#you sit down and start timelining the event making logics steps

[ald3r-wolfcak3]

I keep thinking about what if Aideen was split because of Garnok?

She created the island while stil was this centaur creature. She natured all the living things on it, making deers and blooming flowers. Keeping the island safe from the other part of the world.

And when Garnok was banished and crashed into the island, the impact broke the law of the world. Rifts opened to other dimention, magic went berserk and Aideen split to human and horse. She wasn't strong enough to protect the island alone, so she gifted her remaining lower to her new creatures, creating the soul riders and soul horses.

Aideen and the first four banished Garnok, but since Aideen power wasn't strong enough it was only a permanent solution. Each generation of the soul riders are stronger, since each reincarnation of Aideen is stronger.

Their goal is destroying Garnok and recreat the eden that never come to be.

#sso #alder wolfcake #look sse this is how you fix your stupid lore #you sit down and start timelining the event making logics steps #hire me and i fix your game i even can add good lessons for the kids

[urlocallesbiab]

ok the initial post for brotzly fake couple's therapy au has already gotten way too long, so i take this as a sign i should start posting things separately and establish a new navigation tag

so, either way, a lil background on the characters

todd: exactly the same shit as canon, just imagine that instead of the seer-of-universal-truths syndrome there's some regular non-magical neurological disease running in the brotzman family.

farah: mostly similar to canon, just a bit toned down. she's not exactly an one-woman army, but she is freakishly physically fit, combat-ready, and proficient with common types of firearms — significantly more than you would expect any random person to be; she had always wanted to become a part of the police force like her brothers and father, but never passed the screenings due to debilitating anxiety, ocd and autism (never tried to join the fbi or the military tho; both her skills and her family expectations aren't That high).

her father had gotten terminally sick when she was a teen, and that significantly cut their income and added to their spendings, usa healthcare system be damned; old family friend, successful enterpreneur patrick spring, had stepped in to support them both financially and morally. farah ended up being halfway raised by him, always hanging out at his house and playing with lydia; out of all her family, save for her father, farah was the closest to patrick.

some time before the main timeline events, maybe half a year or a year ago, farah, patrick and lydia were having a nice family outing — up until patrick had been shot to death in broad daylight. his history of rising to success hadn’t been exactly pretty, you see, and the organized crime eventually took what was due. farah still blames herself for letting that happen despite her training and her worrying habit of never leaving the house without her gun; but if you asked her, really asked her how would she go about preventing that, she wouldn't be able to give you a good answer — it's just that one second he was alive, and the next he was not.

lydia, as both the key witness and the fortune's inheritor, had been taken into the witness protection program; farah hasn't heard from her since. she misses her like crazy, possible even more than patrick. therapy was meant to help her cope with the ruinous ptsd from those events, and she's been slowly, slowly making progress. that day she was having an especially Bad One — after which she and dirk got shit-faced — was soon after her father's death.

dirk: he grew up in the foster care system, and as a pre-teen was adopted by a kind and soft-bellied, if a little strict, ex-military man on a good pension, scott riggins. dirk had always been a bright kid, fascinated by complex mathematics (oh, the patterns! the beauty chaos and order! the language of the universe!) and some strains of physics (especially quantum studies; it all started with an article on shrodinger's cat and went downhill from there), quickly picking up on underlying logic within numbers (way quicker than his little undiagnosed autistic brain picked up on most social cues); teachers always promised him a bright future, even with the chronic lack of resources. scott had made sure dirk would get access to the best education possible, be taught by best tutors available, enroll into the best school imaginable; he gave dirk everything, and all the boy had to do is put in some effort. and he tried, oh god did he try; but he didn't do it hard enough. the new schoolwork load was multiple times bigger and harder than the worst he had ever experienced before, and he would often grow exhausted, distracted, unfocused and loose-minded (the adhd never got diagnosed either). some days a new and curious configuration would catch his attention and he would crack down on it with fervor, but some days he would just sit there and chew on the same three problems for hours on end to no avail. on those bright days scott saw his potential, his true and exciting and wonderful potential, and wanted the kid to live up to it; on the brain-foggy days, when he failed to do so, scott grew dissappointed. and whenever he felt disappointed, dirk felt it tenfolds on his skin. scott wasn't violent, godforbid, he's not a monster — just a little strict: it's just that he frowned, and tutted, and shook his head, and told dirk off, and didn't kiss him, and said things that dirk deserved to hear no matter how it felt, and took his books away (if there was anything the kid loved as much as math, it was thrilling detective stories, and sci-fi, ans fantasy, preferably all at once, read in one sitting) so that he wouldn't get distracted, and sometimes wouldn't call dirk down for dinner until he was done with the homework.

it hurt terribly to have the only person who'd ever cared about dirk, who had chosen him out of everyone else, who had chosen him and stuck by him, the only person in the world who loved him, be upset with dirk. for the longest time, dirk was convinced that he simply was lazy, and awful, and ungrateful, and hopeless, and the worst person to ever live, with how he let his father down time after time. but over the years, his self-hatred got so large he couldn't carry it anymore, and it spilled onto the mental image of scott, just so that he could breathe again; over the years, he grew bitter and disillusioned. as a young adult, he still couldn't tell if scott's demands and ambitions were fueled by simple materialistic hopes of fame and monetary grants, or a vain desire for glory, or some weird roundabout way of achieving personal fulfillment, but he knew for sure: scott riggins wanted himself a pet boy genius, not a son.

when the time came to attend college, dirk picked cambridge over harward, mostly because he would take any excuse to get an ocean away from scott. and he passed the exams — with flying colors! he was, after all, exceptionally smart. the teachers were delighted to have him; three months later he got booted because he missed half the classes and didn’t do any homework: drunk on the newfound freedom, stressed out by a trans-atlantic move, and lacking the only accountability system (however flawed) he'd ever had. he didn't tell scott, of course — he wasn't ready to go back home, he would do anything to avoid going there. so he took the college-student-allowance his foster father kept sending him, none the wiser, and set out backpacking across britain and then the rest of europe. soon it turned out that travelling cross-country is slightly more costly than living at the dorms, and there were only so many plausible excuses he could use to cajole more money out of scott, and coming clean about his strategical-omissal-of-crucial-information-that-wasn't-tecnhically-outright-lying was out of the question, so dirk had to cut some costs: skip a meal here, sleep on a train station bench there, get chased out by foreign policemen once or twice, a few times of staying overnight at some shady moldy place with some shady people whose language he didn't speak too well — nothing any other travelling young person hasn't seen, truly. he was coping alright. eventually scott caught wind anyway, and dirk, not that dirty and scrawny, had been forcibly dragged home. from there it's been a steep decline in the relationship: more harsh demands and more desperate pleading, more affection followed by more coldness, threats and promises from scott, and a few failed attempts at coninued education, a few move-outs followed by a few move-back-ins, plus a few ultimately abandoned career choices from dirk, who never seemed to grow out of whatever it was that was wrong with him, even as a decade slowly passed and gave way to another one.

when todd meets dirk for the first time and asks the inevitable "so what do you do for a living?", dirk introduces himself as a writer, which, combined with his rather frivolous spending habits and impressive disposable income, leads todd to assume that dirk must be some literary genius, top-nyt-bestseller, author-of-future-classics madly successful type of guy — but in reality, he sits on his arse and writes experimental-storytelling-style sci-fi/fantasy/whodunnit fusions that no agency interested in commercial success wants to look at, he's been published only once by a tiny indie house that paid him jack shit and a penny in royalties, and half his money still comes from scott. that financial dependence is the main reason dirk's in the us at the moment — he's been pulled from his latest bout of doing volunteer work for a queer nonprofit in eastern europe by the threat of cutting his whole goddamn allowance off. as a compromise, he returned to the country but not to the city, claiming that he needed fresh scenery to inspire his creativity and maybe actually write a profitable book for once; really, he just hadn't been mentally ready yet to be in the same town as scott so soon. so, settle, washington it is, why the hell not.

by the way, "dirk gently" is his pen name — legally, he's still dirk riggins. also, in the skype calls he's sometimes talked into having, dirk still calls him "father", but behind his back it's been "scott" for almost two decades now: at some point growing up he felt the need to put some mental space between himself and that man in order to stay sane.

after his fateful Big Talk with todd, where dirk admitted the less pleasant parts of his childhood and youth in most detail he had ever did in his whole life, todd convinces him to start looking for a better job to support himself, change his legal name, and someday cut riggins off for good. also get some therapy, for fuck's sake, god.

#fake couple's therapy brotzly au #vikarambles #vika's personal dghda tag #gun violence mention #dghda #dirk gently's holistic detective agency (tv 2016) #dghda au #farah black #dirk gently #child abuse mention #......silly fake dating au innit? #farah black 🤝 dirk gently: ptsd 🤝 cptsd #colonel scott riggins #long post #.... im so glad ive decided to make this a separate post. yesterday evening i thought 'oh ill just jot down some thots' #but it grew into a monster of 1.5K words that ate most of my time today #if you catch any typos pls do let me know im not rereading All That #kp as this thang's main fun i hope you enjoy this generous serving of. uh. angst

[rahleeyah]

Hi! I want to tell you I am in awe of your writing. It’s powerful and moving and so true to characters. I’m always curious…what is your writing “process?” If you don’t mind me asking!

Oh this is a great question!!! We haven't had a writing question in a while.

My process is not something I usually think about; when I first saw this question I was about to say something like mostly what I do is I just sit very still and let the words come out. And that's true but not fair; that's only one piece of the puzzle.

The first piece is routine. I write at the same time every day. Weekdays it's first thing when I come home from work, weekends it's first thing when I wake up. Always the same time, always sitting in the same place - on my porch, away from distractions, with fresh air and a glass of water and some smokes. That last part is not recommended.

It is hard to write if I miss a few days. One day is fine, but if I go more than 2-3 (which I don't think I've done since Christmas) I'll be out of step and it'll take a while to get back in the groove. So that's the practical part, is I've got a time and space set aside to write and that makes it easier.

The next piece I guess is where the ideas come from. I rewatch a lot. I find watching helps me keep the character voices, but it also helps me make new connections or find new moments to explore. I'll post thoughts here or share them with friends and the back and forth helps flesh things a lot. Most of the time an idea for a story is like a lightning strike; it feels as if it's come out of nowhere. But it isn't completely organic; I spend a lot of time thinking about ideas. In the shower, in the car, before bed, in snippets on tumblr. You have to cultivate the idea generating part of your brain. Sometimes I'll play with a story in my head for weeks and it won't go anywhere; sometimes the whole thing just appears fully formed in my brain like Jesus air dropped it to me. But you gotta be open to the spirit before the spirit can move you, you know?

So we have a place to write and we have an idea, how do we make a story?

A story is like a road. It is going from point A to point B and we gotta lay the pavers to get there. A story like hov is easy; it's set in canon so there's episodes to draw from, and there's a clear linear progression from not pregnant to pregnant to baby. There's a time frame and there's built in milestones. Something like let's take long way down, madam Jean, for example, is gonna be totally different, bc it isn't set in canon and there is no roadmap to get from strangers to happily ever after.

A lot of the time I don't look at the big picture bc it's overwhelming. It feels insurmountable, if I think about how many chapters it'll take and how much time it'll take. I'm eating this elephant one bite at a time, just like my mama said. So we write the first scene. The first paver that goes down is the Problem.

Not to be all freshman English class but every story is centered on conflict. Those conflicts can be anything; it doesn't have to be a "fight", an actual literally good guy vs bad guy. It just has to be an issue. Liv is pregnant but Elliot is her partner and they're not supposed to sleep together. Lucien works for the police but he's intrigued by the local madam. Eli doesn't know who Liv is and he's worried about his dad. Bernie Stabler shows up unannounced. All of these are Problems.

Once we have a Problem, we can start working on the Solution. We do this one step at a time. We do not rush.

So every day, I read over the last chapter I wrote. Where are we, what's happened, what are the Conflicts, what is the next logical step? How do we address it in one scene?

Lucien saw the madam, and she asked him to look after a pregnant girl. Ok now he has to go back to the brothel in the next chapter. That moves the timeline forward and moves us closer to the end goal, bc while Lucien is looking after the girl he talks to Jean, and we plant the seeds of them falling in love. It also gives us one piece of action to work on, one moment in time to write. I sit down, I write Lucien going to the brothel, I write him examining the girl and talking to Jean, boom there's one scene we're done. We tie those two things together; logical progression of Plot events, and the emotional undercurrent. I like it best when a chapter has both.

Themes come out naturally most of the time. Matrilineal, for example, was just me sitting down to write about Bernie and I used Amanda bc I love an outside pov. But as I was writing I'm thinking you know, Amanda has a complicated relationship with her mom. Shit, so does Liv. And they're both mothers now. And so is Bernie. And the emotional threads come out naturally as a result of who these people are. The piece wasn't gonna be about mothers but then it became obvious that it had to be.

Motifs appear the same way. The first chapter of bury my heart, I used this is love. That wasn't originally intentional, but when I did it the second time I thought there it is, and kept using it, and that's where the gut punch of the final line comes from; the meaning has changed from joy to sorrow and it is only impactful bc of the repetition and our previous connection to it.

I use a lot of imagery, and a lot of it tends to be religious - Jean is very Catholic, and so is Elliot, so for both Blake and svu there's room to play with it there. I like similes, I like metaphors, I like synecdoche - there's a fun one. I like to play with putting words together in different ways but that stuff doesn't happen in the car, or the shower, or on my lunch break; that usually only happens when I'm writing. I have to sit down and be still and let my brain go.

Conflict, themes, motifs, images, characters, these are the ingredients that make a story. And the more you work with them the easier they come. It just takes practice. But one of the best ways to improve is to read. See what's possible. See how other people have put words together. Someone commented once about how sometimes I say a lot with very few words; that is something I picked up from two very different places. Stephen King is great about short, simple, powerful sentences that knock your socks off. And there's a recurring line in my favorite series, the Belgariad, where when things are bad the man character goes to his aunt, who has raised him since he was a baby and is essentially his mother, and she holds him, and everything was all right again. It is a simple, repeated phrase about love, and comfort, and how no matter how terrifying the world can be, love brings healing and hope. There are quotes scattered throughout my work. Olivia quotes Heraclitus to herself in bury my heart; yes I am a classics major but my connection to that quote comes from the film the emperor's club. Inspiration is everywhere; draw on all of it.

This is. Probably more information than you were looking for but once I got started I couldn't stop.

#anonymous

[lovelivingmydreams]

A might have been part 2

Okay listen. If you really believed for even a moment that I was going to make an alternative past for @kingcreativityau where King got to be friends with baby instinct/fear and write all the way up to the split and then not include everything that happened after... Do you guys know me at all? My brain will not be sattisfied with this narative until i have written at least up until the return. And if there ever comes a time where the og comic comes to a conclusion, you better believe I’ll write how all of those events transpired in this alternate version of the timeline. So like it or not, at least two more parts are coming. So there. Enjoy!

part 1 here

A friendship for the ages

Creativity blinked in confusion. What… What was he doing? He looked up and saw… Himself? “Wow, you are just like me!” they chorused. They looked at each other stunned for a moment before they burst out laughing. They got up and shook hands. “Creativity,” they introduced themselves, laughing once more. “Wow, no kidding,” they snorted. “King?” a broken voice wondered. Both looked up. Curious about who spoke. Someone about their height took a step closer, pushing away from a smaller boy. Wait they knew this guy right? The name was at the tip of their tongue. “Not me. Is he talking to you?” they both wondered, looking at each other. “Guess not,” they shrugged. But King did sound familiar, though it didn’t quite feel like them. “I call Prince!” the one in the red cape declared. “Why?” The green caped one pouted. “Because I was first to call prince!” the prince reasoned. “Oh… That makes sense. Then I’m duke!” duke grinned. They turned to the boy, both grinning widely. Seemingly unaware of the atmosphere surrounding their appearance. Prince stepped forward proudly. “I am Prince!” he announced with a bow. “Nice to officially make your acquaintance.” Because they did know him didn’t they? Why was it such a mess in their heads? “Duke!” the other cackled. “Duke, dukey!” he giggled then. “I’m dukey,” he exclaimed with glee. “This… Is quite the unexpected turn,” a taller boy with glasses said. “Unexpected? You killed king! And all you can say about it is that it was unexpected?” The familiar boy cried, making the tall boy flinch. “Fear, kiddo…” the shorter boy soothed. Fear! “Oh! Fear! You are Fear!” Duke shouted, jumping up and down as he pointed at Fear. “You are our friend right?” Prince added. Fear looked up at them, tears still in their eyes. “Why are you sad? Whom must I slay?” Prince asked. “Yeah! We’ll make them poop their pants!” Duke added. Fear took a step back and shook his head. “You stay away,” he sobbed and took of. “Fear!” the little boy with glasses pleaded. The twins looked at each other. “What did we say?” “Fear simply needs time to ‘mourn’ your previous form. He’s highly emotional, it was to be expected that he would not respond well to such a big change with no time to mentally prepare. Let him have his tantrum. He’ll be back soon,” the tall boy stated firmly, adjusting his glasses. The boys wanted to believe him but both he and the little guy who introduced himself as Morality and the other as Logic cast worried glances in the direction Fear had ran of to. Sometimes they’d disappear in that direction and come back looking sad. Prince and Duke got to know the mindscape and, more importantly, the imagination fairly quickly and both agreed that Thomas was the most amazing person in the world and deserved everything he wanted. Sure Duke could be a bit gross sometimes and Prince could get a bit egocentric and too caught up with his own thoughts. But they were doing well. Logic was frustrated though that neither had interest in homework. And Morality seemed upset that they didn’t care much for playing with the other kids. Not even Thomas’ brothers. Well that was their problem really. The twins had each other. There was one side they were interested in though. Fear. The ‘tantrum' as Logic called it had still not blown over and everyone seemed worried. So, deciding to investigate to satisfy their curiosity they went looking for him. They knew what direction to go in. The others had gone to talk to Fear a bunch of times since he left. All they had to do was walk in the direction they went until they found him right? The walk was long, but eventually they saw a big willow. No Fear though. Was he in the shadowy part of the mind? “Stop!” The twins froze and looked at the willow. Had the tree just shouted at them? “Hello?” Prince called. “Leave me alone!” They knew that voice! The twins ran up to the tree and pushed the branches out of their way and froze. Fear was sitting up in the higher branches, hood pulled over his face and four spider legs springing from underneath his clothes. He looked down and six purple eyes lit up in the dark. “I said go!” he growled. A yellow snake slithered up from a hole in the tree wrapping itself protectively/comfortingly around his figure. “That is so cool!” Duke grinned getting himself a jab into the ribs from his brother. “Fear. We… We just wanted to know why you don’t want to be our friend. Did we do something?” Prince asked gently. “No! I’m keeping everyone safe. People who are nice to me get hurt.” “That isn’t true fear…” the snake hissed gently, surprising the twins. Fear glared at the snake. “Isn’t it Deceit?” he growled, making the snake recoil. “Thought so. Just… Go with them. I’ll be fine,” he muttered as he curled in on himself and wrapped his legs around himself like a cage. “That’s a lie. You aren’t fine,” Deceit objected. “Is he… Is this because we aren’t king?” Prince wondered nervously. For all his grandness he was terrified of falling short. He didn’t want to be less wonderful than this King person. If he wasn’t as good or better than the original, what was the point of him existing? “This has nothing you do with that! Just leave me alone!” Fear growled hiding in his hoodie. The snake sighed and came down, turning into a teen boy. Duke whistled impressed, while Prince looked away. Something about the scaled half of the boy's face made something in his gut twist. It felt like guilt. But he’d never met this side. What could he have done to feel this way? “Maybe you two have more luck,” Deceit muttered as he left the shelter of the Willow. “Finally,” Fear huffed. “Now if you two would kindly go back to the central consciousness and get back to work. Thomas needs you two too much for you to waste time on me.” Prince rolled his eyes. “As if. Logic is making homework and if we try to have fun now we’ll get yelled at.” That caught Fear’s attention. “You aren’t helping?” he asked confused. “Why would we? Homework is boring,” Prince scoffed as he put a hand on his hip and made a gesture with his other as if to indicate how obvious his statement was. “Yeah, we only ‘get in the way’,” Duke chipped in. Sounding like he was quoting Logic. Fear rolled his eyes. Honestly. “Have you not been listening to anything Morality’s been teaching you?” he asked. “I am a prince! I know good from bad!” Prince objected, sounding rather insulted. “Not about being moral… Has Logic been showing you around then?” Fear wondered. He had assumed Morality would take up the role of care taker. But maybe Logic had taken up the task of instructing the new sides in the ways of the mindscape? “Showing us around?” Duke wondered as he and his brother exchanged glances. “Wait… so they just… Expected you two to know what to do?” Fear asked shocked. “What is there to know? We are creativity. We found the imagination and that is that,” Prince huffed. Though he was intrigued by the idea of more, he wasn't going to admit to being I’ll informed. Fear jumped out of the tree and took them both in. “You’re not lying to get me to come back are you?” The confusion on the twin’s faces must’ve been enough. “Fine,” Fear surrendered grumpily as he started walking to the central conscience. “I’ll show you the basics, but then I’m kicking Logic’s behind in gear and heading back home.” The twins protested, but were secretly excited. They’d needed someone to actually break their ties when they disagreed. To actually listen to their stories and give input other than almost blind praise or cold analysis. Not to mention the fact that they had known him as a friend when they woke up while the others had been mostly strangers in their eyes. That had to mean something. Surely he was a fun playmate. When they saw the stress bunnies for the first time they were absolutely delighted to have something to hunt. And surely enough, Fear was enjoying himself too. Fear showed them how to make learning fun for Thomas and he even showed them that playing was more fun with others. And though he insisted he’d leave again soon, and avoided the others for a good while, he stuck around. Prince and Duke soon discovered just how far Fear was willing to go to keep them safe. During the first nightmare Fear encountered with them he defended them fiercely. Actually almost injuring himself. The twins were shocked by this and took better care to make sure Fear didn’t endanger himself for their sake again. “You aren’t really going back to the willow are you?” Prince asked one day, almost timidly, though he tried his best to sound casual. Fear shifted. The twins knew how to work with the others, they understood what to do with stress and worries and fears, they knew who to turn to when trouble arose… But he could find a million reasons not to leave them and he knew why. He had grown attached to them. He’d tried not to. It felt like a betrayal to King and he still worried he’d loose them right when he got comfortable with the new situation. But he couldn’t leave their side now. “Nah. I don’t trust you two not to burn down the mindscape without me keeping an eye on you,” he teased. Prince scoffed and gave him a push. Duke just shrugged, because honestly? He would definitely cause chaos and destruction if Fear didn’t redirect him every once in a while. Fear knew that if he was staying he should talk with Logic and Morality. “Padre! Teach! We got someone here who wants to talk to you,” Prince announced. The two sides turned and the twins made way to show Fear was with them greeting both sides with an awkward wave. Morality gasped and clasped his hands in front of his face. “Kiddo! Are… Are you back to stay?” he asked carefully. “I mean… I’ll stay out of the way if you want. I just… Yeah, I’m back. Those two need babysitting and neither of you are up to that it seems so…” He felt two fists push at his shoulders and chuckled. “You know I’m right,” he grinned. Then he looked up at the two sides he’d been rather rude to. “Listen, I’m still not happy about you guys not including everyone in the decision. But Princey and Duke don’t seem to be upset with you two. Not really, so I can’t be either. You tried to do what was best for Thomas. I can’t be mad about that. I just… I was afraid to let you guys back in I guess.” Fear couldn't meet their eyes. He was sure they hated him by now. He'd been pushing them away and…

Suddenly he was tackled in a hug by Morality.

“Oh kiddo. Of course you're welcome back!”

“Indeed. Though you might not have been talking to us, we have noticed your efforts. Or was I to believe that the twins suddenly got interested in assisting with schoolwork on their own?”

Fear shrugged as best as he could while still being embraced by the heart.

“From what I heard, yeah? I mean you guys seem to expect them to just know how things work.”

Logic nodded. “I see. Well we did attempt to explain at first, but we failed to communicate with the twins properly.” It had been puzzling to him why the twins couldn’t just follow his instructions. He would have to ask Fear what he’d done to get them suddenly interested in helping out. But almost overnight Logic had gone from overseeing the homework by himself to having two eager assistants making Thomas excited to learn again.

Morality finally let go and grinned up at him. “Guess a dad can sometimes learn a thing or two from his son,” he teased. Recalling how Prince had suddenly started to include his family and classmates in the stories he and Thomas made again. How Duke’s unfiltered curiosity started branching out to other people as well. How had Fear done that? Fear rolled his eyes. “Whatever short…” the teasing remark was cut off as Fear looked Morality up and down a few times. “Did you get taller?” he asked perplexed.

He was sure Morality used to be a head shorter than him. But now the difference was less than an inch.

“Um yeah. I guess…” Morality mused waving his hand above their heads in fascination. “I didn't really notice. Gosh. Maybe I’ll end up taller than you. Wouldn't that be something?” he chuckled.

Fear just shrugged dismissively.

“Nuh uh! We'll be the tallest!” Prince declared. “Just you wait!”

“Fear is going to be a midget forever though!” Duke chuckled.

“What is that supposed to mean?” Fear frowned.

In answer the twins flanked him and he could see they were both taller than him. Not by much, but enough that he couldn't deny it once he paid attention to it. Of course. Even when he was no longer the youngest he was destined to be the baby of the group. Well better remind the twins why he's called Fear then.

“You have five seconds,” he smirked.

“Huh?” Duke wondered.

“Four seconds, “ Fear grinned as his eyes lit up with a violet shine.

“Duke run!” Prince urged and the two took of. Fear chuckled for a few seconds before he let his spider voice echo through the mindscape. “One, Here I come.” And then he took off after the twins.

“He’s a little different isn't he?” Morality mused worriedly as he listened for the sounds in the mindscape, relieved to hear nothing but laughter fill the metaphysical air. Fear was just playing.

“As was to be expected. Fear held a strong attachment to king. More so than either of us. I don't think that I would've been able to convince him to help me stage a coup so to speak if it had come to that.

That loyalty and attachment has now transferred to the twins in some measure, but that does not replace what he had with King. The roles seem to have switched though. He is the caretaker now, though the twins seemed ready to fight on his behalf when they first formed…” Logic summarized looking into his notes. He’d been cataloguing the changes in the Thomasphere after the split and how they correlated to changes in Thomas’ over all wellbeing for future reference.

“They are more equal now,” Morality noted. “Fear wouldn't have dreamed to initiate such a game with King, or to say anything suggesting he needed help. I think… “ Morality frowned. There was no way to say this without sounding terrible. “They might both be happier like this. King… he would want this for Fear,” he decided. King cared for Fear almost as much as he cared for Thomas. It was out of concern for them that he’d asked them to do this. He might not have expected this outcome, but he would understand right?

“So long as the progress of the past week keeps up, Thomas will greatly benefit of the situation.” Logic supplied.

Morality let out a sigh. Thomas would be fine and Fear would fully forgive them with time. And then they could build on this new foundation. He would make sure his family stayed happy. That was his job. He was the dad after all.

It was only a matter of time before the twins would run into Deceit. Especially since the Dukes ideas were unpleasant to Thomas more often than not. Fear usually managed to get Duke to use his ‘inside voice’. Sometimes Prince would notice Fear was getting uncomfortable and reign his brother in. But that couldn’t last forever.

“What is going on here?” Deceit wondered as he walked in on the trio. Duke paused in his rambling and Prince looked up from where he and Fear were sitting on the ground, his arm around the nervous side’s shoulder while Fear had been curled up in a ball trying to block out the images Duke was planting in his head. Once he saw who it was though Prince looked down, he still didn’t like looking at that scaled face.

Fear looked up and went from comforted to comforting. He didn't know what happened, but he did know that for some reason king had changed Deceit and Prince had inherited some sort of phantom guilt.

“Snake-face hi!” Duke on the other hand found it amazing.

“You’re clearly the charmer of the two,” Deceit drawled. Fear was pretty sure that some of his change in attitude had to do with him spending so much time with Dee right after what everyone just called ‘the split’.

He had simply rubbed off on him. “Hi Dee,” Fear smiled tensely. “Fear, good to see you out and about,” Deceit smiled warmly. It was odd. When King first discovered Instinct, he’d been sure he wouldn’t like the new side. He didn’t like how excited King already was for a new friend. And by all accounts he should’ve stayed away from him, but he just couldn’t help but feel a bond with him. They both had a job that wasn’t particularly fun to do, both had parts of them the others disliked. And they both took King’s split hard. Not that he had told Fear of the latter. What was the point? And King hadn’t wanted Fear to know anyway.

“Yeah, I guess you were right. I couldn’t hide away forever,” Fear smiled tensely. “What seems to be the problem here?” Deceit wondered. Something had called him here after all. He knew he couldn’t avoid talking to the twins forever, but he had pretended he could. And now he had to make a stellar first impression. Great. “Oh… Did I do the thing again?” Duke wondered. He didn’t get why the others got upset over is suggestions so much, but they did and he tried to not be too much. But now he really was just having some fun. He wasn't saying Thomas should do anything. He was just making pictures.

Still, Fear was clearly upset. “It’s… It’s fine. You can’t always help it,” Fear assured him. Duke looked around and noticed an abundance of stress bunnies and kittens and puppies, most of them slightly more grotesque than Fear’s usual were. He liked it. But why hadn’t Fear gotten rid of them yet? It wasn’t like him to let them roam free for long.

“Want some help with those?” Deceit wondered as he gestured around. Fear looked at the dozens of creatures and let out a tired sigh. “I’ll get it. Just… I need a moment,” he muttered. “Very well. Duke was it?” Deceit asked. Duke nodded. “I need some help maintaining the Willow. Would you be so kind?” Fear frowned. What? Duke just jumped up with a big smile. “Of course double D!” he grinned. “Wonderful. Fear, Prince, you don’t mind if I borrow him for a couple of hours right?” he asked. Fear looked at Prince who just shrugged. “If he’s okay with it. But he will come back after right?” The prince asked tensely. “Of course. I’ll send him straight to the imagination even,” Deceit bowed before leaving, the Duke following right by his side, ranting about one thing or another. Fear looked at Prince. “You sure you are okay with this? You two haven’t been apart since… Well. Ever.” Prince shrugged again. “I… I think so. We don’t have to be together all the time right?” Fear shrugged. “I guess not,” he allowed. They weren’t one person anymore after all. Fear tried to remember that, but it was still strange sometimes. “I’m going to round up those guys,” he announced as he got up. Prince followed his example. “Want some help with that?” Fear hesitated, he didn’t usually ask anyone for help. The point was that he’d deal with them alone right? He'd just told Dee he could handle it… “Morality says that friends should be able to count on us to help them. So… I want to help,” Prince insisted. Fear smiled at that. “Yeah, sounds fun,” he allowed. As Deceit promised, Duke returned to the imagination after a few hours. All the shadow creatures had been dealt with and Duke was back to a level of crazy Fear could handle. Thomas had not been negatively affected by Dukes mood after he went to the back of the mind it seemed. The twins started going off on their own more often after that. Duke tended to venture to the willow to chat with Deceit for a while, while Prince remained on the front of the mind at all times. Fear wandered between the two. He couldn’t really handle not seeing either for too long. Still things started to get to a new sort of normal and Morality and Logic became more and more convinced every day that they’d done the right thing. Everyone was happier now. That’s what Morality thought, until he found Fear, sitting in a corner of the mind by himself. Which was unusual. “Heya kiddo. Where are the twins?” he wondered gently as he knelt down. He was a good inch taller than Fear by now. Which made Fear officially the shortest of the group, a fact the twins loved to tease him about. “Duke is at the willow and Prince is fighting a dragon or a witch, I don’t know,” Fear shrugged, his eyes shimmering. Had he been crying? “Ok… And why are you here all by yourself?” If Prince was fighting something, Fear would usually stick close by just in case. And sometimes that was indeed needed, though Morality and Logic both wondered if Prince occasionally just liked having Fear save him and fuss over him afterwards.

“I… It just hurt too much today,” he whispered, a sob breaking free. Morality felt a sharp pain in his chest. He knew what Fear meant and he couldn’t believe he never picked up on this. Of course spending time with the twins was hard on Fear. “Oh Kiddo… Do you want a hug?” Fear didn’t always allow physical affection. This time however he seemed to be really in need of some, because he almost immediately latched onto the fatherly side and started sobbing. “I care about them, I really do! But I miss him so much!” he tried to explain. “Of course. Loving them doesn’t take away how you felt about him. I think those feelings actually make each other stronger. Remember what he said? That it didn’t matter what name you used, you’d always be his friend? This is sort of like that,” Morality assured him. “I… I know… Most of the time. But sometimes I feel so bad for liking them, and then I feel bad about feeling bad…  What if that never stops? I don’t want to hurt them!” he pleaded “It’ll get better. There will be bad days, but it’ll get better. I miss him too. I know it wasn’t the same as it was for you. But he was important to me too.” “Sorry, I… I didn’t mean-” “No kiddo, that’s not what I meant. I was just trying to say that I understand. And I’m here to listen. Okay? Just come to your dear old dad whenever you need to okay? I’ve got you.” Fear let himself relax into the embrace and cry the tears he’d been holding back for months. He didn’t notice someone was watching them. Morality did though, and he tried not to let the accusatory glare get to him. Deceit could think of this what he wanted. Morality was just trying to look out for his kids. Things got a little better after that. Fear was more relaxed when hanging out in the back of the mind, the vague memories of being an incorporeal instinct not as haunting as they once had been. He got even bolder in his banter with the twins. He was also a bit more comfortable with letting them be without him from time to time. And he got a bit braver when it came to confronting the uglier parts of the past. “I’m just saying. If you ask them they’ll probably change you back,” he insisted as he laid down in the patch of grass underneath the willow. The twins were doing a school project with Logic and he had chosen to catch up with Deceit who still didn’t come up to the central consciousness except to retrieve Duke when needed.

“I don’t want them to change me back Fear, drop it.” “Then why are you hiding away all of the time?” Fear countered. “I know Princey is kinda awkward around you, but that won't get better if he never gets to know you. And the others will warm up to you. I'll have your back remember? No matter what happened between you and him, the twins deserve a chance don't they?” Fear pointed out. Deceit sighed. “I suppose you have a point… And Duke isn’t horrible company,” he allowed. Fear smiled and they both started debating over something Thomas' teacher did that week. The subject laid at rest. Deceit never did ask the twins to return his face to normal. He felt it was fitting honestly. A permanent warning to everyone of what he was. Princey slowly relaxed around Deceit as the later visited the central consciousness more often. And once again things in the mindscape improved.

#kingau #sanders sides #tssides #creativitytwins #virgil sanders #patton sanders #logan sanders #janus sanders #this au lives rent free in my head #but i need the space #please send help

[fabricated-misslieness]

Peter Parker x gender neutral hero reader

Had the idea out of nowhere, thought it’d be fun

Reader has the ability to resurrect, but have they told anybody? Guess what, no. This technically means that they’d be invulnerable to eternal death by old age, except they’d live dying from old age over and over until the end of time.

Requested: No

Word Count: 1842

Warnings: Major character death, swearing, angst to fluff, sad Peter, promise rings, car crash, atheist Peter and atheist reader, swearing

He thought the 5 stages of grief were false, just a meme to laugh at on the internet. Boy, was he wrong. It was real, all too real.

You'd proven him wrong.

He wished all the ceremonies would be done.

They were overwhelming. He barely had any time to grief before all the events had begun. As a result, he had to bottle up all his feelings. All those speeches he gave in frustration, all those fake smiles he had to give, and all those condolences he had to receive, he wanted it all to be over. When he had the time and everything was over, he finally realized that you were truly gone.

He wished he could have warned you sooner.

“Look out!” His spider-sense had told him before he could warn you. Those were his last words to you. All the pleading, shouting, sobbing.. that’d been done when you were long gone. It was his fault and he would never stop blaming himself for it.

He wished that by some miracle, you’d be with him again.

You didn’t have powers like him, you didn’t have powers, tenacity or years of training like most of the Avengers. You were just you, a teen without a family, with bare strength, flexibility, and the biggest heart he knew. Perhaps in another timeline, you’d never become a hero. You’d just be his lover, supportive and loving and caring and all that. He would do anything, kill, betray, massacre, if it meant having you back. Maybe it was selfish, maybe it was irrational, but he wanted you to be here, with him. 

He wished you’d never left him.

But Peter can’t control life and death, the same way he couldn’t control your actions. You were gone. Nobody could change that and nobody would. He should stop visiting that sapling.. or maybe he should go more frequently. It made him cry more but… maybe that was the way to let you go.

He wished to live forever.

To visit that tree every single day until he died, to see it grow the size of a Coast Redwood, because he knew you were strong enough for that. To live for you, to continue going for you. You’d want that. You’d wanted kids, you’d wanted marriage, you wanted to die of old age with him, you wanted to do so much with him. If he couldn’t do most of those things, at least he could do one. At least he could live like you wanted him to.

Ned, Tony, the Avengers, they were like family to him. They, along with aunt May, had helped Peter come to terms with you. They'd been with him through and through, just like you had once.

Which is why he started all over again when he saw you.

“Hey Peter.” Soft-spoken words in the same gentle voice he’d learned to love. Yet, why was he hearing this again? For a second, he contemplated this, thinking about all the possibilities. This could be a new person with the same voice, he could be hallucinating, which makes ‘I can still hear their voice’ true; this could be some sort of recording… this could be you.

He whips around, almost too fast, to see you, in the flesh. This couldn’t be. You’d died, for god’s sake, you’d died! He saw your lifeless corpse. He was there at your funeral, he looked into your casket at the reception, you were there. So why the fuck are you here now?

“Who-” Peter chokes back a sob. He can feel the tears prick his eyes; he thought he’d ran out of shit to cry out, yet his body finds a way to defy him. “Who the fuck are you?” He has a right to be confused, and to feel threatened. He’s a teenager with superpowers who’d witnessed his partner’s death, and then suddenly he’s back in front of him as if nothing had happened. For all he knew, this could be a new supervillain with transformation powers. Loki and other mutants proved that anything could be possible.

"I know you're confused, and probably scared, but…" You step forward slowly, arms cautiously reaching out to your love. Peter slaps your hand away, but you understand why.

"No shit!" Peter shouts, backing away from you and towards his web shooters. Whoever you were, supervillain or not, you definitely knew about his powers. He could climb up the wall and get to safety. Though everything in him was fighting against his logic and longing to hear you speak and explain.

"I'm not here to hurt you," You step back, remembering just how shitty that phrase is. It's also a phrase a villain would use, and Peter knows that perfectly well. "I'm sorry about that. I don't mean it like a supervillain." It really felt like that was you, but he couldn't trust you until he was sure. "Peter, I'm your lover. I'm (y/n)."

Peter almost runs into your arms but he fights to stop himself. "How do I know that's you?" He shouts. The thin walls would alert neighbors, but he didn't care.

At one point, he'd begged and pleaded for you to come back. Now you were in front of him, and he hadn't done anything for this to happen; he was sure it wasn't those gods he prayed to, as an atheist.

"You can't." You mutter under your breath, hoping he doesn't catch it. You hadn't thought this through enough. You fiddled with your hands, pacing back and forth. Unbeknownst to you, you were scaring Peter. The pacing had made you look insane. Then, you got a thought. The promise rings you'd gotten each other like the cheesy naive teens you were. They were unique, custom-made, courtesy of Tony, and you were buried with yours. "Peter." 

"I was buried with this. There's no other like it." You hold up your hand, showing him the ring. "Hell, I was buried in these!" You gesture towards yourself.

Tears stream down Peter's face as he scrambles for his ring. He'd left his in his nightstand drawer while he cried all those nights. The engravings had scratched against his skin as he wiped his cheeks. He grabs it out of the mess of the drawer, the sight of it causing the tears to start rolling in bigger, hotter droplets.

"(y/n)!" Peter cried out. The promise ring was enough to prove you were… you. Plus, you looked sincere.

"Sweetheart." You sigh out of relief. Peter rushes over to you, wrapping his arms around you in a concerningly weak hug. He buries his head into your chest. You kiss him his hair multiple times to reassure him. "I love you, I'd never leave you."

"But you did!" Peter sobs, further staining your burial clothes. You didn't particularly like them or anything. Peter knew that, but your family was in charge of it.

"I know I did, I'm sorry." You cup Peter's cheeks and pull him to look up at you. The sight of his face, puffy and teary-eyed, it made you feel bad because you were the cause of it. "How about we sit down and I explain?"

He nods, pulling you over to the bed.

"You need anything? Water or..?" He shakes his head.

You sit on the bed, but Peter pushes you to lay down. He snuggles into your side, still sniffling but doing better. "Well, where do I start?"

You run a hand through Peter's hair as you think. "For starters, I can resurrect."

"What the fuck."

"I know, totally weird. I figured out when I got into a car crash. I was pronounced dead on the hospital bed, but when they came back to move the body, I was suddenly alive again. Nobody had an explanation, since they tried with a defibrillator earlier and it hadn't worked." Peter reaches for your hand. "They called it a miracle, some work of god. It sounded like bullshit so I never believed it. There was never really a second time until now, which proved my ongoing theory."

"That's… rough." He really didn’t have anything to say.

"That's rough, buddy." You quoted, to which Peter laughed.

For a moment, you sit in silence. Neither of you know what to say or even if you shouldn't talk. Maybe you should get up or maybe you should stay. Peter speaks up, ending both of your insecurities.

“So.. you’re alive. Does that mean we’ll get our happy ending? Get married… maybe have kids?” He looks up at you with pleading eyes, even if he knows you agree. You got these promise rings and you’d talked about your happy ending a whole lot. Should you be thinking that far ahead? Whenever you thought about the future, all you saw was Peter as your husband.

“Everything we’ve talked about. Yes.” You sit up a bit, which confuses Peter for a second until you pull him onto your lap and pepper kisses all over his face. It’s something you commonly do when talking about stuff like that.

“I missed this.” Peter mumbled. “But I do have one question, well, maybe a couple.”

“Ask away.”

“You were buried with the ring, so what happened with the grave?” You grimace, which makes Peter giggle in anticipation for the obviously chaotic story you’re about to tell.

“I dunno what happened, but it exploded. When I woke up the casket was broken and the dirt above it was scattered everywhere. Might have messed up other graves, hopefully the dead don’t come after me.” Speaking of which, you rub a little dirt smudge off your ring.

“Did it happen at the hospital, too?”

“No.” You shake your head, gazing off as you think about it. “Maybe it’s my powers looking after me. After all, I wouldn’t love being buried alive.”

Peter winces at the thought. “Right. Wouldn’t your powers mean that you’re immortal?”

“Yeah…” You frown, pressing a kiss on Peter’s nose to reassure the both of you, maybe more for yourself. “I would be, and I’d be very lonely too. Damn, never thought about that.” 

Peter pulls your hand up to his lips to kiss your ring. “Then live for me, just as I did for like a week.”

“A week? It’s been that long?” You scratch your head. “It was a few hours at the hospital. Maybe it’s cause of how brutal that dude beat me.” You shiver, remembering the pain you’d felt right before your death. “Has it made the news?”

“Yea. It’s like a movie now.” Peter laughs. “Fighting crime while the criminals think you’re a ghost. Wait.. wouldn’t that mean you’d have to hide your identity? I’d be alone with school, nobody to defend me from flash? Man, that’d suck.”

“Unfortunately. Although the crime fighting part is fun, the rest would be awful. Well, I could get a new identity. That cool haircut I’ve always wanted, a new cool name like… I don’t know, Remy?”

Peter laughs loudly, “Remy is not a cool name!”

“Hey, don’t hate on the Ratatouille rat.”

#swearshirt #peter parker x reader #spider-man x reader #mcu x reader #marvel x reader #angst #angst fic

[fireinmywoods]

the heart of the matter (is Leonard McCoy)

Followers...friends. I come to you today, hat in hand, to ask for your support in a certain fandom matter, a trifling concern of little real consequence which nevertheless has been driving me absolutely cross-eyed bonkers for some years now.

Simply put: can we please all agree that Bones is the heart of the Enterprise???

In AOS, I mean. I’m not aware of any debate over this when it comes to TOS, where the roles of the triumvirate have always been explicit, though there are a few different ways to identify them:

Spock = logos = superego = head

Bones = pathos = id = heart

Kirk = ethos = ego = soul

So clear! So clean! So universally accepted by Trek fandom at large!

Oh, but things get murkier in AOS, and there are plenty of posts floating around which suggest that it’s Kirk, not McCoy, who serves as the heart in the Kelvin timeline. Even the writers of the first two AOS films have outright stated that their interpretation of the triumvirate had the original roles switched, with Kirk as the highly emotional one and McCoy as the arbiter between Kirk’s passion and Spock’s logic. It’s true that this technically counts as a Word of God pronouncement by the actual creators of 2/3 of the series thus far, which some would argue renders it canon. However, it’s equally true that those same creators also felt that Kirk was a fuckboi and that Benedict Cumberbatch wonderfully embodied their vision for Khan Noonien Singh, so honestly, who gives a hot hollerin’ fuck what those dingdongs think. This seems as justified a time as any to invoke Death of the Author, and in fact, it’s my firm belief that despite the writers’ intentions, Star Trek and Into Darkness both support the original triumvirate breakdown.

Under the cut you’ll find a long-winded and self-indulgent ~*~character analysis~*~ of the Kelvin-timeline incarnations of Jim Kirk and Leonard “Bones” McCoy, reviewing why Leonard is still unmistakably the heart, unpacking what the hell Jim’s deal is, and finally taking a look at some key examples from canon, because ya girl believes in showing her work.

Let’s get down to business.

[A quick warning, as this is starting to spread beyond my own followers: if you don’t like McKirk as a romantic pairing, you ain’t gonna like part IV, so I’d bow out before then or just take your leave now.]

i. Leonard

Independent of Jim’s characterization, it should be blindingly obvious that Leonard is the heart. He’s by far the most nakedly emotional of our seven core crew members, a trait we see writ large and small throughout the films. He’s reactive; he’s passionate; he’s humane. He cares, first and foremost.

Not about Starfleet, of course. Leonard doesn’t give a damn about playing the game or advancing his career, or even really about the Enterprise’s mission - he has no desire to explore strange new worlds, he’ll pass on seeking out new life and new civilizations, and he spends half his time trying to convince everyone else that boldly going where no man has gone before is a great way to die horribly. Fuck exploration, fuck space, and fuck the Federation while we’re at it. Leonard is perhaps the most improbable of the Enterprise’s senior officers for the simple reason that he seems to resent everything about the job.

Well. Almost everything.

See, what Leonard cares about is people. He cares about their lives, about their stories, about their hopes and dreams, about their suffering. That’s why he entered and has stayed in an extremely taxing caring profession, and it’s why he’s still on the Enterprise despite his incessant bitching about everything they do. He wouldn’t trust anyone else to take care of the crew he’s become so attached to, and he finds fulfillment in helping the people they encounter out there in the nightmare of space.

In every timeline, Leonard McCoy defines himself by what he can do for others: the pain he can ameliorate, the wounds he can heal, the diseases he can cure, the small amounts of good he can bring to a galaxy filled with so much absolute horseshit. Unlike most of his colleagues, he’s not motivated by curiosity or an adventurer’s spirit or a burning desire to make sense of the universe. (Fuck the universe, too, as a matter of fact.) Instead, he’s driven by the incredible depths of his compassion and empathy and concern for the people he serves alongside and those they meet along the way.

Sure sounds like the heart to me.

ii. Jim

I actually totally get why some people characterize Kelvin-timeline Jim as the heart. He’s quite literally a different man than the original timeline’s Kirk, and he definitely has more of the pathos qualities to him. Early on, he’s a total spitfire, fierce and hot-blooded, quick to anger and other sharp-edged emotions we’re not used to associating with James T. Kirk. Even as he grows into himself and leaves some of those traits behind, he remains spontaneous, passionate, protective, and self-sacrificing - easy enough to mistake for the heart if you squint.

But let’s not confuse having a heart for being the heart. Sure, Jim is more openly emotional and reactive than his TOS counterpart, but there’s still a marked difference between the way he and Leonard express and act on their emotions.

AOS Jim definitely has a lot of feelings - big ones - but at the end of the day, he’s not driven by his heart. He’s driven by his gut.

Whenever there’s trouble, Jim makes a beeline right for the center of it. He’s impulsive as hell, rarely pausing to think past his first instinct, because he just wants to be doing something, no matter the odds, no matter what it costs him. He explicitly calls himself out on this in ST:ID when arguing with Spock: “I have no idea what I’m supposed to do. I only know what I can do.” He doesn’t have the patience or the constitution to sit and debate all the options, either internally or with his crew. If there’s a path forward from where he is, even a bad one, Jim’s gonna take it.

[Sidebar: One could make the case that the roots of Jim’s instinct to act reach back to his childhood traumas - canonically ignored abuse and neglect on the one hand, and the Tarsus IV famine and massacre on the other - but that’s a whole post on its own and we ain’t got all day here.]

Jim can’t not act, and while that gets him into a lot of trouble, it also saves lives. Sulu probably appreciated that Jim’s gut drove him to leap off Nero’s drilling platform without a moment’s hesitation after a man he’d only just met. He may have been a real shithead about it, but Jim’s impassioned insistence on going after the Narada and not wasting time on the possibility of a better option was key to saving Pike and Earth itself. And I don’t know why Spock was so surprised that Jim intervened to save him on Nibiru, considering that the reason they were there in the first place was because Jim couldn’t sit back and watch the Nibirans die when there was something his crew could do to help them, even if it meant risking a violation of the Prime Directive.

Jim is a good man with a big heart, and he cares about people, absolutely. But he cares most of all about Doing The Right Thing - which in the heat of the moment often translates to Doing Something, Anything, Hold My Beer.

iii. heart vs. gut (i.e., time for some receipts)

I think one of the main reasons Leonard and Jim’s characterizations get confused is because they both tend to act on instinct, only lightly informed by higher reasoning. However, I’d argue that their motivations and the nature of those actions are super distinct, and those distinctions remain relatively consistent throughout all three films. (And y’all know I really mean this shit if I’m out here calling ST:ID consistent.)

Jim is a big picture guy, figuratively and often literally heaving himself full-body into the mix of whatever problem the crew has encountered for lack of any better alternative. That energy propels the plots of all three films: the chaotic path he carves through the events of Star Trek and ST:ID, and the slightly calmer but still undeniably bananas course he charts for himself and his crew in the second half of Beyond.

As the heart, Leonard operates on a more micro level. His concern invariably lies with the individual people caught up in those grand events Captain Chaos is busy dragging them all through. While Jim’s zooming around flipping plot switches, Leonard can always be counted on to bring it back to the personal.

We frequently see this juxtaposed right there on film. Think of that slow pan through medbay in the first movie after the Narada’s ambush and the destruction of Vulcan: while Jim is stewing over what to do about the Big Bad, Leonard has stepped into the CMO role without fuss or fanfare to care for the wounded crew and traumatized survivors.

Or jump ahead to Beyond: during Krall’s attack on the Enterprise, there’s a gorgeous cinematic shot of Jim sprinting down the corridor with two crew members to take on the invaders - and then we cut to Leonard moving slowly through those same ghastly red-lit corridors, searching for casualties in need of help, visibly affected by what his scanner is telling him about the downed crewman he tries to save.

Actually, Beyond as a whole does terrific justice to each of their roles. (Perhaps because it was not written by dingdongs.) The first act finds Jim flailing around for a sense of purpose and forward momentum - an understandable consequence of a gut-driven character having stalled out for too long - and he ultimately gets his mojo back by spending the rest of the film careening through one insane seat-of-his-pants ploy after another. Meanwhile, in the quieter moments between all the mayhem, Leonard serves as the empathetic sounding board for both Jim and Spock as they struggle with deep emotionally charged secrets and Big Life Questions, helping them untangle their feelings and reminding them of the emotional attachments which are ultimately key to their respective decisions to stay on the Enterprise.

More examples, you say? Don’t mind if I do!

Star Trek

GUT: Jim hurtles around the Narada, improvising almost every step of the way and paying the price for his and Spock’s scheme in bodily harm, and ultimately succeeds in rescuing Pike. HEART: Leonard calls out for Jim as he runs into the transporter room, overwhelmed with relief that he’s made it back, and takes Chris Pike’s weight literally and figuratively onto his own shoulders to begin healing him while Jim runs back off to the center of the action.

Star Trek: Into Darkness

GUT: Jim argues with Leonard, Spock, and Scotty in quick succession as he’s preparing to drag them all off to Qo’noS, immune to their attempts to reason with him because, unraveled as he is by grief and pain, he can only focus on his visceral drive to Do Something. HEART: Unlike the others, Leonard is upset not about the larger moral questions of whether it’s right to go after John Harrison or bring torpedoes aboard the ship, but about the fact that Jim himself is hurt and hurting and won’t accept help.

GUT: Jim makes a snap decision to sacrifice himself by hurling his body against the warp core to realign it and save his crew. HEART: Shellshocked by the emotional grenade of his best friend’s death, Leonard suddenly realizes, through the haze of his own numbness and upswelling grief, that he might still be able to do something for this lonely radiation-ravaged body he’s been brought and the life it represents.

Star Trek Beyond

GUT: At the tail end of an improvised plan to out-maneuver Kalara, Jim quite literally shoots first and asks questions later, igniting a fuel tank and setting off an explosive series of events which he and Chekov just barely escape. HEART: The next time we see Leonard, Spock is opening up to him about Ambassador Spock’s death and his own plan to leave Starfleet for New Vulcan - and while he’s empathetic toward Spock (I can’t imagine what that must feel like), Leonard’s thoughts go immediately to the emotional impact of Spock’s plan on the other people he’s closest with. (I can see how that would upset [Nyota]. / I can tell you, [Jim]’s not gonna like that.)

GUT: Jim frantically strains to reach the final switch in the life support hub, believing that he’s going to die either way since the vent has already opened, but spurred on by the knowledge that his ability to move that switch is the only thing standing between Yorktown and annihilation. HEART: Knowing exactly what’s at stake, with the fate of the station and millions of lives hanging in the balance, Leonard’s greatest concern is that Jim won’t make it out in time.

iv. never bet against the heart

Let’s wrap this up with a deep dive on one of the absolute best examples of Leonard as the heart: his decision to sneak Jim onto the Enterprise in the first movie.

As relentlessly as I drag him for the, you know, poisoning and kidnapping aspects of that whole deal, there’s no denying that it is a god-tier heart move. Is it logical? Absolutely not. Is it really the right thing to do for either himself or Jim, as far as he knows at the time? Nope. It’s 100% the wrong choice for his own job security, reputation, and relationships with his fellow crew, and it’s almost guaranteed to get Jim into even worse trouble. Leonard is a smart dude who must understand that this course of action will likely end up coming back on them both in a real bad way. For someone who argues loudly and often in defense of self-preservation, this is a shockingly bad idea.

But none of that matters, because Jim shakes his hand and tells him to be safe with that horrible empty-eyed smile, and it gets him right in the heart, one-two-three.

One: sympathy, worry, and affection for Jim - his best friend, his wild and troublesome stray, his only family.

Two: guilt over adding onto Jim’s pain, and the instinctive urge to fix whatever‘s hurting him.

Three: fear of heading out into the unknown by himself, the agonizing uncertainty of not knowing what’s coming, craving for the security and reassurance Jim’s presence would give him.

“Dammit,” Leonard says, as his heart wins out over his brain. He knows this is a garbage plan, and he doesn’t care. His heart chooses Jim. That’s all that matters.

So he goes back for Jim, and to his own surprise it turns out that this Very Bad Idea was actually a Very Good Idea because Jim’s impulsive instincts end up saving Earth, and Leonard’s not in the habit of fixing what ain’t broke so he figures he may as well keep on chasing Jim’s crazy ass around the galaxy for a while, through jungles and off cliffs and into the goddamn afterlife when need be, until finally one day Jim’s gut drives him right into Leonard’s arms and he suddenly realizes that this is what his heart was choosing all those years ago: Jim’s wide terrified eyes, Jim’s voice breaking over his name, Jim’s hand pressing hard against his chest, reaching out for what’s his.

But that’s another story.

#mckirk #otp: bedside manner #fic related #palimpsest verse #@animetrashmuffin is a gift #several people messaged me when i vague-tagged about this a while back #but you're the one who had to listen to me rant at great length about this while i was sick so CONGRATS PAL THIS MESS IS FOR YOU #mccoy #kirk #star trek #aos #long post

[ploppythespaceship]

Dark Season 3 Review

I know I’m a month late to this party, but... I finally finished the show. So! Overall this final season was very good and made for an emotionally satisfying ending to the show. Everyone has been praising it and that praise is well deserved.

But that being said, it was definitely the weakest of the three seasons, and some parts of it have been bothering me.

Heavy spoilers to follow.

The main issue I took with the season was pacing and focus. Season 1 and 2 have basically perfect pacing, where the show feels like a slow burn while still giving you new developments and twists at a good pace. Season 3, on the other hand, felt very fast and at times rushed by comparison.

I think they may have bitten off just a bit more than they could chew -- juggling the introduction of a parallel world, quantum entanglement, and the transitions between the various time periods is a lot to manage in eight episodes. You have to fly through some explanations and gloss over parts here and there to make it work, and I do think the season suffered slightly as a result.

Additionally, the first two seasons were fairly easy to follow once you had the characters down. Information was presented in such a way that piecing it all together didn’t require much effort. But this season often went so fast and flew through some explanations at such a pace that I had to pause several times to walk myself through it in a way that made more sense.

I also felt that several of the characters I cared most about and was more interested to learn more about were underused and overlooked. For example, Magnus, Franziska, and Bartosz being trapped in 1888 barely feels like a plot point at all. It’s brushed past yet so quickly -- yet I care about all of those characters and want to know how they feel about being trapped over a hundred years in the past.

And then when Bartosz and Silja turn out to be Noah and Agnes’s parents, the moment has no weight because the entirety of their relationship happened offscreen. We see Bartosz and Silja meet. We see Silja give birth to Noah. And we see her dead after giving birth to Agnes. That’s it. Why couldn’t we have slowed down to see the rest of that?

Another one was Hannah in 1954. After she decides to keep her child... we don’t see her at all until she travels to find Jonas in 1911. It’s possible that not much of interest happened, but I would rather have seen that, or simply seen Eva visiting her and young Silja. This could have easily been included as part of the “Between the Time” episode, and I’m not sure why it wasn’t.

Instead, a lot of the focus of this season was on the parallel world. Which is a good concept in theory, but in execution, I think the concept was a little half-baked and never felt fully developed. There were some elements I really liked -- everything in the parallel world being literally mirrored was a nice touch, and it had the added bonus of making some character’s faces look different in a very subtle way.

But there simply isn’t time to developed an entire parallel world to the same extent as the one we’ve spent two seasons now fleshing out. Yet the show tries to, taking a weird amount of time showing us slightly altered versions of events we’ve already seen instead of expanding on characters and events from the universe we already know and care about. The novelty wore off for me after the first episode, and remaining in the parallel world after that to focus on Ulrich and Charlotte’s investigation was just dull and unnecessary. All we needed to know was that everything in Eva’s world happens more or less in the same way as in Adam’s world, and the differences between the two are irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.

My last issue is about the time travel itself. For the whole show, the timeline has been treated as entirely fixed and immutable. Any changes that a time traveler may try to make in the past, those actions have always been in effect and have always impacted the future. Even if characters like Adam, Eva, and Claudia didn’t actively work to keep events the same way every time, they would still play out in exactly the same manner, with no variation, because the entire system is predetermined.

I really enjoyed this fixed timeline philosophy because it made Dark the single most consistent time travel story I have ever seen. Many of the logical contradictions present in other stories were simply absent, because everything is predetermined. It wasn’t a story about changing the timeline, it was a story about discovering how the timeline had already played out. It made the entire show’s structure incredibly satisfying, while also trying into the idea of fate and free will very nicely. The overwhelming theme was that your choices don’t matter, because everything you do has already happened. You are quite literally trapped in the cycle of time.

So naturally, season 3 stepping back from that to subscribe to the idea of a timeline that can be altered? That the timeline only loops on itself because Adam and Eva and Claudia actively work to ensure that it does? That didn’t sit right with me And I couldn’t help but feel a bit disappointed.

The timeline changes were implemented in a way that is consistent with itself and with the story up until that point. And it didn’t feel like a cheat, exactly. Once I managed to rethink the timeline and the knot, it is in fact consistent with itself, and I’ve come around to the ideas presented. But it still jarred me at first and left me a bit underwhelmed.

(Side note: this video helped me with rethinking it the most -- don’t picture the time knot as a circle as I had been, but picture it as a slinky. A series of nearly identical circles, the end of one loop leading directly into the beginning of the next.)

Additionally, the loophole/quantum entanglement parts still don’t make sense to me, despite all the theories I’ve read and videos I’ve watched. Does this mean there are two versions of young Jonas running around at once? Or does this mean that the two outcomes alternate each time we progress through the loop? As in, the first time through the loop, Jonas goes to Martha’s world and dies, and the second time through the loop, Jonas stays in his home to survive the apocalypse and become the Stranger. I don’t know!! This doesn’t feel adequately explained to me.

Regardless, this all feels to me like it goes against the core conceit of the show. In a way it’s arguably more tragic -- the knot could have fallen apart sooner had Adam and Eva simply chosen to let it fall apart. But they cannot change their human nature, meaning that their stubbornness and utter commitment to their own selfish goals perpetuated an endless cycle of misery for everyone. But now it’s a story about human nature and refusal to change, instead of free will and determinism. Which isn’t wrong, exactly, but again, to me it feels like this goes against the philosophy of the show’s earlier seasons.

Then again, you could argue that the whole point of the show is to make you rethink something you thought you understood and view in a new light, so maybe the show did exactly what it set out to do? I don’t know! And I think the fact that I don’t know and have to keep mulling this over after the fact speaks to what a masterpiece the show is.

And in any event, I do get why the decision was made to change the time travel philosophy And I don’t think there were any better solutions. The show has been set up in such a way that the only satisfactory ending would be breaking out of the time loop. And in a completely fixed and unchangeable timeline, this just isn’t possible. The only possible outcome is that the loop continues indefinitely, and that would be such a bummer of an ending that... I get it. It’s a better ending from an emotional and storytelling perspective, and that should be prioritized over the logic of the time travel.

Which, from a storytelling perspective, it really does work. The idea of a third world being the origin of this knot, of Jonas and Martha ultimately being the ones to break the cycle that they started? Both are thematically beautiful. You can’t help but feel emotional watching everyone fade away, wondering if they will only be a dream.

So don’t misunderstand me and think that I hated the final season. I really didn’t, and it was a good ending for the show. And I immediately looked up theories and videos to try to wrap my head around the whole thing! I just can’t help but be bothered by some of these issues, and haven’t really seen anyone discussing them.

#personal #reviews #dark #dark netflix #dark spoilers #i could barely sleep last night thinking about all of this lmao #pls feel free to add on any thoughts you may have

[michael-langdon-appreciation]

Apocalypse After (Part One)

Pairing: Michael Langdon x fem!reader

Summary: There was never any hope of saving Michael Langdon, never a chance to stop the apocalypse. The Antichrist was already too intertwined with his destiny, too far down the wrong path when the reader met him. But Mallory can go back and make things right and when the reader travels with her, an opportunity arises to try and make things right after all.

Words: 2.8K

Warning: Swearing! Character Death! (for a sec)  

A/N: I put out the feelers a bit ago asking whether anyone would be interested in this as a series and I’m so excited to have started writing it! I’m hoping to keep most of the events canon, even the parts we saw in the Alternate Timeline. This series will explore a non-Antichrist Michael, guided by the reader as they show him that there’s always another path to take. But it’s not going to be easy. My first series and I hope you all enjoy 😘

(Banner by @michael-lives-on)

It’s the welcome tingle of wind on my arms that tells me I’m back.

        I’ve done it.

        The warmth of a sunny day in LA embraces me and as I push myself into a sitting position my fingers catch in the grass. My hands drop to my stomach where my soaked dress has dried. There’s no evidence of my trip through time but my own now drying blood, covering most of my front. The stab wound in my stomach is healing quickly, becoming just a scar underneath the torn fabric and I’m lucky to have escaped with something relatively minor. But the reminder of what I’ve lost will be there long after all this is over. 

        I may never see my Michael, the one from the Outpost again.

        I can’t help but think I was never destined to have a child, to find something good and happy with Michael and for the briefest of moments I ask myself what is the point in continuing to pursue this relentless mission? Is it not better to appease whatever fate has planned and let Mallory do what she came here to do? To move on and start a new life, because whatever happens next, I know that neither Mallory and I will let the apocalypse happen a second time. By travelling back we’ve already changed things, the lives I touched even for the briefest of moments will be forever altered. If the Antichrist is destroyed, the timeline skews irrevocably and everything we do from now on could have lasting consequences.

        I don’t have the luxury of wallowing in my self-pity for long. I have a choice to make: find Mallory or find Michael? Both can’t be too far away from my current position, because Mallory’s spell has brought us to a moment where the Antichrist is at ‘his most vulnerable’. I don’t think about what she’s planning to do when she finds him, it’s an obvious answer.

        To my left is the cemetery where we laid Moira to rest, which is now in the future, meaning I’ll still find the old maid inside the Murder House, should I go there. It’s just a few houses up from where I’m standing, looking to be in slightly better condition than during my visit in 2017, but not by much. The iron gates are firmly closed, the entire house projecting to the neighborhood that it does not want to be disturbed by anyone. But the grass isn’t so dead and one of the upstairs windows is open, letting in the sweet breeze and it’s that detail that draws me back to the house.

        I catch sight of a dog walker, his poodle nosing at a flowerbed. He scans me and then points at my clothes, “You in a play?” He offers, “Halloween ain’t for couple months yet.”  

        I just run, incapable of forming a credible excuse as to why I look like I’ve been massacred. My feet pelt down the sidewalk, the Murder House looming larger as I get closer. I won’t be able to do shit all if I can’t blend in, waiting for Mallory to make her move. I reach the front gates, looking out for both targets as I go. The fact that neither of them have shown up yet is getting to me, and I fight down the sinking feeling that I might already be too late.

        I grit my teeth and the Murder House gates fly open, clanking as they ricochet from the force of my telekinesis. I run to the door, which flies open in a similar fashion to the gate and despite knowing a whole manner of things could try to kill me the moment I’m inside, I step into the house. I’m met by the sound of hurried footsteps on the stairs and then shocked faces of Ben Harmon and Tate Langdon appear. 

        Tate pushes forwards, taking note of my bloody appearance. “What happened?” He asks, “Which one of them did it?”

        “You can see us?” Ben’s more cautious, he remembers what they are.

        Tate halts, “Can you?”

        “Yes.” I say, looking between both of them. “I know who you are, I can see you and your son is in danger.”

        Both men glance at each other. Perhaps it hasn’t ever been said out loud to them before, the idea of sharing a son, that Michael belongs to both of them.

        I press on, “I need a change of clothes.”

        “Slow down,” Ben says, “You’re covered in blood.”

        “I’m not hurt.” I insist, “But I need new clothes, now.”

        I pray they just help me and don’t keeping asking questions. I don’t know how much time I’ve got. Ben surges towards me, “You can trust us, if someone in this house has hurt you, then you need to let us help you.”

        “You need to help me.” I say, “It’s not the house or anyone in it.” They aren’t convinced though, “If you don’t Michael is going to die.”

        The ghosts of the past travel across their faces. Ben’s eyes go moist with tears, Tate’s fists clench.

        “Good,” Tate hisses, “I’ve heard what he’s putting Mom through.”

        “He’s your son, Tate.” Ben reasons.

        I push past them, it’s taking too long. I run upstairs ignoring the indignant sound that come out of Tate’s mouth. The men give chase, shouting questions as I quickly locate Violet’s bedroom and fling the door open.

        Violet Harmon screams, book dropping from her hands. I pay her no mind and start ransacking her closet for clothes that’ll work. “What the fuck is going on?” She demands, as I find a pair of jeans that might fit me and seize the first shirt I can find.

        Ben and Tate stop in the doorway as I start stripping, “Jesus Christ.” Ben curses, “What is going on?”

        I turn to the men and put all my attention on Tate. With just a little influence, he starts relaxing, muscles going slack against the door. “Go and look out for Michael. You tell me the second you see him.” He follows my command at once, his own feet carrying him away to the nearest vantage point.

        Ben and Violet are motionless as I turn to Ben ready to do the same, but he starts talking before I do, “You don’t need to do that.” He says, “I don’t know what you are exactly, but we’ll help you because ironically, we do not condone murder in this house.”

        I give them a chance, not because they can do much to help me, but because technically they’re my family too. Violet’s jeans are halfway up my legs and I make quick work of pulling them up and buttoning them, “My name is Y/N. I’m a witch.”

        Violet recovers first, “Like the ones from the news?”

        “What I just did on Tate, that was magic.”

        Violet looks at me in awe. “Cool,” She says.

        Ben however, is still having trouble. He looks as if he’s working through a challenging math problem, eyebrows furrowed and mouth moving silently.

        I smirk, “You looked the same way the first time we met.” I tug down Violet’s shirt, check my scar has fully closed and make sure I look somewhat normal again in the mirror. “I don’t blame you. You were a psychiatrist, right? A man of logic and reason. Magic always befuddles you people.”

        Ben shoots me a pointed look, “I’d remember meeting a witch.”

        “Would you?”

        Violet’s grinning. It’s probably the most excitement she’s had since her death. She’s vibrating with energy, fingers clenching and unclenching. “What do you need us to do?”

        I beckon for her to follow me, “Set up the living room for a patient. If Michael’s hurt we’ll need to be ready to jump into action.”

        “Why what’s going to happen to him?” Violet asks, “What are you gonna do?”

        I check on Tate, Ben and Violet trailing after me. He’s doing his job, looking out at the house across from us. “Anything?”

        Tate shrugs. “That’s where he lives with Mom. But there’s been nothing so far.”

        I look to my three helpers, “Will you go and set up?”

        “What about you?” Ben asks.

        “I need to do this next part on my own.” I tell the trio, “Whatever happens, stay inside the house.”

        Tate scowls at me, “As if we have a choice. And I’m not doing anything till you give me some answers.”

        I level him with my best glare, “I’ll just make you do it for me then.”

        Tate barges up to me, but Violet comes to my rescue, “For god’s sake Tate, there’s a real life witch who needs our help and your son’s life is at stake.” She snaps, “So get your ass downstairs before she mind-controls you again.”

        Tate is speechless. He stares at Violet, completely stupefied.

        Realising her mistake, Violet closes her mouth and there’s a moment of awkwardness. She collects herself and then brushes past us all, disappearing downstairs. Tate glances to Ben and with a small nod of encouragement, Tate immediately follows Violet.

        Ben remains with me. He peers with me out the window for a minute and we watch the front door open. “There he is,” He says.

        Sure enough a slight, young teenager has just stepped outside. I’d recognize that floppy golden hair anywhere – my Michael, younger than I ever knew him, but he’s still alive and that’s what matters.

        I race downstairs and I’m about to open the front door again when doubt takes over, inhibiting me with my hand on the door handle. If Michael sees me, then what? I haven’t been able to plan further, not knowing where the hell Mallory is. The other occupants of the Murder House have started to come out of hiding, intrigued by the commotion I’m making, but none offer their help.

     I move to the window next to the front door and watch as Michael makes for the Murder House, right towards me. He steps out into the road and before I can do anything to stop it, a car slams into him. My scream has Violet, Tate and Ben all running to my side, their hands full of towels. I take no notice of them and yank the door open, right as the car reverses and runs Michael over again.

        I know who’s responsible and I scream her name till my vocal chords blister, “MALLORY!”

        The car stops and for a wild moment I think she’s heard me, but it’s not because of me. Constance Langdon has also stepped outside, having witnessed the collision. Dread fills me because I can’t intervene, not now. I could never save Michael while Mallory is here. The rising Supreme will not rest until he’s dead, she won’t give up, and if I save Michael now at this very moment, Mallory will not only end the son of Satan, but me too.

        I slump on the front porch, my legs giving way. The pain ricochets from where I land, but no one pays me any attention. Constance us watching the SUV, but my eyes are rooted to the torn up body lying motionless in the middle of the road.

        There’s nothing I can do.

        The car begins to accelerate again, the engine roaring as it bursts forwards for the grand finale. Mallory hits Michael for the third time with extreme force and I know it’s the deathblow. Michael rolls like a rag doll, limbs snapping and bending in all the wrong ways. The car doesn’t slow down this time, just continues to drive away as if it was never responsible in the first place.

        Hatred spirals in me, so all consuming I don’t know what to do with it. I want to incinerate that car, exact vengeance and end Mallory’s life.

        But I can’t. It won’t reverse what’s happened. Mallory is a good person. She never wanted her destiny, just as Michael never wanted his. To end her life would accomplish nothing. It wouldn’t help me feel any different.

        I watch Constance approach Michael’s body and hide myself behind the hedge. She kneels down and takes his head in her lap. Michael’s clutching at her, his mouth moving but I can’t make out what’s he’s saying.

Constance looks towards the house and I duck down so she doesn’t see me. Violet appears beside me, making me jump. “You have to help him right?” She pleads, her eyes full of tears. “You’re a witch.”

        “I don’t know how.” I admit, “I’m too late.”

        A tear makes its way down Violet’s cheek, but her expression is fire. “No, I don’t accept that.” She says, “No more death. Go over there. Heal him, bring him back, do what you have to.”

        “I can’t do anything while she’s there.” I say, keeping an eye on Constance. “I don’t know what she’ll do.”

        “She’s a bitch.” Violet says, “She’ll leave him to die.”

        “She’s his Grandma.” I reason, “She must love him?”

        But my statement comes out as question and Violet doesn’t have an answer. No, Constance was in love with the idea of raising the perfect child and when Michael turned out not to be that dream, she wanted nothing to do with him. Violet and I peer round the hedge as Constance shoves Michael off of her and heads back into the house. She doesn’t turn back, if she had she would have seen us gawping at her from the hedge.

        My mouth falls open in horror, but Violet just says, “Told you.”

        But I’m thinking about her previous words and the beginnings of an idea are swirling. I know I’m going to see him, I know what I’m going to do, and my feet carry me automatically over to Michael Langdon’s broken body.

        I’ve got to try.

        It’s so much harder than I thought it would be, as I approach him and the urge to run hits me, to not watch. He’s gurgling, crying in confusion and pain and it’s so pitiful that I’m crying again and I can’t speak as I watch him choke on his own blood. His beautiful face is marred with deep wounds, cuts crisscross over his skin and bruises have burst onto his neck and chest. He searches for someone, for anyone to help him and finally those blue eyes fall on me. Michael tries to reach for me, his voice only capable of the tiniest whimpers, but he can’t. He doesn’t have it left in him and I sink down beside him in the middle of the road.

        He scrabbles at me and I take his hands in my own, tears rolling down my cheeks as he pleads with me, voice cracking on every note.

        “Help me, please.”

        And I know what I have to do, as I reach out and brush away the blonde curls that have stuck to his forehead, matted with blood and lift his head into my lap.

        I have to let him die.

        “Please.” He begs, and maybe he is asking for me to end it. Maybe he can still sense the magic between us and it’s so hard to keep looking at him. The guilt is too much. I see the anger flitter across Michael’s face, that I would stay by his side but not help him, but he can’t hurt me anymore and I fight to keep my face neutral. He struggles with his words, “I’m sorry.” I wait for him to finish, my fingers threading through his hair. He continues to cry, fat tears rolling down his plump cheeks, still a little round with youth. They disappear into his ears, dripping onto Violet’s jeans. He’s so young as I wipe away his tears the moment they come.

        “It’ll be better soon.” I whisper, “I promise.”

        “I don’t want to go.” He presses, “You have to save me.”

        I lean down to kiss him, still so familiar even though in this lifetime we have only just met. I can feel his life-force leaving his body and Michael panics, taking in a sharp stab of pain, “I’ll be so good.” He vows, “I’ll stop. I know I can.” I grip him harder as I fight with myself and my risky, crazy choice. “Please.”

       I hush him, rocking him back and forth as much as I think he can take. “I will,” I whisper, pressing my lips to his forehead.

        Michael’s hands go slack in mine, and when I pull away I know he’s gone.

        My vision’s a blur, awash with tears, my shoulder heave at having lost him a second time. I steel myself, gripping his hands tighter in my own till my hands start to go numb. I move my lips over his own, covering his body with mine and breathe into his mouth.

“Vitalum Vitalis.”

Read Part 2 here

#apocalypse after #new series #michael langdon #ahs #american horror story #part one #ahs apocalypse #ahs murder house #michael langdon x reader #michael langdon imagine #alternate timeline #young!michael #ahs mallory #not today mallory #constance #murder house #ahs coven #ahs michael #violet harmon #tate langdon #ben harmon #my ghostly trio #violet x tate #vitalum vitalis #witch!reader #my work #tempus infinitum

[i-am-thequeencapricorn]

Watch The Marvel Movies In Order

AVENGERS: ENDGAME, opening on April 26, is more than just another Marvel movie. It’s the final film in a story that’s been over a decade in the making, a celebration of everything Marvel Studios has done to date. If you’re like us, a binge-watch of the entire MCU is in order to prepare for the big event. Here’s the big question: How should you watch the Marvel movies in order?

There are two common ways to build a Marvel movies timeline. The first is in release order, kicking off with 2008’s IRON MAN. The second is in chronological Marvel movie order, following the order of events. That means moving CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER to the pole position and shuffling Phase Three’s movies in some interesting ways.

Over on Reddit, however, one smart fan suggested another approach — a thematic structure that may be the best viewing order yet. Here it is, updated for the latest Marvel movie releases.

Captain America: The First Avenger 

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER is something of an extended introduction to the MCU. The bulk of the movie is set in the ’40s, and it introduces viewers to the SSR, which becomes S.H.I.E.L.D. Even the end-credits sequence, which features Nick Fury, is a nice setup for everything that will follow. Want to watch the Marvel movies in order? Start here.

Captain Marvel

CAPTAIN MARVEL effectively takes the spot formerly held by IRON MAN as the proper kickoff for the entire MCU. The story is primarily set in the mid-’90s and features the first evolution of S.H.I.E.L.D. and an important stage of Nick Fury’s career. The story also sets up the Kree (later seen in GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY) and, most importantly, deals with an object that becomes significant toward the end of Marvel’s Phase One. As the origin story for Carol Danvers (Brie Larson), this also feels more like a Phase One movie than anything Marvel has done in the past few years. In terms of tone and theme, it sits well in the beginning of the viewing order. Yes, there’s a connection to INFINITY WAR and ENDGAME, but just keep this film’s first post-credits sequence in your back pocket for later.

Iron Man

Although IRON MAN was the first MCU movie, it has more power when placed here. We know who Howard Stark is thanks to THE FIRST AVENGER. Watching his son take his first faltering steps into the “bigger universe” is an effective stage of the MCU movie order. The final scene, with Nick Fury stepping out of the shadows, will take on a subtly different meaning after the events of CAPTAIN MARVEL. Rather than hint at the birth of the MCU, it will become connective tissue linking the first three films together.

Iron Man 2

After IRON MAN introduces viewers to the modern-day iteration of S.H.I.E.L.D., the sequel dives deep into that organization. It also features Nick Fury in a far more significant role, allowing viewers to get a sense of just who this figure really is. Meanwhile, the focus on Howard Stark’s legacy continues to draw the narrative threads together. It makes perfect sense to watch IRON MAN 2 at this point.

The Incredible Hulk

This particular adjustment to the viewing order is appropriate — while THE INCREDIBLE HULK actually happens at the same time as IRON MAN 2, the end-credits sequence assumes Stark now has a “consultant” role with S.H.I.E.L.D.

Thor

THOR introduces viewers to Asgard and launches a series of stories inspired by events in the Realm Eternal. At the same time, it continues to develop the story of S.H.I.E.L.D., with Coulson and Hawkeye playing important roles.

The Avengers

This is a natural fit after the events of THOR, continuing many of that film’s themes and character arcs. Loki returns as a villain; the concept of the Tesseract is explored; and the existence of dangerous alien beings becomes public knowledge when the Chitauri invade New York. There’s also a more subtle detail as this is the first film to really hint that S.H.I.E.L.D. isn’t just “good guys.” THE AVENGERS includes a disturbing sequence in which the World Council orders a nuclear attack on American soil.

Thor: The Dark World

Here’s where the order of events really changes, but for good reason. The last two films have explored the cosmic side of the MCU, and it makes sense to continue that line. Some of the most important themes and ideas — particularly the relationship between Thor and Loki — follow on perfectly from THE AVENGERS. This also introduces the idea of the Infinity Stones, although they’re only partly explained at this point.

Guardians of the Galaxy

Continuing the cosmic focus, GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY unveils another Infinity Stone. The Collector, introduced in the stinger of THOR: THE DARK WORLD, makes another appearance, tying the two films together. Viewers are left with a strong sense that the Infinity Stones are being brought into play across the universe.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

The events of GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 2 are set only a couple of months after the first film, so it makes sense for this to follow straight on. It continues the space-opera style and tone established by the last two films in our Marvel movie order.

Iron Man 3

The cosmic diversion is over, and the focus now moves back to Earth, where Tony Stark is dealing with the emotional fallout from THE AVENGERS. The passage of time between the films actually makes Tony’s PTSD feel more significant, while also more making it feel more natural that Stark has had the time to build so many armors.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Continuing with the Earthly focus, this movie shows what Captain America is up to. This story could even be happening at the same time as IRON MAN 3, explaining why Cap doesn’t help Tony against the Mandarin and why Stark isn’t on hand to deal with Hydra. Or maybe Cap and Stark are merely still wary of one another at this stage. Perhaps most importantly, placing this film here begins a Falcon arc that will run through the next few movies.

Avengers: Age of Ultron

This is another natural fit. The film opens with the Avengers taking down a major Hydra base. In thematic terms, placing this close to IRON MAN 3 makes Tony’s emotional journey feel more immediate and natural. This film also begins to tie the Earth-bound adventures into the cosmic stories, with another Infinity Stone revealed. Thor’s vision establishes a sense of impending threat.

Ant-Man

Set in the immediate aftermath of AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON, ANT-MAN contains subtle references to the devastation at Sokovia. Placing it here in the lineup makes the Falcon fight carry additional weight, bringing Sam closer to primary character status. 

Captain America: Civil War

The Sokovia arc that begun in AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON comes to a head in CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR, tearing the Avengers apart. CIVIL WAR acts as the launchpad for the next batch of Earth-bound stories, so they slot in nicely after it. It also follows on perfectly from ANT-MAN’s end-credits scene.

Black Panther

Black Panther was introduced in CIVIL WAR, and this continues his story. It’s appropriate to drop this movie in next, as BLACK PANTHER is set only a week after the Avengers divide, and the Wakandan focus follows on nicely from the end-credits sequence.

Spider-Man: Homecoming

Set two months after CIVIL WAR, SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING focuses on Peter Parker. It’s important to note that Tony Stark has been given time to heal a little, so this viewing order makes sense.

Doctor Strange

Placing DOCTOR STRANGE here gives the film real importance as a thematic tie between the MCU’s Earth-bound and cosmic movies. DOCTOR STRANGE introduces the concept of magic and brings the Time Stone into play. The Quantum Realm also plays a subtle role, as Strange glimpses it while being sent careering through the dimensions. Finally, the end-credits scene leads nicely into THOR: RAGNAROK.

Thor: Ragnarok

This film follows on logically from DOCTOR STRANGE. (There’s even a cameo.) The end credits begin the direct buildup to AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR, with the Asgardian refugees intercepted in space by Thanos.

Ant-Man and the Wasp

This is a difficult one to place in this thematic structure. While it returns to the Earth-bound adventures, ANT-MAN AND THE WASP is fantastical and funny. The bulk of the story is set before the events of AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR, so it makes sense to place it here. This particular viewing order does change how the post-credits scene plays, however. Rather than knowing what’s going on, you’re with the same sense of shock and horror felt by Hank Pym or Scott Lang.

Avengers: Infinity War

In this order, AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR will be the last thing you watch before AVENGERS: ENDGAME. That works particularly well when you consider that, according to screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, the snap was originally in ENDGAME. These two films may not be a traditional Parts I and II anymore, but their relationship is so close that it’s better to watch them back to back — just how they were filmed.

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Not really a fan of Superhero Movies, but after watching Captain Marvel last Friday, I was hooked. I’ve decided then to binge-watch all the Marvel Movies so I can catch up before they release the Avengers : Endgame. My only dilemma was, I have no idea what to watch first and so on. I tried to do a little research and I came across with this article. I’ve watched the 1st three movies, and since I’ve already tendered my resignation, I have all the time to finish the remaining movies before the opening of the final story. Yey!!

#repost #ctto #mahaba habang panonood to

[incarnateirony]

Let’s talk about subtext. Again.

This is a topic I've talked on before, but at that point, it was a fairly closed-in discussion about the (mis)use of the word "subtext" abroad, especially in regards to intentional undermining of discussion of canon. Lots of people use the word, but nobody really understands what the word means before they use it, even well-intended people, much less people arguing for the sake of argument.

So I'm going to start with this, then put it behind a cut.

I will warn due to the nature of examples, there’s some Megstiel-critical stuff included even if it’s not entirely the core-point of the post. Plenty of disclaimers about your right to fanfiction and your headcanons there but there’s a lot of stuff I’ve noticed Megstiel shippers just... don’t want to read, or something, so if you’re like super duper defensive of the ship, stop while you’re ahead. But for what it’s worth (though I absolutely SHOULD NOT have to disclaimer this, but it’s SPN fandom, so,) Rachel Miner is a doll and my reservation to her or her character does not reflect on her whatsoever. Actors are not their characters, and opinions of characters in no way represent opinions of actors.

But yeah. *points up* subtext.

(Edit: I’m gonna spare everybody a lot of time and say that if you’re a reactive Megstiel shipper that refuses to practice basic self-care or heed the warning, once you read this post in full, also read the notes in full, in order, to prevent any cyclic time wasting repeating yourselves, since you guys seem to have a very linear argument track that I’ve now watched across multiple people on multiple SM platforms. If you hit a redundant point, your only response will be *points at previous notes* or *points at post*, so let’s not waste kilobits. Somebody got there ahead of you and already ran full ouroboros in advance.)

Cool. Got it. So subtext is the underlying spirit of a story, especially if it is implicit and thematic to the piece; Canon I went into extensive detail in this previous post but the basic points to consider in fictional literary canon, since that was fairly single ship focused post; let’s just scrape out a few of the original sourced points on what fictional canon is:

Original works of a writer who created certain characters and/or setting

In fiction, canon is the material accepted as officially part of the story in the fictional universe of that story. The alternative terms mythology, timeline, universe and continuity are often used [...] to refer to a richly detailed fictional canon requiring a large degree of suspension of disbelief, while the latter two typically refer to a single arc where all events are directly connected chronologically.

Other times, the word can mean “to be acknowledged by the creator(s).

I think, in base premise, everyone agrees with the base line of this: Fanfiction is not canon; stuff made by the original creators is canon; elements like mythology, continuity, etc, especially elements directly acknowledged by the creators, are canon. I don't think anyone's going to argue this, and if you are, sit down, Carl.

Don't worry, this isn't going to be a "Destiel is/isn’t canon" post. I've beaten that literary field to death. It's just the continued misuse of the words that is pissing me off right now.

One thing you will notice, however, is that "subtext" is thematic and implicit; and at times, authors have commented on subtext and given approval, nods, or confirmation. In example, despite subtext, those areas are inherently canon, even if never-ever overtly textualized.

But we're gonna go deeper than this, because some people have wrapped and tied it up in their noggins that people have to literally continuously creator-nod at the canon, despite thematic and implicit elements of storytelling that are previously confirmed.

Schroedinger's Canon

If an idea is formerly established, but we don't take the explanation out of the box every time, is it really canon?

(Psst: The answer is actually yes, I’m just being a smartass.)

I'm going to give the simplest examples.

Demons have black eyes (unless of course, they're higher ranking.)

We are aware that this is an established premise.

Early on this was even textually explained.

However, it was never stated that only demons have black eyes.

There are many encounters where a creature flicks their eyes black and we recognize them as a threat. And what kind.

In some of these moments, they are not explicitly labeled as demons. They are just ambiguous bad things if we ignore the meaning to these thematics.

That said, if we don't have a "you're a demon!" or "I'm a demon!" revelation, is that character suddenly not, canonically, a demon?

The simple answer is no. They are still a demon.

The same goes for angels. We are aware of a variety of angelic reasonings and behaviors and elements that were established at some point.

However, there are cases that are not necessarily called out and explicitly labeled "I/they am/are an angel."

Let's take 9.03 "I'm No Angel."

We see a pharmacist attack Castiel. Castiel slays the pharmacist and the pharmacist collapses without any dialogue exchanged to clarify angel-ness, but a bright white flash of light.

In fact, despite only having seen the pharmacist prior jamming to music, the transcript goes so far as to include "He is obviously possessed by an angel."

Why though? Why do we consider this "obvious"? Because there are thematic, subtextual, enduring elements, that even when not spoken, they are implicit. This is the very meaning of canonical subtext.

Canonical subtext is not "A random line I can extrapolate into whatever the hell I want in a given moment removed entirely from scenario." That is just interpretation of a moment. If you're just pulling random lines out of your ass that don't have consistency, that is not subtext. The line is canon. The interpretation, if not built off of established thematic subtext, is just that: an interpretation.

A wild interpretation appears.

Logic is destroyed!

But the fact is, deep down, we all know this. There are thematic, subtextual, enduring elements to the show that we don't need ELI5'ed to us to understand. We may need them ELI5'ed to us to feel the need to win a digital argument with someone you feel is being thicker than Rocky's pectorals, but we don't need it to actually understand these events.

Previously established and enduring premises that are technically subtext to continue to adhere to include:

Demons are bad things, and generally possess people against their will. There have been a few exceptions to this rule, which canon made point to highlight vividly.

Vampires are monsters, and generally drink blood to survive. There have been a few exceptions to this, which canon made point to highlight vividly.

Despite these changes, we all understand the enduring subtextual mechanics involved. Just because Ruby got the medical certificate of her coma patient after Sam grilled her about eco-friendly recycled hosts doesn't mean all demons are choosing coma patients and walking around with their medical records now. Just because we've met a vampire clan that sucks on cows instead of people doesn't mean they all go vegan. Just because exceptional moments of these tennents exist do not mean we should assume this applies to every scenario moving forward, or pretty much the entire scenario of the show goes in the shitter.

Nobody disagrees with me here, right? Pretty sure we all agree here.

So the real point of where "subtext" arguments get obnoxious is when people choose to undermine thematics. It's one thing to not *notice* the thematics initially. Not everybody is a high-acuity meta viewer/reader/writer. Sometimes we don't consciously absorb them or we miss a detail. Sometimes a few years later the authors are bashing their heads off their desk because we're still arguing over a point they tried to make so they write it in neon letters on a character's forehead. But it's another thing entirely to willfully reject thematics.

Let me fall back to these previous examples. Angels, demons, empty vessels, etc.

Ruby recycled her body and made point to do so. In making a point, they evoked a coma patient who was considered braindead. This warranted a clean, empty vessel without a host.

In 5x21, Castiel wakes up in the hospital feeling a bunch of human elements after losing his grace, having been considered brain dead.

Now, we can banter headcanons on day on how exactly we went from (later quote of) exploded by an archangel (previous to this would be Raphael) to a season-gap and then clinically registering as braindead. Logic on my end would indicate Castiel hadn't been strapped up to machines to gauge his brain-dead-ness until then, ergo, nobody was there to gauge that he was brain dead. Unsurprisingly, doctors didn't fly out to test molecularly-recomposed Castiel immediately.

But that's a heck of a random element to include after them slapping it around as a unique item before. While subjecting him to itches, pain, hunger, and headaches suddenly and talking about his lack of mojo.

Well, that's because it's not random, and it's thematic, Carl. The same way it's thematic he acquires those as a human later (and technically previously-later in 5.4), and even Lucifer in season 13. That's because we understand these thematic elements of the story. This is subtext at this point, but this is canon.

(In this example, Castiel is confirmed an empty host in 5x21 in thematic fallback to Ruby's host braindeath, but also confirmed humanized/degraced in both forward and backward thematics.)

These things aren't not-canon simply because they didn't have Chuck step in to narrate it to you. They aren't not-canon. They're definite canon elements that quite definitely reached the screen.

So where is my issue with this?

Well, have an example: Recently, I've been having problems with possible-Megstiel shippers. (I say possible because there’s also been an insurgence of well-known-Castiel-haters brushing shoulders with the Megstiel crowd and rooting for her to come back to respark the ship FIVE YEARS LATER because, IDK, I guess they’re panicking about how gay it’s getting and realized spitting acid at TPTB for years isn’t working so I guess they figure they can try to side-write him off. And when they suddenly pop out being combative AF as below, I mark them as possible anti in Megskin.)

Now, you guys have followed my blog for a while, and you may notice I've never commented left or right about Megstiel, because generally, if people are leaving me and mine alone, I leave them alone. But the genuine fact is I fucking loathe it. It makes me furious to my core. And not "because Destiel shipper." I only went true dumpster season 13 and maybe started tipping towards it around S11. But I hated Megstiel since the concept of it.

So I want you to first imagine this set-up. Me, some friends, Destiel conversation thread. BOOM. Aggro Megstiel shipper kicks in mocking ship superiority. Gets shut down. They stop. Next day, repeat. BOOM, starts talking bullshit about more canon stuff to their ship. Gets mad when people counter. BOOM, kicks in another day, starts saying people only don't like Megstiel because it's a "threat" to Destiel (...I'm not sure how a ship that died 5 years ago is a threat to anything???) - so people start setting this person straight on the reasons they don't like it.

Now, if you're super-defensive of Megstiel, you may want to skip this section, but this boils down to:

Vividly painted consent issues

Lack of honesty in the character

Psychological abuse elements

Psychological is semi-relative but considering Cas' mental state over time, some of his stans aren't fans; Meg isn't the demon's name - it's the name of the girl she possessed, and we never learn more about this demon and who they actually were. But back to the girl she possessed: in 4.2 it was Meg - the real Meg - the human Meg that REALLY manifested the consent issues to light, almost in counter-highlight to Ruby expressly clearing herself of riding with a passenger. And yes, Meg* (asterisk because HONESTY, wtf is your name demon dude/chick/other?) acquired another vessel, but also talked about the girl's aspirations and suicidal attributes. The long and short of it is - some people have a legitimate visceral reaction to this because, especially and of all characters, Meg Masters (human) illustrated this as a problem and then people just sort of wandered off and acted like it was NBD, like, she probs did the same thing as Ruby, right?

Well... no. That's where things hit the line of headcanon. And you have the right to develop your own headcanon to build a little fanfiction corner to do what you want in it, but you don't just get to ram it down everyone's throats and act like "their interpretation of canon is wrong." Not if they’re the one following thematics.

Thematic elements are canon. Excuses around them are headcanon.

This bullshit of “all interpretations are equal regardless of who does or doesn’t have actual canon content and supporting quotes, references, or moments and it’s all just interpretation and nothing is true and there’s no true canon because it’s all an illusion and it’s all interpretation” needs to die.

Otherwise, just deadass admit that you think there is no spoon, there is no canon, and there is no consistency or theme to the writing going on whatsoever at any point.

Because entertainment is art. And yes, you can interpret things. But things do have genuine themes. Supernatural is not one big floating 3D image of floating cubes you squint at that is entirely relative to the viewer. There are in fact stories being told, elements had, and truths within the world setting. 

Otherwise, we can randomly choose to extrapolate that Sam’s hair isn’t hair, because it’s never molecularly analyzed, and we can clearly and reasonably argue and be totes-equal-canon if we state it’s actually a bunch of Leviathan Scales stripped into hair shape. And yell that my opinion is as valid as everyone else’s and just as canon as the people who thinks Sam’s hair is hair on a molecular level. Except we can’t. Because there’s common sense and base rules to reading things in context.

Points raised were

"well Meg fell down after exiting so the host is empty." Okay, and an entire fresh-black-cloud-possessed town fell down after a mass exorcism before, so that means what, exactly? Nothing. There is no implication or even premise to that, which is thematic and sound, and in fact, thematic evidence to the contrary.

"Well when Meg exited she got stabbed and she left her so the host died. THEN she came back." Okay first of all, the knife was pulled and she was never actually stabbed, but even if we add the argument she secretly got stabbed off screen (not canon) for her to have died to try to make this an okay argument - Okay, but... if demons could just possess actual corpses, wouldn't that kind of undermine the entire point of The Everything here in picking braindead hosts? Why aren't entire legions possessing graveyards themselves instead of just raising zombies (like Samhain did?) To be dead like that but not dead-dead and only-mostly-dead is a level of devil's advocate that hits the realm of absurdity. Like, they waited until she braindied, but not organ diedededead? What's the odds of it even working like that? ????  

THAT ISN’T EVEN HOW BIOLOGY WORKS. There is no implication or even premise to that, which is thematic and sound, and in fact, there is again thematic evidence to the contrary. And past even the thematic evidence to the contrary, you’re now basically going to, what, argue some bazillion to one order of operations where she experienced brain death BEFORE organ death somehow? Is it only interpretation that Sam and Dean probably have to use the bathroom every day cuz it’s only mentioned a few times and that’s the only time those body functions are canon? Common sense on basic body processes is just interpretation now?

And just to clarify for the argumentative shits out there:

It has been proven that demons can continue to occupy dead hosts, if the hosts died while they were in possession. Exorcism of the demon at that point double-deads the host (again, ironically, Meg 1), as they are no longer supernaturally animated. However, a demon has never possessed or repossessed a previously-dead host. (And as above, what would be the FUCKING point of Ruby then? Or ANY of these instances if we can just possess the dead? Of the entire show?)

See examples: Meg 1 was alive when possessed; Meg fell out the building and broke; but Meg was possessed and got back up; Meg died immediately on exorcism because she was no longer supernaturally animated. New vessel was found. Similarly, the boys will kill demons in existing-dead vessels from fatal wounds which they identify, meaning demons continue to animate a host.

There is no instance TO DATE of a demon going into a previously-fully-dead-body, or otherwise, you know, the entire premise goes to shit. Yeah sure Ruby would take care to leave her braindead body on the floor instead of, I don’t know, just swinging through and picking up the first 100% dead chick available. Or she wouldn’t have just done that to begin with and shown Sam the grave or death certificate. Because it’s totally easier to find completely braindead patients than dead people, right? Because again. Thematics guys. Brains. Use the cells in them.

BUT AGAIN, SHE NEVER ACTUALLY GOT STABBED, SHE LEFT CUZ SHE WAS ABOUT TO.

So it’s almost like there is zero reason to even believe canon is trying to make a she-dieded-here excuse because she didn’t get stabbed, and almost like that is all completely arbitrary fanon.

I just felt the need to address how there is no universe that excuse even works in canonically.

Now, if you want to use these headcanons in fanfiction land to write a fanfic where it isn't noncon, that's great. You do that.

But canon has been very, very vivid about clarifying these issues; sometimes bluntly (Ruby's exposition), sometimes subtly (Cas' braindeath post-Ruby's braindeath), sometimes recurring until everyone gets the goddamn point (No, dude, he's alone, and human, he doesn't have other voices; no, dude- that's his heartbeat- no, dude- okay, fine, we'll have Cas explain EXACTLY the period Jimmy died [available in the same bracket] AND show him in heaven to make SURE everybody knows Cas isn't lying because for SOME GOD AWFUL REASON THEY ARE STILL ARGUING WHY.); sometimes they paint it as a story for an episode (cow-vegan vampires), sometimes they paint it almost like someone's changing and have them regress (Benny.) But they paint these elements if they are meant to be painted within canon.

And no, choosing not to ELI-5 these things every single time isn't bad writing. It's them trying to put faith in an audience. At best, it's bad understanding of the volatility of their audience. Much of the art of writing is through subtlety and persuasion. There is nothing more annoying than a villain that monologues his every decision and nothing more condescending than bashing your viewers with kindergarten explanations EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

But apparently some people in this fandom need that, because otherwise they'll run circles yelling it's just subtext, but that it isn't canon, despite it being subtextual canon, and that maybe the bad thing with black eyes that came from a black cloud wasn't a demon because they never called it a demon maybe it was an ebonyoompaloompa and you can't tell me otherwise because they never said it's a demon and THATS JUST SUBTEXT.

...THAT ISNT HOW THIS WORKS. I don't care if it's about races, about powers, about story elements, or about ships. Thematic, implicit, enduring subtext is canon. I honestly don't give a shit if you like the canon implications, and if you don't like the canon implications, that's what fanfiction is *for*, but this is not some ambiguous void in which the universe doesn't have any true rules whatsoever just because they don't stop to explain literally every single event happening on screen at any given moment.

This fandom is one of THE. MOST. FRUSTRATING. PLACES. to even TRY to hold literary discussions in. Because people don't just move the canon goalpost, they just flail it around wildly while telling people nobody can hit or declare what a goalpost is and that everything is irrelevant and there is no goalpost, and there is no canon, only Zuul, and again, THAT ISNT HOW THIS WORKS.

But while we’re at it, why the HELL is the ship called Megstiel? We are fully aware that is the name of the human girl that was screaming about consent. Why aren’t more people bothered by the continued use of her name? Nonamestiel? Anonstiel? What even is this? She’s not only walking around with a (generously, at-best) questionable consent host, she’s freely using the name of her last dead, terrified, used and abused host and Megstiel fans seem to not understand why people have HUGE squick issues with this.

Regressively, they tried to take a potshot at Destiel and Jimmy with season 4-5. At which point they claimed, blindly, I was moving the goalpost with the following points:

Destiel launched 4.1, Meg addressed this 4.2.

Not everyone is a meta author deeply considering these things *IMMEDIATELY*

This is different from aggressively resisting the ideas years after the idea was entered into central fandom narrative

Generally speaking the Destiel fandom of that era adapted by writing fanfiction to alleviate the shared vessel issue, or OT3 fics that involved his consent, or ironically actually wrote fics premised exactly on what happened (Jimmy died at a splodey advent and was released) and was confirmed even hammer-on-head-blatantly in canon.

Trying to yell at or about people who literally didn’t know better because it wasn’t even a spark in the common mind at the time, versus aggressively refusing to accept it years after it became an accepted thematic canon establishment, are two wildly different things Carl. 

Blameshifting, gaslighting, goalpost moving; it’s all ridiculous. But we can cull goalpost moving. Again, about *any* part of narrative discussion. Because most importantly and essentially, subtext is actually a very important part of our everyday viewing experience and understanding of entire universes, as long as it is true, implicit, thematic subtext. 

I’ve also heard the comment “I’ve wished they clarified that more for Meg.” Well... no? Has it come to mind they never wanted to clarify it? They clarified Ruby at the same time (Human) Meg screamed about consent. They clarified Castiel. But Meg just jumped vessels and kept using the name of the girl that was screaming about consent. Talked about her host’s mental state. Did not redeem for years after the fact. Had no real compulsion to do so. Her redemption WAS her highlight of learning at least a *few* of her mistakes (though it failed to address many of them, respectively), and being different than Just Another Demon. *points at the various demon subtext above* If they wanted to clarify that... well... they would have. They did with the others. Unsurprisingly, they didn’t with her.

And people can say that’s just an interpretation, but son, that’s the canon. That is literally what is there, through and through, in the canon. Top down left and right from origin to sunset. Demons Are Bad Smoky Things That Turn People’s Eyes Black And Have Little Moral Compass And Possess People Without Consent Unless Given Active Resistance To Make Them Act To The Contrary is canon. “But passing out implies empty” is not canon; new hosts have done that too; “But she got stabbed so could be dead” is not canon, because if she died, well, how the hell was she possessed again beyond Magical Fairies Preventing Her From Organ Death In Spite Of Braindeath While She Bled Out? - these things are not remotely canon. They are not even subtext. They are not thematic. They are headcanon. And again, you are free to have a headcanon in your fic land, but you don’t get to act like the canon of other stuff isn’t there and just tell everyone else they’re being mean/wrong/whatever for... reading... the content... both textual... and thematic... that is there.

And this is tumblr. I fully expect one of the Megstiel fans to come crawling buttchapped out of the woodwork, but I do defer you to

Your friend crawling our asses for days and seeking us out just to argue

The lead in that wasn’t just purely about Megstiel, as much as inspired by a Megstiel conversation, and still addresses broader fandom narratives

Why you so mad, bro.

If you want to have a problem, send me an ask and we can make a new thread about it. This thread is for literary discussion only. You *will* be blocked if you try to start a troll-off over it in hyper-super-inflated-defensive-psycho-shipper-mindset running off of emotion rather than logic, especially after as many disclaimers and “enjoy your fanfiction” labels as are present.

But the bullshit claim I encountered today that these reservations are “just shipwar wank” rather than upset survivors and/or people with disassociative or similar episodes being terrified and horrified by the presented concept is so fucking trivializing I could vomit glass.

Or that it’s “most” people just using it for shipwar wank. You don’t get to decide who has abuse survivor history, or MHI history, that could be deeply and fundamentally bothered by this. Whether or not you have a survivor card of your own, you don’t get to decide that. If it doesn’t bother you, great. Yet again: Enjoy your fanfiction. And if reading these repeated drilldowns about the canon problematic nature of it bothers you when everything else is rando excuses, then consider why it bothers you to be given those excuses in fanon but not canon spaces, and consider how those of us who take issue with it for these issues feel every time you drop it into conversation like a nuke.

And the thing is, it’s not just Megstiel. Not by a long shot. Like I said, I’ve stayed quiet on Megstiel through the course of my time in digital fandom. Most of the time, I’m laughing out bullshit from bronlies that are completely revisionist. Sometimes, I butt heads with other Destiel shippers (generally wherein they read my “subtext can be valid canon” and think I’m saying “queer people should settle for subtext”, of which these statements are not connected nor implied. Not even in thematic subtext.)

And again, like in the previously mentioned, previous post about subtext, canon and literary discussion: Even applying any Death of the Author excuses is wildly abused. There’s a goddamn spoon, Neo, and I’m going to smack you with it. Because when they’ve managed to collaboratively manifest these details into fruition and they have in fact aired, you can’t just run around yelling NOOOOO at everything. You can’t just pitch random excuses like spitwads into conversation hoping they stick to the wall. Content needs to be reviewed in full context. Otherwise you are literally spit-balling. 

Even the most generous styles of literary analysis will tell you that, unless your interpretation is literally that it is a completely abstract piece with no intent, continuity, objective, moral, thematics or anything like a Wassily Kandinsky painting, and even then he had SOME sort of premise to his stuff. But hey, if you want to write a fully, top to bottom, consistent and thematic analysis where literally the entire show is made in an arbitrary and random nonlinear hodgepodge of non-events, by all means. It’ll be pretty hard to convince people, but go for it. You’ll probably be up against far more solid readings, though.

If we want to get into “full context analysis” while trying to diminish actual content in the series, then the time comes to argue if any content can be removed from the series, due to seeming non-canonical; getting everyone to adhere to this revised canon is its own feat, of course, and is instead a side branch of alternate canon which may or may not be widely accepted (just as in literary canon, there’s multiple canons for different genres, etc.)

An example of a premise for this would be:

I genuinely believe Megstiel only exists because all related episodes of initiation (notwithstanding her flirting with Cas like Demons Do in previous seasons, where he complied only long enough to THROW HER AS A BRIDGE TO WALK OVER FIRE, but instead to season six where it started tilting) were penned by rookie authors during a season that has been proven to have poor executive story editing and many plotholes. Initiating episodes were written by new authors on their first and second episodes, while the one writing the teleplay was simultaneously among the story editors that were failing in other areas, making double-checking their work even more dangerous. Failures to address issues like seeing her true face and more, which were previously established, can easily be considered as part of this.

(Before 6.10 Caged Heat Jenny Klein only wrote 5.07; she co-wrote with Brett Matthews, who previously only wrote 6.05 Live Free or Twihard. Brett Matthews was also credited exec story editor on this episode. So two newbies cowrote an episode and then story edited it themselves. In a season full of plot holes big enough to fly a Boeing 747 through so nobody upstairs was doing tighten-up work either.)

This would be an argument to try to strike it from canon considering standard elements of even non-direct non-Megstiel-ick, just why-didn’t-he-see-her-face wumbo sized oversights.

However, despite however logical this may seem to a large swathe of people, I am not snorting enough crack to think I can convince the entire fandom to consider this and revise the fandom wide canon acceptance. Ergo, I will not premise an authentic argument from it. 

But that’s about what your other options are if you want to, say, try to scrub out thematics of demonic possession/exorcism effects or whatever else.

Ironically, the antis that yell a bunch of long-disproven points about Destiel, who are grudgeshipping Megstiel, are stepping foot in the same things they falsely yell are problematic. Even if we argued huge devil’s advocates on Meg’s life state as... dead and her reanimating her post-full-death after exiting at some point... then that’s necro? Like they try to claim Destiel is necro, despite Cas being explicitly divine-revived and having his own heart beat on multiple occasions afterwards since then, thus not being dead? Or that it’s noncon, despite canon aggressively clarifying time and again since as far back as season 5 that it isn’t? Or the above-mentioned pulled survivor card trying to speak for all people with that survivor card; is it because they tried to pull the “angels trigger me because of church abuse” card and got told to watch another show? Because... like. SPN is literally about magical creatures and angels, that’s part of what you sign on for. We don’t sign on for central themes of rape, incest, pedophilia or any other wild shit. There’s other TV shows for that. That isn’t this show. If angels bother you, practice basic self care. Just like my self care involves avoiding Megstiel episodes, or any episodes with T.A.W. in them.

Do they think they’re gonna pull an “ah hah, gotcha” if they make someone argue it? Because... these... these things aren’t parallel. Not even close. And at the risk of sounding like “my ship is better than your ship,” they’ve made a point of removing these problems for one character, and with the other character, repeatedly narratively highlighted these issues directly as enduring issues. So whatup with the super ironic grudge shipping?

Oh, lemme guess. “Subtext.”

...*looks up at the wall of everything above* 

Myeah, no, that’s not gonna work.

#supernatural #canon #subtext #literary discussion #megstiel critical

[bluepenguinstories]

Happiness Overload Chapter Thirty

First thing I noticed was the rug on the floor. Then, there was the loss of orientation, a little bit of dizziness, and next thing I knew, I was vomiting.

“Oh, come on! Not on the good carpet!” The wheezing voice whined somewhere next to me. Probably off to the right.

“You might have meant 'rug', dog,” another replied, again, nearby.

I looked around. My vision wasn't in what I would call 'tip-top' shape by any stretch of the imagination but it was clear I was looking at a couch (or was it a sofa?) with about three tall and stoned creatures with long, pale faces.

“Rad,” was the first word I spoke.

“NOT rad,” one of the folks I had gotten to know as 'the beige' replied with a furor only matched by the degree in which they were stoned off their tits.

“You're right. This doesn't make me very happy. Not a smooth landing. Nu-uh,” I shook my head. I thought I had recalled my other times using the time cube much more of a smooth ride. With my euphoric body, I should not have had to experience such a painful entrance.

“That was the good rug, too! It really tied the pyramid together!”

“Ah, bro, brother, dog, fear not, my dude. For all good things must end, so too another shall begin. We may yet make another rug from the finest of hemp.”

“Say no more,” I belched, still feeling a bit of acidic vile. That didn't last, thank goodness.

“So, when do you think the problem child will arrive?” I could overhear my brethren doing their usual rounds of behavior I did not approve on. Though the cheerios I had been sucking on were running dry, I savored the flavor.

“Any minute now. I think they already did and just decided to bend logic,” came the response from one that I could tell just by listening was sitting right beside the other. Their voices carried through many layers of the pyramid. Let it be known how loud my brethren were when under the effects of hallucinogenics and let it be doubly so known that they were always under the effects of hallucinogenics.

I had arrived. Properly this time. So I may have added yet another past, but devil in the details, let's get down to brass tacks (side note: I never understood what that phrase meant but it sounds so serious and it makes me happy to finally have an excuse to use it).

“Welcome back,” one of the Beige greeted.

I grinned and waved to the sofas and the chairs occupied by my kindred spirits.

“It's good to be back! I've missed you guys so much!”

“Tell me, child, did you reach your emotional high?” An elder Beige inquired.

“Yeah, it felt good. You could say I'm sobered up a little at the moment, but I'll be with her fully in due time. I just want to see a friend of mine beforehand. Even after all this time, I feel like things aren't quite over, y'know?”

The elder took a rip from a bong and coughed a violent cough. “Yes, we understand.”

“By the way, how's the me on this universe doing?”

“They died breaking into what they thought was area 51.”

“Ooh!” That did sound pretty damn impressive, yet at the same time, I wasn't surprised. “Sounds just like them...er...me?”

“The populace likes to think there is something of value there. Do you know how many bases the US Military has? Experimental aircrafts, biological weaponry, electronic components, material from other planets, all over their bases across the planet. Of course, The Flashbulb owns all these things as well, and more. Also, of course, The Flashbulb owns all the other military bases on this planet. This planet is not very interesting. It's just the world going to war with itself to give itself resources and take resources away from itself.”

“That's neat! Though I don't care about any of that!”

All the Beige laughed, then coughed. Clouds of smoke pervaded through the pyramid's living room.

“Neither do we, that's why we said it's not very interesting. Yet people try to break into what they call 'Area 51'. Out of all the places in the world, Nevada is probably the least interesting of them all.”

I shrugged. “Maybe that's why they got the whole 'mythos' thing. Gotta drum up tourism somehow.”

“The only interesting thing on this planet is something not of this planet.”

“Yeah, I'd call that pretty interesting. Are you referring to yourselves?”

“We think you already know what we are referring to.”

I gave a hearty laugh. Of course I did.

Then I noticed something.

“Hey, you haven't been speaking in past tense as much as I remember. What's up with that?”

“Ah,” it sounded like one was reminiscing, or it could have been a lapse in consciousness. “We're already looking forward to the future.”

“That's fair! Know what's in store?”

“Well, the being you call 'Euphoria' has had quite the effect on people. The world is breaking itself in a manic craze. In time, this world will come to an end.”

“Sounds good! You guys okay with that, though?”

They gave a collective shrug. “It was bound to happen when The Flashbulb introduced such a thing. We have enjoyed our time here and will continue to do so in the future. But what of you? When you were here prior you seemed more eager to prevent such a catastrophe?”

“Well, I'm a little bit different than whoever you met before.”

Lighter laughter. “Yes, we're sure you are. As all things go.”

I continued. “Considering she is a part of me just as she is a part of Earth, it would seem a little unfair of me to be against it. I'm just happy to be here before it already ended!”

“Ah, well, you can say it's in the process of ending.”

“So you're a whole new being now, eh?” One of the Beige asked, sounding more drunken than high. “One with the angel, eh?”

“Yeah! Pretty cool, huh?”

“HEY PEABRAIN, CAN YOU TELEPORT?”

“Isn't that how this whole story started in the first place? I mean, yeah, but then I'm a different version of me, aren't I? I can't even tell what number we're on anymore. I think I lost count after three.”

“There are an infinite number, as you're aware,” an elder Beige pointed out.

“I'm aware, but I'm not interested,” I shrugged, even gave a fake yawn for added effect. “Anyway, know where Conrad is?”

“He's dead.”

“Shoot. Even in this timeline the guy can't catch a break. Well, what about Velvet?”

“Not dead.”

“Cool! I'd like to visit her, then! I've missed her!”

“ARE YOU GOING TO TELEPORT?”

“Dude.” I made some wild gestures. “What is your deal with teleportation?”

More eruptions of laughter mixed with coughs. I sighed.

“I'm just going to walk, actually.”

They seemed to be ignoring me.

I looked around. I didn't remember jack shit. This wasn't good.

“How do I get outside again?”

They laughed and pointed to my left. Even the elders were in on it. I wish I was having as good of a time as them, but I knew leaving would have made me much happier.

“Thanks, you guys. You know, I'm going to miss you.”

“You're really going to walk? When it's hot out? Do you know how slow you humans walk, anyway?”

I grinned. I wasn't too bright. They were right to question my actions.

“I'm sure I can get some kind of mini air-conditioner going and I can catch some rides along the way. I'm not even too sure where Velvet is, but I'm sure I'll stumble across her eventually. Besides, there's something poetic about getting to see the world as it's falling apart, don'cha think?”

Everyone fell silent.

“My dude, that sounds super pretentious.”

I waved as I walked away. As I walked away, I heard the wild explosion of laughter beginning again. Perhaps they too were affected by Euphoria. Then again, it was probably just the weed.

I stamped my good, healthy feet down the steps leading to the bottom of the pyramid where the living room was. At least one of my hearts was healthy. I had good cholesterol levels. My people were threatening to raise my blood sugar. All this noise they made while I was attempting to meditate. My precious meditation! What more? I believed I heard chatter downstairs, chatter that was coming from someone who wasn't of our kind.

My respiratory dongers took on the foulest of stenches.

“Do you guys ever consider using an air freshener!!? Is it so hard?!”

“This is the good kush, Tim,” one of them explained. No. There was NO use explaining. My fellow idiots were NOT going to get out of this one.

“By the way, WHO was here just now?”

“Oh, just one of those problem children, you know how it is.”

“GREAT. How many kids do you have, anyway? I really should keep a better eye on you guys, but the trouble is you guys keep me from being calm!”

“I think we just had the one, didn't we?” One turned to the other.

“Well, there was the other one, I think? I don't know, we were stoned when that happened,” the other replied.

“Dude, we were stoned when both times happened!”

“How do we even remember it happening in the first place?”

“Because, like, get this, it happened in at least a few pasts!”

“The past sure is a funny thing!”

“Which one?”

The two of them burst into...well, hideous noises! Horrid and rapturous!

“Shut up! Both of you! I get it! We all get it! We're all aware of the infinite and ever expanding universes and how events play out differently in each one of them! But guess what? We're stuck in this one and the problems we face are right here!”

“Tim, try some dank kush and maybe you'll calm down,” one of the older ones handed me a joint. I slapped that useless object out of their hand and looked in disgust.

“Tell me WHO was here already!”

They shrugged. “Just Blanc.”

“And WHO is that?”

“Just someone problematic.”

“So you didn't give birth to them?”

“Nah, just visited a while back and we figured they were chill so we invited them to the Hall of Memories.”

“I...just...how...why...oh, never mind! I'm going back to the top of the pyramid and I'm going to meditate on this until this planet crumbles.”

The whole way back up the steps, the many flights of steps, I grumbled. I just couldn't believe the irresponsibility of my fellow idiots. No, I could believe it because I've been living with them since we crashed here! I don't even know how long that's been anymore but our whole time I've witnessed the effects of their irresponsibility. They just didn't care, did they? As long as they got high, they didn't care what they did. That's why I never touched the stuff, even though our people thrive on it! Because...because we're all idiots!

Once I made it to my quarters at the top of the pyramid, I arranged the grains into various shapes and thought of the numerous ways I could suck on them.

“Yes...it's their fault...they do all these irresponsible things and I try to do the right thing by staying out of it so I can make sure I'm not one of the ones responsible...” I muttered and groaned, while sucking on a couple of granular circles in the most intricate of ways.

“This is all their doing...this is all them...” I was starting to nod off. That was how I knew the meditation was working.

All of these memories. I didn't know who I was or when I was at times. Past, future, never a present. But all of that would end. I reached clarity when I devoured my brother and I was closer and closer to clarity the closer I had been to my brother.

Lurching now, weakened just a bit. I inched my way through those darkened halls and coughed up flesh and bone.

“Oh, brother. Seems I wasn't meant to hold you down,” I heaved a little more as I smiled with my blackened teeth. “No matter, we are together. We will meet our goal together.”

Few steps further. I didn't even need to take many steps. I was everywhere except in my own body.

I was deep underground, in a series of tunnels. Also deep underground in a series of tunnels were my brother and sister, Gumby and Polo. Not related by blood, of course. Unless I were to devour them. I knew Gumby wished to devour an angel, or at least wished to meet such an angel to fulfill his wish of an amphibious army. I wished to devour the same angel, or at least meet such an angel to fulfill my wish. My wish of...

My wish of having a wish?

I already knew from the start the angel wasn't one who dealt in granting wishes.

That said, I was aware of who else was underground. I spoke with her once through a corpse. One sweet Dr. Chekhov. Quite the kisser. But that wasn't the 'her', that was the corpse.

She was of a different breed. Quite ordinary. As was Chekhov, but he was an obsessive one. Quite like me. Obsessed over the angelic. Again, quite like me. Velvet, she was the one down here, ordinary. Not quite like me. Not quite, but a sister in her own right.

She was also with the angel I had been seeking. I knew the angel would appear, close to me. Not close enough to taste. All I could see were memories, memories I was not allowed to live. So it was up to me to project myself and influence what I could until the angel was ready to have audience with me. Until my body was ready to move closer. I had the clarity, but I was still not quite ready yet for everything...

What were they all responsible for?

Oh, just a problem child.

When we landed on Earth, it wasn't a crash landing. Not at first. We were time-travelers. We were conquerors. We had such great technology and were prepared to lead the humans to a new era of prosperity.

It wouldn't, or shouldn't, have even been difficult. We would arrive in what would eventually be come to be known as Egypt and conquer them, then work our way up. We made sure it was early into human civilization so that they wouldn't have as advanced technology to challenge us. We had it all planned it.

Once we landed, however, we were greeted by humans in strange attire. We would later describe them as 'business suits'. One of them, who introduced themselves in a language that would later be described as 'English', which we were certain was not what the Egyptians were speaking during that time, said unto us:

“Hey, we're time-traveling entrepreneurs and we were thinking how our time traveling devices aren't quite up to snuff. We noticed you have some of your own, so we're just going to steal them from you.”

We had no idea what they were saying at the time, though we would later understand years later. We tried communicating in hand gestures, but they must have taken it as a threat as they pointed weapons at us that sent electricity through our systems and restrained us. Due to the hard coating of our bodies, such a feat should have been impossible, but those people must have done their research on us beforehand.

Next thing we knew, they went in our ship and ransacked it, leaving little behind. After we could move again, we looked inside to see the one thing we could salvage were our cannabis plants.

I think the rest had already been told.

We introduced our plants to the Egyptian people and they were so impressed that they built us a pyramid to live in. We took shelter in the pyramid, expanded space underneath to fit our ship inside. Then we disassembled our ship and repurposed some of the parts to create air conditioning units. We dug further underground to make space for the Hall of Memories. We brought it with us, but not with the ship. There's no real way to explain it and I was never high enough to understand, myself. It was just something that was ever expanding, just as the universe.

All of this may be common knowledge by now. As it's pretty apparent, those folks who stole from us were members of what would become known as The Flashbulb. We lived in secrecy and have been ever since. So why waste anyone's time bringing all that up? Surely this is just drivel that will be recorded in the Hall of Memories as a portion of repetitive nonsense.

Well, let's see...

The 'lived in secrecy' part. Yes. Kind of hard to do when people already knew about you.

At least the people who knew about us were accepted and adored us, treating us like honored guests. Or, really, some kind of divine beings. I would end up finding my fellow idiots intoxicated on inhaled cannabis plants surrounded by humans crawling all over them. Oh, the humans were intoxicated, too. They loved the stuff. The things the humans were doing disgusted me. Gyrating and pressing their mouths against various parts of my kind.

It seemed like they were enjoying it. Both the humans and my fellows. There were fluids all over the floor and I was pretty sure it wasn't bong water. I was, of course, disgusted. As anyone should be.

Few days, or maybe months, it was hard to pin an exact date, especially when calenders change, later, I checked up on my people and noticed something on the floor and the dank scent of something...indica.

Whatever was on the floor seemed to be moving. Well, moving in place. I leaned down and noticed that the movements were breaths. This thing was alive and breathing.

“That was new,” one of them pointed at the creature on the floor.

“New? NEW?!” I was...the word wasn't quite astonished, but it was a certain furious and confused feeling. “What did you do?”

“They called it 'sex'...”

“Yes! I know what sex is! We all know! Intercourse! You...conceived! This is horrible!”

“We conceived constantly. Each thought became a conception,” one pointed out.

“You know what I mean!”

“You did not speak in past tense...”

Their heads bobbed, so dizzy they looked. My head was getting dizzy just looking at them. Just looking at the newborn...whatever on the floor.

“How did this happen?!”

“That was much better, brethren.”

“Tell me NOW!”

“Those pharaohs were quite...alluring.”

Each nodded in unison.

“We aren't supposed to breed with humans!” I protested. As I had been. Every word I spoke, every action, a protest against their madness.

“Did you suggest a certain...racism?”

“No! Our anatomies are incompatible! You already know this!”

“My bro, many things became possible whenever we got stoned. You have known this.”

“Never mind that! You HAVE to take responsibility!”

“Indeed, we smoked a lot of the good stuff, and there was still much to smoke. We needed to smoke more.”

They each took turns taking more hits and ignoring the small, black mass, writhing on the floor.

“Fine!” I yelled. “I'll take it upon myself!”

As I marched up those steps, I didn't realize what an undertaking that would be, nor did I yet know what they had wrought upon the planet. I looked down on this creature, much less beige in color than any of us, and started to think the thing was rather...adorable? Especially the tentacles writhing every which way from the back.

At the top of the pyramid, the room was small, the space between the walls were thin. It was darkest up there and enough space for my tall body and the reeds I liked to carry with me. Though it was a cramped space, it was mine and suitable for me. I rocked and cradled the young in my arms and could hear the creature gurgle and thought of the different ways I may raise it.

I could instill a good system of values, teach all that I know, nurture the thing, feed them, raise them, be the very thing the rest of my kind couldn't and refused to be. I could be just what the child needed. While lost in such thoughts, I started drifting off to sleep and before my consciousness went on vacation, beyond the foul odor emanating from the child, I thought I heard them utter their first word:

“Entropy”.

I felt like crying tears of THC.

As of the current moment I was certain of the direction of the narration even in spite of my movements.

“Hello, Tim,” I said, though no one was around to hear me, especially not Tim. At the current moment in time, I was certain of just what thoughts were coming from whom. Now there was yet the question of the movements, where these legs would take me. Such long, foreign objects.

“Dr. Chekhov may not mind if I swallow him whole,” yes, that was the next course of action. Of course. I would visit the one I spoke through, if only but a moment. I would devour the scientific knowledge. Or, I would find nourishment.

“Oh, Tim. It is a wonderful thing that you remember me, even as we may never meet again.”

Through the labyrinth of hallways I made my way, motioned, though I pictured myself as a reel on a tape. I must have been a motion picture. I must have seen myself as a movie. At the present, I detected no reflection. Oh, and the Beige that Blanc met, I had the answer.

“I cannot move. I can teleport.”

So through shadow, my appearance. Within the room, computers. Abandoned. Husk of a body, hunched, a seeming smile spread on the face of the man. I smiled back. I greeted him. As I approached, I thought of romance. When I was near his face, situated on his skull, I kissed him. He wasn't breathing. He had been dead for an unknown amount of time. I was guessing at least two hours. If I was counting on the low end.

“Velvet, if we were to meet I would thank you for shoving lipstick down his throat.”

Though it was never applied to his lips. Less of a kiss, I released myself from him before opening my mouth and letting the caverns expand. The entrance to what would accept the once doctor's skull would need to widen if I were to take it all in. So began the process.

As the devouring process went underway, I considered what the next course of action may be. One may think and eat at the same time. Just as a couple of friends may chat over a good meal at a diner. So to would I make headway on a good meal. Once I had my fill, I needed something new to keep me going. To think that I was aimless would have been a mischaracterization.

Noble goal as any, to continue as I had been doing. The spread of happiness to the world. What better way to show my conviction than to pay a visit to another good doctor? The next one I would spare the pleasure of swallowing whole. All I desired from the one in mind was a little chat. After all, my accomplishments deserved an audience.

Baby didn't cry. That was the first thing I made note of. I wrote on the walls with my reed 'baby no cry'.

I stared at the abyssal thing. Thing stared back at me. Already so old and ancient, only alive for a day.

“What am I?” Spoke the creature. Stretching at two meters tall.

Astonished, I lacked in an explanation. “You were born of one of us, and a human. Or several.”

“Has the Dunwich Horror come out yet?” They asked.

I had no answer to that either.

Again, the creature spoke:

“So what does that make me?”

“A little of both, not quite either,” was the best answer at the moment, and I wish I had another.

“It's a good read, though I suppose the author won't be alive for a long time. Reminds me a little of myself.”

“Which part?”

“The ones who spawned me are downstairs, correct?”

I nodded.

“The contents of the story. I am already alive, silly.”

So the creature itself moved on its own, bipedal, already accustomed to legs. No need to crawl. Yet I was the one on the floor and could not figure out how I was going to pick myself up.

“It has only been a day...” I whispered. Oh, but the coming days would prove to be adjustable.

After a while, I got used to their speech patterns, though at certain points I wondered whether it was actually a side effect of their birth or something deliberate. There were moments where they seemed rather inconsistent. Child-like with too much knowledge. It dawned on me then what the problem was: their mind was ours, through and through. All the contents of the Hall of Memories, spread within the caverns of their mind, scattered and shaken about. With the mixed birth and the high levels of THC they were born with, they had trouble organizing such thoughts. Sometimes things were more clear than others.

I lost, or would lose, track of days until years passed. All the knowledge I tried to pass down to them proved ineffective as they already knew such things. Maybe not in the moment, but maybe a few days prior, or a few days later.

One day, or year, either way, one particular phase of the moon, I stumbled downstairs, running low on my granular supply.

In the living quarters, my fellow pale ones were blowing smoke and the tall, dark mass stood stiff, arms folded.

“We have the opportunity to take back what is ours!” Shouted the creature.

One of the elders, moving a lazy hand and gazed with a lazy eye, replied:

“Why would we do anything like that?”

“I might go about calling myself Iskandar...unless that guy hasn't existed yet...I cannot claim to be someone I emulated if the person I want to emulate isn't around...”

“Who?” I asked, barging in.

“Oh, hello, one who ate the grains. Be it wheat?” Another elder asked of me, then turned to my adopted child in shadow. “We have everything we need right here, not to worry.”

“But they stole from us! We were going to conquer this planet and now you don't want to do anything! If I wanted to, right now, I could find the ones who stole from us and destroy them!”

“No need, child. They will do that to themselves. We are better sitting here until that happens.”

This 'child', turned to me, a jagged and loose grin. “An honorary pharaoh, something which I may be. Tell me, do we have names?”

The great elder ones shook their ancient heads in a stupefying manner. “We have no need of such things, nor do you.”

They dusted off their shoulders, so broad, so narrow, such a contradiction. Some smoke, some shadow, faded, yet the human features were just that: features, and the non-human parts were pronounced in their obscurity. What I hoped to raise, they shook their head, less anger and more a look of shame. As if they were the parent and we were facing a collective disapproval.

“I must go, then. I cannot stay here and do nothing. What would that say of my life?”

None of us had an answer, not even I. Just as they walked away, they stopped in their tracks.

“I will come up with a name for myself and until I find one that satisfies me, that name will keep changing,” they made such a bold declaration before twisting their head in my direction and pointing their chiseled yet crooked finger my way. “Tell me, have you gone by 'Tim' yet?”

My loins knew the answer, though I refused to acknowledge them. Deep down, within the gland on the upper portion of my skull, I also knew the answer. That I had for the longest time had these same thoughts. That we should have tried to fight back and returned to our original goal. That we had grown stagnant and now the very idea of a goal seemed absurd. Absurd yet, the thought that we had no names, no identities, didn't sit well with me, but I never thought of one that would prove a remedy. Tim...that name sounded comforting. Such simplicity. So sublime.

“No, not yet,” was my response.

Not yet acknowledging that I had acknowledged their question, they turned their attention back to the ones seated on their cushioned thrones.

“Tell me: do we have genders?”

“We have no need for such ridiculous things!” They dismissed, baffled by the very idea. We were aware some of the humans who came to visit had such things, though not everyone. “What are we going to do with those? Smoke them?”

“You will soon,” they nodded. Though this answer seemed a response to my fellow wise idiots in comfort, I knew it was directed at me.

They walked away, approaching the exit, and without even turning their head, they whistled a tune and called out through the darkness:

“From this day henceforth, I am a man! Yessiree! I am he!”

I didn't think the song would catch on, but if 'he' wanted to sing, why not? Well, it seemed my ilk had objections, as as soon as he was gone, they all burst into laughter.

“So they're just gong to have a name and gender now?”

“You mean, HE'S going to have a name and gender now!”

I got cross.

“You guys are being rather disrespectful, you know?”

They continued laughing.

“It's not what you think! We're so high we can't stop laughing! We don't mind what that problem child does or doesn't do! So he's a he? We're just gonna be here smoking the leaf!”

I was about to go back up to the tip top of the pyramid when I remembered why I came downstairs. Not wanting to go out into the heat, I inhaled what I hoped to be nothing before exhaling a plea.

“Can I borrow some of your cannabis, my dogs?”

The great elder bowed their head, then stuck out a tongue, an affirmative statement. “The plant is for all of us, my dude.”

Blessed be. I took the bushel of kush up to my quarters. Though this felt like an hour of weakness, it would only be for one night, then it would be back to the grain...I just hoped that the paranoia wouldn't set in.

My full story...hm...yes. I could tell what Tim was doing. Honestly, such an ordeal was going to be lengthy and boring. Memories are a fickle thing. That was an allowed present tense statement because it was, is, and always will be true. Whatever Tim was about to bring up was just a matter of memories. Even that very fact was something worth remembering. If I myself were just a pile of memories, then I was false data mixed in with vague truths.

Entertaining, really. That was why I loved my brother, though I could never be like them. All I could do while watching another's memories of me through my own memories was sip brain matter through a straw. In other words, relax, and enjoy the show. Or be prepared to get bored to death.

We sat. Just as we always did. Our meals consisted of the grub we took turns gathering each day, the grub resting far beneath the soil. As we would all be high, such tasks could take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours and it was not unheard of for a day to pass before the one tasked to supply our cure for the munchies returned. All the while, we sat.

Grub; locusts, mealworm, scorpions, snakes, and flies, mixed together and mashed up before being left to dry in what would result in a concoction perfect for any time of day. As it was known, the munchies could strike at any time, so our grub had to be readily available. When the munchies rared their ugly heads, we dipped our finger in the grub and chowed down.

None of this information was important, yet someone needed to know it, that much was certain. The only relevance is that at a specific point in time, that time being the past, we all had a collective case of the munchies. Just as we dipped and savored our grub, we were made aware of the humanity on our laps, kissing us up.

Such lovely humanities we were fine with, but one humanly body tore its way into the pyramid base and we could see the look on their face; paranoia was setting in.

“One of our children has gone missing! What if it was one of our enemies? Or the wrath of the gods? Osiris? Ra?”

“Now, now,” we reassured. “None of your gods have ever been interested in children.”

“Then what?” The human of Egypt continued to be in a state of panic. This alarmed about two of the sensual ones, who ceased their pleasures to share in the worry.

“Which child was it?” One of them asked.

“One of the children of the sun,” the barging one explained. “Shorter than a reed, thin, black hair! All the other children were accounted for!”

“Oh no!” One of the lovelies on our laps cried out in distress. “What if they were eaten alive by locusts? The season is upon us!”

Despairing bearer of bad news only had a head to shake. “One of the children told me they saw a tall man clad in shadow interacting with the missing child, though they claim not to know what happened!”

We looked to each other and nodded. Though it may not have been our business, one of us decided to interject.

“We know what happened,” we explained.

“You do?”

“Mhm. But we are too high to tell you.”

This left most of them disappointed, so another of us reassured them.

“Fear not, your missing child was probably eaten.”

This did not have our intended effect, as this just drove the group in a haze of speculation. All the humanity in the room fled and took all the fear with them.

I was doing my ritual meditations when I received a visit from the child. I opened my eyes and he was beside me. I took a jump back from where I had been sitting. Bad vibes emanated from entrance.

“Fear not,” he spoke with a icy glee. “I'm not actually here! Fancy trick, is it not?”

“How am I able to see you, then?”

“Firetrucks are pretty important.”

“What are those?”

“I'm projecting myself. Don't worry, it's a hallucination! It's also not one, because we're interacting and this is an actual conversation! Turns out any Beige could do it, the real mystery is why they don't!”

“So where are you really?”

“I suppose firetrucks haven't been invented yet...they will be pretty important. I don't suppose you have just regular trucks either. You're probably closer to trebuchets than trucks. Well, keep your eyes peeled for them. By the way, Tim, you're looking pretty healthy. I've thought of meditating, myself, but I seem to always be on the move. You know me, ever the busybody!”

“I really don't know you. I tried. I tried to teach you the right things. You already seemed ahead of me from the beginning.”

I ignored the fact that he called us 'Beige' as that was something we didn't even call ourselves. Though we didn't really find value in calling ourselves anything, it seemed.

“I don't really know where I am! I just move! Territories haven't quite been established yet, have they? Even if they have, I can't make heads or tails of where and when I am! Whenever something is no longer fulfilling, I look for something else, simple as that!”

“I see...so what have you been up to?”

“Please, Tim. Don't sell yourself short! I do love you, after all, just as I love all things I am not quite like! You taught me that, don't you know? That I'm not quite like you guys and I'm not quite like the humans. Oh, but I do love them both all the same. You taught me to be proactive, you taught me the importance of a name! Right now I've been calling myself 'something-hotep', though I don't think it's been catching on! Oh, and the elders taught me things as well! When I would go out into the grub gardens, they would teach me about sin and morals and what silly things those are! They taught me of the importance of the past, though I can't really distinguish it from the present or future! Maybe it's like that for all of them, though? Hm...”

Quite talkative, this one was. 'Something-hotep'. Was it a name of mockery for the people who took us in or a sincere name? I didn't think it would last.

“Maybe it is...I don't think I feel it as much as the others do as I rarely partake in the herb, though the great elders would say a lack of THC in the system is dangerous.”

“I've been up to a great many things! You know, I figured that the other Beige may have been right and pursuing those who stole from us would be a futile effort and I could still conquer. But 'conquer' was too harsh a word. That's not really what I wanted. I love humanity, after all. I want to see the best of them and I knew I could help them. I made it my goal to lead a large group of people and they followed wherever I went! It was a time of peace and prosperity! Ah, but then I got bored of them. These people started dying off and fights were breaking out and it was really quite tiresome. So I started suggesting a few things here and there and next thing I knew, they all killed each other.

I decided that I needed a new goal, one that would last me longer. I still wanted to help humanity in some way, or at least stave off boredom for a little while, but something was missing. Maybe the scope was too small? Whatever it was, I figured the best course of action was to get closer to humanity. Plus, I missed you. So I returned to Egypt and I ate someone.”

“Why would you do something like that?”

He pondered, though I don't think it was a pondering of my question.

“Yes, you're not much like the others, are you? But that's okay. I love you just as I love them. You know, when you came down and overheard my anger towards the ones who birthed me over their stagnation, it was not the first time I expressed a desire for identity. I would often go out and speak with the elders and do you know what they once told me when I asked for a name?”

“No, I don't.”

“I figured it would bring me closer to humanity! Alas, it mostly tasted like flesh. Bit of organs here and there. Not boneless, I may add, but since it was just a child, it didn't taste so bad. You know, in many ways, I am still a kid. Or at least one at heart. I don't think I'll ever be allowed to grow any older.”

I felt like I was going to wretch. None of the others had a desire to eat our own. I could hear his excuse now “but humans aren't quite like me, and besides, it was an act of love.” To this problem child, swallowing a life whole must have been like making hamburgers out of a sacred cow; I didn't know the meaning to my own analogy.

“That's sick...” I mustered my reply. I felt as if he would neither continue nor leave unless I said something.

“They told me, in their great wisdom, to look at the sky. They told me that there are countless stars among countless galaxies and that I was a single comet among a host of stars. That a chunk of rock doesn't ask for a name and just does what it does and allows itself to happen. That is what I am. That if I should strive to be anything, it ought to be to strive to be nothing,” I heard a sniffle. He wiped his face, then laughed. “Do you understand? That is what they are! They do nothing and allow things to happen! But I know very well that's not how they used to be and that's not how I want to be! That's not who I am! Because I am not quite like them, now am I?”

This time, he required no response. Nary a pause.

“That's right! Do you know what is also sick? That I should exist and allow things to pass on their own! I know who stole from us, they call themselves 'The Flashbulb' and they are brazen! They deserve no remorse and I despise them! They are humanity! I despise the Beige because their inaction speaks volumes! That they would resign themselves to live the same monotonous life for all eternity! I despise and I love them all, for I could never be either of them and they are so foolish and I admire their differences and in the end, they all mean nothing!”

His voice, seething rage and a blackened laughter.

“I am going to live for a very long time, you see...I need something to keep me going. No others mean anything to me, nothing else is important, all I ask is something fulfilling. Something that I can work toward and feel satisfied afterward. I will attempt many things, this I know. Many goals I will have I will achieve, and still I will seek more. Many others I will come close to achieving and abandon, feeling empty toward the end. Do you understand?

I will never disappear. I will always be out there so long as I am not satisfied. For all I amount I despise The Flashbulb, in the end, they mean nothing to me, because I know I could dismantle them at any point and I would still exist. So what then?”

I had no answer. Did I ever?

His hands shook, he grinned, then fell silent.

“It was nice playing catch up. I may discard you at some point, so hope you have nothing but restless nights.”

The image of him ceased. Or, the one in front of me. But within, he persisted. I became aware of his actions, even if I never knew what they may be, I knew what destruction he would bring. Whatever name he went by, he would make himself known. In a sense, he felt an obligation to make himself important, even though I knew he thought of himself as the least important of all.

Or maybe he thought of himself as the most important. I wished he would remain a secret, but I knew he couldn't keep himself hidden. At least not to me, and who knew who else he would like others to know him?

Thousands of years passed by since. That memory still haunts me.

I remembered once coming downstairs and everyone seemed to be having a sort of celebration. It was rare to see any of us, me included, with such energy. Our tall bodies writhed with pleasure, our legs dangling in the air and sliding around on the ground.

“What's the occasion?” I asked.

One of the elders, dancing, informed me.

“Our child has reportedly fallen into a coma for which they will not awake from!”

“Can I see?”

“Nope! Because some humans took the body to one of their secret facilities! Probably not good that those outside of the small group of Egyptians know about us, but who cares? Not our problem now!”

Yes...I should have hated the fact that we were known, that it seemed at any moment, the humans could eradicate us, however...that he would no longer be a threat, all I could be was relieved. I let out a sigh, signifying such a thing.

“Now we can smoke weed all day, every day!” One elder cheered in a proverbial voice.

“But don't you do that already?” I asked.

“Hey!” Another elder, though looked closer in age to me, judging by the lack of tentacles, pointed a fleshy finger. “Don't kill our vibe!”

I was much too happy to argue, so I did a little jig and went back to the top of the pyramid where I hummed a little tune and smiled.

For years and years, I thought I was rid of the one who had started going by the name 'Marco' as I found out just a few days ago. I didn't understand how Conrad knew of his existence or how he was still out there when I was told he had gone into a coma, never to awake again, but I felt the fear once more and those stupid Beige were wholly responsible.

Did Tim wrap it up? I admit I fell asleep partway, but I think some of those memories were still fresh. I must say, I was a little amused at that assumption that I was the one in a coma. Did Tim not know that the Beige had sex with each other once and had a full Beige-baby? Well, maybe if Tim came out of their room more often, there would have been less confusion.

If I cared enough to visit, I would assure Tim that I ate the one in the coma and I was doing just fine. But I knew that things were coming to an end soon and what would make Tim happiest was not to see me, and I sure did like to make others happy. So, like a good Samaritan, it was due time to commit other random acts of kindness.

#happiness overload #writing #horror #story #conspiracy #surreal #supernatural #marco #weed #Aliens #ancient aliens #happiness #goals

[rhysand-vs-fenrys]

Nesta in ACOFAS: My Overall Opinion

Below the cut is my stance and interpretation of everything Nesta and surrounding Nesta in ACOFAS. I’ve been as exhaustive as possible in my answer because I’m only making this one post to go through it all.

It is broken up into 5 sections (with subcategories):

How the trauma built

How it manifests

Rhys & Feyre’s responses (with some overall references to the IC here)

Cassian’s role

Nesta overall

The TL;DR of what follows is that I support the direction SJM is taking these characters and it is completely logical as they have been presented to us.

How the Trauma Built

This is to the people saying Nesta was OOC because of her PTSD (though again, Maas is these character’s God and Creator, it’s impossible for her to write OOC).

Nesta was isolating herself quite a bit in the beginning of ACOWAR. She wanted nothing to do with anybody, and also isolated Elain with her. She had a sort of ally in that regard.

Over the course of ACOWAR, Nesta started reaching out more and engaging more with Prythian and the other members of the Inner Circle. She even came close to reconciling with Feyre (more on that with “Rhys and Feyre’s Responses”). 

For Nesta at that point, being alone to process her thoughts and then becoming more immersed in Velaris and Prythian was the right path. It helped her find the ground again after her trauma in the Cauldron, which is very much described in WAR as a violation with similar descriptors to being raped (feeling that their body did not belong to them anymore). 

And then Nesta killed Hybern.

She was built as being incredibly resistant to even the idea of war, and never wanted to fight (More on that later in “Cassian’s Role”). The IC were the fighters, she wanted to maintain the sort of innocence that came from not surrounding herself in blood.

Not only did Nesta kill Hybern, but she killed a dying man. Elain struck the fatal blow- the knife through his neck. He was done for. Because of what he’d done to their father and to Cassian, Nesta snapped and literally sawed off his head while he was still alive.

ACOFAS builds around Nesta’s thoughts of that moment, the last words Cassian thought he would ever say to her, and her own fears during that time. 

I think Nesta would have been alright if “just” the Cauldron happened (not that that was a weak blow). She was finding her way and her strength, she’d accepted that at her core nothing was different. She was still the same Nesta she’d always been- imperious and not someone to fight a war. 

But then she was the one who ended it, and that shattered her sense of self and with it any progress Nesta had made against the trauma of the Cauldron. After 1 traumatic event, it is hard enough to find your footing. After two, spaced far enough apart that some semblance of recovery had been made? Utterly devastating. 

How it Manifests

The Drinking

The IC has always processed things with the assistance of alcohol. Rhys’ answer to Feyre’s marriage to Tamlin was a plan to get blackout drunk. Cassian having a bad meeting with Nesta in MAF meant he went for the liquor when he came home. Feyre fighting with Nesta in WAR earned advice from Mor that it was fine to drink directly from the bottle.

Giving Nesta space to drink all she wanted might not have seemed entirely wrong (at least, at first). Fae healing probably means over-drinking isn’t as much of a threat to their health, and it took them a while to realize and accept that Nesta wasn’t just drinking off stress, she was well on her way to becoming an alcoholic.

I hesitated there to say that she is an alcoholic mainly because she wasn’t showing signs (in her PoVs) of an addiction mindset. She never seems to crave alcohol, and I think overall rather than an addiction it’s an expression of her trauma and attempt at self-medication of sorts (not to say it hasn’t morphed into full alcoholism). 

Again, that isn’t a denial that it’s alcoholism, just a hesitation in assigning the term in this circumstance without more data.

The Sex

If you haven’t read the ACOMAF excerpt “A Court of Wings and Embers” about Cassian and Nesta’s meeting, it revealed something about her back story that she (and Cassian) never mentioned in the core trilogy or FAS: When Nesta broke up with Thomas Mandry, he attacked her and nearly raped her. He got as far as tearing her dress before she managed to escape.

In “Wings and Embers”, Nesta is even sensitive to Cassian’s normal taunts and demeanor because of that experience, she has a bit of a flashback of sorts while they’re talking and he realizes what must have happened. Nesta refuses to give him the name of the man who tried to hurt her (because he promises very sincerely that he will kill him).

For Nesta to go from that to unchecked anonymous sex ties directly into her references in ACOFAS to feeling completely numb inside. I think in forcing herself to bed some random stranger- which “Wings and Embers” makes clear is unacceptable to her- she was trying to trigger some kind of shame or horror response in herself. 

She was trying to feel anything. Even if that feeling was fear.

The IC has always been sex-positive, and they didn’t have that critical piece of knowledge Cassian alone holds about Nesta’s past. So they had no hope of catching Nesta’s behavior early on as the cry for help it is.

In that vein, some people do use sex as a coping mechanism after stress or a traumatic experience (This one being killing Hybern). Nesta was lost and needed to figure out who she was after her self-image was shattered. The sex alone might not be the best way to handle it, but it didn’t raise flags for Feyre and the IC because they didn’t know the piece of Nesta’s story Cassian was pledged to secrecy over.

I did not see slut-shaming anywhere in ACOFAS. If anything, Feyre dwells on it because it’s the piece that really doesn’t fit for her. Nesta used Feyre’s sexual relationship with Isaac as fodder to make her miserable. Nesta is the one who slut-shames in TAR and even leans towards it in MAF when she’s snapping at Rhys (More on that in “Rhys and Feyre’s Responses” next).

Feyre isn’t sitting there going “Wow Nesta is a slut”, she’s trying to connect the dots, again while missing the piece of information that would reveal exactly how Nesta was using that sex in her PTSD. 

From an outside standpoint, Maas was using it to show another way PTSD manifests. Feyre and Aelin both manifest as being hollow inside and completely shutting down. Some people affected by PTSD don’t have that “quiet” route, and so Maas is opening up and exploring another form. 

The sexual aspect of Nesta’s PTSD is specifically to show that fundamental difference in how her trauma needs to be treated (more on that in “Nesta overall”).

Rhys and Feyre’s Responses

This section alone could be a novel, so I’m going to try and keep it fairly linear timeline-wise, but still separate Rhys and Feyre later on.

History

Think about how we’ve seen Nesta in ACOTAR and ACOMAF:

In ACOTAR, she’s a frigid, cruel bitch to her baby sister. She slut shames her, insults her, finds insults that literally make Feyre flinch and digs in harder, and does everything in her power to sabotage Feyre because Nesta is mad at their father. For years she makes Feyre’s life a living hell and even contributes to Feyre’s own psychological issues that Tamlin actually heals in TAR (props where props go).

Feyre has zero hope for life in the beginning of TAR, she even tells her father hope doesn’t exist because she genuinely believes that. It is tied almost exclusively to Nesta’s abuse or things that result from her abuse (if Nesta had helped Feyre instead, they might have been able to find a better footing in their poverty, or at least had a home Feyre didn’t dread returning to).

When she returns to the mortal lands, before venturing out to save Tamlin(’s ungrateful ass), Feyre finds a sort of peace with Nesta and starts to realize why Nesta was so horrible to her for so long. The key here is that there is no reconciliation, just a beginning step towards one.

In ACOMAF, Feyre returns from Prythian almost expecting that same quasi-peace she and Nesta found, only to find Nesta as viciously mean and cruel as she was in TAR (probably because of Cassian, but also her own prejudice against Fae and all that their presence might represent (war)). 

Again, a bit of understanding is reached by the end of the book-

then Nesta and Elain are thrown into the Cauldron.

And guess how Nesta treats Feyre in WAR when she returns? Like shit. Again.

Each time the slide back to cruelty makes sense- TAR --> MAF it is the introduction of the fae element and knowing Feyre’s involvement makes the war inevitably an Archeron problem. MAF --> WAR it is the incredibly traumatic event Nesta and Elain went through, Feyre not being there to help them on the other side, and Nesta feeling as if she and Elain were abandoned to the care of near strangers after such a horrifying event (that again is always described along the same vein psychologically as being raped).

Still, even though it makes sense where she is coming from, Nesta does always return to the evil bitch role and never apologizes to Feyre (though she does come close).

Rhysand

He’s first because he’s easy.

People are harping on Rhysand for how he treats Nesta in FAS but it’s totally in line with canon. Feyre snaps at him in WAR for little offhand comments he makes against Nesta. He’s never had a particularly warm image of her.

Rhys brings out receipts for Nesta’s treatment of Feyre pre-ACOTAR, specifically sending her out to hunt in the forest. Remember what happened to Rhys’ little sister when the older sibling didn’t protect them? And she was meeting him somewhere that should have been perfectly safe, she wasn’t entering a dangerous area armed.

On top of that, he’s seen Nesta slut-shame her sister, and even from a non-Feyre side of things, Nesta has a habit of landing hard blows on his entire IC. His best friends who have helped him through horrible trauma, and she attacks them and repeatedly belittles them. 

From his PoV, even if he wasn’t in love with Feyre, Nesta is just downright evil.

Feyre

Nesta is always going back-and-forth. Even Feyre cannot predict when Nesta will strike a blow (metaphorically) or when she’ll be somewhere in the vicinity of pleasant. She defends Nesta to Rhysand (in MAF, WAR, and FAS), but even so whenever Nesta opens her mouth to say something Feyre flinches or anticipates something horrible.

She doesn’t want Rhys to speak ill of her family because they are all she has left of her mortal life, and she had to literally risk her life to keep them fed for years. She couldn’t let grudges grow, because if she did she might just walk into the woods and leave them to starve. They are her family, and so she feels an obligation to protect both Nesta and Elain (more on Elain in a moment).

That doesn’t mean she isn’t affected by how she was treated, or that old wounds aren’t there. She just doesn’t want to get into it. It makes Feyre more dismissive of Nesta, but she is still trying. She’s just lost the strength to try as hard as she would for Mor or Cassian or even Elain- people who actually show her kindness and love.

Elain and the IC

Mor sees Nesta as a nasty thorn in Feyre’s side, but she knows what it is to deal with horrible family (to a much harsher degree). She supports Feyre and her stance, and that’s it. She tried making friends with Nesta and had her head bit off, so she’s not reaching out.

Amren and Azriel you all know.

Elain is where Nesta isolated herself wholly and completely.

In WAR, Nesta had Elain with her as they processed their trauma. Elain was worse off than she was, completely shut down, and so the isolation seemed like a good idea (you may remember in WAR it was not a good idea when it came to Elain, she needed to be around others regularly to open up).

After WAR though... Elain accepted Prythian. She doesn’t fully accept that things are over with Grayson, and doesn’t entirely acknowledge that she is fae, but she accepts Prythian and Velaris and Night. She accepts the world, even while ignoring her circumstance... and Nesta resents her for it.

Elain was always side-by-side with her, but as Elain settled and Nesta raged, she couldn’t count on her younger sister anymore to just be there and understand. Elain started having her own life and hobbies. She found a way to start processing her pain and deal with it. She wasn’t set back by the death of Hybern because Elain accepted that it had to happen and she was protecting her family and avenging their father. 

Elain is very much the one to let go of grudges, while Nesta holds them in a vice-grip. Nesta resented Elain’s peace, and so she distances herself from even Elain, while still leaving a door open for the sister she always favored (at least for a while in FAS Elain is the one who can get Nesta to do stuff).

Cassian’s Role

From the very beginning of WAR, Cassian has known Nesta isn’t like her sisters.

He wanted Nesta to train, he taunted her over it repeatedly, trying to goad her into it. Cassian’s approach to Nesta has always been the closest to how Nesta needed to be approached. He has a fundamental understanding of her and her personality.

Cassian was once someone without a place in the world, and so he carved it out himself. He wants that for Nesta, but he also knows she has to be the one to take it. He tries to help Nesta while giving her her space, and he also seems to accept that while Vealris treats Nesta as if she’s his (brought up by Nesta herself in FAS), she is still her own person and free to be with whoever she wishes or live as she chooses.

Cassian is trapped between wanting to help Nesta as much as she will allow, and minding that line so she knows he isn’t trying to force his presence or himself on her. He is dismissed and ignored by Illyrians as a bastard and is touchy about that, but he endures dismissal when it comes from Nesta so that she knows he is always there for her.

Still, as much as he clearly loves her and cares about her, he can only take so many hits at a time before old wounds become too raw. That is why he will push more forcefully, but in the end he always leaves it to Nesta to take the final step herself.

Cassian is watching her more closely than the others, and he knows that missing piece about her sexual history. He is trying to help her as much as he is capable, but he also knows she needs something different. She needs real help, and Cassian doesn’t have any right to be the one to drag her bodily off to get the treatment she needs. He also knows she wont open up to some doctor.

I’m not doing a lot on Cassian’s stance because that’s what the next novel is going to be. Cassian honestly sees the same pain on Nesta that he had, and he knows her personality very well. She needs the fight, and she needs to feel like she’s earned and carved her own spot in the world.

She needs training as an Illyrian, a position he has always held when it comes to Nesta.

Nesta Overall

Contrary to how some tumbrs have been spinning it, the IC and Feyre never outright abandoned Nesta.

Even Nesta acknowledges at one point that the IC tried giving her jobs or pulling her along in their group to get her to engage. They tried to help her through her PTSD the same way they did for Feyre, Rhys, Mor, even Elain (given a job early on of designing the Townhouse garden). Rhys has offered her duties or positions, Feyre’s tried to help find hobbies for her, and yet Nesta is resistant to all.

As I said before, Maas is showing another form of PTSD, one that requires a completely different path of treatment. The IC try to heal Nesta the way they healed others, but she was never going to be able to walk that same path, not after what happened with the King of Hybern at least (remember, Nesta accepted the role as Ambassador to the Human Lands in WAR as she recovered from what the Cauldron did to her, then wanted nothing to do with it in FAS).

The IC didn’t abandon her, they just couldn’t understand her, and Nesta cannot express herself to show them how best to help her. 

She’s always been barbed and defensive, and in this case when she needed people to gather around her all the more and see through it, they were pushed back because of her own past actions. The IC cannot help her, because she burned bridges with them time and again and they’re just done taking her punches.

Cassian sees what is happening, and he tries to reach for her- but Nesta doesn’t need him alone to make that leap. Even if she loves Cassian desperately and they are endgame mates (that’s not an ‘if’ that’s a fact), she needs to know the others care.

She needs to know that she is genuinely wanted, that her presence is appreciated and accepted with no other thought than “Nesta’s here, I’m so happy” (why Cassian reacted so strongly when Feyre made mention of the almost buyer’s bargain with Nesta coming to Solstice).

Feyre’s exhausted when it comes to her sister. Rhys and  most of the IC have no reason to reach out for her very much because of her own personality and how it hides deep rooted insecurities. Rhys in particular has dealt with horrible people his entire life and he’s not willing to keep them around that much, not if he believes there is nothing redeeming inside them. 

Nesta is screaming for help in her own way, but unfortunately it’s a case where no one else speaks the language, save Cassian. And knowing Cassian understands makes Nesta feel ashamed and weak, open and judged, so she uses every weapon at her disposal to push him back.

She needs both isolation and acceptance. Nesta cannot open up enough for that, and the rest of the IC doesn’t speak that language. They aren’t wilfully ignoring it, they honestly have no idea how to process it and are frustrated by that lack of understanding.

The minute she got up and went to the dying King of Hybern, this became completely inevitable. Nesta isn’t someone who can be strengthened and forged like Feyre or even Elain- surrounded by gentle love and kindness. She needed to be shattered and re-forged, and when she is she will be stronger, more confident, and happier for it.

The next book is going to be incredible.

#cassian #nesta #nesta archeron #feyre #feyre archeron #rhysand #mor #nessian #morrigan #elain #elain archeron #acotar #a court of thorns and roses #acofas #a court of frost and starlight #acofas spoilers #nesta overall #using a special tag in case i need to hunt this down again later #acofas interpretation #posting of this moved up because i have 15 asks dealing with stuff answered here #not to mention the DMs

[monkey-network]

Pink Diamond, Rose Quartz, & ‘Taking the Napkin First’

Okay, I’m “neat” enough to put this in further detail. I’m calling this an SU Critical Theory, for I wanted to express why Pink Diamond = Rose Quartz felt mishandled and why Pink, and by extension Sugar, should’ve considered the idea of ‘Taking the napkin first’, a simple phrase that generally has existed since societal beginnings, which would’ve made her character arc, by extension the story, a bit more ingenious and thought out for audiences, kids and adults alike.

But, what am I talking about with napkins and stuff? Well consider this scenario,

Suppose that you were sitting down at a table. The napkins are in front of you... which napkin would you take? The one on your “left”? Or the one on your “right”? Left or right side? The correct answer is that ‘It’s determined by the one who takes his or her own napkin first.’ If the first one takes the napkin to their right, then there’s no choice but for the others to also take the ‘right’ napkin. Same for the left. Everyone else will take the napkin to their left, because they have no other option. It is not about ownership, but understanding the worth of power.

Sounds bizarre right? Until you factor in that this is how society generally functions. Trendsetting is something people are typically against, but nevertheless follow through because inclusivity is something everyone strives for, for better or for worse. So, what the hell does this have to do with Steven Universe’s Rose and Pink? Well, I’ve come to believe that Pink should’ve have been the initial rebellion/Crystal Gem leader. If Pink Diamond was the one who stood against Homeworld, stood for Earth, while having Rose Quartz around, that would’ve worked better for the show overall. Keeping that quote in mind, roll with me here...

I remember in Now We’re Only Falling Apart where Pearl said Pink did everything she could as a diamond before becoming Rose, but that doesn’t/didn’t sit well with what was shown because what we see is Pink begging before Yellow and Blue, that’s all. I found everything to be great up until that point; we didn’t see her truly go on her own resolve until becoming Rose. So, instead of just becoming Rose to jumpstart events, I say she steps up as a diamond with a different path. Without Blue and Yellow’s permission or oversight, as Pink Diamond, she could head to Earth to express her pro-earth stance before her subjects and make them see her viewpoints without forcing it on them like what her others would expect from her. She brings herself to their level, still claiming her heritage while doing this less for selfish reasons. She’ll still come off as childish like before, using this newfound attitude as a means to spite her general kin, but also appears to want change and to be treated better by doing this. Hence, taking the napkin first. Her relationship with Pearl and the Diamonds hasn’t changed, but her presence as the catalyst in this story is given a better initiative because we’re given a different light of her uprising.

“But how would that work without the Diamonds noticing or set to finding out?” That is where her command comes in. To take the napkin first means that everyone must follow without question or choice, so it would be fair to say that while she shares her viewpoint on equal terms with her subjects on Earth, she demands that no one expresses what she states to gems of other colors, and will threaten anyone who dares to squeal. It’s using her authoritarian influence to keep Blue and Yellow from suspecting as well as giving her subjects the indication that she can mean business, making her look like she’s gradually gaining competence as a leader in the efforts to keep Blue and Yellow from noticing, like Connie keeping the truth about her eyesight from Priyanka. She’s not forcing a viewpoint, but she is taking precaution to who might get her message.

“But where does Rose Quartz fit into this story?” Well, if not the initial leader of the rebellion, Pink will still be Rose but will considerably be Pink’s 2nd in command next to Pearl. To take the napkin first means that someone must spread the awareness around next, and Rose is the perfect facade for Pink to influence the public because of who she represents: the common gem. While Pink tries to get to her subjects’ level, Rose will already be on their level and be the one that many can side and relate with more, all the while sharing the same message. Pink will still be the leader, while Rose is the boot on the ground, so to speak. PD’s the thinker, Rose is the doer, both playing a mutually proactive role in the story. This keeps the duality between Pink and Rose solid, but now there’s a stronger reason as to why Rose and Pink are never at the same place at once, why Rose getting poofed and exposed can ruin everything, and how Rose is the reasonable scapegoat for when things get serious, which I’ll get to later.

Furthermore, this provides the thought that Pink not only cared about salvaging life on Earth, but being there for her colony’s safety and prosperity as she treats them like individuals while disguised as one. With Rose being the next to take the napkin, this helps the rebellion take form within Pink’s colony without Pink Diamond doing it as herself. This makes Pink sort of patriotic in a way, beginning to worry less about personal desires while still acknowledging that she still has to be tyrannical in some fashion for things to get anywhere. To achieve her goals, she still plays a diamond but gets a kick out of being Rose, which helps give her later reformation as Rose a stronger and more empathetic purpose. And this keeps Garnet, Bismuth, Greg, Jasper, and Rose’s relationship the same as before while still leaving them in the dark; all in line with the events of the show. She’s still a manipulator, but the thought of seeing Rose and Pink being one in the same can be thought provoking nonetheless to the show’s characters and the audience, especially with what we see of her here. In addition, Blue and Yellow will still see Rose as the enemy of it all, their relationship with Pink not affected by this change of roles because of her keeping her actions a secret. 

“But why would she still keep this a secret from Garnet, Bismuth, and them?” Like the game of trendsetter, she has to be in control without anyone being able to point her out. Keeping the peace can mean that Rose can’t reveal everything to everyone except Pearl who’s relationship is like the one in the show but she now a better reason to not receive Pearl’s interest in her, which I’ll get to later. If Rose revealed herself as Pink, this could put a strain on things because she’s a Diamond and while Pink is a good diamond in the eyes of the team, they’re still considering the Homeworld Diamonds as enemies. You don’t wanna put people in a tight spot of conflict, so keeping this between her and Pearl would be the most sound idea. This keeps in line with Bismuth and Sapphire being rightfully shocked about this, but now the sense that she had to do it puts their turmoil over this revelation in a more nuanced conflict. How could you be mad at Rose for Pink’s overall decision making if this was the way it went? And this leads into....

“But how would she be able to shatter herself if she’s the initial leader of the rebellion?” Ah, now this is where things get tricky. I have said that Rose, Garnet, and Bismuth’s past relationships are the same, but now’s the time to express Pink, Garnet, and Bismuth’s relationship within this spin of mine.

With Bismuth, it’s simple because she’ll have a better connection with Rose than with Pink, acknowledging that while Pink is a inspiration leader to the gem army, she still has a bias against the diamonds and this puts a familiar strain on her and Rose’s bond with her introduction of the breaking point. Taking the napkin can be a blessing and a curse, again depending who takes the initiative, and Pink/Rose could see that Bismuth doing this could be dangerous on all accounts. Keeping with the show’s timeline, Rose still bubbles Bismuth knowing that not only is killing a diamond, her own kin, is a considerably bad idea, but this would put Pink in a tough position because this could reveal her as the true mastermind behind the rebellion because Bismuth came from her legion. Even with that slight difference, Bismuth’s arc in the show will generally play out the same though the perspective might be tweaked when she finally recognizes the hurdles Pink actually went through.

As for Pink and Garnet’s relationship, if Pink was originally leading, it would be similar to Bismuth except she would believe that Pink’s “shattering” would be for the greater good because of her status. Since she’s unaware of Rose being Pink, she’d think her action would be a justified sacrifice, believing Rose to be the better leader by comparison. With Pink taking the napkin first, Garnet would be okay with Rose replacing Pink because nothing would change, and the gem army would abide by this logic. Rose would realize this and accept that as the way it had to be; letting someone else make her cover up story for her and this gives her the opportunity to naturally start over as Rose. Garnet’s arc in the show will generally play out the same as well, with her still being mad at Rose for pulling strings, only this time there’s some nuance in her, or Sapphire, getting angry at herself as well knowing she agreed to some regretful decisions that Rose was fully aware of but didn’t speak on ‘em to keep Garnet content with her newfound life like before.

And as for Jasper and Pink’s relationship, there wouldn’t be any because her only considerable enemy would be Rose. Unaware of her true identity, therefore her actual influence on the Crystal Gems and rebellion, she would be like the Diamonds and find Rose to be the only threat in their path. When she sees Rose shatter Pink, that’ll still be all she sees. Her treatment towards Steven and her awareness of Rose’s identity wouldn’t have to change since it was never her duty to uncover Pink’s ruling.

Her and Pearl’s relationship would have a little more weight to it. On one hand, she loves Pearl and starts to treat her less like a servant and more like a partner. But, being both the leader and the head soldier, there lies a bubbling conflict in her that she can’t get too into Pearl or the sentimentality can ruin things. Her resolve in seeing things through can be expressed in Pearl claiming she became more stand offish, yet still respectful and loving, as the war went on. She wants to give Pearl the world, but this spin makes her more selfless and by extension an indirect yet justified tease of Pearl’s affection. This is maturity.

Though her and White Diamond’s relationship could mean a different yet similar spin for the better because even when if we she her step up a diamond rebel leader and all she’s put into leading as herself and as Rose, White would still consider everything she’s worked for as a game, still believing Pink is her bratty self, and all the events of everyone’s lives to be a fun pass time. With this or the show’s take on Pink, White’s grasp of the situation is an interesting one, but I won’t say much else on this matter.

As for Blue and Yellow, things would play out exactly like in the show. The diamonds would consider Earth a lost cause and still wouldn’t heed to Pink’s word in things, which would make Pink feel like they still don’t care about her, even after all she’s accomplished as herself, leading to Pearl & her faking her assassination as a message that her era as a Diamond is over, with Rose taking over without question, and the rest would be history.

So with all this, why would I consider this change in character if it doesn’t really affect the show that much? Well one, I am (was) shitfaced. Two, this would honestly make Pink Diamond/Rose Quartz a way better character because if you take into account everything I’ve added, you could make the argument that she’s actually an amazing villain that has done no wrong. Instead of changing the way the world works or how gems think, this Pink Diamond would take advantage of how the world, or gem society, works.

That is why she should’ve been the one to ‘take the napkin first’, lead Earth to rebel, only for her alter ego to subtly replace her, freeing her from Homeworld’s hierarchy while still leading the gems to freedom. Even after faking her death, Pink would generally be replacing herself with herself, attributing to a sense of selflessness in an idea that what she wants to accomplish is much bigger than herself. While people can consider Pink a terrible person, one can argue that she is objectively a more ethical and just character in the story. The Rose shattering Pink storyline would have a better effect on how the gems viewed Rose and the war itself. The struggle for Steven and the others to come to terms with Pink being a diamond but one with better intentions would be an interesting case. Pink and Jasper’s conflicting ideals would be a strong duality between selfless and selfish natures. While this Pink would act out of selfless intent to benefit her colony and her personal desire to keep Earth beautiful, it wouldn’t change the fact that she plotted war, was involved in political corruption, and responsible for the death and literal corruption of her legion. This Pink Diamond would understand what it means to be a good person, a borderline mature person, so she knows that some of the things she acts upon are risky to the point of dangerous. 

One may think this doesn’t add anything but it still offers the audience a valid question: Is this character truly selfless and acting in the pursuit of the greater good for Earth’s safety and the benefit of her gem colony or are her beliefs nothing but a lie she’s told herself over and over again accepting it as truth when in reality, after all those years, she failed to admit that what she’s doing was for herself all along and never should’ve continued? Considerably the same argument the show made, but with a bit more weight in the debate and nuance. I’m just saying if Sugar wanted people to think Rose is an awful person, this would’ve been a great way of going about that instead of what we got.

That is why I think Pink Diamond should’ve taken the napkin first.

#su critical #su theory #su rewrite #pink diamond #rose quartz #villains

[thorne93]

Curious Conundrum (Part 29)

Prompt: You’re John Watson’s sister. One day you decide to visit your brother for lunch, only to meet the infamous Mr. Holmes…

Word Count: 1591

Warnings: language, flirtation, sexual innuendos (maybe? idfk), murder/crime/case related stuff, angst, jealousy…

Notes: Beta’d by @carryonmyswansong Not only did she beta, but I literally couldn’t have written half these scenes without her help. She contributed majorly, even wrote some parts of scenes. I am forever in her debt.

Also, this starts AFTER Season 2, episode 1. I don’t follow all the episodes, but it does follow the timeline and hit some major events : )

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 |  Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 |

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He shot him. Sherlock killed a man.

Not that you could say you blamed him. Magnussen gave you the absolute chills, and you’d worked with serial killers. But now… Now he was being deported out of the country and Mycroft nearly assured you he would be dead within six months.

“Please, I am literally begging you, Mycroft. There has to be something you can do. Surely you can pull some string. I can find a loophole. I mean, he was blackmailing half of London.”

“It doesn’t work that way, Y/N.”

Desperation had enveloped you as you stood in Mycroft’s cold, stoic office, pleading.  

“No, but it needs to! Sherlock isn’t guilty!”

“He shot him, Y/N,” he had reminded as if you weren’t aware of that.

Your eyes had shot daggers at him. “You know what I mean.”

“I’ve done all I can,” he had sworn sincerely, feeling an iota of guilt and sympathy for you as he eyed you.

That was the day after the shooting. You were beating your brains out trying to find some legal loophole to say Sherlock had done it as some sort of self defense, but he didn’t lift one finger. It’d been four days, and in just three more days, the plans Mycroft had managed to get would be flying him off to Eastern Europe. Mycroft said it was an undercover assignment. In other words, fiances were not welcome.

“Are you going to help?” you snapped as you read through one of your law books.

“Hmm?” Sherlock said, his fingers forming a pyramid as he touched them to his lips. He’d been sitting like that for as long as you’d been trying to find a solution. So far you’d only slept four total hours since the crime.

“Sherlock! Are you going to help me try and find a way to keep you here or are you just going to go along with what your brother says?!”

“Why are you panicking?” he asked as he turned to you, a perplexed look on his face.

“I’m not panicking!”

“You are though. You’re perspiring, your leg has been bouncing while you read -- something you only do for really important cases, and your voice is shrill.”

You stood up and walked over to stand in front of him, your hands on your hips. “Okay, maybe I am panicking a little bit. But can you blame me? We’re engaged for less than twenty-four hours and you commit murder.”

“I thought you said it wasn’t a crime,” he retorted, throwing your own words from the last few days at you, his eyes glinting with annoyance.

An exasperated sigh escaped you. You squeezed your eyes shut and clenched your fists. “Fine, you didn’t commit any crime. My point is… Mycroft says you won’t make it back. How the bloody hell am I supposed to feel? We are engaged. We just agreed to have our lives bound. And now you’re--”

“Y/N, need I remind you, we agreed to have our lives bound the moment you said you’d be mine nearly four years ago. The ring I put on your finger is simply a physical representation of a vow we made long ago.”

Tears sprung to your eyes. Frustrated, sad, happy tears.

“Even when you’re being completely logical, and nearly devoid of any romanticism, you still manage to swoon me,” you breathed, impressed and angry.

He looked up at you once more. A look of pity crossed his face as he stood in his blue silk robe and wrapped his arms around you. “I realize it’s not ideal, but… I will come back. Mycroft is a fool and doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

“But--but--” you blubbered, the sobs starting to form now.

“Love, stop looking at the books,” he requested, a slight plea in his voice as he held you close.

“But I have to find a way to save you!” you cried.

“You already have,” he cooed as he kissed your head. “Come, I don’t want my last few days here for a while to be with your nose in a book.”

He let go of you slightly to get a good look at you.

Unsure how to respond, you remained quiet.

“Please? For me? Let’s go out and do something, or stay in. I want to do something joyful for the next few days, alright?”

You nodded, wiping your nose on your sleeve, a pitiful sight but he loved you all the same.

“Alright. What would you like to do?” you asked, ready to make him happy, no matter the cost.

“Want to go people watch at our favorite spot?”

“Hot chocolate?”

“Is there any other way?” he said with a coy grin.

---------------------------

And so the next few days carried on like that. Talk of Sherlock leaving never graced either of your lips. You spent time out and about, at nice dates, inside the apartment just being together. Every night was spent tangled in the sheets of your bed. You knew he was trying to distract you from it, but part of you wondered if he wasn’t trying to distract himself as well.

Yet now, all of you stood on a tarmac as Sherlock was being ripped away from you yet again. All distractions had faded away as if they were a mirage and the cold reality was punching you in the gut.

You wanted to say something to him, but you couldn’t stomach saying one word to him. It hurt too much. You knew if you opened your mouth, a slew of heartbreak would hit you like a truck.

Sherlock said goodbye to Mary, then your brother, and finally, you. Mycroft refused to let you on the plane because he believed if you knew where Sherlock was going you would find him and escape with him. He wasn’t wrong.

You’d been biding your time, trying to find something to say. Something heartfelt, something funny, something clever. Anything for him to remember you by, but no words came.

“So… Here it is.”

“Mhm,” you hummed through tight lips.

“Well, do go ahead and start planning the wedding. You know how I hate all of that sentimental rubbish,” he requested formally.

Your eyes cast a cool glare over him. “I won’t plan a wedding that won’t happen.”

He nodded slightly. “It will happen.”

“Please, Sherlock, don’t make promises you can’t keep,” you begged, anger and desperation lacing into your voice.

“Very well then. How about a promise I can keep?” He stepped up to you and put his hands on your shoulders. “I promise to love you for the rest of my life, and that I will do my damndest to make sure the god-awful sentimental wedding of your dreams happens.”

A familiar sting touched your eyes.

“Sherlock,” was all you could get out before you threw your arms around him and cried into his neck.

“Come now, I don’t want my memory for six months to be of you blubbering,” he said. You nodded and pulled away, clearing your face of all evidence.

“Right, sorry.”

“A smile?” he asked, his own dazzling on his face.

Your heart betrayed you and you obeyed his gentle request. Anything Sherlock Holmes wanted of yours, was his. Your smile, your laugh, your joy, your heart -- all belonged to him. Unfortunately for you, you knew he would be taking it with him when he left.

“That’s my girl. Come on, it’ll be like a vacation away from my incessant ways.”

“I love your incessant ways,” you mumbled, knowing he was just trying to cheer you up.

A knowing smirk graced his expression. “I know.”

“Brother mine!” Mycroft called and the two of you glanced over to him. He made a face that said ‘Wrap it up’. Sherlock nodded in understanding and turned back to you.

“Keep an eye on him, for me, will you? And your brother.”

“Brother patrol, got it.”

“And yourself. Don’t let my absence consume you, please? Do this for me?” he begged.

You nodded, trying to keep a little bit of a promise for him. “I’ll try.”

“Thank you. Well.. must be off.”

“Yeah…”

He leaned down and placed a long, loving kiss to your lips. A kiss that you never ever wanted to end. He broke away all too soon and looked down at you with adoration.

“See you at the altar?” he asked.

“I’ll be the one in white,” you cornily responded. With that, he took your hand in his, gave it a slight squeeze, then started to walk away. The two of you held hands until he was out of arm's reach, your fingertips barely touching. He dashed onto the plane, his brother giving you a strange look.

“You alright?” John suddenly asked from behind you, making you jump a bit.

“Yeah…” you lied as your eyes glued to the plane. “I’m just fine.”

The three of you stood back away from the runway, watching as the plane got in position and took flight. Every inch it moved towards its destination felt like another punch to the throat and gut. You stood between Mary and John, trying to hold yourself together as best you could.

For the most part, you did splendidly, until the plane was out of sight, and Sherlock couldn’t see your face, you broke down. You fell to your knees, your face in your hands. John and Mary instantly tried comforting you.

But no amount of words, consoling, or hugging would replace the giant hole that had just been ripped into your heart.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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#curious conundrum #sherlock holmes x reader #sherlock x reader #sherlock holmes fic #sherlock fic #sherlock bbc #sherlock holmes #john watson

[the-ash0]

surviving paradise ch 26 - loss

Lekus was dead.

They stood outside Frieza’s on-world throne room, the giant doors slammed on them after the shortest debriefing ever, and it just would not stick. His head throbbed with the attempt to find the logic in a timeline of completely unrelated events.

Lekus was dead. What had just happened?

The Saiyans had returned a day late. Just a day, but one day should have been enough for another epic prose session detailing their failure. Not to mention that Vegeta had expected another public debasement, another one of Zarbon’s great tales. He had also expected Frieza to reiterate its proposal where the tyrant implied that Vegeta was not cut out for command. That he shouldn’t bother with any delusions about being self-reliant; he should just sit at Frieza’s side from now on and wait on the Icejin’s orders before he acted.

He had been ready to accept the offer.

But none of that occurred. Frieza had given Zarbon one warning to ‘keep it short’, then still cut him off after less than a minute, dismissing his elite with a: “so, the mission was a success. Great” Next, the Icejin turned to the Saiyans and addressed the whole group in another out of character act. ”You’re all on stand-by until further notice. Well done.”

It wasn’t fucking well done. Vegeta was infinitely aware of that; aware that he’d finally and irrevocably messed up. Frieza should have sensed that. The lizard should have been well aware that any advantage the Prince had gained last time could have been taken back with interest in that very moment. Yet Frieza had acted distracted and absent-minded. So, apparently, any game they had been playing was already over.

Why had Frieza lost interest? Vegeta was nearly sure he could have just ordered his squad to turn around and go back after one look at that planet and their defences. That he could have reported to Frieza the job was impossible and he needed to send the Ginyus or something, and he’d still have gotten the same glowing review. Hell, in its present state of mind, Vegeta could have taken the squad on an intergalactic pleasure-cruise and the tyrant would still have complimented him on a good job and sent them on their way.

It didn’t make sense. Frieza was nothing if not perfect: immaculate, obsessed with cleanliness and time-tables, and devoted to micromanagement. For the lizard to just drop his modus operandi was unsettling. And Lekus? Lekus was dead, and it didn't even seem to matter.

Nobody gave a fuck. Not Frieza, not his Saiyans... No one. Couldn't they see? Couldn’t anyone see? Granted, Vegeta supposed he should not have expected the lizard emperor to care. But his own men, he had at least expected to be somewhat upset. Instead, they stood around outside the doors, clapping each other on the back in congratulations. An odd relief was expressed on their faces, any tension long gone. All his Saiyans, except for Raditz, who was still in the tanks because his wounds had worsened on the return trip despite cryo sleep. And Lekus...

Lekus was fucking dead, and Vegeta had just gotten congratulated on a job well done.  

“A celebration is in order!” Jack roared, as coarse and boisterous as ever.

Nappa guffawed right back. “Let’s get shit-faced drunk!”

Even Nion, who believed himself to be the voice of reason, laughed. “Drinking is called for.” He paused, then looked the prince's way with uncertainty. “Will you toast with us? In memory of Lekus?”

Why were they happy? Vegeta snarled, countering his own pounding head. “In Lekus’ memory? You fucks crazy?”

“My prince, please relax. We did well. We received a good review and some down time, finally. And he earned it for us, together with your outstanding tactics, of course. We should celebrate!”

Vegeta wasn’t really sure why that set him off. Nion was not smart enough for this level of sarcasm. Still, a ‘job well done’ was a bald-faced lie, and it lit the Prince’s face bring red as he screamed. “Fuck that dumb fuck for getting himself killed. And fuck you all!”

With a punch to Nion’s gut, Vegeta shoved the elder out of the way then growled a warning at the others. They stepped back, cowed. Still, the Saiyan teen felt suffocated. Smothered, like he was drowning. Outside; that’s what he needed. With an angry tread he took the fastest way out one of the ornate balconies, then pushed off and flew up into the white clouds overhead.

The air was frigid cold on his face, whipping in his ears so loud it hurt. But the cold, wet air calmed the rage and numbed his pounding head. After a little while, it felt good to just dive down and wind through the white-topped jagged peaks that covered most of the planet’s surface. Vegeta was not one to notice beauty, and he hated this planet too much to consider such a possibility. But the action was mildly entertaining, perhaps even enjoyable when done at a speed that made the curves a challenge.

When the novelty had worn off, Vegeta returned to the heights above the clouds, watching his long shadow in front of him in quiet contemplation. A prince should practice cold logic, even if his gut felt like it was on fire. Vegeta felt like that a lot lately, and he hoped it was an age thing. He was royalty, and only lower classes were supposed to be susceptible to bloodlust bad enough that they could not see past their own rage.

And looking at it now with a literal cooler head, he wondered why he had been angry at all. Vegeta had planned to downplay the loss. But he had been so sure he would have been called out on Lekus’ death, that when it did not happen it caught him off guard. In fact, Vegeta though he would have preferred it if someone had blamed him. It would have made it easier to brush off.

Yes; brushing it off had been what he had intended to do. Act casually. Drinking with the men would have been perfect for that. It's what commanders did. Probably. He’d just been blindsided by these fool reactions. And Frieza’s. Which worried him to his core.. But. No, he should have accepted the offer to go drinking.

It would not do to turn around and find his squad though. If Vegeta showed up now, someone might think he was apologizing for his earlier behavior. But he couldn’t keep flying like this indefinitely either. At the rate he was burning through his ki, even a Saiyan could not keep the cold at bay for much longer. The small sun was already half-hidden behind the jagged peaks, so it would be dark soon and colder still. Besides, he had worked up quite an appetite. After getting his bearings, Vegeta grudgingly opted to go back to Frieza’s ship and get a filling meal.

On return, he checked the med-bay first to find Raditz still immersed in healing liquids. At least the third-class was going to live. Not that he cared; at least not enough to have his mood lifted. Vegeta trekked to the mess hall next, thankful that most staff had disembarked. He was in no mood to talk to anyone.

Sadly, there was still a short line at the feeding station. Five men out of the six in the room stood waiting, and the line did not move. At all. After a minute, Vegeta shoved past the waiting men until he found the culprit: a tall, thin green alien that moved slowly and deliberately, collecting his slob with agonizing slowness. Like an old man, although Vegeta doubted the creature could be much older than himself. Vegeta growled at him, but when the man turned, recognition fluttered inside the Saiyan’s mind.

The feeling, it turned out, was mutual. The creature froze, and the closer Vegeta studied it, the more disgusted he felt. It was too thin and had grown up weak. Then the man started to shake as well. This was not an unusual reaction to the Prince of Saiyans from a civilian but for a soldier… it was just odd.

“Don't I know you?” Vegeta pondered.

The green man’s face contorted, either in rage or fear. Or both. “You...” it hissed. Then it seemed to lock up and as it looked down at its ugly, crooked fingers.

What a mess of a man. How could Frieza allow something like that to work for it? Vegeta mused, and yet. He knew this creature… well, it didn't really matter. Food, now that was important.

“What the hell is the hold up?” he inquired.

The look of shock that came over the man’s face sparked another memory. Of someone younger, a lot healthier looking, and... Yes, this was the boy... The one that could... cook … right? Vegeta certainly didn't remember him being this ugly and crooked, or this weird in the head.

A purple face pushed the tall green thing to the side, and this one Vegeta definitely recognised: Cui. “Can't even remember his name, can you, Vegeta? This is Cordwell. You’ve caused him a lot of suffering, you know?”

If Cui had meant to talk for the gaunt thing, he met some opposition from the creature in question. The thing called Cordwell leaned over Cui’s shoulder, and pushed round fish-like eyes close to Vegeta’s face as it spat out: “It’s all your fault!”

Vegeta returned the challenge with another snarl. How dare he speak that way? Lekus... No. And now this creep? No. he was not responsible. “You might want to be more specific. You upset I didn't kill your mom before she had you or something?”

Cordwell made an attempt to climb over Cui, long limbs reached out and twisted fingers grabbed for the prince. “You put me up to it. Put us up to it.”

It foamed at the mouth now, and the spectacle was disgusting enough to make Vegeta rethink fighting the creature. Maybe he’d eradicate it from a distance, but he didn't want to catch whatever madness held the lanky alien. Its words made little sense, and despite any real belief that this thing was capable of intelligent conversation, Vegeta heard himself ask: “What?”

“We tried to run,” Cordwell panted, having made a path over and past Cui, who now tried to restrain him from behind. The squid didn’t have enough footing, and so the green mess inched closer to Vegeta. “You told us we’d die if we didn't. That we should take the pods. But we were caught.”

Confused, Vegeta fixed Cui with a questioning glare. But he was met with such a hostile look  that he had to ask: “What nonsense is this freak talking about, squid?”

Cui tisked at him, then violently wrestled the much larger alien back. “You gonna deny this now, monkey? Everyone knows your father was a traitor. But you had to go on and pull us down with you, didnt you?”

“What are you talking about?” Vegeta inquired, disgusted.

The foaming, sick thing accused with a voice that jumped another octave: “When your stupid old man got himself killed. You told us they’d come for us too. That we’d be killed. That we should run. But we only ever got the pods to lift off before we were retrieved. And we ran, so we were guilty. I’m... I’m all that’s left. We... we... we should never have listened to you. You killed them.”

That didn't make sense. Vegeta had not known about his father’s coupe until after it had happened. He’d not had the chance to tell anyone anything, with Frieza smacking him around. And even if he had... What the man claimed was impossible. No one could get a pod to take off without clearance.

Nothing the boy said made any sense. None of whatever was supposed to have happened to those boys was his fault... and Lekus...? That wasn’t his fault either. Vegeta stared down at the tray in his hands, red pushing up and around his vision. The tray shook as his hands threatened to bend it, until found the perfect place to bury it: right in that lying green slime’s lying face. The Saiyan didn’t pause before he socked Cui in his tentacled mouth. Vegeta turned again to charge a blast at Cordwell, but the thing was already swinging its own tray at Vegeta. It contacted with a smack to the side of his skull, but the Saiyan took it with a grin, just so he could fire off the ki he held.

It was not rage that overtook him, rather something empty and uncaring. Vegeta swung punches without even blocking, and when he felt Cui rain blows on his back he took the punches to his kidneys and spine as well. He was probably smiling, perhaps even laughing. Vegeta’s fists throbbed with every impact, and he clung to that feeling regardless of any other body parts screaming that he was taking actual damage.

Vegeta didn’t give a fuck anymore, he just methodically punched the tall green creature to the beat of some alarm that had gone off and now blared across the mess hall. He turned to exchange fists with Cui again, only slightly hampered by the green beanstalk that now tried to restrain him. Vegeta swung out his elbows left and right, not even caring what he hit. This bought him a few seconds, which he used to turn his assault back to Cui, until something dropped on his head hard enough to daze him.

It must have been Cordwell, dropping something hard on him. But it was impossible to tell, because his head was ringing. It didn't matter though. With a shake of the head, Vegeta waited for his vision to clear enough so he could pummel the first shape he made out. He’d drink it up, all of it, drink it up and spit it out tenfold. And it was working. Cui and Cordwell were so confused and rattled by Prince’s willingness to take anything they dished out that they guarded more than attacked.

With one last hard hook, Vegeta pushed Cui back far enough to make another one-eighty turn and lounge at Cordwell. But the creature had already backpedaled at least six paces and then dropped to his knees, eyes wide as he looked off to Vegeta’s left and cowered. It was not as the Saiyan had it pissing its pants though.

“Dodoria.” It shuddered, like that monster was something worse than the Prince. Vegeta was less impressed. He just turned to face this new threat, and charged up another blast.

The pink brute reached out a large fist and engulfed Vegeta’s entire arm, blast and all. “Making trouble, little Prince? And while our master is getting ready for his guests no less? Bad timing.”

What guests?

“Fuck you,” he raged and tried to pull his arm free, unwilling to extinguish the shot, even when he started to smell cooked flesh. That ki was intended for Dodoria’s face, to wipe that ugly smile off it. Vegeta bared his teeth.

Dodoria blinked, then smiled a toothy smile. “Oh yeah. I think you need a little time to cool off, don’t you?”

“Fuck. You.” It burned, and it occurred to Vegeta that his hand would sear off before he even pierced Dodoria’s thick skin. Logic. He was going to think, not act like some blood-raged… The ki went out.

“I’m guessing that’s Saiyan for yes.”

read the rest on https://archiveofourown.org/works/15338988/chapters/35590152 or ff.net

#surviving paradise #vegeta #fanfic #dbz #dragonball

[collaborativedocumenteditingsoft]

The Published Secret to Post Production Workflow Discovered

Come see us at the #Televisual Corporate Video Production Workshop at the #Jigsaw24 office in Soho on March 27, 2019. Make your asset management and collaboration more efficient than ever before. To register: https://t.co/vUMVm7aZVJ pic.twitter.com/c2X113mqqO

— Projective Technology (@ProjectiveTech) March 14, 2019

Adobe I/O Runtime

I've had a few cases where I've had to recreate an issue under different circumstances for them but they've been helpful and patient through those processes too. Sanfusion works only in NFS and it would also work well but it has some stability problems in recent times. But with this qnap and with the qtier system I noticed that with avid you can not work well, sometimes randomly there are dropframe or the volumes in nfs are unmounted.

Remote editing, whilst using high-quality Proxies and decent editing Software

Yossy is the founder of filmmaking academic program - "The Art of Independent Filmmaking", which is focused on the complex integration of cinematography, editing, color grading, sound design and music composition. A timeline can even feature dozens of layers of sound effects and music (the green clips in this screenshot), so make sure you invest in audio. Watch all your clips (again) and “drag and drop” them into the timeline to start creating your rough cut.

What are the stages of production?

The Importance of Post-Production. Post-production is as essential to film production as turning the camera on and hitting record. Editing, sound mixing, colour grading, special effects and the list goes on and on are as essential as production stage.

Derek had the pleasure to be on Larry Jordan's @DPBuZZ again to talk about the @ProjectiveTech new branding, the lastest product development and #knocktheirsocksoff Strawberry foot wear. Listen to his interview: https://t.co/9wHNobCj0F pic.twitter.com/MkwBkYShTx

— Projective Technology (@ProjectiveTech) April 16, 2019

DNxIO is compatible with Avid Artist Suite solutions and many third-party tools, including Blackmagic Resolve, Apple Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe After Effects and others. It includes hardware by Blackmagic, which is a new I/O Connectivity Partner for the MediaCentral Platform. “Bandito uses Pro Tools for mixing, which also makes the ISIS

VM involves investing in a stack of servers at your facility and running VMs, or virtual machines, on these stacks of servers.

Can 7zip open BIN files?

Click the "Tools" button on the menu, and then select the "Convert Image File Format" option. The "convert" dialogue will be pop-up. Press the “Browse” then choose a BIN/CUE file you wish to convert and choose the “ISO files(*. iso)” option.

But if the audio isn’t up to snuff, the whole project can be negatively affected. Therefore, it’s very important to pass the video file along to an audio professional after you’ve approved the final cut.

The answer is https://www.toodledo.com “potentially yes, depending…” Your colorist will have good advice on the best way to do this, as well as the best way to set the timeline. In the list that appears, twirl down “Premiere Pro Project Data”. No camera, none, includes alpha channels as it is recording video.

What is the post production process?

Post Production Workflow Model. The Post-Production Workflow Model is designed to assist/inform you of the editing process, necessary after recording a video footage. This model will provide you with information relating to Best Practice, once your project reaches the post-production portion of Video Production.

8K UHD has four times the horizontal and vertical resolution of the 1080p HDTV format, with sixteen times as many pixels overall. Whatever your production environment, whatever resolution you’re working in, there’s an Avid Artist interface for you.

In this project, you will build your own collaborative editor. This is a challenging application, since it involves handling concurrency (so that simultaneous actions interleave in a reasonable way), dealing with network connections, and building a graphical user interface.

A great way to keep your timeline tidy and efficient, you can place your scenes on the main timeline as single timeline clip events, but you can still go back into the scene to change things if needed. Thanks to the increased affordability of editing software and a wide array of online tutorials, digital editing is more accessible than ever before. 9.The third cut or the fine cut where you work with both audio and video at this point and trim out finer edit points. You will also be multi tasking at this point when you are working with graphics

Can BIN files contain viruses?

Pro Tools 12.4 Track Freeze. Finally introducing to Pro Tools the most requested feature by users, Track Freeze allows users the ability to "lock-in" the processing on a track so as to free up resources. Furthermore, it also allows users to "UnFreeze" a track if edits are needed down the road.

Export a Reference Video

Avid features in ProMAX enables various editors to operate on various ProMAX Platform’s Shared storage devices. “To meet the trend, we now offer ‘Baselight everywhere,’ with the appropriate tools – and the same uncompromised color precision – on devices from on-set ingest to the final deliverables. They have incorporated Forbidden Technologies FORscene, a cloud video platform, into its regular workflow to make the post-production process more flexible and efficient, especially for large-scale projects. Boston — EditShare is now offering Mac OS X 10.9 (Mavericks) compatibility for all its shared storage, Flow media asset management and Ark archiving and back-up products.

What affects video production costs?

What are post production activities?

post-production. This includes tasks such as the editing of raw footage to cut scenes, insert transition effects, working with voice and sound actors, and dubbing, to name a few of the many pre-production tasks. Post-production is the third and final step in film creation.

While you can access the computer running the Teradici software with a macOS or Windows equipped computer – or even via a hardware zero client – the environment you create in will always be a Windows OS. They can increase the CPU density by a factor of 2 or 4 times. It allows the video file playback of 4 channels from all kinds of media in 12G-SDI. mediaCARD is a software application that automates and improves the camera card ingest and transcode operations. Providing ingest / outgest automation allows users to save time and resources on manual tasks, automating the whole workflow and getting full control of the complete solution.

If you’re interested in this kind of thing, check out this post on editing keyboards, controllers, mice and more. This is instead of using the supplied ‘Editor’s Mix’ from the location sound recordist, which are intended for dailies. Organization of your edit begins at the project level with your Bin structure. Eddie shared some of his workflow tips in this fantastic interview with PVC writer Steve Hullfish, which provides some of the detail in this post, as well as other interviews with Eddie that I’ve read or heard over the years. Eddie’s essential philosophy is that everything should be so clearly labelled and logically laid out that any other editor could sit down in his chair and quickly find anything they needed.