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#the show gave him a ponytail in the flashback i win!
videogamelover99 · 3 years
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The series reminded me how much I love book!Darkling so here's bastard man!
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bamfdaddio · 3 years
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X-Men Abridged: 1977
The X-Men, those starjammin' mutants that have sworn to protect a world that hates and fears them, are a cultural juggernaut with a long, tangled history. Want to unravel this tapestry? Then read the Abridged X-Men!
(X-Men 103 - 108) - written by Chris Claremont and art by Dave Cockrum, Bob Brown and John Byrne
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The fabled M’Kraan Crystal, a.k.a. Everything’s a butt plug if you’re brave enough. (X-Men 107)
When we last left our X-Men, they were being pummelled into a paste by Black Tom and the Juggernaut at the ancestral Cassidy Keep. Only Nightcrawler was out of their clutches, because he was saved by elves. (All Irish keeps have elves, plz don’t question it.) Apparently, Juggernaut and Black Tom have been holding the inhabitants of the castle hostage under the orders of Eric the Red. Black Tom plans to mindrape the X-Men to lure Charles to Ireland to kill him, which… er… Wouldn’t it be easier to go back to the USA now that Charles is mostly unprotected? Most of the the X-Men are in Oire right now!
Nightcrawler incidentally discovers he turns invisible in the shadows, and it makes total sense that he only realizes this now, because they have no shadows in Germany. Eh, nobody remembers he has this power these days anyway, so! Moving briskly on!
Kurt surprises the gay villainous duo by pretending to be a surprisingly spry Xavier. (Image inducer ftw.) While trying to turn Nightcrawler into a smear of blue fuzz, Juggernaut punches through a wall, exposing Storm to the sky and releasing her from the tight grip of her claustrophobia.
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Very few things fill me with more delight than seeing Storm doing loop-de-loops. (X-Men 103)
Storm frees the rest of the X-Men. In the final battle, Banshee tussles with Tom, tossing him off the ramparts and straight into the choppy ocean. Even though tossing a villain into the water is an absolutely sure-fire way to guarantee they'll survive, Juggernaut jumps in after him, desperate to save his boyfriend. Friend. Whatever.
Hilariously, the people at marvel.fandom hate this issue and plotline, saying it’s more riddled with plot holes than Swiss cheese. For example, the elves reveal Wolverine’s real name - Logan - which… “This issue implies that the leprechauns have some prior knowledge of, and even a connection to Wolverine. This plot point, however, was completely dropped and never referenced again (which is probably for the best, considering how goofy it is.)”
I mean, they’re not wrong.
So. Hey. You ready for things to get weird?
Moira has received a VAGUE BUT DISTRESSING call for help from Muir Isle. Off-screen she got upgraded to being an associate at Edinburgh University who owns a lab in Scotland. She left some dude named Jamie Madrox in charge, which - Moira, you have a Phd, you should be able to tell that Madrox is an absolute (entertaining) mess of a person.
Also super surprised that Jamie Madrox was conceived in the seventies, but whatever.
In order to check out the lab, the X-Men rent a hovercraft, which explodes just off the shore of Muir Isle.
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Get a bucket and a mop for this wet-ass fuzzy. (X-Men 104)
They are beset on all sides, before being pulled into the laboratory by… MAGNETO?
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Magneto accusing anybody other than Dr. Doom or Namor of all-consuming arrogance shows us that self-awareness can’t be taught. (X-Men 104)
Cyclops arrives by airplane, reuniting with the team, while also talking to Moira and Madrox. Absolutely bonkers revelations are made in the space of three pages:
Moira’s lab is a secret Mutant Research Centre. (uh…)
In the Defenders-comic, Magneto was de-aged into a baby. (...what?!)
‘Research Centre’ is a Scottish synonym for a penal colony for all kinds of dangerous mutants, like baby Magneto, Dragonfly, Unus and the mysterious Mutant-X. (...what?!)
Moira quite cavalierly experiments on prisoners and babies. She also has a machine that can manipulate age. Xavier knows and is fine with all of this. (wtf!?!?)
This is such a bonkers, messy way to rewrite both Moira and Magneto. Like, I can’t.
Eric the Red freed Magneto and then used the aging machine to turn Magneto back into an adult man at the peak of his powers. This Magneto is understandably upset at having been turned into a science lab experiment/baby and he mops the floor with the X-Men.
Cyclops makes the executive decision to flee Muir Isle, because they have no chance against Magneto and he now realizes Professor X is unprotected and probably at the mercy of Eric the Red. Wolverine calls him a big fat sissy to his face.
I kind of dig that the X-Men don't win a lot of their fights yet. They’re still treated as relatively unseasoned, especially as a team, and they don’t automatically win at the end of every story. It also gives Magneto more oomph as a villain.
Anyway, when the X-Men arrive at the mansion, they’re defeated by Firelord, Galactus’ former herald. He’s been duped into attacking them by Eric the Red. Firelord is convinced the X-Men are the villains, because Eric went with the Wounded Gazelle Gambit: he even knocked out Havok and Polaris to pretend he was attacked by our merry mutants. (Next time we see them, they’re back to their normal, non-brainwashed selves.)
In her new apartment, Jean is introducing her parents and Professor X to her new girlfriend roommate Misty Knight when princess Neramani (of, uh, space) teleports into the room. And then Firelord attacks Charles! Jean has absolutely zero chill for all of this.
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I know very little about Misty Knight, but every time she appears, she responds to anything remotely surprising by drawing her gun. I assume she shoots her paper boy every morning. (X-Men 105)
The entire point of this issue is to show how big a threat Phoenix is. Claremont originally wanted to use a big name like Thor or the Silver Surfer, but editorial nixed that: they feared that it would be emasculating for a popular character to be beaten by a girl. Once again, this proves how badly the Phoenix storyline was needed. Did Jean single-handedly introduce feminism to superhero comics? I’mma say yes.
With Jean distracted and Charles teaching Lilandra English telepathically so he can woo the pretty space-lady and/or get an explanation as to why the universe is ending, Eric the Red strikes, revealing himself to be: SHAKARI.
Yeah, no, I don’t recognize the name either, but the dude’s been working on this reveal for a while, so just let him have it.
He absconds with Lilandra through the Stargate and switches it off, just as the X-Men arrive. Jean casually turns it back on and because the Professor is all, “we’ve got to save her! I mean the universe!”, the X-Men jump through the gate.
Jean’s parents are all out of wtfs to give.
We take a break from Shi´Ar shenanigans with an inconsequential filler issue, where we flashback to Xavier while he was being driven crazy by his Space Trek dreams. It’s established that Moira and Xavier are ex-lovers and that Xavier’s melodramatic subconscious wants to kill the new X-Men. (Probably not for real, but who knows.) Next!
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Still a better villain than Onslaught. (X-Men 106)
Anyway, the X-Men find themselves surrounded by aliens in front of the ginormous M’Kraan Crystal. The Shi’Ar are all: ‘dafuq you’re doing here’, Cyclops is all: ‘We’re here for Lilandra’, and the Shi’Ar are all: ‘You mean our prisoner and rogue princess?’ Scott decides that gathering more information is for losers and starts blasting, triggering a fight with the Imperial Guard.
Lilandra, meanwhile, is in the hands of Shakari and her big brother, Emperor D’Ken. He releases some nebulously defined monster - a Soul Drinker - to kill Lilandra. Nightcrawler saves her from its murderous clutches by teleporting two people for the very first time. Lilandra doesn’t barf up her insides, which is apparently a test of character, and proceeds to explain what’s what.
First, she tells the X-Men that she felt Professor Xavier when he was doing the telepathic care bear attack against the Z’Nox way back in the sixties and that she felt instantly drawn to him. She also explains that she’s D’Ken’s younger sister and leading a rebellion against her mad, power hungry brother. Why is he mad? Well...
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The X-Men vs. Astrology! Riveting. (Still a better villain than Onslaught.) Although, “I’m a Pisces” sounds a lot lamer than “I was born under the Nine Death Stars. (X-Men 107)
The guy in the mohawk is Gladiator, he is consistently the worst. Even when Lilandra reveals that opening that gate triggers the End of All That Is, he’s still all: “Juuust following orders.”
The Imperial Guard goes in for a smackdown, but the X-Men are fortunately saved by the Starjammers. (Space pirates, not an 80’s rock group.) They are:
Corsair, a debonair dude with one golden earring. Pretty obviously a human.
Raza, cyborg with a temper and somehow bald whilst rocking a ponytail.
Ch’od, lizard creature. Has a white fluffy spider monkey-thing that I don’t recognize and but is apparently called Waldo Ch'ee. (I pray it just got lost in Marvel history and that it doesn’t get squashed at some point. It’s adorable.)
Hepzibah, cute cat girl with a gun. Involved with Corsair, except he can’t pronounce her name so he just gave her the completely unrelated nickname Hepzibah? Dude!
Jean, having learned psychic etiquette from Charles Xavier, immediately violates their privacy and scans their minds, figuring out that Corsair is Scott’s dad. Superficial telepathic read, my ass.
Meanwhile, power builds up in the M’Kraan Crystal and the universe briefly blinks out of existence, threatening to tear open the fabric of the universe if this keeps up. To emphasize that this is a Big Honking Deal, we cut to Earth where the Avengers, Fantastic Four and Peter Corbeau (rumored to have an IQ over 200) are all: oy, did the universe just stop existing?
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That’s Hank McCoy for “we’re fucked’”. Hi Jimmy Carter! (X-Men 108)
Apparently, this is the year the X-Men can’t catch a break, because after being beaten by the Juggernaut, Magneto and the Imperial Guard, they are soundly trashed by Jahf, the Guardian of the Crystal. That is, until Phoenix drops a small meteor on him. In a story beat that I really like, Jahf isn’t fazed at all: the Phoenix, despite her immeasurable power, isn’t omnipotent. Sometimes, you need a scalpel instead of a sledge hammer: it’s Banshee whose sonic scream can scramble the guardian’s circuitry.
Unfortunately, defeating the first guardian only awakens a second, stronger one, so…
Raza decides he’s had enough of this nonsense and, displaying admirable proactive problem solving skills, simply tosses D’Ken into the M’Kraan crystal. Presumably, the Crystal is annoyed at being attacked by someone who also has an unnecessary apostrophe in their name, and it lashes out, trapping everyone involved in their own personal hell. For Jean, this is apparently death, but she’s all: “Um, I was recently deceased, no big deal,” and snaps out of it.
The Phoenix reaches out the crystal, which is slowly cracking under the weight of the universe. (Same.) If it shatters, it will destroy the universe, devouring all . Think of it as a cosmic reset button. The Phoenix is its opposite, a bringer of energy and life, so it might be able to fix the crystal. Problem is, Jean has trouble remaining anchored in this reality, because she’s being absorbed by the crystal.
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OKAY. SO MANY THINGS TO LOVE. Even when allied with a cosmic force, Storm proves she’s our queen. Furthermore, other than Jean/Scott, Ororo/Jean might the most fleshed out relationship among these new X-Men at this point. Their friendship is consistently a highlight.
Also, rough, rough day for Corsair. (X-Men 108)
Phoenix mends the crystal with a lot of mystical space mumbo jumbo and… er, that’s it. Cosmic balance restored, she poofs the X-Men home.
Lilandra tags along with them, explaining that D’Ken’s tinkering with the Crystal left him catatonic and unfit to rule. As his sister, she’s the rightful heir, but since she also led a rebellion, she kind of cancelled by her empire. She announces she will stay on Earth with Charles while the Shi´Ar iron out the details of the succession. So, instead of consolidating her power base and claim to the throne, she peaces out to explore her feelings for the hairless pink alien who can peek into her brain. Solid.
And with that final bit of space opera, we say goodbye to Dave Cockrum and welcome artist John Byrne. The Claremont/Byrne-run is widely seen as the definitive X-Men run, so hold onto your butts and let’s see where the Phoenix takes us, shall we?
Didn’t you take Art History? I stand by my space mumbo jumbo comment from earlier, but check out these Byrne-pages:
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Chef’s kiss. (X-Men 108)
Ugliest Costume: I have a fierce hatred for the Shi'ar's weird wispy triangular hair/feather/thingies, but those are technically not costumes. So: Lilandra, why is your boob window a bug?
Best new character: I’m not much of a fan of space operas or the Shi’Ar and their extended court, but I do have a soft spot for the Starjammers, Hepzibah in particular. I fondly remember her being a part of the X-Men at some point in the future, although I don't think her actual unpronounceable name ever gets revealed.
Most audacious retcon: Moira the housekeeper is actually an evil morally complicated mad scientist.
What to read: Issue 105, 107 and 108, for all your Phoenix Saga needs.
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un-bearablysweet · 4 years
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Teetlez in Highschool Part 3
Wow, I’m thrilled people enjoy this headcanon so much! And I apologize for the delay, but I finished drawing Leo’s pic right afters Donnie’s and I liked it. Until I did a side by side comparison of Raph, Donnie and Leo and Leo looked like a 23yr old gigolo.
No Lie for some reason he’s wearing a skin-tight leather shirt and It just seemed weird when I put them side by side, especially since they’re supposed to be in high school, and I know 14yrs old nowadays look like they’re in the twenties, but that’s not the point.🤷🏿‍♀️ Either way, if enough people ask, I’ll release the picture, but probably not because I’m so ashamed now.
If Donnie has box braids Leo must have dreads that is the law, lol
If Donnie is a drama queen, then Leo is trying to dethrone him, but I think we all know that Leo is Diva after my own heart.
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 Leo is so much like his father when he was younger; it’s scary. Leo will do something completely ridiculous, and its like Splinter starts having war flashbacks to his childhood.  
“Is this punishment for my previous sins?”
“My parents were right; my behavior would replicate in my children twice fold." 
While the boys, in general, are considered popular among the other students, Leo is a bit of a queen bee. Leo’s versatile nature makes him while liked by everyone. A complete sweet talker, do you know how many detentions this boy has talked in his way out? He once convinced a History teacher to save himself the trouble of grading the classes test by merely giving the whole class B+’s. 
He’s putting his pretty face to work, and being a schmoozer is his second nature. Raph’s the muscle and leader, Donnie’s the Brains, and Leo’s the Pretty face with a silver tongue. 
Co-captain of the basketball team he is not to be trifled with or underestimated, you already know this boy loves to win, and he always thinks of the best gameplays to win. Takes any chance to dunk on someone and doing trick shots. 
Leo said, give me your ankles boi; this boy is always breaking the other team’s ankles. He calls them chronic floppers, constant smack talk on the court. Leo often gets in trouble for either showboating or ball hogging. 
He’s always hyping up the crowd at basketball games, it’s constant dabbing and dabbing on the court from him. Leo’s definitely a crowd favorite and treats each game like it’s a concert. 
He considers himself to be the star player on the team. His teammates know he’s the best player, too, but don’t want to inflate his ego anymore. Every now and then they have to humble their beloved co-captain. 
"Um guys, where are my clothes? Seriously, guys, I have Mr. Demario’s class in five minutes, and you know he gives out detentions like candy." 
The stole is clothes and uniforms, and he ended up having to wear the mascots suit to class. The first sophomore to become the swim team captain, he’s the fastest on the squad. Sadly, the school doesn’t have a kendo team, so he joined the fencing team. He did, however, join a Kendo club outside the school, it’s actually where he met his boyfriend, Usagi. 
Leo coming back from try-outs with a placement on the team and Usagi’s number is not what Donnie was expecting. 
"It was love at first, Encho." 
*Encho* The match is declared a draw
"You could say he swept me off my feet." 
It had been two days since Usagi and Leo’s first date, and while Donnie was happy for his twin, he didn’t want to listen to Leo gush about his new boy toy at 4am. 
"What happened to love is for suckers.” Typing away at his Lab report, Donnie’s head gestured for Leo to continue. 
“That was then this is now, and if that’s the case, then Usagi a Tootsie Pop that I’ll lick all night~."
...
” Ew"🤨
It’s constant memes and puns with this boy, and you know those guys on Instagram that are continually sticking their tongues out, showing off their abs or biting their lips?
 That’s Leo, this boy is a certified Instagram thirst trap. 
Donnie often jokes that he might as well quit sports an become a full-time IG model. Jokes on him because Leo actually gets picked up by a modeling agency. 
He mainly does small local shoots for teen magazines or clothing lines. 
The photographer actually took a shining to Donnie when he came to pick Leo up from one of the shoots. He really likes the duality yet contrast Donnie and Leo create. 
I gave Leo high cheekbones because I know that he would abuse them completely. The glasses he has on his shirt he stole them from Donnie.
People were surprised to find out Leo and Donnie were twins, especially when they seemed so different, Leo often had to tell people they were fraternal, and as much as he hated it, Donnie was indeed the oldest. 
Leo had lovely smooth brown skin, his black dreads pulled into a high ponytail. His vitiligo taking the place of his beloved scale markings. He did miss his red stripes the most, so he dyed two of his dreads red. And when he was feeling especially fancy, he would use red kabuki makeup and mimick his red stripes. He usually did this for important games or on his dates with Usagi, they give him confidence. 
Leo is a bit of a fashion icon in the school and is often and a trendsetter. Winged eyeliner sharp enough to cut a bitch. He uses waterproof for when he’s at swim meets and for when he sweats during basketball practice. 
When he takes off his helmet after Kendo practice, he wants to look his best. 
“Mr. Hamato, you cannot use a ruler to correct your makeup; save it for study hall.”
Other nerds who resented Donnie and for being smart and good looking if they couldn’t get to him would try to insult and attack Leo. Oh, no honey, he is not the one. Donnie isn’t the only one with savage comebacks.
The Spanish teachers love him; his Spanish is nearly flawless, especially for a student that was previously homeschooled. All those nights working for Hueso and babysitting Hueso Jr paid off. 
Leonardo ‘Akihiko’ Hamato 
Akihiko meaning 'Shining Prince.' 
15yr, Sophmore
Basketball Co-captain, Swim Team Captain, 
Fencing club member, Kendo Club Member. 
Voted most likely to make a pun doing his own wedding or dab doing the reception.
Oddly enough, I think Leo was the hardest to write for. Up Next is Mikey, along with a bonus post. 
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bow-woahh · 4 years
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She-Ra season 5 thoughts
A chaotic summary of my feelings/ reactions of each episode! Spoilers. Obviously. 
Episode 1 — Horde Prime
- First of...Adora stop throwing yourself into battle challenge - "You're not She-Ra anymore" — TELL HER SIS - The way Catra was so smug but Glimmer was not having any of it "You're just as alone as I am" if that ain't the truth idk what is - Catra wanting the climb up the ranks? Sis I don't think so let's see how long that lasts - The DINNER pissed me the fuck OFF - Oh yeah here's my obligatory SW FUCK OFF CHALLENGE - Micah, King, glare at her!! Yes!! - The way Scorpia said "Catra thought my singing was annoying" honey - That clone was SO annoying stfu about Prime being omniscient and omnipresent and shit like ugH idC - Bow and Adora are the BROTP - Scorpia stinging Adora to keep her safe - and that's on friendship - The way Prime INSTANTLY called Catra out "Adora means something to you" listen I hate the gay but damn he's smart. He saw right through her act. - "Adora chose her side and I chose mine" that doesn't mean you don't still care Catraaa - Also that was REALLL quick lmaoo the way five seconds she was like "imma climb up the ranks" then in about two secs HP was like "sis I have no use for you" - "What are you going to do to me?" IM CRYING - Adora and those weird flashback PTSD things -- are u okay sis?? - This was the first episode and I already want to cry so....wow
Episode 2 — Launch
- Adora omg she's so fatigued girl S L E E P - Bow getting pissed at everyone for not letting her rest...what a king - Catra disobeying HP and talking back to that clone but then HP took its form...fuck man that shit scary - STOP CALLING HER  LITTLE SISTER CHALLENGE JESUS FUCK - Everyone hates Entrapta wow ouch - Literally Entrapta being horny over robots is hilarious lmaoo - Mermista is a great leader and they worked so well together ahhh! I'm loving Scorpia and Frosta's friendship - Entrapta got the signal!! I'm proud -  Adora stop following holograms and illusions challenge -  Adora being all like "I don't know my destiny anymore but I know I need to save my friend." LIKE YES HONEY -  Glimmer is sO volatile like honey,, did you need to break HP's crystal ball thingy?? DID U?? -  also she knows her dad is alive now and that H U R T S ++ I bet she doesn't know the sword is broken so fuckkl -  Micah as She-Ra?? something I never knew I needed -  SW not being in this episode at all? love that for us - "I reinstate my horray" I LOVE YOU SCORPIA - "Can you stay?" MY FUCKING HEART GLITRA FRIENDSHIP HERE WE COME
Every episode I just feel immense f E AR
Episode 3 — Corridors
- THIS STARTS W BABY CATRA AND ADORA?? NOELLE WHY ARE TRYNA KILL US?? - Catra and Glimmer talking about sleepovers and Adora...damn my heart - Adora and her stupid ponytail 💀 - "I'll never say sorry!" - THE WAY YOUNG CATRA WAS SO JEALOUS EYE— - "There's no one in the entire universe who cares about me." - "Im sorry! For everything." IM SO UPSET WTF -  CATRA IS FUCKED BUT SHE SAVED GLIMMER -  HP GTFO CHALLENGE -  I'm so proud of my baby tho wow... -  What the fuck we gone do now? -  so much happened in this episode so this is a lot shorter because my brain is numb. Catra is gonna get brainwashed?? isn't she?? -  "I want to do that one good thing in my life." IM CRYING Y'ALL
Episode 4 —Stranded
- Adora is like "Catra, Catra?? saved you?? wtaf?” Lmaoo - Bow and Glimmer fighting is hurting my HEART - KYLE HAS A CRUSH ON ROGELIO?? SCORPIA DONE EXPOSED IT AHHH - Swifty tryna contact Adora?? kinda cute - him impersonating everyone was onbrand and kinda funny ngl - The way Adora is like "it's complicated" lmaoo girl everything is w you - I live the star siblings omg yeS - "I have to save someone. Someone I—" omFG ADORA - Adora is S T R O N K - she GLOWED OMFG SHE RA?? IS THAT U?? - BOW AND GLIMMER BEING OKAY?? MAYBE - Etherians really are wilding out here - YESSS THEY JOINING THE REBELLION - "Maybe we'll never be friends like we used to be."  Glimmer...I love her sm - "I can't just leave her there. I have to try." Adora actually cares so much about her!! and I love Glimmer being supportive wow we love a queen! - THE BEST FRIEND SQUAD IS BACK TOGETHER!! LETS GOO - "She-Ra is back." Swift Wind is annoying but thank you. thank you for saying that horse.
I literally threw my hoodie across the room and forgot that I did that wow lmao
Episode 5 — Save the Cat
- My friend who's ahead me said wait for episode 5 now I'm fucking S H OO K - this episode name has me shook I can't - its WRITTEN BY NOELLE?? WE'RE FUCKED - I love Wrong Hordak SM what an idiot - Catradora really is gonna be canon wow - WTAF IS THAT SHE IS NOT MY CATRA SHE IS A CLONE her hair tho?? kinda nice - the way HP said "your Catra." like low-key he said gay rights - "You broke my heart. And he has made me whole again." - "We both know I don't matter"  and "you're and idiot" "I know" THESE TWO ARE MADE FOR EACH OTHER - SHE JUMPED OFF A CLIFF FOR HER - the way she's holding her?? so soft - SHE RA IS LOOKING FLY -- and is she taller?? - "You miscalculated" YES QUEEN I LOVE HER. THAT WHOLE FIGHT SCENE WAS AMAZING - FuCK HORDEP PRIME - Darla is the best Light Hope SUX - the "Hey, Adora" was SO SOFT IM SO HAPPY
That episode really hiT different Catradora is DEFINITELY canon EVERYONE SAY THANK YOU NOELLE
Episode 6 - Taking Control
- Adora. Chill. - Catra's trauma...wow - honestly I have SO MUCH TO SAY and so little at all. - The ending w Catra joining was so cute and all the Catradora interactions are SENDING ME this is the development I need - "Adora. Stay." MY HEART - thank fuck that chip is gone YAY - Entrapta and Catra making up? Catra saying "Thank you and I'm sorry" her least favourite words -- characters DEVELOPMENT - The way Catra blushed when Adora transformed GIRL YOURE GAY - SHERAS POWER IS TOO MUCH SLAY GIRL - Horde Prime FucK off challenge I hate him - Micah tryna be a father figure? cute - the endING FUCK WHY WOULD THEY DO THAT SPINNERALLA??? POOR NETOSSA
okay but where tf is DT, KYLE, LONNIE AND ROGELIO??
my mum is so tired of me screaming lmaoo
Episode 7 — Perils Of Peekabloo
- Catra just SAT on Adora's lap the PDA is unmatched - We love a filler wow - we literally can't trust anyone this shit sucks - SCORFUMA STANS STAY WINNING - Mermista and Seahawk kinda cute tho (the  heart eyes) - DT I KNEW IT   - CASH KITTEN? EYE—JUST SAY SUGAR MOMMA AND GO - NETOSSA DOESN'T DESERVE THIS - MERMISTA TO - EVERYONE is chipped WTF - DT is a theatre gay through and through   - THEY'RE FUCKED WE'RE FUCKED - NOOOO SCORPIA 😭😭😭 - "I'm the muscle, remember?" - SCORPIA'S POWER, HER REACH, IT'S AMAZING - everything is going downhill FAST - "Happy Anniversary" EYE—😭😭😭😭😭
well that sucked What the fuck we gone do now?
Episode 8 - Shot in the Dark
- The soft smile Catra gave Adora while teasing? love that - loving this new squad - the wAY HER TAIL FLUFFED UP SHES SO SCARED MAN - Wrong Hordak is my main g - the LAUGHING!! THE BLUSHING!! EVERYONE CAN SMELL THE GAY TENSION - omg Catra being the brains of the operation?? yes please - "Catra's first mission" THEY'RE SO OBNOXIOUS I LOVE THEM - "I'm going to kill your friends." "Please don't." we are ASCENDING - Casta? Strike her down anyway please 🙏 - Adora is SO WHIPPED the way she blushed at Catra making the door - "It's such a cute sneeze" BOW KNOWS IT CATRA IS CUTE AND THATS THE TEA - literallyyyy I hate SW GTFO CHALLENGE get OFF my screen 😡 - CATRA WHY DID YOU LUNGE AT THAT THING?? - OMFG MAGICAT?? (Nope dumb bitch) - "I'm coming!" "Hurry." - "I'm sorry. I got angry. It's something I'm working on" ADORA GLOWED AND SAID "You are?" WE LOVE SELF GROWTH AHH - It was Catra's hand OMFG IN THE TRAILER - Adora and cat thing being magic? we love it - MELOG IS SO CUTE and Catra can talk to it?? wowow - they love taking strays lmao - Wrong Hordak's character arc is the best one in the show - CATRA HAS AN IDEA?? YES - Preach Casta shut Weaver up - "That about sums it up, yes." I love them as a team - the hand holding? so cutee Catra don't pretend you're not whipped - oml Glimmer kissing Catra before Adora? EYE— Glitra shippers gonna be so happy at that one moment lmaoo - THEY'RE HOMEEEE
ahhh we're getting close to the end nooo
Episode 9 —An ill Wind
- oh god oh god - Catra is so badass with Melog i LOVE HER EMOTIONAL SUPPORT ANIMAL  - having to fight your own wife? that shit sucks - Erelandia? it's free - omg HP is angry asfff - FROSTA CHILL SHE PUNCHED HER HARD - Adora and Catra are soft 🥺 that's all I have to say
Episode 10 — Return to the Fright Zone
- omg are we gonna see Kyle?? Lonnie? Rogelio?? (also nope, stupid hoe) - okay but Netossa getting screentime? YES PLEASE - I love the intro sm ahhhh - also her knowing everyone's weakness? love that shit - ouch Perfuma ouch didn’t have to go so hard on Catra and YET - omg I forgot Bow's dads existed - "Mostly bad memories" 😔😔😔 - competitive gfs for the win - Catra FLEW tho WOW Scorpia is STRONK - the dad jokes are immaculate - "I'm working is being a better friend. That has to count for something right?" - "We don't throw tanks at our friends" sis you don't give flowers to your them at this current time either - "why did I get stuck with the water Princess?" Catra...baby I love you - omg there's a fail safe THANK FUCK I was legit speechless - "There's real power in love and friendship" preACH IT GIRLIE - SCORPIA FIGHT IT YESSS - legit forgot Spinny and Netossa were fighting lmao oof - FINALLY ANGST OVER THE WIVES ARE BACK - omg THE PAN TO ADORA ABOUT BEING VULNERABLE AHHHH - Perfuma is Catra's therapist that's my headcanon - OMFG I FORGOT ABOUT SW FUCK SHIT CATRA BABY IM SORRY
damn I'm stressed out
Episode 11 — Failsafe
- Weaver STFU challenge - them taking about their abuse? we love to see - "We— I could really use your help" KILL ME NOW THEY'RE TOO MUCH - "Not because I like you" she says SMILING - Melog is Catra's affectionate side prove me wrong - Stan Entrapta for clear skin - SW doesn't deserve rights (as per usual) - DONT TOUCH HER BITCH LITERALLYYYY WHYYY - and now She Ra is glitching?? fuck - Catra is so jumpy eye— "Trust Me" MY HEART SBSBDB - Weaver really called her a DISTURBANCE STFU 💀💀💀 - Entrapta and bird horse ftw what a tag team - OMG NO BE CAREFUL - "Did you just jump in fire to save me?" SHE WAS SO SMUG - can SW burn like... now? - "It's none of your business" LITERALLY BUTT OUT  - "Catra, she distracts you, confuses you." WEAVER I FUCKING HATE YOU SM I FUCKING I WILL PUNCH MY SCREEN - Entrapdak being a thing? I do not know how to feel - "Your imperfections are beautiful."  I am.... conflicted - SW doesn't deserve screen time - Catra is an i no cap (I genuinely have no clue what I meant so sorry about that) - i think the fuck not - this episode is so stressful - Catra saving Adora >>>>>>>>> - what an awful reunion for Glimmer damn - "It doesn't always have to be you!" IKR IT SHOULD BE WEAVER - fuck dark magic fuck it all - Catra's upset?? no my baby 🥺 - this whole episode is just traumatising - Adora's heart do be glowing - Catra's LEAVING?? why?? - "What do you want Adora?" - MY HEART BEEN BROKE SO MANY TIMES I DONT KNOW WHAT TO BELIEVE 😭😭 - omg this time instead of Adora leaving it's Catra (you are a dumbass DUH) - that H U R T S - ADORA TELL HER YEs QUEEN
omg HEART NEXT???
Episode 12 — Heart Part 1
- I am not prepared for this - Adora...baby I'm so sorry - Glimbow moment with a banjo?? that was cute - Adora really is a party popper - "Adora doesn't want me. Not like I want her." AND THAT'S ON LESBIANISM BUT ALSO FUCKING OUCH  - but really Catra...do you really think Adora doesn't want you? girl are youb B L I N D?? - Wrong Hordak is MY GUY - Stan the rebellion for clear skin - NOOO WHAT THE FUCK MY HEART DON'TPLAY WITH ME LIKE THAT THEY NEARLY KISSED AND IT WAS A FUCKING SIMULATION - real Catra be CAREFUL - "We have to warn Adora" YES SIS WARN YOUR GF  - "I thought I could make my own destiny" U STILL CAN SIS - I'm scared I'm fucking scared - my HEART IS BEATINGG FASTT - I really hate Horde Prime uhhhhhhhgg - for once in your sorry life do something good Weaver jfc - "I can't leave her behind again" - BEST FRIEND SQUAD + MELOG YES - "Bow, I love you." GLIMBOW IS BACK ON AHHH - BUT AT WHAT COST??? (literally what am I saying??) - "You deserve love too." AND THAT'S ON PERIODT - Glimmer coming in clutch!! - Mermista and Seahawk do be cute tho - Micah is actually the worst rn wow - "Goodbye, my oldest enemy" CATRA COME QUICK AHH
the last episode....I'm not ready to say goodbye
Episode 13 — Heart Part 2
- ofc this is written by Noelle - "Hey, Adora" MY HEART - "I'll catch up okay? Get to the heart." - SW ACTUALLY DIED?? THANK YOU MY GIRLS CAN HEAL NOW
andd that's as far as I got before freaking the fuck out with everything that was happening onscreen but THE CATRADORA KISS WAS EVERYTHING and the ending was perfect 🥺💖
Thank you Crew-Ra, Noelle for making such a beautiful and heartwarming show, this will be remembered for years to come because what this show did was incredible and unlike anything I've ever watched.
37 notes · View notes
lakadyn · 4 years
Text
So This Is It...
I watched the last show yesterday, slept on it and now I have a few thoughts. First, it was a good send off. Satisfying. I will be able to watch the show again without fail, the last ep gave me what I wanted: a reunion. Oliver and Felicity together at last at peace (wherever it is, really I don’t care).
I always disliked that Oliver saw her for the first time in a flashback but the way it came to an end with him recreating the very room where they first met (adding some red pens along the way) moved me. Plus the way she was dressed as he sees her. Not dressed as she was that day, no. I love that he sees her with the ponytail, a light pink blouse and a skirt not-that-short… And heels of course. And he’ll explain why they are in his mother’s office after a long love session (but I digress).
So I enjoyed this episode and it was important to me. The show writers and me have been at war for a long time because of the plotholes the size of the Grand canyon. Very fast, I learnt to focus only on Olicity because there Stephen and Emily made sure they could not fuck up too much. Plus, there was Diggle, with David Ramsey always being the cheerleader for those two and having a beautiful love story of his own. As long as I concentrated on that I was (mostly) fine.
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Arrow is not my first fandom but it took a strong meaning in my life because it came from left field. I’m a journalist and I covered the first episode. I remembered writing it was “unusual to watch a show for the lead’s abs but that Arrow was an exception”. I didn’t give it much thought after that. Too many Award winning shows to watch and Supernatural too, mind you.
But one night, during what would become the worst year of my life, I needed a show to help me pass the long hours before dawn and the hospital. My TV had stored the first 2 seasons of Arrow so I began watching trying to keep panic at bay. And there came Emily. I binge watched because good TV can take you away from your problems even the scariest. By morning, I was hooked especially because I was in awe. Felicity was not an unusual character per se, she was the geek, the computer genius any vigilante couldn’t live without these days. But she was sexy with glasses. Short and with a temper. Not afraid  of our then grumbling hero and the most intelligent person in any room at any time. I’m a feminist, I was proud a sexy girl could be that smart unapologetically. This said, those geeks don’t get the sexy guy. NE-VER. Felicity sure was sexy as hell, but really? With the comics fans yelling Canary love and LL continuity?
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Thank god for Em and Stephen chemistry because every conversation they had was full of sparkles. After I binge watched, I finally joined the fandom live by the beginning of S3 with my fingers crossed for Olicity. I started a Tumblr just for that and Oh that season! It’s still my fave. Every ep analyzed to catch the looks, the almost touches, the lingering pauses. It was a blast. When Nanda Parbat came, I was still surviving what turned out to be a year and a half of bad luck but as I rewatched the love scene (with ou without sound LOL), I could escape my many problems. The geek got the guy and that made TV history.
I lost my job, I had toothaches that lasted 4 months, my appartement was robbed, I had a cancer scare, I was diagnosed with endometriosis after years of pain without explanation and finally I decided to sell my house and move abroad.During those 2 years, Arrow was my rock. I know it’s pathetic but it sometimes was the only happy hour in my week and so, for a long time. This show didn’t save my life but it made it easier. It was my life raft. And for that I will always thank the show and the fandom and especially Emily and Stephen.
As I write this in sunny Spain, my life has changed dramatically, I bought a new appartement, I have new plans and my show is done. Thanks for the ride guys. It was a bumpy one but we made it in the end. Olicity prevailed. We survived and enjoyed most of the ride and the most important thing is : we have memories that will last us a life time and that can help us escape when life throws us a curved ball (or two, or three…). I kiss you all and wish you all the best. XOXO
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31 notes · View notes
jbuffyangel · 5 years
Text
It Ain't Nothing but a Family Thing: Arrow 7x17 Review (Inheritance)
“Inheritance” is equal parts necessary exposition and filler episode. Not quite sure how the writers accomplished that, but they did.
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Let’s dig in…
Emiko and Oliver
Soooo… here’s the problem guys. I don’t really care about Emiko. The whole time I’m watching this plot line unfold I am thinking, “Couldn’t Thea have gone all evil?” 
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Take a pause and give that a good think. How awesome would it have been for Thea to take a deep dive down the evil hole? It would have been amazing, which is why I loudly demanded it for the six years Willa Holland was on the show. 
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Watching Oliver try to pull Thea away from the Ninth Circle would have been a good time.
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Not so much with Replacement Thea. The problem is I just met Emiko this season. I understand that’s typically the case when it comes to Arrow villains, but I’m supposed to bond with her character as Oliver’s sister and then be horrified when she turns out to be a villain.
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Arrow even tried to fast track my bonding by making Emiko into Oliver 2.0.  I’m not really seeing the individualism except for evil. Every week the writers were hanging a sign out that said, “SEE? SHE’S JUST LIKE OLIVER!” by mimicking previous OG Oliver Queen scenes. Just in case you missed any of the visual cues or copied verbatim scenes, the other characters are here to verbally proclaim Emiko is just like her brother. 
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Eh… keep it. Unfortunately, none of this has accomplished Arrow’s intended goal which is for me to give a crap about Emiko.
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It should be noted that when Arrow does the “SEE? SHE’S JUST LIKE OLIVER” with Mia or “SEE? HE’S JUST LIKE FELICITY!” with William (and vice versus) I love it. Yes, I am aware this is a double standard. Maybe it’s because the kids have more personality than cardboard. Sorry Emiko. Facts are facts. Maybe it’s because they are Olicity’s kids and therefore my investment is virtually guaranteed. I don’t know. I don’t care. It’s Season 7 and I’m gonna do me.
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The only thing keeping me mildly entertained with Emiko is that she is evil. I’m not really interested in watching her be redeemed either. I know I know. The season theme is redemption, but come on! Someone has to burn in the fires of Hades for all eternity. It doesn’t mean anything if every character is redeemed.
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Typically, I am down for Robert Queen flashbacks whenever possible, but in order to make this storyline work they had to turn Oliver’s father into a tremendous pile of stinking douchebag. Robert was always kind of a douchebag what with the whole killing a man by accident, lying about it and then getting embroiled in Merlyn’s plot to destroy half the city because of his guilt. 
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But he had gravitas. The class of an elder statesman. Maybe it’s the silver hair and grumbly grandpa voice I pray Oliver Queen will have some day. Maybe it’s because he put a bullet in his head to save his son. Annnnd… also murdered someone else in the process. Alright. Robert was a douchebag, but he was a mildly noble douchebag and I love him okay? I DON’T KNOW WHY!
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But the Robert Queen in “Inheritance” is a misogynistic, slimy, cheating, coward who kicks his mistress and love child out of the swanky apartment he was putting them up at and tells his daughter, “Life isn’t fair. We don’t always get what we want.” Wow. 
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That’s a great way to create a villain, Robert. Watch Batman or Star Wars or ANY HERO STORY EVER and learn fool.
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Emiko worked hard to get her father’s approval or acknowledgement of her existence to the world. She wanted to run Queen Consolidated, but nope that’s a man’s job sweetie. Oliver Queen and his penis, which was whoring its way through Starling City at the time, are destined for CEO.  Emiko takes Robert’s misogyny in stride and simply asks him to back a company of her own, but he balks at that too. This is the last straw in a very long line of straws.
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Unfortunately, Emiko doesn’t tell her father where to stick it and cut off all contact. No, that would be reasonable. Instead, she decides to go super villain on him. She impresses Dante after stealing from him and he agrees to train her. Emiko vacillates between being a Queen and joining the Ninth Circle for years, but the final brush off from Robert is the tipping point. She decides Dante is right and the Ninth Circle is her real family.
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Oliver follows Emiko after Bl*ck S*ren warns she may not be playing for the home team and he sees her with Dante. Oliver confronts Emiko and she sings some song and dance about not knowing who the real Dante was when she signed up with him. Now she’s trapped. It works. Oliver buys it hook line and sinker, because blindly ignoring blatant warning signs is what he does when it comes to the Queen family.
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He smartens up once he figures out Emiko sabotaged Felicity’s Archer program to protect Dante’s location. DO NOT MESS WITH THE WIFEY’S TOYS. 
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Oliver and Emiko face off in a fight that’s a lot about her ponytail. It had a life of its own.
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Sadly, this is one of the worst fights I’ve seen in Arrow’s history. I really hope Sea Shimooka isn’t taking acting tips from KC, because it sure looks like it. 
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WHO IS SHE LOOKING AT? I’m not putting all the blame at her feet. Stephen upped his cheese factor about ten notches too. The whole scene felt awkward, choppy and forced.
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Source: smoakmonster 
Diggle sits Oliver down for a much needed Yoda talk. John warns him not to be so invested in Emiko’s redemption that he ignores the threat she poses. Ah yes, the evil sibling plot line also happened in Season 4 with Diggle and Andy. 
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Yeesh, alright it’s time for this show to end. John’s need to save his brother ultimately cost L*urel her life and he doesn’t want Oliver to make the same mistake. 
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It’s time you left yourself off the hook on that one, Diggle. 
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It was all win from where I sat, so stop being so hard on yourself.
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UGH.  I tell the man to be Jesus and then he starts acting like Jesus!!! The nerve. Oliver, being a fully realized superhero doesn’t mean you save EVERYONE. Jesus didn’t save every – never mind. The point is, after seven seasons, now the pine tree listens to me? He could’ve popped the question in Season 3 and I’d be on my way to a second set of triplets, but nooooo.
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Oliver wants to redeem Emiko because then it means he’s redeemed the family in some way. 
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Source: olivergifs 
Why isn’t enough that you’ve redeemed yourself Oliver? You’re a Queen. You count. Yes, you were a massive douchebag once upon a time, but you stopped sleeping with Lance sisters (thank God), fell in love with sunshine, and embraced monogamy & commitment like the squishy teddy bear with abs we always knew you were. You also fight for the city, save lives, and cook your pregnant wife yummy veggies to munch on. You’re evolved dude. Cut yourself a break. And Thea isn’t exactly the Mistress of Satan. She’s off saving the world too. Two out of three ain’t bad.
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This whole “Right my wrongs” needs clarification. First it was the list, but it morphed into saving the Glades. Then Tommy died and things kind of snowballed. So, how many wrongs are we talking Bobby? Let’s get specific. We’ve only got 15 episodes left. Did you sell Iran nuclear weapons? Use Moira’s toothbrush and not tell her? Steal candy from babies? Are there a dozen more Robert Queen kiddos intent on world destruction? 
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Time is a wasting. I have a spin off coming and it needs to not be about your bullshit man.
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Team Arrow ultimately foils Emiko’s plan. Well… kind of. They miss one drone, but no worries! It was just a demonstration. They’re worried about the next time, when it’s not a demonstration, but I was more focused on the few extra tidbits delivered in the final moments of the episode
Not only does Emiko choose the Ninth Circle, she is their leader.
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She is also targeting the Archer program, which means nothing good for Oliver, Felicity and their children. Despite, my frustrations with Emiko’s character I am glad they are tying this all back to Robert and the Queens. Family is where this story began and it’s where it should end. 
Dante gave Emiko a gift when she was struggling between being a Queen or joining the Ninth Circle. It was the most hilariously unrealistic looking invoice from Merlyn Global, but it showed the location of the bombs on the Queen’s Gambit. Emiko knew about Merlyn’s plan and she could have saved her father’s life if she simply passed on the information at their meeting. But he rejected her once more, so Emiko sent Robert to his death and unknowingly condemned her brother to five years of hell. Damn.
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What Emiko doesn’t realize is that by keeping quiet about the bombs on the Queen’s Gambit she helped set her brother on a path to become someone who can stop her. In the immortal words of Leo McGarry, “ "It ain't nothing but a family thing.”
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Felicity Smoak
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Source: felicitysmoakgifs
Felicity wins Walter White. 
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This is something many fans have been saying for years, including yours truly, so I am quite happy the writers agree.  
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Felicity continues to slay at all three, but a key part to “having it all” is knowing when you need help. Felicity asks her friend Alena to join the company as CTO.  Look how excited this human rainbow is. She melts my heart.  
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Source:  felicittysqueen
Unfortunately, I don’t really trust Alena. Yes, I know she’s helped Felicity in the past, but I still feel uneasy about her. Perhaps that distrust is unnecessary and her interactions with Felicity will continue to be adorable and on the up and up. But Archer is corrupted somehow in the future and I’m keeping an eye on Alena in present day.
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Concerns aside, I did have myself a petty little cackle. Technically speaking, Felicity had a built in CTO for Smoak Tech on Team Arrow – Curtis Holt. Instead, the writers ship him off to D.C. and bring in Alena who, shady or not, is far preferable to Curtis. I just didn’t think Beth would agree with me. She’s like friggin Santa Claus.
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The biggest issue I had with the spinal technology was it didn’t really connect to the Team Arrow storyline. A character feels isolated on their own show whenever that happens. My concern was Felicity’s great individual storyline was going to cut her off from the action. 
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The genius of this season, and the retooling of Felicity’s company, is the writers have found a way to weave it in with the vigilante storyline. Smoak Tech no longer feels like an island they are placing Felicity on, but rather it permeates almost every facet of the show – both past and present. This means Felicity permeates every facet of the show.
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Last, but certainly not least, Felicity continues to be a bad ass wife as she manages more Queen family drama.  The man is an Adonis who cooks, but oy does he come with family baggage. At least, Oliver’s reaction to this type of drama is predictable and Felicity doesn’t miss a beat.
When he comes back from the field empty handed Felicity knows immediately how to make him smile.
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Source: olicitygifs
She tells Oliver he’s hot. That’s it. That’s how Felicity cheers him up.
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He compartmentalizes and hyper focuses on stopping Emiko, but Felicity tells Oliver to take a beat and process. 
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Source: olicitygifs
Of course, Oliver ignores her and becomes frustrated with the team when they aren’t moving fast enough. So, Felicity tells him to cool it. 
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He ignores her AGAIN, but at least we are blessed with this glorious response. 
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Source: oliverxfelicity
Where has this gif been for the last seven years? If Oliver is going to be a stubborn ass then at the very least his wife is going to drag him for it with some patented Felicity Smoak snark.
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I think Felicity and Diggle have a system for deciding who talks to Oliver. Maybe it depends on circumstance. Diggle seems like the obvious choice because he had an evil sibling too. Maybe they rock paper scissors. Whatever the system, it was Diggle talking down their boy this week. 
We did, however, get some quality husband and wife crime fighting team work. YOUR OTP WOULD NEVER.
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Source: olivergifs
After a long day of supporting her husband, incubating their child and stopping criminals, Felicity returns to the loft to work on Archer with Alena. And this was a light Felicity Smoak episode. Damn. Queen of DCTV is right.
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Sweet holy Moses, how are we going to do ten episodes without her? 
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I love Oliver Queen. He is my favorite character, but I think we can all agree Felicity Smoak makes him infinitely more tolerable. Oliver can be stubborn, grumpy pine tree left to his own devices. Hopefully, he’s evolved enough that all of Felicity’s hard work doesn’t go down the tubes the moment they are separated. He is supposed to be Jesus now. I think Slabside is evidence it won’t, but ten episodes without Felicity Smoak feels like a daunting task. It feels like climbing a mountain...
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only to get stabbed in the chest and chucked off the edge once we reach the top.
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Bl*ck S*ren
BS decides to follow Emiko and gets spliced with an arrow because she sucks at covert ops. 
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Source:  nyssaalghl
She goes to Olicity’s apartment to speak to Felicity about her Emiko suspicions, but unfortunately the wifey isn’t home. Bl*ck S*ren turns to leave when she realizes the only person available to discuss her suspicions with is Oliver. I believe there's 0% chance of L*urel falling in love with Oliver and 99.99% chance she's already in love with Felicity.
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Not to be outdone, Oliver offers to bandage up her bleeding wound. He takes out antibiotic and gauze and SETS. IT. ON. THE. KITCHEN. COUNTER. 
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It’s a very large kitchen counter too, so it creates the wide berth these two require to stand being in a room together.  
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 Source:  nyssaalghl 
We’ve gone from main love interest to stay on your side of the room. I died. 
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I don’t know how we got here family, but we’re here and it’s fabulous. 
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The writers are more anti L*uriver than I am, which is an impressive level of hate - if I’m being honest.
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I need to put on a sweater whenever Stephen and KC film a scene because brr it’s cold! 
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The L*uriver fans expecting sexy bandage time must have been deeply disappointed. Or at least the two fans left were deeply disappointed.
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Of course, Oliver doesn’t believe BS because duh. My dog could’ve called that one. He tells her to mind her own business and pretty much kicks her out the apartment. Obviously, L*urel is right about Emiko, but Oliver telling her to shove it never gets old under any circumstances.
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Then Dinah accuses her of murdering a witness 
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Source:  nyssaalghl 
and L&urel is righteously indignant.
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Of course, L*urel is right. It’s not like she has ever murdered before. Why on earth would anyone ever think that? 
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Dinah even has the nerve to bring up her dead boyfriend again. She really needs to let this Vince thing go because L*urel played lawyer for the last seven months and helped get Oliver out of a jail. See? All better.
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BS is redeemed now, so Dinah really needs to stop bitching. Arrow is my life tutor, so following that same logic I’m going to murder a baby and then buy a puppy because it will even the cosmic balance. 
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The best moment is when Emiko releases images of Savior of the World L*urel L*nce meeting with Ricardo Diaz. 
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Source:  nyssaalghl 
It’s going to be pretty tough for BS to keep up the pretense she is law abiding, justice yielding District Attorney L&urel L*nce when she’s hanging out with one of Star City’s most notorious criminals.  I take it back. Emiko is awesome.
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Of course, I’m not delusional enough to believe Arrow is going to give BS an arc that actually qualifies as redemptive. Helping Felicity was a good start, but it doesn’t wipe the slate clean for me. Not by a long shot. Neither does being a fake lawyer. I would like to see L*urel pay for her crimes the same way Oliver paid for his by going to PRISON, but I doubt the writers will give me that much Christmas. I am very curious to see how “Lost Canary” shakes out. That said, I have very little doubt BS will betray her one true love.
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Stray Thoughts
“Which doesn’t mean she’s bad.” I told you Olicity wouldn’t care Emiko killed Diaz. They brought the marshmallows to his bonfire party.
“On your own.” Stephen read that line super diva and it cracked me up.
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“Being a father is more than just blood.” I hate to agree with a villain but damn he’s right.
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Every time Felicity touches her stomach I happy clap. Source: olicitygifs
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L*urel’s shoulder pads have to be stopped. Just say no wardrobe department.
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Forcing me to go without this adorableness for an additional ten episodes is not oka. I’ll go through Felicity Smoak withdrawal which is hazardous.  Source: ebett
Does Emiko visiting her father’s grave make a damn bit of sense now that we know she played a role in his death? Nope. Didn’t think so.
Disclaimer: Any gifs on the blog are not mine. If you would like a gif removed from my reviews, please message me. 7x17 gifs credited.
If you’d like to support the blog, please buy me a cup of tea!
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makeste · 5 years
Text
BnHA Chapter 214: 4th Popularity Poll and 5th Set Climax
Previously on BnHA: Deku met a Hellboy-looking dude in another one of his One For All Dreams and they had a chat! This friendly yet intimidating fella told Deku that the power that had just exploded out of him was actually the dude’s quirk, Blackwhip. It turns out that OFA hasn’t just been stockpiling physical power; all six of the prior wielder’s quirks are included in the package as well! It’s just that up until now, none of the other wielders has ever been able to access them. Before vanishing back into the dream abyss, Deku’s new friend told him he needed to gain better control of his emotions, as his anger toward Monoma was what triggered Blackwhip’s rampage and made it so difficult to handle. Back in the real world, Deku awakened unharmed thanks to Ochako and Shinsou’s efforts. But since the teachers hadn’t called off the battle yet, Monoma came rushing in to attack, with the rest of Team B not being far behind. Mina and Mineta showed up to battle Yanagi, Shouda, and Kodai (they really need to do something about that number disadvantage), while Ochako battled Monoma and Shinsou got ready to take on Deku. The teachers are still watching btw, but it seems like they want to see how this plays out.
Today on BnHA: The newest popularity poll results are revealed and I have a lot of thoughts. A lot of thoughts. Vlad and All Might question why Aizawa wants to let the kids keep fighting, and Aizawa says it’s cuz they’re all still trying their hardest to win. Mineta saves Mina’s life and then completely ruins it because of course he does, but she takes it in stride and uses him to attack the others by flinging him at high speed to ricochet endlessly off of his grapes in a Gran Torino-esque fashion. Monoma tries to attack Deku with One for All but it doesn’t do anything (fortunately for Monoma), and Ochako then takes him down while Deku goes after Shinsou. Deku by the way is fighting quirkless because he’s worried that if he tries to use OFA right now he’ll lose control and put everyone in danger again. He and Shinsou start tusslin’ and we have a flashback to when Ponytail!Aizawa (omg) was training Shinsou on how to use his capture weapon. Back in the present, Shinsou uses the scarf to send a bunch of heavy pipes crashing down towards Deku. But Deku chooses this moment to make peace with himself and his quirk, and catches the pipes using Blackwhip.
(As always, all comments not marked with an ETA are my mostly-unspoiled reactions from my first readthrough of this chapter. I’m caught up with the manga now at chapter 225, so any ETAs will reflect that.)
how are BnHA’s Jump covers always so epic you guys
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Shinsou you better watch out, Deku’s fist is too close for comfort. well you’re the one who wanted to fight him again buddy
all right now let’s check out that character poll
oh, nice
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BUT WHERE ARE MY POLL RESULTS. HOLD ON A SECOND, I’M GOING TO THE WIKI TO INVESTIGATE
...okay so apparently the results were actually in chapter 207? but the color spread wasn’t released until this chapter wtf why
okay well let me analyze the color page first, and then I’ll go find and complain about the poll results
BAKUGOU AND DEKU’S SWORDS. okay I’ve seen this image before and I love it so much, and that is of course because it’s a sequel to the color page from chapter 120. and the two of them are now each carrying one half of All Might’s sword. basically this is symbolic confirmation that the two of them together will carry All Might’s legacy forward. this is so important to me you guys. this brings me so much joy and happiness
can we talk about what Hawks is wearing. I thought this was a medieval AU, but he’s looking rather steampunk to me. what, are you too cool for D&D, Hawks? also is that a literal hawk. that you’re holding. for some reason. huh
can we talk about what Todoroki is wearing?? and also what the actual hell is going on with his face? he’s wearing some sort of weird mask. and his outfit looks nothing like it did in the previous AU color spread. was Horikoshi just being extra or is this some indicator of a crazy plotline coming up for him somewhere down the road?
I notice my boy Aizawa is missing from the top ten, which is AN ACTUAL CRIME THAT SHOULD BE REPORTED TO THE POLICE, but! on the other hand! BEST FUCKING JEANIST OH MY GOD. WELCOME BACK BEAUTIFUL PRINCE. PLEASE HEAL UP SOON
loooooool Endeavor being in the top ten must have pissed off lord knows how many people. it would have pissed me off, before the Endeavorhawks arc. but I’m cool with it now. I get it. having him as your favorite doesn’t mean you’re giving a ringing endorsement of all his actions; it just means he’s a compelling character who’s been getting some really good development lately. still absurd that he’d be ranked over Aizawa, but if I’m honest with myself it really should be Jeanist who was bumped down for that. he’s just there because Japan apparently shares the same weird tastes as myself. by the way how fucking strange is it to see Jeanist without any Jeans holy shit is that even allowed
and winding down here, (1) I’m glad to see All Might still in the top ten ranks at least, (2) Iida is a handsome boy and I love how his armor is reminiscent of his Ingenium costume here, and that he’s the one actually riding the dragon (be careful Iida or my idiot son is going to fall right off its head), (3) Kirishima is still as popular as ever I see, and lastly (4) Momo being in the top 10 is giving me life and I hope she gets some more spotlight this year! it was great to see her as the head of her respective Joint Training battle team
okay! so now let me find the list from chapter 207
holy shit, okay so first of all let me just say that apparently this poll received almost 81,000 votes. for comparison, the third poll only received about 36,000
so having said that, it is absolutely astounding that my boy Bakugou came in at number one yet again, with a margin of over 1000 votes. glad to see you being appreciated boyo
and Shouto made it to #2 for the first time! good job hot and cold! the Endeavorhawks arc definitely gave him a boost as well I think. and well deserved!
and my boy Deku at #3, but while the difference between Katsuki and Shouto is only about 1200 votes, the difference between Shouto and Izuku is more than 7,400. basically the top two are in a league of their own here goddamn
and Hawks is all the way at #4! holy shit! more than 4,500 votes between him and Deku, mind, and Kirishima is nipping at his heels less than 200 votes away from him, but still, that’s amazing given how recently he made his debut and how relatively few chapters he’s been in. I expect the number of votes for him to skyrocket in the next poll, assuming we get more of that double agent storyline. Touya -- I mean Dabi -- is probably gonna get a boost too lol
my boy Finest Jeanist on God’s Green Earth is next at 6th, and then MOMO IN 7TH PLACE YAAAAAY GO MOMO
and Endeavor made it to 8th! HOLY SHIT ENDEAVOR YOU FINALLY BEAT ALL MIGHT IN THE APPROVAL RATINGS. THESE TRULY ARE MAD DAYS
Iida beat All Might as well and made it to #9! though only by 100 votes
and All Might is in 10th, and then Aizawa is at 11th. oh Aizawa. you were upstaged by a crotchety old man seeking to make amends for his past sins, and a denim-clad meme who nearly made the ultimate sacrifice against AFO and then proceeded to not be in the manga for 120 chapters and counting. but it’s okay you were never in this for the fame
anyways the rest of the results are listed here, but some quick parting remarks:
Gang Orca came in at 15th, presumably thanks to his EXTRA GUIDANCE
my boy Denki is in 16th place and I want him to keep moving up! go kick Shindou’s ass. how the hell did that tool make it all the way to 14th place
Ojiro is still inexplicably popular to me. he’s a nice guy but you could replace him with a cardboard cutout of himself probably and I bet you it would take some time before anyone noticed something was off
Jirou is at 21st despite her performance in the Band AU arc and that is fucked up, people. WHERE IS THE RESPECT
Shinsou somehow went down despite finally making his reappearance in the series?? I seriously don’t understand how popularity works, at all
Overhaul beat Mirio by 3 votes and while I’m so psyched Mirio did better than the last poll (up to 26th place! these 455 people have impeccable taste), this fact is utterly depressing to me. did these people actually read the arc, for real
NIGHTEYE IS AT 27TH AND I’M SO SAD. not about him being at 27th, because that’s actually pretty good. but just, you know. because once again I am reminded that he’s dead sob
lastly, in the American popularity poll Bakugou received 38,000 fucking votes holy shit. we may not have any fucking clue how to vote for presidents but at least we fucking got something right, goddamn. and Mirio in 9th place. and Aizawa in 6th. you guys are all right, US fandom
anyways that took like 25 years and if I’d known it was going to be this long I would have saved the poll to be its own damn recap lol. but now on to the actual chapter!
lol so Vlad is like ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS, YOU DON’T WANT TO STOP THEM??
Vlad this is just how we do things around here. not all of us can be ~safe~ teachers whose students don’t get attacked and abducted every Wednesday afternoon. some of us like to live on the edge and be super irresponsible because we’re lazy and also because the students will honestly manage to get into trouble regardless of whether we do our jobs or not
and anyways Aizawa says that if Deku’s quirk acts up again he’ll stop it so it’ll be fine
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and All Might’s asking Aizawa why
well it’s obviously because he wants to give Shinsou a chance to complete his examination. and maybe he wants to see how the kids deal with this unexpected twist as well. so long as nobody gets hurt, why not
oh my god Aizawa
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this man is fighting to reclaim that top 10 spot. never give up. never surrender
so we’re cutting to panels of all 9 battlin’ kids, and he says all of them are still trying to win this battle
because fucking plus ultra, in other words
sob I should be more indignant shouldn’t I. has this school actually made me come around to their way of thinking
nah, it’s only because everything is clearly fine now. had this scene taken place even 90 seconds earlier I would have been all “WHAT ARE YOU DOING, OF COURSE YOU SHOULD STOP THEM”
lol what
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he just shows his affection in some very strange ways tbh
anyway so here we go! back to the kiddos! Deku and Shinsou are each holding onto Shinsou’s scarf and staring each other down!
and now Shinsou has GONE FISHIN’
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this is beyond hilarious to me. oh my god. Deku you could just let go
but I guess he thought he could out-muscle him. like if anything, he’d be the one pulling Shinsou down to where he is. but instead he’s falling off of the platform where he and Ochako were standing
and Ochako’s running over and she’s all “Deku lost...?! in a power struggle?!”
that makes it sound like Game of Thrones lmao
Deku’s glancing back up at her and says he can’t use his quirk right now because he’s worried about putting everyone in danger again
yeah, that’s probably a good call. at least until you get a handle on your emotions. even ol’ Hellboy was all “much as I love my awesome fucking quirk, it’s been powered up to here and back now so results may vary”
Ochako says that in that case they should retreat and regroup
lol how are you going to fucking retreat. this has already turned into a melee battle, they’ll just follow you
and Deku says that if they retreat now, they’ll lose
ah, good point
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this is their chance to capture him, when he’s exposed and his quirk which relies heavily on stealth and surprise has been neutralized
Ochako’s jogging over to him
oh my god
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IT’S THE BATTLE HE’S BEEN PREPARING FOR HIS ENTIRE LIFE
oh to see Katsuki’s reaction to this. sigh
oh. but Deku is dotting and he says “not exactly”
what are you up to you mysterious little chia pet
meanwhile ASHIDO MINA IS BEING A TOTAL BADASS AND I’M HERE FOR IT
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THIS ACID MAY STING! A BIT!!
(ETA: you know, I made fun at the time, but given all the other shit we’ve seen today, I have to give her credit for at least warning her opponents before attempting to maim them.)
and class B is just doing the same damn thing as before
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I’m surprised they’re not trying to go on offense. mind you, it shows that they have a lot of respect for Mina’s offense and they don’t feel like getting pummeled by acid this fine afternoon, which is understandable
oh shit but here we go
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MINA YOU BETTER DODGE THAT SHIT, SHOUDA’S QUIRK HAS A LOT OF POTENTIAL TO BE RIDICULOUSLY BROKEN IF HE USES IT RIGHT
...holy shit
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QUICK, LET’S ENJOY THIS BEFORE HE SOMEHOW RUINS IT. WHY CAN’T WE LIVE IN THE ALTERNATE UNIVERSE WHERE HORIKOSHI GAVE US A LOVABLE, FUNNY, AND COOL MINETA AND NOT THE HOT GARBAGE PERV THAT WE HAVE TO PUT UP WITH INSTEAD
good job Mineta. how many panels before you say something stupid to enrage us all again
oh shit I scrolled down to the rest of the page and SO FAR SO GOOD?! wow this is like a record
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Mineta did something smart and creative and swooped in to save a teammate and didn’t say or do anything perverted to ruin it?? better get me an umbrella cuz I suspect the other shoe will be dropping shortly
(ETA: 3... 2...)
aaaaaaaaaaaand the very first panel on the next page is him being smacked into Mina’s chest as a result of the twin impact, apparently just as planned
well so much for that. he made it a whole five panels though
hey, imagine if Horikoshi had written that scene and then not thrown in that last part in for absolutely no reason. imagine if Mineta was like that all the time. underestimated and mostly overlooked because of his mascot-like appearance and oddball quirk, but impressing us all with surprisingly clutch saves at crucial moments. kind of like the little niche that Aoyama has established for himself. it honestly wouldn’t be that hard to make Mineta an interesting and actually funny character, and the fact that we’re going on five years of the same old shit instead is kinda disheartening
anyways, enough mourning what could have been, I guess. in the meantime Mina is grabbing him and hurling him lmao
and he’s bouncing around like a ping pong ball and class B is trying to avoid getting hit by him
oh my god. he is the special attack
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ain’t nobody wanna get hit by that. that’s a smart move
Shouda says he wants to pull back, but they’re kind of surrounded now and it’s hard to come up with a plan in the spur of the moment
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all credit to Mina’s astounding creative mind, which has fucking flourished in these last couple of arcs and I hope it continues to do so. she is brilliant
Tsuburaba says Shouda is having to protect the other two because they’re weak at close-range combat? say what now?? how is a telekinesis quirk weak at close-range combat, exactly?? just float some metal shit into the air and wait for Mineta to inevitably ricochet into it and concuss himself and just like that you’re free to take on Mina three against one. even someone as awesome as her would struggle with that
meanwhile, Jirou is wondering why the hell the teachers haven’t stopped the battle yet
and here’s the first we’ve seen of Katsuki since The Thing happened, so yeah you bet I’m posting that shit
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he looks openly confused, and not in his normal “I don’t know what’s going on and that pisses me off so Imma make an angry face” way. but in a more overtly “what the fuck” way. not that dissimilar to the way he looked when he was watching All Might battle AFO, but with less panic, thankfully
it definitely says a lot about how far his relationship with Deku has come that this is his reaction, though. confusion and maybe slight concern, rather than anger or jealousy or automatically thinking this is something new Deku had up his sleeve that he was purposely hiding from him. he really has come such a long way since Ground Beta
anyway so here’s Deku and Ochako taking on Monoma
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at least someone is using that TK quirk. or is that twin impact that he’s using. well either way, at least he’s doing something and not just standing there
oh look more Monoma monologuing
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officially the most dramatic motherfucker who ever lived. but more importantly,
OH MY GOD HE’S GOING TO USE ONE FOR ALL LASKDFLKJSLKDJFLK DON’T DIE MONOMA
why he would attempt to use a quirk that he has seen breaking its original owner’s bones and only MOMENTS AGO causing its owner intense pain as he flailed around out of control is beyond me. he kind of snapped here and got all go big or go home, I guess
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Deku I assure you it very much can
now Ochako’s telling Monoma to stop and that it’s dangerous! and she’s charging toward him!
OH MY GOD
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HE WAS FUCKING BLUFFING?? HOW
AND OH MY GOD OCHAKO, I STAN YOU SO FUCKING HARD RIGHT NOW THOUGH. IS IT JUST ME OR ARE THE LADIES THE UNDISPUTED MVPS OF THIS FIGHT!? DEKU DOES SHE HAVE TO DO EVERYTHING HERSELF OR WHAT
wow what??
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so he was trying to activate it but it wouldn’t work?
well (1) he’s damn lucky it didn’t, and (2) is that because Deku’s technically quirkless? or is it because the nature of OFA makes it so it can’t be copied or passed on to anyone against the owner’s will? that is really convenient if so
(ETA: or (3) he did copy the quirk but not the accumulated power stored within it. oooh I have some thoughts on that. gonna try and take some time this evening to type out that OFA essay.)
Shinsou’s trying to save his partner, but!
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oh shit
he looks so caught off guard sob. Deku are you gonna punch him. please be gentle he is still new to this
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once again, I submit for your consideration: your MVP
you see Monoma, this is how you take a supposed “supporting character” quirk and elevate it to its max potential
so now Deku’s tackling Shinsou and they’re tumbling onto the ground
Shinsou’s making another attempt to get Deku to talk but our boy is too smart for that shit now. fool him once, shame on you. fool him twice, shame on him. but you still haven’t managed to fool him thrice so it looks like he can be taught!
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and Shinsou is again saying he’s not the same as when they last fought
ahhhhhhhh we’re cutting back to the teachers now ARE WE GONNA GET SOME SHINY MENTOR FEELS
YESSSSSSSSSSS
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HOWIRHFALSKDLFJL THE PONYTAIL LIVES, MY FRIENDS
oh my god oh my god
mentor feels! All Might you’re not the only one who’s been training kids out in the woods in the wee hours of the morning!
Aizawa is self-taught holy fucking shit this man’s talent is severely underrated
THE PONYTAIL. I NEED TO MENTION IT AGAIN FOR OBVIOUS REASONS
and I don’t think I’ve rambled about this yet, but! now we’re finally getting to see why Aizawa took such a personal interest in Shinsou, and I’ve been waiting and waiting for this and I’m so happy we’re finally getting to it. he sees himself in him. they both have powerful quirks capable of incapacitating even the strongest opponents, but the catch is that those quirks are mental rather than physical. physically they are essentially quirkless, and so if they ever get caught off-guard -- or pitted against giant robot opponents, or opponents who are otherwise immune to their abilities -- they’re at a huge disadvantage
so here’s this kid who’s very much like him, and Aizawa has no obligation to reach out to him, but he does so all the same, because he cares, and if he can help this kid fulfill his dreams and not have to stumble along and make it up as he goes the way he had to, isn’t that worth doing?
Aizawa Shouta let me just once again say that it’s a war crime that you were not ranked in the top ten, and I think we need to conduct a special investigation into these poll results. I’m only seeking justice and the truth
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OKAY BUT THIS IS SOME INDIRECT HIGH PRAISE FOR THE ENTIRETY OF CLASS “NOT A SINGLE ONE OF US WAS EXPELLED” 1-A THOUGH AND I CAN’T EVEN DEAL
AND THEN THE FLASHBACKS TO SHINSOU AFTER HIS FIRST BATTLE, AND BEING SO HARD ON HIMSELF. BECAUSE HE WANTS TO LIVE UP TO AIZAWA’S FAITH IN HIM. OH MY GOD I CAN’T, THIS IS SO GOOD THOUGH AND I’M EMOTIONALLY COMPROMISED
so now Shinsou’s shouting again that he’s not the same as he was back then!
and he’s using his capture weapon to bring a bunch of heavy pipes crashing on top of them!
BUT NOW DEKU IS HAVING SOME MENTOR FEELS OF HIS OWN OH GOODNESS
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;________; WHY DID THAT MAKE ME TEAR UP, SOMEBODY EXPLAIN
(ETA: I think because it’s a reminder that all of the past wielders of OFA are just as good and pure as All Might in their own ways, and they’ve all been working tirelessly to fight evil this whole time, and it’s like Deku doesn’t have just one mentor, but he has eight now.)
AAAAAHHHHHHHH
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LOOK AT HIM USING BLACKWHIP IN THE SAME MANNER AS THE CAPTURE SCARF WEAPON, THOUGH?? DID SHINSOU INSPIRE HIM
(ETA: of course he did. this is Deku, he takes and learns from everyone. I love it.)
AND JUST LOOK AT THIS FUNKY LITTLE SUCCESSOR LIVING UP TO THE FAITH THAT’S BEEN PLACED IN HIM
oh my god. what a damn chapter. this recap is almost 4000 words and it was worth it. I love this arc
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darkzorua100 · 5 years
Text
When it comes to the majority of the anime I watch, I don’t believe in the concept of death. Unless I see a body, I don’t believe a character has actually died. When it comes to anime like Yu-Gi-Oh, even if we see them die on screen, unless it is some kind of Bruno case (which is extremely rare), they always find a way to revive the dead characters in the end. It is why I don’t believe Windy’s kid and Earth are dead dead. I’ve been so conditioned to believe that the character is still alive or will be bought back in some BS way because it always happens. The Boy Who Cried Wolf scenario.
That’s the best way I can describe the end of the Ghost Girl vs Blood Shepherd duel. 
Now the duel itself was amazing. We got to see both sides Synchro Summon and the plays that Ghost Girl made were just awesome and to me felt like something you would actually see in the real life card game from a Altergeist player. Sadly though, BS still ended up pulling out the win and at this point, after what just happened, I can’t take him serious anymore when it comes to Emma. What happens is what we basically are never going to see after the BS vs Soulburner duel which is that Blood Shepherd doesn’t shoot Ghost Girl. He lets her keep her account, making the whole duel completely pointless since he doesn’t even get Aqua afterwards for winning. Are you kidding me right now? This is actually stupid. Playmaker vs Bohman round 3 and Soulburner vs BS results left a bad taste in my mouth since they both felt like cop-outs (so Playmaker and Soulburner wouldn’t actually lose) but this is actually a cop-out. People have pointed out that Emma would have been just fine if she lost her account. She could have took the Kusanagi route for Aoi. That would have been perfectly fine! No instead the writers chickened out at the last second and boom, Ghost Girl is still alive out of basically pity from her older brother all because she had to get the final words in of “oh just to let you know, our dad died. Hope that doesn’t change your thoughts about deleting my account!”. I hate the Aoi/Miyu/Aqua story because it feels so cheated in but this...this is just the writers not holding up their end of the bargain and now I can’t trust them to not do this again when it comes to Emma and Kengo. I just hate when people set a set of rules for their universe in fiction and just don’t follow through with them. Why should we be worried about these characters then if nothing bad is actually going to happen to them? Playmaker and Soulburner never losing because they have a Ignis. Blue Maiden is probably never going to lose now because she has a Ignis. I don’t see what I should care or worry about them and that makes me so mad but mostly sad. 
So we get somewhat of a backstory for Emma and Kengo. They are actually half-siblings with them sharing a father who left Kengo’s mother for reasons and years later met Emma’s mother and they got busy, resulting in Emma’s birth. Seems to me that Kengo has always had a bit of a resentful side to him because of this and his car accident simply brought him to his breaking point or simply just gave him an excuse to unleash all of his anger out onto the world. Now I’m honestly not trying to find reasons to hate on the show as of late, since that seems to be a common factor now, but I don’t like how Emma found this out. Her doing some digging into Blood Shepherd’s past I can see, since this is Emma, but I don’t understand why they didn’t show us the ending to their confrontation in 63, 14 episodes ago all the way back in the beginning of August mind you, if they weren’t going to go back to that scene as the reveal. If they just showed us the end to that confrontation for the beginning of the episode as the recap and added onto it, with Blood Shepherd letting it slip that they were siblings and Ghost Girl being shocked about it, it could have lead Emma into doing all that digging to find out that hey, they actually are siblings. If we are to believe that she knew about this since the beginning of season 2, since the flashback showed her in her old Ghost Girl avatar, that just doesn’t make sense since Emma was clearly still wondering what the actual hell was going on, retconing the whole thing. 
The duel was awesome. It was just the beginning and the end parts to it that were just done so badly -_- 
Now onto the thing the everyone is going crazy about: Blue Maiden. Again, I’m not trying to hate, if you love the new design that’s great! More power to you for getting a design that screams character growth. I just...don’t. And I honestly don’t know why. The outfit is fine, I think it is just the hair that makes me dislike it so much. I was honestly expecting to to be long, since her Blue Angel form had her hair in ponytails and Blue Girl was short (which btw I’m going to miss that hairstyle since it was amazing) but the color pallet just looks wrong. It is a different shade of blue from what Aoi’s other forms had, actually the color pallets were flipped, so maybe that’s what bugs me. Also, the fact that she does look so grown up just looks...wrong? Is that the word to use? She is supposed to be sixteen and looks like she should be Emma’s age or something. It just doesn’t feel right. I know I’m going to get used to after a while but for now...I just don’t know. 
So we get a little bit more about Miyu, who actually did change her hairstyle during the Hanoi Project to reflect Aoi, and yeah Aoi is her Ryoken. Simple as that. Still don’t like this development but I’m starting to sound like a broken record as this point so moving on. Aqua and Blue Maiden team up, as to be expected, and them and the boys fly off into the sunset (well not really but you get the idea) as the new trio (because Go decided that frame was more important) which honestly doesn’t feel earned (since the boys still hasn’t told Aoi their identities yet or just the fact that they are going along with the fact that Aoi has an Ignis after the fact that she tried to steal theirs for SOL) but I’m just complaining at this point for no god damn reason.
So yeah, if it wasn’t obvious, besides the duel, I really didn’t like this episode. Honestly I do like how they are trying to get the girls involved in the story, which is saying something since in the previous series they would have been written out completely at this point, let alone have such a big role in the story that Aoi has now, but I just don’t like how it was structured to get us to this point. Aoi/Miyu/Aqua came out of nowhere and the Emma/Kengo storyline, while it had so much build up to it, just didn’t have the payoff that it deserved but that might just be me. I never expect any of my opinions to be popular and I’m fine with that. Once again, if you love everything that has been happening so far for the females, that’s amazing! I’m glad for you! Truly I am! I just wished I could say the same. 
The preview though. Wow Blood Shepherd is getting screen time in the form of duels. We knew about Ghost Girl and Lightning but not Revolver. Omg yes! We are actually getting the Wild West shoot out! They are actually going to duel in a wasteland! I wasn’t expecting this. I just thought 78 was going to be a plot episode. I’m not complaining this time but you all know I’m a Ryoken/Revolver fangirl so there might be some biased there. I have no shame to admit that. So who do I think is winning this? Pfff not even a question, Revolver is so going to kick his ass. He’s going to Mirror Force him just like he did to his younger sister and when he does I’m going to laugh so hard at the irony. Oh it truly is a wonderful thing to have our meme lord back.
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worryinglyinnocent · 6 years
Text
Fic: Reunion
Summary: Three friends – Belle, Ruby and Emma – attend their ten-year high school reunion, each wondering if her life has taken the course that she was expecting it to take after she graduated. Throughout the evening friendships are strengthened, and relationships are tentatively kindled. One thing is for certain – this reunion will be far from boring… Rumbelle, Red Warrior, Mad Swan.
This fic was started a very, very long time ago – mid-season 2. I’ve updated it to reflect the characters better, IE introducing Mulan and Zelena, for example, but there are still a few small discrepancies that date it, the main one being Neal. At the time this was originally written we’d not had the Neal-is-Bae reveal, so for the purposes of this fic, Neal and Bae are two separate people.
Rated: T
Content warning: Flashback to sexual harassment and attempted assault.
=====
Reunion
Belle turned the card over and over between her fingers, looking at but not reading the words printed thereon. They were already indelibly burned onto her brain.
Belle French is cordially invited to the Storybrooke High School class of 2008 ten-year reunion.
She was in two minds about it. On the one hand, she was very much looking forward to seeing where everyone had gone after school, what everyone had been doing, whether or not the yearbook predictions had come true. On the other hand, when she remembered her final moments at the school, all she wanted to do was to run a hundred miles in the opposite direction. Presently the phone rang, jerking her out of her reverie. She put the card under the issue desk with her handbag and picked up the receiver.
“Storybrooke Lending Library, Belle speaking, how may I help?”
“Have you got one too?”
“Hello to you too, Emma.”
“Hello. Well? Have you?”
“I take it we’re talking about high school reunion invitations,” Belle said dryly.
“What else would it be?” Emma replied. “I highly doubt that some anonymous benefactor’s started sending out million-dollar cheques.”
“You never know,” Belle said. “But to answer your question, yes, I have received an invitation.”
“This is a major crisis,” Emma said bluntly. “We need a plan of action for surviving this. We need to talk to Ruby. Granny’s, half an hour.”
“I don’t go on lunch till one o’clock,” Belle pointed out.
“Granny’s at one then,” Emma said. “Belle, this is a catastrophe waiting to happen and I know just who’s behind this.”
“Emma, the last time I looked, planning a high school reunion wasn’t against the law.”
“Huh.” Emma did not sound at all convinced. “We shall see.”
X
By the time Belle arrived at Granny’s diner, Emma was already there, and Ruby was hovering by their usual booth, waiting to take their order and then join them on her own lunch break. Of all their graduating year, Belle, Emma and Ruby were amongst the minority in staying in Storybrooke and staying in touch. They had come together by accident in school, three loners seeking company in other misfits, but they had fast become close friends, and so they had remained.
Belle had been the archetypical bookworm, liked enough, but nowhere near popular and privately seen as a boring good girl. Ruby had been the opposite, hanging around with the gaggle of biker boys known as the ‘wolf pack’, in trouble every other week and a force to be reckoned with. Emma on the other hand was different again. Although Belle could never recall an occasion on which she had spoken about it in school, everyone knew Emma as ‘that foster kid’. She’d only started at Storybrooke High halfway through junior year when the cliques had already been established. It was clear to all that Emma wasn’t interested in trying to fit in, and so no-one had tried to accommodate her.
The three girls had first met in detention one evening. Belle had been late too many times in one week thanks to getting engrossed in a book at the breakfast table. Emma had given Sidney Glass a black eye for calling her an unloved dustbin baby and Ruby had had detention so many times that she couldn’t remember what that particular one was for. They’d been practically inseparable since then, and the notion of ‘Granny’s, half an hour’ to solve all their problems remained.
“It’s Zelena West,” Emma said, once all three were seated. “This is her doing, I swear.” She jabbed the piled of invitations on the table in front of them. “She was so tired of coming second to everyone in high school that she’s decided to get us all back together to show us how mediocre we are compared to her now. I heard she’s some corporate lawyer hotshot now. And what are we doing? A librarian, a waitress, and a small-town sheriff only got the job after her predecessor died and no-one else wanted it.”
“There’s nothing wrong with being a librarian, a waitress or a small-town sheriff,” Belle protested. “And who did Zelena come second to in high school anyway? She was always the queen bee as far as I can remember.”
“Mary Margaret Blanchard was crowned prom queen instead of her,” Ruby said. “Ashley Boyd was made flyer on the cheer squad instead of her.”
“Well, that’s because she was the smallest,” Belle said. “Zelena could never be the flyer, she’s too tall.”
“Belle, I know that seeing the best in everyone is normally a good trait,” Emma said, her voice exasperated, “but don’t forget that she gave you evils for a week when you graduated top in English lit.”
“She dipped Tara Punzel’s ponytail in glue after she won her scholarship to the beauty college. Tara had to cut off two feet of her hair,” Ruby said absently. “And Zelena was only valedictorian because Regina Mills mysteriously got food poisoning on graduation day.” She wrinkled her nose. “She’s determined to make our lives a misery again, I know it.”
“We won’t go then,” Belle said, trying to bring some common sense to the table. “If you’re that upset about it, I’m not going to let Zelena make you any more miserable, so we’ll have a nice night in at mine instead.”
“No!” Ruby exclaimed. “I want to go! I want to show the bitch she doesn’t own me. By not going, all we’re doing is letting her win.”
“We’ve got two weeks to make up our minds and RSVP and then another three weeks to change our minds back again,” Belle said. “Has anyone been online to see where it’s being held?”
“The Palace Hotel,” Emma said.
Belle’s heart sank.
“The same place as senior prom,” she said. Emma nodded, and Belle bit her lip. None of the women said anything, but it was plain to see that they were all thinking the same thing. Belle’s memories of the senior prom were somewhat sour.
She pulled up all her courage. Do the brave thing and bravery will follow.
“I say we go,” she said. “It’ll be nice to see everyone again; and if Zelena wants to try and make us feel bad about ourselves, well, we won’t let her. We are all perfectly respectable human beings and we have a right to be proud of what we have achieved.”
Emma thought for a moment and finally gave a slow nod.
“Ok, I’m in. But if Sidney Glass or anyone from the cheerleading clique makes a comment about me being an unwanted foster kid, I will deck them one, and you are providing me with an alibi.”
The three friends linked hands across the table.
“Agreed.”
X
It was the eve of the reunion, and Belle couldn’t sleep. She’d spent the entire day leading up to this moment painfully reliving everything that had happened during her senior year, and now, the catalogue was culminating in the prom. She didn’t want to think about it, but her mind was in freefall and there was no stopping her now.
She’d been surprised when Gaston Chevalier had asked her to the prom. She had been perfectly happy to go on her own, take a book and find a quiet corner, chat to anyone who happened to pass. Belle wasn’t the life and soul of the party, anyone could tell that. But still, Gaston had asked her, and he was cute even if he was an arrogant jerk at times. Well, who on the football team wasn’t an arrogant jerk at times?
So, she’d said yes, and he’d been the perfect gentleman, picking her up from her dad’s house, giving her a corsage, getting her punch once they arrived. But now, he’d suggested they get some fresh air, away from the crush in the ballroom, and Belle was beginning to feel ever so slightly uneasy.
“Gaston, where are we going?”
“Oh, I just thought it would be nice to get away from everyone. Get some time to ourselves. Get to know each other a bit better.”
They were in the hotel gardens, separated off from the building by wide hedges, and Gaston brought them to the stop in front of a spluttering fountain, pulling her down onto a bench next to him.
“It’s nice here, isn’t it?” Gaston said, inching closer to her. “Just the two of us.”
“Lovely,” Belle replied coolly. She looked around for signs of anyone else from the prom, but all she could see was the flicker of a cigarette end outside the entrance to the hotel kitchens. She shivered involuntarily. “Can we go back now, Gaston? I’m getting cold.”
“I’ll warm you up, babydoll” He put his arm around her and Belle’s jaw clenched. Of all the epithets she had heard the jocks call their dates, ‘babydoll’ was the one that grated the most. She was eighteen, an adult, and she deserved to be respected as one, and she was not a doll, an ornament made to look pretty, stay silent and be dressed up and stripped off as the whim arose. But before she could ask Gaston not to call her that please, she had a name she’d appreciate him using, his mouth was pressing insistently against hers, his tongue forcing its way between her lips.
Belle froze. She had not expected her first kiss to be quite like this. Her books had always spoken of a soft meeting of lips, something warm and delicate, seeking permission to go further rather than assuming. But then again, her books were fiction, and maybe this was fact.
She felt Gaston’s hand on her thigh, moving higher and bunching up the skirt of her golden gown. She pulled away from him.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she asked, wishing her voice didn’t sound so wobbly. A quavering voice could be a sign of lust or fear and she knew that Gaston would take it the wrong way. He just raised an eyebrow and squeezed her thigh. Belle knew what he was doing, of course she knew.
“Move your hand, please,” she said, more firmly this time.
Gaston just snaked his hand further up her thigh. Belle gritted her teeth.
“That’s not what I meant.” She picked up his wrist with thumb and forefinger and moved it off her thigh, standing up quickly, but Gaston grabbed a handful of skirt and pulled her back down.
“I know you want to really,” he purred in her ear. She tried to push him away, but Belle was the little class bookworm, and Gaston was a fullback on the football team. “You wouldn’t have said yes when I asked you out if you didn’t.”
“I thought it might be nice to have a date for the night,” she said. “Get off, Gaston!”
“But everyone knows what happens on prom night.”
“Gaston, I don’t want to, let go of me!”
Gaston narrowed his eyes, and his hold on her tightened.
“You’re not a lesbian, are you? Or are you one of those who’s ‘saving herself’? Come on Belle, it’ll be fun.”
Belle scrabbled at him. “Get off! Get away from me!” She was almost pinned flat on the bench, and she could taste blood in her mouth where she’d bitten her lip in the struggle. There was only one thing for it. She brought her knees up and kicked him in the crotch as hard as she could.
That had the desired effect, and she kicked him off and got off the bench.
“Bitch!” Gaston roared. He grabbed the beaded drop shoulder of her dress to pull her back, yanking so hard that the fabric broke. “Frigid bitch!”
“She told you no!”
There was a waft of cigarette smoke and a fist made contact with the side of Gaston’s head. Belle, mute with fear, looked at her saviour. He was too old to be one of the boys from the school, and the name badge on his lapel showed that he was hotel staff. She only saw his face for a moment before he ducked to avoid Gaston returning the punch. “Go,” the man mouthed, and Belle turned on her heel and ran back towards the hotel without a second glance over her shoulder. She had to get out, go home, but she’d come in Gaston’s car. Hopefully Ruby could help her.
“Ruby!” she called, pushing through the crowds in the ballroom. She knew she must look a sight, her dress torn, her makeup running and her hair a passable bird’s nest, but she didn’t care. “Ruby!”
Ruby’s red-streaked head jerked up from where it had been resting on Peter’s shoulder during the slow dance.
“Cripes, Belle, what happened?”
“Gaston,” Belle choked out. Thankfully, Ruby didn’t need any further explanation.
“Come on sweetie, let’s get you home.”
Peter had driven them home and waited in his car whilst Ruby got Belle cleaned up and tucked up in her pyjamas. Her friend had offered to stay, but Belle had declined, wanting to be alone with her thoughts. Her dad had threatened to go out there and then and take his secateurs to Gaston’s nether regions, and Belle had almost taken him up on the offer.
Ten years later, Belle blinked back tears. A decade later and it still cut like a knife. How could she have been so stupid? Of course Gaston had just wanted to get in her knickers. She’d been so naïve, so trusting… She knew it wasn’t her fault, but it had made her guarded and wary around men for a long time afterwards.
She picked up the phone and dialled Emma’s number.
“Belle! I was just about to ring you.”
“Emma, what if Gaston’s there tomorrow?” she asked, at the same time as Emma continued.
“Belle, what if Neal’s there tomorrow?”
X
There was silence on the other end of the phone and Emma knew that they were both thinking almost exactly the same thing.
Emma’s experiences with Neal were not the same as Belle’s with Gaston, in fact, they were pretty polarised – and they hadn’t waited till prom night. Emma had been ready to lose her virginity. What Emma hadn’t been ready for was finding out she was pregnant two weeks after graduation. What Emma really hadn’t been ready for was Neal vanishing into the ether before she could tell him that she was pregnant. She’d always known that he wanted to get out of Storybrooke as soon as he could, but she hadn’t anticipated it being quite so soon.
In hindsight she wasn’t really all that surprised. She had known that she and Neal were never going to be together forever. Emma had never really held with the idea of marrying your high school sweetheart straight out of school and having a bunch of kids with them, a picture-perfect life that involved growing up far too fast and not having any chance to find out who you really are. She couldn’t really blame Neal for taking off so quickly, wanting to get away from the town he had always found so stifling. Whenever he had talked of his plans, Emma had never really featured in them, her involvement was always more nebulous. Even before he left, it had been clear to Emma that he would have been leaving, with or without her, no matter what.
She could have tracked him down if she’d had the inclination, but in the end, she knew that it wouldn’t be a good idea. Their relationship would not have survived. She liked to think that Neal would have been receptive to the idea of fatherhood, but she didn’t want to take that risk. She knew how important Neal’s future was to him, and she didn’t want to run the risk of him discovering that he was going to be a father and then still thinking that his future was more important. She would far rather that he never knew, than that he knew and was resentful and bitter about the fact.
Having been through everything that she had been through in the foster system, Emma had known that she was going to have to make a difficult choice when it came to her child. She really didn’t want to put him through what she had been through herself, but as she had no experience of anything that could be constituted as proper parenthood and family life, she had been terrified of doing something wrong.
“We’ll get through it,” she said to Belle on the other end of the phone, aware that she was caught up in her own reminiscences and not actually speaking. “We’ve got this far in our lives without them, and we’ve both come out stronger in the end. They don’t have any claim over our happiness anymore.”
She got up from her bed where she had been sitting stewing over the reunion the next day and made her way through the apartment to Henry’s room, risking a peep inside. He was ten years old now, but she still liked to check in on him when he was sleeping and see him looking so peaceful, just as much as when he had been a baby.
“Yeah,” Belle said on the other end of the phone, her words enveloped in a heavy sigh. “Yeah. But all the same, I can’t help fearing that if I see him, I’m just going to go back ten years and I’ll be frozen to the spot. I’ve done so much healing and growing up since then, and I don’t want it all to just fade when faced with him.”
Emma closed Henry’s door again and returned to her own room.
“We’ll be strong for each other,” she said. “We’ve got each other’s backs, and Ruby has our backs as well. I mean, Neal’s probably not even going to be there, I don’t think that anyone kept in touch with him after he left Storybrooke and I don’t think that Zelena would have gone to such great lengths to track him down.”
“Yeah, same for Gaston,” Belle said. “That incident did put a bit of a cloud over his college football career. But you’re right. We’ve got each other. We’ll get through this.” There was a long pause on the other end of the phone. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Belle. We’re going to kick this reunion’s ass.”
Belle laughed, and they said their goodbyes. Emma lay back on her bed, staring up at the ceiling and knowing that she wasn’t going to get to sleep any time soon.
She could never regret Henry. She had been in two minds about whether or not to give him up for adoption throughout her pregnancy, and she had almost been set upon it up until the moment of his birth. She was only eighteen, she didn’t have any college prospects and she was stuck in a low-paying waitressing job in a backwater Maine town; there was no way that she could give her child the life that he or she deserved.
But then she had held her son for the first time, and she knew deep down that she didn’t really want to let go of him. She wanted to give him his best chance, but she knew from experience just how the foster system could be, and she did not want to give him that. She might not be able to give him a fantastic life with every luxury that a child could dream of, but she knew that she could give him the love that she herself had never experienced.
She’d called him Henry after the obstetrician who’d delivered him, and they’d been inseparable ever since. Emma would never change her relationship with Henry for the world, and although there were many things in her life that she wished she could have done differently, her son was not one of them. No matter what anyone else at the reunion might say about her career path or the turn that her life had taken after she had graduated, Emma was fiercely proud of her son and she wasn’t going to let anyone take that away from her.
And if Neal was there at the reunion, and if the news of his fatherhood was broken to him then, then so be it. Emma was a proud single mother and whilst she might not have been the best at raising her child, she had done her best, and that was all anyone could ask of her. She’d put up with a lot throughout her school years, and she was not going to let anyone taint the years that had come since, the years with Henry that were, despite all the trials and tribulations that she had gone through, the best years of her life.
She just hoped that she would still have the same mindset when she actually got to the reunion the next day.
X
“God, I hate high school reunions.”
Gold looked up from the stock lists to find Cara Mallory sitting at the bar. Actually, slumped on the bar would be a better description. The Palace Hotel catering manager gave an emphatic groan and lifted her head an inch or so off the polished wood to speak.
“I need a triple vodka and tonic.”
Gold merely raised an eyebrow in response and continued ticking off stock, something that really should not have been his job. Something that had not been his job for fifteen years, ever since he had risen to the role of bar manager. Someone was going to have to explain to him how he kept hiring bartenders with such lousy timekeeping and stock-taking skills. Sometimes he was of a mind to fire the lot of them and run the entire show himself.  
Cara lifted her head a couple more inches and fixed him with a glare. “Now, Gold!”
Gold rolled his eyes, put down his pen and leaned on the bar opposite Cara.
“What’s the magic word, dearie?”
Cara gave him a withering look.
“Gold, please get me a triple vodka and tonic before I expire.”
“Just for you, Cara.”
He hooked his cane over the bar and mixed Cara her drink. “Now tell me, Miss Mallory, why do you loathe high school reunions so much?”
“Because they’re just an excuse for a hundred people to come together and try to one up each other for a couple of hours. You can almost taste the sense of failure, depression and smugness. It cloys on the tongue.”
“Now now, Mal, it’s not all bad.” Jefferson came in and perched on a bar stool beside Cara, patting her shoulder. “At least you weren’t working at the Palace when the Storybrooke High class of 2008 had their first grand gathering here like some of us were, right Gold?”
Gold narrowed his eyes.
“You weren’t, you pipsqueak. You were barely out of short trousers. I, on the other hand, do not need reminding that I am, as you so delicately put it the other day, ‘getting on a bit’.”
“You must admit, Mr Gold, that you are not as young as you used to be.”
“Oh, go and event co-ordinate, Mr Events Co-ordinator,” Gold said. “You’ve got a hundred guests about to arrive to be thoroughly depressed, and there’s the woman who’s about to depress them.”
He nodded over Jefferson’s shoulder through the ballroom doors towards the main entrance of the hotel, where Zelena West had just walked in.
“Oh crumbs. I’d better get moving.”
Jefferson hopped off his bar stool and went to greet the reunion’s host. Cara just groaned and downed her drink.
“Wake up and smell the misery.” She paused and looked at Gold a little blearily. “That was way more than a triple.” Gold shrugged, and Cara continued to speak. “Must be interesting for you, seeing how they’ve all grown up.”
“Cara, I have seen so many proms and reunions in this ballroom, I lose track.”
He put down the stock lists and checked his watch. “We’ve got an hour for my errant bar staff to turn up, or they’re all fired. I’m going for a smoke. You’re welcome to join me.”
Cara declined and returned to the kitchens, and Gold left the ballroom, limping through the hotel grounds to find his favourite haunt. His hands were shaking as he lit up and took a long drag to calm his nerves. The problem was, he did remember the Storybrooke High 2008 prom.
He looked down at the cigarette between his fingers. If it hadn’t been for his vice he wouldn’t have got involved at all; it would have blended in with all the others. He looked out over the gardens towards the fountain and the benches there. He’d been in this exact same position ten years prior when he’d seen her, so beautiful and innocent in her golden gown, smiling and laughing.
She’d been with her date of course, and he’d assumed he was her boyfriend. He wouldn’t have stayed out there watching them – Gold knew only too well what happened on prom nights. He remembered his own. But something about her had made him stay, because she didn’t seem comfortable. Events had happened rather quickly after that. He remembered running as fast as his ankle could carry him, he remembered the resounding thump with which he had landed the blow against her lecherous date; he remembered the grim satisfaction with which he had thrown the boy out of the hotel.  
He hadn’t seen her again after that. Working the long hours that he did at the hotel, he didn’t really get out and about in Storybrooke all that much, and he was certain that someone as bright and lovely as she was would have got out of the town as quickly as she could. It was a dead end for most people, and she had definitely had potential.
All the same, he still couldn’t help but wonder what had happened to her after that night, and whether she was all right after her ordeal. He wondered whether he would see her again tonight, or whether she had decided not to return to the scene of what had occurred. He wondered whether he would even recognise her, all these years later. Ten years had passed in the blink of an eye, but Gold knew from his own growing son just how much people could change over the course of a decade.
He finished his cigarette and tossed the butt aside, blowing out the last lungful of calming smoke and looking at his reflection in the glass of the kitchen door. He’d changed a lot himself in the last ten years, and he hadn’t exactly been young when he had first seen her. It wasn’t good for him to be standing out here wondering about a girl so much younger than him. Whatever happened, there was a gap between them and it was something that could not be bridged or ignored.
Gold sighed. Whether she was here tonight or not, whether he recognised her or not, there was no hope that she would recognise him. Their eyes had met for all of a second before she had fled the gardens, and there was a lot on her mind. For now, he would be content just to see that she was all right and had moved on from the events of that fateful night in the garden. That was all he could hope for, and to ask for more would be folly.
He took a deep breath and went back inside the hotel, making his way back towards the ballroom ready for service to begin. A couple of the bar staff had turned up, and he wasted no time in letting them know his ire at their tardiness, but it was still clear that he was going to have to get stuck in to serving as well if they were going to keep the bar running at peak capacity and avoid long and unruly queues for drinks. Gold sighed. He really needed a new job, one that didn’t require him to do a bunch of other people’s jobs as well, and one that allowed him more time at home with Bae, but there was something in the back of his mind that had always kept him here.
He knew what it was, and he didn’t want to admit to it.
Guests started arriving in dribs and drabs, with Zelena greeting them all cordially, but with barely disguised glee as she caught up with their lives for the past decade and realised that she was doing far better than all the rest of them were. Gold just watched her antics with a practised eye; he had seen it happen all before and he could quite understand Cara’s sentiment of hating high school reunions. With someone people, bitchiness wasn’t something that was outgrown, it was simply something that was tamped down and kept simmering in the background until it was given the chance to rage into life once more.
Zelena was definitely one of those people, and Gold was quite glad that he was not among the reunion guests tonight. He had to give a little laugh as he thought of the poor sods that she was talking to; he had every sympathy for them but at the same time, it was morbidly entertaining to watch, and at least it made for very good bar trade, with everyone needing some kind of alcoholic refreshment to get them through an evening of veiled insults and white lies regarding how perfect their lives were now. For all the downsides to his job, he really couldn’t fault the opportunities for people-watching.
He was very thankful that he’d never been to his own school reunion.
Gold didn’t see her the moment that she walked in. It wasn’t an instant recognition by any manner or means. He’d registered that she was there, just as he registered whenever someone walked into the ballroom. He could see it filling up, and he was interested to see the new faces. She’d come in with a couple of friends, and he had thought nothing of it. Blue eyes, chestnut brown hair curling around her face. There hadn’t been anything familiar about her at first sight. It was only when she came over the bar that something in the back of Gold’s mind began setting off fireworks and alarm bells, telling him that this was someone whom he really should remember.
“I’ll have a glass of Pinot Blush, please,” she said, and it was the accent that did it. And accent you wouldn’t soon forget. For a moment, Gold was back ten years in the gardens, and he could definitely see the young woman whom she had been in her features now. She glanced over her shoulder to see Zelena approaching her, and she wrinkled her nose as she turned back to the bar. “Better make that a large one.”
Gold couldn’t help a laugh as he gave her the wine, and she looked at him for a moment, her brow furrowing. Could it be that she recognised him from a decade ago as well?
The moment was gone, and she left the bar, visibly steeling herself to go and speak to Zelena, and Gold continued to watch her for a few seconds until one of her friends came over to order a drink. She seemed to be happy and flourishing, and that was all he needed to know.
X
Ruby had been prepared for quite a lot of things to happen at this high school reunion, but she was beginning to think that the reunions shown on TV and in films were highly fictionalised and not at all indicative of reality. She had been prepared for thrown drinks and food fights, for real fights and hair-pulling. She had been prepared for terrific revelations that would send the entire room reeling into silence. She had been prepared for everyone in the class’s dirty laundry being aired, including her own. She had been prepared for pretty much every cliched scenario that could have happened at this reunion, but she was absolutely not prepared for sheer boredom.
It was clear that everyone was on their best behaviour, and that there were no chances of any catfights on the horizon despite the utter loathing with which everyone was looking at everyone else. Neither Neal nor Gaston were at the reunion; either they hadn’t come, or they hadn’t been invited. There was no need for her to stay on her guard to possibly sweep in and rescue either of her friends from uncomfortable situations, and so Ruby had found herself at a loss.
The problem was that despite being a naturally outgoing and sociable person who enjoyed talking to everyone who crossed her path in the diner, Ruby didn’t actually want to talk to anyone at that moment. She was very aware that of all the people here in the ballroom, she had probably made the least progress in her life, and despite her usual attitude, and the attitude that had carried her all the way through her school years, she really didn’t want anyone to know that.
Up until she had received the invitation to the reunion, Ruby had been happy with her lot. She had always had vague ambitions of travelling the world and seeing new things, they’d all had those, but she’d accepted that it wasn’t going to be possible. With Granny as her only remaining family, she knew that she had to stay close to help her out. The diner wouldn’t run itself, and Granny wasn’t going to get any younger. Just as Belle had stayed in Storybrooke to help out her father, and Emma had stayed in Storybrooke because of Henry, Ruby had stayed because of her family, and she could never bring herself to regret that. Granny had supported her through some difficult times, and Ruby had caused more than enough trouble to make her grandmother’s hair prematurely grey. After she’d graduated it was time to give back, and Ruby was happy with how she was giving back and what she was doing with her grandmother. There would be time for adventures in the great wide somewhere later.
It was just that sitting here at the bar looking at all these wildly successful people that she’d gone to school with, Ruby couldn’t help feeling distinctly inferior, and at the same time bitter that they’d had all the opportunities that simply hadn’t been open to her. She didn’t have the money for college, she didn’t have the money to move out of Storybrooke and start fresh somewhere, and a small fiery part of her was angry that everyone else seemed to have had it so much better in their lives.
She ordered another rum and coke, staring at it glumly so as to avoid having to look at everyone else in the ballroom.
“Hey.”
Unfortunately, it didn’t seem like the ballroom was going to leave her alone. She turned minutely to see Mulan taking a seat at the bar beside her. Despite the years, she looked almost no different to how she had looked in high school, and that fact made Ruby smile.
“It took a long time to track you down, you know,” Mulan said. “I was certain that I’d said hello to everyone except you, and I was certain that I’d seen you come in with Belle and Emma, but I was beginning to think that maybe I’d imagined you.”
Ruby laughed and shook her head. “No, I’ve just been hiding.”
“Yeah, can’t say that I blame you.” Mulan took a sip of her own drink. “Why did we come here again?”
“I honestly don’t know,” Ruby said. “Because we felt that we had something to prove? Or because we thought we had nothing to prove? I don’t know. Maybe I’ve had too much rum on too few canapes.”
“I think it’s morbid fascination in part,” Mulan mused. “We really want to see if anything weird and wonderful has happened to our former classmates. Maybe someone’s become a world-renowned scuba diver or something like that.”
Ruby snorted. “Are you a world-renowned scuba diver?”
“No, I’m a gym teacher. But I’ve always wanted to try scuba diving. What about you? Any hidden talents that have emerged since we last saw each other?”
Ruby shook her head. “No. Still just waitressing at Granny’s, so I think I probably win the award for least successful person here.”
“I wouldn’t say that.” Mulan shrugged. “There are different measures of success. If you’re happy, then that’s what matters. Don’t think yourself as any lesser than anyone else. What you do is valuable, no matter what anyone else might say.”
Ruby scoffed.
“No, I mean it.” Ruby looked over at her, but Mulan was completely in earnest, and she had to wonder at the vehement defence.
They had always been on each other’s periphery during high school; Mulan was an aloof loner in much the same way as Emma had been, with just a small group of friends around her. She was an odd one out because she was athletic, and sports had always been the domain of the boys, meaning most of the girls shunned her. Whilst Mulan could definitely be described as tomboyish, she was never ‘one of the boys’. She’d never lost her femininity despite the cattier girls being determined to take it from her.
Although Mulan had never been in with Ruby’s more trouble-making crowd, they’d definitely been on each other’s radars until graduation had happened and people started drifting away. Now, it seemed that they were back on each other’s radars again. Mulan had certainly not forgotten her, and the thought made Ruby smile.
The desire to talk to people had returned, and she shuffled her bar stool a little closer to Mulan’s.
“So, what have you been up to since high school then?”
X
Emma could tell that something was troubling Belle. She kept glancing over at the man behind the bar who had served them when they had first come into the reunion. He wasn’t serving now, he appeared to be berating the other two bartenders for reasons still unknown. He was obviously their boss, and she wondered how come he had become seconded into helping serve. Probably for the same reason he was now having serious words with them.
Belle was still staring intently at him as Emma approached her, and she only shook herself and looked away when she heard Emma’s voice.
“Are you all right? You seem kind of spaced out.”
“Yeah, just got a weird sense of déjà vu, that’s all.”
Emma laughed. “Well, we’re in a room with a bunch of people who we were at school with and we’re all doing our best to hide the fact that we still hate each other with a passion; I would say that was a memory of any normal day from your teenage years.”
Belle shook her head, the quip falling completely flat.
“No, it’s not that. It’s that guy behind the bar. I feel like I ought to know him from somewhere. He looks really familiar. It’s like there’s a hole that he fits perfectly in my memory, but I don’t know where it’s from.”
Emma looked over at the man again; there was nothing about him that was touching any chords in her own memory.
“Well, if he works here at the hotel then he’s probably local to Storybrooke,” she said. “Maybe you’ve just been standing behind him in line at the drugstore or something, or you see him on your morning running route.”
“Yeah.” Belle didn’t seem particularly convinced by that explanation, but Emma didn’t have another one to offer her. She pulled out of her little daydream and sighed again. “I’m going over to say hi to Regina, I think she’s the only person whom I haven’t said hello to and even though we never saw eye to eye, you can bet that if I miss someone out then it’ll be all over social media once everything’s over.”
“Belle, we’re hardly linked to any of the old school crowd on social media. That’s why it’s been so alien coming here and seeing people again. The only friends from school I have on Facebook are Mary Margaret and Aurora and that’s because they’re just too nice not to be friends with. Unfriending them would be like kicking a puppy.”
“I know that, but I still feel like I ought to make an effort. I’ll see you in a bit, provided Zelena doesn’t collar me again to tell me all about her world travels.”
Emma wrinkled her nose. “That’s in very poor taste.”
“I know. I told her that I never went travelling because I needed to look after my dad after my mum died, but I honestly think it went in one ear and out of the other.”
“No, no, I think she understood perfectly, she’s just that kind of a person.”
“Yeah, you’re right. I think I do always see the good in people too much.”
Belle left her then, and Emma was left looking down at her empty glass. She’d got through that whiskey remarkably quickly and she wondered if her going up again to get another one would be noticed.
“Emma Swan.”
Emma would recognise that voice anywhere. Although Zelena West was the orchestrator of this entire event, Ashley Boyd - well, Ashley Herman now - was definitely the other person whom Emma had not been looking forward to meeting here.
On the face of it, she and Ashley should have got on very well. They’d both been pregnant straight out of high school, after all, and one would have thought that young mothers would have stuck together in the face of the trials and tribulations that were coming their way. Unfortunately, things had not worked out in quite the same way. Whilst Neal had disappeared, Sean had stuck around - forcibly, some might say. And whilst Emma had stayed in Storybrooke, a windfall from Mr Herman Senior had allowed Ashley to get out of the town and not look back - and when she did look back, it was with that sweet and insincere smile that said look how lucky I am, my children have a father and we live in a beautiful house off millions made in the canned fish industry, what do you do, Emma?
“Hello Ashley.”
“I’m sure you remember Sean, of course.”
“Of course. How are you, Sean?”
“Can’t complain. Business is doing well.”
“So how have you been keeping, Emma?  How’s your son? He’d be in the same year as our Alexandra, wouldn’t he? Of course, Alexandra goes to the private school at Newport. Having a proper education is really so important, don’t you think?”
Emma looked around the group of old classmates in the ballroom. “Well, I don’t think public school did us any harm.”
Ashley’s eyes narrowed. “Well, of course, growing up in a stable family environment is just as crucial, although I suppose you and your son wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
It was in that moment that Emma realised that she had two choices, and that her brain had made the choice without any input from herself. She could either lose her temper and drag Ashley out of the building by the hair, or she could be calm and composed and collected.
For some reason unknown to Emma, her brain decided to take the third option, and she found herself sprouting a lie of enormous proportions that she had never even given thought to before, let alone had time to work on and make consistent.
“Well, since I got married I like to think that I managed to provide a very stable environment for Henry.”
Ashley’s eyebrows raised to her hairline, and Emma began to flounder. Where the hell had that come from? Hadn’t she, Belle and Ruby all determined that they weren’t going to lie, and they were going to be proud of what their lives had accomplished in the years since high school?
Yes, her brain told her, but at the same time, she just really wanted to wipe that smirk off Ashley’s face without the threat of physical violence.
Still, she was stuck in the lie now, and there was no choice but to run with it.
X
If Gold was alarmed when Jefferson grabbed him by the sleeve and steered him roughly into the stock room, he didn’t show it, and merely raised one eyebrow, brushing down his jacket when the younger man finally released him.
“Gold, I need to borrow your clothes,” Jefferson said.
“All of them?” Gold asked drily.
“No, no, just some of them,” Jefferson said, pulling off his suit jacket. “And your cane. Quick, give me your waistcoat and your tie.”
“Jefferson, is there a reason for your sudden desire to inhabit my wardrobe?” Gold asked, beginning to unbutton his waistcoat.
“I need to look like an eccentric billionaire and to do that I need cane. Because right now I look like a harassed event co-ordinator…”
“You are a harassed event co-ordinator,” Gold pointed out.
“I know, but eccentric billionaires don’t look like harassed event co-ordinators – they wear ties and they don’t have asparagus stains on their shirts from where a waitress walked into them with some canapés so please Gold, I need your waistcoat to hide the damage. Please, it’s an emergency!”
“An emergency,” Gold repeated, removing his jacket and waistcoat and handing the latter to Jefferson, his tie following shortly after. “What sort of emergency could possibly require you to dress up as an eccentric billionaire? In my best suit, no less.”
“Jeff? Gold?”
Jefferson looked up from tying Gold’s tie round his neck to see Cara Mallory standing in the doorway to the stock cupboard, no doubt on her way back to the kitchens to supervise the restocking of the buffet.
“I’m not even going to ask what you two are doing,” she said, looking them up and down.
“Impromptu striptease,” Gold said. He made to undo his belt buckle. “Private show?”
Cara rolled her eyes and left the room, closing the door after her with a wry ‘whatever floats your lilo, gents…’
“I need to rescue a damsel in distress,” Jefferson said. He finished tying Gold’s tie and its owner rolled his eyes.
“That is the worst Full Windsor I’ve ever seen. Let me.” He pulled the tie loose and started again, working the fabric deftly. “I’d fire you if you turned up to work one of my bars with a tie like that. Right, go on and rescue your damsel.”
“Thank you, Gold. I owe you one!”
He grabbed the bar manager’s cane, ignoring the older man’s shout of protest at being rendered unable to walk, and legged it back to the bar.
X
Emma was getting desperate. The lie had been a spur of the moment panic, and now it was most definitely coming back to bite her in the behind.
“What precisely is it that your husband does, Emma?” Ashley asked pleasantly, her voice benign but her eyes revelling in every moment of Emma’s now hopelessly obvious discomfort.
“Oh, you know, this and that… He’s very entrepreneurial, dabbles in all sorts of new ideas that need investments…”
“Really,” Ashley said. “How fascinating. Is he not here tonight?”
“I didn’t think that spouses were invited,” Emma said. “Unless they were also in the class, of course,” she added, looking at Sean, who didn’t seem to be taking in any of their barbed comments towards each other at all.
“Darling!”
Emma was startled by the arrival of a complete stranger by her side, linking his arm through hers and pressing a glass into her hand. She was half-tempted to upend the gin and tonic over him and unleash her taser.
“I’m so sorry I’m late, poppet, something came up at the office. There was a problem with a shipment from Sicily, pistachio nuts all over the eastern seaboard, utter nightmare… Look at the coaster…” he hissed under his breath to her on the pretext of kissing her cheek without actually making contact.
Emma did so, raising the glass to take a sip of the clear liquid and looking through the bottom at the white paper coast stuck to the bottom of it, reading the scrawled message.
Pleased to meet you. My name’s Jefferson.  Play along for as long as you need to.
Emma grinned, as she remembered seeing the man – minus tie, cane and neatly slicked back hair – talking to Zelena at the hotel entrance and ticking things off on a clipboard just before they entered. On closer inspection, she could see the pin pricks on his jacket lapel where his name badge should sit, and there was a staff key-card on a lanyard stuffed hastily into his inside pocket. It was the event manager, come to her aid.
“Jeff, darling,” she said, deciding that playing along was better than breaking the illusion. “I didn’t think you’d come. This is Ashley and Sean Herman. They were together in high school and they’re married now, how long is it again?”
“Ten years,” Ashley said proudly.
“My word, that must have been very quick after graduation,” Jefferson said, and Ashley’s smug smile began to falter. “Still, I must congratulate you on the longevity of your union, and on the forthcoming pitter patter of tiny feet, I see. Is it your first?”
“No,” Emma said. “Ashley was just telling me that she and Sean have two children already.”
“Really? How fascinating. Emma and I don’t have any together yet, sadly, but I am blessed with a wonderful stepson. Do you have any pictures?”
“Sure.” Sean, obviously always happy to talk about his kids, pulled out his wallet and showed Jefferson and Emma the pictures therein.
“Ah two girls. How old are they? Eight and four?”
“Ten and six,” Sean corrected, before Ashley smacked his arm.
“Sean!” she hissed. “Don’t tell him that!”
“Ten? My word, that must have happened very soon after graduation. Still, absolutely charming to meet you both; Emma, shall we get some canapés? I’m absolutely famished.”
He steered her off towards the buffet table, leaving Ashley to moan at her husband, and Emma couldn’t stop herself from giggling.
“Thank you,” she said. “How did you know that I needed a prop?”
“I happened to overhear your conversation. I wasn’t eavesdropping, I swear. I’m very good at telling when people are lying, and I could tell that she was baiting you. I have to say, it was a bit obvious.”
“Yeah. I’m usually really good at spotting liars as well; maybe that’s what makes me a bad one.” Emma gave another laugh as she remembered Ashley’s priceless expression. “Thank you, anyway. But you really shouldn’t bait her for getting pregnant in high school,” she said eventually once composure had returned and Jefferson had snaffled four smoked salmon canapés. “I did the same.”
“I gathered,” Jefferson said. “And she had no right to look down on you for it when she did exactly the same thing herself.” He sighed. “It’s Sean that I feel sorry for really. If it hadn’t been for the other kids and the fact he was no doubt on the wrong end of a shotgun barrel at some point, do you think he would have stuck around?”
Emma snorted. “I don’t know. He seems happy enough, but it does make you wonder. I know I wouldn’t want to be in a relationship just for the sake of being with the father of my child. That kind of thing can affect a kid growing up.”
“And that is the difference between you and her.”
“What is?”
“You raising your child alone, not settling for getting into a relationship you didn’t want to be a part of or running off to your parents to get them to make it all better.”
“No parents to run to,” Emma muttered.
Jefferson smiled and handed her a canapé.
“Which makes you all the more remarkable, Emma Swan.”
Emma returned his smile, and as she ate the asparagus morsel in one clean bite, she felt a weight lift from her shoulders. For the first time since she had entered the reunion, she felt proud of herself, the same pride she felt when she looked at Henry and realised that she hadn’t done badly, all things considered. Despite everything, she still had every right to feel triumphant.
“So, what is it that you and your significant other really do?” Jefferson asked her.
“Storybrooke Sheriff,” Emma said. “I was deputy until four months ago, then elected unopposed when Graham died. And there is no significant other.” She paused. “Just me and Henry. The dynamic duo.”
Jefferson smiled. “That’s what my Grace and I call ourselves.”
“So, what is it that you really do, billionaire husband?” Emma asked. “I know you work for the hotel, I saw you talking to Zelena earlier.”
“Events co-ordinator,” Jefferson said. “You can blame me for this entire spectacle. You might not want to introduce me to Zelena West as your husband; I know I look slightly different to before, but I doubt it’ll fool her.”
Emma laughed. “No, it’s ok, I should be going now anyway. I need to pick up Henry; a friend’s looking after him tonight.”
“Same for Grace, I should be making a move as well. I guess you too know the pitfalls of being a single parent who often has to work evenings. Besides…” Jefferson cast a glance over his shoulder at the bar. “I borrowed half of my outfit from a colleague and he looks pretty keen to get it back. The clothes I think he could live without, but I’ve borrowed his cane as well and unlike me, his need for it is rather more than simply ornamental.”
Emma looked in the same direction and saw a tieless man in a suit that matched Jefferson’s waistcoat leaning heavily on the bar and glaring at her companion.
“Yes… He looks a little murderous right now.”
“Well, I shall return his possessions and mobilise him once more – I’m impressed he got to the bar, actually, I left him in the stock cupboard – and let you on your way. Unless you’d like me to call you a cab?”
“It’s all right, I’ll walk. I’m only going to Granny’s diner, and I don’t live far from there. And I have a taser.”
Jefferson gave her an astonished look.
“You’re joking.”
“No, I really have a taser.” Emma pulled it out of her bag and showed it to him.
“No, not that, Granny’s diner. Granny Lucas is looking after Henry?”
“Yes… Is there a problem with that?”
“She’s looking after my daughter,” Jefferson said faintly. “She’s my go-to babysitter.”
The two parents looked at each other for a moment, before bursting into fresh laughter.
“Go and give your colleague his clothes back,” Emma finally managed. “Come on, you can walk me home, eccentric billionaire husband of mine.”
She watched him make his way across the ballroom towards the bar, and she startled when a familiar voice spoke in her ear.
“What were you and Jefferson giggling about then?”
Emma twisted round to see Ruby standing behind her, arms folded and patented ‘tell all’ expression firmly in place.
“You know him?” she spluttered.
“Of course,” Ruby said airily. “Granny and I babysit his daughter all the time. Her name’s Grace; she’s in Henry’s class at school.”
Emma shook her head in disbelief. She’d heard Henry talk about Grace, but she’d never met the girl before, much less her father. It really was a small world. Ruby was just giggling her head off, and she patted Emma’s arm.
“He’s a great guy, Em. I can vouch for him. If you want to pursue that course, I would say to go for it. What have you got to lose?”
Emma thought about it for a few moments and gave a decisive nod.
“Nothing to lose,” she agreed.
Ruby grinned. “That’s the spirit. I’m going to head out soon too; go somewhere a bit quieter where I’m not going to be mobbed by old friends who were never really friends in the first place.”
Emma looked over Ruby’s shoulder. “Will Mulan be going with you to that place where it’s a bit quieter?” she asked sagely.
“Maybe.” There was a playful smirk in Ruby’s words, and Emma had to laugh again. She was glad that Ruby had found some happiness here as well. The only person who didn’t appear to have made any new connections and turned the evening around into one that could be celebrated was Belle; considering the fears that had plagued her before the reunion, Emma felt a pang of disappointment on her friend’s behalf. Glancing around the room, she found her friend chatting animatedly to Mary Margaret Nolan-née-Blanchard and managed to catch her attention, mouthing ‘Henry’ and indicating that she’d call her tomorrow. Belle nodded and waved goodbye, and Emma went to wait for her fake husband in the lobby.
About ten minutes later, Jefferson reappeared, and they left the hotel, heading away in the direction of the diner. The conversation flowed freely and easily, talking about all the things that they had never known they had in common. Even though Storybrooke was a comparatively small town and Emma knew most of the people in it thanks to her job as sheriff, it just went to show that even small towns could still be surprising. For all she had been complaining at the lack of excitement in her life since graduating high school, Emma knew that this was exactly where she wanted to be. She had a fantastic son, she lived in a great town, and she had a good job that she was proud of doing. It didn’t matter what the rest of her classmates might be doing now. Emma was happy where she was, and she wouldn’t change it for the world.
As they walked along, she kept glancing over at Jefferson. Even in Storybrooke, there was still a wealth of possibility to be had.
X
The party was coming to a close, winding down, but Belle couldn’t help thinking that there was something missing somehow. There was something still nagging at the back of her mind, something that she needed to come to terms with before she could truly let this experience fall behind her and say that she was done with high school forever and could move on.
Gaston hadn’t been at the reunion and Belle was very glad about that, but all through the evening, she had been in this place and continually reminded of what had happened the last time that she was here. When she looked around at her fellow ex-students and looked at how far they had all come since that night, she found herself looking at herself in a different light too. So, she may not have moved far out of the town and created a new life for herself in the big city, and she might not be in a high-flying career like Zelena West or Regina Mills, but she was happy with her life. She didn’t yearn for something more. She was content with the small things. Right now, Belle could confidently say to anyone who asked her that she was living her best life.
The only thing she wanted was someone that she could share it with, and perhaps tonight was the time that she could finally make steps towards that.
She glanced over at the bar, but the man had vanished. Belle wasn’t exactly surprised; it was clear that he was the manager in charge of it all and therefore shouldn’t be doing the serving on a regular basis, but all the same, she felt a little disappointed that she wouldn’t be able to speak to him again. There was something so familiar about him. Maybe it was because she was seeing so many familiar faces among her old classmates that she was now thinking that everyone was familiar, but all the same, that hint of recognition was going to bug her for a long time after tonight. She usually had a good memory for people, so the fact that this man eluded her was annoying.
Still. Even if she did meet him and strike up a conversation and work out that he was standing in line behind her in the drugstore one time, or some other equally inane conversation, there was something that she wanted to do first.
Belle left the ballroom where the reunion was taking place and made her way out of the back of the hotel through the gardens, up towards the roses and the fountain and the bench where the events of the prom were still there at the back of her mind, and she looked down at the stone for a long time.
It was just a bench, an inanimate object, and it was not the bench that had hurt her. Looking at it now, and looking around at the garden, she could see the beauty in it. She sat down, looking around at the foliage in the twilight and taking it all in. She had felt apprehensive when she had first walked up here to this spot, but now there was a sense of release and catharsis. It was just a bench, just a garden, a beautiful garden. Gaston wasn’t here, he was gone from her life, and as she sat, Belle knew that she was not going to let him ruin whatever might happen next.
“Hello.”
Belle turned to see someone coming up the gardens towards her. It was the man from the bar, and she smiled, waving him closer when he stopped a good distance short from the bench.
“Hello again. Catching a break from all the drunken revellers in the ballroom?”
The man laughed, sitting at the other end of the bench.
“Well, they’re not exactly revelling, but several of them are well on their way to being very drunk, including the hostess.”
Belle had to laugh at that. “When we first got the invitation, a lot of us were certain that this would be an event of snarking and bitching and one-upping each other.”
“Much like being back at high school then?”
“Yes, now that I think about it. I don’t think that we were expecting Zelena to be among those of us drowning their sorrows because they haven’t been as successful as their peers.”
“You’re not drowning your sorrows though, I hope?”
Belle shook her head. “No. I’m happy with my life. I don’t have that sort of chip on my shoulder. Everyone has a different measure of success, and the problem occurs when we try to measure ourselves against other people’s. I know my own worth, I don’t need anyone else to define it for me.”
The man nodded. “That’s very astute.”
Feeling bold, Belle held out a hand. “Belle French.” She looked down at the name tag that Zelena had given her when she had first walked in. “Of course, you probably knew that already.”
The man shook her hand. “Raymond Gold. And likewise.” He pointed to the hotel staff badge on his lapel. “Most people just call me Gold, though.”
“You look familiar, but I can’t place you,” Belle said. “Have we met?”
Gold gave a tired half-smile. “In a manner.” He offered her a cigarette and Belle declined with a shake of her head. He took one out himself and was about to light it when he paused and put it back in the packet, stowing the heavy gold lighter in his inside pocket but leaving the packet on the bench between them. “My son keeps telling me to quit. No time like the present to give it another go again.” He sighed. “I should’ve put more effort into it sooner, really, but there was always something in the back of my mind keeping me from really trying.”
Belle looked at him, her head tipped on one side as she continued to try and place the face in front of her, framed with greying hair and the faint scent of tobacco. “What was that?” she asked.
“Just the whim of a foolish old man, my dear,” Gold said.
“No, I want to hear it,” Belle said.
Gold smiled.
“I’ve been working in this hotel for a long time, I’ve been smoking outside the kitchens for a long time, and I’ve been witnessing high school proms for a long time. And sometimes you see more important things outside the ballroom than you do inside it. I always wonder, if I hadn’t been sneaking a smoke that night, at that moment, I wouldn’t have seen her. She was something special, not part of the popular crowd, not the prom queen, but still something special. Her date took her outside and was trying to get some in the garden, and she fought him off like a little lion cub; brave and utterly ferocious but just not big enough. And if I hadn’t been outside, I wouldn’t have been able to lend a hand.”
And suddenly, Belle realised where she knew him from.
X
Gold watched as recognition dawned on Belle’s face, and he wondered what her reaction would be.
“I knew I knew you from somewhere,” she said. “Thank you.”
Gold shrugged. Her response had surprised him. He hadn’t expected her to take it so calmly. What kind of a man remembers the face of a woman whose date he punched at her prom ten years earlier?
“I was only doing what any decent person would do in the circumstances.” He sighed, he was in too deep now and he might as well give her the full story. That was what she had asked for, after all. “But that’s why I never quit.”
“Because you were worried about what might have happened to me if you hadn’t been there?” Belle asked. Gold nodded.
“And… On the off-chance I might see you again,” he murmured, then looked away, embarrassed. If she hadn’t thought him a mad stalker before, then she would definitely think so now. He felt her small hand on his shoulder, a friendly, relaxed grip, and he turned back towards her. Belle was smiling.
“Well, it worked,” she said. “So maybe now is the time to quit.” She took his cigarettes. “You shouldn’t be needing these anymore.”
Gold gave a weak laugh. “It’s hard to break the habit of a lifetime, Miss French.”
Belle smiled and stood up, leaning in close to him.
“Maybe you just need to find something else to do with your mouth,” she whispered in his ear, before pressing a light kiss to his cheek. Gold felt the weight of something drop into his jacket breast pocket and Belle flashed him another brilliant grin and left him sitting on the bench, as she began walking back down the garden towards the ballroom.
Gold looked down and saw that she’d returned his cigarettes. He pulled out the packet and was about to take one out, from habit more than real desire, when he saw it, there on the side of the packet in neat, rounded hand.
She’d given him her phone number.
There was a definite spring in his step as he followed the path she had taken back down to the bar.
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taiblogcomics · 6 years
Text
A Jerkass at the Circus
Hey there, spicy Gushers. Well, let's do one of our things on the back burner. But which should we do? I dunno. Want to base it solely on the cover? Okay, we got a boring team pose as usual on Suicide Squad, and Red Hood is an annual. You know what, let's do the annual, we don't gotta worry about continuity that way~
Here's the winning cover:
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Hey, it's Nightwing! Will he be the newest Outlaw? Well, considering he has his own ongoing series and doesn't appear outside of this annual, I highly doubt it~! It's a cool, dynamic sort of cover at least, so that's good. What is that last word on Ma Gunn's sign, though? "Criminally Infirmed"? Is that a thing? Maybe this comic will tell us if that's a thing~
This comic takes place before the events of issue 12, but it waits until page 5 to tell us this. So you can fit it into continuity if you want to, presumably~
So we open on a big cruise-looking ship. A yacht of some kind, I dunno. It's got a huge deck with a lot of people on it. One is clearly the captain, since he's wearing white and has a hat (he might also be a milkman, but I'm betting captain). Another is an old guy with his grey hair in a ponytail, who's smoking. His name is Dimitri, and he's hired the captain here to pilot this boat out in the middle of the Baltic Sea to meet a fellow he wants to hire. Because the middle of the sea is a great place for a clandestine meeting. Dimitri got shown up by Red Hood at some point (he's too generic for me to remember, if it ever even appeared in a previous issue), and now he's hiring KGBeast for revenge. The captian panics as soon as Dimitri reveals who he's meeting, and for good reason. KGBeast blows up the boat and shoots everyone but Dimitri. Now they can talk privately.
So, where do you go from there? Well, how about a circus in Russia, where Dick Grayson, AKA Nightwing, is watching the performance. And what a performance it is: Jason Todd as a combination trick-shooter and motorcycle stuntman, Artemis as a more traditional horse-mounted bow-based sharpshooter, and Bizarro as the strongman. Buy T-shirts, kids! Anyway, after the performance, Nightwing (who we'll refer to by his supranym, since unlike Jason and Roy, we actually respect Dick Grayson and think he's cool) goes seeking out Jason's trailer, since apparently he got a text more or less requesting a meeting. Bizarro serves beans while Jason explains the situation. So, those Russians Jason threw out of Gotham back in issue 7? The ones we long forgot? Well, they're back, and they're using this circus as a front or something. Anyway, the long and short of it is that basically Jason wants to hang out with Nightwing, but is too much of a dope to come out and say it~
And just because Jason and Nightwing have made up enough that Jason doesn't want to murder him anymore, he may just have had a flashback revealing he admired Nightwing ever since they were both kids and Jason went to one of his circus performances, but he still enjoys taking the piss out of him. We may respect him, but Jason doesn't: Nightwing will be filling in as "Flippy-Flop the Acrobatic Clown" while undercover here. And so, the undercover work begins by integrating themselves with the circusfolk around a bonfire that night. While Artemis is charmed by Nightwing, Jason instead encourages Bizarro to pursue a circus performer playing the violin. Artemis is more interested in Nightwing's shared backstory with Jason, though, but Bizarro hits it off with Angelique, who reveals herself to be a bearded woman. Bizarro sees nothing wrong with this, and she finds him very sweet for that.
Another circus worker expresses a notion of gratitude towards Jason, as Angelique is his daughter and he's clearly sent someone kind her way. Since he's been kind to his daughter, he decides to let them in on his secret: he can help them get extra work, work that doesn't involve the big top. He'll let Jason in on it if he comes to see him during their friend's performance. And speaking of friends, Nightwing exposits some backstory to Artemis, mostly involving how he joined the Bat-team. Their first real meeting comes when Jason returns one night from being Robin, collapses into bed--only to find Nightwing already in it. Apparently after Nightwing moved out, Alfred just gave his old room to Jason. Apparently he neglected to tell him someone else was using it now when he came back home to visit~
Artemis is deeply amused by the stories, though she thinks perhaps things could have gone differently and led to friends instead. She tells Nightwing not to let the past define him, and Nightwing thinks Jason's lucky to have her watching his back. They part amicably, and everyone goes to bed. We open the next day, already midway into Nightwing's act as Flippy-Flop. Fortunately, despite the terrible clown outfit, he's not wearing a wig or makeup or even a red rubber nose. In other words, the least horrifying clown ever made. So, while that's going on, the Outlaws instead go down with Jason's new friend, who shows them a mysterious pool in the middle of the circus. Diving down, they find a cavern off to the side, wherein a whole load of explosives are being stored. And who's down there taking inventory on all the munitions? Why, our previously foreshadowed friend KGBeast~
Apparently this whole thing ties back to events in Detective Comics Rebirth, which I didn't read. The long and short of it is, a military group was formed to destroy the Batman, but they lost. This seems to be one of their weapons caches, which I'm not sure does them a lot of good hidden in Russia and not Gotham, but what do I know~? The guns in this thing are energy weapons strong enough to push back Bizarro, so it might be a little overkill for Batman. Fortunately, Artemis always brings an axe to a gunfight, and she cleaves his new toy apart. Jason leaps at KGBeast, and both begin exchanging point-blank gunfire. They both must have really good body armour. Jason's are non-lethal, though, given that promise he made to Batman at the beginning of the series--which he even states out loud--but KGBeast is under no such obligation. I guess he's just a terrible shot~
Artemis, instead, chooses to fight him more hand-to-hand, and indeed chops off his wrist-mounted gun. That's KGBeast's thing, if you didn't know: he's missing a hand, so he has an elaborate gun instead. KGBeast encourages them to drop their loyalty to any particular nationstate and be their own person, which might be inspiring if it wasn't coming from a crazed gunman. He's growing a bit tired of the fight, and comments that he's seen through their ruse. Their "Outlaws" thing is just an excuse to get crime out of Gotham. And apparently they've been in Gotham the whole time, it's just the circus that's Russian. Sorry, the context was ambiguous. There really was no "Meanwhile, in Gotham" sort of label to establish any of these scenes. We need those, guys!
KGBeast prepares to give the Outlaws a quick death, but Nightwing suddenly jumps on him from behind. KGBeast attempts to throw him off, but Nightwing just uses Bizarro as a set of parallel bars and rebounds. He and Jason team up and both punch KGBeast in the face. This is then followed by Artemis and Bizarro doing the same, and they're much stronger, so KGBeast is knocked out. And so the comic wraps up with Nightwing putting in with his contacts at ARGUS to arrest the other criminals at the circus, while he and Jason share an amicable handshake, with Nightwing basically saying that he's proud of the work Jason's doing as an Outlaw now. Artemis is a little bummed that she wasn't given an equal goodbye, but Bizarro's really pleased he got to kiss the pretty bearded lady. He even made sure to get her number: eight. Jason sighs and leads Bizarro inside to explain a few things~
So, other than me getting confused about the location for half the comic, this issue was not too bad. They say “before the events of issue 12″, but probably before that whole storyline works better. It’s nice to see Nightwing and Jason actually respect each other, though the idea that perennial street orphan Jason Todd happened to visit the circus and see a young Dick Grayson (age 12) perform is a bit contrived if you ask me. Otherwise, it’s just kind of a fun romp with a classic Batman villain like KGBeast. He’s going by just “the Beast” now, given also his new declaration of not allying himself with a particular nation, but I’d rather not confuse him with Hank McCoy of X-Men fame, you know~? Plus Bizarro’s just kind of a delight, like always~
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asroarke · 6 years
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The 100 Ask
Tagged by @sly2o who I love so dearly and deserves all the lovely gift baskets in the world for being a delightful human
rules: answer as many as you want if tagged and then tag three more people OR just reblog it and treat it as a regular ask meme!! have fun xoxo
1. What would you get arrested for on the Ark? Pretty sure I would jokingly kick or throw something to dramatically show that I was angry with someone (because that’s the kind of diva I am) and actually break something important in the process, potentially one of the basic things that the rest of the Ark needs to survive.
2. Would you take off your wristband when you landed on the ground? I’d probably resist as long as it was convenient but as soon as they started saying I had to take off my wrist band to get food, I’d give in.
3. What would the necklace Finn would make for you look like? (Clarke: deer/Raven: a raven duh..) the corpse of Finn Collins Pauna
4. If you could resurrect any MINOR character who would it be? SHAWN MENDES
5. Create a squad of 5 characters to go on missions with. Who are they? Okay, well Bellamy can’t go or else I’ll be distracted. In that same logic, Clarke can’t go either. My bisexual heart flutters at the sight of both of them. Raven would drive the rover. Jasper would DJ. Monty would explain smart things to me and I would just awkwardly nod. I’m gonna throw Miller in there so I can try to set them up for fucks sake. And Murphy will have to be there, for commentary purposes.
6. Minty or Briller? Minty. But really, I’m totally here for the Miller x Jackson train.
7. What would your name be in Trigedasleng? (example: Octavia=Okteivia…just make it up!): Aleks?
8. Thoughts on Finn? Just casually annoyed about the fact that homie didn’t even have to try to get two of the most fascinating, smart, and beautiful women in the 100 universe. Like how fair is that? I try really hard and just last week I blew it by stuttering when a girl said something nice to me and then told her I needed to go see what the weather was like and then hid in the bathroom for five minutes as I gave myself a pep talk. I want like 10% of the confidence Finn Collins had for literally no reason.
9. Be honest. How willing would you have been to take the chip without knowing all the horrible things it does? It would have been soooo easy to get me to take the chip. Someone would just have to say my mental health problems would leave me alone and I would give the fuck in.
10. What character do you relate to most & What character do you like the least not including the obvious ones like Pike, etc… I relate the most to Clarke in the way that she isolates herself, her bisexuality, her communication patterns... I relate with Raven because I’m quite familiar with chronic pain. The character I like the least is Thelonious Jaha. I find him to be quite preachy and arrogant, but don’t really see why he gets to be that way considering how many bad decisions he has made.
11. Describe your delinquent outfit: Okay, I want Jasper’s earth day t-shirt, Raven’s red jacket or Clarke’s blue jacket, steal a beanie from Miller, some tight pants that don’t look practical but magically never hinder my ability to run through the forest for plot reasons, AND THEM COMBAT BOOTS.
12. Favorite type of mutant animal? does Cage Wallace count Pauna
13. What would your job be on the Ark? A really terrible mechanic that Raven roasts constantly but secretly likes because I start my day by telling her she’s a genius and she replies with “I know”
14. Would you have willingly pumped Ontari’s heart if Abby asked it? There is no way in hell I would have been in that room when that decision took place because I would literally still be chipped and no one would bother to take the time to fix me like they did with Raven and Abby because I am a soft lazy soul not made for this survival world, but if I was there and it had to be done, probably (and I’d have a panic attack while doing it)
15. If Lexa wasn’t Heda, then who would make the best commander? Indra (season 4 Indra, not early Indra)
16. If you were a grounder, then where would you live and who would be your mentor? Oh God there are no good options here in my opinion. I’m gonna say Azgeda just so Roan could be my mentor (I love him) but like I’m not crazy about Azgeda for all the crazy plot reasons.
17. How would you act if you ate the hallucinogenic nuts like Jasper and Monty? You would find me having very intense, intellectual debates with... absolutely no one. I’m talking to someone I hallucinated, likely an ex boyfriend from years ago who still deserves to be put in his place.
18. How would you have dealt with Charlotte’s crime? I mean, I don’t think there was a right way to deal with it. Rehabilitation, maybe if they lived in a world without insane war and had actual guidance from actual adults (who weren’t raised on the Ark and ingrained with the death penalty for all crimes mentality)
19. Who should be the Chancellor, if anyone? Who should be? Probably Bellamy, but I don’t want him to be because I don’t think it would be good for him. I’m actually gonna go with Monty because I think he would take counsel from Bellamy and Clarke, keep a level head, and be able to separate personal feelings from what has to be done... but not to the level that Clarke would. I think he would be a nice in between.
20. Mount Weather had a lot of modern commodities. (example: Maya’s Ipod)What is the one thing you would snatch while there? There’s not a lot that I can think of that I would want for my own personal entertainment, but like maybe a water filtration system? Feel like that would come in clutch.
21. Do you think you’d have caught the virus spread through camp or would you have been immune like Octavia? I am the kind of person who goes to a doctor for one illness and catches another one while I’m in the waiting room. I WILL BE PATIENT ZERO, NO DOUBT.
22. What would your grounder tattoos look like? Hairstyle? War paint? Norse symbol for where there’s a will there’s a way kind of look for my tattooes, want that Octavia ponytail (because fuck that was a good look), and no war paint. My face looks like it melted at the end of the day with my makeup, there’s no telling how messy and tragic my war paint will look after a war. If I’m gonna be a grounder, I’m gonna look damn good doing it.
23. Favorite quote? Whatever the hell we want
24. Can you forgive Murphy for his actions? How about Bellamy? Yes and yes.
25. If one of the characters was in the Hunger Games, who would have the best shot at winning? I know Octavia is probably the right choice (but she did not win on her own, and I highly doubt she would get as lucky in the real hunger games) so I’m going to say Raven because she’ll be like those tech nerds who made the arena go boom. I think people would team up with her, not really thinking of her as a threat so they could kill her later on, and then she makes everything go boom and wins the damn thing.
26. Least favorite ship? Favorite ship? NOT INCLUDING CLEXA OR BELLARKE. Uh Octavia and Illian for least favorite? Like I don’t really think about ships that I do not ship, but their little storyline really freaked me out. Favorite, princess mechanic, forever and always.
27. A song that should be included in the next season, like when Radioactive was? Ummm, obviously it is an accoustic cover of Radioactive done by Shawn Mendes as he emerges from the bunker with everyone else (the accoustic cover he spent the last six years working on, by the way)
28. What would you do if you were stuck in the bunker with Murphy for all that time? Omg we would have the snarkiest time as we try to out-asshole each other. We’d be quick buds.
29.Opinion on Emori? Roan? Emori is chill. ROAN IS MY SON AND I MISS HIM SO MUCH AND I’M SO LIVID THAT HE DIED BY BEING DROWNED IN A DAMN WELL?? THAT’S THE MOST OOC NONSENSE I’VE EVER SEEN! IT’S PRINCE ROAN KOM AZGEDA GRANDSON OF THEO SON OF NIA CARETAKER OF THE THRONE AND KEEPER OF THE FLAME FOR CHRISTS SAKE
30. Would you want to be an extra that is killed off in a brutal way? No, I want to be an extra that keeps randomly doing unimportant tasks in the background and when you look me up on IMBD you get a “random teenager who once was seen having a conversation with David Miller” next to my name.
31. A character you’d like to learn more about and get flashbacks of? Uh, Roan. Like why was he banished? What’s going on with him and his mother? What kind of history does he have with Echo? Where was he during the first two seasons of the show? HAS HE EVER GOTTEN LAID BECAUSE THE FACT THAT HE DIDN’T GET WITH ANYONE AFTER GIVING SEX EYES TO LITERALLY EVERYONE MAKES NO DAMN SENSE JROTH?
32. A character you’d bang? Roan. Y’all know I’m Roan trash.
Tagging: @isla1975 @bellamyblakesfreckles @bellamyblake-kru (ignore if you’ve already been tagged. I’m too tired to check.)
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