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ikleesfiction · 3 years

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Will you follow through if I fall for you?

Fandom : One Chicago Word count : 1,652 words Disclaimer

Previously on this fic : Part 1 🞂 Part 2 🞂 Part 3 🞂 Part 4 🞂 Part 5 🞂 Part 6 🞂 Part 7

Part 8

"Okay, you have passed all our tests. We can officially clear you now. Congratulations, Y/N!" your therapist informs you while you are sitting on the floor, panting, after pushing yourself hard.

You grin widely, elated. "Thank you!!" With your phone in hand, you are so excited to share the good news with Jay.

"I will send my notes to your physical trainer in Amsterdam. That way, he can correctly maintain your fitness level." your therapist pats your shoulder and leaves.

Your heart suddenly dropped. How could you forget that you're leaving? What should you tell Jay now?

◢◤

Jay's cell phone rang on his desk when he went to the restroom. Hailey planned to answer it if it's related to the case they're working on. But when she sees your name on the screen, she lets it ring. The phone soon stops ringing. It only chirps one time after that.

"Your boo was calling," Hailey says, a bit miffed, to Jay. He grabs his phone to check it. "She gets that you're currently working, right?" Hailey continues as Jay scrolls on his phone. Ignoring his partner's comment, he immediately leaves the room.

Jay sees you standing on the sidewalk outside the 21st District. "This is a nice surprise," he walks toward you. "But unfortunately, I don't have much time to enjoy it," Jay continues with a warm hug.

"I know. That's why I bring lunch here, instead of asking you out. Maybe we can sit down somewhere quiet and have it together?" you hesitantly suggest.

Before Jay can answer, he hears Hailey coming out from the District. "Hey Halstead, let's go. We got a hit on our suspect!"

Jay gives you an apologetic look, "Sorry, I gotta go."

"Of course. I understand," you say even though your face doesn't betray the disappointment. "Here, take this. It's enough for two. You can share it with your partner," passing him the paper bag from your hand.

Jay accepts the bag and kisses you quickly. But you know each kiss now is counted. So you palm his cheek and give him a lingering kiss before dejectedly resting your forehead on his lips. Jay notices something feels wrong. He puts his hands on your face and looks at you in concern, "You okay?"

A horn is honking impatiently behind him. You clench your jaw, frustrated. "Go. Be safe, okay?" You tap his chest gently.

"I will," Jay answers instinctively. He then quickly goes to the car, where Hailey's already waiting.

◢◤

You have laid on the couch since you're back from The 21st District. The sun already sets, the room has darkened, but you're still not moving. Your thoughts are all over the place.

You jerk in surprise when you hear your phone vibrates angrily on the coffee table. You see Nick Kroes is calling. Nick is initially, and still is, Alex's manager. When you started to gain more recognition for your work at Alex's record label company, Pyramid, Nick then decided to take you under his management as well.

"Hey, Y/N. I heard the good news! It's been a long time coming, girl! Cannot wait to have you back here,"

"When do I have to leave?" you cut to the chase.

"How about next week?" Nick ponders.

"A week?" you stutter in disbelief.

"I know, I'm sorry I couldn't arrange it to be sooner," Nick misunderstands your upset.

"No, I mean... Can you give me a month?" you plead.

"You want to stay there for another month? I thought you'd be asking me to send you a plane tomorrow." Nick startles.

"Yeah. Just.. there's something I need to do. Please, Nick?", Your voice sounds desperately close to begging.

"Ah... I'm sorry, Y/N. We really need your help here. Two weeks is the maximum time I could give you," Nick ruefully tells you.

You close your eyes in resign. "Okay. I'll try to sort it out in two weeks."

"Thanks, Y/N. If you need anything else, just tell me, okay?" He says as he ends the call.

◢◤

It's already nearing midnight. Jay calls you even though he's not sure if you're still awake. The phone only rings twice before you pick up.

"Hey, love. You're not asleep yet?" Jay greets you.

"Nah, I can't sleep without knowing you're okay," you reply, which is a half-truth.

"I'm always okay. Well, most of the time." Jay chuckles. You smile but stay silent.

Taking a deep breath and ready to bite the bullet, you start to say, "Jay, I need to tell you.."

But you hear him speaks at the same time. "So, babe. I'm going to.. "

Both of you laugh nervously. "Okay, you start first," you decide.

"I need to go undercover soon. So I might be unreachable for quite some time," Jay informs you.

"Is it dangerous?" you faintly ask.

"A bit. But my people will keep an eye on me. I'll be fine." He tries to assure you.

"How long is it gonna take?" you feel more disheartened. Really, time is not your best friend right now.

"As long as needed. It might be a week or two. Hopefully not more", Jay tells you lightly.

You close your eyes, trying to contain your tears from falling. You only have two weeks before leaving Chicago. "That's long." your voice sounds shaky.

"Yeah. But it's my job, Y/N", Jay huffs.

"I know, I know. I understand," you say as calmly as you could while hiding your anguish at the same time.

But Jay doesn't feel console. "Do you? Because you sound uncertain about it. Did you just realized the consequences of dating me?"

"Hey, I don't wanna fight," you toughen your voice. "You're going to be away soon. I don't wanna us be mad at each other for a long time."

Jay stays silent, but you can hear his ragged breaths. "Please be careful, alright, Jay?" you continue.

"Yeah, I will," he promises. "Look, I gotta go to sleep. Tomorrow's gonna be a long day."

"Okay. Sleep tight. I love you," you murmur your goodbye. Jay hangs up the phone without saying anything else.

You slept restlessly through the night. The next morning, you wake up to two text messages from Jay.

I gave your number to Hailey. If anything happens to me, she'll call you. I'm sorry for snapping at you last night.

I'll try my best to come back to you soon. I love you

◢◤

Nearing your departure, you hang out at Molly's every night. Whenever your friends from Firehouse 51 are not on shift, you always have someone with you. But tonight, all of them are working. So you sit alone at the bar, with a glass of ice water in front of you.

"Mind if I sit here?" says someone on your left. You look to your side and find Will Halstead standing there.

"Dr. Halstead, Hi," you nod at him as he takes a seat.

"Just because the other Halstead isn't here doesn't mean you can keep calling me that, Y/N," Will jokes. You smile shyly.

"You just got off shift? How was your day?" you ask him. Will has heard from Jay about this before. How genuine and caring you are to your friend. Always asking simple, but thoughtful questions.

"It's great. Busy, but I'm glad I didn't lose anyone today. How was your day? How is the podcast going? I cannot wait for the next episode," Will says.

"You listened to my podcast?" you ask him, dumbfounded.

"Yeah, I did. Jay told me about it. It keeps me company on my way to work. I like the remix that you played in the last episode. Smokey Robinson's song? What's it called..." Will tries to recall.

"Tracks of My Tears?" you reply. You smile to yourself, remembering your first car ride with Jay.

"Ah yeah, did you make that remix?" Will asks.

"Oh, I wish I were. But no, that was a work of the great Avicii," you explain. "You really enjoy it?" you ask him, still with a hint of doubt.

"I do, yeah. We have a similar taste in music, I think. Unlike Jay, though. Bet the only reason he listens to it because he likes to hear your voice", Will mocks his brother. You burst out a laugh. "But I know he's proud of you and your work." Will continue after his laughter.

"Hmm, yeah. I'm proud of Jay and his work too. Even though, sometimes it sucks," you harshly tap your phone that sits peacefully on the bar table. It lits up after your touch. Will can see a picture of Jay making a ridiculous face on the screen.

"You heard anything from him yet?" you question him.

"Not from him, no. But I saw Burgess today at the hospital when she's interviewing a victim. Said Jay's fine. They think they could wrap the case in a few days." Will informs you.

"Good. That's good." you pause to sip on your water. "Hey Will, may I ask you a question about Jay?"

"Sure. Ask away." Will nods.

"Is Jay.." you falteringly begin. "When Jay's mad, is he a type who's holding grudges for a long time?"

"Well, depends on the person. If they are a criminal, absolutely. If they are someone he's close to, sure, sometimes he can be a stubborn asshole. But in the end, he always forgives them, especially if it's someone he loves," Will answers. "Why? You guys had a lover's quarrel?"

"Hmm, something like that," you vaguely answer.

"I say, absence makes the heart grow fonder. Jay must've been impatient to go back to you." Will tries to comfort you.

You are so close to telling Will the truth. That, instead of thinking of a past quarrel, you're actually preparing for the upcoming storm. But in the end, you change your mind. "Thanks, Will." you just give him an unconvincing smile.

Next on this fic : Part 9

+x Taglist +x

@shipshipshipau @itsdesiree86 @thevelvetseries @annaallicce

#fanfiction #jay halstead x reader #jay halstead fic #jay halstead imagine #one chicago fic #one chicago #chicago pd tv #chicago pd fic #jay halstead #will halstead #hailey upton #original work #wyftiiffy

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casebasket · 4 years

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The Mystrade Treatise

I am long, long out of the Sherlock fandom, but I still have a soft spot for mystrade after ~ 7 odd years (the only thing I really cared about in the show), so when a friend asked about mystrade I hit them with a spontaneous 2000 word block of text. I thought I’d share it as an homage to the still quietly existing community of mystrade shippers out there. Basically, in this essay I will argue for my interpretation of how the BBC TV show Sherlock (2012) establishes an implied relationship between Mycroft, (The Government) and Lestrade (The Force) in the subtext. This analysis will be broken down to two parts: 1) show chronology / their history and 2) their compatibility, which can be further split into 2a) personalities and 2b) external circumstances.

(The beginning is the only formal(ish) part of - I’m calling it a treatise -, the rest of the piece is written in “I typed it all in messenger app” style. This all came out off the top of my head, so if you think I’m missing something I’m open to the callout)

TL;DR: I’m still mystrade trash and I’m pulling the receipts on mystrade canon

1) Their history - it's clear they know each other and are in communication with each other since the very beginning - and very likely even before - the events of the show. Just a show tidbit, the ending of the pilot episode has Lestrade watch John and Sherlock walk away happily staring into each other's eyes and tell Donovan about their potential as partners, whereas the actual first episode replaces him with Mycroft talking to his assistant Anthea, which shows their character parallels. In one aspect, their role as "aggravated older guardian" is a shared one and one that - rationally, but in fanon - allows them to commiserate with other another. Also, Mycroft kidnaps John in his very first day of him meeting Sherlock, so reasonable to conclude he did the same to Lestrade, so they've clearly met. And, I believe it's canon that Lestrade helped Sherlock with his drug problem, so he's clearly run into Mycroft, whether it's because his brother's OD'd or found with possession or whatever whatever. The possibilities are endless.

We have hints of them knowing each other throughout the show - in season 2 episode 2 the Hound of Baskerville (I am surprised and appalled I know this off by heart instead of more important things), the duo meets Lestrade in a tavern where he's clearly back from holiday and when Sherlock eggs him by basically calling him Mycroft's lackey, he, aggrieved, says "I don't just do what your brother tells me", which is a line I still unfortunately remember over 5 years later, and that is the first precedent set in canon that they clearly communicate. We can interpret this line, given the circumstances, that Mycroft asked him to cut his vacation short to go check up on his brother, and Lestrade, being whipped, was like fine.

This is mere speculation, but in that mini episode, Many Happy Returns, Lestrade is listening to Anderson go on about his conspiracy theories on how Sherlock is still alive, and at the end of it he passes a newspaper article about Sherlock, and he smiles at it like he KNOWS he's still alive somewhere even though he just walked out calling Anderson on his bullshit and dismissing his theories, and I like to interpret that as Mycroft told him Sherlock's still alive. Plus, when Sherlock greets him after his two year absence, the way Lestrade reacts is less “am I seeing a ghost because you’re supposed to be dead” and more “you’re finally back I already know you were alive because my boyfriend Mycroft told me”.

The first time we see them in frame together (in the mystrade community this is famously known as the 29 frames moment because they only showed up for - 29 frames, like 2 seconds) was in season 3 episode 3, where Sherlock goes missing and everyone looks for him in the hidey holes they know of. Lestrade is seen in Mycroft's office while Mycroft tells him about potential hiding spots. Honestly he did look hella dismissive and rude but you know what? Everyone was stressed. But this shows not only is Lestrade trusted in his secret government offices - and likely this was the secret one because it looked like a cellar - but he trusts Lestrade implicitly. When Sherlock is about to leave on a plane, Lestrade's in a pub watching the TV screen when Moriarty's face is all over it and the very next scene we see Mycroft on the phone with someone getting the news that this was happening. Coincidence? I think NOT - Lestrade called up Mycroft and told him, CANON.

And then there's the Christmas special or whatever it was, about the abominable bride, and yes, this one is set in Sherlock's drug fevered mind, but that only means that, in Sherlock's mind, he sees the two of them as a set (Sherlock ships it confirmed lol). During the whole episode when we see the canon versions of Mycroft and Lestrade they are together as a unit. When John leaves him, Sherlock's mind goes to the most reliable thing in his life to help him, which is his brother (and his brother's boyfriend) and his friend Lestrade to help him, together. Sherlock asks the two of them to help him dig up a body and they share a Look, which is clearly Mycroft's way of asking Lestrade to do the dirty work of actually digging and Lestrade resignedly concedes because there is no other way to analyse the Look, and in the next scene we see Sherlock and Lestrade digging in a grave while Mycroft holds up a lantern because Mycroft doesn't like legwork and Lestrade, clearly his boyfriend in Sherlock's mind, understands this and is willing to accommodate.

And then we have the whole of S4, or as I like to call it, Johnlock hell but mystrade victories!, because in s4e1 when Mary is shot in the aquarium, the first person they look at is each other, indicating they take some level of comfort or seek it out from one another in a room full of other people, also the two of them arrived together so they clearly coordinated, also when the gun was lifted Mycroft looks shocked and steps back a bit while Lestrade moves forward in a “ready to step in” protective gesture, and this all happened in the same frame, and there are gifsets of this happening, and everyone was quietly screaming (Johnlockers in pain, mystrade shippers in "look at them sharing a frame together look at these scraps we're getting"). In the second ep we don't see them together but we do see Mycroft getting hit on by Lady Smallwood and he looks hella uncomfortable about it, while Lestrade is talking with another detective and Sherlock shoots him down telling him she's not the one (because clearly we all know who is the one and Sherlock knows it's his brother).

Oh yeah also jumping back to S3, Mycroft is saying no one can match him and he sees everyone as goldfish but Sherlock is like oh really and was lowkey concerned about him and that's how the mystrade fandom got this whole goldfish thing and it's adorable (special shout out to duchessclovery ‘s masterful fanvid romcom series A Fish Called Greg), and in the wedding ep Sherlock calls Mycroft to attend the wedding but he refuses, and Sherlock says "specter in the feast" to entice him and I like to interpret that as him lowkey jabbing him with a *in*spector in the feast because Lestrade was there looking tired and lonely throughout the whole ep lmaaaaaaaaaaaaao.

Anyway back to S4E2, Mycroft is getting hit on, Lestrade is the most tired we've ever seen him, Sherlock is trying to waive off Lestrade's suitors to save him for his brother. Why is Lestrade so tired? Yes, he's questioning a suspect or something, but also! maybe it's related to his love interest getting hit on, who knows???? And lastly, the last ep of S4, the golden era of mystrade, at the very end of the episode after we've seen Mycroft at his most vulnerable, Sherlock asks Lestrade to "take care of him (Mycroft). he's not as strong as he seems". This was an explicit request by Sherlock, addressing Lestrade correctly for the first time, to take care of his brother, and Lestrade says yes. Of course I will. S4 ended with the promise of the him taking care of Mycroft and honestly I don't care about the entire episode except that part

2) A: their personalities: so, Mycroft, as his colleagues know him, is ~ the ice man ~. He's hard to know, even harder and more stubborn and isolated than his brother, and on top of that he's like, contractually obligated under his top secret government job to not be known. That makes him, and this is canon as Sherlock discussed his loneliness with him in S3, even more lonely than his brother, and probably, as much as he likes to think himself more accommodating than his brother and he can definitely pretend for the sake of appearances, more difficult to deal with than Sherlock if he really sets his mind to it. But he's not a complete block of ice - after all, ice can melt - and he has soft spots for his family, esp. his unruly little brother, and by extension (maybe more necessity than real care, but still) the people his brother affiliates with. Because Sherlock is so tricky to deal with, I believe he has a soft spot for people who share that softness for his spiky sibling, and no one cares for Sherlock as he does except for Mrs Hudson, John, and Lestrade. Lestrade's done it for even longer than John, and in the show plays a somewhat paternal figure to Sherlock despite him causing him even more stress sometimes than solving cases for him would relieve. Lestrade is shown to drop everything to help Sherlock when he needs it, and is considered one of his best friends when Moriarty put a sniper on each of Sherlock's closest acquaintances (Lestrade was a target). Lestrade always saw the good in Sherlock despite everything, and believed he could be great. Very few sees the same potential, or shows that level of kindness for - lets be honest here - someone we would want to kick in real life. Lestrade's kindness and patience, enough to deal with Sherlock, surely can be extended to involve Mycroft, as Mycroft's protectiveness extends somewhat to Sherlock's friends.

And this is not a one way street of just Lestrade being kind and accepting. The people Sherlock surrounds himself with appear dull, and have "normal" lives, but secretly either have a florid past (Mrs Hudson) (and her present with the race car and her quick thinking when the flat gets ransacked) and/or crave adventure and danger and intrigue (John) (Molly). Lestrade is the probably the same. He seems aggravated by Sherlock but still like him a whole lot and truly care for him, and you don't go into policing if not for some kind of excitement. He has a failed marriage with his wife who boringly cheated on him with a PE teacher, like how predictable and cliche, and they broke up. Lestrade is loyal, and he wants to fix things, but in the end it doesn't work out. The show doesn't really tell us why, but given what we know of his work and his habits, he probably spends way too much time on the job and in part, neglected his home life. That isn't to say the cheating his wife did can be condoned, nor was it justified, but it does tell us that Lestrade is a workaholic who craves excitement and adventure which explains his attachment to Sherlock. Who else can match that with him in a relationship? Another workaholic who surrounds himself in government intrigue and MI6 bullshit cloak and daggers who also share a soft spot for the most annoying detective consultant, of course!!! For all we know from the show, Mycroft is Lestrade's one constant relationship outside of work. Their common interest is keeping their shared loved ones safe. Beyond that, even though Mycroft feels bored by everyone because "no one is as smart as i, hohoho", Sherlock used to be the same but he found John. We see Lestrade able to hold his own against Sherlock sometimes too, and he is a detective inspector, so as much as Sherlock likes to call him dumb we know that Lestrade's actually pretty smart. If he can hold up his own against Sherlock, he can hold up his own against Mycroft. Mycroft needs someone with the patience to go through all his bullshit, and Lestrade needs someone smart and interesting and protective, because as a protector himself sometimes you forget you need someone to protect you in turn. And that is basically their whole thing - two fierce guardians, trying to protect the world, finding they also need protection, and finding it in each other (end of season 4). Also there's this scene where Lestrade is sitting by his desk with his feet propped up while he eats a donut and says "not my division" which looks exactly like this scene where Mycroft is sitting by his desk with his feet propped up looking smug, or as the mystrade shippers like to call it, "boyfriends picking up each other's behaviours". Essentially, the johnlock relationship sort of parallels the mystrade relationship in that we have a smartass, spiky, secretly vulnerable one paired with a badass, patient, relatively more sunny one. But more mature. And also preferable. The two of them share some kind of relationship that has reached the point of nonverbal understanding, as we can see in their quiet glances towards each other during the few times we see them on screen together, that requires a level of trust and time.

2) B: compatibility in external circumstances - this is a short one, it's mostly that they're both workaholics who needs someone to understand their unpredictable work schedules, and also how minimal their social life can get being a) married to work and b) work can be classified and you can't tell anyone about your case files / government coverups. No one could understand the need for secrecy and getting up in the middle of the night for a case/subterfuge than Mycroft and Lestrade, as their career roles work in tangent with each other. And they share (1) chaotic child between the two of them, so they just. get it when one receives a call telling them to fish this loud annoying bitey man child out of the Thames. Their jobs get in the way of establishing close relationships, so who better to relate to than another who live the same kind of life and can understand?

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jarienn972 · 4 years

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Bloodline

From the OUAT Winter Whump 2018 event

After being inspired by @wyntereyez live-blogging her rewatch of OUAT S7 last night and her post reblogs today, I was originally going to just reblog this story which was my re-imagining of Season 7 episode 19, Flower Child, but I decided to create a new post so that I could attach the art work that today’s birthday girl @cocohook38 graciously surprised me with!

This story does feature violent situations as it was created to fix the wasted potential of the episode for those of us who enjoy seeing a little bit of whump. Please Note: Gothel is the featured villain here so fair warning as there are some vague mentions of her history with Rogers.

Also on FF.net and AO3

So little had made sense for weeks now in the Heights and Detective Rogers’ inquisitive mind was in overdrive. Every time he thought he’d guessed the next move correctly, he’d found himself face to face with his often condescending partner who was all-too-happy to remind him of his failures. It wasn’t as though Weaver was giving him any answers either, just more cryptic questions and general annoyance. Granted, a fair portion of his frustration was his own damned fault. Weaver had warned him not to pursue his search for Eloise Gardner, but obsession had gripped him, forcing him to investigate every clue to hunt her down - although they’d likely never know exactly how or why Victoria Belfrey had imprisoned her in the tower. He’d managed to uncover bits and pieces of a story about how Eloise was evil and needed to be kept locked away from humanity, but he hadn’t really believed any of it. Not until bodies started turning up all over the Heights - Belfrey’s included.

Maybe he should have listened to Weaver’s advice, but he just couldn’t help himself. He’d been so driven to find the girl who had haunted his memory for years, only to discover that maybe she wasn’t really the person he’d imagined her to be. Maybe if he’d heeded his partner’s warning, he wouldn’t be in his current predicament, not that it would matter for much longer. He’d be able to hang on a little while…

Maybe, just maybe, someone would come searching for him or maybe Tilly would spring back to her senses?

But the reality was - who would be looking for him?

One hour earlier

She was mad. Had to be. How else could he explain it?

Maybe he was mad. How had he allowed this woman to gain so much power over him?

He felt manipulated. Used. Hell, part of him felt downright violated, but yet he was still inexplicably drawn to her.

Weaver had warned him that she was a powerful witch, but he honestly hadn’t believed in witchcraft - at least until now as the realization struck that she had pulled him right into her coven’s waiting trap. He’d been so gullible, but it also struck him as odd that he had no idea why she’d sought to ensnare him. All he had wanted to do was help Tilly, and then - there she was - Eloise Gardner and her coven of witches hidden behind dark, heavy, hooded cloaks. He and Tilly had wandered straight into the witch’s wicked web and despite knowing that they were both in grave danger, a voice in the back of his head kept telling him to protect Tilly.

“Please, don’t hurt her,” he’d pleaded with the witches as one of them grabbed Tilly from behind, clamping a hand over her mouth as they led her away from him, disappeared down what must have been a staircase. He was at the wrong angle to be certain, even as he strained against his captor, struggling to get a better view. “Tilly’s an innocent here…please, don’t harm her…”

Eloise approached him, drawing close as her minions restrained him. He continued to struggle, trying to free himself from their grasp but despite their diminutive appearance, the hooded figures were far stronger than he expected. The witch pressed her body uncomfortably close to him, an air of triumph in her icy gaze. His own eyes clung to defiance, even as her hand raised up to meet his face, fingertips lightly tracing the shape of his jaw while she stared at him with a sickeningly sweet smile plastered on her lips - the way he would imagine a predator admiring its prey.

“You’ve got this all wrong, Captain,” she insisted, never breaking her evil grin as she spoke. “Tilly isn’t the one I intend to hurt. I need her. You, on the other hand, are far more expendable.”

He had no idea what she was plotting or why she’d called him Captain - and she wasn’t the first to do that either. All of his senses were screaming at him. There was no doubt he was in way over his head, but no matter how much he struggled, there was no breaking free.

“What do you want from us?” Rogers demanded. Hell, if he was going to die here, he at least wanted to know why.

“Oh, you’ll prove useful to me yet again. You’re going to help bring my creation to life,” Eloise purred cryptically as she pulled her hand away from his face. “But first, I need you to stop being so uncooperative…” Her right hand unfurled once again before his eyes, this time, revealing a clump of what appeared to be sparkling pink dust resting in the curve of her palm. With one quick puff of her breath, the colorful particles were swirling around him and somewhere within that cloud, Rogers lost his will to resist, his body dropping limp into the arms of his captors.

**********

As his senses gradually returned, Rogers immediately knew something wasn’t right, but he didn’t know yet just how precarious the situation actually was. His head throbbed and his recollection of the events that got him here was a tad cloudy - a sensation he’d experienced far too many times when he’d lost control of his indulgences. Only this was no mere hangover.

His eyelids parted slowly, adjusting to the dim light of the surroundings, seemingly illuminated solely by flickering flames. Ruddy hued rocks comprised both the floor and the walls of what must have been some sort of a cave but as his sight became clearer, he discovered that this cavern held far more sinister secrets than he could have imagined. He’d also come to the realization that he was suspended in the center of said cavern, his upper body bound tightly with vines. Vines? It certainly wasn’t rope that secured him and as he tried to wiggle himself out of his bindings, he learned - rather painfully - that the vines were covered in thorns. Dozens of thorns, sharp as needles, jabbed into his bare skin with even the slightest movement on his part. He’d clearly been impaled a few times already as he could feel the tickle from the little rivulets of blood making a path down his leg to drip off of his big toe.

What he couldn’t tell from his vantage point was that his nearly nude body hung directly above an intricate design carved into the stone below - one the same shape as the coven’s symbol he’d been seeing all over Hyperion Heights. Surrounding him were the dark, caped figures, each standing at one of the eight points of the symbol softly chanting some unknown incantation. One of those hooded beings broke from the circle to canter towards him, apparently having realized he’d regained consciousness. The figure raised her head as she neared, enough for him to recognize her face as his gaze locked with that of Eloise Gardner once again.

The expression on her face confused him falling somewhere between satisfaction and sublimation. If this was indeed the same girl he’d tasked himself to locate so many years ago, what had happened to her that led her down this path? To have become involved with such a devilishly evil cult that had obviously stripped her of the innocence he’d remembered? Well, at least the innocence he thought he’d remembered… Had she been so offended by his failure to protect her as a child that she’d spent all of these years planning ways to make him pay for that failure? Even after he’d rescued her from Belfrey’s prison? Hadn’t getting shot and spending the better part of a decade searching in vain been penance enough?

“Captain…” Eloise purred into his ear, her lips so close to his skin that he could feel the warmth of her breath, sending his body into an involuntary, repulsed shudder. “Just what is going on inside that pretty head of yours?”

“Why are you doing this?” was the question that crossed his lips, although there were so many others demanding to be asked as well. “I tried… I tried to help you… I freed you…” he stammered, his mind conflicted by both a desire to fight his thorny restraints and a total lack of willpower to do so.

“Oh, Captain,” she said through that same salacious grin, “we’ve such a torrid history… Where would I even begin?”

“History?” He didn’t understand how their few interactions could be construed as history. “Eloise, we barely know anything about each other aside from the fact that I spent years searching for you…and I did find you. Why this?”

“It’s almost a pity that your memory didn’t return like some of the others, but maybe it’s for the better…” She stepped around to his back, her right hand trailing along the skin just above the waistband of his boxer briefs as she leaned in to address his left ear. “How about I start by re-introducing myself? My name is Mother Gothel, not Eloise, and we do indeed have some very interesting history. It might even have been so much more… I could have helped you seal your revenge against Rumplestiltskin while we pillaged and plundered the realms, but no. You surprised me. You chose the brat over me…”

“Brat? What - Tilly?” His stuttered words barely made sense in his own head, but they seemed to increase her ire.

“If that’s what you want to call her,” she scoffed. “You gave her a different name back then, but nonetheless, it won’t matter for much longer.”

“You haven’t harmed her, have you?” he asked meekly, his voice cracking audibly at the thought as his eyes grew wide with fearful anticipation.

“No, I haven’t harmed Tilly. As I said before, she isn’t the one I plan to harm. I need her magic to help initiate my spell…” She paused her statement as she ambled around to face him once again, the iciness of her stare prickling every hair on the back of his neck. “But I need something else from you first…” Her fingertips made contact with his thigh, the skin searing beneath her touch as he fought back a swell of nausea. If this was what she wanted, he wasn’t interested, but as her right hand slithered up toward his hip, she raised her left hand in front of her chest, making certain that he would witness her next move. Out of thin air, what might only have been described as a giant thorn materialized from her palm. It was at least the length of her forearm and his terrified eyes instantly focused on its razor sharp point - even more so as she ghosted that needle-like point across his chest, drawing tiny droplets of blood as she passed it through the course, dark hair almost indecently.

“Eloise…” His voice came out as a whimper as he tried his best to shrink away from her, but the brambles encircling him only seemed to squeeze tighter. “I can still help you…” The cop in him was still trying to reason with her, even if his efforts might be deemed futile.

“Yes, my dear Captain, you most certainly can help me,” she assured him as that devilish grin crossed her features yet again. “I absolutely require your assistance to activate a portion of my spell. More specifically, I need your blood.” She refused to give him even a moment to process her statement before thrusting the pointed end of her oversized thorn into his abdomen, angling it upward, beneath his rib cage and into his vital organs, yet stopping short of his heart. She drew her arm backward, retracing the blood stained thorn so that she could admire her handiwork for a split-second before repeating the stabbing motion twice more.

The coppery scent of his own blood filled his nostrils as his mind and body were both overwhelmed by the shock of the assault. Blood mixed with his saliva as he coughed up a bubble that he couldn’t swallow back down. Sanguine trails flowed from his torso to form a small puddle on the carved rocky ground below as his instinct to fight for his life finally kicked in and he gathered his remaining strength to try to free his arms so he could put pressure on the seeping wounds.

“Struggle all you want,” she taunted him as she dropped the bloody thorn to the ground as she cupped his jaw with both of her hands. “My vines will only grow tighter, driving those thorns deeper into your flesh. Since we’re going to be here for a while as your body is slowly drained of its blood, you may wish to spare yourself further anguish. I need your heart to keep pumping as long as possible to keep that blood fresh and potent until the entire medallion beneath you is filled. Then, I won’t need you anymore…”

His body shook from a combination of fear and pain-driven convulsions as his blood flowed from the trio of punctures in his gut, but even with the agony she’d already inflicted upon him, the witch wasn’t done with him quite yet. New vines began to sprout from those encasing his upper body, spiraling lower to wrap the rest of his torso and both of his legs with the constricting brambles. Every nerve ending in his body felt assaulted as dozens of newly formed thorns tore into his skin, drawing more blood. Rogers couldn’t even remember if he’d screamed but a silent prayer kept reciting within his head that maybe someone would find him. And that blissful unconsciousness would befall him soon…

**********

Rogers didn’t know what stirred him back to consciousness but the immediate wash of pain over his entire being reminded him that he was still alive. The dead didn’t experience pain, did they? He assumed he’d learn that answer soon enough - as soon as his lifeblood drained from him, his heart would inevitably cease and his lungs would no longer need to draw breath. He didn’t have the energy within him to fight against the tightening vines, still feeling their intrusions across his arms, chest and back, but scarcely able to feel his legs anymore. He wanted to just go numb, to return to the peaceful, pain-free oblivion, but his mind apparently wanted him to be awake to bear witness to his own torture.

“I’m surprised to see you awake,” a voice rang out from his right. Or was it from the left? Clearly his head wasn’t thinking straight, the blood loss leaving him disoriented. “Perhaps you’re a tad more resilient than I’d thought…” The voice continued in a sickeningly sweet cadence that made him want to retch even before he sensed the warmth of fingers brushing against his blood-soaked thigh. “You still have so much more to give…” He wished he could pull his leg away as the sensation of fingernails drawing lazy circles through the dampness only increased his nausea.

“What do you want?” He knew he’d asked the question before, but in his weakened state, he didn’t remember the answer - certainly not the answer she was about to give.

“Oh, Captain, this goes back so far…,” she mused. “Years ago, we met in a far away land, high in a tower where I needed you to provide the one thing that would allow me freedom from that prison - a new bloodline. You were so, how should I say this? Eager? So willing to provide me what I needed, but then, you betrayed me…”

Tower? Betrayal? Her words were conjuring images that bombarded his psyche, but were they memories or hallucinations? He didn’t know if he could trust his own brain right now.

“Eloise…”

“Not Eloise - Gothel,” she reminded him, her tone more annoyed than playful this time. “You really should try to remember me.” Her hand instantly snapped from caressing his thigh to clutching his throat, her thumb and forefinger pushing his head upward to meet her gaze. “I want you to look at me while you hang there dying. I want you to regret ever choosing that brat instead of me!” She stabbed a manicured index finger towards one of the cloaked figures as he recognized Tilly’s profile beneath the hood.

“Tilly…” he whispered, not even certain if his voice was loud enough for her to hear.

“She can’t hear you. She’s caught in a trance that I placed upon her. She’ll keep mindlessly repeating that incantation over and over until your blood fills the rest of the medallion here. Then, as soon as she steps into the center, the mix of bloodlines will enact my spell and bring about the return of this land to its rightful ruler - Nature.”

“Why Tilly? If we have history, that’s between us,” he argued weakly, energy waning quickly, but still possessing a flicker of determination to protect his young friend from this madwoman. “She has nothing to do with this…”

“Oh, but you’re wrong there, Captain,” she laughed. “Tilly - or Alice, as you used to call her - has everything to do with this. She’s our daughter - the blend of our bloodlines - possessing some of your spunk and some of my magic. I need to draw that magic from her and it just so happens that her father’s blood is the perfect conduit to do so.”

“Wait - daughter? Tilly… Alice… she’s my daughter?” he stammered, trembling as his already pain-wracked brain overloaded. “How can she be my daughter? I’m not old enough…”

That statement brought an amused cackle from his captor. “Looks can be so deceiving, Captain, but then curses can certainly play such tricks with your mind… You really don’t look a day over two hundred.”

Images came to him once again in vivid flashes as his barely lucid mind struggled to make sense of them without any context. A pirate ship. A tall, isolated tower. A small, blonde haired child. Eloise, yet not Eloise…

A hook.

His sullen eyes drew downward, seeking out the prosthetic hand attached to the wrist of his stumped arm which suddenly didn’t feel right to him. The weight, the fit - all wrong.

He’d lost that hand in a bad car accident, hadn’t he? He questioned his own recollection, no longer sure if anything he knew about himself was real. He was hanging here, slowly bleeding to death at the hand of a woman he’d thought he’d rescued and yet he felt as though he was right on the cusp of an epiphany.

His eyes squeezed shut as his body convulsed involuntarily. Why hadn’t he told Weaver what he was doing? The only other person who knew he was here was Tilly and she was lost to some hypnotic trance. He didn’t dare think what this witch would do to her once she’d served her purpose. He fought through the impending darkness to take in Tilly’s features for what he feared would be the last time. Could she really be his daughter? He’d likely never know now as a single tear rolled across his cheekbone, its saline trail finding its way to the corner of his mouth just as his lips parted.

One single word rolled off his tongue as his body fell limp against the imposing vines.

Starfish.

His voice was scarcely a whisper yet that single utterance reverberated throughout the cavern, reaching the single pair of ears it was intended for. It echoed into Tilly’s ear as a plea and her eyelids flew open, the chanting instantly ceased. Her hands raised to her head, tossing the hood off of her blonde locks as she lifted her chin.

She’d only been vaguely aware of her surroundings, but now, her senses were overwhelmed. The voices of the other hooded figures were all she could hear and she just wanted to drown them out. She tried to focus on something else - the crackle of the flames from the candles and torches positioned around the circle. Focus, Tilly, focus, she told herself. She concentrated on those flames, inhaling the scent of the burning wood, but she could smell something else too. Something faintly metallic…bloody…

Only then did she realize that there was another person in the center of the ring of caped figures - a person whose body was nearly obscured amongst a tangle of thorny vines. There was a pale, dark-haired man bound by those vines and while she couldn’t make out the majority of his form, she could see that his legs were riddled with crimson trails and there was a pool of dark red liquid beneath his feet. And she could see just enough of his face to recognize that man suspended lifeless before her: the man she’d known as Detective Rogers. But she also felt an awakening within her muddled mind which reminded her that she’d known him far longer - and by a different name.

“Papa?”

The moment she uttered that single word, the rock walls of the cavern began to shake as if from the rumbling of an earthquake, showering her with pebbles and dust that rained from above. A newly defiant Tilly shrugged off the heavy dark robe, eyes wide as she frantically searched for the monster.

“Show yourself, Witch!” Tilly hollered, bolstered with newfound bravado. If he was still among the living, she had to save him. Had to save her Papa from this monster witch. It was all up to her and this time, she was determined to listen to the little voices within her head that assured her that she possessed the power to defeat this witch.

“I’m right here, Tilly,” the witch replied as she took a step from behind her nearly lifeless prisoner.

“Let him go, you monster! You’re hurting him and I can’t allow that!” Tilly shouted. “You said that if I helped you, no one would get hurt but you lied! You always lie!” Both of Tilly’s hands clenched into fists as Gothel continued to stare blankly back at her, entirely devoid of any human emotion.

“It’s entirely too late for that, little girl,” Gothel snapped back confidently. “As soon as his blood fills that medallion on the floor right there, my spell will begin and there’s no one powerful enough to stop it. Not the Evil Queen nor the Wicked Witch. Not even the Dark One himself.”

“Then I’ll stop you,” Tilly responded as she stood her ground with equal confidence. “You took my Papa away from me once. You aren’t going to do it again.” Her blue eyes reflected a fierce determination as Tilly set her jaw and racked her brain to recall how to harness her magic.

“Please…,” Gothel dismissed her with a haughty wave of her hand. “You aren’t any match for me. Just get out of my way and do as you’re told…” With a faint flick of her wrist, another new growth of vines sprouted from the cluster binding Rogers and jettisoned toward Tilly. With only a fraction of a second to react, Tilly threw up her hands defensively in front of her face and instantly, the brambles froze mere inches from her, the thorns separating from the vines and falling harmlessly to the floor while tiny, white four-petal blossoms took their place. Tilly blinked a few times until the realization sunk in that she’d used magic to defend herself. She wasn’t mad - well, at least not when it came to the existence of magic.

“Impressive, but you’ve still so much to learn,” the witch continued to taunt her as Tilly attempted to move from the carved coven symbol beneath her feet. Gothel smirked as she watched the rock beneath Tilly’s feet dissolve into mud that the younger woman sank into it, only to have it harden back into stone around her shoes, entrapping her in her position on the outer ring. “It would be rather rude of you to leave before my big performance - and I’m not done with you yet…”

Unable to step away, Tilly’s eyes flittered wildly between the nearly inundated medallion on the ground before her and the pallid, expressionless face of her dying father whose head was drooped against his chest, body clearly only held upright by the witch’s enchanted vines. She watched in seemingly slow-motion as a drop of blood fell from his toe and splashed into the sticky, crimson puddle.

“It’s nearly time,” Gothel announced with a giddy chuckle as a tiny evergreen tree pushed its way through the solid rock to emerge in front of one of the remaining cloaked figures. As the tree grew in stature, the cape worn by the nearest coven member slumped to the floor and the person who’d been beneath it seconds earlier vanished in the blink of an eye. “Six more to go… Then you.”

“No,” Tilly sobbed, cursing herself for ever agreeing to help this monster in the first place, but now, the witch had to be stopped. “No - I won’t allow you to do this!”

“You won’t allow me?” Gothel laughed off Tilly’s cockiness. Apparently the girl had more of her father’s personality than she’d believed. “Then stop me.”

The challenge was issued as an insult, but Tilly didn’t take it as such. She was going to prove that she had the strength to defeat this horrid person.

“Stay with me, Papa,” she called out to him, still uncertain if he was alive or dead. “No matter what happens, I love you, Papa…” Silent promises now made, Tilly squeezed her eyes closed as her outstretched hands began to tremble. Another low rumble echoed throughout the cavern as flames flickered, billowed by some unseen wind that swirled dust and rubble around the young woman.

“What are you doing?” There was a faint hint of alarm in Gothel’s voice this time as she feared she may have underestimated her daughter. She’d long known that her child possessed powers, but with no one to cultivate them, she’d doubted Tilly’s ability to harness magic. But it was Gothel’s discounting of that untamed nature to Tilly’s magic which might prove far more dangerous.

“Love is always stronger than hate,” Tilly stated as she clasped her hands together sending out a blast of powerful energy towards the blood-drenched medallion. The ground began to shake, mildly at first then growing in intensity as the rock began to crack, fissures zigzagging across the entire coven symbol until they reached the stone that encased Tilly’s feet. The rock holding her crumbled away, allowing her to hop out of the circle and sever the connection necessary for Gothel’s spell to proceed. The evergreen tree that had sprouted within the cavern withered away to ashes as the magic sustaining it evaporated.

“You insolent little brat!” the witch shouted, seething with anger. “How dare you?! Now you’ve ruined it! I should have killed you years ago - both of you!” She took a step forward, hands extended and prepared to unleash some new horror against her beleaguered daughter. But so blinded by her hatred of her own offspring, she failed to notice that the cracks beneath her feet were widening from the tremors, opening into a chasm that swallowed the witch, plunging her screaming into the void. Tilly didn’t know what she should feel as the monster disappeared into the earth. She just stood there frozen until another voice roused her attention.

“Tilly?” she heard the voice call out to her, but was it merely inside her head? “Tilly?!” came the voice yet again as she blinked her eyes trying to figure out where the familiar voice originated. She recognized it now - Weaver - but she couldn’t reply yet. Her fragile mind was still processing all that had just transpired. Everything she’d just made happen… And oh, no - Papa! She saw the familiar face of Detective Weaver - Rumplestiltskin - emerge from the entry passage, weapon and flashlight extended before him. “Tilly, are you alright?” he asked as he ventured deeper into the subterranean cavern.

Alright? Was she alright? She didn’t even know but there were more important things to attend to… “Yes, I am,” she responded frantically as she hurried toward the center of the room. “But he’s not…” Weaver stopped short of entering the circle as he spied the huge, gaping cracks that transected it. His focus was drawn to the cluster of vines at the center of the ring where he now spotted his partner hanging motionless and entirely encircled by those same bloody vines which seemed to be withering away as Gothel’s magic faded. Despite the fissures crisscrossing the ground beneath him which had drained away most of the blood, there was still enough visible on the rock for Weaver to know his partner wouldn’t survive long with this amount of blood loss.

“We need to get him down from there somehow,” Weaver stated. “The vines are dying and won’t hold him for long…”

“I know,” she insisted, trying to locate that magical trigger within her one more time. “I’m trying…” She’d never been particularly good at concentrating - at least not lately. She had to try and push all of her jumbled thoughts away to focus on her most important task - rescuing Papa. As the brambles crumbled, an invisible force caught Rogers, his limp form suspended in mid-air but seemingly with nothing holding him aloft. The unseen hand carried him safely across the fractured floor placing him gently atop a boulder beside Weaver just before the vines completely disintegrated to a pile of dust.

Without the bindings in the way, Weaver could see that his partner’s body was riddled with puncture wounds, some of which were still oozing blood - a positive sign that his heart was still beating. Satisfied that immediate danger was over, Weaver tucked away his weapon, shining the flashlight’s beam onto his partner’s unconscious form as he felt for a pulse. “He’s alive. He still has a heartbeat. I’ll get the paramedics down here…”

A small smile crept across Tilly’s face as her resolve finally broke, but that smile rapidly faded, her eyes welling with tears as yet another realization struck. His heart. Without another word, she bolted past Weaver and darted out of the cave.

She couldn’t be here. She couldn’t cause him more suffering…

**********

The next few hours were tense ones. While her father was barely clinging to life, Tilly had vanished, leaving Weaver to be the one holding vigil in the hospital waiting room. Thankfully, the trip from Gothel’s hideout beneath the old theater to the hospital was a short ride. Weaver had followed the ambulance in his own vehicle with lights and siren blaring to keep up with the paramedics. By the time he reached the Emergency room, Rogers’ blood pressure had dropped to dangerously low levels and his breathing was erratic, but his most life threatening battle was against the uncontrollable bleeding. Something in his system was preventing his blood from clotting properly - likely Gothel’s work as well.

But as far as the Emergency room personnel were concerned, Detective Rogers had been a victim of the Candy Killer, attacked while investigating the cave beneath the theater. He answered the barrage of questions as best he could, not even attempting to create a plausible explanation for the multitude of puncture wounds from the thorns. He just told them his partner had multiple stab wounds and didn’t elaborate. There would be no mention of Eloise Gardner in Weaver’s report, even though he had actually found his way to the cavern just as the witch plunged into the chasm, presumably falling to her death although one could never be entirely certain when there was no body left behind as evidence.

After the first hour of waiting, he’d called Roni and Henry to see if either had seen Tilly and filled them in on his partner’s condition. Neither knew where Tilly might be but both offered to help locate her. Roni left the bar in Remy’s capable hands as she left a message for her niece, hoping Tilly would seek out Margot’s company and Henry set out to search some of Tilly’s usual haunts. Only Roni, Kelly and Weaver knew the truth of Tilly and Rogers’ relationship and while they understood her reasons for running, she needed to be aware of what was happening with her father, lest her fragile hold on her sanity be lost.

He wasn’t overly surprised when he heard Roni’s voice in the corridor, asking a nurse where she’d find the Emergency waiting area. He lifted his chin and nodded a greeting to her as she passed through the doorway, walking quickly across the crowded room to join him on a bench positioned against the far wall, away from prying ears.

“Have you heard anything yet?” Roni asked in a hushed whisper.

Weaver shook his head. “Not yet.”

“Gothel?”

“Hopefully gone, like most of the objects she conjured. She fell into a giant crack that opened up beneath her.”

“Did Tilly do that?” Roni wondered if battling her mother had contributed to the younger woman’s unease.

“Yes,” was Weaver’s unpretentious reply as he slumped back against the wall. Roni mouthed a wow as she copied his posture, crossing her legs at the ankle.

“Margot thinks she knows where to find her,” she told him. “Henry’s taking a loop around the neighborhood too. She’ll turn up.”

“She knows she’s Alice,” Weaver stated without preface. “As soon as I said that his heart was still beating, I saw it in her eyes. She panicked.”

“She remembered his poisoned heart…” Roni sighed. “That poor girl… She didn’t want to cause him more pain. She must be devastated…” Weaver didn’t answer; he already knew she was right. Getting her memory back, watching her father suffering and then having to destroy her mother just might have short-circuited Tilly’s complicated mind.

But it was Roni who suddenly sat up straight, a quizzical arch to her eyebrow as she contemplated a thought that had leapt into the forefront of her mind.

“Did his heart stop?” she asked, almost a bit too loudly as it drew some unwanted attention from other people in the waiting room.

“What?” He’d heard the question, but wanted her to repeat it.

“Do you know if Rogers’ heart stopped beating at any time?” she inquired once again, this time keeping her voice low since their conversation was about to head in a direction that wouldn’t be easily explained to eavesdroppers.

“I couldn’t hear everything that was said when the paramedics brought him in, but I thought I overheard something about him coding in the ambulance. Pretty sure that means his heart stopped, but he had a pulse when the ER took over. What are you getting at?”

“Have you been out of the magic business too long, Rumple?” she asked, using his real name in public for the first time since they’d awakened from Gothel’s curse. This was definitely Regina talking now, not her barmaid alter ego, Roni. “Gothel placed that poisoned heart curse on him a long time ago and we were never able to find a cure. The only way to end the curse was death - his heart no longer beating. Do you think there was a time limit as to how long his heart needed to be stopped before they brought him back?”

Weaver’s lips pursed in thought as he rubbed the hint of stubble sprouting on his chin. He definitely needed a shave, but whiskers were merely a distraction as he tossed ideas around in his head. “CPR isn’t exactly commonplace in the Enchanted Forest, nor are machines to shock a heart back into rhythm. A curse such as that one should die along with its victim…”

“Then it’s possible that the poison died when his heart stopped beating the first time. There’s no way a curse from our land would have a caveat built in for someone being brought back from essentially being dead.”

“There’s only one way to test that theory though…and Tilly is nowhere to be found,” Weaver reminded her.

“We’ll find Tilly and explain. If your partner pulls through this, I’m pretty sure he won’t be going anywhere for a few days. We’ve got some time.”

“There is still the matter of breaking the other curse,” he added.

“One curse at a time, please…”

Two days later

There was that pain again. Maybe not as intense as before, but definitely still there. Little pinpricks he could feel everywhere - annoying and even a little bit itchy but they were only the prelude to the dull, somewhat burning ache that radiated through his chest and abdomen. His head was still on the fuzzy side but he remembered someone stabbing him - Eloise. No, not Eloise - Gothel. The witch that Tilly had been correct to call a monster.

He struggled to force his eyelids open, his vision assaulted by the bright lights above him. He remembered being in a dark cavern, completely bound by thorn-covered vines that were constricting him tighter and tighter until he’d blacked out. Or maybe he’d blacked out from the blood loss…? Maybe both? But it was apparent that he wasn’t in that dank cave any longer. He blinked a few times to allow his sight to adjust, turning his head slightly to get a look at a stark white wall that contained only a clock and a dry-erase whiteboard that was filled with incomprehensible scribbles.

He started to become aware of additional sensations as he started putting the pieces together. He wasn’t hanging from those vines anymore; he was laying down, presumably in a bed. He could feel the softness of fabric beneath his fingers and thought he sensed something encircling his wrist, although not as painful as the witch’s brambles. He raised his hand to a height he could see it without moving around too much and learned he’d been correct - some sort of rubber or plastic band was fastened around his wrist and there was some plastic tubing affixed to the back of his hand with tape that was irritating his skin. An incessant beeping resounded in his ear, mixed in with other faint sounds he’d yet to make sense of, but it was enough for him to figure out his location.

He was in a hospital - which meant he’d survived the witch’s attack.

And surprisingly, he discovered he wasn’t alone.

“It’s about damn time you woke up.” He knew the voice instantly, recognition sending an involuntary shudder down his spine. The demon masquerading as his partner.

“Crocodile? Come to execute me while I’m vulnerable?” he asked his visitor.

“If I’d wanted to do that, I wouldn’t have waited until you awakened, Captain,” Weaver replied. “I’m just Detective Weaver now. I put the rest behind me to honor Belle’s wishes, although being caught up in Gothel’s curse hadn’t really been a part of my plan. I’m just trying to do my best to help people so that someday, I’ll be able to join her - and that includes trying to help you and your wayward daughter…”

“Tilly - does she know?”

“She does. It was her magic that defeated Gothel and her coven. The witch was swallowed up by the earth she revered. Alice is down the hall in the waiting room with Regina.”

“She’s here? Alice is here?” Rogers asked, his voice growing agitated. “But the curse…”

“Relax… She’s not close enough right now to disturb your poisoned heart, but Regina has a plausible theory that might mean you’re cured.”

“There’s no known cure for a poisoned heart,” Rogers scoffed, his eyes dropping with disappointment.

“That’s not necessarily true,” Weaver began. “Facilier was able to cure Henry’s heart with a bit of magic born from Lucy’s true belief and the remnants of Ella’s glass slipper. While that same magic isn’t available for you, you may still have been cured in a much simpler manner - your death.”

“My death? My head is muddled enough right now but clearly, I’m still alive - despite many valiant efforts…”

“Technically, you died twice,” Weaver stated. “Your heart stopped beating twice - once in the ambulance on the way here and once on the OR table while they were trying to stitch your insides back together. From what we were told, you were technically dead for over a minute before they were able to resuscitate you. Curses aren’t designed to survive death - even mine. Generally, where we come from, if your heart stops beating, you’re dead. They don’t try to bring you back. The curse should have ended the moment your heartbeat ceased.”

“Should have? That’s an awful stretch… What if you’re wrong? It’ll only cause both of us more pain…”

“Then it’s a good thing to do it here in the hospital where they can treat you should we be wrong, but what if we’re right? You can be with your daughter again.”

Rogers had to contemplate the possibility for a moment. As much as he loathed trusting his long-time enemy, he also had the memories of being Detective Rogers and in this world, he actually trusted Weaver’s word. He’d also become close with Regina, the reformed Evil Queen, whom he’d now entrust with his life. What strange company he was keeping…

“What does Alice think?” This was going to affect his daughter as much as it would him so he wanted her to be involved in the decision.

“She’s frightened, naturally, but she’s also very curious. She believes that Regina might be correct, but there’s only one way to find out…” Weaver motioned toward the hallway beyond the room’s doorway as he stood up. “Should I go get her?” Rogers swallowed back the lump in his throat, but nodded an affirmative. Whatever would happen, he was prepared to face the consequences.

Seconds later, he smiled at the sight of his daughter’s unruly golden locks flashing past his window into the corridor before she bounded through the open door, although she stopped short of approaching her father’s bedside. He suddenly felt horribly exposed, clad only in the thin gown the hospital had dressed him in, his truncated left arm bare, no hook or prosthetic to hide his deformity.

“Starfish,” he greeted her with her childhood nickname.

“Haven’t heard anyone call me that for a long time, Papa…,” she replied, her cheeks flushing with a mix of anxiety and embarrassment. This wasn’t how he would have wanted her to turn out, but she didn’t care anymore. She wanted her Papa back more than anything. “I’ve missed you so much.”

“And I’ve missed you, too, Love,” he insisted as he shifted nervously on the bed. “There’s only one way for us to know if this curse is really gone…”

“You think…?” she asked timidly, taking one tentative step closer to the bed.

“Come closer,” he instructed, bracing himself for the onslaught of pain as she made her way across the room at an almost agonizingly slow pace. He felt a few twinges, but nothing was any worse than the discomfort from the stabbing. “It’s okay, I’m fine.” He offered his reassurance with a weak, timid smile. He extended his hand to her, eyes begging her to grasp it, eager for even that tiny bit of contact.

Alice squeezed her eyes closed as she reached for his hand, awaiting the burning sensation from the mark emblazoned into her wrist as their fingertips touched for the first time in many years. Neither knew what would happen, but there was nothing. No burning. No aching. No magic driving them apart - and there was absolutely nothing containing Alice’s ecstatic joy as she nearly threw herself into her papa’s arms to hug him as tightly as she could.

“It worked! Papa, it worked!” she exclaimed gleefully, excited that she could finally embrace him after such a long time - almost so excited that she missed his pained grunt beneath her, turning her head expecting to see his smiling face but instead seeing an uncomfortable grimace and the dampness of tears around his eyes. “Oh, no…” her mood turned somber in a split-second. “ I spoke too soon…?” She backed away, ready to run, but he held tight to her wrist.

“It’s alright, Starfish. My heart is fine. It’s just my other injuries…”

“Oh, Papa, I’m so sorry! I was so excited, I forgot what that monster did to you! I hope I didn’t hurt you too much…”

“Nothing that won’t heal,” he chuckled as he gritted through the ache in his chest, drawing his arms in tighter as if trying to hold his guts in. “I promise, it will all be fine…” There were more tears flowing now but all were tears of joy.

“I love you so much, Papa.”

“And I - you, my Starfish.”

#ouat s7 ff #ouat ff #knightrook #detective rogers #bloodline #self repost #whump fic #rogers whump

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paulisweeabootrash · 3 years

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2020 mini-review pack

Di Gi Charat (1999)

Episodes watched: 7

Platform: VRV (Hidive)

Di Gi Charat (pronounced like “carrot”) is a series of fast-paced 4-ish-minute shorts nominally about Dejiko and Rabi-en-Rose, rivals trying to be Earth’s greatest idol. Who are, respectively, a catgirl and a bunnygirl. Oh, and also they’re aliens? That’s... uh... certainly a premise, I guess. The actual show consists of self-contained gag-filled episodes with no ongoing story, in almost a sitcom kind of way, throwing the characters into situations without context, but with a stable “baseline” situation (unlike, say, Pop Team Epic, where the characters serve more as stock personalities playing different roles in different sketches). Dejiko is a snarky schemer. Rabi-en-Rose is a snarky schemer whose main activity seems to be bothering Dejiko at work. Puchiko is a small and quiet child and behaves accordingly. And Gema is... something? I have no clue, honestly, and neither does the fan wiki. Other recurring characters fill stock roles such as “manager” and “otaku”. A lot of the humor centers around poking fun at fandom. It’s a show by, for, and about otaku from an era before our current internet culture, and since I’m a millennial and not from Japan, that makes it unusually hard to evaluate.

W/A/S: 8/2?/5?

Weeb: Chibis. Catgirls. Idols. Kappas. Kawaii verbal tics. Akihabara. Low-detail background characters who look like blobs or thumbs with faces. Kanji left on-screen but untranslated. Particular sorts of highly-exaggerated facial expressions we may have become familiar with through emoji, but which still haven’t made their way into American media generally. This is ludicrously Japanese.

Ass: This really isn't that kind of show. Although it is certainly designed for adults, as evidenced by the presence of phrases like “naughty doujinshi”.

Shit: The art is fun. It has style shifts from comic strip to watercolor painting to mainstream 90s anime, and looks better than some of its contemporaries that were, uh, “real” shows. The opening takes up about a quarter of the total runtime and gets annoying quickly (but that's because it’s clearly designed for being part of a broadcast block, not binge-watching). Still, unless I’m missing hidden cleverness on account of not having the background knowledge, there’s not much to it. It’s just okay.

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First Astronomical Velocity (band, active 2011-present)

Platform: Spotify, surprisingly

Okay, this one is a bit different, and I’m jettisoning the whole format for it. Remember how I said the music-centered episodes of SoniAni were actually pretty good, even though the modeling-centered episodes were so offputting I never finished the show? Well it turns out that First Astronomical Velocity, Sonico’s band, has released several IRL albums. Physical copies may be a little hard to come by, but official uploads of a lot of their music can be found on Youtube and Spotify. Do your musical interests include at least two of: string arrangements that would be at home in a particularly sappy movie soundtrack, 90s-00s alternative rock, synthesizer beep-boops, and that constricted cutesy Japanese women’s vocal style (you know the one I mean)? Then this is for you. They’re a pretty good... uh... alt-pop-rock band, I guess is what I’d call them.

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Interspecies Reviewers (2020)

Episodes watched: the entire 12-episode season

Platform: I plead the 5th. But it’s getting a video release soon, so it will finally be legitimately available in English!

I started this year with a plot-light fanservicey animal-people show, and now I’m ending the year with... a plot-light fanservicey animal-people show. But unlike Nekopara, this show had me cracking up, eagerly clicking “next episode”, and not complaining about the premise. I’m sure a lot of people do have a problem with this show’s premise -- which centers almost entirely on various forms of sex work -- and I understand and respect that they will want to skip this show.

But for the rest of you: Interspecies Reviewers is a wildly-NSFW comedy about a group of fantasy world adventurers who gain fame and fortune reviewing brothels of different species. I expected excessive nudity and fantasy tropes, but I didn’t expect to also get serious thoughts. Like showing, in the golem and Magic Metropolis episodes, some of the unsettling problems that are looming IRL as deepfakes and sex robots are in development -- note especially the contrast between consensually and non-consensually basing automata on real people in those episodes. Or the discussion in the last episode of how much riskier sex would be in a world without magic (i.e., ours). This is a much smarter and more interesting show than you’d expect, considering that it has so much sexual content that it got dropped by two of the networks airing it and even its US distributor.

W/A/S: 5/10/4

Weeb: Although heavily influenced by the Western fantasy media canon of European mythology and Tolkien and tabletop RPGs, familiarity with the tropes of fantasy anime will help you “get” this too, as will familiarity with the -sigh- character dynamics and censorship practices of hentai. Especially because it’s a comedy, there are probably also instances where I have completely missed topical references or wordplay that a Japanese person would get, but I can’t think of any specific instances right now of “there was clearly supposed to be a joke but I missed it”.

Ass: Look, this could not possibly have more sexual content without unambiguously becoming porn. Genitals are (almost) always carefully hidden by viewing angle or conveniently-placed glowing (something lampshaded in one episode as an actual feature of one of the species they review), but otherwise, expect lots of nudity and almost nonstop crude humor. Do not watch this with children. Do not watch this with your parents. Do not watch this with friends you don’t know well enough to know how they’ll react to something like this.

Shit: This show is better-made than it deserves to be. It’s pretty dumb at points, but it’s fun enough to make up for it. The art is consistent and pleasant, and the opening and ending themes are extremely fun, but it’s not a serious standout in any of those departments. Also, I swear the background music is stock music, but I don’t remember what other show(s) I’ve heard it in before.

Stray thought: Crim is a precious and relatable cinnamon roll and I love them.

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OreSuki OVA (2020)

Platform: Crunchyroll

So, I know I didn’t cover the whole season in my initial review, but I still want to mention the hour-ish-long finale of this show, which was released straight to streaming. Short version of the rest of the season: Joro starts to actually fall for Pansy, but a new challenger, Hose, appears. He is irritatingly attractive and effortless at maintaining the right persona for the situation, leading Joro to describe him as “the main character”. Hose is the sociopathic manipulator Joro wishes he could be, and Pansy, who has a bad past with him, clearly wants nothing more than for Joro to stand up to him. But, since this is OreSuki, it’s not going to be handled simply. No, instead, strap in for a grand finale of Joro and Hose competing in, and trying to manipulate through rules-lawyering, an absolutely ludicrous competition to win the right to date Pansy. And, on top of it, we also get to finally see how Sun-chan got to be the way he is and what happened at that pivotal baseball game that set off the whole plot. What has Joro learned from the experiences of the past season? You’ll see! And you’ll facepalm about it!

Really, you must watch this if you watched the regular season.

W/A/S: 6/5(!)/4ish

Weeb: Basically the same as I said before. Gags referencing other Japanese media, anime and otherwise, and it's better if you’re familiar with the high school romcoms and harem comedies Joro thinks in terms of.

Ass (and slight content note): -sigh- Why does the camera need to be there? Also, Joro, you just committed a little bit of sexual assault for the sake of this contest. Stop.

Shit: I want to rate this overall better than I did the regular season because I think it’s an excellent finale overall because, even though it ends in a very “let’s leave everything unresolved” way that’s common in media that rely on absurd relationships to propel the plot, it does so in a way that makes sense in character. I personally think it would’ve been stronger if it had, well, confirmed its title, and at least some of the other “challengers” had lost interest in Joro, but I guess they probably want a Season 2, since they have so much more source material to work from. There are... oh god 14 light novels?! That is too many.

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Your Name. (2016)

Platform: DVD

Two high schoolers -- small-town girl Mitsuha, from Itomori, and big-city boy Taki, from Tokyo -- find themselves in each other’s bodies for a day. They both think at first it must be a very vivid dream, but when it happens again, and they start finding clues like notes they don’t remember writing and comments by friends and relatives about their out-of-character behavior, they realize the body swap is real. This begins a relationship of mutual understanding that nobody else can really understand -- or would even believe (except Mitsuha’s grandmother, who is... familiar with this phenomenon) -- and the plot then pivots to a tense adventure where they use their connection, some crucial information Taki has, the skills of Mitsuha’s friends, and the intervention of Itomori’s patron deity, to save the town from an impending disaster.

And that’s all I’ll say about that, because I really do think this is something you should go into blind. My only remaining comments are that (1) the red string of fate is critically important imagery, and is particularly interesting to me here because, if I took a particular scene correctly, Mitsuha made her own red string of fate from sheer necessity, which is a very different twist on that trope, and (2) I am now curious about the history of the body-swapping phenomenon in-universe.

W/A/S: 4?/2/2

Weeb: As mentioned above, symbolism of the Red String of Fate shows up throughout the movie, as do the occasional distinctly Japanese quirk like a wildly out-of-place vending machine or a café with dogs, and but for the most part it’s a cross-cultural story of understanding and dealing with someone else’s life, and of forming a connection other people don’t -- can’t -- truly understand, and to some extent of divides between urban and rural and modern and traditional that I think could play out in any country with just the local symbolism tweaked. The significance and content of Shinto beliefs and practices depicted, particularly kuchikamizake, are made pretty explicit, so although foreign to the vast majority of the non-Japanese audience, I feel like this movie also has nearly no barrier to entry for people not familiar with the cultural context, so I don’t want to rate it very high on this scale.

Ass: Look. It involves teenagers switching bodies. What do you think they do? Especially Taki? But it’s played for laughs, not titillation.

Shit: This movie is beautiful and punched me in the feels and was very satisfying. The closest I have to a complaint about any aspect of it is that the musical breaks that I guess are supposed to mark acts of the movie almost make it feel like binge-watching a short series instead of watching a single self-contained movie.

#weeaboo trash #anime review #mini-reviews #happy new year #di gi charat #first astronomical velocity #super sonico #interspecies reviewers #oresuki #Are You Really the Only One Who Likes Me?#your name

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jan-uinely · 4 years

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hot takes [pt. ii]

good[e] morning campers! we have more thoughts on \_ |_ | _/ RuPaul’s Drag Race episode 9... because i have nothing better to think about... lol. This is a novel, btw.

SO... I have said it before and i will say it again... the in memorium segment gave me life. Robot Barbie Cheerleader. also RIP to jan’s clear drink in untucked.

Let’s get into the gig, because why not. Unsure if readers are aware, but I am very politically minded. [do I use tumblr as a way to put politics aside for a little while? sure. but I have also worked on campaigns, did not take Elizabeth warren dropping out of the presidential race well... I mean she dropped at the beginning of march and now look at where we are.... anyWAYs.]

I did not like this episode. I did not like the challenge. From what I understand, the only other time this challenge was done was in season 4, but I stopped watching season 4 when sharon wore a conf*derate flag bodysuit for a mini challenge, prior to which she wore a mccain/palin shirt. I still don’t know if it was a joke, but #yeet.

So this episode took the place of a “roast”/ stand up episode. Those are usually fine. They separate folks a little bit more. But, as someone who followed the recent primary with a VERY close eye, but was could also be humorous about it... Debates are hard to do. What makes a debate work is that everyone is well versed on everyone else’s platform, and knows how to attack them, because they have been the same person the whole time. For some reason, everyone “invented” a different character to play.... no one had a real platform... and it’s really hard to ~volley~ when people don’t really understand everyone’s characters. I also think, similar to the democratic primary- that there were too many people on stage. I also think snatch game happened too early... but that’s another story never mind anyway [did you catch that into the woods/bernadette peters joke???? @ JAN ].

So everyone has these “characters” which for the most part are not super consistent with who they’ve been portraying on the show... which makes it challenging. Then, it was moderated very poorly, and then edited together very poorly. There was no flow... it was very choppy. Again... not a fan.

Season 8 also had a political challenge, but if i remember correctly, that was just a branding challenge kind of. It was better than this. Now, do I appreciate the fact that Drag Race is taking this election very seriously?? YES. But this challenge was just Not It.

I thought Jaida was very consistent, I liked Jackie’s a lot [It seems like a running gag that she is too prepared in the same way that Jan was too energetic... which has its own election flashbacks....] I am really enjoying crystal... I thought she also had what was close to a fully formed character.. it just needed to bake a little more.

So... next up... ms. goode. #cringe. tbh I don’t care about the performance. Were they just trying to redo snatch game? basically. were they the only person to try and do that? No.

This mirror chat was the bomb dot com tho. best part of the episode.

We’re talking about the “oh i’m not political” We knew from episode one that Gigi grew up in a lot of privilege- and wasn’t the only one [@ jan] but jesus has it shown in gigi the most... I mean bob the drag queen said it best.. Gigi goode’s mom vs Jaida Essence Hall.

But the nerve to openly say “i’m not political, and I don’t like it” when you KNOW at this point in time what the contestants have gone through... it’s just really insensitive. Also to be the open front runner knowing that the RPDR fans can be young and impressionable.. is really irresponsible TBH.

Guess what? I don’t like to follow the news sometimes. I don’t watch tr*mp’s press conferences. Sometimes I log off twitter and go to tumblr. But I still stay INFORMED on the issues and am able to back up my positions. I VOTE. [cannot believe i’m saying this but i would not be surprised if gigi did not vote in 2016.]

[sidebar]

Maybe it’s bc I stan jan in a way that I have stanned no one else before [the only ru girl who even comes close to it while I was actively watching the show without prior knowledge is naomi] Maybe it’s combined with the quarantine that I have nothing else to do. And with that comes a [virtual] introduction to basically everybody who’s anybody in the NYC drag scene. [I will say the Bob-Monet-Cracker-Jan quad is just A+] So maybe I just have a better idea of what it is [have I gone down a Youtube rabbit hole on this subject? yes]

Is new york also my personal favorite city? yes. Have I been to LA? no. Do I like the concept of LA? no. Have I been west of the mississippi river? no. So maybe it’s a combination of all of these things [including Jan saying on repeat that New York is the greatest city to do drag] but. The NYC girls are just so much more political. Brita, Bob, MOnet, tbh Jan is also on the record saying some A+ shiz. Marti Cummings is a non binary drag artist running for city council in manhattan. “Everybody black and aquaria.”

Is NYC politics like any city, full of machines and garbage too? Sure. But NYC is just so much more powerful and political. LA is just the embodiment of privilege.

I also think it’s interesting that some of the smaller town/city gals will move to LA [Trixie/Katya/Alaska? I’m looking @ you] after they get the drag race coin. Not that it’s a bad thing or anything, it’s just an interesting dynamic. [another aside: the non NY/LA girls deserve it all and i think it’s really powerful when the show directly addresses issues of wealth/privilege/access to drag on the show.]

[end sidebar]

And Gigi came into the competition saying “I want to be on vogue” which is great. Their fashion sense is great. Most of their outfits are great. It’s great that they can do comedy [sometimes- like when they are not playing the role of Gigi] But something else I take issue with- and don’t get me wrong humility is great- is the whole “I’m not a dancer” that’s BS. they whole back handspring etc, madonna challenge. Maybe you weren’t a trained dancer, but ffs cut the crap. [if you haven’t look up gigi goode showgirls]

And yet the judges continue to give Gigi [and SP] free passes. It’s like Ru is so afraid that if either of them end up in the bottom, they won’t turn it out and then there will be no frontrunner. Well guess what? In season 7, Max had 2 wins before anyone else and came in 9th. valentina going home was a total gag. Brooke and Yvie lip synced on the snatch game ep. But Apparently when the skinny white fashion queen from the big city [gigi, aquaria] does less than well, they don’t get put up for elimination??? [did aquaria deserve to lip sync for the makeover? idk.]

Gigi is getting a “winner” edit and it’s not really fair to anyone. People who should have won certain challenges were IGNORED, and instead the producers give all the credit to gigi, giving them almost a worse edit. Like we want to see humans, not robots. If we learned ANYTHING from last week is that the judges don’t like when you just “start on 100 and stay there THE WHOLE TIME”. Bc the truth is that [aside from the loads and loads and loads of privilege,] Gigi is really nice and very talented. But I, as a viewer of reality TV, live to see the perfect fail. I want everyone to shine [this is why I loved when Naomi sent manila home, oops]

Also.. I would like to address the fact that Gigi basically used the same outfit twice... this runway and entrance look have almost the same pattern, with just a slightly different skirt type. I would like for this behavior to be called out bc it is such a memorable silhouette.

Also- Shout out to Crystal for the most bomb ass runway... I want that whole outfit pls.

but aside from that... TBH I just want a show with the real top 7 [ the heidi and widow have been cracking me up saying “we’re at top 5″ or “we’re at top 6″ before the ep aired on instagram and I’m loling.. and that VERY AWK moment when Jan is on the x change rate saying that they couldn’t justify putting anyone other that her and widow in the bottom bc gigi and 3 wins and trying to work around not saying SP’s name had 2. [also shout out to jan the real mvp for unfollowing SP on twitter]] doing competitions and having fun. And I’ve said this before. This is a really good season that did not need production’s handprints all over everything. But they chose to cast RuPaul’s Best Friend Race, so they shouldn’t be complaining or trying to manufacture drama.

I was cracking up when Jaida was [clearly prodded by producers] asking is there anything we need to talk about? and then Jackie goes to talk to widow right before they leave and they are just nice to each other. lol no drama here. It’s the season of the inner saboteur.

So Jackie and widow are in the bottom and tbh I don’t know. I would have liked to see Gigi lip sync. I would have liked this challenge to not happen. but it did. The lip sync song.. I just didn’t love the cut... Katy perry’s voice is so over produced [trend alert] that the illusion of the lip sync didn’t work in the first chorus. Jackie’s plastic bag was just A+. These lip syncs, tbh starting w jan v widow have been very good. not good enough to make up for the garbage that was everything since ep. 3, but close. [and some of that was song choice, some of it was not. I will say brita killed her first one but rip to rock]

Jeff gold bloom. I just don’t know. Maybe it’s bc I never saw jurassic park. Maybe he was just a bad judge. maybe he too was being prodded by production. ugh. You can read the takes on his interactions with jackie somewhere else.

#RuPaul's Drag Race #constructive criticism #drag race season 12 #drag race spoilers #most of my frustration is towards production #goode bye to jan sport

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arcaneranger · 5 years

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Final Thoughts - 2018 Long Shows

It’s finally here! I’m so close to being done with 2018 (...mostly. We’ll get to it) that I can taste it, but in the meantime, this list is gonna be weird, because there will be things that were already on other lists since I revised my rules of what should be classified how. This post is specifically for any show that ended in 2018 and lasted longer than 13-ish episodes (including shows that aired a second season during the same year or within six months of finishing the previous one), which means that there’s about as much on it as a usual season of shows, but they all had more time to impress - or disappoint me. I’m doing a better job in recent seasons of getting to everything, but last year there were unfortunately things that I missed (I was burned out in the winter) and just have to leave aside for now because I can’t wait any longer for these lists.

Anyway! As usual, let’s start with what I skipped!

* The Seven Deadly Sins: Revival of the Commandments, The Disastrous Life of Saiki Kusuo S2, Cardcaptor Sakura Clear Card, Garo: Vanishing Line, and Mr Tonegawa: Middle Management Blues because I haven’t seen their previous seasons or parent works. (Yes, even Cardcaptor Sakura. Y’all can shoot me later.)

* Hakyuu Hoshin Engi, Beatless, and Basilisk: The Ouka Ninja Scrolls because by the time I was rounding things up, I hadn’t heard a single positive thing about any of them.

Next comes what I dropped -

WORST OF THE YEAR: Steins;Gate 0 (4/10)

What a fucking mess this show was. Aside from a very noticeable downgrade in production talent from its predecessor, the plot meanders and flirts with maybe actually happening this time before just dropping out again, over and over, to the point where I was perfectly willing to drop it two episodes from the finish line because it was such an insult to fans of the original. (Also, continued disgusting mistreatment of the transgender character.)

Gundam Build Divers (4/10)

Taking the Build series from being a well-written kids show to an averagely-written kids show that hides itself in decent mech designs.

Katana Maidens (4/10)

I remember so little about this show, and granted that I did drop it after one episode almost nine months ago, but what I did remember was that it gave me strong KanColle vibes with laughably inconsistent animation and flat characters. Meh.

Darling in the FRANXX (5/10)

This should probably be lower on the list, but I got out of Darling while the getting was good, sixteen episodes in. I understand that future episodes of the show cemented it as crappy right-wing nonsense in addition to pushing worldbuilding out of its fortieth-story window, but the moment it lost me was much sooner, when the crazy yandere female lead was reduced, almost instantly, to Good Anime Waifu as a reward to the protagonist for going against his friends with his selfish motives.

Persona 5 the Animation (5/10)

In addition to not actually finishing in 2018, Persona 5 just did not give me a single reason to watch it when I’d already finished the source game, with middling-to-bad visuals (thanks to the switch from Production I.G. to A-1 Pictures, and not even the team that created the much better-looking Day Breakers OVA before the game was released in the U.S.) and phoned-in music, which is especially unacceptable in a Persona adaptation. Also, we all absolutely called that the studio couldn’t tell the story of the entire game in just 26 episodes.

Record of Grancrest War (6/10)

There’s people that like this one a lot, but I didn’t see much that interested me in the first two episodes. I’ve heard better things about the manga.

Golden Kamuy (6/10)

I had problems with the first half of Golden Kamuy that the second half simply didn’t fix, and it became difficult for me to keep watching - the show still interrupted almost every fight scene with a dick joke, but still wanted to maintain a serious and occasionally frightening tone - and those things simply don’t go together. It needed to either spend more time being funny, or keep its lowest-common-denominator humor out of the fights.

Next, I have two shows that are (potentially permanently) On Hold, simply because it’s time for me to move on and I don’t have the time or energy to marathon them when the Winter shows are starting to wrap up:

Kakuriyo: Bed & Breakfast for Spirits, because even though I initially dropped it, I’ve heard a lot of good things since and I want to eventually give it another shot.

Yowamushi Pedal Glory Line, because despite the fact that I still enjoyed the previous season, this one started right in the middle of my burnout and I only heard bad things about it. I’ll get to it eventually, but it’s a shame that this series has been on a clear trend downwards since its revival.

And finally, the stuff I finished!

The Ancient Magus’ Bride (6/10)

Keep in mind that this is here entirely on the merits of its aesthetic and its side characters - in the end, Ancient Magus’ Bride is a Beauty and the Beast story where the beast gets what he wants without learning to be less of a dick or even apologizing for his clearly wrong actions.

Major 2nd (7/10)

Always pleased to have even just Good sports shows around, and this one is a very effective reboot of a classic series that’s never made its way stateside (man, the underperformance of Big Windup! really did a lot of damage to this genre in the West). With good character development and a decent second-generation premise, Major 2nd has the potential to be the beginning of a solid baseball story, assuming that it gets a needed followup.

IDOLiSH7 (7/10)

I dropped IDOLiSH7 when it first aired, and though I wound up enjoying it after I was very strongly urged to revisit it, the problems it started with never quite left it behind - that is, it has an okay cast of characters but doesn’t present even passable performance sequences, and if you’re going to include big song-and-dance numbers, they have to be good, or you may as well just be UtaPri.

ClassicaLoid Season 2 (8/10)

In 2017, I gave the first season of ClassicaLoid a near-perfect 9/10, and while this season gives us a satisfying conclusion to the story, it does things both a little better than the first, and also not quite as great. It’s story is much more well-integrated over the runtime so it doesn’t happen all at once in a few chunks, and the jokes that work are still absolute genius, but there’s simply too much that doesn’t quite land correctly, and a little too much immature humor, for it to reach the same lofty Hall of Fame heights as the first season. Still, one of the most underrated shows I’ve ever seen.

My Hero Academia Season 3 (8/10)

God, Izuku in that onesie is too damn cute.

My problems with Hero Academia are frustratingly persistent - the show is at its best when the students are competing with other students, because outside of last season’s Stain (a villain whose motivation is specifically related to the world of MHA), the villains are just not at all compelling and they all seem a little too generic for their own good. I just want Horikoshi to be a little bit less predictable of an author and do a little less reading of the Standard Shounen Playbook. Luckily, when it works, it works magnificently.

March Comes in Like a Lion S2 (8/10)

March remains director/auteur Akiyuki Shinbo’s most accessible work, and one of his masterpieces, as a well-paced and marvelously moody story of a depressed shogi prodigy learning to be a normal teenager before his youth completely passes him by, and the fantastic characters that surround him with their own complex problems and motivations. I just really, really hope it gets a third season eventually, because this one did not leave off on a satisfying conclusion.

Speaking of which...

Food Wars! Shokugeki no Soma S3 (9/10)

It’s almost a shame that My Hero Academia became hugely popular purely based on its accessibility to American audiences, because Food Wars pretty squarely deserves to be the reigning Shonen Jump king - each season has only improved on the previous one, and this one was based entirely on a continuing arc that could only have happened in the universe of this show, Fighting Food Fascism. That being said, it also leaves off right in the middle of the arc (because it had almost caught up to the manga), meaning that we have to hope that it can remain relevant long enough for there to be enough source material for another season. I’ll be crossing my fingers until they snap.

Banana Fish (9/10)

Yes, this has risen a point since my review, but Banana Fish still deserves to be thought of as both a complete masterwork of crime fiction, being fantastically paced and expertly plotted in the use of its many, many twists, and a work that disappointed the side of me that hoped that, in adapting it into the modern day, MAPPA could have managed to get the author to let them depict what is clearly a queer relationship with the authenticity and legitimacy that it deserved. It’s still amazing, though, and Amazon should be pushing it with their most lavishly-made originals. At least it was the last noitaminA show they’ll get to totally bury.

And, finally, the one you all saw coming.

BEST OF THE YEAR: Lupin the 3rd Part V (10/10)

Lupin is, quite simply, one of the pinnacles of the medium. A simple idea that can (and did) go in thousands of different directions, handled by highly creative writers and an animation staff that has been knocking it out of the park for years, despite the fact that it is criminally (heh) unrecognized in the West. To put it simply, there’s a very, very good reason that it’s been around since the 70′s.

Okay! All I have left to do is finish Dragon Pilot (waiting on a friend) and we can get the last two lists out of the way! We’re almost done...

#multi 2018 #arcaneanime #year end anime list #final thoughts #lupin the third #my hero academia #banana fish #food wars #the ancient magus bride #March Comes in Like a Lion #idolish7 #major 2nd

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sanrionharbor-blog · 5 years

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Some Sanrion Pick-Me-Ups :)

*Guys, I’m going to be nothing but GOT meta for the next few weeks--there’s more text where this came from xD

Did a wee bit of thinking today and, while I’m 100% confident that I have no idea who will end up with whom either in the GOT-verse or ASOIAF-verse, I can say this: shipping is excruciatingly fun, and I’m just here for the ride.

So without further ado, some Sanrion thoughts.

1. Sanrion is still up in the air. Like, the ship hasn’t sunk, nor has it sailed. Theonsa? Feels like pure emotional bonding to me, not a sudden crush. Doesn’t mean it won’t “happen” but let’s be honest--Theon’s arc revolves more around his redemption (which will probably end in death) than another Grey Worm-esque romance.

2. If Sanrion DOES happen, that means we got the best slow burn romance of this entire show.

Look at what was, essentially, confirmed in Episode 2: Braime and Gendrya. (More on Braime in a bit).

Gendrya sorta needed to happen in the first two episodes--it’s more fitting with Arya’s hell-bent personality, and if there are going to be multiple endgame couples, they better spread them out. Now Sansa, if she has any romance at all, has the opposite problem that Arya has. Whereas Arya has trained herself to be stripped of almost all armor (figuratively speaking--she’s tried to strip herself of her identity, humanity, and fear of death--and far from being a casual fling, her night with Gendry was a step towards her feeling both pain and love again), Sansa has multiple layers standing between her and anybody who might dare love her in that way. Her costuming reflects this. Her experiences inform this. Her history and her character are not something that will be transformed with a pair of bedroom eyes. (Again why I don’t interpret her bowl of soup with Theon as romantic--actually, speaking of soup bowls...).

3. I’m getting brotherly vibes from Sansa’s reactions with Theon. I know Jonsa is a very popular ship and Theonsa is the little ship that could, so again, if you ship these, don’t read any further. But I see brother/sister/survivors-of-war parallels between Sansa’s interactions with Jon and Sansa’s interactions with Theon. Nothing romantic, but still intimate and deep. Her reunion hugs with both Theon and Jon have the same vibes--tender, precious, tentatively hopeful, pain being replaced with relief. Heck, they even shot her eating soup with Theon in a similar fashion to her eating soup with Jon. Which tells me it probably shouldn’t be read as OMG-Theon-is-the-one-for-Sansa.

How do you cinematically set up two characters for romance? You give them one-of-a-kind shots. You give them tension. You give them unresolved threads.

4. Now, who does Sansa have unresolved threads with? Arguably, Jon and Tyrion. For the most part, I believe Sansa’s relationship with Jon has improved by strides--but is it suddenly going to go from “you were the half sibling that my mother taught me not to respect” to “Jon, who is not actually my sibling, is my future husbando.” I mean, with 4 episodes left? So the unresolved thread here is, who/what will Jon be loyal to, if asked to choose? Obviously Sansa represents his ties to the Starks and Dany represents his ties to the Targaryens. (And if the showrunners boiled that down to a love triangle instead of continuing Jon’s arc of brotherhood/loyalty/searching for a home, so help me--).

Or does Jon have to choose? Remember what he told Theon--”You’re both a Stark and a Greyjoy.” But anyhow, that’s going into another subplot.

As for Tyrion, Sansa still has unresolved tension there. Which is why I think both she and Tyrion will definitely survive the upcoming battle. They didn’t give Tyrion nearly enough to do in these first two episodes, or Sansa for that matter, to just kill them off for shock value in the following climax. And perhaps they didn’t wrap things up with a bow between Sansa and Tyrion because they’ll be integral to the drama that will unfold after the battle. IF that drama included romance, I think it would be a subtle footnote, or a “Hey, let’s start again.” Actually, how poetic/bittersweet would it be for the two families that have been warring all this time to unite in a marriage where both parties actually consented? (I’ll have to do a separate post on all of the psychological complexities that still stand in Sanrion’s way, because I’m OCD that way, but for now let’s just say a Lannistark romance would be epic).

5. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe there’s more book-context for Sansa/Tyrion than there is for any of Sansa’s other ships (the interesting asides with Sandor Clegane withstanding). There are also some interesting parallels in their story lines: take their runaway bastard story lines, which are perfect parallels to one another right after they split up over the same event--the Purple Wedding. Then, an internal journey/myth parallel, which is that of Beauty and the Beast. The same kind of story line that GRRM explicitly set up for Jaime and Brienne. Long story short, there’s lots of contextual things going on for Sanrion

6. (Bridge4 is a super smart GOT fan who’s dived into all the lore, genuinely loves and has fun with the series, and occasionally drops compelling reasons for Sansa and Tyrion to end up on the Iron Throne together ^^) [sorry if the video doesn’t show up correctly!]

youtube

7. I consider Seasons 5-8 of GOT a rough draft for the last third of GRRM’s series anyhow. xD Not dismissing a lot of the hard work put into it, but I can’t for the life of me understand why they couldn’t get people better at writing dialogue in their inner sanctum. I’m a writer myself and know it’s a lot easier to criticize than it is to create. But GOT started out as a filet mignon with baked Alaska and has somehow become a cheese pizza with extra ham--and don’t get me wrong, all the ingredients are top notch, but it’s a strange course to end on all the same. Bring back the Shakespearean drama and leave out the self-referential humor and fan service. (and please, if we ever have any more super cool reunions, don’t just do the boring thing and sit them around a fire, in a circle, with literally nothing interesting in the room, no interesting angles, no nothin--i digress).

#sanrion #sansa stark #tyrion lannister #got #got s8 spoilers #shipping #sansa x tyrion #tyrion x sansa #meta #long post #sorry not really generous to any other sansa ships haha #anti theonsa #anti jonsa #ugh anti looks so negative but i don't want shippers to accidentally read something against their ship

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voltron-s7-8-rewrite · 5 years

Text

“The Feud”

This is part of my Voltron Season 7 & 8 re-write. If you are interested start HERE

The Feud

Like every episode, Norlox welcomes us, the viewer, to "Garfle Warfle Snick!", prompting the audience to cheer. He announces our favorite host, Bob, who flies out, sitting on his ever present floating lounger. Bob informs us that there are very special contestants on the show today, and introduces the Paladins of Voltron.

All five Paladins rise up out of the floor, extremely confused as to what’s going on. Just a moment ago they had been traveling in Voltron on their way back to Earth, now they appear to be the midst of an alien game show.

Bob comes over and asks for the Paladins to introduce themselves, bewildered by everything, Keith asks what this is. Bob chastises them for not listening to Norlax, and asks the audience to tell them the name of the show.

The cameraman switches to a view of the audience, where Shiro, Krolia, Romelle, Coran, and even Kosmo are sitting, just as confused as the Paladins. Surrounding them is an audience made out of Bobs who all answer the other Bob with a shout of “Garfle Warfle Snick!".

With that out of the way, Bob once again asks for the Paladin’s names. Keith tells him, and asks how they got there; Bob dismisses his question with a joke, and continues asking the others for their names.

Once everyone is introduced, Bob begins the first game. He explains the usual rules, how they need to accumulate quaz-cenbullion credits to win, and informing them that if they don’t reach the stated amount, they will be trapped in the studio for all eternity.

The Paladins are stunned at his statement. Enraged, Keith says they won’t be wasting their time here, that the universe at stake, and they are leaving. However, Bob snaps his fingers, and the Paladins find their legs bound to the floor. Bob’s jolly behavior turns downright sinister as he tells them that they have been selected as guests on his show, and they will play it for as long as he wants them to. The Paladins, unnerved at the change of his behavior, agree.

Seeing the Paladins understand, he immediately snaps back to his normal jolly self, and calls Keith over for the first game.

Having heard the rules, Krolia turns to the others and says they have to help the Paladins out. She explains while Bob is focused on the game, they can attack. The others agree and stand, walking down one the aisle, only to return to their vacant seats from the other side. They are shocked and turn around, only to see their vacant seats behind them.

Refusing to give up, Krolia motions the isle below them, and they start hopping over the seats, much to the displeasure of the Bobs they are stepping over. Walking down several rows, they once again end up on the isle with their vacant seats. Realizing they are stuck here, the five sit down, angered and annoyed.

Pulling Keith up to the main stage, Bob explains the first game, Pictation. With it being like the human game, “Pictionary”, Keith is able to easily understand and play.

While Bob puts Keith through some extra humiliation by pulling his hair up and sticking a pacifier in his mouth, the Black Paladin takes it in stride and concentrates on the game as the timer starts.

Allura is able to guess his first drawing of an Arusan, while Pidge gets the second with his drawing of a Marmoran Blade. Lance figures out the third picture of a Bytor, and while Hunk guess the fourth being one of the Voltron Lions, Bob says he need to be more specific. Hunk tries to quickly list the different lions, as Keith draws some flames, but the time runs out before he can say the right one, so they don’t get that final point.

Bob talks to the audience some more, while Keith is returned to where the others are. Hunk apologizes, but Keith assures him it’s not his fault, and tells the Paladins that if the only way to get out of here it to play along, then fine, they are going to destroy Bob at his own games. They agree, and the five are fired up and ready to take the game show host down.

Returning to the Paladins, Bob picks Lance for the next game’s contestant, but breaks for a word from the show’s sponsors.

In the audience, the others are still looking glum and annoyed, all except for Coran, who’s starting to enjoy the game.

Kosmo, sitting in one of the seats, teleports away only to reappear in the exact same spot.

Krolia, Romelle, and Shiro sigh in frustration as Coran claps with the audience Bobs as the show returns.

Coming back, Bob asks for the next game, which Norlax reveals to be “Garflater”. Bringing in a special guest, Bii-boh-Bi, Lance is told the rules. He must answer five questions correctly in Bii-Boh-Bi’s native language.

Lucky for him, Lance had learned a bit of the language in order to talk with fans during Voltron’s shows. He hopes it will be enough, and the Paladins encourage him on. Bob says there can’t be any communication between Lance and his team, and has an isolation shield dropped around him.

Bii-boh-Bi asks his questions, and Lance takes it slow, trying to answer. He gets all but the last one right, and is returned to his spot.

The others console him, and complain about having to answer in another language. Bob tells them that if they didn’t want to play the games, they shouldn’t have come on. Pidge snaps that he forced them here, but he ignores her and moves onto the next game, calling Hunk up.

Bob tells Hunk the rules for the game he gets to play; he's going to be shown a series of photos of people that the Paladins met on their journey, all he has to do is correctly name them. Hunk panics, saying they’ve met a lot of people, but Bob starts the game.

First up is Antok, who Hunk knows, but he has a hard time remember his name. He feels horrible, saying that he lost his life while helping the Paladins fight, and that his death really impacted Kolivan. Saying that triggers his name, and Hunk quickly says it.

The next is Swirn, who Hunk instantly remembers, explaining that she helped save him and Lance from being brainwashed, then helped take down a creature that was harvesting her people.

After her is N7, a cyborg Rebel friend of Matt’s who Hunk says he met and really got along with after the battle of Naxzela.

And the final image is Klaizap, who Hunk fondly remembers as the third alien he ever met.

With that, the game is over, and thanks to his caring and altruistic personality, the Paladin’s score was greatly boosted. The Paladin’s, as well as the rest of the group in the audience cheer for him.

Allura and Pidge are chosen for the final game, “Bankchannel”. The two must answer a series of questions as they run through an obstacle course. Every question wrong causes more obstacles to hinder their path. The goal is to get to the end line before the timer runs out.

The two start off and work together, Pidge answering the questions while Allura gets them through the obstacles.

However, halfway through the two put their own plan into motion. As Bob floats nearby, rather than helping Pidge over an obstacle, Allura turns and throws her at Bob, allowing her to tackle the host to the ground.

In the audience Krolia, Shiro, and Romelle excitedly cheer Pidge and Allura on, as Coran and the other Bobs stare in shock.

Pidge holds Bob down, as Allura runs over. They demand to be released, but an alarm starts blaring, and immediately the two girls are back with the other three Paladins at their podiums, everything having returned to normal.

Bob announces the final round of the game; the Paladins must vote for one of their team members to stay, trapped in the audience forever, while the others will be released. He gives them a moment to vote. The Paladins all glance at each other, the prospect of leaving one of their own behind is unthinkable. Slats come up, cutting their view of each other off. They all step up to their podium and take their pens, none of them hesitate with their answer. They all know who the right person to stay is.

Bob comes over for their answers, and one by one each of the Paladins reveal that they voted for themselves to be the one left behind.

Bob once again loses his cheerful personality as he sees this. The Paladins prepare for the worst, but he snaps back to normal and jolly self tells them that they all get to leave.

He then turns to us and ends the show, snapping his fingers and causing the Paladins to disappear in a flash of light.

With the Paladins gone, Norlox asks Bob why the anomaly he sent wasn’t enough. Bob says the anomaly was a trial, but this was the verdict.

Waking up in the Lions, Hunk complains about a horrible dream he just had. Pidge asks if it was about "Garfle Warfle Snick", prompting everyone to realize it wasn’t a dream.

Lance asks what that whole thing was about, but before they can ponder, Keith, voice in a state of disbelief, tells the Paladins to look at their sensors.

They do, and stare in shock as they see that they have reached the Milky Way, despite having still been hundreds of light years off before being pulled into Garfle Warfle Snick.

Not willing to look a gift horse in the mouth, Keith gives the command to head home.

Notes:

So, after the emotional turmoil of the previous stories, and the upcoming darker ones, we need a nice light-hearted story to break things up. However just because it’s lighthearted and fun, doesn’t mean it can’t help progress things in the story and characters. So, I changed some of the games, and who gets to play them, to do just that!

First, I hated how they made Lance look so flippant and uncaring about those who they’ve met by having him not remember their names. So, I changed that game to being played by Hunk, and used the Bii-Boh-Bi game to show that Lance actually cares about those he meets too.

So often Lance is shown interacting with the aliens in a way that makes it look like it’s all about his own self-admiration. Showing here that he actually takes the time to learn things about other species, including taking time to learn bits of their own language, shows that he cares about these peoples and tries connect with them.

And for Hunk, he is a character who is so caring and attentive, I thought not only would he remember the names of the people he’s met, but ways they might have made an impact on him.

The creators having the characters be so flippant with characters, especially ones like Antok who sacrificed his life for the Paladin’s cause, is a horrible thing to show. It’s important that the characters the Paladins meet during the events of this story mean something to them. Because if the Paladins can’t be bothered to remember the names of people who helped and died for them, why should we?

I changed the fourth game, to an obstacle course. I had some kind of “Legend of the Hidden Temple” Temple Run parody in my mind for it, with an added quiz element to it.

I mean, in the show Bob asks who is the “Brainiest” is, to which they all say Pidge; so why is the game mini golf? Because of that, and Allura being the strongest, I thought a team game where they could both use their strengths to get through would be fun.

Finally, I changed the last round for a couple of reasons. For one thing, I don’t like the characters didn't have any issue with just picking one person to go free. You would think that they would say something to each other, or try arguing with Bob about freeing the others. They are supposed to be close, without showing them have any heartache about picking one over the others makes them look like they don’t really care all that much.

By changing it to them having to pick one person to stay, we now get to see that what they said in the last story is true, without hesitation, they were each willing to be the one left behind. They would sacrifice their freedom, their lives for each other.

So, with this fun ‘filler’ story, not only have we shown deeper parts of these characters, by showing how they care and think about the peoples of the universe, but we have shown how much they all truly love each other.

I also didn’t want to leave Krolia, Shiro, Coran, Romelle, and Kosmo out of this story, as we spent most of the last one without them. They might not be Paladins, but they are a vital part of the team, and should not be left out all the time.

Having them in the audience and seeing their reactions to the ridiculousness would be a great way to have humor in the story. Least, I find it better then the “lol, Lance is dumb” ‘humor’ the episode had.

You could even make it worse for them by having them have to wear ridiculous costumes the whole time, giving a nod to shows like “Let’s make a deal”.

Now, about the end with Bob and Norlax ; one of the interviews with the show runners I remember seeing, mentioned that Bob was kind of like Voltron’s version of Q (from Star Trek). Being the Trekkie that I am, I wanted to play that up and imply that this ‘game show’ is Bob’s version of Q’s courtroom. Both the anomaly in the previous episode and this event is Bob’s way of judging the Paladins; testing to see if they are worthy of their positions and if their bonds are strong enough to face what’s coming their way. Which they are. . . . . . . . Oh, and Bob should have totally been voiced by John de Lancie in the actual episode.

Thanks for reading, have a great day!

#voltron #lance voltron #keith voltron #Allura #hunk voltron #voltron pidge #MyVoltronSeasonSummary #mywritings

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dragon-ball-meta · 5 years

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Ohhh boy... -cracks knuckles- Let’s do this, shall we?

30. HIS DESTRUCTO DISC WAS THE STRONGEST KI ATTACK IN THE SERIES How does that not make sense? You’re starting your list off by not even framing your complaints correctly, as your beef isn’t the attack’s power, but that it’s underused. But even that’s explained. In short, the Kienzan takes up a LOT of energy. To form, to get it spinning fast enough, to throw, takes a bit out of the user. It’s also got several drawbacks, including, but not limited to, being quite loud. People can hear it coming and adjust accordingly. One can make a slightly weaker version they can steer, but that reduces its effectiveness. Really, the Kienzan is only feasible in certain scenarios, at least until Krillin managed to gain the ability to control it without sacrificing power. 29. HE THOUGHT ANDROID 18 WAS DATING HER TWIN BROTHER Uh... ok? I mean I’m not sure how that ‘makes no sense’ but yeah, he made a mistake. Whoops? 28. HIS BODY MEASUREMENTS Bear in mind a few things here. Namely, that while Toriyama does depict these characters as “muscular”, it’s also lean. So the idea he should be ridiculously jacked is also a bit off. I believe the weight estimate also originally came back when the “Z” arcs started, so there’s that. Otherwise, this is probably one of the only legitimate points on this list. 27. THE REASON WHY HE SHAVES HIS HEAD ...again, how does this make no sense? He shaves his head as a sign of dedication to his practice of the martial arts and because he was taught it aided in the flow of ki in one’s body. That’s explained full well. Just because he ASSUMED Roshi shaved his head doesn’t make this not make sense. 26. HIS ABILITY TO BREAK THE FOURTH WALL It’s a comedy manga at heart. There’s jokes like this throughout. In Goku’s rematch with Yamcha, Goku hits him so hard that he actually breaks one of the borders between the panels and bounces off of it. It’s a thing in the series. Also, Idk why you’re referencing movies when they’re clearly not part of Toriyama’s continuity, but I’m reasonably certain that “lasted a season” was meant in terms of time passed, not “seasons” of a show. Especially as DB never had “seasons”. 25. HE NEVER TRAINED WITH WITH KING KAI Now this is what annoys me about this article. Y’all will take the anime and even movies into account when making this list... and yet with this complaint, you even have a screenshot of where he trained with King Kai in the anime. Yet you say he didn’t do it. Also, “with all the time he spends in the afterlife”? lol really? 24. HIS HEAD DOTS You... you literally explain this in full. How is this something that makes no sense? Literally how? 23. HIS REDUCED FIGHTING PRESENCE IN THE CELL AND BUU SAGAS Again, you explain this in the first paragraph of this entry. Yet you also talk about his activities in both arcs. So... how does this not make sense other than the fact that complaining about it makes no sense? I mean he still has a role, it’s just primarily non-combat. He carried the meat of the story in the Cell arc. 22. HIS BIZARRE CHILDHOOD "A lot of the pasts and families of Dragon Ball’s characters have been shown before (including Frieza's), but Krillin’s remains a mystery.“ Actually, no. They’re not. By and large, we learn very little about the pasts of any of these characters. We have only the vaguest details about anyone not Goku, Vegeta, Piccolo, or Bulma, discounting the people we actually see born during the series. Kami’s past, even his name, is a complete mystery. Tien? No one knows his background outside being taken in by the Crane Hermit and training alongside Chiaotzu. This is not uncommon. But we actually do know a bit more about Krillin’s past in that he was raised at Orin, and he was abused. Daily. Frequently. It left him with a complex that lasted well into his adult life. He ran away one day in tears, determined he was gonna prove he wasn’t weak or worthless someday. That’s a good sight more than we’d gotten about most characters til recently. 21. HE NEARLY BECAME AN ANDROID You guys are reaching into arcade path endings from video games. Why am I not surprised? 20. HOW HE DEFEATED GOHAN DURING TOURNAMENT OF POWER PREP This is easily one of the worst offenders on this entire list if only because this is very, very easily explained. Hell, it was the point of them doing it. Gohan was operating with the wrong perspective, that Krillin going one on one vs a powerful opponent would, by necessity, be outclassed and overpowered and thus couldn’t be an asset. He was also under the assumption Krillin had gotten much weaker, unaware he was stronger than ever. Couple these things with both the fact that Gohan himself wasn’t near as strong as he used to be, and Krillin simply out-planning Gohan and beating him by using the rules of the arena against him vs trying to actually overpower him, and Gohan losing there makes perfect sense. Krillin simply overwhelmed all his senses, dropped out of sight and detection, and then simply knocked Gohan off-balance and shoved him out of bounds. Simple. Literally nothing hard to understand about that. 19. HE’S THE FIRST PERSON FROM UNIVERSE 7 TO LOSE IN THE TOURNAMENT OF POWER He’s the first one out because he actually ditched the safety of the group strategy and rushes out to rescue his wife, who was nearly eliminated first herself. He then teamed up with her for a bit and even took out a particularly skilled enemy himself by using his head. Then he was tripped out of bounds because he was distracted by (sadly) rare praise. It happens and it’s not indicative of “strength” or “power” at all. 18. HIS BATTLE STRATEGY AGAINST FRIEZA'S SECOND FORM Lord, here we go. Imma say this again: The Kienzan takes a LOT of energy to form and use. Krillin had just thrown like, twenty of them in a row and then had to run at top speed. The odds of him being able to produce a Kienzan in time are slim to none This is why, upon blinding Freeza, he was yelling for Vegeta (who was still FRESH, mind you) to attack Freeza now. But Vegeta was too paralyzed with shock and fear to act. I’d also like to point out that blinding Freeza wouldn’t have been super effective with an attack that Freeza could easily HEAR coming. He heard it at the last minute even over Gohan’s screams of agony, pretty sure he’d have heard it off to the side where it was just them too. 17. HE LEAVES HIS DAUGHTER IN THE CARE OF KIDS Yes. Apprehensively. At the insistence of his wife, who assured him she’d be ok and could take care of herself. Y’all really tried to use this to imply he’s a bad dad, wow. 16. HIS REGRESSIVE PTSD IN THE FOREST OF TERROR I’m not sure if I’m happy someone finally admitted it’s PTSD (#DragonBallAintDeepBro) or pissed off someone called this “regressive”. Wait no, I know exactly what I am, and frankly... WTF is wrong with you? How on God’s green earth is that Regressive? Are you, by the body of this entry, implying PTSD is a thing that exclusively happens to people who aren’t strong or “strong enough”? Either way, you missed the entire point of the episode, which you simultaneously admit was good character development. A development arc hinted at since the Buu arc really, but really kickstarted back in the BoG arc. The Forest of Terror was never about just strength or ability. Truly, the enemies seen there were only as strong or weak as Krillin empowered them to be by his fear and the ki he poured into them as a result. The point is they were a personification of Krillin’s own fears. His self-doubt and self-loathing. The condition was slowly killing him, his confidence was next to nothing, and it was affecting his life. His job. His family. It’s why 18 gave him the kick in the butt to start training again, to try to regain some of his confidence. It’s why Roshi sent them there; he saw the lack of confidence in the man. He saw his student in anguish, hating himself for not being more than what he was, but also fully believing he never could be. That he just wasn’t good enough. It’s why, even when facing enemies that his rational mind KNEW were weaker than himself, to say nothing of dead, he still panicked. His PTSD was triggered, vivid memories of what they’d done to him, the pain he suffered, came rushing back. And removing it was what finally allowed him to reach into his truest potential, and become even stronger than he’d ever been before. I also love the realistic way the series handled the condition, in that even as he tries to improve himself, he still has moments where it starts to kick in and he has to fight it off, will himself not to lose it. His wife knows it too and takes extra care (for the most part) to not let him slip back into it. But he refuses to allow it to control him anymore. How the hell that’s somehow a negative, let alone something that “doesn’t make sense”, is a mystery to me. 15. HIS "FULL POTENTIAL" THAT THE GRAND ELDER NAMEKIAN GURU UNLOCKED How is this really confusing? It simply allows him to tap into potential, power, that was blocked off. There are many factors that can contribute to it, be it limitations on time, plateaus, mental blocks, etc. The Grand Elder removed those and awaken that potential. It’s why Gohan and Krillin started to make the gains that they did at the rate they did, going from only about as strong as Goku had been on Earth to strong enough to help Vegeta overpower and potentially kill Freeza in his first form. 14. HIS YOUNGER CHARACTER TRAITS Y-you do realize you’re literally complaining about character development... right? Krillin grew up in an abusive environment where he felt he could trust no one, everyone was out for themselves, and that he had to do whatever it took to get ahead and be accepted as one of Roshi’s pupils so he had a chance to be... anybody, really. And yes, over time, between the influences of his friends and general maturing and growing up, he became a very kind, compassionate, and caring individual and a true friend. THAT’S. CHARACTER. DEVELOPMENT. And to present these traits as a “mistake” is to somehow suggest they came later. They were his original traits. 13. HIS BULLET INJURIES DURING HIS POLICE JOB Literally explained in Resurrection F, both the arc and the movie. Emptying one’s body of ki leaves it vulnerable. It should be his instinct to do so right away, but he doesn’t. He’s becoming careless and distracted. It’s part of his PTSD. Hell, Goku’s clearly not getting “that weak” and yet he also got lightly bruised by a bullet because he didn’t keep his energy up, a sign he was falling out of practice due to his inability to find a training partner, or to leave to a place that would really push him in his training due to work. Also, if one being vulnerable to gunfire means they shouldn’t be a police officer, or any like job where there might be danger... well... That’s dumb, my friend. 12. HE CAN PERFORM THE SPIRIT BOMB AND KAIO-KEN ATTACK Stop using video games to pad your list! SERIOUSLY! And how does “performing the Spirit Bomb” make no sense? Goku and King Kai both instructed him how to do it, and Krillin’s always been especially gifted at both energy manipulation and learning on the fly. Besides, it’s not as if he knows how to summon said energy himself, just wield and form it. 11. HIS ROMANTIC NATURE NEARLY DESTROYED THE EARTH Hot Take Time: Krillin’s decision not to kill 18 stemmed from general compassion, not just the fact that she kissed him, and his decision would have had NO impact on Cell had Vegeta followed through, done what he was supposed to, and killed Cell. Even if Vegeta, by some bizarre chance, failed? Trunks was there, and just as powerful. There were two people there capable of killing Cell. No, what nearly destroyed the Earth was Vegeta’s VERY conscious decision to actually HELP Cell reach his Perfect Form, something Krillin never imagined Vegeta would be stupid and selfish enough to do. And even then, Krillin told her to get lost and hide, and even offered to help her move 16 so she could. 10. HIS EARLY DISMISSAL IN FORTUNETELLER BABA'S TOURNAMENT ...IT’S A COMEDY AND HE GOT HIS WHOLE HEAD BIT INTO BY A VAMPIRE, WHAT’S HARD TO UNDERSTAND? FFS He’s still weaker than even Yamcha at that point. His quick thinking is also all that saved Yamcha’s ass from getting whupped into submission. 9. HE PASSES AWAY THE MOST... EVEN THOUGH HE’S EARTH’S STRONGEST HUMAN Oh lord here we go... a. He wasn’t at the time of his first death. b. That kinda doesn’t mean much when you have to fight an alien lizard or ancient demon who could dust you with their pinky. This only makes no sense if you utterly ignore any and all context. Vegeta, for example, has actually died just as many times as Krillin now (Freeza, Buu, Freeza again)... and he’s the second strongest in the roster. Goku has also technically “died” just as many times now too (Piccolo, Cell, Hit), as well as Piccolo (Nappa, Buu, Freeza). Mr. Satan and Bulma have died the least of anyone. Hardly an indicator of power. 8. HE LIVED WITH HIS FAMILY AND MASTER ROSHI IN THE KAME HOUSE It’s housed Roshi, Oolong, Krillin, Goku, Yamcha, Umigame AND Launch in the past. Housing Krillin, 18, a baby/toddler, and Roshi is hardly filled to capacity. That said... they move. They move as soon as they can afford their own home, which is shortly after 18 gets her fall money from Mr. Satan. 7. HIS FUSION WITH PICCOLO I’d just like to state for the record that this is literally complaining about a fun drawing Toriyama did of what Krillin and Piccolo would look like Fused. That is all. 6. HE CAN ABSORB SPIRIT BOMBS AND USE THEIR ENERGY Aaand we’re back to video games. 5. HE’S THE STRONGEST HUMAN ON EARTH Ok now this one? This one is utter BS. Krillin outpacing Tien makes perfect sense since it’s been happening since Tien first appeared. When everyone came back for the 23rd Budokai? The gap between those two shrunk. A lot. Krillin had not only taught HIMSELF how to fly, how to steer energy after firing it, and more, but he’d improved to the point of Piccolo not only using his true power to beat him, but he managed to survive a blow Piccolo assumed HAD to have killed him... and made Piccolo question whether or not he was even strong enough to conquer this world even if he DID beat Goku. When the Saiyans came? Even smaller gap with the exact same time to train. And Tien even had the benefit of having Chiaotzu as a partner, Krillin was off finishing his training solo. And the Grand Elder awakening his dormant potential, as well as the combat experience on Namek, finally sealed the deal. After all, Yamcha was still intently training at that time too, and Krillin surpassed him. Why then is it so hard to believe he could surpass Tien? It also doesn’t help that Tien doesn’t actually train nonstop, despite what anime filler would have you believe. He runs a dojo and a farm to boot. Tien is also demonstrably still weaker than Krillin in Super and lasts longer in the Tournament because he and Roshi are taking cover and surprising targets to knock them out while they’re off-guard. So there’s that. 4. HE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE THE EXCITING FOIL TO BORING GOKU He was created as a rival character to play off Goku and give Goku something to measure himself against. That doesn’t exactly mean he’s meant to be “more exciting”, but to bring an element of entertainment to the series that had been missing, as well as give Goku someone his own age to grow with. Nice dig at the character at the end though. Top notch. 3. HE NAMES HIS DAUGHTER AFTER HIS EX-GIRLFRIEND For the last time: Maron. Is. A. Filler. Character. Toriyama did not create her. Toriyama did not name her. Toriyama named Krillin’s daughter “Marron” because it’s French for “Chestnut”, which is a play on the fact that the first syllable in Krillin’s Japanese name, “Kuri”, also means chestnut. It’s not at ALL indicative of “lingering feelings” for a character that Toriyama didn’t even make, let alone doesn’t appear in his manga or continuity at all. 2. HE NEARLY ALLOWS VEGETA TO GAIN IMMORTALITY Well, it was more or less that or let the kid he’d sworn he’d keep safe die. I don’t really blame him for at least entertaining the idea at that point. An ultimately bad idea? Yeah. But one born of desperation. Hardly the first for characters in this series. And finally... 1. HIS MISSING NOSE ...wow. It’s... it’s a physical deformity. I’m not sure what about that doesn’t make sense? This list was even more of a dumpster fire than usual.

#Krillin #Screen Rant #ScreenRant #DBZ #Dragon Ball #Dragon Ball Z #Dragon Ball Super #DB #DBS #Dragonball #Dragonball Z #Goku #Son Goku #Vegeta #Android18 #Android 18 #c18 #Android Eighteen

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langxue · 5 years

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Avengers Endgame Initial Thoughts

Okay. I have some Thoughts about Endgame, most of them fairly critical. Also highly subjective. So here goes. Spoilers abound, for Endgame and other MCU content.

1. OMFG they completely wasted Captain Marvel.* In her own movie, Carol is a fairly laid back, adaptable, competent, and Silly person. She has a wonderfully casual charm and sarcasm that’s really fun to watch. She’s also a powerhouse, and by the end she definitely knows it. (Like seriously, she destroyed multiple of Ronan’s ships in under a minute. In GotG, it took a whole fleet just to slow one of them down, plus a team on the inside to blow it up. And then Carol’s just like “nah, you’re done now.”) And then you hit Endgame. And we have a stoic, closed off Captain Marvel, who shows up, talks a lot about how awesome she is, and then spends fucking 80% of the movie on a shelf on the justification that she’s helping other worlds that are also in trouble. Which is a fine justification to keep her away for some of the setup. But the heroes’ main plan is time travel. Which means it’s not time sensitive, and they keep making a big deal about only having one shot. Why, in that case, wouldn’t you wait until you could get Carol on your team?? Thor is a psychological mess. Keep him on the bench and bring in Carol. OR have her on hand to use the gauntlet after all the stones are collected. But no, they just went with “eh, we’re not sure how to contact her, so we’ll just skip over that option entirely.” So they wasted her character as a character with minimal interactions with the others, and zero of those interactions actually being in character (except maaaybe with Peter at the end, but that very much felt like two actors trying very hard with very little to work with), and then also wasted her as far as plot impact, opting for a heroic re-entrance most of the way through the movie.

2. The time travel felt extremely poorly explained, which is really bad when your plot completely hinges on it, and is especially bad if you’re gonna rag on other movies with time travel. Back to the Future is paradoxical nonsense, but it’s self-consistent paradoxical nonsense. Endgame was some kind of multiverse with zero clear understanding of how different timelines/realities could and could not interact with each other. I’m still trying to wrap my head around all of the possibilities and whether there actually is an internal logic, but at the very least, while watching the movie, it entirely felt like they were doing whatever they wanted to suit the plot. Which is a bad sign when dealing with time travel. (My general approach to time travel is that you either have to completely handwave it or completely explain it. And that explanation doesn’t have to be an info dump! It can just be apparent in the story itself, such as with Time-Turners. Though I personally don’t mind time travel info dump tbh.)

3. Relatedly, the secret to time travel is to model an inverted Möbius strip and get the eigenvector of that one particle there. I don’t think I’ve been that annoyed but technobabble in a long time. That’s math word salad, as far as I can tell (though I’m admittedly not a mathematician. If any mathematicians can clarify how this makes any sense, I’d appreciate it, but in the mean time, I’m going to assume it’s garbled nonsense.)

4. Still on time travel but I’m having one hell of a time figuring out Steve’s ending. Like, how can he do that within the confines of the time travel mechanics? Why wouldn’t he come back and spend that time with Bucky?? Since, you know, they’ve like barely spoken being reunited?? For Pete’s sake, don’t set up their bond like that, spend two full movies on the turmoil cause by Bucky’s return, and then just fucking drop the plot line on the floor because you wanted to stick Steve back with Peggy. What in the fuck.

5. IM. SO. MAD. ABOUT. GAMORA. (And also Natasha, though that’s a slightly different anger.) GAMORA’S DEATH WAS THE MOST BS THING IN INFINITY WAR AND WAS ALSO THE DEATH I WAS MOST CONCERNED THEY WOULDN’T CORRECT. AND GUESS WHAT. THEY DIDN’T. SHE’S STILL DEAD.** The soulstone mechanic can get Fucked, because Thanos should never have been able to get it like that (and relatedly, should Hawkeye have gotten it, since Natasha threw herself, rather than being sacrificed? I’m undecided, but mad either way).

6. Is Loki still dead? Was he ever dead? We just don’t know. If he is dead, that was an amazingly dumb end and I object. If he’s not dead, that is a dumb cliffhanger and I object.

7. I don’t love Thor + Guardians’ dynamic? It feels very off, and I can’t tell if that’s just because it’s Avengers and therefore all the characters have gotten slightly flattened or if it’s just an unappealing dynamic to me. But we already had Quill vs Rocket leadership tension. I don’t was more of that but with Thor. That’s dumb. I’m hoping that it gets more nuance/resolution going forward, but I’m not holding my breath.

8. Relatedly, why would you put Valkyrie in charge of Anything but a battle plan? Nothing I’ve seen of her makes me think she’s well suited to general leadership, and I think she’d chafe under it just as much as Thor does. She’s not the Responsible One to take things over so Thor can go have another finding himself adventure. Ffs.

9. Probably no one’s fault because actor contracts are complicated, but I’m still salty about Lady Sif being 100% absent and unacknowledged for this whole thing. Largely because I haven’t gotten to see her interact with Valkyrie OR Carol and I feel cheated.

10. Some quick minor things before I go on a big rant. It bothered me that Thor’s depression and poor coping was just a joke, basically just “Oh look he’s fat and scared now, isn’t that funny?” I’m so tired of Tony vs. Steve, and I hate that they waited until the last fucking movie to sort of kind of resolve it. You don’t get to pull on found family heartstrings and tropes when you’ve done such a bullshit job of actually showing us a family. You’ve had 20-odd movies to do so. Do better.

11. Okay. I like battle scenes. They’re fun! They’re dramatic! If done correctly, they can give a very tangible sense of odds and stakes. But. Not every movie with high stakes needs a big final battle.

Okay, to clarify a bit, I’m specifically referring to army vs. army battle scenes here. Big punch outs between titans, or scrambling to minimize damage from a disaster are different, and have their own applications and pitfalls. All clear? Great.

Battles, with two armies facing off against each other in fronts, look cool, but fundamentally make no sense in the context of Endgame. Battle lines exist so that you have not very many people actively fighting at once, and so that you can protect the people next to them. When the frontline gets tired, they rotate back and others take over. Battles are not the same thing as skirmishes and they are not mass melees. If a battle turns into a mass melee, something has gone very wrong and you should in all likelihood pull back immediately to regroup.

All of this breaks down when you have an opponent who can break up or ignore your battle lines. Historically, this was artillery and guns—things that forced battles into a cover-based issue. In superhero movies, it’s... pretty much every character of note.

Thor’s lightning —> broken battle line

Black Panther’s suit discharge —> broken battle line

Falcon attacking from above —> pointless battle line

Wanda or Carol doing... anything —> pointless battle line

All of Thanos’ many flying troops —> pointless battle line

Thanos’ warship overhead —> what are you doing pls stop this

All of which is to say that traditional battle tactics don’t apply to this conflict. But the battle we’re shown doesn’t reflect that, and it feels very... weird as a result. Where who’s winning is entirely arbitrary, rather than any kind of steady build.

This tends to lead to a very episodic battle, where you show off individual characters or small groups of characters fighting. Which is fine, though contributes to battle progress being unclear. But there’s a temptation then to give everyone equal levels of badassery in their vignettes, and I think that’s a mistake. The avengers et all are a complementary group. They have members suited to a battle field and members that aren’t. That isn’t to say that Hawkeye and Black Widow can’t hold their own, but their skill sets aren’t specialized for something like this, and so any attempt to make them seem equal in this way is going to either fall flat or cheapen the battle suited heroes’ specialty.

And this tendency to level the field of badassery can also lead to situations where Okoye is backing up Carol for a charge, and I just.... gah. I love Okoye. So much. Carol does not need her help to rush a group of enemies. Carol doesn’t need help from any of the women who showed up behind her except for maybe Scarlet Witch. I get what they were going for. I get that it was supposed to be a Girl PowerTM moment. It wasn’t. It was dumb. It was so very much the wrong time for that moment, because this was not a context where Carol needed help. She just flew through a spaceship. She can fly through some enemies no problem. And it’s probably easier if she’s not worried about her allies getting caught in the blast. And then they had to make the backup team useful, so they made Carol struggle in a moment where she just shouldn’t have. You don’t get points for Girl PowerTM if you have to de-power one of your women just to make it make sense. Give me more scenes with Gamora and Nebula helping each other through Thanos’ abuse. Give me scenes with Carol and Okoye bonding over putting up with impractical people. Don’t give me this battle scene bullshit, I don’t want it.

11. I remain pissed off that there are no actually articulated arguments against Thanos’ fucking stupid plan. What the actual fuck, this is not that hard.

Okay. Now that I’ve gotten that out of my system, some things I actually really liked.

1. Steve wielding Mjolnir was fucking amazing and I’m so pleased.

2. Any time Scott was on screen.

3. Peter Parker is a precious child and he needs to be protected.

4. I actually really like the set up for the time travel nonsense, and I liked that they seemed to be doing something other than a mass melee battle. That the group was divided into manageable teams, and sent on different kinds of missions that required them to be clever and play to their different strengths and help each other through. And then they shoved in a giant battle anyway, because fuck you that’s why.

5. I can appreciate what they were trying to do in giving all of the non-returning Avengers decent send-offs, even if I didn’t like some of those conclusions.

6. There were some genuinely funny moments, but I’m struggling to recall them right now.

7. Oh wait! “It’s an earthquake in the middle of the ocean. We handle it by not handling it.” That one was great.

Okay, that’s all for now. I might have more later, once I’ve picked apart the time travel a bit more and dined some processing.

I think it’s also worth noting that like... ensemble movies with a cast this big are *hard.* character are going to end up feeling confined, and there’s less time to grow because there’s just less time per character. But I think we could’ve had better, and I think if they focused more on group growth in the group movies instead of just drama, then they would’ve been in a better place and had a better story.

It’s probably also worth noting that I really liked Thor: Ragnarok, really like Captain Marvel and really didn’t like Infinity War. So I sort of went into Endgame feeling like it had to make up for Infinity War and live up to the higher at from the recent solo movies. And I really wanted to like it. I really wanted them to pull it off. But those are high and fairly specific standards, and so they fell quite short.

*This should be taken with a grain of salt, because I’d been dreading Endgame as an obligation to watch, and the Captain Marvel movie was the only thing that sparked my interest again. And then Endgame massively dropped the ball as far as I’m concerned.

** there was some stuff at the very end that makes me wonder if there’re plans to still bring her back in a later movie. But it doesn’t change me call bullshit on everything that Infinity War/Endgame has done to her.

#spoilers #Endgame Spoilers #Captain Marvel spoilers #just #general MCU spoilers #ye have been warned

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betweensceneswriter · 6 years

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Chemistry Test, Part 8: C***-Blocker

Lallybroch Library Prompt Exchange!

Prompt #33 Modern AU: Claire auditions for a role opposite Jamie who has been cast as the male lead in a TV drama.

Previously–Part 7: Laughing Man

Master Post

“Murtagh, man, I love you. But why in hell are ye here?”

The walls were thin and Claire could easily hear the heated conversation from within the bedroom, even though they had closed the door behind them. She sat gingerly on the couch, looking around the small apartment.

It was neat and clean except for the suitcases and backpack next to the door; those must be Murtagh’s. Once Jamie had rushed around opening all the windows, the smell of burnt haggis had dissipated, only to be replaced by the smell of city—exhaust, ancient brick, and sadness.

“Your landlady is quite a lonely woman.” It was Murtagh’s gruff voice speaking. “She talked my ear off, but she was more than happy to let a godfather into his godson’s apartment.”

“Why didn’t you call? Or simply mention you were coming?”

“I ken how much you love a surprise!”

“A birthday party, maybe… or a gift,” Jamie said incredulously. “Not an extra inhabitant for my already too small apartment, especially when…”

Claire heard Jamie drop his voice, but it wasn’t low enough. She blushed as she heard his words.

“God, man, do you see her? I’ve been anticipating being with Claire again for weeks!”

“Oh, aye, she’s nice to look at. But Jamie, lad, I couldna imagine you being here for months or years and not coming with you!”

From @outlanderamerica

“But why does it matter if I’m here this morning? Were ye planning to bring her inside and immediately tear off each other’s clothes? God’s tooth! It’s not even noon yet!”

Claire chuckled. As embarrassing as their first encounter had been, she had managed to develop some affection for Murtagh in the last two weeks as she and Jamie talked daily; hearing his gravelly, acerbic voice making comments in the background of their calls, learning of his dry humor from his godson’s descriptions, feeling grateful for the role he’d played in parenting when both Jamie’s mother and father had died while he was still a teenager.

“I canna say what would have happened. But Murtagh, I haven’t been able to make love to Claire in two interminable weeks!”

Claire blushed. They’d felt such a connection immediately, instantly. Her heart leapt on hearing Jamie call it making love. Not having sex, not shagging, not fucking, not doing the rumpy-pumpy, not bonking...

He wanted to make love to her. She couldn’t wait for it either.

Of course, what Jamie didn’t know was that Claire Beauchamp had been his fan for far longer than he’d known her, an admirer from afar. It was two or three years ago that she’d found that little gem–the TV-MA show he’d done when he was in his late twenties.

Frank kept asking her why she repeatedly watched the three seasons of Island Fever. Claire lost herself in the story of a young woman, ironically named Carlie, who traveled out to the Marshall Islands as a volunteer nurse. Immersed in a foreign culture where Carlie was a fish out of water, she floundered. And then Carlie met, made friends with, and fell in love with a young man named Campbell, played by none other than James Alexander Malcolm MacKenzie Fraser.

God, she’d fallen in love with him just as the young actress in the role of Carlie had, this lean, muscular, tanned Scotsman, with that furiously curly red hair. Jamie Fraser wasn’t an Ed Sheeran red-head… Not pale and orangey. His hair was closer to burgundy, and he was rugged and manly even when he was playing a 22-year-old adorably devoted virgin.

Her favorite episode in season 1 was “Restraint,” where the young couple were engaged and still trying to wait. It was crazy how sexy not having sex could be.

Although Frank hated how many times she rewatched Island Fever, his eyes would brighten if he came into the room and saw her viewing that scene where Campbell and Carlie walk out to the beach at dusk shortly after their surprisingly sudden engagement. Those were the nights where Frank was guaranteed to get some, even though Claire was certain that he’d known the truth--that even though he was with her, she was with Campbell MacReid…

@frockflicksfeed

Even now, Claire felt sheepish yet aroused at the memory of Jamie’s perfect ass in the honeymoon episode as he gently undressed his new bride. She was lovely too—god, what was her name? Claire had often imagined herself standing before him as he knelt, kissing her belly, running his hands over her hips and drawing her lacy panties down to the floor. She pretended it was she to whom Campbell said, “What would you like?” as he lay next to her on the bed; that it was her body that made his eyes widen in discovery and darken with desire; that she was the one blissfully blinking in surprise, not expecting a virgin to know enough to bring her to climax their first time together.

And she teared up almost every time that Campbell smiled at Carlie and said, “Virgin blood,” as he drew the blade of his fishing knife across his thigh and reached for the nuknuk.

But it was Jamie Fraser, not Campbell MacReid, that Claire started to admire as she watched interviews with the actor on YouTube. He was thoughtful, kind, and protective of his co-star. A gentleman who ushered her out of cars and was her constant cheerleader. That was when Claire had started to wish she could meet this man she had long admired. So when there was open casting and she sent in her audition tape and got a call back, she started to think that it was fate.

As if it was fate, Jamie had responded to her with equal enthusiasm, on one wild, romantic night. He wanted to make love to her.

Suddenly Claire had an anxious thought. A few months from now and that would be her nude body in front of the camera. With him.

On camera? Touching him? Kissing him? On camera? For the world to watch? Her heart dropped and she felt slightly nauseated.

The men were STILL talking.

“So if I understand this correctly, you were thinking young Jamie needed an outing?”

“God, Murtagh.”

“You were gazing at her round arse and thinking you needed to inspect it further?”

“You make me seem a lecher!”

“And then you came to your apartment, fully expecting to be naked in minutes…”

“Hush, man!”

“So that explains why you’ve greeted your godfather so rudely? Embarrassed me in front of the lass? Dragged me into the bedroom as if I’m a wee lad about to get skelped?”

She knocked hesitantly on the bedroom door.

“Since I can already hear your whole conversation, don’t you think you might as well come out and sit comfortably?”

Both men stepped out sheepishly.

“I didn’t want to reunite with you just to lose you immediately to an argument,” she said, directing her gaze at Jamie. “And it’s probably best that we didn’t just fall into bed right away,” she added, smiling at Murtagh. “Since the haggis is burned, since it’s just around noon, don’t you think the three of us should go out for lunch?”

Murtagh nodded and Jamie smiled at her. But Claire shuddered involuntarily at the look on Jamie’s eyes.

She used to imagine that expression of desire and admiration directed at her. But this was real.

Part 9 - Eating Out, Part 1

How’s that for convoluted? In a story about Claire and Jamie as Cait and Sam trying out to be Leo and Kate in a gender-reversed TV show based on Titanic when Claire’s a little bit of a stalker because she used to watch and lust after Jamie (like you and I currently do with Outlander) when he starred on a non-existent series based on my current book. Honestly, it was all a shameless plug for you to check it out. :) It’s sweet & hot & much improved from the fanfic rough draft!

Island Fever on Amazon-Kindle and Paperback

#betweensheetswriter #BetweenSceneswriter #Chemistry Test #Claire x Jamie #Jamie x Murtagh #c***blocker #convoluted #Island Fever

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harriet-tuttle · 5 years

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Highlights from Mark Watches Death Note

Episode 1

Ryuk is… well, he could be on a friendly baking show, and I’d still be terrified of him. HE LOOKS LIKE WHAT I THINK ALL CLOWNS LOOK LIKE: ENDLESSLY FRIGHTENING.

Episode 2

I mean, word of advice, Light: stop acting like an arrogant teenager who discovered Ayn Rand or something. FREE ADVICE FOR YOU, DUDE.

Episode 3

Watari stands by the laptop that’s connected to L, which has to be the most boring job imaginable.

Episode 4

He stops viewing these people as humans and instead seems them entirely as pawns. They’re good for nothing more than his goal: to rid the world of all criminals and create a utopia. What utopia that might be is left unsaid, not because the show is trying to hide it from us, but because Light probably hasn’t even decided what it’s going to be.

Seriously, Light is the worst. (That is an odd sentence to type. Makes it sound like I hate electricity or something.)

Episode 5

Initially, I was convinced that he just wanted to misdirect Penber. That was easy to do, and after Penber got off the bus, I figured that was it.

But no.

Nope.

NOT AT ALL.

Episode 6

L ACTUALLY SMILED. (That was my single favorite moment in the whole episode.)

Episode 7

When we’re not focusing on how Light is THE LITERAL WORST PERSON IN THE UNIVERSE, Death Note gives us more of the relationship between L and the police officers who have won his trust.

Episode 8

So how will the future of this anime look? I don’t think you can sustain this kind of back-and-forth for nearly thirty episodes, especially since Death Note is already barreling forward as it is. Will Light slip up and reveal something about himself to L? Is there a third party I haven’t met yet that will mess things up? And what of the very strange subplot involving Ryuk’s withdrawal from apples? Was that there to drop a hint about the shinigami, or was it weird just for the sake of it? (I realize I’m asking for background information on a floating reaper who looks like a clown, so… whatever.)

Episode 9

I honestly thought that L and Light wouldn’t meet until well past the halfway mark because… well, that’s why all the tension existed! Neither of them were ever in the same physical space, and they were exacting a war against each other from a distance.

That’s why L’s actions are so fucking flagrant and brilliant. No one expected this. Not me, not Light, PROBABLY NOT ANY OF YOU.

Episode 10

Even if he has Light investigate himself, it only means that he’ll eventually lead them straight to him anyway. It’ll happen either through his fantastic deductive work, or Light will give away something to the team. But does that mean that L will have to introduce Light to the other officers on the task force? That seems like a bad idea

Episode 11

Somehow, Kira had killed Ukita without knowing his real name. Understandably, EVERYONE FREAKS OUT. THAT INCLUDED ME. How? How had Light been able to do this while standing in his bedroom? He couldn’t have possibly known who would show up to the police station. But let’s say he did. “Assault” takes things a step further when Light’s father drives a bus into the station. Will Light risk killing him if he discovers who drove the bus? Oh, but let’s take this a step further: two random cops who show up to deal with the police bus that sits in the lobby ARE KILLED. There is a 0% chance that Light knew their names, so how? HOW???

Episode 12

There’s so much going on in this episode that I was positive the show would cut away right before Second Kira’s shinigami revealed how to kill him. Why would they reveal something this huge so early into the show? Because Death Note doesn’t give a shit about me, and I was shocked to watch an extended flashback sequence play out.

Episode 13

In the thirteenth episode of Death Note, I will repeat myself endlessly while reviewing this: HOW DOES IT KEEP ESCALATING.

I just have to expect this show to throw me into an abyss every episode. I just have to do this to survive.

Episode 14

At the very least, I don’t think Misa will last much longer because she’s too much of a risk to Light. IT’S GONNA HAPPEN, I’M CALLING IT.

Episode 15

I get that catching Kira is a big deal for all of these people, and I’m happy that they all believe that Kira’s murders are 100% wrong. Does that mean they should be allowed to do something like this to a teenage girl??? No, not at all!!! It’s horrifying! Did they feed her? Anything???

Episode 16

NOW I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHO THIS SHOW IS ABOUT. WHAT THE FUCK.

Episode 17

As for Light? Well, he’s now handcuffed to L. FOR TWENTY-FOUR HOURS A DAY. (Major BOOOOO to that weird-ass line where Misa calls them gross because boys shouldn’t be handcuffed together? Yuck.)

[N.B.: This is the first and only remark by Mark Oshiro, Gayest Reviewer on Planet Earth, that in any way acknowledges subtext between Light and L. Behold the glory of this non-barking dog, my psychotic fandom.]

Episode 18

At this point, does L even suspect anyone else aside from Light and Misa? No, not really, even when he guesses (correctly!) that Kira’s “power” can jump from one person to the next. I don’t think L will ever take his eye off of Light for the remainder of the show.

Episode 19

In the nineteenth episode of Death Note, I really loved this, and MATSUDA IS GREAT.

Episode 20

Yet this is where the main schism happens. L, unsurprisingly, wants to follow the option that allows his theories to be proven. That’s who he is. He’s nearly as averse to being impulsive as Light, so he doesn’t want to move ahead with an arrest UNLESS he can prove every bit of his hypothesis. In this case, that means letting people die, despite knowing that these men are going to use Kira to kill them. There is a tragic irony in the fact that Light finds this plan abhorrent because DUDE, YOU HAVE KILLED MORE PEOPLE THAN ANYONE ELSE IN THIS DAMN SHOW.

Episode 21

However, then she stated that she wanted to do something to get even closer to Light and impress him.

HOW WAS A DATE WITH HIGUCHI GOING TO HELP HER DO THAT? Oh, Mark, YOU DON’T GET IT. Look, the very nature of Death Note means I’m always going to act like a fool whenever someone tells the truth.

Episode 22

Look, I kept thinking that EVERYTHING was going to go wrong. When Light called the Yotsuba men, I was certain they’d spoil the plan. Then I thought that Higuchi wouldn’t actually go through with murdering Matsuda. And then, as each piece fell into place, the tension got worse because WHAT IF HE ACTUALLY REVEALS HOW HE KILLS? How is Misa going to react to that?

Episode 23

How the hell are there fourteen more episodes??? HOW???

Episode 24

I’m so nervous about this development, though, because it allows Light to be completely free of the investigative team. Oh, sure, he’ll probably stick around so he can monitor everything, keep these people from getting close to him, but now? He’s won, hasn’t he? At least for the time being. However, there are now a bunch of variables and chaotic factors just sitting around. All these detectives and cops and investigators all know the truth of the Death Note. (Well, except that Light lied about one of the rules that governs the notebook. HE IS SO EVIL, Y’ALL.) How are they going to approach this case knowing the truth? I bet that Light will start killing criminals in the next episode, and I don’t know how this will progress from there. Don’t they all know way too much? Can’t they use the knowledge they have of the Death Note to be better detectives? How many red herrings will Light give them to keep them busy?

I am comfortable stating that something like that can’t last forever. Something will have to come crashing down. What could that be???

Episode 25

What the hell is wrong with this show.

Episode 26

Y’all, Death Note doesn’t even fuck around when it comes to CLIP EPISODES.

Episode 27

WELL, THIS IS HOW THERE ARE MORE EPISODES OF THIS SHOW. THE DEATH NOTE IS INTERNATIONAL NOW, AND LIGHT IS GONNA GET FUCKED UP. Episode 28

The elaborate, complicated, and utterly ridiculous means that Mello and his men go to in order to obtain the Death Note is significant because, as I said before, no one had been able to truly best Light. Ever. Ever. L tried, and LOOK WHERE THAT GOT HIM. (I miss him.) But Mello comes out of nowhere, concocts a truly absurd method to get what he wants, and executes it flawlessly. Seriously, let’s go over this. He:

orchestrates the quietest hijacking of an airplane ever, all so that it can land somewhere in the middle of the desert in America and then continue on to its final destination of Los Angeles. (Can you imagine how fucking terrifying that must have been if you were on that plane? IT LANDED IN THE DESERT!!!! Good lord, they’re probably all traumatized now.)

is fully aware that Soichiro will be monitored by satellite, so the entire swap is UNDERGROUND IN A SECRET BUNKER THAT SOME GANG OR MAFIA ONCE USED.

has his man utilize a revolving door that is so deviously brilliant that I can’t even believe a human thought of it.

has that same man making the trade test out the Death Note before accepting it

then has two separate “vehicles” leave the compound at the same time so that those surveilling him don’t know which one has the Death Note on it.

makes one of the vehicles a missile. I cannot even remotely exaggerate here, y’all. A missile. A MISSILE.

I THOUGHT LIGHT WAS RIDICULOUS AND OVERLY-DETAILED ABOUT HIS PLANS, BUT HE HAS CLEARLY MET HIS MATCH.

Episode 29

(Does that mean he gave up half his life AND HE ONLY HAD A FEW HOURS LEFT ANYWAY? Good god.)

Episode 30

In order to subvert what Near is doing, he turns the President against the SPK and has him PUBLICLY DECLARE THAT THE U.S. WILL NOT PURSUE KIRA. He knows that everyone is afraid of him, so the threat against the President’s life is easy. It’s a no-brainer. But when Near gets a little too close to the truth, Light takes matters a step further, unleashing Demegawa’s dogma as a weapon. He stokes the flames of anger and resentment, and he lets this man loose on the airwaves, and A GIANT CROWD OF PEOPLE ARE BREAKING INTO SPK HEADQUARTERS TO OSTENSIBLY MURDER EVERYONE THERE AND HOW IS THIS A MORAL, PEACEFUL WORLD, LIGHT? PLEASE ANSWER THAT.

Episode 31

But how? How does Light slip up so terribly after meticulously constructing this entire existence meant to protect him?

I think the answer to that can be found in the way that Near behaves. It’s so much clearer now that Near is NOTHING like L, and his brash, aggressive manner speaks to that. I believe Light composed his master manipulation with L in mind. There was a code of sorts that L followed. Near, however, doesn’t give a shit. He really doesn’t.

Episode 32

WELL. I said that I wasn’t sure why Mikami had been introduced to us so suddenly and without a real sense for who he is, AND THUS, I GOT THIS EPISODE.

Episode 33

She then requests five pages of the Death Note and tells him to continue killing people with a “fake” notebook. Which makes no sense to me! How can Mikami kill anyone if his notebook is fake? Perhaps I misunderstood this, and Mikami scheduled out deaths in order to cover himself. But what did he do with the real Death Note? Hide it? Give it back to Light? Of course, all of this is useless to talk about if Mikami didn’t actually do as he was told. HOW THE FUCK DID MIKAMI KILL THAT MAN ON THE TRAIN? How?????? I DON’T GET IT.

Episode 34

Credit for that goes to Gevanni, who was given one of the most difficult tasks on the whole team. Surveilling Mikami had been bad enough, but he’s asked to break into the man’s locker at the gym and touch the Death Note. IT’S SO TERRIFYINGLY RISKY, ISN’T IT. Yes, it’ll give him the power to see a shinigami, but Ryuk could be RIGHT THERE. Watching him. READY TO WARN MIKAMI ABOUT HOW CLOSE THE SPK ARE.

Bless that man’s heart. That whole sequence was terrifying.

Episode 35

I’m still struggling to understand why he did it. Why kidnap Takada? If his goal was to catch Kira before Near did, then I suppose he was trying to draw Kira out by kidnapping someone associated with him. As Kira’s spokesperson, Takada was the only person that Mello had access to who could make this goal of his a reality.

Lord, does he underestimate EVERYTHING, though. Kidnapping a high-profile media personality was bad enough. Did he think no one would follow him or figure out a way to locate Takada? However, it’s Takada’s resourcefulness that ends up taking Mello down. I still don’t know how this fits in with Light’s plan for Mikami. Does he have a fake Death Note or not? We do see what Takada does with one of the pages that Mikami gave her, but I’m also a little confused by that, too. As far as I understood it, Light genuinely did not expect her to have that page, nor did he think she would use the Death Note to kill anyone if she was ever captured. Indeed, that’s part of the conversation that they have over the phone near the end of the episode. Light refers to a vague “plan” that he had discussed with Takada about what should happen if she were captured. Which was???? We don’t ever find out because she made her own choice.

Episode 36

The show drags this moment out to an impossible length, and even if it’s seriously unbelievable (WAY MORE THAN THIRTY SECONDS PASSED, COME ON), it’s compelling and nerve-wracking. This is it. There’s no leaving that room unless one side wins. You know, Death Note has been fairly cynical along the way, so if it ends with Light’s victory, I wouldn’t necessarily be surprised. But I want Near to reveal that he knew this would happen because… well, I want to see Light pay for what he’s done. I want to see him fall from his unnatural height because he’s played with human lives as if they are nothing more than pieces of garbage to be discarded as he saw fit.

I want Near to bring justice to this world because Light has no idea what justice is.

Episode 37

I found it incredibly powerful that after thirty-six episodes of this man proudly and defiantly claiming that he was at the head of a moral mission to protect the world from evil, Near called him a murderer. IT IS ABSOLUTELY THE BEST SINGLE EXCHANGE IN THE ENTIRE EPISODE, PERHAPS THE WHOLE SERIES. In just a few sentences, Near obliterated Light’s logic. He called him a serial killer and a murderer and refused to accept a single shred of this man’s terrible logic. I LOVE IT SO MUCH, EVERYONE. I think it’s a perfect lead-in to what comes next: Matsuda’s reaction. After Near so brilliantly dissected what was wrong with Light, I believe that Matsuda broke. And honestly, I don’t think there was a better choice of a character to finally go up against Light and to fatally harm him. Look at his transformation! He went from the goofy, underused investigator to the man who wanted desperately to be seen, to be respected. Then, as L was killed and Kira became an undeniable part of the world, he turned into a fanboy. He began to support the idea of Kira, perhaps not totally, but enough to be entertained by the drama that unfolded around him. He couldn’t take the case seriously because… well, did anyone take it seriously?

So when he found out that he’d been played, that the killer they’d been searching for the whole time was right next to him, he snapped. This story belonged to Matsuda, and it’s about the best closure I could ask for.

This was a fun journey, y’all, and now I know why people had been recommending me this show for so many years. I UNDERSTAND.

#mark oshiro #world's only sjw who likes stories and fun #he is awesome #death note

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hans-garden · 2 years

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Stina Vik from Modus: random thoughts under the cut because I accidentally wrote nearly a thousand words when I only wanted to give a quick facts/thoughts dump.

1. I can't find any information on the actress (Esmeralda Struwe) beyond this role. Like she came in, absolutely slayed, and then dipped. A legend.

2. I took some time to analyse her medical file that's very briefly visible in S1E3, and report the following information: her personnummer is 20030817-6427 which is correctly formatted but is not a valid personnummer (the last digit which serves as a checksum should be 9). This also means her birth date is August 17, 2003. A lot of the file is cut off so there are only fragments of sentences visible that don't mean a whole lot on their own (like "by parents and the school" or "peer relationships") but the one thing that stands out is it mentioning "rigid interests"

3. The first season takes place over December 2014 and January 2015 (as seen on a plane ticket in the later episodes somewhere and on multiple phone and computer screens), meaning Stina is 11 at the time of season 1. This also checks out with her grandma's remark about her starting to hit puberty.

4. Inger Johanne Vik is possibly the best parent of an autistic child I've ever seen in fiction? Someone makes a remark about Stina wearing a football jersey over a dress at someone's wedding, she hits back with a "I think she looks beautiful" like yes yes yes.

5. I've mentioned this before (here) and I just don't know what the phenomenon is called but the thing where an autistic person tries to communicate A by stating related thing B. It can be a source for misunderstandings because naturally the conversational partner doesn't immediately connect B to A. The clearest example is when she and her sister are dropped off at her dad's and her mom is about to leave when Stina sees the murderer loitering around the car. She communicates "You can't leave, mom" - which Inger Johanne interprets as "Stina wants me to stay (because she wants to have me near)" while Stina is actually trying to say "You can't leave (because it's dangerous.)" The situation escalates a bit because of the miscommunication and honestly it just sucks overall because there's not a whole lot that can be done. Stina is trying to communicate her message as best as she can and Inger Johanna is trying to understand her as best as she can and sometimes that still isn't enough and that's just the way it is.

6. Echolalia. Not a lot, not very often, but it's nice when it is.

7. I'm having trouble deciding whether this is a consistent character autism-wise. (By that I mean that the character's skills and impairments are portrayed consistently and that if she can't do one thing in one episode, she also can't do that thing or a logically related thing in the next episode). Obviously there's to take into account the fact that she goes through a major traumatic event at the start of the series (and then throughout the whole first season really) so that's naturally going to throw a person off-balance. I guess the thing that's tripping me up the most is in episode 8 her asking random lady who gave her a ride to borrow her cell phone in a Completely Socially Acceptable Way. Then when her mom asks over the phone where she is, she says "here" - which like listen. I'm not the gatekeeper of autism, I only have my own experience to draw from and characters that are very different from me, I find very difficult to interpret. This is not me saying "this is not ever possible in an autistic person", this is me saying "this does not necessarily seem consistent speaking from my own experience and if anyone has any other thoughts on this I would love to hear it." It's mostly that that level of scripting/masking in the first interaction doesn't necessarily seem like a skill that's consistent with a character that also seems to have significant troubles with theory of mind and communication.

8. Her police car comfort object being called "cat" is the funniest fucking thing in this series

9. Hmlisten the "autistic person is the only witness to a crime so how are we ever going to get their testimony???" is an overdone trope and I don't know how I feel about it here. Like. They know for a fact that Stina has witnessed this murder but Inger Johanne just says "no u can't interrogate my daughter" which is a good move of her but it seems a bit weak that they just leave it at that? It's one thing that Inger Johanne knows her daughter and tries to get her to offer the information on her own terms but it's just a bit odd that the police never insist on interrogating her.

10. Overall thoughts: pretty good. General accuracy is okay, with some very specific moments that are just *chef's kiss*. Melinda Kinnaman and Esmeralda Struwe also spoke with parents of autistic children and with autistic teenagers for their roles which is very nice.

#stina vik #modus #autistic character

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jarienn972 · 5 years

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Bloodline

It’s finally time to share the first of my two stories for @ouatwinterwhump! I’m getting this posted a bit later than I’d planned today, but due to a lot of real world angst that my family and I suffered through over the past few weeks. I got way behind on everything. This came together over the past week and a half and I have to give huge thanks to @the-whumpy-fangirl for being a huge help as my beta reader on such short notice!

For this story, I did a bit of a re-write of portions of episode 7-19, Flower Child as there was so much wasted opportunity for good whump there! Anyone not interested in the S7 characters will probably want to wait for my second story later this month, but for everyone else, get ready for a little bit of Detective Rogers in peril. Note: Gothel is the featured villain here so fair warning as there are some vague mentions of her history with Rogers. Rated T and up for violent situations.

Also on FF.net and AO3

Maybe, just maybe, someone would come searching for him or maybe Tilly would spring back to her senses?

But the reality was - who would be looking for him?

One hour earlier

She was mad. Had to be. How else could he explain it?

Maybe he was mad. How had he allowed this woman to gain so much power over him?

He felt manipulated. Used. Hell, part of him felt downright violated, but yet he was still inexplicably drawn to her.

“What do you want from us?” Rogers demanded. Hell, if he was going to die here, he at least wanted to know why.

**********

“Oh, Captain,” she said through that same salacious grin, “we’ve such a torrid history… Where would I even begin?”

“Brat? What - Tilly?” His stuttered words barely made sense in his own head, but they seemed to increase her ire.

“If that’s what you want to call her,” she scoffed. “You gave her a different name back then, but nonetheless, it won’t matter for much longer.”

“You haven’t harmed her, have you?” he asked meekly, his voice cracking audibly at the thought as his eyes grew wide with fearful anticipation.

**********

“What do you want?” He knew he’d asked the question before, but in his weakened state, he didn’t remember the answer - certainly not the answer she was about to give.

Tower? Betrayal? Her words were conjuring images that bombarded his psyche, but were they memories or hallucinations? He didn’t know if he could trust his own brain right now.

“Eloise…”

“Tilly…” he whispered, not even certain if his voice was loud enough for her to hear.

“Wait - daughter? Tilly… Alice… she’s my daughter?” he stammered, trembling as his already pain-wracked brain overloaded. “How can she be my daughter? I’m not old enough…”

A hook.

His sullen eyes drew downward, seeking out the prosthetic hand attached to the wrist of his stumped arm which suddenly didn’t feel right to him. The weight, the fit - all wrong.

One single word rolled off his tongue as his body fell limp against the imposing vines.

Starfish.

“Papa?”

“I’m right here, Tilly,” the witch replied as she took a step from behind her nearly lifeless prisoner.

“No,” Tilly sobbed, cursing herself for ever agreeing to help this monster in the first place, but now, the witch had to be stopped. “No - I won’t allow you to do this!”

“You won’t allow me?” Gothel laughed off Tilly’s cockiness. Apparently the girl had more of her father’s personality than she’d believed. “Then stop me.”

The challenge was issued as an insult, but Tilly didn’t take it as such. She was going to prove that she had the strength to defeat this horrid person.

“We need to get him down from there somehow,” Weaver stated. “The vines are dying and won’t hold him for long…”

She couldn’t be here. She couldn’t cause him more suffering…

**********

“Have you heard anything yet?” Roni asked in a hushed whisper.

Weaver shook his head. “Not yet.”

“Gothel?”

“Hopefully gone, like most of the objects she conjured. She fell into a giant crack that opened up beneath her.”

“Did Tilly do that?” Roni wondered if battling her mother had contributed to the younger woman’s unease.

“Yes,” was Weaver’s unpretentious reply as he slumped back against the wall. Roni mouthed a wow as she copied his posture, crossing her legs at the ankle.

“Margot thinks she knows where to find her,” she told him. “Henry’s taking a loop around the neighborhood too. She’ll turn up.”

“She knows she’s Alice,” Weaver stated without preface. “As soon as I said that his heart was still beating, I saw it in her eyes. She panicked.”

“She remembered his poisoned heart…” Roni sighed. “That poor girl... She didn’t want to cause him more pain. She must be devastated…” Weaver didn’t answer; he already knew she was right. Getting her memory back, watching her father suffering and then having to destroy her mother just might have short-circuited Tilly’s complicated mind.

But it was Roni who suddenly sat up straight, a quizzical arch to her eyebrow as she contemplated a thought that had leapt into the forefront of her mind.

“Did his heart stop?” she asked, almost a bit too loudly as it drew some unwanted attention from other people in the waiting room.

“What?” He’d heard the question, but wanted her to repeat it.

“There’s only one way to test that theory though...and Tilly is nowhere to be found,” Weaver reminded her.