumes on their sides.

For the first time since they arrived Cadence is sprung to action. Holds Cal back with a firm hand but keeps his distance from the witch and her exposed skin. The same look of cautious fear in his eyes as he had in the cage.

And at the couch, their drinks forgotten and seeping into the rich upholstery, Katherine aims a familiar-looking gun dead between Smoke’s eyes. Completely disregarding the also-familiar sister weapons now aimed at her from across the room.

Now would be the opportune moment for the main character to leap out in the middle of the fray and convince everyone to calm down; to shout “Nobody needs to get hurt tonight — we’re all on the same side!” or some other amount of crap that would be the bare minimum in getting everyone to see the bigger picture.

Ha — no thanks. No way is he getting mixed in with a vampire who tore a Minotaur to shreds, more guns than should legally be allowed in the same room, and whatever danger Smoke’s manicure ignites.

Nope. See, the best he can figure is there’s a reason Vera and Nik were so hasty to pull his only-a-threat-after-a-ton-of-spicy-food ass out of the crossfire. And that’s good enough for him.

Only when everyone’s stayed statuesque-still for the better part of a minute does Cadence pull back — away from Lady Smoke, eying her palms with the same look Vera’s giving the guns.

“Enough,” he repeats and is no less forceful, “enough of this, Tonya. You force me here, you force others — innocents — here, all for this flagrant abuse of your power? I settled the Lowell pup’s debt. You and I are even and he’s out of your cross-hairs.”

“So you’ve been saying, Smith,” — so why doesn’t she sound like she’s content to agree? — “but I don’t recall agreeing to your commerce de dettes. As it is not the place of they who owe to decide what is suitable payment.”

“You may be speaking of Dominic Lowell, but the same could be said for you.”

Smoke curls her fingers in the air; reminds Taylor of spider legs.

But Cadence has to be right or she’d have thrown back a snide retort instead of the silent treatment given.

Finally she speaks but her answer is strained. “We never outlined the terms and conditions of that particular contract.”

“Because I know better than to get something in writing with you. I may not know much but I certainly know that.”

“I cannot let this abide, Smith. Actions must be made; consequences for those who would publicly challenge the safety I provide this town —”

Maybe there’s more for her to say but she doesn’t get the chance. Not at the disgusted noise that comes off to Taylor’s right — nor the bewildered look Lady Smoke throws their way. Only when she throws up her pointed finger like a gun instead of a stern mother’s tool does Vera make the noise again.

“‘Safety,’” now she actually sounds the part of the witch, too, with her curled upper lip and fists trembling at her sides, “you’re gonna dare stand there in front’a me and call New Orleans safe? After what I told you was after me?!”

Taylor’s glad he’s between them when Ryder turns a murderous flush of violet.

“Now is not the time to air our family grievances, Vera.”

“You did know.” Taylor whispers. Loud enough for Vera to hear, to flinch and hug her arms around herself. Looking the same measure of scared and young and vulnerable as she did that night. “You—you do. Know; what it is. You know.”

She nods.

“Why didn’t you say?” When Ryder asked, when we locked eyes under Persephone, before Kristin and I jumped over the wall and to our deaths. “Why didn’t you help?”

“I didn’t wanna be right.”

Tonya raises her voice, tries to speak over her daughter. “Vera, this is not the way.”

“How the hell would you know, mom?!” she lashes out a sob, “You’re content to hide here and pretend everyone’s safe when they aren’t?!”

“You’re safe, baby girl, that’s all I care about.”

“Well I ain’t that selfish.”

It’s taking everything in her to not choke; lose her nerve. “If I’d known you spent all this time thinking it was after you, Taylor, I’d’ve told you sooner. I swear I didn’t mean for Cookie to get hurt — you neither. I thought when I split that you’d be safe.”

“Wait — back up. You think this thing is after you?” Nik interrupts, surprised.

“Not another word Vera Claire Reimonenq, so help me God.”

Ice-cold demeanor finally melted, some version of the real Tonya Reimonenq shines through in the crack in her voice. In the way she bites her bottom lip so hard it might burst like the vein in her temple might burst.

Taylor just doesn’t get why everyone is suddenly so freaked out about the way her hand is held aloft at Cadence’s neck. One deep bob of his Adam’s Apple away from choking the life out of the undead.

Katherine the opportunist takes the stunned pause to aim instead at Vera. Passes the barrel of the gun over Taylor’s chest and this is now officially too many times in the same week his life has flashed before his eyes and been less-than satisfying.

“Back. off. Smoke.” The huntress orders.

Cadence resists swallowing — painfully so.

Time to finally take the hint and get as scared as the rest of them it seems.

“You even think about pulling that trigger — you know what I’ll do to him.”

Katherine’s laugh is an unfeeling thing. Like a whole different woman stands before them — someone used to carrying the gun, to doing what needs to be done.

“And the payday of a lifetime goes down the drain, sure,” but her finger doesn’t stop caressing just shy of the pressure point, “but I’ll always find another. Don’t think the same can be said about a daughter, though.”

“Katherine —”

“Shut up, Nik. I let you do your stupid shit. My turn.”

Taylor’s one stupid heroically-inclined thought from stepping in front of Vera when she speaks up; “Stop it, momma. Just — stop it. Too many people been hurt already.

“Too many more’ll be, too, if we don’t try to get help.”

“You think they’ll help us? The whole city will turn their backs on us — make sure we’re the ones who suffer instead of them!”

“You don’t know that! You don’t know them!”

“Stop being so damn naive!”

Voices, tensions rising. Arms wavering with the weight of their weapons and sweat beading like the first of so many bullets down everyone’s backs; their brows.

It’s not the heroic, main character thing to say but that doesn’t stop Taylor from feeling really good about it when he finally shouts —

“Will someone please just say what the literal flippity fuck is out there?!”

“A bloodwraith!”

The way Vera covers her mouth he half expects to see blood dripping down her chin to stain her blouse. Her tongue bit off as divine — or supernatural — retribution for her admission.

Not that that’s the case. In fact he’s left feeling a little bit like he was denied some grand climax.

So he does what he always does — because this other, darker world seems to exist to make him look absolutely ridiculous in how little he knows — he looks to Nik for the textbook entry he’s missing.

“And a ‘bloodwraith’ would be…?”

“Trouble, Rook…”

Lady Smoke’s pulling her gloves back on. The gun hangs limp at Kathy’s side. Even the biggest bully of the henchmen looks ready to wet himself. There’s nothing reassuring about Cadence’s slow nod of realization — the way the natural enemies vampire and werewolf share a look of ‘well hell.’

Sometimes it’s not a rallying cry that gets opposing forces to work together. Sometimes fear is more than enough.

And the way Nik pulls him in close, hugs him with one strong arm like he’s already a dead man walking? That’s… uh… that’s pretty damn fearful.

“— It’s really, really big trouble.”

#nightbound #choices nb #playchoices #nik ryder #cal lowell #nik ryder x mc #vera reimonenq #katherine nightbound #oc: cadence smith #nightbound mc #mc: taylor hunter #oblv: bound by circumstance #oblv: new chapter #; my fics

[takaraphoenix]

Review: 3x14 - A Kiss From a Rose

So, @kimmycup and I finished watching that episode!

Let’s a try a different tune and be more positive, because overall there’s such a... tired weariness that settled deep in my bones concerning this show at this point. And that’s actually actively making me sad.

So, let’s talk about the things I liked:

1.) The fact that a stranger Seelie who never met Clary makes a better Clary impersonation than Jonathan can make a Jace impersonation. Like. Boy. Your acting used to be way better. (And yes, this is under “liked” because, honestly, I find Jonathan just straight up hilarious at this point. Boy needs to get his shit together, man.)

No, but seriously - what I liked about it was how fast Clary noticed it. It’s come a time where I once again forgot that I used to actually like Clary at some point. And this was exactly why I liked her! She notices shit! Instead of wasting a whole-ass episode where a character doesn’t notice when someone is impersonating a person they should know really well (*side-eyes Alec real hard here*), she is like nearly instantly “Well that ain’t Jace, huh”. And the trick with the rose to verify was really clever.

I miss them writing Clary as clever. Most of the time they just write her as raging and loud, or insanely horny and stabby. Just... Clary being clever are her best character moments and I like them.

2.) I LOVE SOFT!JACE SOFT!JACE IS MY FAVORITE JACE. Seriously from the cute bedhead, to him again picking something really thoughtful and really romantic to do - I love that romantic!Jace is canon, considering how much he is always reduced to just being a horny playboy by the fandom that apparently never ever saw an episode of the show huh - to him being graceless for a change and falling flat on his ass. Sure, that totally destroyed my headcanon that Jace can ice-skate, but heeey, it’s cute as fuck so I forgive canon.

3.) ISABELLE DOING SCIENCE. Sure, it was only short, but urgh, I love scientist!Izzy. It got so lost in all the romance drama and addiction drama and her... suddenly... also being weapon’s master for whatever reason (y’all still haven’t explained what that shit even meant, aside from you saving on giving another character a speaking role to hand Clary her Super Special Swords). I am still calling bullshit on that entire whole plotline because it is in fact bullshit to act like Izzy and Alec haven’t know all along how the Clave operates, but if it gets Isabelle back to actually doing something productive and showing off her skills instead of just... suffering in some form? I’m all here for that.

4.) Magnus actually opening up to Alec. Y’all know that my biggest complaint about canon!Ma/ec is that they don’t communicate and would literally rather bite off their own tongues than share personal stuff with each other. I like that so far in this half-season, they have... actually been talking about their feelings. It’s low-key pathetic that you gotta praise the very baseline of what a healthy relationship is, but here we are.

Seriously though, the feeling that was conveyed, how Harry played the scene, how much Magnus’ loss stood in the forefront there.

Things I didn’t like:

1.) I don’t trust this show enough to not bring Jordan and Maia back together. Yes, I did like that they talked shit out and had a good, surprisingly long scene together (instead of the usual incredibly rushed quick moments of Actual Talking before they dive right back into drama and action), but this show... I mean, come on, they chose a shared bite that brought Izzy back into addiction to open up the S/izzy, so if you really put it past them to bring Jordan and Maia back together only based on them having One Good Conversation, you do not know this show well.

So, yeah, that’s what I’m currently wearily expecting them to do, because they have given Bat a full screentime of 5 minutes so far on this show so I am somehow not thinking Ba/ia is gonna be endgame.

2.a) That whole Lorenzo story, start to finish, is literally just forced additional drama. And I do mean from start. Seriously, what reasoning goes behind “We need a new High Warlock of New York... so let’s take this outsider instead of a proper representative of our community like, say, Catarina Loss”. But no, we couldn’t have Cat do it and it not being dramatic. We needed a secondary antagonist so let’s put an OC in here. And like, yeah, I like Lorenzo alright, in the role he is in, but it’s also rather... unnecessary. Like, there’s already enough going on and Magnus is honestly already suffering enough without additionally getting kicked while he’s on the ground??

2.b) Also I am willing to bet money that the whole entire story-point of Magnus losing his loft is so Ma/ec can find ~a place of their own~ and move in early after all. Because seriously literally every single loss and suffering Magnus has endured in this show had the sole purpose of furthering the ship. I’d like for him to be, you know, treated as his own person?

Also, high-key Alec threatening Lorenzo over the very fair deal that Lorenzo made with Magnus, regardless of how petty it was, was... Not Good. This is exactly part of the point I keep making why the “OH NO the Clave is torturing Downworlders! We would have never expected uwu” is absolute bullshit for Alec and Isabelle. Because treating Downworlders as inferior is literally how they were raised. And this little display of “I can strip you off your power for upsetting my boyfriend because I’m a Shadowhunter” was very much an act of “I am the superior species” and that’s... uh. Yeah.

2.c) What also bothers me is the magic though. I mean this was like... borrowed magic? From Lorenzo. So, does it wear off? Is this going to be like another addiction plotline where Magnus pulls a Willow Rosenberg and goes for regular magic-fixes because he needs more whenever it wears off?? Because I can’t imagine that “a higher demon took all of my magic in a deal” can literally be resolved by a 2 second, non-draining magic transfer from the High Warlock? Like, Lorenzo wasn’t even outta breath? It can’t have been that easy.

3.) Filing. Okay, hear me out on this one. Literally everything in the Institute is incredibly high tech - all their fancy screens and scans, their database of warlocks, security system, the whole 3D projection of the city they can pull up. There is just no way that they have not digitalized all those old tomes and couldn’t just cross-referrence “Morning Star Sword” in some database. No way in fucking hell.

This is part where the whole world building doesn’t seem fully thought through again. They have all of those heavy, old books in their library. They would have digitalized those. They would have created Institute-wide networks to cross-referrence instead of solely relying on heavy old books in libraries that you gotta comb in person to find shit.

Not in a world where “A Shadowhunter in Paris has just reported a Stele missing” reaches the New York Institute in five nanoseconds. They’re more organized than that and they have shown to be more digitalized than that.

Sure, they’d still have the libraries for aesthetic reasons, but they sure as shit would have used spells or something, or even the Silent Brothers who apparently have enough free time to illustrate Paradise Lost, to digitalize their books.

4.) Luke. Luke getting stalked by those cops for? What? Reason?? Seriously, what charges do they have. It’s not like 0llie died, she was apparently transferred so she could have easily cleared Luke of whatever he was accused of when she had disappeared. There is... literally no legal reason why he is still suspended and why they would have cops trailing him? And then he just... immediately gets arrested. You really think that in the what, ten minutes that you had lost sight of Luke since you stalked him at the café, he had enough time to slaughter all those people. What the fuck, man.

#Shadowhunters #Shadowhunters Spoilers #Phimmy Watching Shadowhunters

[thebeltanequeen]

Thoughts on GoT 5x08 pros and cons

The cinematography was STUNNING!! The editing, particularly with Arya and the Hound, was amazing. The symbolism was amazing. The white horse symbolized death but I also immediately thought of Lyanna, with whom Arya has always channeled anyway and been compared to. Loved it. Was terrified Arya died but she didn’t so loved that.

Poor Varys. Knew he was going to die like that but his goodbye to Tyrion fucking wrecked me. RIP to a real badass and one of if not the best player of the game

Cersei dying with Jaime was exactly what should have happened. This has nothing to do with ships and everything to do with Jaime’s character in the books and ESPECIALLY in the show. They loved each other. Yes, it was toxic. Yes, Jaime left and tried to separate himself from her to varying degrees of success. Yes he loved Brienne in a complicated way. It doesn’t matter. He came back. In the books he knows he must die with Cersei. They were irrevocably in a twisted and tragic love their entire lives. I knew this would happen and that’s why I didn’t want Braime to happen bc Brienne is amazing and didn’t deserve this. It was pointless to hurt her like that. I hated it. Justice for Brienne.

While they should have died together... NOT LIKE THAT. A ceiling. Seriously? The Keep fell down around them and crushed them? NO!!! N O . Cersei would have BLOWN EVERYTHING UP, her and Jaime included, bc she’d be DAMNED if Dany had the satisfaction. If that wasn’t going to happen, Cersei and Jaime would have tag team taken each other out. I loved that Cersei was frightened and vulnerable with Jaime, she always has been and she’s been especially fragile this season, but she would have taken charge regardless. For those of you who are mad that she was treated very humanly and as a protagonist um... sweetie... We’ve literally been following her POV since episode one. That makes her one of the audience’s protagonists, whether or not she’s the other characters’ antagonist. And always been she’s extremely human - Are you even watching the same show?? She’s been mourning and crying and backed in a corner for years, but a cornered lioness still fights!!!!! MY BABY GIRL DIED FRIGHTENED AND CRYING AND IT BROKE MY HEART!!!!!!!!!!!!

How did Dany beat Cersei’s forces SO EASILY in THIS SINGLE EPISODE when they were setting up “the even playing field” Golden Company? Useless. Euron’s plotline? Useless. The sudden inability for the scorpions to hit a dragon? Convenient!!!!!!!

NO ELEPHANTS!!!!!!!!!!!!

The acting. From literally everyone. Phenomenal.

I knew Dark Dany was going to happen YEARS ago. I was excited for it. It wasn’t OOC for Dany to do what she did BUT THE TIMING WAS SHIT!!!! THE SETUP WAS SHIT!!!!!! Dany snapped when it should have been a natural progression like her father. Not a complete 180. Dany wouldn’t have done what she did tonight until YEARS down the road!!!!

The deaths of the people were truly terrible and heartbreaking. We’re finally seeing Dany through the eyes of the conquered. We’re seeing Dany destroy a city we’ve been “living in” for years. We’ve been watching our favorite characters scheme in it for years. We’ve watched it be threatened and then celebrated when it was protected. We’ve spent more time at King’s Landing than we have anywhere else. It even beats out Winterfell by a fraction. Watching it be destroyed was horrible and heartbreaking. It is it’s own character death.

I loved loved loved Arya and “Sandor’s” interaction. Beautiful. I’m so glad he snapped her out of her stupid revenge vendetta. I wanted Human Arya back. I’m so happy she is. And good for Sandor taking out his brother RIP TO A REAL ONE!!!

I actually liked Qyburn bc he was a fellow Cersei stan and a literal Dr. Frankenstein genius so RIP your Death was too quick my friend

Tyrion BROKE MY FUCKING HEART with his goodbye to Jaime JUST LET ME DIE

Why was I following Arya around? I love her... but. No. KL is not her place. She was there for like 5 episodes and didn’t really interact with anyone there much. We needed to watch things more through Tyrion’s eyes. Those few scenes we did get spoke more than any other. His absolute detestation. My god I cannot I’ll fucking cry. I really want to see Tyrion’s reaction to the bodies of his siblings too bc I love torturing myself apparently. We needed more of Jon’s POV too bc it was obvious he now knows Dany is crazy but he has been SERIOUSLY lacking in “the things to do” department this season

I’d actually really like this episode IF CERSEI AND JAIME WERE NOT KILLED VIA CEILING MY BAMF BABIES DESERVED SOMETHING EPIC!!!!!! Dany was also OOC to the max. Not bc she was never going to go mad queen (bc she always was fam), but bc the whole plot was NOT set up the way it should have been these past few seasons and this realistically shouldn’t have happened until a theoretical season 11 or 12

#game of thrones spoilers #game of theones thoughts #got season 8 #got s8 #got spoiler

[phoenixyfriend]

asukaskerian

  asukaskerian  ...

sure, yes! :D what even is the plot like?

OKAY, SO.

Young Avengers can be split up, roughly, into five sections:

Volume 1, Part 1

Volume 1, Part 2

The Events (Civil War, Secret Invasion, and Dark Reign)

Children’s Crusade

Volume 2

Most of the cast has appearances in other things, but the main plot can be summed up as the above.

And now under the cut. I am verbose. Sorry.

V1 Pt1

Nate Richards, in the 31st century, finds out that he’s destined to become Kang the Conqueror, a time-travelling supervillain.

He comes back in time to the current era (or, well, 2005-ish), in an attempt to get some help and Not Go Evil.

He gets brushed aside by all the real Avengers, but finds the Vision’s corpse in a destroyed Avengers Mansion, and comes across the Avengers Failsafe Program. If they were to ever need a back-up team, then this was it!

The results aren’t meant to be just teenagers, but they’re what Nate finds. He calls himself Iron Lad, fashioning himself after Iron Man, reconstructing Vision partway to use the bot as armor. His new friends are:

Billy Kaplan, who calls himself Asgardian. He later switches to calling himself Wiccan, because being a gay superhero whose name is Asgardian would get him ripped to shreds by the media. It initially seems like his powers are electricity and flight, but it turns out he’s a reality warper.

Teddy Altman, who calls himself Hulkling. He’s a shapeshifter who can take on a Hulk-like form, though he keeps his wits about him.

Eli Bradley, who calls himself Patriot (after Bucky Barnes’ original alter ego, I think), a supersoldier whose grandfather was Isaiah Bradley, aka the Black Captain America. Isaiah was either one of the few survivors of the rounds of testing that the Serum underwent before Steve Rogers took it, or he was one of the few survivors of the experiments to recreate it after Steve went down, depending on the backstory. Either way, Eli’s got a chip on his shoulder about how African-Americans are treated by the government, including a short issue where he’s mentioned giving a school presentation on the Tuskegee experiments.

They try to do some superheroics, with varying results. The newspapers dub them the Young Avengers, and Jessica Jones, a reporter at the time, goes looking into them.

They try to save a church full of wedding guests, because the happy couple is Very Rich and everyone’s getting held hostage. They set the place on fire by accident, and have to be helped out by one of the bridesmaids. It’s not a great night for them.

Bridesmaid’s name is Kate Bishop! She doesn’t have a superhero identity yet, but she’s pretty good in a fight, and she’s the one that Cassie Lang finds.

Kate and Cassie find the boys at Avengers Mansion, and get the backstory. Cassie finds out that all the Pym Particles she was stealing from her dad (Scott Lang, one of several people to be Ant-Man) since she was in the single digits? They actually gave her superpowers. She can change size. Yay!

There’s a great big kerfuffle as Kang (Nate’s evil future self) and the actual Avengers show up. Jessica Jones ends up un-pregnanted for a bit as time threatens to collapse in on itself because of the stress it’s undergoing.

Billy’s reality-warping abilities are revealed, and he accidentally saves the day, but does not save Nate. Poor Nate.

He and Cassie kissed at some point. It’s not very relevant.

Vision is now a person! Not the same Vision you know and love, though. This one’s brain waves are based on Nate. His name is Jonas. I love him.

He ends up falling in love with Cassie because of this. This is relevant, but not for a while.

He also isn’t part of the team yet.

The adult Avengers tell them to stop superheroing, because they’re kids and not ready for this.

The kids don’t listen. They’re a Team Now.

V1 Pt2

There’s an entire “Eli’s not actually a supersoldier like his grandfather, so he takes Mutant Growth Hormone the way a normal person would take speed so he can temporarily have superpowers and it’s killing him slowly” plotline that I’m not a fan of. I’m really not a fan of the black kid getting the drug plotline. Yech.

He leaves the team for a while.

Kate is an heiress, so she’s bankrolling the team. Fuck yeah.

Also she’s calling herself Hawkeye by this point. Cassie is Stature.

Less Fuck Yeah is the fact that aliens are showing up. Why are aliens showing up? Because Teddy’s an alien.

Turns out his mom was the Skrull princess, and he’s heir to the throne of an alien empire. (His inheritance is bigger than Kate’s.)

Skrulls are natural shape-shifters, hence Teddy’s powers.

His dad was Captain Mar-Vell of the Kree empire.

The Kree and Skrull usually hate each other. Mar-Vell seduced Princess Anelle while he and some other Avengers were imprisoned by her father, in fact. It was very soap opera.

Both of these people are dead, and Teddy was raised by a nurse that Anelle had entrusted him to.

Teddy’s adoptive mom gets burned alive. And then not-alive. Teddy is understandably traumatized by the fact that he’s an alien and that his mom was just murdered by the guy that came to steal him away.

Teddy gets kidnapped. Eli rejoins the team because, well, kidnapped.

BTW Jonas has been living at Avengers Mansion, playing chess and getting tested for sapience.

Edwin Jarvis tries to convince them to let the real, adult Avengers handle the kidnapping.

They nope and Jonas helps them find more Young Avengers. They go break a kid out of prison.

Kid’s a mutant, like Billy! Kid’s had trouble controlling the powers and destroyed some stuff, like Billy! Kid looks exactly like Billy, like... wait.

This is Tommy Shepherd. He blew up a school when his superspeed manifested, and got tossed into juvie as a result. He has white hair, but he and Billy are otherwise identical. This is relevant.

They go try to save Teddy, but even more aliens show up than just the One Guy (K’lrt, the Super Skrull) that kidnapped Teddy.

The Skrulls and Kree are about to fight a war over Manhattan because Teddy exists.

A few people suggest that Billy and Tommy are retroactive reincarnations of the Scarlet Witch’s dead kids. This is still relevant.

There’s a big fight, but not a war.

Eli gets shot.

K’lrt has a change of heart and shapeshifts into Teddy and replaces him so that the aliens leave.

Eli gets a blood transfusion from Steve Rogers himself. He’s a real supersoldier now!

They get commended for their actions. Now they really ARE a team, and if someone says V1 team, it’s gonna be these seven: Billy, Teddy, Kate, Cassie, Eli, Tommy, Jonas.

Sometimes Jonas gets swapped out for Nate.

I get sad.

The Events

Civil War was about Tony Stark and Steve Rogers fighting about government oversight. It was more complicated than the movie.

Most of the YA are on Steve’s side. Cassie is on Tony’s.

They try to help the Runaways at one point.

Noh-Varr gets mind-controlled into trying to kill them.

Noh’s life is an endless clusterfuck.

They all almost kill each other, there’s a kind of queerphobic kidnapping (it’s focused on mutants and aliens, but the mutant is gay, two of the aliens are gay, and one of the aliens is genderfluid), and there’s torture of minors.

On the bright side we get to see Tommy being a Big Bro Friend to a twelve-year-old with super-strenghth, so that’s fun.

Secret Invasion is basically about the Skrulls being Everywhere.

They run into the Runaways again.

They fight some aliens.

Teddy almost gets kidnapped again?

This is not the last time Teddy gets kidnapped or even just almost kidnapped.

He should work on that.

Tommy’s powers get a panel that heavily indicate some Science that I once nerded out about for a while.

IDK it’s drawn manga-style and they all fight alien assassins and it’s fun.

Dark Reign was about Norman Osborne taking over everything and being awful.

There’s an evil version of the Young Avengers running around, using their name.

They confront the new team.

The new team ranges from “artsy villain fangirl who found a magic coat” to “guy whose powers led to him accidentally murdering his parents and now he’s fucked up from it and trying to do good” to “girl woke up with powers one day and decided to lie to the world and pretend to be Asgardian” to “some guy who just really loves guns and killing people and styled himself after Punisher’s aesthetic with even less regard to human life” to a chick that’s just a straight-up Nazi with size-changing powers and a robot boyfriend that she’s constantly rewiring to make him a more awful person.

I fucking hate Big Zero. She’s a nazi and she’s awful.

I like Sylvie, though. I mean, she pretends to be something she’s not, and she flirts with a man who’s clearly taken and gay, even while she’s not single herself.

But like.

She’s fun and kinda dumb and I enjoy reading her.

Children’s Crusade

The Scarlet Witch has been missing for a few years.

After Billy’s powers go nuclear, he decides to go find her, because she’s his soul mom.

He brings the team.

(There’s a lot more going on because the Avengers all think Billy’s powers are going to go on the fritz and murder everyone.)

GRANDPA MAGNETO IS IN THIS ONE

I LOVE GRAMPNETO

HE’S NOT GOOD AT THIS GRANDPA THING BUT HE’S HERE

Also Pietro

He’s the worst uncle

He’s so bad with kids

I love him

They find Wanda but it turns out she’s a Doombot.

So they go to Castle Doom, and it turns out she’s amnesiac and about to marry Doctor Doom because he’s manipulating her into thinking he’s a good person.

Shit happens, she gets her memories back, and then there’s a big fight between the Avengers (who think Wanda and Billy are risks), the X-Men (who think similarly, but also are mad at the Avengers, and there’s a cool sequence where Wanda knocks out Emma Frost), and Doctor Doom, who’s trying to become God.

He kind of succeeds, and then fails.

Nate shows up.

Several people, including Cassie’s dad, get brought back from the dead, or are revealed to have never been dead in the first place.

Cassie dies.

Jonas is murdered by Nate.

Everything is awful.

The team splits up.

Only Tommy wants to keep being a hero.

Everything sucks, basically.

V2

I fucking love V2.

Kate and Noh-Varr hook up and she doesn’t even realize this is the guy who almost killed her that one time until the morning after.

They fight some Skrulls while flying around in orbit with Noh’s spaceship.

(We later find out that these are not Skrulls. They are shapeshifters who are Skrull Fanboys.)

Teddy’s been sneaking out at night (he lives with Billy’s family, since he’s an orphan now) to fight crime. Billy does not approve.

There’s a new girl called America Chavez. She’s important.

Loki is like... ten.

Billy tries to pull Teddy’s mom out of another universe, moments before her death.

It’s great!

Turns out she’s an interdimensional Eldritch Abomination that wants to eat their souls.

She can make adults oblivious to the fact that anything is wrong.

She can mind-control parents.

She can, in the right location, bring back DEAD PARENTS that she mind-controls to fight you for the ultimate trifecta of trauma.

She’s terrifying and I love her.

Anyway, Loki tries to help, almost gets used as a bartering chip with Asgard to get them to help instead since no one trusts Loki, and the team comes together!

Kate, Noh, Loki, America, Billy, Teddy

They have to fight a really big horde of mind-controlled parents.

Including their own undead superhero parents.

Loki actually helps!

They fly off to have fun fighting crime elsewhere until they can figure out how to avoid Mother more successfully, since they can’t really stay in New York right now.

They live on Noh’s spaceship.

It’s a nice spaceship.

(Irony of ironies, Loki was the one that pointed The Mother Parasite in Billy’s direction and planted the idea of saving Mrs. Altman into Billy’s mind in the first place. It was a whole Thing.)

TOMMY is not part of the team, because he cut himself off from basically everyone back in CC. I’m not actually sure anyone knew HOW to contact him at this point.

He goes on a date with a cute, superpowered coworker. Coworker’s name is David. He doesn’t actually HAVE superpowers anymore, but his superpower used to be knowledge absorption, and he remembers EVERYTHING.

EVERYTHING

You wanna know Wolverine’s preferred ass-wiping method? David knows. You wanna know how to do a one-time pad to encrypt data? David knows. You want Emma Frost’s bra size? He knows, but he’s not going to tell you, because she’s terrifying.

I love David.

There’s some horrifying Thing wearing Eli’s old costume running around and doing weird illegal shit so Tommy and David investigate.

Tommy gets kidnapped for a bit.

David gets the Young Avengers to help him save Tommy.

It’s awesome, mostly.

Teddy and Billy take a break, and Teddy’s new therapist is Leah of Hel.

I love Leah.

There’s a support group for exes of superpowered people who got fucked over by that whole nonsense.

All three of Noh’s exes are torn between wanting him back or wanting him dead.

Except Oubliette, who doesn’t see why she needs to choose.

America’s ex-teammate is mad that she’s a lesbian.

Patri-not is an Eldrith Being that kidnapped Tommy and we honestly still don’t know what it was.

It’s been SIX YEARS IN THE REAL WORLD AND I STILL DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS

And Leah is Loki’s former best friend.

Teddy think’s they’re all nuts and tries to leave.

Take a guess what happens.

Take a guess.

If you guessed kidnapping, you’re right!

The support group is working with the Mother Parasite.

So now the team has to go rescue Teddy.

Loki gets aged up by way of Billy’s magic but it doesn’t help Loki get their magic back fully like they’d hoped.

So, fight.

It’s all very dramatic and they use David’s phone tree to get backup and there’s a lot of visual metaphor.

Billy becomes the Demiurge for a bit to erase Mother from existence. He’s basically god?

Noh dumps Kate for his ex.

It turns out all of the exes are figments of Loki’s imagination. His guilt over murdering his child self (back in Journey into Mystery) and possessing the body manifested itself externally, and the reason he lost so much of his magic was because he was subconsciously creating magical constructs like Leah and the League of Evil Exes.

Noh feels like a dumbass.

Loki disappears just as Billy’s introducing all of his friends to his parents.

Loki feels guilty as shit.

There’s a New Year’s party and everyone’s invited, including David’s phone tree.

Fun!

Turns out Loki bankrolled the party. They flirt with David for a bit.

I ship it, tbh.

Patri-not wasn’t actually a figment of Loki’s imagination. Patri-not is real, and an enigma, and still has Tommy.

David makes out with Patri-not and halfway through Patri-not turns into Tommy so. Tommy’s back!

WE STILL DON’T KNOW WHAT THE FUCK PATRI-NOT IS

YES I’M GENUINELY UPSET ABOUT THIS

There’s a joke at the end of the comic about how they’re all queer except Kate.

Hawkeye implies that she’s probably bi later on.

Loki never rejoins the team because GUILT.

Original Sins was a thing. Teddy, David, and Noh work together to save a bunch of stoners who are about to die from having a bunch of information downloaded directly into their brain when someone crushed a giant eyeball.

And everyone’s been doing their own thing since then.

Teddy really needs to stop getting kidnapped, tbh.

#asukaskerian #Young Avengers #Teddy Altman #Billy Kaplan #Kate Bishop #Eli Bradley #Jonas #Tommy Shepherd #Noh Varr #David Alleyne #America Chavez #Cassie Lang #Nate Richards

[neuxue]

Wheel of Time live blogging: The Gathering Storm ch 24

In which I have less patience for Gawyn than I thought I did. Also I wrote this on a 12 hour flight and am posting now after 5 more hours or transit and no sleep so I have absolutley no idea how coherent it is. Enjoy?

Chapter 24: A New Commitment

Oh it’s Gawyn.

I don’t think I realised until just now how thin my patience for Gawyn has become.

You know that feeling, when you’re reading a book that has multiple viewpoints or plotlines and it changes from one to the next and your immediate response is ‘ugh, do we have to?’ Yeah.

To be fair, I suppose those last two chapters are a hard act for any change in viewpoint to follow. But still.

Gawyn yawned

Even he’s bored of his character.

Okay, sorry, give me a minute and I’ll see if I can dredge up some last few fucks to give about Gawyn Trakand.

Surprise surprise, he’s gone to Bryne’s camp. And by that I mean this is not the least bit surprising. Gawyn’s still seeking authority and command; he chafed under Elaida’s, but for all that he acted as a commander of his own forces, he was never truly autonomous. And now he’s left her, but he doesn’t know what to do and he’s still lost, so he goes to find a different authority. Someone he knows, someone he trusts – or at least, trusted. Someone who can give him answers, tell him what to do or – perhaps more importantly – tell him he’s doing the right thing.

What it comes down to, I think, is that Gawyn hasn’t grown up the way so many other characters have. He hasn’t, but he thinks he has. So he thinks he’s playing one role when really he’s playing another.

I think I’ve said this before but it’s as if he’s in the wrong story. Not narratively, but in the sense that he’s vastly out of his depth. This isn’t the story he was prepared for – he was raised to be First Prince of the Sword, to be a hero of sorts, but within a particular structure. And none of that applies here, when everything is chaos and nothing is as he expected, and the lines are blurred and there aren’t always clear-cut answers or easy ways to tell what the right thing to do is. And he doesn’t know how to cope with that. And instead of learning how, he runs away, he avoids making decisions, avoids truly acting, truly committing, even when he tells himself he is. It’s all very, very human and in that regard understandable, but the frustrating part is that Gawyn himself doesn’t see it, doesn’t acknowledge it. It’s as if he’s still trying to force the framework he thinks should apply onto reality instead of looking around and letting himself see the truth of the situation.

So for all that he is – or I suppose was – in a position of command, he’s ultimately still letting others call the shots. As if, subconsciously, he’s looking for a way to avoid making those decisions that threaten to overwhelm him because he doesn’t know what to choose or what to do. Following orders, even when he chafes at them, gives him…something of an out. Except now he has finally made a decision and acted on it – he’s left Elaida and the Tower, rather than simply ruminating on it and being frustrated. Still, though, his first instinct is to go to Gareth Bryne. A different figure of authority.

All things considered, though, Bryne is definitely a better choice than Elaida. And maybe Bryne can either slap some sense into him or help him find his feet and sort some of his shit out. Or both.

Not to mention the fact that it’s probably no bad thing Gawyn is seeking out someone like Bryne rather than just running off on his own. Because he is lost, and well out of his depth. He just needs to be made to actually recognise that and either do something about it or step back.

No, a single man approaching the army was not a danger. A single man riding away from it, however, was cause for alarm. A man coming to the camp could be friend, foe or neither. A man who inspected the camp then rode away was almost certainly a spy. So long as Gawyn didn’t leave before making his intentions known, Bryne’s outriders would be unlikely to bother him.

I’m not sure why this paragraph in particular made me think this but: Gawyn seems like a classic example of someone who is very skilled at tactics but has absolutely no aptitude whatsoever for strategy. Or perhaps no understanding of the fact that the two are not synonymous.

This paragraph also highlights what I was thinking earlier – Gawyn understand things within a certain framework, and when he’s operating within that framework he’s good at what he does. The problem is, that framework doesn’t always apply, and he doesn’t know what to do when it breaks down.

By now, the Younglings knew of their leader’s betrayal

Clearly I have Star Wars on the brain because all I can think of here is Anakin.

Yet leaving had been the right thing to do. For the first time in months, his actions matched his heart.

There’s a kind of irony in the fact that my patience with Gawyn has run out at precisely the time he’s finally showing some positive growth.

Maybe I just liked him more when he was suffering. That would be like me.

Saving Egwene. That was something he could believe in.

I just rolled my eyes so hard I think I severed the optic nerve. Seriously, Gawyn? It’s a good thing he and Mat haven’t spent much time together. But it fits right in with Gawyn’s whole…concept of who and what he’s supposed to be. It’s a simplistic concept, and one that doesn’t really work in practice, and he just has absolutely no idea. He sees this as a perfectly realistic and sensible thing to think. Go save Egwene, because clearly she needs him to save her.

But really. Not helping Egwene, or even ‘Egwene was someone he could believe in’, but straight to I Must Save Egwene. Maybe take ten minutes to get your own shit together, Gawyn, before you run off trying to save someone when you know precisely nothing about the situation. Maybe try not jumping to conclusions for once. Shall we give that a try?

They were the ones who had propped Egwene up as an Amyrlin, as a target. Egwene! A mere Accepted. A pawn. If they failed in their bid for the Tower, they themselves might be able to escape punishment. Egwene would be executed.

On the one hand, he’s not wrong. On the other hand, you’d think he would have enough confidence in Egwene to trust her to see the truth of the situation as well. It reminds me of when Mat tried to mansplain Egwene’s situation to her. SHE KNOWS, GUYS.

It’s easy to see why Egwene is consistenty underestimated by various characters. That’s not the issue so much as the fact that supposedly Gawyn loves her and you’d think that if he knew her, he’d at least think ‘okay Egwene’s not stupid, maybe I should find out more about what’s going on and see if she needs my help’ rather than MUST SAVE THE DAMSEL FROM HER DISTRESS.

I’ll save her somehow. Then I’ll talk some sense into her and bring her away from all of the Aes Sedai. Perhaps even talk sense into Bryne. We can all get back to Andor, to help Elayne.

What.

I just…what. I don’t even know where to start. Every single word of that was absurd. Every phoneme.

Let’s start with I’ll save her somehow. Who needs a plan? Not Gawyn Trakand! Because running into things with only a vague understanding of what’s going on always works out so well! Also just the brash arrogance of it – that he, with no thought and no plan, can just somehow do what he doesn’t even consider she could ever do for herself.

And then there’s I’ll talk some sense into her and even talk sense into Bryne and at this point I just give up.

And then they can all go back to Andor and help Elayne and everything will be all fine and dandy, just like a little storybook, nothing to worry about. PLANS, GAWYN. STRATEGY. BASIC KNOWLEDGE OF THE SITUATION. MAYBE EVEN A TOUCH LESS HUBRIS. You are not the only person alive capable of accomplishing things.

This next bit is a very Sanderson description.

A random Aes Sedai amongst the washwomen…I can’t think who this would be. Are we supposed to know? The rebels don’t have any spies from the Tower, do they, the way the Tower had Beonin and maybe others with the rebels? Or have Aes Sedai from the tower begun defecting from Elaida’s travesty of a regime?

“I’m not a recruit,” Gawyn said, turning Challenge to get a better look at the men. “My name is Gawyn Trakand. I need to speak with Gareth Bryne immediately about a matter of some urgency.”

The soldier raised an eyebrow. Then he chuckled to himself.

I can’t help but compare this to Rand walking alone into Ituralde’s camp, and the way Ituralde immediately took him seriously just because of his bearing, his look, the way he spoke. Gawyn…doesn’t have that, it would seem. Then again, I’m not sure how fair a comparison that is. Not to mention Rand isn’t exactly a role model at this point in time.

So Gawyn is entirely failing at gravitas, and while this seems entirely perfect for his character, there’s a small part of me that’s at least a little bit sympathetic; there really is very little more purely frustrating than not being taken seriously, or being taken for a liar or braggart when you’re actually telling the truth.

(Yes, I am a Slytherin, how could you tell?)

Gawyn met the man’s eyes. “Very well. We can do it this way. It will probably be faster anyway.”

The sergeant laid a hand on his sword.

Gawyn kicked his feet free of the stirrups and pushed himself out of the saddle.

And proceeds to win without killing, against several opponents. The fight scene also feels rather Sanderson – especially with the frequency of ‘fell into [stance]’ phrasing, which Sanderson has a slight tendency to overuse, and which I don’t recall Jordan using as often; he tended to go more with ‘Parting the Silk met Hummingbird Kisses the Honeyrose’ and constructions along those lines – but it’s well executed. (Ironically, that sentence I just wrote is a classically Jordan construction in terms of construction…)

“I am unarmed,” he said over the sounds of the wounded. “And none of these four will die this ay. Go and tell your general that a lone blademaster just felled a squad of his guards in under ten heartbeats. I’m an old student of his. He’ll want to see me.”

Gawyn is, by the rules of the title, a blademaster. He earned the title, and he is certainly skilled in a fight, and he knows it. And this takes me back to what I was toying with just a few pages ago, the sense that Gawyn is a good tactician but a terrible strategist, and doesn’t seem to recognise that there’s a difference.

He can plan a battle or a raid, and if you put an enemy or five in front of him he can win the fight. But he could never win a war.

He doesn’t think through cause and effect and consequence, doesn’t consider the entirety of the situation before focusing in on a single piece of it, doesn’t look at the bigger picture or the longer term. He gets lost in the middle, and there are parts of that middle in which he excels, and he sometimes mistakes that for a different ability altogether, and it just leads him further astray.

Perhaps it had been a mistake to fight the men, but he had already wasted too much time. Egwene could be dead by now!

She’s been Amyrlin for months and a prisoner for weeks. Five minutes one way or another probably isn’t going to make much difference now, Gawyn. I mean, maybe it will, but the fact that you only found out about this a few days ago doesn’t mean it didn’t exist before then, or that it’s suddenly become more immediate a problem just because you’re now aware of it. But again, that’s…not really how Gawyn looks at things. Or rather, that’s the kind of thing Gawyn doesn’t look at. He’s aware of it now, so it’s the centre of his focus, so it’s immediate and urgent and there’s no time to waste on things like…figuring out what the hell he’s actually going to do.

It’s like my never-ending frustration with people who run red lights, or the equivalent. Is that thirty seconds really so urgent? And is it worth the risk of being stopped for far longer than it would have taken you to just wait for the damn light to turn in the first place? Sometimes running headlong into a situation without stopping to consider the bigger picture or plan just means making a bigger mess of things. Sure, there are times when snap decisions are necessary and where there really is only a matter of seconds in which to act, but more often than not it just feels that way, when actually taking a few seconds to make sure what you’re doing isn’t going to fuck everything up is worth it.

Hi Bryne. Please slap Gawyn in the face. Just once.

“You, come with me.”

Gawyn clenched his jaw. He hadn’t received such an address from Gareth Bryne since before he’d started shaving. Still, he couldn’t really expect the man to be pleased.

No shit.

“Gareth,” Gawyn said, catching up, “I—”

“Hold your tongue, young man,” Bryne said, not turning towards him. “I still haven’t decided what I’m going to do with you.”

Gawyn snapped his mouth closed. That was uncalled for! Gawyn was still brother to the rightful Queen of Andor, and would be First Prince of the Sword should Elayne take and hold the throne!

Through no help from Gawyn, as it turns out. This is where Gawyn in many ways is still something of a sheltered boy, who hasn’t really grown past that. Hasn’t really learned that the world – or at least the apocalypse – isn’t so simple, while so many of the other characters have. It’s as if Gawyn has been left behind while the rest have developed as people – as leaders, as politicians, as heroes, as whatever else – which I think is part of the whole point.

Bryne should show him respect.

He should earn it. This is an interesting comparison to Bryne’s interactions with Egwene. The one Gawyn wants to run and save because she’s just an Accepted and a pawn. But in truth she is the Amyrlin, and while she’s still young she has earned Bryne’s respect. He doesn’t give it out based on rank or training or ‘should’. He respects those he has deemed worthy of his respect, those who have proven themselves. Egwene has. Gawyn hasn’t. Not yet, at least.

“All right. Explain what you’re doing here.”

Gawyn drew himself up. “General,” he said, “I think you mistake yourself. I’m no longer your student.”

Then, with respect, you’re an idiot. Because if you think that at the age of twenty-something, with a short time in command of a group of soldiers – yet still under the command of Elaida – you have nothing more to learn from Gareth Bryne, you’re kidding yourself.

Well, or you’re lost and uncertain and full of self-doubt and trying desperately to be the person you think you should be, and seeking someone who can help you do that while at the same time wanting to prove to yourself and those around you that you’re worthy, that you’re not just a pawn in the game.

So, okay. It’s not ego, precisely. Or it’s not just ego. It���s…a sheltered upbringing and a duty and an oath to give his life for queen and country, to be a leader and a hero and a sacrifice if necessary, it’s a great deal of skill combined with not a great deal of experience, it’s a need to be good enough combined with doubt that he is good enough combined with always feeling second-best to his brother yet unable to resent that and so instead pushing himself, it’s feeling lost and uncertain and so in desperation overcompensating and trying to do something, but not having the experience or information to match his ability.

“I know,” Bryne said curtly. “The boy I trained would never have pulled a childish stunt like that one to get my attention.”

I think that counts as a slap in the face. Gawyn needs this, though.

“Look,” Gawyn said, “perhaps I was hasty, but I have an important task. You need to listen to me.”

Why does he need to listen to you, Gawyn? Also, do you really think he’s leading the rebels’ armies and yet is somehow ignorant of Egwene’s situation? Do you not think, maybe, that he might actually know more about it than you do? There’s a time and a place for a ‘you need to listen to me’, but right now is more a situation for ‘I’ve heard some worrying things about Egwene; what do you know and can I help?’

It’s the sort of arrogance that isn’t conscious or even based in a sense of superiority but more is based in completely failing to take a second to think. Or to realise that you aren’t the centre of the universe. In other words, it’s the arrogance of immaturity.

Here’s the thing. Gawyn’s irritating me right now, and I’m obviously being critical of him here, but I still find him such an interesting narrative choice, and an interesting character and character arc to have included in this story full of people who grow into their roles as heroes of one kind or another. Because Gawyn provides something of a foil to that – a character who really should have been a hero, who was trained for it and positioned for it, and who tries so hard to do the right thing and save and protect those he loves, but so often makes the wrong choices. Sometimes through misinterpretation or failure to understand the situation, and sometimes through lack of information more than any fault of his own, but who nonetheless ends up adrift, while so many other characters are moving in the opposite direction. From confused and uncertain and young to more and more capable.

“If I instead throw you out of my camp for being a spoiled princeling with too much pride and not enough sense?”

More or less, yeah. Please sit him down and explain the concept of strategy to him, Bryne.

Gawyn frowned. “Be careful, Gareth. I’ve learned a great deal since we last met. I think you’ll find that your sword can no longer best mine as easily as it once did.”

And just like that, he proves Bryne’s point. And mine: that he thinks he has learned and grown, but he fails to see all the ways in which he hasn’t. He’s learned, but he’s learned the wrong lessons – or rather, there are so many more things he hasn’t learned. One of the greatest being that it isn’t about being able to stab his way through all of his problems.

It’s an issue of self-awareness, and of awareness of the rest of the world outside of himself. It’s being able to take honest stock of his abilities and his shortcomings. It’s recognising that he’s good at hitting things with a sharp stick but he has by no means learned everything there is to learn.

That’s kind of the tragedy of the Younglings (aside from their name); they’re…okay so the description that comes to mind is one of my favourite poems: “the lads that will die in their glory and never be old.” Those skilled enough and just experienced enough to think themselves wise and knowledgeable and ready, but too young and too caught up in the glory or the honour or even the sense of duty to see beyond that, to see that they are condemning themselves to being used by powers they aren’t truly equipped to contend with, to fighting to no purpose, to dying for nothing in the end. It’s a child’s sense of honour, and Gawyn can’t afford that anymore.

“I have no doubt of that,” Bryne said. “Light, boy! You always were a talented one. But you think that just because you’re skilled with the sword, your words hold more weight? I should listen because you’ll kill me if I don’t? I thought I taught you far better than that.”

Subtle as a hammer, but that’s what Gawyn needs right now. Especially since he killed his last Hammar.

Bryne held his gaze, calm. Solid. As a general should be. As Gawyn should be.

Gawyn looked away, suddenly feeling ashamed of himself.

The thing is, while Gawyn is in many ways still far too young and too immature, it’s…not all meant as a criticism of him. Some of it, sure. But it’s also an aspect of his character and his position – he did have a relatively sheltered upbringing, and while he was trained for some of these kinds of things, a) there’s not a whole lot of training you can do for an apocalypse you don’t know is coming and b) he was thrown pretty immediately into ‘reality’ before actually learning how to apply his training to it. The Tower coup was a baptism by fire when it comes to chaos and impossible choices. He wasn’t ready, and he got thrown into the middle of it, and because of his name and his title (and his skill) he ended up in a position of authority when he was in no way prepared for it.

And he had no guidance, from that point onwards. Even Rand had Moiraine and Lan and Verin in the early days, and then Rhuarc and Bashere and arguably Cadsuane. He was thrown into the deep end and it hasn’t exactly gone well for him, but he has had people along the way trying to teach him and guide him and occasionally serve as role models. Gawyn had that, when it was all still training. But from the moment it became reality, he’s been alone.

Which is, I think, another part of the reason he almost instinctively seeks out Gareth Bryne.

Bryne doesn’t like tea? Okay forget it, Gareth, you’re dead to me.

“Gareth. It’s Egwene. They have her.”

“The White Tower Aes Sedai?”

Gawyn nodded urgently.

“I know.” Bryne took another drink, then grimaced again.

Perfect.

I mean really, Gawyn, did you honestly think hadn’t noticed? What did you expect? “Oh, shit, you’re right, we’ve misplaced the Amyrlin! Thank the Light you’ve come to inform us of this! Hey, anyone seen Egwene in the last month or so? You know, dark-haired girl, wears a stole? Hall freezes in terror every time she walks past? No? Weird, could have sworn she was right there…”

“We have to go for her!” Gawyn said. “I came to ask you for help. I intend to mount a rescue.”

Bryne snorted softly. “A rescue? And how do you intend to get into the White Tower?”

“Oh, you came for help? Alright, let’s see the plan. You do have a plan, don’t you? No? Okay so maybe let’s start there.” Thank you Gareth Bryne. And to Gawyn’s credit, at least he went to the one person who probably stands a chance of getting something through his head.

“But tell me this, lad. How are you going to get her to come out with you?” Gawyn started. “Why, she’ll be happy to come. Why wouldn’t she?” “Because she’s forbidden us to rescue her,” Bryne said

Ah this is glorious. The value of information. Gawyn hasn’t the slightest clue what’s actually going on and he wants to run headlong into it with a half-baked plan and a whole lot of determination. Which is admirable and all, but it’s also probably the best way to turn a shit situation into an absolute catastrophe, so, you know, maybe let’s not.

And Bryne does this well; he doesn’t just refuse Gawyn outright and tell him he’s an idiot. He actually doesn’t tell Gawyn anything at the start. He leads with questions, and lets Gawyn see the extent of his own ignorance. “Okay, sure, so we do that. What next?” is a great way to get someone to poke holes in their own idea, rather than poking them yourself. This way, Gawyn’s more likely to actually learn something, and to understand what he’s learned, because he can see for himself that he’s already worked his way into a corner, and that’s only in the hypothetical.

“Bryne, she’s imprisoned! The Aes Sedai I heard talking said that she’s being beaten daily. They’ll execute her!”

“I don’t know,” Bryne said. “She’s been with them for weeks now and they haven’t killed her yet.”

“They’ll kill her,” Gawyn said urgently, “You know they will.”

I’m on a plane so it’s a little hard to hit my head against a hard surface but you can trust that I’m giving it my best effort.

It’s not that Gawyn doesn’t have a point in theory – there’s something to be said for his ‘eventually you mount your enemy’s head on a pike to make a point’ logic – but he still doesn’t have anything close to all the information. Even that isn’t an insurmountable obstacle, but he still doesn’t realise the pitfalls of not having the information. I’m reminded of what Lan said to Rand: “You can never know everything, and part of what you know is always wrong. Perhaps even the most important part. A portion of wisdom lies in knowing that. A portion of courage lies in going on anyway.” 

Gawyn’s got the ‘going on anyway’ part down more or less, but it’s the rest of it that he’s lacking. He trusts too much in the little information he has, and doesn’t think about where the holes are, or what he might be missing, or what might have been altered in the telling. He doesn’t think about all the ways in which what he knows may not actually be correct in a particular situation, because it’s different from what he’s been taught or what he’s seen. He doesn’t think about the uncertainties, and the way they can compound into catastrophic errors.

Which is central to the series in so many ways, and Gawyn is yet another variation on the theme of information and the lack of information, on truth and rumour and supposition, on the way fact and story and rumour can all be warped by time and distance, on how it’s virtually impossible to know everything, but it’s important to work with what you have in the best way you can.

“I’ll try to get you an audience with some of the Aes Sedai I serve,” Bryne said. “Perhaps they can do something. If you persuade them that a rescue is needed, and that the Amuyrlin would want it, then we’ll see.”

I can’t decide if I’m annoyed at this or not. On the one hand, why should they take Gawyn’s word for what is in Egwene’s best interests, when Egwene herself says otherwise? On the other hand…it’s not a bad idea to have a Plan B if you need one. Also, this is perhaps a good way for Bryne to basically encourage Gawyn to actually think everything through, and consider more of the situation, and make a genuine plan – because there’s no way he’ll be able to persuade the Aes Sedai without more than he has right now. And even then, it’s a ‘we’ll see’. It’s a test, of sorts.

So the Aes Sedai with the washwomen was definitely not a random aside, and I still can’t think who she might be, except a defector from Elaida. I suppose it would be the right time in the arc for that – Egwene’s last chapter was, as she saw it, the end of her own war within the Tower, and now it’s up to the Tower to take up the…fight? Non-fight? Struggle? Anyway, she provided the impetus, so now it’s time to see if she’s managed to break through the inertia, if it will be enough to start a cascading effect.

Meanwhile Bryne is finally like okay so Gawyn what the fuck were you even here for in the first place. Pretty sure he knows, he just wants Gawyn to say it.

“Why aren’t you back in Caemlyn, helping your sister?”

GOOD DAMN QUESTION.

“Well, rumours are unreliable,” Bryne said.

You might need to make more of a point of that, Bryne. Though Gawyn’s issue isn’t precisely gullibility so much as something almost along the lines of confirmation bias.

“Your sister holds the Lion Throne. It seems that she’s undone much of the mess your mother left for her.”

With no help from you, Gawyn.

It serves to highlight how lost and adrift Gawyn has been, how futilely he’s been running around trying to help, trying to do the right thing, but ultimately getting nowhere. His sister has become Queen of Andor. His girlfriend has become the Amyrlin Seat. They’ve claimed two of the most powerful stations in the world, and Gawyn is with neither of them, has helped neither of them, though everything he’s done has been in an attempt to do right by both of them. Also he still thnks they need his help – that Egwene needs him to rescue her, that Elayne needs him to help her. But they’ve achieved this without him, and it puts the spotlight back on the question of what are you doing, Gawyn?

“Your place is at your sister’s side.”

“Egwene first.”

“You made an oath,” Bryne said sternly, “Before me. Have you forgotten?”

In fairness to Gawyn, he was what, four? There’s an argument to be made there about oaths made well before what anyone would reasonably call age of consent. And about what that does to the one who makes the oath before they’re truly old enough to understand.

“But if Elayne has the throne, then she’s safe for now. I’ll get Egwene and tow her back to Caemlyn where I can keep an eye on her. Where I can keep an eye on both of them.”

Now you sound like Mat again, and not in a good way. Tow her back? Keep an eye on her? Gawyn you can barely keep an eye on yourself. You mean well but…you have also never seen Egwene take on the Hall. Or Elayne take on Andor. Give them a little bit of credit; they’re doing better than you are right now.

Bryne snorted. “I think I’d like to watch you trying that first part,” he noted. “But regardless, why weren’t you there when Elayne was trying to take the throne? What have you been doing that is more important than that?”

Gareth Bryne, asking the real questions. This is what Gawyn has needed for about eight books now. Someone to sit him down and say, calmly and clearly, what the fuck.

Especially because Gawyn’s reasons – ‘I grew entangled’ – are going to sound so much more feeble when said aloud than during all those long hours agonising to himself over what to do, and how to choose, and what is right. Don’t get me wrong; I rather liked a lot of those moments. It’s just that this plays so well; we’re so good at lying to ourselves, at justifying things to ourselves, and it’s so easy to get caught up in something and it all makes sense at the time, and it doesn’t seem like there’s any other choice…and then when faced with a conversation like this that cuts to the heart of it, and you have to explain those choices, and really look closely at them, it all…falls apart.

“Blood and bloody ashes!” Bryne exclaimed. The general rarely cursed. “I knew that the person leading those raids against me was too well informed. And here I was, looking for a leak among my officers!”

“It doesn’t matter now.”

Um? Sorry, Gawyn, I believe the correct response is “I have toh.” Or just a simple “Yeah I fucked up.” But to dismiss it like that? Really?

I had so much patience for Gawyn, you guys. I was so interested in him as a character concept, in the notion of a character who doesn’t grow the same way as the rest, who tries to do the right thing and should be a hero and instead makes the wrong choices, through poor decisions or poor luck. I was so interested in seeing the effects of that on him, on those around him. Plus I liked him at the start.

And he’s really done as much as he can to THROW IT ALL AWAY. I WAS PATIENT WITH YOU, GAWYN, AND THIS IS HOW YOU REPAY ME. *scowls*

“I’ll judge that,” Bryne said.

Gareth Bryne, singlehandedly ensuring that this chapter doesn’t actually drive me insane.

“But you still haven’t explained why you didn’t return to Caemlyn.”

Gareth Bryne, singlehandedly ensuring that this chapter doesn’t actually drive me insane.

“Regardless, once I get you a meeting with the Aes Sedai, I want your word that you’ll go back to Caemlyn. Leave Egwene to us. You need to help Elayne. It’s your place to be in Andor.”

“I could say the same of you.”

Touché. One point to Gawyn. Several hundred behind Bryne, still, but hey.

It’s hard to blame Bryne for being angry and upset and even disillusioned with Morgase after what she did and said to him. Because…well, back to information people have, and information they don’t. But…ouch.

“It must have been part of some scheme,” Gawyn said. “You know Mother. If she did hurt you, there was a reason.”

Bryne shook his head. “No reason other than foolish love for that fop Gaebril. She nearly let her clouded head ruin Andor.”

“She’d never!” Gawyn snapped. “Gareth, you of all people should know that!”

“I should,” Bryne said, lowering his voice. “And I wish I did.”

The interesting thing here is the reversal. Gawyn is still trusting to what he thinks he knows, what he believes, and Bryne is still trusting to observation and reason. But this time, Gawyn’s actually…well, he’s not completely right but he’s closer. But how on earth would anyone who saw Morgase, and saw Andor at that point in time, believe that? In this case, no one alive knows the full truth of what was happening. Not even Morgase. She herself would likely agree with Bryne. Which…yeah. That’s just so many kinds of horrific.

“Curse al’Thor! The day can’t come soon enough when I can run him through.” Bryne looked at Gawyn sharply. “Al’Thor saved Andor, son. Or as near to it as a man could.”

Well…at least Rand’s got Gareth Bryne on his side? (~It must be nice, it must be nice…)

This conversation is so well done in terms of showing how complicated the ‘who has what information and what does that mean for them’ game can get.

“How could you speak well of that monster? He killed my mother!”

Actually he was trying to avenge her, but why would you listen to literally anyone except that one rumour you hate and therefore cling to?

“I don’t know if I believe those rumours or not,” Bryne said, rubbing his chin. “But if I do, lad, then perhaps he did Andor a favour. You don’t know how bad it got, there at the end.”

Rahvin’s treatment of Morgase is one of the cruellest things done to an individual in WoT, possibly with the exception of…uh…Semirhage two chapters ago. It’s not just what he did to her directly in the form of physical and mental rape, but what he did to her as Queen, what he did through her to Andor, and what that did to an entire nation’s perception of her. To how those who loved and trusted her now see her. To her own perception of herself. And also to Andor as a whole; he nearly destroyed a country. And not only is she blamed for it, but she herself shoulders that responsibility, and she has no way of knowing that it’s not her fault. That’s…frighteningly thorough and perfect destruction of a person. Not just Morgase individually, but the very memory of her in the minds of thousands. The destruction of her, her memory, her legacy.

And you see it in moments like this, when someone like Gareth Bryne, who loved her and whom she loved, believes that maybe her death was the best thing for Andor. Believes the worst of her, because what else is he supposed to believe?

Anyway, Morgase’s story hurts, news at 11.

“I’ll always speak truth, Gawyn. No matter who challenges me on it. It’s hard to hear? Well, it was harder to live.”

Ow, stop it, this is NOT OKAY. Because he’s right. He’s right to speak the truth, despite how hard it may be to face. That’s so desperately needed…but in this case it isn’t truth. There’s just absolutely no reasonable way for him to believe that, because who looks at a situation like that and goes “ah. Of course. This must be a classic case of manipulation via a largely forgotten magical ability that no man should be able to wield anyway so he must have been one of the legendary monsters from millennia ago, disguised as the lover of the Queen of Andor. Also the earth is flat.” Occam’s Razor would be crying in a corner, shortly accompanied by all principles of logic and reason.

“In the end, Gawyn, your mother turned against Andor by embracing Gaebril. She needed to be removed. If al’Thor did that for us, then we have need to thank him.”

And every word of that is wrong. It was her loyalty to Andor that saved Morgase in the end, and it was out of loyalty to Andor that Morgase fled. It was out of loyalty to Andor that Queen Morgase, for all intents and purposes, died.

“Yes, Morgase the woman I can forgive. But Morgase the Queen? She gave the kingdom to that snake. She sent her allies to be beaten and imprisoned. She wasn’t right in her mind.”

No, she wasn’t, and it’s so much worse than you can imagine and this is FINE, everything is FINE. She herself was imprisoned, and now she has to live with the memories of doing all of this.

All that aside, I of course love the separation between Morgase the person and Morgase the Queen. It’s something we see and are seeing with so many characters, this conflict between who they are and what they are. How that plays out in their own mind and sense of self, but also how it combines with the way they are seen and treated by others. Who can still separate the person from the title, and who conflates them. Whether an individual can take on some of those roles and still hold onto themselves.

“But you have to bury that hatred of al’Thor.”

And Gawyn’s response, of course, is ‘nah’. HOW MANY TIMES DO YOU NEED TO BE TOLD THIS, GAWYN. BY HOW MANY PEOPLE YOU SUPPOSEDLY TRUST? He even saw Rand, at and before Dumai’s Wells. And yet, he holds to the thing first believed.

And in an abrupt change of subject…hi, Shemerin.

Interesting. So…kind of a defector from the Tower. And, actually, an altogether fitting one, to be the first one we see. The beginning, perhaps.

(Side note: the woman sitting next to me on the plane just asked if I’m writing my thesis).

Next (TGS ch 25) Previous (TGS ch 23)

#grow up Gawyn #Lia liveblogs on airplanes: the saga #Wheel of Time #The Gathering Storm #neuxue liveblogs WoT

[tyrantisterror]

Bonus: More Buffy Characters I’d Ruin

I had to cut myself off while writing my How I’d Ruin It: Buffy the Vampire Slayer article because it was almost 10pm and I still hadn’t finished, but goddam if there aren’t more Buffy characters I wanted to talk about, so here’s the “deleted scenes” for the article.

Anya: Introduced as a monster of the week (specifically a demon), Anya was demoted by her bosses to a mere mortal human after she was defeated, and went on to be a recurring cast member.  Anya had a delightfully warped outlook, since she really wasn’t accustomed to human society and as such didn’t understand many social taboos. While she could be blunt and callous, she meant well, and was a good ally.  Unfortunately, she was also written to be Xander’s love interest, and most of her plots were built around him.  Worse, the rest of the characters kind of treated her like shit, regarding her with annoyance at best and outright hostility at worst.

Since my reboot is a bit kinder to monsters in general, we’d go a different way here.  Instead of being annoyed by Anya, the group would all actively try to rehabilitate her – their end goal is coexistence with the supernatural, after all, and Anya could be instrumental in that.  Though it takes a while and is often frustrating, they make progress, and Anya eventually learns the value of humanity and in turn becomes an essential ally.  Especially once her powers start coming back…

Tara: Introduced as Willow’s first female love interest, Tara was a young witch whose family told her (and all her female family members) that women in her family would become demons on their twenty first birthday, and thus had to be hidden away to keep from incurring the wrath of the outside world.  This was resolved in one episode, and afterwards Tara had little to do except be Willow’s girlfriend.  The writers later killed her off for drama because they had nothing else for her to do.

But, I mean, c’mon!  A young woman raised by an abusive and misogynistic family goes to college, discovers witchcraft AND her own homosexuality, and then rebels against her family despite being told that doing so will reveal her true inhuman nature?  Surely that has potential for more than just one episode of focus!   Let Willow and Tara have solo adventures!  Get her involved in helping the rest of the cast!  Shit, you know what, given our reboot’s stance on monsters, let’s make the family’s threat true – maybe she IS part demon.  Demons rebel against authority, and some authority needs to be rebelled against.  Tara has the potential for interesting and awesome plots – plots about how being different from what is normal doesn’t have to be a cause of shame, but can instead be literally empowering.  Let’s make it happen.

Jenny Calendar: Jenny Calendar was introduced as the high school computer teacher, and also a “technopagan,” i.e. a witch who incorporates modern technology into magic, rather than remaining in the past.  That is such a badass concept that it’s a damn shame they never did anything with it.  Instead, Jenny became Giles’ love interest, and then was revealed to be part of the Roma family that cursed Angel to have a soul, which is treated as a betrayal for some reason.  Then Angelus kills her so Giles can feel sad.

Again, there’s so much lost potential here!  Given that this reboot is playing up both the magic AND technology expertise with Willow, Jenny could easily find stuff to do as Willow’s mentor, and making a mix of magic and technology more of a thing could also allow for a lot of weird and fun monster plotlines that they would be key in solving.  Having a strong, adult female role model would also be good for, like, all of the main characters – Buffy’s mom can’t fill the role entirely since she needs to be out of the loop for plot reasons.

Kendra: The first time Buffy died and came back to life resulted in another Slayer getting called into being, violating the “there can only be one Slayer” rule after a grand total of one season.  Kendra is one of the few black characters in Buffy who gets more than one line, AND she’s a Slayer, AND she’s from Africa!  There’s a lot of potential there!  Sadly, she was kind of, well, boring, and her case wasn’t helped by the fact that the writers clearly didn’t do a whole lot of research into any of the various countries and cultures in Africa, resulting in a character that’s pretty stereotypical.

But that potential though! Let’s have the reboot violate the “only one slayer exists at a time” rule right from the get go – instead, there are many slayers, albeit still very few (definitely under 100).  Each would be the hero of their own story, and there could be fun stories where we get glimpses of the different types of supernatural threats on other parts of the globe.  We could explore how different Watchers work with their respective Slayers, comparing Giles and Buffy to others while also examining the problems with the Watchers Council (and perhaps showing that more Slayers than just Buffy realize they’re getting a raw deal here).  The potential is so great!

Faith: As mentioned in the article proper, Faith is Buffy’s evil opposite, the rogue Slayer who became a villain.  Faith loves fuckin’ and killin’, and the show makes it very clear that both of those interests are the reason she’s evil – everyone seems to go out of their way to slut shame Faith, to the point where “evil” and “skanky” are both treated as her defining attributes, each equally vilified. While Buffy has a fairly normal middle class life (despite being in a single parent household and, y’know, a vampire slayer), Faith grew up poor in an abusive environment, and has overall had a hard life.  She is very clearly a troubled person before she turns full villain, and her character arc is primarily focused on her envy of Buffy’s life.  She rants repeatedly about how often she is unfavorably compared to Buffy, and one of her evil schemes involves swapping bodies with Buffy to escape punishment for her actions.

The fact that Faith is positioned as Buffy’s evil opposite because her life situation sucks is, well, problematic, and the slut shaming piled on top of that definitely doesn’t help. However, since we inverted Buffy for this reboot, why not invert Faith as well?

Reboot Faith comes from a ridiculously rich family, is valedictorian at her school, and treats vampire slaying as an unfortunate responsibility rather than an adventure. She’s a brutally efficient yet utterly merciless Slayer.  In her mind, she’s an exterminator, not a hero who saves civilians and certainly not someone who wants to find a peaceful solution to the humans vs. monsters conflict. As far as she’s concerned, supernatural creatures threaten humanity just by existing, and the conflict can only end with one side’s total destruction.  She is essentially every negative implication of a typical “Human slays monsters” story condensed into one character – a proper opposite for Reboot Buffy’s open minded rough housing party girl monster fighter.

Forrest Gates: “Who the fuck is Forrest?” you may be asking. Working for the same government monster task force as Riley Finn, Forrest was essentially Riley’s sidekick and foil.  He was both Riley’s second in command and best friend, and he stuck with the government when Riley rebelled to be with Buffy.  Being a foil, his personality deliberately contrasts with Riley’s: while Riley is straight laced, soft spoken, and “nice” in a bland “I’m not vocally racist but I still voted for Trump” sort of way, Forrest is hot blooded, individualistic, outspoken, sarcastic, and sometimes deeply cynical. If you were to guess which of the two would rebel when they learned their government employers were up to shady shit, you’d guess Forrest – which I suppose makes it an interesting twist that he stays while rule-abidin’ Riley goes rogue.

Forrest doesn’t develop more than that, and when I first saw the series I wrote him off as just what he was written to be: Riley’s foil.  Upon rewatching the series this year, though, I noticed something: Forrest is, well, interesting.  He’s far more analytical and aware than Riley.  He’s got better lines, he’s got a good sense of humor, and he brings a wild sort of energy to every scene he’s in.  He’s got more vocal interest in and chemistry with Buffy than Riley did before they hooked up (not a hard feat, to be fair – Riley has all the romantic energy of two week old mashed potatoes).  And, yeah, he seems much more believable as the army guy who would spot the flaws in his organization and go rogue.  Let’s make Forrest the Initiative Agent who switches sides and goes with our heroes.  It verges into crackfic territory, sure, but that’s what How I’d Ruin It is all about.

Harmony: Starting as “Cordellia except without the depth,” Harmony was just a Mean Girl stereotype until she became a vampire. Then she evolved into something slightly more complex: Harmony was a woefully ineffective villain, a ditz who was not cut out for causing evil that everyone, good and evil alike, made fun of. She also became an abuse victim, which might have been poignant if the show didn’t spend all the rest of her screen time making fun of her for being dumb, shallow, and promiscuous.

I have a noted soft spot for affable and ineffectual villain characters, and I think Harmony could play a valuable role in my heretical reboot’s approach to monsters.  Harmony would be the rare person who actually improved upon becoming a vampire, as her death and rebirth as a monster helps her realize how bullshit all her high school clique nonsense was.  At the same time, she’s grossed out by the whole “eating people” thing, and her general cluelessness actually gives her a unique perspective that other vampires and monsters lack – Harmony, in her own simple way, could note the pragmatism of not eating people, since no one’s gonna stake you for buying blood from a butcher.  When grander villains rope her into their schemes, they quickly find she’s more of a hindrance than a help.  She’d be the loveable rogue of the story – not quite a hero, but never a true villain either.

And maybe we could explore toxic relationships with someone who isn’t quite so cartoonish.

“Angel”: While the core of Angel’s character – being the only vampire with a soul and the guilt that comes with – doesn’t work in the reboot’s setting, that doesn’t mean we can’t have him altogether.  Reboot Angel would take a page from his spinoff and make him a vampire Private Detective, and one of the first vampires Buffy meets that is inarguable a decent person.  He helps the helpless, gets his blood from non-human animals in a human way, and is generally a good person despite being a vampire.  In this take, Angel wouldn’t be a love interest – ‘cause even when he’s not evil, there’s a creep factor to the whole “vampire with a body that’s in its mid 20’s dating a 16 year old” thing, and also because it would be kind of funny to me for a vampire to rebuke the interests of a young vulnerable woman, since, y’know, that’s the opposite of what vampires usually do. Buffy’s crush would, painfully for her, be unrequited.

“Angelus”: In the original show, Angel lost his soul and became the evil Angelus when he and Buffy bumped uglies in the figurative way instead of the literal way they usually do.  It’s one of the more clever results of the show’s “All monsters are metaphors” approach – a guy seems nice until he sleeps with you, then he turns evil. That’s a really good way to use a monster story as a metaphor for a real problem young women face.

But.

There is a crucial difference between the figurative meaning of this plot and the LITERAL events of it, and that difference rests in the guy’s autonomy.  Angel has NO CHOICE in the matter – he has no control of his actions, no agency in the horror that follows.  His soul is magically removed by the coitus, and the evil done by Angelus is the responsibility of the vampire spirit that now runs his body. The only one who has agency here is Buffy – the person who, in the real life problem this situation is an allegory for, should be the VICTIM of the resulting abuse.  Women get blamed for making men abusive a LOT – “she was asking for it” and all that bullshit.  And here we have a monster plot that literally makes the victimized woman the only person in the relationship who has agency in causing the abuse that follows – she literally removed his soul by sleeping with him.  It’s not an unintended thing, either – some of the characters call Buffy “rash” and “careless” for sleeping with Angel, and  taken within the show’s general opinion that girls who sleep with men before marriage are bad, it’s not something we can ignore.

Still, there’s a good idea beneath the awful execution.  We just need to tweak it.

So our “Angelus” would begin as a decent guy who dates one of our young female characters – maybe Buffy, maybe Willow, maybe Cordelia, we’ve got options here.  He seems nice at first – he’s got sort of a bad boy thing going on and he’s a bit older than is normal, but whatever doubts he inspires are quickly dissuaded by the help he offers the group and his general kindness. He might be broody and angsty from time to time, but any red flags he sends are easy to write off.  Until he sleeps with the girl in question.

Then, quite literally, he turns into a monster.  Up till this point the audience would be lead to believe he’s human, but no, he reveals his true colors as something inhuman and heartless – perhaps something much worse than a vampire.  The personality change is as drastic as the physical, and our heroes quickly learn that all his “kindness” before was a ruse.  He is nothing more than cruel and sadistic predator, and one that needs to be put down.

Vampires as a whole: Buffy’s take on vampires is one of my least favorite in fiction, since they’re basically just strong guys with sharp teeth, weird eyes, Klingon bumps, and often an inexplicable knowledge of martial arts.  Like most post-Anne Rice vampires, they’re very simple so as to avoid being “goofy” – no transformation, hypnosis, etc.  My preference is for the “goofy” stuff though – turning into mist, or a giant bat, traveling on moonlight, commanding legions of rats, all that good Bram Stoker shit.  I also love some of the weird folkloric takes on vampires, like the ones with multiple hearts and other weird shit.

Borrowing a page from my own fictional universe, the vampires in my Buffy reboot would be weird and varied.  There would be multiple breeds, and even within those there’s a lot of individual variation.  While some vampires are stronger than others, ALL would be significant threats.  We’d be going for quality over quantity – while Buffy has less vampires to fight in this reboot, the ones she does slay take a lot of work to kill.  So, in short – vampires by way of Stoker rather than Rice.

#buffy the vampire slayer

[randomramblesandlearning]

10 Things I Loved About Mass Effect:Andromeda

Warning: Spoilers! And I wrote this on the spur, so there might be grammatical errors.

1.      I enjoyed the story. Yeah, people will say it recycles from the trilogy, but come on, people. Why are you surprised? Bioware recycles their plotlines all the time. It’s pretty much the same in all of their games. A protagonist gains special abilities and leads a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits team to defeat a big threat. And I’m not bothered by that. Sometimes familiarity in your franchise is good, just as long as you do new things to the formula, and I think they do.

What interested me the most was the theme of starting over. A lot of people in the Andromeda Initiative were former criminals or outcasts. The reason they joined was to start a new life, and it’s explored in the main questlines, the loyalty quests, and numerous side quests. I was worried about the game talking about colonization since humans are looking for a new home, but I was pleasantly surprised that the game made it clear that Andromeda is the angara’s home first, and humans and other Milky Way species will have to work with them. Thank god! No Mightey Whitey trope this time!

2.      Ryder as the player character. I honestly never thought I would love Ryder as much as I did when I played the game. Sure, no one will ever replace Commander Shepard, but Ryder isn’t meant to replace the Commander, rather show a different perspective in a new story. Commander Shepard is the hero we want to be while Ryder is more of a relatable character. Ryder has to learn through the entire game how to be a leader while going through the obstacles of their inexperience and youth so people will take them seriously. And it was compelling, uplifting, and at times amusing to see them become a hero in their own right and step out of their father’s shadow.

Also Sara and Scott felt like their own person. In the original trilogy, the player character is pretty much the same no matter what gender. But sometimes the dialogue can be different depending on if you play a male Ryder or a female Ryder. That’s because they are two different people who have had their own experiences and personalities. That really adds to the replay value!

3.      Female aliens everywhere! One of my major issues with the original trilogy was the lack of female Turians, krogans, and salarians. Sure we had asari an all-female race, and female quarians, but it felt weird that we met so many aliens with very few ladies. Not only do we get a female Turian squadmate, we also get plenty of lady alien NPCs gathered everywhere for random quests. We also have Kesh who works at the Nexus. And we get to see female salarians! And they kind of look the same as male salarians except with different voices. Thank god! It would’ve been horrifying to see salarians with boobs. Uh! And I’m pretty sure there were just as many female angara NPCs as there were males.

4.      The romances. Especially the queer ones. One of the things I love about Bioware games are the romance paths. Bonus points if there is a queer option. And as of patch 1.08, this game has the most number of queer romances in any Bioware game. I think my two favorite romance paths are with Sara and Vetra and Jaal and Scott. While representation for the LGBT community is improving in media, there’s no denying we still have a long way to go. And after again the crap year 2016 where we had a huge number of queer women characters die in tv shows, it was so wonderful to have a healthy and happy relationship between two women when I first played the game. And even if it wasn’t added until the patch, the romance between Jaal and Scott is absolutely sweet since we see two men show a lot of love and affection for each other which is rare to see in media.

5.      The Tempest Family. I adore every single character on the Tempest, and they really did feel like a family once you played further into the game. I am a sucker for found families, and to see these people who are trying to find a home ending up finding a home with each other just gives me so many feels!

Since there’s not really a huge crew in the ship like in the original trilogy when Shepard had an army of humans. In Andromeda, we have six squad mates, four additional crew members, and Ryder. And I think it made the family more intimate. It’s like our own little family lives on the Tempest.

Also I liked how there were more quests spread out throughout the game with the squad which I think was lacking in Inquisition. Plus. Movie Night is the best scene ever!

6.      In my opinion, the side quests were fun. I think this was one thing they improved from Inquisition. Inquisition side quests just felt like a bunch of fetch quests that got kind of boring pretty quick, and didn’t really add to the overall story. Some highlights from Andromeda were: Kadara, the angara reincarnation questline, the Turian jailed for murder, the anti-AI group, meeting Zaeed’s son, and those kids sending out a distress signal for a new light for their weed plant. HAHA!

They were compelling in their own right and included cut scenes instead of the Inquisitor going to some location like in Skyrim to do a thing come back to the quest giver saying, “I did the thing.” “Ok, good.”

7.      Unlike in Inquisition, there’s actual payoff for some of the quests you do. I don’t mean to be mean to Inquisition, I still love the game, but remember when we were promised that you had to build your forces up in order to defend against the main threat. Yeah, you built forces to get influence points to gain perks, and that’s it.

In Andromeda, while, yes. It’s not the same level as Mass Effect 2. When you actually complete quests and help out leaders, you can get different results during the final battle. Like, there’s a chance Captain Dunn may not survive.

Also, when you get 100% viability on all the planets, you get a special surprise on Habitat 7- being told that it will one day be habitable because of our efforts. Sure it was a side quest, but it just felt so rewarding!

8.      The climax was actually fulfilling and exciting. Again, something else Inquisition was lacking in. Seriously, when I first played Andromeda, I legit gasped when the archon was taking control of SAM node. The villain was actually living up to his threatening nature!

Just when we think we got everything under control, and are about to find Meridian, the Archon fucks shit up, and our sibling has to step up to save the day. Then we have to gather people we helped out and prepare for a final battle, and Ryder can finally prove themselves as a true Pathfinder and kick the Archon’s ass once and for all. People are saying the ending was as disappointing as ME3’s? Pfft…What are you even talking about?

9.      The angara. Bioware never fails to make me love an entire fictional species. Yeah, it feels a bit off that they pretty much have the same faces and the same 3 voice actors, but I really do love their culture. And I appreciate that they were clearly coded as POC while Andromeda didn’t go through with the whole Mighty Whitey Trope. The game wants you to respect their culture and to respect their home.

I love the angaran people are open about their feelings, I love how their religion believes in reincarnation, I love how we see angaran scientists, soldiers, merchants, mercenaries, and civilians. Also Aya and Hivraal are absolutely gorgeous!

And when Jaal finds out his people were created by the Kett, I was worried it was going to go the Dalish elves route, but Jaal points out that it doesn’t change anything about the angara. They are still their own people. And that was such an uplifting message.

10.  The overall light-hearted tone. I wrote a small post that got a good number of notes. (Probably the biggest number I’ve ever gotten), so to quote: “There was always this sense of hope and optimism about finding a new home. ‘Yeah, things may have gone totally wrong, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make them better’ was the overall message I got.

And really, with so many bad things happening in the world right now and too much of our entertainment supposedly being our escapism being dark for the sake of dark, this was something I think a lot of us needed.”

Mass Effect 3 had its light-hearted moments, and I love it, but man, that game was emotional draining.

It’s a bit discouraging to love something so much and get recommended videos on youtube pointing out the same flaws of that certain game, and why they thought it was a huge disappointment. Do I agree with some of their criticisms? Sure. Does the history behind the production explain the flaws? Oh absolutely.

           But people seem to forget that the original Mass Effect trilogy wasn’t without its flaws. I mean, sure everyone can agree on the Mass Effect 3 ending, but I could make a list of all the issues I have with the other Bioware games including Dragon Age: Inquisition (which despite winning Game of the Year, kind of suffers the same problems Andromeda had).

           So yeah, after the crap year of 2016, I was so excited to get a newly-released game that made me happy. And still makes me happy, and makes me in the mood to play another Ryder.

#mass effect #mass effect andromeda #me meta #meta #top 10 list #mass effect andromeda positive #bi jaal #angara #ryder #scott ryder #sara ryder #vetra x sara #vetra x ryder #jaal x scott #jaal x ryder #tempest family #mass effect positive #me:a #me:a spoilers

[theinfiniterick]

Ep 10 Shoddiness (Spoilers)

I'm procrastinating on some design homework for this but I just can't focus unless I get it out. Thus I'm going to elaborate on why I don't like this episode... and why Dan Harmon should stop writing.

Key points:

character inconsistency

rapid and unsubstantiated changes in interpersonal dynamic

underwhelming content for finale

That last one needs no further explanation except that the Ricklantis Mixup should have been the finale. I was blown away by that episode and it's definitely my favorite of all three seasons. No surprise that it's also top of the episode ranking list on IMDB.

Now, I can see why people might like the episode. The main plot was funny and we got to see Rick really unload some badassery with his gadgets and wit. I laughed a lot. It's important, however, to not overlook the misdirection and ultimately how it can invalidate character progression or principle plotlines.

Firstly, let's address character inconsistency.

I'm talking about Morty here. We ALL want Morty to progress, to grow, to go somewhere, to change a little... but we want to SEE it. We want to be there to see the growth along the way. When there are gross changes in character that haven't been substantiated by a turning point or haven't been eased into, writers invalidate the very concept of growth. We end up feeling empty while the characters feel less "real."

Morty here is incredibly confident, talks back to the president, doesn't care about his selfie, doesn't even say a single "aw, jeez" in this episode (if he did I seriously missed it)... AND... did you catch where he snaps at Rick with his body language while on the phone? I was shocked. (It also felt uncharacteristic of Rick to just take that.)

It all feels so alien and is a big change from the previous episode. --Oh wait we didn't see Morty in the previous episode. I mean the episode before that. Although, wait a minute. Summer completely reset both Rick and Morty to a state before ever going through the mind blowers, so we can't reference that. The episode before was the Ricklantis Mixup and all we saw of them was before and after entering Atlantis. Which leaves us with Ep 6: Rest and Ricklaxation. --No wait. Morty wasn't his actual self in that whole episode and seemingly returned to normal unconfident Morty afterward.

Episode before that was the Jerry episode. This is the last time we see full normal Morty go through any kind of plot that could progress his character before the finale. That was five whole episodes ago, AND unfortunately he was a sub-plot in that episode, not a main.

Why is this important? Good shows ease into character changes, not just pop them on viewers and make the excuse of "well he must have progressed off screen for the last 4 episodes."

Remember the first episode of the season and how it began with Rick seemingly explaining to his family "and that's how I broke out of prison"...? We were all pissed for a moment because we thought writers took the lazy off-screen-progression route and left us out of the whole damn escape. That's what I mean. Morty in this episode has progressed to a point that feels very out of nowhere with the excuse of "well he's been adventuring a lot with Rick off-screen."

Here's another character/inconsistency issue.

Morty didn't only talk back to the president and act like a little mini-Rick the whole episode. He also did something that should not have been used so lightly in the plot.

There are quite a lot of times in the series where something serious happens, Morty has had enough and he threatens Rick that he won't go with him, that "this is it." Each of those times so far have made sense considering what was at stake or what Rick put him through. Morty threatening to end adventures is not something used lightly and normally has substantial reasoning.

In this episode, however, Morty is completely willing to give up adventuring, abandon his grandpa and live in the woods with his family--something pretty huge--*without* a substantial reason. It's great that his parents got back together but was that really enough to warrant using that plot point? It feels like an incredible stretch and just messes with the realism and relatability that other episodes have established.

Let's talk about that interpersonal/family dynamic.

The end of the episode was the grossest part for me. We see the dynamic between Rick and the group completely turned upside down and somehow Rick ends up being treated like the black sheep of the family. It was weird. It was alien. It was frustrating to watch and I seriously wanted him to snap and just shoot all of them...... revealing they were all clones.

Why is Rick's status here such a problem? Some people say it was refreshing to finally have his family treat him like dirt instead of bowing down to him, but refreshing isnt at all what I would call it. This is yet another flip-switch that forces a rapid change without substantial reason. We didn't witness some big meaningful turning point that set them all as equals. We didn't witness any valid reason for condescending upon Rick, any feasible plot point for the power to change hands.

Secondly, the vast majority of us didn't get on this ride to see Rick treated like Doofus Rick. We fell in love with his command over life and the universe, his no fucks attitude, his disrespect for authority and being told what to do. It feels like the entire family just kinda crapped on him today for no good reason and he took it, uncharacteristicly.

Last but not least...

The last weird thing is that Rick even compromised to settle things with the president rather than put him in his place. The president didn't even learn a lesson or have any growth himself. This is really unlike Rick and unlike prior writing where antagonists realize where they went wrong (or of course just kicked the bucket.)

And are we really to believe that the president has a stalemate with the smartest man in the universe? The writing just defies everything we've come to know about Rick. He can topple an entire *galactic* federation but here they put him on a sort of "par" with the American government? Rick is a good three or four steps ahead of the elaborate scheme of Zigerian scammers, and we're expected to believe he never knew about illegal satellite spying? Rick has a device that rendered all squirrels inert for a radius probably about a block in size and we're expected to believe him and Morty would really just walk down the mine shafts shooting infestations individually with guns?

Again, it wasn't the presidential or political plot that I disliked. There was so much about this writing that just doesn't fit, is disappointing, underwhelming and defies previous character abilities/personality. It feels like it was a throwaway episode merely meant to align things the way they want it for next season: have Beth and Jerry back together without any issues, drop the idea of Beth being afraid of Rick leaving (but why drop that?), and set Rick up to be more indebted to the family, not have as much power over them. It sounds like they want to neutralize all series subplots (no more family drama, no more father daughter conflict) and get back to, as Beth mentioned, a more streamlined plot with just Rick and Morty.

While I do want them to show more of the main characters and stop going on these side escapades, having father-daughter conflict makes the show a lot more meaningful. Having Beth Summer and Morty want to stay in Rick's life because they love him makes the show more meaningful. Completely erasing that dynamic and now having the family shit on Rick and not care whether he stays or goes, having Morty be so willing to abandon adventures instead of be caught in dissonance between keeping his family happy and keeping Rick around...

Idk about you but that doesn't sound like the Rick and Morty I want to watch...

#rick and morty #rick and morty season 3 #rick sanchez #rick and morty season 3 finale #morty smith #dan harmon #bad writing