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lonewolfel · 2 years

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Titan’s Power

Luz, King, and Hooty were being chased by the Emperor's Coven when suddenly they weren't.

Twin Kings AU

Sorry Twin King anonymous. I wanted this out earlier but RW King was refusing to cooperate. I’m treating this as a starting point for any future oneshots I will write.

Scouts were chasing the trio. They had gone to the Owl House and they had unfortunately attracted the attention of the scouts. Then Luz and King tripped and fell onto the floor. Though instead of the forest floor they were met with paths.

"Wee?" King asked. Luz stood up and looked around. They were in Bonesborough and there were no scouts around them.

"What?" Luz asked. She noticed a wall that was full of wanted posters. She expected to see ones of herself and her friends but they were absent. Instead, it was replaced by a single wanted poster that depicted a woman wearing a long dark blue cloak with its hood pulled up and a dark blue raven mask on with a white and gold raven palisman. Underneath it said 'Wanted The Raven Witch'. "Is that...?"

"Lulu!" Hooty cried.

"That doesn't make any sense. Lilith was never a criminal before now." King said.

"What if we accidentally stumbled upon an alternate universe where there are slight differences!" Luz exclaimed. King looked down at his claws. He was the cause of this. He didn't know why or how.

"Oooohhhh Lulu would be so fascinated," Hooty said.

"We need to get back," Luz said

"I don't know how," King said. Luz and Hooty looked back at the young Titan. Luz looked at him with sympathy.

"We'll figure it out. Maybe someone here can help us." Luz said.

"LUZ!" Willow called. Luz looked around in shock. Then they caught sight of another Luz. One that looked happy and carefree. Gus followed behind Willow and they hugged.

The three of them moved closer to the three friends. They made sure that no one saw them move toward them. How would people react to seeing two Luzs? The hug broke and the friends began to talk.

"...Oh, I am so ready." the other Luz said.

"Hootsifer, what are you doing here? Luz, what are you wearing?" Lilith's voice sounded behind them. They screamed in shock. They turned around and saw Lilith was wearing a dark dress and shirt. She wore a torn and dirty dark blue cloak with the hood pulled over her head and most of her face was covered in shadows though they could make out her glasses and her mouth.

"LULU!" Hooty cried wrapping around her. Though Lilith paid no mind to that but continued to look at Luz.

"Is that Edalyn's Grudgby jacket?" Lilith asked. It was difficult to tell what she was thinking.

"Well...uhm...its..." Luz stuttered

"It is." King broke in. Lilith looked down at him and her entire body tense. Her palisman turned into a staff.

"What is he doing here?" Lilith demanded. Her voice showed clear disdain. This confused the trio.

"Hey, Lilith who are you talking to?" The other Luz asked from behind the witch. Lilith turned around and seemed to do a double-take. The other Luz noticed their Luz. Her eyes widened comically. "Woah!" Their Luz began to laugh nervously.

"We have much to discuss," Lilith said. She turned around and began to walk away. The other Luz followed her and the rest of them followed behind them.

~~~

King was sitting out in the forest. They had explained what had happened besides the fact that he is a titan. Lilith quickly figured out that they fell through a rift created by Titan's blood or in their case an inexperienced Titan.

They had since then moved on to the pairs comparing notes on their life with Lilith digging through books to figure out how to send them back. King honestly felt left out. Lilith didn't help matters. She kept glaring at him as if she expected him to do something awful.

"I'm only saying this once so listen up. You are all pathetic." A very familiar voice said. King headed over to where he heard the voice making sure to stay hidden. "Head Witch Eda wishes her sister to be brought in." Then King saw something that shocked him.

He saw himself standing in the middle of a group of scouts. He was wearing what was clearly Emperor's Coven clothing.

The coven scouts grumbled and groaned. They moved slowly to follow their orders. This angered Coven King.

"Get moving. We need to strike before the house demon..." The other King started

"Heya!" One of the Hooties said popping out of the ground. There was a shriek and all of the scouts went running. Tho that was a fair response to Hooty.

"Oh come on!" The other King cried.

"Sorry dude, we aren't fighting that thing for you." One of the scouts said.

"Heya King! Lulu would be so happy to see you!" Hooty said. Hooty wrapped around him.

"LET GO OF ME!" The other King cried.

"Ok," Hooty said cheerfully. The other King was dropped onto the ground with a muddy splat. "It's for the best we have company." The other King began to stand up and wipe the muck off of him.

"Who would ever want to visit you?" The other King snarled.

"Well..." Hooty started. King decided to but in.

"Leave him alone, Hooty," King said.

"Ok." Hooty agreed. With that, the house demon was gone. The other King turned around.

"Who are you?" The other King demanded.

"I'm an alternate version of you," King said. The other King looked him up and down.

"So what, I've been downgraded to a pet." The other King huffed.

"I'm not a pet. I'm part of a family. What would you know coven lackey." King defended.

"I am the second in command to Head Witch Eda of the Emperor's Coven." The other King shot back.

"Well, I'm second to no one," King responded

"Well, I have true power." The other King shot back.

"I'm not so sure. Those scouts sure didn't listen to you." King responded. The other King's face twisted in anger.

"You know what. I don't know about the world that you come from but here you don't mess with coven officials." The other King said. With that, he walked away.

King had a feeling that this wouldn't be the last they see of each other.

#owl house #the owl house #luz noceda #toh king #lilith clawthorne #hooty #twin kings #toh #fanfic #fan fiction #the raven witch au

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kindaorangey · 2 years

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im so fuckin. confused actually. yet another long post about 'any sport in a storm' under the cut.

so here's the dilemma: at the end of the episode, it's implied that hunter will keep in contact with willow, gus, viney and skara, and therefore may keep his place on the team by sneaking out to practises, despite willow saying she needs to find a replacement for him.

HOWEVER,

luz and amity both have direct experience with how hunter is fake-nice to get what he wants and altogether untrustworthy!

luz - probably undecided about hunter, or at least she might have been before the events of eclipse lake. as far as she knows, hunter has some good in him, but is still a genuine threat and, as we see with amity, appealing to his loneliness/need for a friend Does Not always make him change his mind and do the right thing

amity - probably hates hunter more than luz (i mean, depending on how much she told luz), since he manipulated her (using her insecurity around luz to his advantage, appealing to their shared experiences to gain her sympathy, then betraying her) and proceeded to threaten her AND luz.

now, willow and gus' loyalty kinda comes into question here, but mostly willow's since it's ultimately her decision if hunter stays on the team or not. points to remember:

we do not know how much luz and amity have told each other or willow about their interactions with hunter. it is possible that willow will give hunter another chance because she simply does not know the full extent of how he has hurt her friends. i think this would be a stupid writing decision, but there it is.

hunter is no more valuable a team member than gus, skara, or viney. it's shown most simply in how willow quickly accepts that she's just going to have to find a replacement: willow does not need hunter as a team member. THEREFORE,

the only reason willow has to keep in contact with him would be to remain friends with him, and,

hunter Needs to have friends so that he breaks the careful shelter of isolation that belos has created (i.e. this is necessary for his character arc)

what i'm trying to get at is that the way this is going to unfold is a bit of a brick wall to me?? willow has no reason to keep hunter as a friend or a team member, because i just don't believe she'd essentially.. spit in luz and amity's faces like that? if nothing else, willow is not stupid enough to ignore their inevitable advice against trying to befriend him, but moreover i just don't buy that willow "i want to be strong and wise to protect everyone i love, and if anyone gets in my way, they'll feel the sting of defeat" park would be able to look past the ways hunter has been shitty to luz and amity.

this points towards willow only giving him a chance because of one of two reasons: a) luz and amity don't tell the full story, or b) willow elects to ignore it because she just likes hunter as a person.

if it's a).... eh, that's kind of really boring? this episode was literally already "hunter gets to be seen as a normal teenager, makes friends because of it, then it's revealed the sort of person he really is by virtue of his being the golden guard, and they don't want to be friends with him anymore". doing that again would be kinda uncreative and im not really interested in watching that. on the other hand, it may be the case that willow will just never get told the full extent of how hunter hurt luz and amity. i don't know how to feel about that option

if it's b), that's fuckin uhh. stupid. because all they really have is the "half-a-witch" solidarity and like one day of working as a team? as far as i'm concerned, that won't be enough for willow to be friends with hunter despite luz and amity's advice against it.

or, y'know. it's a kid's show and they're kids, so they're going to brush over it and let hunter be friends with willow without it impacting her friendship with luz or amity much or at all. which is possible, i just think the owl house tends to be better-written than that.

tl;dr: i'm at a fucking loss for what will happen regarding hunter now veing penstagram friends with the emerald entrails

#toh #the owl house #any sport in a storm #toh spoilers #thunder rambles

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jennycalendar · 3 years

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What do you think would've happened if Wesley was Buffy's first watcher in Sunnydale and Giles came in to replace him in season 3?

Also what if Jenny didn't die while this was happening bc like. If we're having fun anyway we gotta include Jenny she's The Most Fun

oh my god i think that's the buffy and jenny timeline. i really do.

see, wesley is so not a good watcher when he shows up in sunnydale. i've always been of the mind that giles is a horrible dad and an AMAZING watcher, specifically because a watcher's job is to train and prepare a slayer for the mission ahead -- and buffy's unwavering devotion to giles means that she is totally willing to follow his lead if she finds his requests reasonable, plus giles's love and respect for buffy means that he in turn is willing to listen and adapt if buffy thinks his methods unreasonable and unfair. thing is, though, wesley does not have any interest in fostering that kind of camraderie with a girl who he sees primarily as a disobedient disciple: he feels WAY too entitled to buffy's respect to ever actually EARN it, because he is gonna constantly treat her like she's lesser for not just perpetually following his lead. which of course will not fly well with buffy AT ALL.

so you know who i think buffy is gonna start turning to? jenny. like, if her two options are 1) her watcher, who has absolutely no sympathy for her as a human person because she refuses to be a cookie-cutter council-approved slayer and is therefore a Rebellious Waste of Resources or 2) the technopagan who helped cast a demon from the internet, knows a TON about magic, is willow's favorite teacher, and is very willing to help buffy when she needs it? buffy is absolutely going to go straight towards jenny.

(this is getting long lmao so more under the cut!)

the change in giles was something that came about because he saw himself in buffy -- she is rebellious in a way that comes from a very compassionate person not being listened to when they say that they have been wronged. wesley, imo, would be far less willing to cut buffy slack, because he is a lot younger and therefore a lot more attached to ideas that aren't his own. he relies on the council because he doesn't know who he is without it. (same as giles, but giles is a little more okay with that ambiguity than wesley, i think. it's hard for him but it isn't the level of Life-Shattering Change that wes went through when the council kicked HIM to the curb.)

so in this version, wesley and jenny are pretty much constantly at odds, but they reach this weird little detente wherein wesley is willing to let jenny handle his slayer's unfathomable emotions and mentor her as long as he's allowed to drill her and take her on patrols and stuff. while wesley and buffy are nowhere near as close as buffy and giles, i do still think that by season three, they have a kind of weird understanding and a pale, watery imitation of buffy and giles's bond. buffy likes wesley well enough. she kinda looks at him like he's this golden retriever puppy she needs to keep an eye on sometimes.

JENNY, however, is the one who buffy has latched onto with all of her might, which in turn has caused a quiet little fissure between buffy and willow (who was jenny's unequivocal and obvious favorite before buffy came along). there are a lot of girls vying for mom's attention in season three -- faith is jealous of buffy like nine times more than in canon, because everybody gets a boring old watcher, but buffy gets a biological mom who is around AND a mentor/unofficial BONUS mom who understands how hard it is to be a slayer. it is literally such a mess and jenny is handling it to the best of her abilities but does not have half the support she needs wrt getting shit done.

the cruciamentum pretty much goes down as it does in canon -- i do think that wesley would falter, because he is a good guy at his core, and the truth of what the council is doesn't seem like something he was willing to accept in canon's season three (if the way he handed faith unceremoniously over to the council goons is any indication). but having to see firsthand this kiddo who he has trained go into a situation where he's certain she'll die? he can't do it. so he tells jenny that he's struggling, because he knows she will flip, and she DOES, and everything kinda goes to shit. wesley gets fired for involving a civilian in watcher matters, JENNY gets forbidden from EVER seeing buffy again, and giles is sent down to reinforce this doctrine.

now, bear in mind, this is a version of giles who has not spent three years with buffy. but this is ALSO a version of giles who, as every version of giles does, falls in love with jenny from the very fucking moment she storms up to him and starts yelling at him about how inhumane the council is. all of the kids are kind of expecting jenny to win against the guy they have unkindly dubbed "wesley 2.0" (god that is such a cursed phrase to type when referencing GILES), seeing as wesley kinda crumbled after two seconds of one of jenny's lectures, but giles gives as good as he gets. giles is not just gonna take insults to the council lying down.

so giles and jenny probably might have spent like the next four seasons screaming at each other if not for the fact that this is also when faith kills a guy by accident. and this is of course a situation that resonates HUGELY with giles! jenny and wesley are both ultra defensive and expecting him to immediately be like "i't's my responsibility to report this to the council," but giles instead is very firmly like. the council is understanding when it comes to youthful accidents, but they're not gonna take kindly to this situation, so we're all going to need to put our differences aside and figure out a way to help faith.

i think giles is actually what pulls faith over to the scooby side for good! like, he is this misfit who the others don't like, he GETS what faith has been through, he's able to relate. they form a very solid and special connection. (this thought was very much inspired by this post by @restlesshush where she mentions that giles and faith overlap significantly, so that's a definite influence wrt my convictions.) faith really likes feeling special to somebody, i think, and it means a lot to her that it's somebody who everyone else is still on the fence about. she gets to be someone's favorite slayer. i feel like she might have at one point wanted that with wesley in canon, before actually meeting him -- hoped on some quiet level that she'd matter More to somebody. and then of course she saw him and was immediately like. yeah. absolutely not.

meanwhile JENNY is seeing giles step up for this traumatized kid and make sure she is okay and run interference with the council to buy them all time while they figure shit out, and suddenly she's like. 💕 oh no. 💕 and buffy is so so viscerally horrified by this reaction.

#asks #anonymous #headcanon #this would be SUCH a good fic actually holy SHIT.

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wombathos · 4 years

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1.8 i robot... you jane

- this episode is so late nineties, it’s beautiful

- what is up with the starting scene where the pretty boy is asked to profess his love to the wrinkly moloch (the corruptor) demon

- so i robot… you jane is a fun episode title (riffing off tarzan) (also asimov! specifically I’m guessing his robopsychologist stories got to admire the man’s commitment to cool scifi versions of psychology about positronic brains and stuff) and it’s not like those influences are entirely absent from the episode itself but… eh. the tarzan and jane stuff is there in the interactions between characters from different........ cultures, fine, I guess? and I suppose one form of a positronic brain would be some ancient demon consciousness as a machine, sure that’s what asimov had in mind

- the scanning magic words and thus letting the demon loose in the computer is admittedly a neat idea, playing off the whole ~power of the words themselves~ trope and trying to bring the magic and tech worlds together (though contrast with s4 episodes that just had unabashedly scifi villains like adam without needing to explicitly involve magic, iirc anyway). also like how the words disappear when they’re scanned - which reminds me of dark willow sucking those magic shop books dry, ~uploading~ them as a source of power

- bit of a tonal disconnect between a character going “I’m jacked in I’m jacked in I’m jacked in” but then in the next shot committing decidedly disturbing self harm

- “to read makes our speaking english good” is just a beautiful line

- one thing I appreciate about btvs episodes - as someone who gets really strong second hand embarrassment - is that even though main characters occasionally have to be idiots for plot purposes, they usually don’t go too far. willow does get suspicious pretty quickly when malcolm knows too much about buffy. and despite how it did tackle the whole ‘oh well you never know who you’re talking to on the internet!’ by going ‘it COULD be a robot/ancient demon’, which... well. it does at least devote some time to the students’ loneliness and why willow might want to believe that the internet guy is real

- “okay, for those in our studio audiences who are me?” nice fourth wall nudge by xander there

- the ‘suicide’ of the boy catches me unawares every single time I watch this episode. it’s such a jarringly dark moment. idk, it’s not like btvs doesn’t normally switch up tones and I can’t attest to how this would’ve played to audiences in the 90s, but I think where I struggle is that despite alluding to plenty of serious fears of technology, the actual plot is... really quite silly (especially the way the fritz character is written), but it doesn’t necessarily feel like the episode is acknowledging that in the same way other episodes might or even seem to be aware of it - so a lot of the dark stuff feels quite cheap and used only for shock value. hence the tonal disconnect

- the robot in the military facility gives it a proto-s4 vibe

- “the divine exists in cyberspace” ha

- about the technopagan thing - it is interesting as a s1-ism since after the early years there’s a lot of emphasis on magic and science as oppositional worlds, which is discussed a lot in relation to willow but isn’t exclusive to her either. like in a post-s2 world, they could’ve gone with willow continuing on with jenny’s path to find a sort of union of the two worlds, contrasting that with giles old-school approach, but they don’t, really. there’s moments where the two meet, like when willow uses magic to make a computer search go faster at some point in s6, but even for willow they mostly remain very separate? she’s adept in both, but in s4 it’s all about how she’s into all the ‘new age’ witch stuff now (not so much in love with those computers any more, she’s into that new trendy thing, get it, get it), then in s6 and in bits of s7, she tries to replace magic by going back to her computer skills. so there’s not really a lot of technopagan-ing going around (not really thought through the implications of this, but I feel like this could’ve been something interesting for her to explore in s7 when she’s trying to forge a new identity of sorts? then again, that would mean you’d need a concrete idea of what technopaganism constitutes beyond ‘using the computer to research stuff’ and ‘doing remote magic circles’ and the more I think about it, it does feel kinda gimmick-y. here it’s fine because it’s the contrast between new and old but… at most tech could be reintegrated into s7 in that faintly utopian noughties spirit of finding community through the internet and willow making her own way, reaching out to others like her, all that collective empowerment schtick) and WOW this is a tangent and a half, anyway

- this is an odd episode for cordelia to miss since it feels like she would’ve fit right into pushing the lonely nerds a little further in their loneliness and their ‘no one else understands me’ thing, except maybe given the dark turn of this episode, they felt like that’d make cordelia look a bit too bad/distract from the main plot

- speaking of lonely nerds, on the balance of s1 villains, the bullied do end up being the villains more often than the bullies, don’t they? for the former you get fritz, invisible girl, admittedly fake-out villain of puppet show. then while the nightmares kid isn’t bullied or a villain, he is abused and thus also a victim. for the latter, there’s the pack. other villains are a teacher, a coach and a mother - all authority figures - and then various vampires who don’t at all fit into the high school hierarchy. all in all, there’s a lot of characters using the supernatural to lash out at others, often their bullies, with sometimes more and sometimes less sympathy afforded to them. but then you also have the protagonists, who are themselves put-upon nerds but ones who don’t (yet) reach to supernatural solutions to dealing with their high school enemies, as well as the negative ways in which the figures at the top of the hierarchy, including cordelia, are portrayed throughout the season. so maybe there’s a fairly even split in how the supernatural is both used in tormenting the weak but also used by the weak to lash out in turn, reacting to their powerlessness (but not in a way the audience is meant to see as good or right)

- moloch telling willow “you are mine”, even robots are doing the male possessiveness thing these days

- “let’s face it. none of us are ever gonna have a happy, normal relationship” press f to pay respects

#btvs #leela watches btvs #suicide mention cw #self harm mention cw #anyway the less interesting the episodes; the wilder the tangents #but also #JENNYYYYYY

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tialovestelevision · 7 years

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Where the Wild Things Are

I know the premise of this episode, and that means I need to give some background on me. Hello, I’m Tia. I’m a 35-year-old transgender woman from the Deep South. I didn’t realize I was trans until my late 20s, but… well, that’s a story for if I blog something about the nature of gender. What’s a story for now is that, when I wasn’t quite a preteen, my parents converted from “nonpracticing conservative-but-vague Christian” to “hardcore fundamentalist Church of Christ Christian.” My mother, who had introduced me to Asimov and Tolkien and Hawking and Baum and to Meat Loaf and Led Zeppelin and these great, beautiful, PASSIONATE works of television (Star Trek!) and cinema and music and literature eliminated all of that from her life and replaced it, over time, with Bible readings and Carmen and goddamn Veggie Tales and did I mention Carmen? And my father, who’d ecouraged me to learn as much as possible even if he didn’t understand what I was learning, who brought me the Stones and Dylan and protest and war and gotten me my very first computer - a real PC clone! - when nobody else I knew had one because that was the future… he closed off to new information, to the world as a whole. I refused to homeschool even though I was badly bullied because I knew that school would keep me a link to the world. I played their sympathy to study astrophysics over the summer, and learned there to measure the distance to the stars and to see that the universe was far older than my preacher said it was. I was hit. Not as often as some others I knew. What my father did to me would not, under legal definitions, count as child abuse. What he did to my brother, who was far more obedient to what he wanted his children to be but far less able to play the part when he was disobedient, who couldn’t keep his mouth closed to keep himself safe, and who was younger and smaller… that might have. Probably did. But what he did to me still shaped me. The things I heard spoken from that pulpit changed me more, I think. I spent so long being taught the fear of God that it took moving away from faith and wandering through a dozen different belief systems before I could see the wonder of God. This is a story about spirits trapped by fundamentalist Christian abuse and possession. I don’t know how much the nature of that abuse is going to be relevant to what actually happens in the episode, but I think it’s important to know the context I come at this topic from. The author, they say, is dead - what the author intended to say with a work is far less important than what the reader or viewer takes from it - and the reader, the viewer, is very much alive, and comes to everything they read and watch with the context of the life they’ve lived hovering around them. Those are the glasses through which we see our entertainment. With that out of the way… we watch. 1. Previously On gives us a reminder of the romantic relationships so far in the show - Buffy/Riley, Anya/Xander, Willow/Tara. Then we get Buffy and Riley fighting a vampire and a demon. “You get Fang, I’ll get Horny.” Heh. Demon is dead. Vampire is staked. That was a workout. Vampires and demons don’t ever work together, except all the times we’ve seen them do so. But I think Buffy and Riley are going to have sex instead of telling Giles. Yep. . 2. We’re in a house. Is it the frat house? It is. Buffy and Riley are asleep in Riley’s room. Remind me to talk about the Kuzuis at some point - that’s a fascinating story of how the TV industry works. Riley heard a noise… dripping. Creepy music. He’s in the bathroom. His room doesn’t have its own. There’s a leaky faucet. He turned it off. We cut to an ice cream truck in a residential neighborhood. It’s Xander and Anya. Xander wants to go to a party at the frat house, but Anya is worried because the Initiative is there and she used to be a demon. Also, she thinks Xander doesn’t find her attractive because they didn’t have sex last night, which is the third time that’s happened. “I don’t understand. I’m pretty. I’m young. Why didn’t you take advantage of me?” And there are children outside the truck. Xander is very, very fired. 3. Buffy and Riley are talking about the demon and vampire. They think Adam did it, because duh. Giles wants them to see if they find any more odd pairings. Riley speaks Giles’s language when explaining the party, but Giles is going to the Expresso Pump for a meeting of grown-ups that will be of no interest to any of his friends. Buffy can’t keep her hand off of Riley. They’re going off for a quickie before Buffy’s class. 4. Sun’s down and it’s party time, I think. But Buffy and Riley are still having sex. They’re getting yet another condom. Building is unnaturally cold, but that doesn’t seem to be bothering Buffy and Riley. The fireplace just exploded and set an Initiative guy on fire. 5. Spike is trying to rob Anya, but she’s not afraid of him. Looks like the party’s still on even after someone being on fire. Buffy and Riley are at the party. The guy who got burned just lost his eyebrows. Willow and Tara and Xander are there. Buffy keeps staring at Riley and doesn’t hear anything anyone is saying. Anya, meanwhile, is hanging out with Spike. She’s commiserating. They’re both not scary demons any more, and everything is complicated. Love always ends badly. “I’ve seen a thousand relationships. First there’s the love and the sex, then there’s nothing left but the vengeance.” Spike suggested that they do vengeance together… Anya eviscerate Xander, Spike stakes Drusilla. Sounds like a lovely bonding moment. They’re not going to do it, though. 6. Now we get to watch painful minor character flirting. Yay? And one of the minor characters just had an orgasm while standing there and talking to the other. Three orgasms. Xander is talking to a girl. And flirting. He’s going to get eviscerated. So eviscerated. Buffy, meanwhile, wants to go have sex with Riley. The wall is making people have orgasms. Willow is with Tara and talking and they keep staring at each other. Tara loves to ride horses and invited Willow to go with her. Willow tried to touch Tara’s shoulder but Tara was suddenly disgusted. Tara look terrified and ran off to the bathroom. And Spike’s there with Anya. Xander feels all jealous, but Spike shut him up. Spike needs a drink. Anya and Xander fight hilariously. Xander found people playing Spin the Bottle. One is the girl he was flrting with earlier; she invited him to play. 7. Spike is drinking with an Initiative gut. The guy didn’t recognize him, but knows he looks familiar. Xander spun the bottle and it pointed at the girl from earlier. They’re going to kiss. Wow, she’s fairly aggressive with it. Now she’s horrified by what she just did and running away. Xander found the orgasm wall. And someone sobbing in a closet. It’s Julie, cutting her hair off. Willow is trying to find Tara. She went to the bathroom, where she washed her face then heard something from the bathtub. She’s checking it out. One of the guys… no, a ghost. Under the water. Drowning. Now he’s behind her. 8. Riley and Buffy heard Willow scream but aren’t getting up. Willow is searching for Xander and Willow. Found them both. Tara doesn’t like the house because it’s haunted. And now the bottle’s gone mad and exploded and seriously injured someone. They’re going to get Buffy. But Riley’s door just grew a tree that’ll keep them from getting in, and Buffy and Riley are still having sex. In… space? That’s a really long zoom-out shot of their bed. 9. Tara just walked away from the door, and there’s an earthquake. Tara’s on a balcony. The quake is emptying the room, but got strong enough that everybody fell down. And Spike’s strapped to a chair.Graham is possessed by a Fundamentalist spirit that’s preaching to Forrest. Forrest is getting him down to the Initiative, though. Anya’s still in the building and a screaming ghost just ran through her. And the quake is starting again. 10. Spike is trying to break loose of his chair, and Xander got Julie out. She’s mostly bald now. Forrest and Graham are locking the Initiative down. Xander and Spike are going to back inside… well, Spike talked himself out of it, so Xander’s going back in. And got thrown out by a spirit. “Or… it could get Watcher time.” 11. Giles is singing. “Behind Blue Eyes.” With an acoustic guitar. He’s… really good. Xander is creeped out, though. He wants to go back to the haunted house. Giles saw them, but is finishing his song. Willow once had a crush on him, and Anya is staring. Hard. Very hard. 12. Now the tree from Riley’s room has taken over the house, and Buffy and Riley are still having sex. 13. “In the midst of all that, did you really think they were keeping it up?” *awkward silence* “Oh, for a different phrasing.” THAT is writing. 14. Now we learn the backstory of the dorm. It was a house for disadvantaged children and adolescents run by Genevieve Holt. She’s still alive, so they’re going to visit her. “I treated them as if they were my own flesh and blood… gave them hugs and praise when they were good, and punished them when they were dirty.” Oh god, Anya’s face here. 15. Nitpick: I’m watching this with Netflix’s subtitles on so I can get all the dialogue. Netflix’s subtitles for the show miss out on a lot of capitalizations - they never capitalize Slayer, for example. Calling. Things like that. Here, they missed one that’s really important for the cultural context of the story. “Without me, they would have been shut out of the Kingdom.” They didn’t capitalize Kingdom. In Christian writing, you capitalize that when you’re talking about Heaven. 16. Anya’s face here. This is a woman who has committed incredible, often disproportionate, acts of cruelty. Who delighted in it. And listening to this woman describe what she did to children has her utterly disgusted. I think, even if I didn’t know this thing happens, even if I didn’t see the hints of it in my own youth… holy fuck, Emma Caufield, you are amazing here. Head and Brendon are also doing a good job, but wow. It’s Anya’s scene, and it’s almost all in her face, and she’s incredible. 17. The house isn’t haunted by actual ghosts - it’s haunted by the energy of what Holt did to the children there. Intense emotion, pain, sexual energy and repression. The poltergeists are draining Buffy and Riley’s life energy through the sex they’re having, while influencing them to have more sex. 18. Willow, Tara, and Giles are going to bind the spirits long enough for Xander and Anya to get Riley and Buffy out. Anya can sense the haunting, which is a neat talent. Willow and Giles and Tara have called the spirits to Tara’s room, so Xander and Anya really should be going in. Which they’re doing. The tree’s taken over - good thing Xander brought a machete. Wind kicked up when Xander tried to open the door. The spirits threw Tara’s table across the room, and they lost the spirits. Xander got dragged into the bathroom and Anya thrown off the balcony. Xander’s being drowned now. Anya’s up, and the spirits are screaming. She’s going up the stairs… her ankle’s hurt. Her hand got impaled by the tree but she’s tough as all fuck and got Xander out of the tub. Tree’s still attacking them as they head for Riley’s room. They're through the door, and just opened it. The tree’s gone and the house is safe. 19. The last scene was all right and wrapped things up. Overall: Emma Caufield. Anya makes this whole thing work. From the moment she’s having drinks with Spike, this is her episode, and she nails it hard. Seriously, she’s utterly brilliant here. Particularly in her scene at Holt’s house and in the frat house with the tree attacking them… she’s just wonderful. I’m not really sure what to say about the rest of the episode. Fundamentalist sexual repression is incredibly harmful, leaving those subject to it with both serious issues surrounding sex and badly incomplete information about it. That’s deliberate - Fundamentalist Christianity is the Christianity of judgement, or punishment for “sin.” In a world where suffering can leave an impression on a place, certainly that - plus decades of intense physical, emotional, and spiritual abuse of children - would do so. This episode is very triggery. But it’s also worthwhile, because it’s the first real time the writers have given a story to Anya to tell, and good God does she nail it.

#buffy #anya #buffy season 4 #buffy the vampire slayer #where the wild things are

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sufferthesea · 6 years

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The Rivalry

Chapter 3 of Leather and Lace

Words: 2.087 Pairings/Warnings/Rating: Remus x OC, Sirius x OC / Bullying, implied ableism / Teen Part 1 | Previous | AO3 | FFN

The hospital wing wasn't too bad – Catlin got food, hot tea, and didn't really have to worry about classes or homework. (At least not yet – she wasn't entirely sure if she'd have to make up missed days or not.) Still, Madam Pomfrey was nice enough, although she forbade anyone visiting. It was only a few hours after she had been admitted to the hospital wing when someone else arrived, though this one was unassisted by friends. Catlin was pretending to be asleep so she didn't have to make small talk with the new patient, but when Madam Pomfrey greeted them, she opened one eyes to sneak a peek at who it was.

She nearly jumped up when she saw who it was – the same long-haired boy from the night before! He had a nasty black eye which he attributed to a stray Bludger from Quidditch practice. His other wounds – another long bruise along his ribs and a sprained ankle – were also said to be the result of falling off his broom after he was hit in the face with a Bludger. Pomfrey didn't doubt him, but it didn't really sound like she believed him either.

“You always manage to get so beat up this time of the month,” she mused as she bandaged him. “It's almost as if you went up against a Whomping Willow.” There was a hint of knowing in her voice and Catlin blushed for him, knowing that he had been outside the night before – the same night she had gotten her own injuries from the Whomping Willow.

“Must be a clumsy time for me,” he said without skipping a beat. “I think it has to do with the full moon. It makes me act a bit funny. A little loony, you see.”

“I'm sure that it's just that,” Pomfrey said as she ushered the man towards the door. “Now get out and get back to class.”

“Class?” he asked incredulously. “With these injuries? Madam Pomfrey, you can't expect me to hobble to class and concentrate when I've just plummeted out of the sky and harmed myself!”

“Yes I do, Mister Black. You have missed far too many classes already, according to your teachers. Your ankle isn't too bad for you to stay here. Just keep weight off of it and you'll be fine.”

“You want me to hop? Like a rabbit? Madam Pomfrey, please. I'm not … I'm not an animal.”

Catlin thought she could hear him almost laugh at the comment, but Pomfrey was unfazed.

“Get back to class, Mister Black.”

He huffed and turned, starting for the door. With every other step he let out a dramatic, pained cry and looked over his shoulder at the nurse who had no sympathy for him. He hobbled over towards the door, gave a final, pathetic look at Pomfrey, then grumbled something under his breath and left. Pomfrey rolled her eyes and stopped by Catlin's bed to check on her.

“Who was that?” she asked quietly, acting as if his cries had woken her from a peaceful sleep.

“That? It was Sirius Black. He's a bit older than you – in Gryffindor house. A bit of a troublemaker, if you ask me.”

“I thought … I thought you didn't let students leave here until they're completely healed.”

“I don't, normally.” She picked up an empty mug from the bedside table. “But he is in here quite often with such injuries, and they aren't life threatening. A few days and all the bruises will disappear. And he can walk just fine, even with a sprained ankle. I think he tried to use anything to get out of class. A few teachers have told me to send him right back on out if he comes in complaining about anything other than massive internal bleeding or a nearly decapitated head. He's missed a lot of school this year. In any case, it's nothing like when I have to keep him out when his friend is here. What a trouble that is!”

“His friend?”

Pomfrey smiled and patted Catlin's head. “Don't worry about it, dear. You'll be out of here before long.” She departed, leaving Catlin alone with her thoughts.

His friend? As far as she knew, he had two – the one with the glasses and the short, blonde one. She couldn't imagine why either of them would be in the hospital wing often enough for Pomfrey to comment on Sirius being a pain to keep out. There was that other one that they had been looking for that night, but she hadn't ever seen him. Perhaps that's where he had been last night – in the hospital wing.

Settling back into her pillows, she closed her eyes and fell asleep, doing the only thing she could do to pass the time while in recovery.

Goldie sat in her History of Magic class, bored out of her mind. She really liked magic, and she really liked history, but the history of magic was just awful. Of course it was important, but it was just so boring. The only good thing about the class was the boy who sat one row ahead and two seats to the right of her, the raven-haired Slytherin boy named Jake DeLeon. He was a year older than her, and he didn't say much to her, but it didn't really matter. There was just something about him. Probably because he was one of the few Slytherins who didn't try to live up to their rumors of evil, and was actually a decent guy.

She casually glanced around the room when she stretched, looking for the mysterious Gryffindor boys who had her friend's wand. Every seat was filled and not a single classmate was one of the boys. Sighing, she slumped forward with her chin in her hands and scanned over the notes on the board. This was even worse than Potions, which she only hated because she didn't get along with Good Ol' Sluggy. She was startled when the teacher, Professor Uggeri, pointed a spindly, white finger at her and shouted:

“Miss Hope! What was the name of the founder who is believed to have made the Room of Requirement?”

Temporarily stunned, she stared blankly at the impossibly thin teacher who eyed her closely. She opened her mouth but nothing came out. She actually did know the answer (though she and most of her classmates had never seen the room themselves), but she was drawing a blank, having been scared half to death by being called on out of the blue.

An unkind snicker rippled around the room from behind her. She cast a look over her shoulder at the girl who had started laughing first. Bernice Broderick, a pasty girl with a face perpetually pinched in either a scowl or a sneer and dirty blonde hair that was always pulled back into a tight pony, smirked back at Goldie. Bernice really had no reason to dislike Goldie – she generally disliked everybody, and made a point of saying so. The only people she got along with were her small group of listless followers – an equally snobby brunette who was long past the hope braces brought; a tiny platinum blonde girl who was always trying to push kids over and ended up falling over herself (resulting in lots of bruises, scabby knees, and raw elbows); and a round girl who waddled rather than walked and whose face looked as if she had sucked on a lemon and it was trying to twist into itself to disappear. None of their features were bad in themselves – what was really ugly was their personalities, and that they thought they were better than literally every other student at the school. It didn't even have to do with blood purity – as half of them were Muggle-born and the others were half-bloods. They were just snobby, selfish, bratty children and their leader had singled out Goldie because of a potential threat.

Jake DeLeon.

It was no secret Bernice liked Jake. She made it very plain to everyone around her. Often threatening other girls to not “even look at him”, and saying that if they dared to speak to him they would have to deal with the “wrath” of her lackeys. Not that it was much of a threat, but it was rather annoying to be minding your own business and have Bernice and her gang pop up out of nowhere to berate you in shrill voices about “looking at Jake when you were taking notes, and you know that's not allowed because only my eyes are ALLOWED TO LOOK AT HIM!!!”

Goldie was a threat because she didn't just dare to look at Jake, she dared to talk to him and even share notes with him after class. They had even planned a study date for the end of the week (which, she mused, she may have to cancel if she still hadn't gotten Catlin's wand back by then) which made Bernice anything but happy.

Goldie's crush wasn't even very obvious – she was just kind and friendly, and apparently that was a mortal sin to Bernice and her posse. Bernice scrunched up her tiny, pinchy face and sneered at Goldie from a few rows back.

“Do you know the answer, you big dummy?”

Unaffected by the rather childish question, Goldie turned back to Professor Uggeri and his deep, sunken eyes, who looked a bit like he had lived through the thousands of years of history he was teaching. “Sorry,” she said. “I can't think of it right now.”

“HA!” Bernice shouted, “What a big, ol’ dummy! She doesn’t even know who made the Room of Requirement!”

Uggeri turned to Bernice, “And do you know it, Miss Broderick?”

It seemed impossible that her face could get more pinchy or her sneer wider, but it did. How she managed that was always a surprise to Goldie, and she half wondered if there was a Sneering Spell to make your face contort into such an ugly, mean look. She would have said that Bernice invented it herself, but she knew that the blonde wasn't patient enough to do that.

“Of course I do!” She turned her sneer to Goldie then back to Uggeri. “Everybody knows it was Phyus Bracklewort!”

Uggeri blinked, as if he were surprised. He wasn't sure why he was surprised. He also didn't know why he thought Bernice would actually know the answer since she spent all her time screaming at other students rather than reading the textbook.

“No,” he said, his voice low and steady. “Phyus Bracklewort did not create the Room of Requirement. He's not even a founder of Hogwarts.”

For a moment, Bernice's sneer fell and was replaced by a heated glare, her eyebrows pulled in so tightly and her brow so furrowed, it was unnatural. She pulled her lips back into a deep frown and gritted her teeth.

“Mister DeLeon,” Uggeri said, avoiding the oncoming storm of insults to his intelligence and knowledge of magical history, “do you know who it was?”

“Helga Hufflepuff,” he said coolly, his voice soft.

Goldie's heart skipped a beat when she heard him say Hufflepuff. He had said her house name – it sounded so nice and not entirely ridiculous when he said it.

“Very good,” Uggeri said, his voice steady. Still, it sounded as if he were relieved somebody in his class had paid attention. “Now, please turn to page 212, and begin reading silently to yourselves...”

Jake looked back at Goldie and gave her a sympathetic smile. She felt her cheeks redden and she smiled back, tucking strands of curls behind her ears. Jake turned around and opened his textbook. Goldie heard a huff behind her and when she turned, Bernice was glaring daggers in her direction. Her face was so red and the scowl was so deeply etched into her face, Goldie half hoped it would freeze like that – if only for the day. It would have made a perfectly frightful Halloween costume.

A bit proud and not at all embarrassed for not knowing the answer she should have (considering it was her house founder who had, according to tradition anyway, made the Room of Requirement), she gave a quick smirk of her own towards Bernice. The blonde's eyes shot open wide and her mouth dropped, like a fish gasping for air. She was speechless. Had somebody just dared to defy her?

A little bit more proud, Goldie turned back around, grinning to herself, and flipped open her textbook.

#mine 44 #akimi.writes #leather and lace #l&l chapter 3 #remus lupin #sirius black #remus x oc #sirius x oc #remus fic #sirius fic #remus lupin fic #sirius black fic #marauders #hp #marauders fic #hp fic

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