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maddiefriendlovesbilly · 4 years

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Spencer x Ghost?

Spencer x Ghost

(AAAAA- it has been months since you sent this to me, and all i can say is im so sorry) Side note I have my friend @lethalbreadkills helping me with this one!

For reference: Maddie (maddiefriendlovesbilly) is green, Jimmy (lethalbreadkills) is red (((its 4:30 at the time i have joined this so im dead braincell wise sorry yall))) and Orange is stuff we decided together :3

Also this is so very chaotic im so sorry for this anon but this has been in my fuckin drafts for SO LONG and this is the only way its getting finished (its now 5 am uwu) im so sorry for all the shitposting i do its a mess. I shouldnt have been allowed here. (we finished at about 5:30 am its hell <3)

Sphost? Ghencer?? Sphoster??? I adore and despise them all equally.

We have decided that it should be BeanieGhost

Anyway I think this ship is really cute

They’re both so neurotic I can only imagine the chaos that would ensue

One of them starts a rant on some topic and the other joins the hell in

I’m an advocate of LETTING SPENCER INFO DUMP BECAUSE HE DESERVES IT OKAY

And Ghost would let this dream come true???

I would die for both of them and if Spencer told me I had to die I wouldn’t even complain, no questions I’d just be like “Aight.” I trust him that much.

(Not sure I trust Ghost’s judgment enough to do that unquestioningly; sorry Ghost)

Back on topic

I can’t imagine these guys on anything that comes close to society’s definition of a date

It’d be more like “hey you wanna come on this hunt with us?” “maybe, depends if there’ll be snacks” or like chilling in Spence’s room binging the entire star trek: original series in one sitting or “oops sorry about that level 11 entity that attached to my soul and is now wreaking havoc in your house, wanna make out later to make up for it?” “Fine but you also have to play three rounds of Call of Duty with me afterward”

They wouldn’t be romantic often but like highkey? I can see them throwing themselves into the line of fire for each other with a recklessness only they could survive

We can’t forget that Spencer is a more than 60,000-year-old overpowered demon/god/entity/thing, which, yes, could throw a slight wrench in this ship for multiple reasons, but I choose to make angst out of it instead.

Side note: Ghost is a chronic conspiracy theorist (and you can’t tell me otherwise) and every once in awhile Spencer will offhandedly say something like “Y’know I helped the Egyptians build the pyramids” and Ghost just goes fucking feral.

Look, I’m not saying Spencer IS touch-starved and most likely has issues creating and developing relationships and therefore avoids interpersonal connection, especially offline, but I AM saying he is prime material for it. (thats a lie thats exactly what shes saying don’t believe it) (I’m projecting okay dont judge me) (loser imagine projecting)

Imagine with me for a second: Why does Spencer willingly stay with a family who locks him in their basement with only minor complaining? He’s a near all-powerful entity just released into the world for Spence’s-sake - If he wanted to, there’s no telling what havoc he could wreak! So why doesn’t he? Why would someone so powerful, so terrifying, so dangerous that a group of people decided to seal him away forever stay with the first family he finds in sub-par conditions for years - especially someone who’s seen to be as high-maintenance as Spencer? Let me hit you with a theory: He’s chasing the feelings of validation, safety, and love - no matter how rarely it’s shown - that a family can provide. Being socially isolated for even a few years can do a number to a person’s psyche (I should know, I’m projecting onto this character right now), let alone thousands.

Now maybe Ghost can’t match thousands of years in isolation, but damn if he doesn’t have a few years of crippling loneliness on his record too.

I can see the two of them learning how to be vulnerable around others together, emotionally and physically; learning how to open up and how to talk through issues; and some third point, because points are better in threes.

(May I suggest that these losers are both trans but thats just me adding in my own projection lmao)

(You absolutely may)

Imagine the conversation thats just “so i have a murderer in my head thats an ass” “rip to u ig sounds like a you problem :///”

imo spence has trouble expressing emotions other than like,,, annoyance and haughtiness, its like sort of his go-to defence, so showing Ghost his emotions is a big step for him

I hear you, and i say yes good. (found this one headcanon that i kinda live by where he was uh, either autistic or adhd i dont remember but theres that too) OH yeah that would be at thing huh. Spencer: *is emotionally vulnerable @ ghost* ghost: oh shit im trusted??? Oh fuck uh.

Yeah so like…. Ghost and spence showing emotion at eachother is kind of :flushed: ghost be like: whats an emotion. Imagine having emotions fuciiing loser hhaha,,,, *laughs nervously*

Ghost is also very emotionally distant with most people so it would probably be like “what??? The fuck?? Emotions?????? You have those???”

Ghost and Spencer be like *gay*

So another idea is that maybe Spencer realizes Ghost doesnt play any games [like the uncultured SWINE he is] and decides he must [remedy] this and so he introduces him to like, nintendo first. (some bitches thought that said nintendo fortnite. Im bitches) and theyre playing like, mario kart or smash or smth and Ghost gets really [fuckin into it]

Ghost and spencer: *literally in eachothers laps playing fucking wii tennis*

Spooker: what are the- *TOAST FUCKING SLAPS A HAND ACROSS HIS MOUTH* shut up you dont wanna know what happens when its mentsonssbfdjfsd (sorry i had a stroke uwuwuwuw)

(Theyre in denial we don’t judge in this house)

They will not hesitate to play dirty either, they will straight up push each other over and vaguely flirt

Ghost is losing and straight up fucking goes “ur hot” and spencer actually dies and boom ghost is the winner. sparkle emoji Magic sparkle emoji

“I am Not a HomoSexual:™:” “Yeah, sure you aren’t” “Screw off”

Pet-names-ish: Asshole, Gaymer-Boy, casual insults, Mr. Spirit Bitch, Mistake, Loves Ghosts More Than His Boyfriend What A Fucking Loser aka Gay-ass

Pros:

They both open up a lot most likely. Gain someone to trust since they’ve sort of been through the same things (though on much different scales)

I can see soft hours of hanging in each other’s bedrooms

Spencer is a tsundere you cant tell me otherwise youre just a coward if you disagree

So is Ghost so this can only go well

Every time Ghost has to solve a case at the Acachallas Spence is just peaking out from his basement like “the fuck is this?? Hot Man??????”

Enemies to lovers 500k (Gets Hot and Steamy :flushed: NOT CLICKBAIT!!!!11!!!!! 18+!!!!!!! GAY LOVE StORY!!!!!!) Lemonz!!! Made from teh Sexiest of Wattpaders UWUWUWU YAOI Boys Love don’t like don’t read!! (this is so fucking stupid jkfnd) I hate this with a passion Q^Q. All my years of being a basic watpad fanboy have helped me to the moment i bring maddie to tears

The steam is just like,,,,, holding hands and being angy all the fuckin time the steam is literal because their anger translates into actual steam

Cons:

Their angst has nowhere to go and it just sits between them like two raccoons at a dumpster-style mexican standoff

They really start off hating each other huh. Like, I know this can still lead to healthy relationships but neither of them are very good at healthy relationships with people he hasn’t known for his Whole Life so that’s an Oh No.

They totally feed off of each other’s stupidity (but this could be seen as a pro too so take that as you will) as well as anger - im talking one-upping each other kinda shit

Its ridiculous honestly how intense it gets, like they straight up need intervention sometimes because they dont realize they can just STOP

Conclusions:

I think this would be a relationship that would that a lot of time and hard work to make work, but i think in the end it would be really super cute!! Like it would make no fuckin sense to anyone else but somehow they’d understand each other and help each other through their similar issues. Also theyre both big nerds in different ways and i think they’d have just ranting sessions back and forth over and over and it would be soft!!!!! So yeah, i think it would work, at least, i want it to :D

So. Maybe?? I feel like it could, but they’d need to work pretty hard to make it healthy and not constant fighting. Could be stupid amounts of cute and wholesome but also could be stupid amounts of oh no and pain, depending on how the two act. If they learned how to get along with each other and work past their differences it could be super cute and soft. Just a very, er, bumpy beginning. And middle. And end. (this makes me very nervous,,,,why did you mention an end) (wouldnt you like to know weather boy) (TvT) UFDUNS bumpy but soft . Agreeing with the loser gay, want this to work it’d be interesting :3

#spencer x ghost #jess writes #ishhhhh???????#venturiantale #venturiantale pie #johnny ghost #spencer acachalla #johnny toast #jimmy casket #fred spooker #let me know if you enjoyed this or not it was intense #sr #ship review #ship reviews #vt ships #vt ship reviews #vt ship review #vt sr

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lisinfleur · 4 years

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T&T - Chapter 1: Castle of Glass

Author’s Notes | Hey guys! Welcome to this new series! This is an old idea inspired by THIS drabble that comes from one of my first celebrations here on Tumblr. Special thanks to @honestsycrets, who helped me to develop this OC. I hope you guys enjoy this work with me! Info | Viking Age AU, fully out of the storyline of the series! Words | 3002 ⁑ Warnings: Mentions of violence and murderous intents, curse, mentions of sex.

"Take me down to the river-bend Take me down to the fighting end Wash the poison from off my skin Show me how to be whole again"

Castle of Glass (Linkin Park, 2012)

"Who's Freydis? You can call me Katya... Queen... Katya!"

The sounds of her scandalous laughs were still echoing into his brain as he was dragging his dirty and crippled body on the mud of the ground once again.

The same mud he fought so hard to get rid of. The same body he broke so many times to see standing... Walking...

"What? I told you, Oleg... He was the weaker. A half-dozen of promises and he was eating in my hands..."

Fool.

From all his brothers, she chose the one whose heart was more easily deceivable. It would have been Sigurd if he didn't have cut his brother's heart in two not far from that day, but it was his. His need... His craving for dreams that now he felt could never be his.

"Mighty God, Ivar! Of course, it is not your child! How dumb do you need to be to believe you could make me a child when you weren't a man not even to fuck me? Even more to seed my womb..."

Now, like a shattered castle made of thin glass, everything he ever conquered was gone, along with the braces her bastard of a husband ripped from his legs and the crutch he ensured to break in front of Ivar's eyes. Destroyed like his pride... And his heart, broken by the moans of pleasure of the woman he once thought loved him; her naked breasts bouncing with Oleg's hips hitting in the middle of her legs, careless of the swollen belly he so many times worshiped, full of another's child he once thought was his own.

A fool. That's what he was. He was no god. And unlike he believed, maybe Björn wasn't the only brother the gods had abandoned. Maybe his gods were indeed fallen as Oleg screamed at his face when they stood at the iron doors of Kattegat, throwing him like a bag of trash with nothing but his clothes to survive the winter outside, dumped from his homeland like an outcast where he once was the king...

Maybe Ragnar's blood was curse inside his veins and like Sigurd, all of them were cursed. All sons of Ragnar would somehow face terrible destinies to maybe pay for his father's greed in leaving his simple farm to become a king.

Or maybe it was his own curse. Maybe it was the curse he attracted to himself by sacrificing that woman instead of Lagertha at the fire. The curse he attracted upon himself with the rage of the gods for he believed Freydis... No... Not Freydis. Katya's words... About his blood being divine. About him being more than just a man.

"For me, you're a god..."

His fingers clenched and his fist hit the ground once again, furious. Maybe the fury was what was keeping him alive and warm enough since the road was muddy around him and he had no proper clothes to cover himself. His own were dirty and he could feel they were wet. Soon the wounds in his legs would be infected. Oleg was right after all.

"I won't get my blade dirt with the rotten blood of Ragnar Lothbrok in your veins. I don't need to... Go. Drag your lame butt out of my kingdom, you rag of a man! I won't lose my time with you anymore."

He could swear he saw a smile on Katya's face and listened to her saying ironically that he wouldn't survive the winter before the doors of Kattegat were closed in his face.

Ivar couldn't really measure how long he had crawled without a destiny. Nor the many tears of pure rage he had already cried away from any eyes that could see his fury. First, he swore with clenched fists and teeth that he would come back and rip Oleg's heart from his chest! And sacrifice their child to the gods as a gift for his victory. And fuck Katya until she was ripped beyond healing just to expose her naked and ragged for everyone who wanted to see how much of a man he could be.

Now he was starting to believe he wouldn't really survive the cold unless he was able to find some warm place to settle down for a good night of rest and something more than raw roots to eat. With his eyes stupidly blue and his legs aching enough to make his movements harder than never in his life, Ivar was really thinking the gods' hands were against his chest, pushing him back, forcing him to give up and die that insignificant and unmemorable way.

The great, great Ivar the Boneless, frozen to death in some stupid road in the middle of nowhere. What a horrid fate! Even Sigurd among his brothers found his way to Valhalla, and there he was, sitting on the road, pulling his legs painfully to rest them against a stone and check on their wounds, trying to keep them dryer than his wet trousers could permit.

And as if his pain wasn't enough, before he could yell and warn, a woman came running out of nowhere, stumbling in his legs, breaking one of them before falling in the mud with a surprised squeal.

If he didn't have broken bones as a routine in his life, his scream of pain would have been heard from Kattegat for Oleg and Katya's pleasure. But all Ivar did was growling, infuriated, like a wounded animal that someone decided to kick for an unknown reason.

He thought about yelling at the woman and missed his daggers to sink one of them in her leg and give her a small fraction of the pain she increased in his body a thousand times. However, the curiosity was bigger than his anger when he saw the woman rolling at the mud with her cloak that was once so clean, covering her whole body with that dirty thing and sitting beside him as fast as she could, shrinking by his side, holding one of his arms.

Why the fuck was that woman doing this?

"Please... I beg your forgiveness and I promise on the gods and their sacred halls, I'll care for any wounds I have caused you, but please... Do not deliver me to them!" she mumbled, causing Ivar's expression to twist even more, utterly taken aback by her words.

"Who are you talking about, woman? What is..." he didn't have time to ask.

She shrunk under the hood and against his body and soon two men passed running in the same direction she was going before. They ran a little forward and not finding a trace of their prey, they came back. One of them roughly pushing Ivar's shoulder, speaking in a harsh tone as if he was somehow obligated to answer whatever they wanted to know.

"You... Crippled!" the man said, attracting the fierce blues of Ivar towards their face.

Oh, how he wanted to have his daggers now...

"Did you see a woman... Gorgeous silhouette, rounded breasts, curly black hair... Did she pass through here?"

Ivar kept looking at them for a moment. He could demand some gold from those bastards for the woman. He could get gold or silver enough to pay for a ride in a chariot and it would save his life for one more day.

But he could also sell her and receive nothing, for they were two enemies and he was only one, unarmed, one leg painfully broken, and his weakened body. They could just kill him and take her without paying him anything... She promised to care for her mistakes...

"Beyond crippled are you mute as well?" the man spat, grumpy. "These parents nowadays are too much a bunch of cunts... Too loose to get rid of a child even in this pitiful state, look at this bastard? Your father should have left you to the wolves, son!"

"I'm not your son," Ivar answered, angrily.

His voice sounded hoarse.

"And I saw no woman if that's what you wanna know. The only woman around is my sister beside me, who's sick with a contagious disease I wouldn't come too close and risk to take from us. Now get the hell out of our way... We have already enough burdens to deal with someone else's tasks!"

The two hunters stepped back, taking some distance from them both.

"Odin..." one of them mumbled. "May Eir have mercy and Hella take your lives soon. Why the fuck did they let you live? Fuck..."

"Let's go, Mir. We cannot lose time. The bitch must be going to Kattegat. It is not so far from here and we can get her there, let's go!" the other warned before they left, following the road Ivar had dragged himself through for the last three days and a half.

He still waited for a little more until the two bastards couldn't be seen anymore at the end of the road and then, Ivar turned himself to the woman by his side.

"I saved you. Now you owe me. What is happening and who are you, woman?" he asked, harshly, as she pulled the hood from her head, looking around to be sure the two hunters weren't after her anymore.

"Well... I'm Iliana," she mumbled, getting rid of the muddy cloak and looking at him. "I'm a whore and I stole their gold," she lied.

Of course, she lied. Ivar sighed, looking at her.

After Katya, he could smell the scent of a lie kilometers away from him...

"Now tell me if I h..." her voice was cut when his heavy hand held her wrist in a tight grip.

"I might be a cripple, but I'm not an idiot. Don't treat me as if you didn't owe me your life... Why were those hunters running after you, Iliana?"

His eyes were fierce and for the first time since she left her master's house, she felt fear.

Iliana had passed through several hands to know that glare in Ivar's eyes wasn't something you could play with...

"They're slave hunters... And my master wants me back. But I won't go back to his hands unless one of them decides the payment is not enough for the work of getting me alive and wants to take my corpse for him to use!" she grunted, pulling her hand from Ivar's grip, massaging the wrist his strong fingers almost broke.

Ivar straightened the gloves he managed to keep from his leather armor that was taken from him by Oleg and his men, looking at her with the same fierceness in his eyes he was throwing towards those men.

So, she was a fugitive... It could be interesting to him. Maybe someone more was searching for her and he could indeed find a way to sell her in order to get enough money for his needs. Something that he would think until they were in the next city. For now, she could be useful.

"You didn't tell me your name," she said, not calling him the same awful way everyone was calling him since Oleg undressed him from his titles.

A cripple...

"I'm Ivar," he answered, not denying her the truth.

But instead of what he thought, she didn't make any questions.

Her eyes were too focused on the awful and inhuman angle of his leg to really hear the name he spoke so naturally.

"My lady Eir... Aren't you feeling this?" she kneeled beside him, looking at the broken leg.

It wasn't an exposed fracture, but surely his bone was terribly broken. Any man or woman or human being would be screaming in terrible pain with that wound and yet, he was there, calm and doing nothing but clench his teeth while moving to get himself sitting straight.

"I can't properly feel my legs," he explained. "And after all, ... I broke them all the time, every day... It's something I'm used to."

Used to...

Iliana sighed.

She couldn't understand how a man was completely still with a horribly broken bone, but she could understand his words about pain: after all these years being whipped, abused, cut, raped... All those pains were not something harsh for her anymore.

She leaned herself to touch his leg and so, Ivar flinched, looking at her and holding her hand once again in a quick movement that made Iliana ponder if he was just a simple cripple.

"Do not touch me," he sentenced, demanding.

But Iliana kept her position looking at him.

"If I can't touch you, then I can't help with your wound. And you may be used to this pain, but you don't seem to have any frostbite I can see. You may not deal with the pain, but sooner or later this wound will make you slower and then, my friend, you'll discover pain can always find a way to make you suffer again."

Ivar looked at her.

Somehow, that woman wasn't a common slave. She was wise... Her words weren't random, but he could feel the experience of someone who was speaking with the property of lived moments; experienced pain... She knew what she was talking about and so, he released her hand, observing as she slowly placed his leg in the correct position, gathering straight twigs from the dry and frozen trees around until she had enough to create a strong structure around his leg, ripping a piece of her skirt in strands she used to tie the wood to his leg creating something similar to his braces.

When she finished, his leg was properly immobilized and the wound wasn't aching that much anymore.

Maybe selling her would be a mistake after all: the woman knew good techniques that could probably help him to survive.

"Where are you going now?" Ivar asked, looking at her.

"I was indeed going to Kattegat, hoping I could sneak into some boat and leave this continent. But now... Now I have to think," she stopped, looking around. "Maybe Vestfold..."

Ivar scoffed and she looked at him, surprised by his reaction, but his words prevented Iliana from giving his scoff an angry answer.

"You'll find nothing but death in Vestfold now. They're under observation and soon will be under attack. The same bastards that did this to me now have their eyes turned towards their lands. Oleg won't stop until he has the whole Scandinavia under his feet and Harald might be whatever he wants, but that old drunken bastard won't be able to defend Vestfold all by himself."

Iliana didn't let pass his words.

"The same bastards who did this to you?" she looked at him.

A cripple, around his twenties, calling King Harald by names no peasant would dare to speak.

"What did you say was your name again?" she asked.

But Ivar just straightened his chest and back, looking at her with those imposing and fierce blues that weren't supposed to be in the face of a ragged man like him.

"I'm Ivar, son of Ragnar Lothbrok, woman," he spoke, imposing. "I'm Ivar the Boneless!"

Her body shivered on its base. Ivar the Boneless. The feared king of Kattegat... What was he doing muddy and dragging himself like a homeless man around his own town?

However, she didn't have to ask. Ivar's imposing position didn't last too much and he sighed, letting go of that ruthlessness and looking at her with defeat in his blues.

"I was betrayed by the woman I once called my queen. And overthrown by my enemies who threw me away from my homelands as if I was nothing but an outcast. Maybe we can help each other, Iliana, the slave," he said, looking right into her eyes. "You seem to know very well how to heal my wounds and you're a very beautiful woman, if I may say. I'm sure you can get us some good money..."

"I won't sell myself for your needs, Ivar, the fallen king!" she said, mocking him with the words as if he had mocked her with the title of slave.

But he scoffed again looking at her.

"Don't be stupid, woman," he said, sighing. "You don't need to lay with them for a few coins when I can kill them to have the whole bags they carry."

Ivar's words shocked Iliana not only by how naturally he was speaking of taking lives but also because somehow... They were making sense... If he was really the Boneless as he said, that would be a thought she would understand coming from his mind.

"You stop the next chariot for a ride and while the coachman is busy with his eyes inside your cleavage, I can get us a free horse and a warm chariot for you to travel. Since the hunters are looking for a woman alone and walking, they will have no reason to receive information about a lady in a chariot driven by a cripple..."

How many times did she think she could do it? Seduce a man, kill him for the gold in his pockets... She even tried it once and ended up being fucked for hours by a man who didn't pay her a dime for the amazing night of sex she offered him because of her inability to sink the dagger through his neck...

Ivar didn't seem like a man who would hesitate as she did...

"I don't have a single dime with me. Also, no weapon. And you don't seem to have anything with you as well..." she pointed.

But Ivar just touched her skirt, pulling the rest of the piece she tore to tie his leg, creating a new strand he wrapped around both of his hands, pulling it from both sides to test the tension of the cloth.

"It will serve..." he said, and Iliana's blood ran cold imagining his plans with that thing.

She would have to hear a man struggling for his oxygen that day.

But both of them would have a warm place to sleep that night...

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#history vikings #imagine vikings #ivar #ivar the boneless #ivar imagine #ivar x OC #ivar ragnarsson #ivar lothbrok #ivar's heathen army #sister wives #T&T

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panharmonium · 4 years

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some disjointed thoughts about stranger things 2 under the cut (concealed to hide spoilers from my sister)

so, season 2!

i’ve gone into every season of this show knowing absolutely nothing about it. i’ve had no exposure to the fandom or to reviews or anything that would indicate what it was about or how good the seasons are in relation to each other, which i like, because i know my opinions are my own. season 1 i watched back in the winter, i think, and it was amazing. blew me away.

i just finished season 2 and i’m like...not as into it?

and i’m glad i had no preexposure to anything, because if i had, i’d worry that i was just being influenced by other people’s opinions, but i genuinely don’t know what people think of the various seasons. i’ve been stringently avoiding anything about this show, have it blocked on tumblr, etc, so i could watch it cold.

i’d have to watch it again to really pin down the places where my investment was flagging, and i’ll probably do that eventually, because i know my roommate will want to see it, but my general impression was this: they had me hooked in the beginning, and then they started to lose me.

- i feel like overall it was 9 episodes where very little substance actually happened. plotlines were stretched out over a reallllllly long period of time and became paper-thin. like nancy and jonathan? the only thing they really did over those entire nine episodes was make a tape recording and send it to the paper. that was their whole story, and it could have fit in one episode.

- and what did happen felt like it suffered from a lack of focus. can i explain this in more detail without watching the show again? not really. but i just mean that in S1, i could tell you what each of the main character’s arcs were, and i could lay out how those arcs had clear beginnings, middles, and endings. in S2, i can really only do that for El (and even that i feel like got messy by the last third).

- the horror vibe was different this season. it was LESS scary, to me. S1 was a CREEP factor that had my skin crawling - it wasn’t like...creature horror - it was the unsettlingness. the whole parallel world thing was so - well, the only word for it is unsettling, like. you felt like you could take a step and accidentally wind up somewhere no one should be - the idea that you can be trapped so close to somebody and yet so far away - you just felt like the world was inside out (or upside down, if you will). and so much of the fear in the first one came from how incomprehensible and uncertain the entire situation was - you didn’t know how things worked and nobody believed you when you tried to tell them what was happening. that scene where the christmas lights spell out R-U-N? scariest fucking thing i’ve ever seen. but S2 changed it to be like...it felt like more of a monster flick. like a zombie movie or something - lots of creatures running around that you can just shoot with a gun - that’s just not really the same vibe as the first season, and i didn’t find it quite as interesting.

- i don’t want to be That Person, because i liked maxine as a character in general, on her own terms, but from a writing perspective - what even was the purpose of her introduction? her and her brother both, honestly, the whole family. i feel almost bad for saying that, because i can guarantee that there were people out there complaining about her being introduced because “they just wanted to have another girl; it’s so stupid, blah blah,” cue more sexist stuff, etc, and that’s really not where i’m coming from, but for me, from a general storytelling perspective, i don’t understand why she or her family were introduced. they were superfluous to the story. they didn’t need to be there. and since i don’t even feel like the returning characters got enough development this season (see point #2), i don’t understand why we spent so much time on her/her family/her introduction to the Party. it felt like filler.

- stranger things S2 did that thing teen wolf does where 2/3 of the way through the season it drops a tonally-different expository/flashback episode that does a lot of the legwork tying other shit together while also being completely disconnected from the rest of the plot, which is basically an info dump and is my least favorite way of relaying plot/getting characters to the spot the writer wants them to go. i think kali was the most interesting new character we met this season; i was rapt every time she was onscreen, but i don’t love the “we’re going to shove all of the character development and background info into this one episode and at the end El has had her turnaround and goes back home.” it didn’t feel believable to me. are we ever going to see those people again, or were they just a plot convenience to serve the aforementioned purpose? (idk, i haven’t watched S3 yet, so...we’ll see.)

- some weird...minor tonal changes/dropped plots? in S1 one of the running undercurrents was how mike and nancy’s mom wanted them to talk to her and she really did care about what was going on but they couldn’t connect to her and that bothered her, whereas in S2 it’s like - that theme has been dropped; she’s not involved in their lives really at all, and her and ted’s spousal relationship is just being played for laughs, and there was that REALLY weird scene with her like...lusting after billy?????? that was so fucking bizarre.

and until one line in the very last episode, they dropped the whole thing about hopper’s daughter, too - the way they wove that into the first season was brilliantly done, and just - you don’t see a bit of it in S2, and that felt off, to me.

- killing bob was a bad call. it was gratuitous, AND it was contrived - who the hell is running for their life and then just stops dead in the lobby to smile at their girlfriend? ANY SENSIBLE PERSON WOULD KEEP RUNNING FOR THE DOOR. like - bob died, but the doctor survived???????? the doctor, who was attacked and immobilized and defenseless in a stairwell, somehow wasn’t killed?????? of course not, because he needed to survive, so he could get El her papers later....that entire thing irritated me. it made no sense. that was actually the point where i said to myself “uh-oh. first Bad-with-a-capital-B decision this show’s made.”

- lack of consistency in terms of how, exactly, Stuff Works. in S1 it was like - the Upside Down is everywhere. the demigorgon could come through anywhere, if you were unlucky. that was part of what made it so creepy - there’s this whole other world and it is RIGHT THERE with you, and sometimes the fabric separating the two universes gets scary thin, and bam, you’re somewhere no human has any business being. whereas in S2 it’s like - ok, things are coming through this one portal and spreading through tunnels underground, in our own dimension??? like at first i thought hopper had actually entered the Upside Down in the tunnels, but then it seemed like the tunnels were still on our plane, just gross-looking. so why in S1 could the demigorgon come through the ceiling of will’s house, or through that tree in the woods, or take barbara through the pool? why did the lab people think burning that little gate would help, when the first monster from last season was obviously popping into our dimension from all sorts of other places?

- this is a minor quibble, but it was driving me up the WALL in the last couple of episodes - what in god’s name were they injecting will with??? and HOW. mike just grabs that syringe off the counter like “we need to make will go to sleep” - there is NO reason that anyone in the room would know what was in the syringe or what the correct dosage was or HOW TO GIVE AN INJECTION IN THE FIRST PLACE. joyce gives it??????? by stabbing straight down???????? into will’s arm???????????? what the hell kind of injection technique is that?!?!?! that’s not....how that works. ever. and maxine does it to billy too, in his NECK - just straight in there. there is no....look, people in human medicine can weigh in better than me here; maybe things are different, but just from the veterinary perspective, you can’t just stab a creature any old place you want, and giving something via any route that isn’t intravenous isn’t going to drop an animal immediately, AND you do not have control over how long they’re going to be out. if you give a sedative, you can’t just wake an animal up by wafting ammonia under their nose. AND the animal is likely not going to be actually asleep until you also give an anaesthetic induction agent, and if you do give an anaesthetic induction agent, you’d better have some monitoring equipment and a breathing apparatus hooked up to your patient!

look, it just - the “go to sleep” injection was used to solve too many critical situations for me to just ignore it. it bothered me.

anyhow. overall, i didn’t hate it. but i thought it was way less cohesive than the first season, and therefore way less effective. i’m still curious to see what happens in S3, but my expectations are lower now.

[if you wanna talk to me about this, you have my permission, but ONLY if you’re able to do it without talking about S3 in any capacity, including your own personal evaluation of how good/bad it is in relation to the other seasons. i like to watch without knowing other people’s opinions of things, otherwise i feel like my viewing experience is colored by what i hear. thanks! :) ]

#interdimensional babysitters club

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whenthesunburnsout · 5 years

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I can’t let go of Endgame, I’m sorry.

ENDGAME SPOILERS! (This is not what this blog was meant to be but it’s my Endgame dumping ground now. Sorry.)

So, I wrote Nothing Breaks Like A Heart to deal with my feelings after Endgame. And then I began to think... how can I bring Tony back and get him and Stephen together without invalidating the beautiful Tony/Pepper and Morgan relationship? This is the result. It’s a novel I could never write so have 1.6k of outline.

I have have a totally sappy title for this: “Learning to Live in Daylight”

I’d love to know what you think about it.

Imagine that Steve, after his travels to bring back the Infinity Stones to their proper places and times, makes one last stop before he settles down with Peggy. He has to have a spare Quantum Realm/Timetravel thingy in case his breaks, right? So he has the tech, the time and the Pym particles to go to Titan, right after the Snap, and get Tony. He gives him all the info he has and sends him 5 years into the future, before he himself fucks off into the past to his fairy tale ending with the love of his life. (Or to change stuff around to create his own branched timeline. That's sounds more in character for him.)

Only, Tony overshoots.

And so the man, who hasn't lived through the last 5 years of pain, trauma, happiness and married life with a daughter lands about 6 years into the future in a world that is almost back to normal. A world with no Nat and a new Captain America in the form of Sam Wilson, a world where Pepper has mourned him and has begun to piece her life back together. And a daughter who he already loves but doesn't know and begins to cry when he doesn't react to "love you 3000" except for a confused look. He cries himself when the little girl runs away from him and Pepper runs after her with tears in her eyes, unable to really look at him.

He may be alive but he's still lost them and he hates Steve for bringing him back so, so much. It would be better to be dead, right?

After some weeks of trying to come to terms with his new reality and new chance at life he decides to confront the one person who is as if not more responsible for the whole fucked up mess than Steve.

The doors to the Sanctum are opened by Wong who takes one look at him and lets him inside. His survival has been covered by the news, but the details have been kept vague. But Wong is neither blind nor stupid - he sees the past right in front of his eyes and can extrapolate from the rest.

"Stephen's not here," he says but Tony can smell the lie.

"Bullshit. He's just a coward afraid to face me."

Wong just stares but it somehow communicates just how untrue those words are. Tony looks around and notices the general state of decay around a building that has felt ancient, welcoming and downright homey the first time he's been here, only a few weeks ago in his own personal timeline.

"What happened?" This time the hostility is gone from his voice and as soon as he truly looks he sees the utter exhaustion and desolation in Wong's eyes and posture.

"Your death." Wong makes an inviting gesture and leads him upwards. "He took his part in it not very well."

"Why?"

Wong just gives him another look. They come to stand before a big door and something instinctively tells Tony that he doesn't want to know what lies behind it. Wong judges him yet again for some minutes. "He's still alive," he finally says. "Barely."

The door opens. Tony takes a deep breath and forces himself to face whatever lies in front of him. All thoughts of revenge, screaming and extracting explanations flee when he sees Stephen floating in the middle of the room, surrounded my bands of magic. He looks lifeless and Tony has to watch him for a couple of seconds before he's sure that the man's still breathing.

Stephen does that. But nothing else. He looks emaciated, skin stretched too tightly over bones. His hands are still shaking lightly, even now, Tony notices.

"The magic's keeping him alive?" Tony guesses and Wong nods tiredly.

"He's over exhausted himself literally to death after your funeral."

Tony shudders at that. Pepper has shown him the hologram his future self has left behind and he knows what happened down to the very last detail. He gets it, he really does, but he looks at Pepper and their daughter and can't help wanting that life even if it ended in a horrible, painful death. At least the other him got to marry Pepper and have Morgan with her. He? Has nothing. He can't just slip into the life of a dead man even if it was himself.

He doesn't ask why Stephen did that. The memory of Stephen on Titan, collapsing after looking into uncountable futures, is still fresh in his mind and he's seen the shock, fear, panic and despair in Stephen's eyes. He still hears his mournful "Tony, there was no other way". Now he knows what Stephen meant and since he had time to pour over all the research the Avengers did after the Snap he knows a lot more about Stephen Strange than he did back then when they were strangers.

He now knows what it means to be the Keeper of the Time Stone and what sacrifices it demands. Bruce has told him about the Ancient One.

Stephen has stopped eating after the final battle, Wong tells Tony, unable to keep anything down while he's been busy with keeping everything together. It didn't take long before he collapsed since he wasn't in good shape from Titan. He's being kept alive - barely - by magic in the hope that his depleted reserves can recover. He's needed more than ever since he's the strongest sorcerer around the threats haven't stopped even with Thanos defeated for good. (Something Tony can still barely wrap his head around.) As much as Stephen might wish it - and Wong knows that he does - he's simply too valuable to be allowed to die.

Tony kind of knows that feeling.

He finds himself drifting into the Sanctum and Stephen's room more and more often in the days and weeks to come. He learns a little bit about magic and talks to an unresponsive Stephen. He's just as elated as Wong is when Stephen recovers a little bit and they can dial back the magical help.

When Stephen finally wakes up he looks into the eyes of Wong and a younger Tony. He thinks he finally lost it for good or that he made a mistake, choose the wrong timeline and that everything was in vain. He breaks down crying before they can even explain what happened. It takes him a long while to recover and be able to listen, even longer before he can even start to believe.

Wong stays for as long as he can and comes as often as possible but he has other things to attend to while Stephen slowly recovers his strength in mind and body. Tony has nothing to do and spends pretty much all his time with Stephen when he doesn't try to connect with Morgan.

Pepper and him are over. They love each other but he's not the man she conceived and raised a child with and they can't slip back into their old dynamic. Too many things have happened and while it breaks both their hearts they agree that a deep friendship is much better than a relationship that just won't work. Morgan is theirs and they will raise her together but they can't be together anymore. Tony spends days crying over the end of their relationship.

So, the Sanctum and Stephen it is. He has to take his mind of things, somehow. Sometimes, Tony brings Morgan with him. Stephen has no clue what to do with her but she's lovely and he can't help but love her. She is Tony's daughter. She shines so brightly it almost hurts.

Stephen looks at Tony trying to be a father and Morgan slowly responding to his overtures and falls in love even more. He's loved Tony for ages now and the constant contact doesn't help.

Tony sees Stephen struggling with weakness and pain, sees him playing with Morgan and earnestly discussing things with Wong. He listens when Stephen tells him what happened whenever anybody but Tony wielded the gauntlet. He begins to cook because he has nothing better to do, Stephen can't do it and Wong seems to be fine to live off sandwiches.

The first time he reaches out without thinking to steady Stephen's shaking hand to help with bringing a bowl of soup to the table there is a spark between them. It's magic that even Tony can feel. They begin touching each other - carefully and innocently at first. Tony's not quite there yet and Stephen's still too fragile for anything else. A steadying hand here, a lingering touch after one gives something to the other. Shoulders touching when they sit together on the couch.

It escalates to handholding and sleeping against each other on the couch. They share a bed after a long day when Tony's too tired to go back to the place he stays. He realizes that the Sanctum and Stephen have become "home" just before he falls asleep and wakes up with Stephen cuddled up to him.

It's the most natural thing in the world to put his arm around Stephen and gather him closer. Later this day, after a mild panic attack and a short talk they share their first kiss. Tony initiates it and Stephen shakes like a leaf in the wind. Tony's not much better, to be honest. But it feels right somehow.

Tony is seven years younger than he should be and Stephen is so much older than he should be. Both are scared and scarred but are determined to find a little bit of happiness in a world they both never could have thought possible.

Little by little they do.

✨

#ironstrange #tony stark #stephen strange #endgame spoilers #avengers endgame spoilers #avengers 4 spoilers

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makeste · 5 years

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BnHA Chapter 149: Villain Island

Previously on BnHA: Twice confronted Nighteye with a clone of Rappa. Nighteye proceeded to beat his ass using rubber seal stamps, incidentally revealing his surprisingly cut washboard abs. Night then blasted away part of Twice’s mask, forcing Twice to retreat in a panic. His personality disorder started to get the better of him, but then Toga showed up and tied a bandana around the missing part of his mask, and it calmed him down and was also the sweetest fucking thing I’ve ever seen. Twice briefly flashbacked to the League of Villains meeting when Tomura announced that Togawice would be lent out to the Eight Precepts. Twice was against this because it turns out he feels responsible for introducing Overhaul to the League and getting Magne killed (and Compress maimed, but no one cares about him). Toga wasn’t keen on it either, but Tomura somehow won them both over by smiling and making it seem like he had a plan in the works. Whether he actually does is anyone’s guess, but damned if it wasn’t convincing. Anyway, so now Toga and Twice are fed up with the Precepts’ general incompetence, though, and are ready to turn on them. And I’ve never been so excited for a plot twist in my whole damn life.

Today on BnHA: Flashback!Overhaul meets Togawice for the first time and asks them about their quirks. The Precepts then ask if Tomura plans on betraying them, and Twice and Toga are all, “[shifty eyed glance] nope, nothing to see here. no impending betrayals on our end, no sirree.” This apparently is good enough for Overhaul, who asks them to sit tight and wait for further orders. Back in the present, Irinaka makes one last-ditch effort to crush the remaining heroes in his accursed hallway. However, Toga gets him to reveal his true body, and Deku and Aizawa immediately attack. With Aizawa having finally neutralized his quirk, Irinaka is detained. We then cut to Mirio, with time rewinding back to show what happened immediately after he went forward on his own and caught up with Overhaul.

But the real star of this chapter is the omake at the end. Kurogiri takes it upon himself to improve solidarity among the League by taking them all on a mandatory outing to an uninhabited island to engage in a survival trial. Tomura spends the entire time lounging on a couch, Dabi unleashes his inner Bear Grylls, Toga steals a bikini, and tbh I kind of wish we could get an entire manga series of just this. But we’ll just have to settle for these four pages, I guess.

(As always, all comments not marked with an ETA are my unspoiled reactions from my first readthrough of this chapter. I’ve read up through chapter 178, now. If I’d known yesterday’s Superbowl would end up somehow being more boring than this entire arc, I would have never bothered taking the day off. But, well, hindsight.)

no, I don’t mind at all

by the way what exactly is going on here with Twice and these handcuff-looking things that I’m not actually sure are handcuffs. because that cord looks more like an earjack cord. but why is it coming from the bracelet like that. I basically have so many questions about this image, and am now also more closely examining exactly why Twice chose a skintight bodysuit as his villain costume

(ETA: I have no excuse. he’s fought with them before and everything; I just never noticed.)

more villain flashbacks!!

but this time it’s T&T introducing themselves to the Eights

“I’m never gonna forgive you, so it’s a pleasure to be working with you” ahaha. classic Twice. this is the kind of iconic bullshit that I’m reading this manga for

Overhaul’s apologizing for killing Magne and says he didn’t want to

but if you really felt that way you could have easily put her back together again, you sociopath

oh my god look at this though??!

holy shit. so she really is another canon trans character, and it’s treated seriously too. I mean, obviously it’s not perfect, and it also sucks that she got killed off, but I’m so used to LGBT manga characters being treated as comedic relief at best, so this frank statement of “hey you misgendered my friend, get it right” and it being totally serious is actually really refreshing

also what is Viz going to do when they get to this chapter. most likely change it up entirely I’ll bet. fucking Viz

anyway, so Twice is all “so now what” and Overhaul says he and Toga just have to follow his orders

he’s also asking for the details of their quirks

but Toga is all “we’ll tell you if and when it’s needed because fuck you”, and have I mentioned I love her???

but holy shit though

bud. are you like, okay. jesus christ

so Twice has decided he hates this and he’s not going to say anything

so naturally the very next thing he does is explain his quirk in great detail!!

holy shit this is an unexpected info dump

once again Horikoshi is all “I see your questions and I will answer them in due time.” so it was a tape measure!! has he had these this whole time?

just went back and checked. yes he has. unbelievable

still waiting on an explanation for that skintight bodysuit though

some of this goes against what we previously knew about his quirk, though. this is the first time a two-thing limit has been brought up, and that seems to go against the whole Calvin and Hobbes “I made a bunch of clones of myself” thing that we know he did way back when (and which he’s also referencing here, as I assume it’s the reason he no longer makes copies of himself). maybe the limit only applies to things/people that aren’t him?

this reminds me a lot of Momo’s quirk in that he needs to know a lot about the object before duplicating it. which means he’s definitely a lot more intelligent than he sometimes comes off as

I mentioned a couple chapters ago that Toga is extremely intelligent as well, and now I’m wondering if Tomura realizes just how lucky he is to have all these smart crazy people on his side. we’ve seen the quality of Overhaul’s own followers, by contrast, and the League most definitely has them beat

anyway! so Toga’s staring at Twice in annoyance for going off like that right after she made a big deal of not telling Overhaul anything

she says he made her look stupid

OMG YESSSS so now she’s going into the details of her own quirk after all omggggg

look at the damn hoops Horikoshi’s making himself jump through all because he made the decision not to do any villain bios. well it’s your own damn fault

I’m starting to understand why Deku keeps all these notebooks

the bit about the transformation time being proportionate to the amount of blood she consumes is extremely interesting and relevant, and now it makes sense why she had that weird gizmo to suck as much blood as possible

I would estimate she got maybe a cup of Ochako’s blood, so we can assume she can transform into her for up to 1 day if needed. but as for Deku, we saw in chapter 114 that she only managed to get like a couple drops worth

one drop is about .05 ml, which is about .0002 cups. so she can transform into Deku for .04% of one day unless I fucked that math up (which is highly possible)

what is that, like a couple seconds?? because if so, holy shit but I’ve been vastly overestimating her ability to wreak mindbendy havoc on our heroes

also does she have to drink the blood right before the transformation for best results? if she drinks someone’s blood but then doesn’t transform into that person right away, does she eventually lose the ability even if she doesn’t transform into them? or can she store that “energy” and use it whenever she likes?

basically this is awesome to be getting so much information here, but now if anything I’ve just got more questions

(ETA: for real. either I really did calculate that wrong, or she got more of Deku’s blood than I thought, or Horikoshi is the one that fucked up the math lol. oh well, it’s easy enough to just shrug and go along with it)

anyway! I almost forgot there was still a chapter going on

so now Overhaul’s henchman is casually asking if Tomura is planning to betray them. well duh

very convincing. well done

anyway, Overhaul seems satisfied for the time being, but he’s telling them they’ll have to stay in the underground HQ until they receive their orders from him. so basically house arrest

and now he’s leaving and Mimic is having a total power trip

seriously dude, simmer down

he’s babbling on about the yakuza getting revenge and “taking back society’s reins from the shadows” and fulfilling the dream of their bedridden boss

and now I think we’re back in the present

and this lil fellow is, as you’ll recall, the guy who’s currently controlling all the shifty walls of the underground HQ while all hopped up on quirk-enhancers

Toga and Twice are having a conversation mid-somersault about how they’re gonna let the heroes take out the Precepts for them. I think

meanwhile Aizawa is asking Deku if he also heard the crazy voice coming from the walls which is, as Deku surmises, Irinaka’s voice

ohhhh I see, if they can pinpoint where the voice is coming from then they can find Irinaka’s real body and like punch him until he quits being an asshole and dragging out the arc with his stupid quirk

do you know, I just realized that basically this entire thing is his fault, and just like that he’s my least favorite character. that’s right. you beat out Stain and even Mineta, because Mineta only ever hijacks like a page or two at a time at most. certainly not a dozen chapters in one go

but anyway, the voice is echoing too much for them to pinpoint it

meanwhile the cops are freaking out because they’re about to get crushed

I can’t figure out why Mimic didn’t just actually crush them all to begin with and be done with it. unless it’s just that he didn’t want the full force of the law bearing down on their organization and seeking justice for dozens of cop murders

HOLY SHIT YOU GUYS TOGA IS TAKING MATTERS INTO HER OWN HANDS

NEVER SEND A BUNCH OF SO-CALLED HEROES TO DO A VILLAIN’S JOB

HOLY SHIT WHAT’S HAPPENING NOW. IRINAKA IS SCREAMING INCOMPREHENSIBLY AND DEKU SEEMS TO HAVE HEARD IT AND IS NOW RUSHING TOWARD THE SOURCE OF THE NOISE

AHHHHH DID HE DO IT???

I CAN’T TELL IF HE GOT HIM. SURELY THAT SMASH WASN’T JUST FOR SHOW

OH MY GODDDDD

YESSSSSSSSSSSS

AND T&T ARE WAVING AT HIM GLEEFULLY AS HE FALLS

I LOVE EVERYTHING HOLY SHIT

the amount of relief I’m feeling right now can accurately be described as “overwhelming” and it’s amazing

because he’s SUCH A GOOD FUCKING PERSON, Deku is catching Irinaka as he falls, because this is BnHA where a fall from a great height onto a bunch of rocks actually will kill you

and please tell me the rooms are back to normal now omg

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

THANK YOU MANGA GODS

HOLY SHIT!!!!!

MIRIOOOOOOOOOO

holy shit. holy fucking shit, finally. finally

FLYING SOLO AGAINST THE FINAL BOSS HOLY SHIT

so is this the part where we find out Mirio is fucking dead omg. holy shit. but you know what, I don’t even care, because we’re finally up to the good stuff and no more bullshit. I feel another binge coming on

BONUS:

oho, what’s this? “special jump outing”?

I don’t know where to fucking start omg

first of all, I’ve actually been impressed with their solidarity thus far so this is news to me

second, I can’t with how their idea of team bonding is “let’s build a house from scratch together on an uninhabited island”

third KUROGIRI WHAT ARE YOU WEARING

cutie

I swear to god if they keep up these antics I’m downgrading their name from “League of Villains” to “Villain Squad Jr.”

Tomura is trying to remind us all that he’s For Reals Evil but idk

on the one hand, we actually have seen this guy kill a man with his bare hands. but on the other hand, it was revenge for Magne, and he hasn’t killed anyone else that I can think of, aside from probably his parents by accident

and also my favorite of all the villains is the only one who is for sure a psychotic serial killer, so it could just be that I don’t actually care

so Kuro is telling Tomura to be less strange, and announcing that the first order of business is to secure a water source

are you telling me you came to this random island to build a house and you don’t even know where you’re building it yet

and now there appears to have been some kind of cut, and Tomura is drinking ginger ale. fucking ginger ale. you’re not evil at all, are you

I can’t believe I was actually worried about what these guys might do to Bakugou if they kept him. their idea of torture is probably less fingernail-pulling and more “let’s make him watch a bunch of Kay Jewelers commercials until he cracks.” which to be fair would break me pretty quickly

(ETA: although Tomura did get pretty hardcore there with Overhaul at the end! but I mean, Overhaul was a total prick you guys. that doesn’t count)

and now he’s tied Kurogiri to a tree and is just making him warp over whatever they need

everyone please look at this panel of Dabi wearing overalls

“unexpectedly into it”

this is the most damning evidence yet that he’s definitely related to Shouto

you go Dabi. I feel like he’s learned all about how to survive on a tropical island by like watching Moana a bunch of times or something

consider the coconut, consider its tree, we use each part of the coconut, that’s all we neeeeed

meanwhile Tomura is reading a magazine on a couch on the beach

Toga is wading in the ocean and her overalls got wet so she’s changing into a bikini

did we ever confirm she was really responsible for those serial murders. it could have been someone else. you never know

anyway she stole the bikini and Kurogiri is acting all shocked like “omg this girl really stole a bikini” but like. what else is she gonna do. pay for it like a normal person

don’t tell me you guys were actually legitimately leasing that bar this whole time. Kurogiri probably actually had his liquor license

so Toga is legit frolicking, and Tomura is playing a PSP or something. with the hand still on his face. how can you even see the screen

and now Dabi has caught them all lazing about and he’s throwing a fit

he’s even doing teamwork

now he’s lecturing Dabi on what’s really important

I think they probably would have turned off the Kay Jewelers commercials after like five of them or so and been all “okay I hope you learned your lesson.” and then if he still didn’t want to join them they would have been all “fine then but it’s your loss” and given him a ginger ale and sent him back home

so now Kurogiri is rescinding all rules and letting them all do their thing

Villain Squad Jr. it’s fucking official

and that’s the end of the strip. but the bonus material is still continuing because FA has been doing these translations of the character book! and the next page is amazing oh my god

YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND, IN THE FUTURE WHEN I INEVITABLY START TO WRITE FANFIC ABOUT THIS STUPID ADDICTIVE SERIES THIS IS A FUCKING REFERENCE GOLDMINE

right away I feel like a good 75% of fanfics are slightly off because U.A. has compulsory Saturday classes. say goodbye to your weekend getaway antics

they don’t actually have much homeroom time with Aizawa in the morning. what subject does he actually teach? I need someone to tell me, I refuse to believe Horikoshi hasn’t established this in canon by now. it’s probably somewhere in this very book

(ETA: I STILL NEED TO KNOW THIS. I’M STILL GOING TO INSIST IT’S ART IF HORIKOSHI DOESN’T CORRECT ME)

anyway, that’s it for today, but that was awesome. on I go to chapter 150

#bnha #boku no hero academia #twice (bnha)#toga himiko #shigaraki tomura #kurogiri #dabi #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #makeste reads bnha #in hindsight I think chevy 'REAL PEOPLE!!! NOT ACTORS!!!' commercials would be even worse torture than kay jewelers #though that might have aroused too much rage in him and accidentally powered him up #although they could have immediately put him back to sleep by just making him watch the damn superbowl last night #not to beat a dead horse but my GOD that was bad #ah well it's all in the past now #I'm gonna go finish this class 1-A band AU arc

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anangelicday-mrwolf · 3 years

Text

Wolfsbane : Noblesse Fanfic (post-ending)

(previous chapter)

Chapter 37 – Yuigi’s Mystery

“Sir, we have a situation!”

Sangin and Yeonsu bolted into the room, their motion so forceful that they might as well have demolished the door.

“We just had an explosion in sector 32.”

“Sector 32? That must be...”

“That’s where we have a facility that belongs to the ex-chairman.”

Of all the places.

Taesik, the director of KSA, minced a biteful of his lips, grasping his desk tightly by its either sides.

“Do we know the cause?”

“We dispatched the agents who happened to be nearby. They testified that the topmost structure of the building – which is in the ex-chairman’s possession – was utterly destroyed. Luckily we have zero casualty so far, due to the time and location of the explosion. Not to mention it was built in an area not dense in transient or residential populations.”

“...That is good to hear.”

“I am terribly sorry to say this, but it is too soon to call off the alarm. We have yet to find the one to blame.”

“...Did you notify them?”

“Yes, sir. Mr. Takio said he’s on his way right now.”

“Very well. You two look into the exact number of casualty and magnitude of damage. We must get ready for the aftermaths, including the media broadcast.”

Sangin and Yeonsu nodded in understanding.

They remained silent, but they knew what used to stand at the scene of trouble. They also knew who was lodging there.

Which was why they mentally mumbled in synchronization: Did she finally do it?

*****

Yuigi was running.

She had been stranger to a chase for such a long time.

However, unlike her previous experiences, she was the one on the run.

“Where do you think you’re going? I just put up a fight and gave you an invitation – don’t you turn down the party!”

The man croaked behind her, sounding much more like a toad with his voice raised.

Currently, Yuigi was luring him.

She could not say for sure if she could muster even one-sixteenth of her original power, but she remembered how she could make a colossal building crumble to the very bottom with a mere punch, as if breaking a toothpick.

She knew herself too well; she could not dare engage in a brawl where the safehouse once maintained itself.

‘There’s no reason for me to reserve myself a lecture from those three, given that I can make it back alive.’

She ultimately reached the area where 6th, 7th, and 8th Elders were lost, still under KSA’s management – a thoroughly vacant space, impeccable for a clash-slash-clamor.

‘No, it won’t be a clash. Clash applies to a case in which the involved parties engage in a mutual combat. What I’ll soon get to encounter here would be a one-sided beating.’

Yuigi directed her eyes, slightly hazy with bitterness, towards her choker, somehow feeling heavier than usual.

“Like I said, you have no idea how elated I am, Yuigi! For at last I have found a chance!”

The modified human smirked, making it so very blatant that he was in ecstasy.

‘Duh, of course I have no idea. I was too busy trying to recover my well-bombarded eardrums.’

That was when Yuigi got curious of what he had said to her upon entrance.

She was aware of the fact that bad guys who talk a lot have so much to offer.

Though verbal manipulation is far from her usual style of battle, Yuigi warmed up her lips in preparation.

“Oh, so that’s what you jabbered about when you crashed through the door? Thanks for filling me in.”

That moment the man’s face was crumpled in displeasure.

“I happened to be busy in thoughts. Damn, speaking of which, I didn’t even get to enjoy my late-night snack. I’ve been waiting to savor it since last night; I wonder if I can get it later. Then again, since the entire building is gone, I should start cleaning the mess. And figure out who to send the bills to pay for the loss.”

Yuigi peeked at him, making herself appear as unconcerned as possible.

Just as she had wished, his face was plastered with doubt concerning his own hearing capability, soon to be marred with question regarding her words.

“That was the prelude of my glorious history of spotlight. You were supposed to be my witness for the moment...! And you didn’t hear anything I spoke?”

“Nope. To me, getting a treat as scheduled is more important than that stupid speech of yours.”

“Why, you...! Stick this to your head – the codename’s Kornel. The new hope and star of the surviving Union! And as I get my revenge for my dear friend Mark, I...”

Kornel flinched and held his tongue, in the course of his frenzied monologue of screech and spit.

And he smiled as if telling Yuigi that it was a nice try.

“You were planning to pry out info from me. Sorry, but I’m not falling for it. I’m not that hopeless.”

Well, you just spilled the codename of your closest comrade. That counts as a lethal mistake in my point of view.

Yuigi did not dispense her opinion, for Kornel did have a point: she could no longer collect intelligence from him.

And she had neither the plan nor time to give it another try. Kornel flexed his fingers and closed the distance between them.

“Since you were keeping yourself hidden in such a place, I assume your skills have turned unworthy of flaunting. It’s a shame that I can’t pummel you while you are in best condition and fully furnished, but I hope you’d understand. When will I ever get to beat a Cerberus? Oh, and allow me to thank you in advance – thank you for serving as my stepping stone to the higher ground!”

With a pregnant thud, Kornel flung himself forward.

Instinctively Yuigi’s senses were whetted to the extremity, and she fixed her eyes upon his fists and correspondingly maneuvered herself in the air.

Kornel launched the kickoff of their game with light punches, their pressure and power nevertheless not even close to the definition of kickoff, and darted towards the red-haired woman. As she ducked and turned in evasion, she could run a self-diagnosis.

‘Reflexes. Speed. Rate of reaction. They’re not so different from what they used to be. My powers may have been only partially retrieved since I was freed from Crombel’s lab, now chained by this choker. But this isn’t so bad; I can handle this, I think.’

And Yuigi got to pay for speaking too soon.

“So this is piece of cake for you, huh? You do live up to the name of the Cerberus.”

So here goes the real deal.

Yuigi had a feeling that was what Kornel’s grin was implying.

Swoosh!

Pow!

“Urgh!”

Kornel’s body faded as Yuigi kept her gaze on him, and right after an impact equivalent to that of a tank’s missile bored through her side.

Despite the painful delusion that half of her form was shattered into dust, Yuigi lifted her body to find out what just occurred to her.

Thus she came to behold Kornel lifting his enormous fist, about to powder her for good.

Bam!

Yuigi gave a kick to her legs at full force, to be gravely astonished by how Kornel had already caught up to her.

‘He looks like a toad, but how come he’s so fast?!’

As far as she was concerned, he was just a bit slower than Takio, based on her memories from the day he exhibited his nimbleness with a glass of water when she first opened her eyes in the safehouse.

Therefore, she had no choice but to altogether pledge herself to dodging.

She was not completely cornered, to her gratitude.

‘No energy manipulation or body transformation. Looks like he’s the type that deals with physical melee based on superhuman speed and strength.’

The moment her analysis met its end, out of habit she attempted to counterattack.

As she had commonly done so, Yuigi concentrated the energy within to eject it in the shape of a beam.

Just then, an unexpected pain yanked her neck, rendering her whole body numb.

It was thanks to the choker, molded by Tao and assigned by Takio.

Simultaneously, she could feel the energy that sparked across her palm withdrawing itself, like fire dumped with water.

Kornel did not hesitate to throw himself towards her, and after a series of despair and helplessness came a thought: Should I just give up?

Yuigi did not even wipe the blood off her throat, a mark left by the slash of wind that very nearly beheaded her. She was captured by the idea that even if she makes it out of here, she still has no life.

‘And I don’t want to stay as a nuisance to him.’

Takio may have thought she was blind to the fact, but she knew.

She knew that M-21, as much as he tried to make it invisible, was not happy at all with her presence.

Although Lunark’s visit set a guideline for her future behaviors, she knew that Takio was on a rather away-from-good terms with his teammates for her sake.

And just then she could see no reason why she should keep on with her current status, void of a purpose but surely a hindrance to her savior.

‘Let’s just give up.’

Her body stopped struggling, as if it were waiting for her statement.

She could feel all of her cells drained of vitality, as if her biological clock has been broken.

Meanwhile, Kornel did not halt his attack; he was right onto her face, which was a sign for Yuigi that this was it.

However, the air enveloping her heaved with a swoosh, and Kornel’s movement went past her.

No, she went past it.

‘What the...?’

She was ready to die. She did not mean to move whatsoever.

Nonetheless, her body scrambled as Kornel lunged towards her once again.

And her body began to move on its own.

‘What the heck...? What is going on?!’

She could not control any of her appendages.

It was as if her mind was cut off from her flesh, trapped in a shell in humanoid configuration.

On the other hand, her steps and actions had turned much more precise.

Apparently Kornel realized the change; his face was muddled with confusion.

But not long after, he snickered, seemingly onto something in his mind.

“A puppet within the Union, and a puppet outside, I see.”

What are you talking about?

Yuigi’s words were mute, her voice box incompliant.

“In the past, I could pick up a couple things about you by pure chance. Including what Yuri did to your body via Crombell’s order, when you were made his test subject. And what you had gone through when you found yourself at the Union for very first time.”

Yuigi did not like the way he was bickering.

For some reason, she felt like he knew something that could devastate her entire world once she learns.

What are you trying to say?

What is it that you know?

Tell me. Say it now.

No, don’t. Don’t say it.

Please let me stay ignorant.

A myriad of thoughts summoned within her soundless lightning, vortex, and squall.

“Did you know that you’ve been serving your archenemy?”

Kornel’s declaration turned Yuigi’s inner lightning into thunderstorm.

“How very pitiful. You haven’t realized who gave you your misfortune.”

Her vortex within transformed into a tornado.

“You’ve considered Union your everything, haven’t you? Well, guess what? It’s the Union that took everything from you.”

Her squall recast itself as a hurricane.

And the said hurricane struck her from head to toe, igniting every nerve of her physique.

What is that...

“...Supposed to mean?!!”

The phrase that was to be left as a thought erupted through her lips.

She could feel control back in her grip; Kornel stiffened upon her shift.

He soon repositioned himself to continue his assault, but he had to hold onto the idea.

“Miss Raciela!!”

Bang! Bang!

With a sheer cry, bullets unusually amplified in power directly landed on where Kornel was locating himself.

Kornel hurriedly took steps back, as Takio secured himself before him.

The Union agent winced upon recognizing him.

A purple-haired gunner. A gray-haired werewolf shifter. And an electric whipper with locks of white hair. In whatever circumstances, don’t you ever face off against them. Or so help me......

‘Damn it,’ muttered Kornel in his head, as he composed himself and gritted his teeth.

“Looks like fortune favors you. But don’t you think this is the end of it. Now that I know you are here, you have just provided us with an additional weapon. You’d better mark my words!”

Contrary to his you-can’t-do-anything-about-us stance, Kornel did not waste a second in running for his life.

Takio kept his gun poised and ready to fire until Kornel was made perfectly scarce, to finally turn to Yuigi, who remained immobile until then.

Her reply to his question of her safety was nothing like what he was anticipating.

“Tao.”

“...Sorry?”

“The guy who used to be in DA-5 with you. The one who is still on your team. I need to talk to him.”

(next chapter)

Yes, Kornel belonged to the assassin team under Crombell’s ownership, along with Mark. The fact that he was Mark’s closest friend is my creation for this fic, so I hope there would be no confusion on this matter!

Now this fic is slowly reaching its highlight chapters. I’ll do my best to bring a good finale for my series! :D

#korean webcomic #korean webtoon #fanfic #noblesse #frankenstein #lunark #frankensteinxlunark #wolfsbane

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panharmonium · 4 years

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stranger things 3, a visual summary:

more coherent thoughts under the cut, because wow.

......okay. that was a Trainwreck. an absolute mess.

i remember when my coworkers were watching S3 (and still urging me to start season 1) and they were saying how amazing the latest season was, and honestly i think there must just be a difference in people who watch tv just to be entertained and people who watch tv and automatically evaluate the story (aka fandom veterans and English majors, lol - cue Me twice), because WHO could watch this critically and praise it that way?

it's honestly hard to know where to even begin; i've been sending frustrated notes to @brambleberrycottage ever since episode three and now that i'm done with episode 8 there's just......so much more to say

first, good things:

erica is a great character. she's what max should have been (aka, uh.......interesting!) i liked the realization moment where dustin was like "you're a NERD!"

that entire sequence where will is so upset with lucas and mike for not being engaged with the dnd game was very well done, especially the conversation he has with mike out in the rain. i loved that moment where mike asked him "did you think we were just going to hang out in my basement playing games forever?" and will said, "yeah. yeah, i guess i did." i really felt that. [edit, now that i've finished: this was never resolved. will giving away his dnd books at the end was not an actual resolution to this conflict.]

steve is still a good dude, and robin was pretty cool. i'm down for them being super friends. but i'm still mourning the steve+nancy+jonathan trio that was a thing for like 5 seconds and then never returned.

i loved how genuinely excited steve was to see dustin when dustin came back from camp. that was adorable. "HENDERSON!!!!" "how many children are you friends with?"

and uh. yeah. i had more problems with this season than praise-bestowing moments, so. here goes that bit.

OVERARCHING PROBLEMS:

1. keep it simple, stupid

remember in the office when dwight quoted the above advice to ryan as michael's rule for making a sale? the same advice applies to storytelling.

season 1 of stranger things is so simple. there is One Monster. that is the danger. and somehow, that single monster manages to be a thousand times more terrifying than all of these new "bigger, scarier, more epic" threats crammed into the second two seasons.

how goofy is the stranger things season 3 plot, seriously? russians are blackmailing a small-town mayor so they can buy up land to steal power from the town while operating a secret lab under the mall to open a gate to the Upside Down (WHY?), while simultaneously a remnant of the malevolent force that was "defeated" last season has reanimated itself and is making people scarf chemicals (WHY?), and then it possesses one of them and uses that person to possess a bunch of other people in order to build itself a body made out of melted people, in order to kill el, whose only story this season is breaking up with her boyfriend, and we have to infiltrate this russian base in order to close the gate (same endgame as last season - BIG NO-NO) to kill the goo monster, except last time the "mindflayer” survived the gate being closed, so why would this even WORK, and -

the fact that there are so many "round-up/info dump" scenes where characters summarize what's going on and make implausibly accurate connections/guesses about what it all must mean is a red flag. the characters shouldn’t have to tell your story to the audience. if it's too complicated for us to keep straight on our own, it's too complicated.

the amount of energy that goes into trying to lash together a Chaos Plot with too many shaky legs leaves nothing left over for nuanced character development or mood establishment. you're constantly running to catch up to your own flimsy story before it collapses on top of itself.

2. the horror!

S1 of stranger things was the scariest thing i'd ever seen.

granted, i don't watch a lot of horror, because i don't like it. i get scared too easily and then i legitimately can't sleep. i watched a horror movie five years ago that i still think about every time the lights are off in my house. but still, ST1 was something i had never experienced before.

it wasn't creature horror, and it wasn't just suspense. it was the UNSETTLINGNESS of it all. it wasn't really about the monster. it was about the Upside Down.

the reason ST1 is so successful is because of how much we don’t know. it's the horror of not understanding what is happening, and the terror of knowing that nobody thinks it’s real. feeling like you're going crazy and being cut off from all assistance. the conspiracy and the cover-up. and the sheer unsettlingness of the whole parallel worlds things just tipped me over the edge - the idea that you can take one wrong step and then be suddenly and without warning completely off the map, simultaneously right next to the people you want to get to and also utterly beyond their reach. that was fucking scary!!!!

and they do it all with so little. i have literally never been more scared in my life than when i would see those christmas lights start flickering. and they're just LIGHTS! yes, we see the monster later, but it's the uncertainty that's most frightening. we don't understand how it arrives in our world, and we don’t know where it will show up next. it could be right next to you - on the other side. you could be standing on top of it. you just don't know. it’s like what jonathan says to nancy in her bedroom - “it can’t get us in here.” and she says, “we don’t know that.”

the later seasons of stranger things, by comparison, did not scare me at all. season two was like a zombie movie - hordes of weak enemies that you can just shoot with a gun. and season 3 was even less frightening - upping the ante and making things gorier, more explosive, and bigger just isn't the vibe they set in S1. i'm not scared of that giant goop monster. it's like godzilla. it's not horror; it's just a lot of noise.

the unsettling, "creep" factor that made season 1 so effective was gone. it just turned into a regular old monster movie, and i didn't find that particularly interesting.

3. illogical, captain

a while ago there was a wave of pushback against people complaining about plot holes, but you know what? there is, in fact, an appropriate place for us to talk about plausibility, as well as the point at which our suspension of disbelief collapses.

ST3 is a bona fide plausibility disaster. i did not believe half of the story, because it was not unfolding in a believable way.

half of the plot points in this season would not have happened if the characters had been behaving with any kind of sense. it is absolutely impossible for me to believe that none of these children IMMEDIATELY went to joyce or hopper the minute they knew something weird was going on. it makes no sense. after the shit they've seen? it makes sense in season 1, because the kids are still so young that they have that kind of magical thinking that makes all of this seem kind of like an adventure. but they're teenagers now, and developmentally, they’re past that stage. they know the evil creature is back and they're pretty sure it's possessing billy? for some unfathomable reason, they don't go to an adult, but try to trap billy in the sauna and just see what happens. the other group has actual proof that russian soldiers are up to something shady in the mall? they don't tell an adult; they send a TEN YEAR-OLD in through the AIR DUCTS to investigate the secret room guarded by MEN WITH GUNS.

this is ridiculous. none of this should have happened. none of this WOULD have happened. it breaks the boundaries of disbelief. it completely sabotages the audience’s engagement with the story - joyce and hopper's whole detour with alexei and murray is so dull, because its entire purpose is to bring hop and joyce up to speed on something that we, the audience, already know. the other characters already found out this stuff, but did not communicate it - the gate is being opened again in a russian lab underground. there's no suspense for us. nothing new is revealed. we're just waiting for them to hurry up and finish finding out so we can move on to the next thing.

moreover: there are so many other problems besides just "these characters would have talked to each other." why on earth would murray, whose sole characteristic is extreme paranoia, take alexei wandering around the festival for hot dogs and carnival games. why would hopper be so virulently against the possibility that weird shit might be happening again? does he remember the past year or what? how on earth would the kids be able to fight off that massive monster with an ax and a hunting rifle? it's made out of dead guts and bones; why does it care if they shoot it?! how in the WORLD is this russian facility so penetrable? i'm sorry, it's just - beyond believable. it doesn't have cameras? the russians guards really can't tell that murray isn't a native speaker? they don't check his id when they don't recognize him? joyce and hopper really just got that lucky, to be asked a question and have “smile and nod” be the right answer? nobody ever got shot? it's silly. it's just silly. so many things - erica uses the "Open" button to open the elevator door in order to let steve and robin and dustin inside, but once the elevator is at the bottom of the shaft, robin explains the door's inexplicable non-opening because......you apparently need a keycard to use the buttons???? THAT MAKES NO SENSE; ERICA JUST USED THE BUTTONS A SECOND AGO.

even the entire endgame of this season is a contradiction! if the mind-flayer survived el closing the gate last time, it doesn't make sense that closing the gate this time would kill it. literally the entire plot of last season was "we need to get this thing out of will, because the creature will die once the gate is closed, and we want to make sure will doesn't die with it." but apparently the creature didn't die upon closing the gate; it just got trapped in our dimension. but now apparently it WILL die upon closing the gate. for whatever fucking reason.

i'm sorry, but that’s a mess. that’s a bona fide mess.

4. watch your tone

i honestly think the tonal change is the thing that made me the most frustrated about this season. it's possible to have a terrible plot and still stay relatively true to your characters - you'll still have a bad season, but at least you didn't bastardize your characters in the process.

i had issues with S2 and i definitely was not as impressed with it as i was with S1, but at least in S2 joyce and hopper were recognizable. in S3, i felt like i was watching strangers. the tonal shift was bizarre and off-putting, more so with hopper than joyce, but it affected both of them.

even as early as the very beginning of this season, i was feeling weird about how often hopper was being used for comedy. and as the season progressed, this trend only became more pronounced. almost every scene we had of him felt silly - and not like there was just something funny in the scene for me to laugh at, but like the audience was almost being asked to laugh AT him. like he was constantly the butt of the joke.

this really bothered me. from that incredibly sincere and heart-wrenching portrayal of him in season 1, when they kept him rooted in the trauma of losing his daughter and the breakdown of his marriage, and then how that same trauma made him so driven to save will and protect the kids - what a change. even in season 2 i was frustrated how the throughline of his daughter wasn’t touched again until the very last episode, and now in season 3 we’ve left that part of him so far behind that he's just there for us to laugh at. we're supposed to laugh at scenes of him being drunk and a mess. every scene he's in is either him arguing with joyce for comedic relief or being way over the top with alexei or the mayor. he was like a caricature of himself, and i didn't recognize him.

joyce suffered from the same thing, just by virtue of proximity. she spent almost all of her time in this season with hopper, and virtually all of that time was taken up with silly shenanigans or comically overblown arguing. what a departure from the desperate mother of season 1, who was maligned by everyone in town and only taken seriously by the audience. now it’s the audience who are supposed to be chuckling at her.

i dunno. the tone shift was very dramatic, very obvious, and it impacted the entire season. are we supposed to be taking this seriously or is it supposed to be a joke? a little bit of humor to break tension can be a good thing, but when it's constant, it confuses the mood.

and i personally don't think it was appropriate or respectful to either of these characters, in this case.

SMALLER THINGS THAT BOTHERED ME:

this show has 100% hit maximum character saturation. by the end of this season there were 13 core characters onscreen at the same time, in the same scene! it’s too many people! they cannot reasonably develop that many people in the space allotted.

i still am not interested in max. i don't feel anything for her. she doesn't feel real. i don't hate her, but she's just an empty vessel, and i really do think she's superfluous to this show. i think you could remove her with very little reworking and the show would be stronger for it. (they TRIED to do something interesting with billy, and i might have cared if we had been given literally any reason to care about him previously, but there was no investment earned there. they didn't do the front-end work to make him somebody we were interested in.)

weird relationship sunderings from previous seasons. i felt very strange about jonathan barely even seeing will this entire season. i felt very strange about steve having almost zero contact with nancy. i felt very strange about joyce hardly ever interacting with her kids. all of these were core relationships - the characters were BUILT on those relationships, and they don't feel real outside of them. not seeing these characters devote time to these relationships makes it feel like i'm watching a slightly different show.

the VIOLENCE. apparently this is a beat-em-up now??? i really felt like every other scene somebody was getting beaten to a bloody pulp. there was SO much smashing and bashing and throwing people into walls and fistfights and head trauma like - first of all, i find that stuff pretty boring, and second of all, all of these people should be in the hospital.

the GORE. other people’s mileage may vary, obviously; i just didn't like that. i looked away at the scene with the rat, and all this...goopy dissolving human shit, and the stabbings, and just...general grossness level - season 1 managed to be bloodcurdlingly terrifying without any of this stuff.

i know this borders on nitpicky, but yet more medical malfeasance - another example of someone receiving an injection via the mysterious 90 degree angle neck route, plus - was anyone else losing it at the fact that steve and robin “puked up” a drug they received……..via injection?????? IT’S NOT IN THEIR STOMACHS, FOLKS! THEY CAN’T PUKE IT UP! IT DOESN’T WORK LIKE THAT!

the complete lack of follow-up to last season. the whole S3 plotline (such as it is) feels like a weird side quest. last season seemed to be furthering the mythos and setting us up for "there are other children like el/brenner is alive" - but this season, that fact appears to have been forgotten by everyone (even el!!!) and has nothing to do with the story that we're given, which is a goofy and redundant story about russians opening a secret lab under the mall which requires us to solve the exact same problem as last season (closing the gate).

this show's inability to keep certain throughlines in its headlights/keep things visible on the periphery instead of dropping them completely and then bringing them back whenever they feel like they need it again. i already talked about hopper’s daughter as an example of this (done well in S1 and poorly in S2 and S3). another example is that scene with nancy and her mom - it’s such a good scene, and yet it misses out on so much resonance, because they completely dropped the plotline of karen feeling locked out of her kids’ lives and desperately wanting to connect with them. if they had continued to reference that throughout season 2, then this scene would have been so much more powerful. as a third example, season 3 starts with a clear context/premise, and it’s INTERESTING - the town landscape changing because of the mall, business slow to non-existent, small town discontent over big corporations moving in, hopper pressured to break up the protest against mayor kline when he should have let it proceed - and then the show just drops that entire context. you expect season 3 to stay rooted in the "our small town is being strangled by this mall" and then to eventually deal with the revitalization of hawkins, but nah. it's never mentioned again.

LASTLY:

i'm not really gonna get into hopper "dying," because he's, like...clearly not dead. but the whole situation was stupid and contrived (i was so sick of that arnold schwarzenegger lookalike by the last episode, god that whole thing was so dumb) and it's even cheaper knowing that he'll obviously be back.

what i AM gonna say is that i was livid that they brought back that peter gabriel cover of "heroes" to end this season. their use of that song in S1 blew my mind - it had me stunned with how GORGEOUS it was and just, the way it worked in that particular scene - absolutely incredible. floored me. gave me chills. to recycle it at the end of such a poorly constructed season made me so mad. yOU CAN'T MAKE ME FEEL THINGS JUST BY REUSING THIS SONG. I REFUSE TO HAVE EMOTIONS JUST BECAUSE YOU PULL OUT THIS BEAUTIFUL TRACK THAT YOU ONCE USED TO GREAT EFFECT; YOUR STORY WAS STILL TERRIBLE THIS TIME AROUND; DO NOT TRY TO TRICK FEELINGS OUT OF US THAT HAVEN’T BEEN EARNED.

and that's it. i’m sure later i’ll think of other things i neglected to mention here, but...yeah. i was not impressed.

#i finished yesterday #holy moly #interdimensional babysitters club

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