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#like the screwed up episode timeline that i discovered

biblioflyer · 9 months

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Storytelling and Character Development in Those Old Scientists

As the show that isn’t strictly serialized but also doesn’t have a hard reset button, the Strange New Worlds writers really impressed me with their genre savvy in so many ways with “Those Old Scientists.”

Several characters have very meaningful, not just silly interactions with Boimler and Mariner. The jokes were overwhelmingly good and the SNW crew were funny without acting outrageously out of character.

Except for Spock.

And that’s the part I think is brilliant. We’ve got another silly episode to go before we find out if this is a lasting thing or not, but if Spock experimenting with expressing his emotions is going to be a thing going forward, then SNW deftly anticipated how uncomfortable this was going to make fans and they leaned into it!

Starting this arc, if an arc it’s meant to be, in the midst of a comedy episode threw open the door to telegraphing to the audience what the appropriate reaction was. Which is cringe. Deliberately so. Spock is bad at this. Extremely bad at this. It’s okay to be uncomfortable. That’s what they’re aiming for.

Boimler’s future knowledge about Spock is another meta way of assuring the canon hawks once again that while the Prime timeline is messy at the level of detail, no one intends to screw with the fundamentals. Spock’s flirtation with expressing emotions is a phase.

However, I don’t think it’s just a bit. I don’t think anything in this episode was only for comedy. This episode is a lot like the character of Mariner herself. If you only pay attention to the funny, you’re missing what’s really going on.

Una gets a nice bit of reassurance that eventually she’s not going to represent a shameful episode in Starfleet history where it discovers a closeted “freak” in their midst, eventually her words and image are considered so powerful they’re recruiting poster material.

Pike also gets a vision of his afterlife. The clock is ticking but he’s on the right track and making the most of the time he has left.

Chapel and Spock get some seeds of doubt planted in them.

Uhura is encouraged to take better care of herself as the key to becoming the all star she now knows is her professional legacy. To become a more well rounded person.

Which brings us back to Spock.

The interesting thing about Spock and Boimler’s interaction is that I think Boimler is completely wrong. Not in a bad way, but like any student of history, he’s got caught up in the myth making.

Clearly the version of Spock he became invested in de-emphasized his decision to turn away from purging his emotions. The Spock we see from that point forward clearly feels emotion, he’s just not ruled by it. That Spock is so completely comfortable in his skin in a way that few humans or Vulcans ever seem to be.

My read on this is that post-Star Trek TMP, Spock has amicably reconciled his twin natures and has found a way to quietly permit himself emotion, and even to let a little out in a way that is designed to help his close colleagues read him better. Yet he also retains the immense discipline.

This is the path that I believe Ethan Peck’s Spock is on. His Spock will struggle to find an equilibrium until re establishing the sort of inner peace that can permit him to push forward a little emotion now and then to playfully gaslight McCoy and then deny everything as part of their eternal fencing.

#star trek #storytelling #strange new worlds spoilers #those old scientists #snw spock #mister spock #spock #brad boimler #ensign mariner #logic #emotion #balance #SNW s2e7

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crimewizards · 2 years

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blackrock 10 year retrospective

so! it’s been. ten years since the blackrock chronicle started. let’s talk about that

i got minecraft in august 2012, right around the 1.3 update, after a camp friend showed it to me. like any other minecraft-playing 12 year old in 2012, i immediately took to the internet and discovered minecraft videos and parodies. one of these was Screw The Nether, the singer of which one of my friends identified as martyn. i watched martyn’s tekkit series (rip) and didn’t recognize one of the names on his waypoints: rythian. naturally, i looked up rythian on youtube, and found this little series called The Tekkit Adventure.

the rest is kind of history.

this series has meant so much to me over the last ten years. from making real life friends because i was reading fanfic and they asked what i was reading to desperately trying to explain the series to friends in 7th grade art to one of my friends making me a charm bracelet with blackrock themed charms for the holidays to the tumblr explanation of the finale to all the different yog servers ive been in and now being a fandom boomer in modern day mcyt spaces. i still cry watching the final episode of season 2. i still only really know the lyrics to zoey’s sk8rboi parody and not the original. frankly, im a lesbian because of this series. i had a MASSIVE crush on zoey as a kid and barely even knew it, and as an adult, im just sitting here like “ah.” she was some of the first lesbian rep i’d seen Basically Ever and i cannot thank her enough for that.

to celebrate, i dug through all my old sketchbooks and notepads to bring you all the blackrock/yogscast fanart i could find from the last ten years. i’m sure there’s PLENTY that’s missing. it’s all under the cut, chronologically listed. cheers, blackrock fandom. we’re still kickin’.

2012-2013 these are all from my 7th/8th grade art class sketchbooks + when i got my first drawing tablet for hanukkah 2013

2014-2015

2016-2017

done during cornerstone rewatch

2018-2019

(danger days au)

EARLY 2020

my rythian pc for a dnd game i was in

2021

2022

kinda funny how this also serves as an art improvement timeline lmao. so yeah! that’s all i got! keep on blackrockin’ <3 <3

#blackrock chronicles #blackrock #yogscast #yogs #when i say im old school mcyt i mean OLD SCHOOL #lav talks #emily art #i cant believe its been ten fuckin years #long post

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bluiex · 1 year

Note

Thought I'd drop some duo names here for people since I’m bored and this fandom has a lack of platonic duo names.

Deadliest Duo [Grian + Joel]. Y'know in Last Life when they went on their murder spree? Well something like 'We are the deadliest duo!' was the original title of Joels episode but he changed it, but ever since this is what I've been calling them, its accurate

Rift Duo [Grian + Lizzie]. This is obvious, they both were the first to discover both rifts on each side, but it is more fitting than that The rift is a dimension travelling thing right? And as someone who watched YHS/TS [TS is the sequel, this is also the one Lizzie guest starred in] was all about things like ailens, dimension travel, fucking up timelines and shit like that

Wither Duo [Grian + Impulse]. Also born from Last Life and their journey as the last loyal southlanders to summon the wither, I think DSMP has a duo name like this one but screw off save some duo names for us. You could also make resistance duo a thing

Mayor Duo [Mumbo + Scar]. S7 Mayoral Elections. I’m sure theres something better but until I find it, this is what I'm calling it

🌀 Anon

THANK YOU FOR THIS

I appreciate and love platonic duos and having some names to go with em..Yesssss

#bluie gets an ask poggers #hermit duos

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h0ptimists · 8 months

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TALK ABOUT - Accepting

@xperimentalranger

🗣 Leeta & Lyco, Pomegranate, Mira Nova, Hyzenthlay, Shard, Slinger!

Leeta + Lyco

The twins!

The fact I picked them on a whim (so the whole team would be complete) and they ended up sticking as muses. Despite not appearing much in the comic; I love the dynamic they bring to the team and how they won't take any shit regardless of the person, even if the person is a former prince.

I also love how they use their appearances as an advantage as well since it allow them to discover that Leeta was being cheated on (since the cheater went and dated Lyco) as well confuse Naugus who had one of the twin pin down after catching her but the other appear behind which baffled him.

Pomegranate

Pomegranate is one my fav character that I picked up. (which was a whim + I wanted a villain muse.)

At first, I thought she was a complete bitch who only cared about Dark Enchantress and her vision, however when I got to learn more about her... She's still a bitch but she has certain qualities which doesn't make her 1000% bitch and the fandom really do mishandle her character terribly (which they also do with a few other characters but that's another topic) since she does have some redeeming quality like actually caring for Poison Mushroom Cookie.

As well, that some of the things she does; it was a reaction instead of her starting it in the first place. The biggest example is the scene where she used a spell on Dark Choco as people treated that scene with her doing it for the lols when in reality; Dark Choco started the fight by

Not doing his job properly and screwing Pomegranate's spell up.

Telling her magic is worthless, and she's nothing with it

Threatening to kill her

Like it was wrong for her to use the spell, but she had her reasons which people seems to ignore and just go with "Pomegranate is just being a little bitch and Dark Choco is a 'uwu sweet' character' which is why I don't really trust the fandom.

Either way, I love her alot and can't wait to see more of her in the story.

Mira Nova

I love Mira~ Despite not seeing all the episodes of BLOSC; she's one of the character I fell in love first. As well as, I do like how her power works since I think it's an interesting take on it.

A moment that still stick in my mind is where NOS bite into her suit to use as an assassin + hostage, but she just peace out of it and keep fighting without her suit.

Hyzenthlay

I like Hyzenthlay and how she wanted to improve the others rabbits' condition even if it meant spying.... And how it was when she gave up in the end and willing to be executed... At least she doesn't actually die and was able to get away as well as finally getting the freedom that she and the other rabbits wanted so much.

Of course, I'm wondering how the other adaption handle her character since I have only seen the Netflix version one.

Shard

My god do I love Shard and how his death destroy me..... He's such a really fun character to read, and I just love his ego as well as his backstory.

The fact he originally was a Metal Sonic and grew into his own identity is just *chef's kiss* as I do think it also helps we actually see his story play out. Although I am sad that his story got cut short with Archive having to reset the timeline, thus wiping him out of existence, since I would love to see more of him.

Slinger

It's really hard to talk about Slinger since most of the things I have for him are purely headcanons and what I think he would be like.

Regardless, I like his appearance and the small details provided to him (such as the fact he juggles his wispons which make his teammate nervous) especially the fact his past is well-hidden to a point that even Mimic doesn't know it.

I'm hoping that the way I'm playing him is close to his actual personality with the context provided.

#outofcream | ooc |

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steve0discusses · 3 years

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Yugioh S5 Ep 20: Pharaoh’s Cool New Trick

Digging my way through quite a pile of commission work (funny how these things only come all at once or not at all), nearing the light at the end of the tunnel, was looking forward to some free time to catch up on my many little side projects when I was asked to take off for a weekend to do some cat-sitting to which I would NEVER say no to a cat, so like...Rip this blog I guess, we only update like once a week nowadays, but what do you do?

That’s right, play Puzzles and Dragons! The only phone game worth paying any attention to! Where they just released Pegasus on their Yugioh Collab and he looks pretty great!

So I’m just gonna take a second for some art appreciation, because the Puzzles and Dragons art team is just A++++ honestly, and yes, I did pull 13 times to get a Pegasus in my monster box, and yes, he is a completely insane team leader that is absolutely broken when paired with Yugi (the numbers are so satisfying) but...look at him. He looks so good!

(also I finally got Joey Wheeler, and so now my gatcha cravings are settled. And, don’t worry, I play this game so much that I was there during Christmas when they offered like a bajillion stones for free so I didn’t actually use real money on this.)

Now PAD also released a Weevil and Rex, and I don’t know why, and neither does the art team because they still look pretty good but in comparison to all the mains, they sure do looks like just some shorty guys in some casuals.

though I gotta admit, I want to learn how the hell this art team does swooshy effects, because man, that would make my art so much better to just have flames violently exploding out of all my art. Why am I not doing that more often? I have the technology.

anyway, I didn’t bother trying to pull them. Maybe I’ll accidentally pull them when they eventually release a Duke Devlin. (also, RIP to the fact that Roland will probably never be in Puzzles and Dragons but like...I can only send them so many polite letters covered in stickers pretending I’m some 10 year old child and writing in my broken Hiragana “Roland in PAD?”. Thems the breaks. (They also might not remember who Roland is.))

Shoutouts to the card that Weevil is holding that is censoring this nipple on the booby spider, PS.

So because this is not actually a Puzzles and Dragons blog, and it’s been ten eons since I regularly updated so I could remember episode to episode...where the hell were we?

That’s right, we’re on an island now. This show’s wonderful obsession with evil islands (and spoiler, this is one of the few Yugioh Islands that doesn’t explode at the end. Mostly because Kaiba isn’t here to do it or this place would be cinder)

(read more island stuff under the cut)

Anyway, after announcing “hey guys! Screw islands!” Yugi immediately collapses and without any warning.

Apparently the armor is a big ol parasite, which is something that Yugi is so used to at this point that he refuses to admit that this is a problem. Just normal Muto stuff, refusing to tell anyone that he has a serious illness going on underneath that giant mass of hair.

(the sailor moon vibes coming off this weird orb energy)

Sort of feels like a call back to S1 when Yugi was clearly possessed and everyone else was like “He acting weird to you?” except it’s S5 and everyone has learned to never trust Yugi when he says he’s fine and they are responding like he is about to die. Which is correct.

Outside of the cave falls this scroll that is...glowing, I guess. So they open it up and get a bunch of hieroglyphs that give them the “riddle of light” and like youknow...it’s riddle stuff.

They’re doing this riddle for “wings.” And it’s like...everyone’s monster here has a set of wings or an ability to fly. Every single monster except for I dunno, flaming swordsman? Hell, Yugi himself had two sets of wings when he fused with Dark Magician (which was weird, and I still don’t like to think about what technically was going on there.) But we have to go and get ourselves even more wings.

Weirdly, Joey turns to Tea and does something that in any other show would be completely normal. He was like “you want to stay here with Yugi, don’t you?” and it was the first time Joey has ever actually addressed the fact that Tea and Yugi are close. Uncharted territory. I was amazed at the amount of casual shipping that is happening here. It’s almost like a normal ass relationship.

So the boys decide to go off, and be boys and tackle this themselves. And they shouldn’t have, because Tea is smart for this group, and also has the only healing spell.

Like if you’re playing D+D you wouldn’t typically leave your only healer behind. Just saying.

Also like...Grandpa Muto went with them? I guess he’d have to since he’s the translator but also...kind of weird to leave your grandson dying in a cave, but maybe that’s just the Muto lifestyle.

Do not be fooled by my caps, no one has addressed the Bakura in the puzzle for 3 seasons. I’m starting to think this show will never address the Bakura in the puzzle. Which honestly, that would be hilarious if they made a big deal out of that plot point and then couldn’t use it in the end.

And speaking of plot points that kind of come out of nowhere and don’t make full sense with the continuity of the show--Joey has regressed back to the 4th grade.

Hey show? What?

So like if you love Joey, this is not the arc for you, because this arc he is reduced to a Himbo and nothing else. Straight up didn’t know what an echo is, but is very strong and pretty, I guess.

This inevitably happens with any TV show becuase different people make different parts, and I’ve brought up before that sometimes it feels like some teams only have loose post-it notes of what any character should be like at any given point (ESPECIALLY with Seto Kaiba’s timeline) but like...

...Personally I’m mot so fond of this interpretation of Joey, kind of ignores Joey’s best traits, and makes Tristan look way too smart in comparison (and like I always pinned Tristan to be the Himbo of the group, but maybe it’s because they give Tristan so little else to do?)

And like don’t get me wrong, Joey’s a dumbass a lot of the time and needs to get corrected by his pals...but...to the point he doesn’t know what an echo is? He’s a dumbass in a High School student sort of way, youknow?

Anyway, they get down to this big ravine, and they have to destroy this stone while the light passes over it. Kind of feels like a Breath of the Wild shrine quest, actually. In fact, I think Breath of the Wild recycled the shadow/sunlight pathing quest like 4 or 5 times. (I love Breath of the Wild to death but boy did they run out of ideas at the end there.)

They have to fight a glass monster and it’s kind of like...do you know the game Balls 3D? probably not, but it looked like a bunch of random shapes stuck together like a 90′s animation. They basically went to war with shapes.

Pure Himbo energy, has several pokemon, but punches for his pokemon instead of using them. A power move if I ever saw one.

Youknow that would make pokemon a lot more interesting if you could like throw out your pikachu, and then choose to just physically run up to your opponents Eevee and sock it in the jaw. Raise of hands--I know you all would love a version of pokemon like that. Let Ash Ketchum punch a Ratata.

Bro has informed me that Ash does do something like this in the anime. But I’m not talking about the anime, I’m talking about the video game. Give me the option to physically combat my rival. This is what I want, Pokemon.

They discover a way to break the monolith, and the show thinks we’re like actually 7 years old (because the show is Y7, although I forget because it deals with so many dark themes) so the show is going to hold on to this puzzle for a while...just to fill time. And it’s fine because we gotta switch over to Pharaoh anyway.

Yami has this dream again. He attempts to fuse with Dark magician to overcome the dream, but alas, he is still not strong enough.

Yugi wakes up in this murky cave while Tea is out washing out like...some rag? (he’s also still got a rag, so I guess multiple rags were required for how sweaty Yugi is.)

Yugi says “I feel like I’m a new man!” a lot in this episode, and every time he calls himself a man like he’s some sort of adult it’s very funny to me.

And then this plot lore dropped.

I mean I guess inevitably it had to happen...

But man, end of an era. It was freakin hilarious while it lasted: that Pharaoh refused to read ancient Egyptian because it’s like 2002 and he is a High Schooler living in Japan and he actually doesn’t WANT to resolve the mystery of the puzzle. Maybe the people who made this arc don’t know about how in S2 and S3, the fact Pharaoh couldn’t read Marik’s back tatt was like...a really big issue. He couldn’t read the God card, he couldn’t even read that massive tablet that read “HEY PHARAOH THIS IS LITERALLY YOU”. KAIBA had to tell him how to read the God card for him. Freakin Seto “Magic is a lie” Kaiba had to tell him how to use the God Card because Pharaoh couldn’t read it.

But like...Pharaoh finally gave in at some point after the world was devoured by the Leviathan, and before Kaiba finished building Kaibaland (which was already built in S1 but wtv)

The timelines on this show have always been a mishmash...but this one is just like...

...show are you trying to convince me that at any point in this show after season Zero, Pharaoh had any idea what he was doing? Did he sap that brain energy straight out of Joey Wheeler so he could do this?

Wow.

(secretly hoping he forgets how to read Egyptian after this arc is over and the show goes back to the other development team)

Pharaohs reasoning is that, if this is the riddle of the light.....

....then where is the riddle of darkness????????????

and when Tea was like “Pharaoh that is not even remotely logic. Omg it’s so bright outside, lets go back to gross cave.” and Pharaoh was like “Tea! You got it!” and she was like “What the hell are you talking about?”

Not gonna lie, I saw the Orichalcos green, and I got concerned.

Anyway, Yugi gets very frustrated and was like “ugh, lets go save em. They’re gonna die (again.)” and marches down there as if he didn’t pass out an hour ago.

And he fuses with Dark Magician again while everyone else (including his grandpa) was like “Yugi are you freakin kidding me? The suit freakin kills you omg! Tea you had one freakin job!”

And then we get the plot twist that...I mean it makes sense but it was choreographed in a confusing way.

And out of no where this guy shows up again:

So this mysterious man shows up and says “If you don’t succeed you have to live here forever” which...nice...that would probably save the world a lot of problems if Yami got locked away and took his OP puzzle with him. And then this man also says “if you do succeed you become VERY POWERFUL” and Yami was like. “...”

This whole episode had a theme to it, where Tristan and Joey were trying to prove that they could do things on their own and without Yugi’s help. And honestly...felt a little bit misplaced. Yami’s the same guy who murdered Yugi last season with the Orichalcos so like...

...I mean he is probably more reliable than Tristan who once died and turned into a robot monkey for 10ish episodes.

and then they flew into a glowing door.

Folks, this was wild to look at.

This is wild.

And at this point I closed Photoshop and thought I was done. But then I looked at my timeline on the video and was like...wait...there’s more?

and I’m really glad I kept watching because it went back to Alex, who...is apparently just still at those steps in this haunted ass Pyramid.

Now we’re watching Yugioh.

I forgot for a second when they turned Joey into a Himbo and made Pharaoh literate, but we’re back. I mean...

...look at the liner art on this adult man.

So...I posit the question...has Alex spent the last 2-3 episodes doing nothing but applying eyeliner to his face in the dark? Because he absolutely has. And honestly, the vibe of being in a spooky haunted pyramid with barely any light, just applying eyeliner down the edge of your face...that’s a Yugioh vibe, if I ever saw one.

This arc is wild. Anyway, next episode we do even more fetch quests and riddles? Just going to guess now that we probably will.

(and for those new here, this is a link so you can read them from the top. Which, since we’re in S5, means you got like...hours of Yugioh content to read through. Enjoy the rewards of my weird hobby.)

https://steve0discusses.tumblr.com/tagged/yugioh/chrono

#Yugioh #Yu-Gi-Oh #yami yugi #S5 #Ep20 #It's actually Ep 20 now I was wrong last time #Yugi muto #Grandpa Muto #Alexander the Great #Joey Wheeler #Tristan Taylor #Tea Gardner #TeaxYugi #never thought I would ever use that tag #in this show where they are canonically dating but sometimes it happens #Puzzles and Dragons #Because yes I had to talk about it. This collab is great

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medea10 · 2 years

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My Review of Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni SOTSU

Prior thoughts here…

Look, I love Higurashi. I really do! But I can’t be the only person to hate Satoko Hojo when it was discovered what she did in Gou. That really tainted Higurashi Gou, which was doing okay up until that point. Now, does Satoko redeem herself and realize that she was petty, vindictive, misunderstood everything, and is absolutely in the wrong? Judging by what some of the seiyuus said after recording and reading the script, they felt weird and off by the material.

That’s very troubling!

Moving on! Our main story tonight is about Hinamizawa. A rural Japanese town with a rich history in religion, colorful characters which you can tell from the hair, and annoying, screeching cicadas! We see you, you dirt-bath twats!

Sorry, I really wanted to do a John Oliver moment here.

PREVIOUSLY ON HIGURASHI GOU: Rika’s suffering has gotten exponentially worse than in previous seasons. We’ve seen Rika die continuously and worse than what was shown to us in the original series. Not only that, but she was murdered by people who never caused Rika any harm prior including Akasaka, Akane Sonozaki, Chief Kimiyoshi, Ooishi, and even Keiichi. Who is to blame for this? That would be Rika’s best friend Satoko Hojo. Satoko was willing to make Rika happy by going along with Rika’s endeavors of leaving Hinamizawa and attending a prestigious all-girls school. And while Rika adjusted to her surroundings perfectly, Satoko was slipping through the cracks. Rika offered a helping hand to her, but Satoko was so stubborn and jumped to every wrong conclusion, thinking Rika abandoned her.

It wasn’t until the girls took a trip back to Hinamizawa that Satoko’s world changed. In the altar of Oyashiro, she is transferred to the limbo and comes face-to-face with a deity much like Hanyuu. We’re pretty sure her name is Featherine…but for some reason Satoko called her Eua so I guess that’s her name in the Higurashi universe. Eua gives Satoko the special power to control her fate and she literally abuses it at every turn to force Rika to stay in Higurashi and change every outcome from every timeline Rika’s been through.

SOTSU: I think we were all thinking throughout the Gou series, we haven’t watched enough episodes of Rena losing her shit and go on a murderous rampage. Or for that matter, we haven’t even watched Mion strap someone down and take off their fingernails! So remember episodes 1-4 of Gou? Apparently the first 3 episodes of Sotsu show how Rena lost her mind in that timeline, the next three episodes followed Mion’s descent into madness, and we follow that up with Teppei living with Satoko. Gou only told part of the story. Satoko drugged all of these people in order to screw with Rika. I mean no one needed to see Rika get strangled and thrown in the outdoor toilet. Yet we got that scene. Thanks series, thanks a fuck-ton for that.

And yes, we indeed got the fingernail scene.

But don’t get it twisted with what I just said. Only some of these scenes are new compared to what was given and shown in Gou. To be mean about it, Sotsu is on par with Endless Eight from Haruhi Suzumiya. But give Endless Eight some credit. It was only eight episodes. We’ve got 13 episodes of almost the same exact crap we watched six months prior in the previous season.

MORE REDEMPTION: Last arc, we kinda got redemptions of several characters near the end from Miyo Takano and Teppei Hojo. I obviously didn’t believe the latter. Teppei was scum in the original series. Not a redeeming thing about him and everyone knows it. This character however was runner-up as scum of Hinamizawa.

Rina Mamiya or Ritsuko dated Rena’s father and it set Rena off. In the original series, Rena’s father would spend butt-loads of money on Ritsuko. And the original plan was a bit of a badger game. The man would spend amounts of cash on Ritsuko until eventually her real man comes in and yells at the other man for messing with his girl until he pays the real man off to leave him alone. And that system was put out by Ritsuko and Teppei.

Sotsu worked a little differently. Due to Teppei’s…redemp…redemp…Nope, can’t do it! Teppei’s out of the picture and now Ritsuko is working in a gentleman’s club. Rena’s father goes there constantly and showers Ritsuko with gifts. Ritsuko gets concerned. That never happens. We see a shred of humanity with her. She mentions that she was raised by a single parent and came to Rena to convince her father to stop doing this. And if Satoko didn’t drug Rena, it would have been awesome to see this happen. I want Rena to be happy.

I WAS AFRAID OF THIS: As this season progressed, I noticed these previous arcs that we’re watching are coming from Satoko’s point of view. Unfortunately, it’s just making myself and many others lose every respect we once had for Satoko. She goes through different timelines drugging people and fucking with Rika. So once we got to the third arc, I was afraid of seeing something with my own eyes. Satoko faking abuse! She is not being abused by her uncle. She is not being abused by the townspeople nor her classmates. She is faking abuse to both piss off her uncle and worry her friends. That is some sick-ass shit!

ENDING: Up to this point, we watched Satoko’s hand in ruining Rika’s perfect timeline. During Higurashi Gou, we weren’t sure who the true culprit was. Higurashi Sotsu came in and had Satoko drug Rena, Mion, Detective Ooishi, Akasaka, Akane Sonozaki, Chief Kimiyoshi, and even Keiichi. Not just that, but lie and manipulate people, particularly in the second-to-last arc of Sotsu.

Many of us (myself included) were a little disappointed in the carryout of the story. Sotsu was essentially Gou, but from Satoko’s angle. In every other Higurashi story prior to this train-wreck, the timelines felt like they were their own story and not recycled garbage. It wasn’t until the episodes with Hanyuu leaving Rika that we got a few questions answered. The sword Hanyuu left Rika was in Oyashiro’s statue. It’s just that Satoko got to it first and a baby piece broke off, leaving Rika unsatisfied. Also, Rika’s flashbacks are giving her some clues. Or could it be Hanyuu leaving Rika the clues?

Hanyuu went to investigate these messed up timelines and sure enough, she encountered Eua. But Eua is clearly more powerful and has an upper-hand in her own realm so she does overpower Hanyuu. Hanyuu learns the truth that Satoko was behind everything and that Eua has been manipulating her along the way. She also watches Rika fall into despair and give up her future goal of one day leaving Hinamizawa. Instead, Rika is going to stay in Hinamizawa and Satoko gets what she wants. Never count out luck when Hanyuu is involved! Rika has been getting flashbacks of the timeline when Ooishi went on the rampage. And sure enough, one of those flashes were of Satoko shooting Rika in the face to make sure she was dead.

Rika knows Satoko is the reason behind the influx of deaths in these timelines. What now?

Satoko kills Rika. REPEATEDLY! And it just goes from timeline to timeline, from Hinamizawa to St. Lucia, from the Cotton Drifting Festival to the classroom! Now, I will admit some of these fights were funny to watch. In one of those times, Satoko kills Rika and in the distance, Rena, Mion, and Keiichi are not noticing a damn thing. That was funny! And then you have Rika and Satoko killing each other over the fact that Satoko doesn’t want to study.

This episode-long slug-fest was like Peter Griffin vs. Ernie the Giant Chicken. It went on far too long. And it was worse because you know Satoko is in the wrong.

Yes, I am on Team Rika in this fight. Rika offered a hand to Satoko. Satoko refused help. Rika didn’t snitch on Satoko. Rika wants to go as far as humanly possible away from the town that caused her so much pain. If you spent hundreds of years in the same year, the same month, in the same town, suffering a myriad of ways to die, wouldn’t you want to take the next bus the fuck outta there? Satoko took a petty fight into a full-blown, time-leaping, friend-killing, witches and Gods holy war! Oh yeah, let’s look at Eua and Hanyuu. Eua seems to have the upper-hand here, but Hanyuu and Rika always have miracles on their side. It might be a 1 out of 1000 shot for them, but they have miracles coming out of their asses. Thankfully, Hanyuu was able to defeat Eua and the girls stopped their fight. After some wise words from Rena, the girls came to a sensible conclusion of giving each other some space to keep being friends.

Rika’s going to St. Lucia and Satoko isn’t. They will remain frenemies, I guess? Satoko will stalk Rika if she’s away too long or doesn’t phone home as often. Geez bitch, clingy much? And we end the series with the classic Higurashi song “You” as we see all the other minor characters we loved from the series. Ooishi is visiting his friend’s grave, Takano (not pregnant) and Tomitake coming back to town, Ritsuko’s alive, Teppei’s alive (and not a horrible human being anymore), everyone’s alive, and Satoko doesn’t learn her lesson. The bitch gets what she wants. This series is shit.

And what’s this? Of all the arcs for Satoshi to wake up and have Hinamizawa Syndrome clear up, it had to be this one! I can’t even begin to describe my disgust here. But I couldn’t because the scene was so fast, I had to contain myself.

OH MY FUCKING GOD! I FUCKING HATED THIS ARC! I HATED THIS ANIME! I HATED, HATED, HATED THIS ANIME! HATED IT! HATED EVERY SIMPERING STUPID VACANT AUDIENCE-INSULTING MOMENT OF IT!

Sorry to get all Roger Ebert on you guys but it had to be said.

Higurashi once had an art to telling the story with repeating and similar timelines. It made it feel like you’re not sitting through 13 episodes of something you already sat through with only a few minutes of new footage. Sotsu went the route of Haruhi Suzumiya’s Endless Eight. You fail, dude! That’s a fail! Each episode up until episode 13 or 14 is primarily the same shit we saw in Gou. With the exception of a few scenes like with Ritsuko, Kimiyoshi’s horrible torture, and evil Satoko moments, it was a shot-for-shot repeat from last season. And it was especially slow and repetitive during the Satoko abuse arc.

I know I went off in the last review about how much Satoko sucks, but she really fucking sucks here. Satoko wasn’t like this at all in the original series. She loved all of her friends, not just Rika. She loved her nii-nii! She cared for Keiichi and sees him as a pro-temp nii-nii. And she cared for Shion, Mion, and Rena. This season with Satoko all I see is manipulation of every character that cared for her, even the minor ones and only care about Rika. Satoshi wasn’t even a passing thought. In fact, not once did Satoko feel the need to talk about her nii-nii except when it was to manipulate Keiichi. She fakes everything! She faked her nii-nii talk with Keiichi, doesn’t give a crap about Shion’s love for her, faked being bullied and lying about it to a numerous amount of people, all to fuck with Rika!

Now then, this really upset a lot of fans. I mean, a fuck-ton a lot of fans. I’m just disappointed that this exists and will spend the next several anime seasons trying to forget about everything I watched here. Eventually, I’ll move the fuck on and pretend this didn’t exist and continue to rewatch the Studio Deen version and reading the manga. But some others aren’t so lucky. This really struck a nerve to those who have been with the franchise since day one. I have a friend that’s so depressed by Gou and Sotsu’s existence, I’ve never seen her this wrecked before!

I cannot give this a good review. I cannot recommend this. It is just unwatchable. Unfathomable! Inconceivable! Unbelievable! In fact, here’s a list of Higurashi stuff I would highly recommend watching or reading before you should ever touch Higurashi Gou and Sotsu.

Higurashi Visual Novel Higurashi Manga Any Higurashi video game Higurashi Season 1 & 2 (Studio Deen version) Higurashi Rei episodes 2-4 Higurashi Outbreak Higurashi Cat-Killing Special Higurashi Rei episodes 1 & 5 The live action TV series from 2016 Umineko no Naku Koro Ni (anime) A 10 hour loop of Keiichi’s sea bear dangling Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni Kira That one episode of Last Period featuring the cast of Higurashi Live Action Higurashi from 2008 Staring at a still-shot of Detective Ooishi wearing a thong from Higurashi Rei episode 1 for five minutes Scratching your neck until you see maggots come out

THEN…no, I don’t think you’re ready to watch Higurashi Gou and Sotsu.

Avoid it like the plague.

What a waste of Studio Passione’s semi-decent animation!

#anime review #Higurashi no Naku Koro ni #higurashi no naku koro ni sotsu #higurashi no naku koro ni gou #keiichi maebara #Rika Furude #satoko hojo #mion sonozaki #shion sonozaki #rena ryuugu #teppei hojo #miyo takano #eua

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i-will-physically-fight-you · 2 years

Note

Are you planning on writing sequel fics to the Chasm one?

(Context) I would absolutely love to write a further continuation but like many other one-shots of this variety, I can't see myself actually continuing for several reasons.

A. It took me three years to actually finish this initial fic, which originally was tied to this oneshot

B. I have very limited time and there's several other creative projects I'd like to devote that limited time to, like finishing Gibbous as an example.

But! I'll share a little below the cut of what I shared on AO3 about my ideas regarding the AU and you're free to send in asks about it <3

Premise: So all the sides are Celestial Beings responsible for looking after the universe and humanity across all reality and time. For "reasons" a large group of the celestial beings decided to repeatedly screw around with the main timeline/reality, starting off by beginning Ragnarok which essentially ends the world and resets it.

Logan, Patton and Roman all disagreed as it's something that's supposed to happen in a last resort, dire circumstance. A few others like Virgil disagreed but stayed mostly silent in their opposition.

Remus is a newer celestial being that took on Roman's role being responsible for Creativity and is constantly compared to him and warned if he steps out of line *too* much, he'll meet the same fate as Roman. This mostly isnt a big issue because Remus's wild, feral energy doesnt often contradict the main agenda of the Others but his curiosity about his "brother" is a concern to them.

Janus has been around for a long, long while yes im hinting he "died" at some point and came back and is the celestial being that took on Virgil's former title as Keeper of Forbidden Knowledge (or did Virgil temporarily occupy that role while Janus was "dead"? Whose to say?).

He has seemingly sided with the Others and their agenda, but it's hard to say whose side he's truly on.

Remy / Sleep is honestly probably a chaotic celestial being who stays neutral to the overall conflict. In fact to make things *spicy* some of the more popular shorts characters are the other celestial beings in this AU.

Bonus points, I'd like to say that c!Thomas is probably not necessarily a celestial being, but like a manifestation of the universe/humanity but has been largely out of the loop on what has been going on. In comparison to the others, I'd say maybe he naturally reincarnates as a human and is supposed to discover his true nature at some point (Think the Avatar in ATLA) but has been kept from that for a long, long time now.

As for Patton's and Roman's current fates:

- Patton is stuck in a time loop he is unable to escape. He's largely given up trying to escape and is slightly in denial of it happening, sometimes trying finding ways to ignore the inevitable reset moment of the loop. When two unknown variables pop up into the equation, Patton doesn't know what to make of them.

- Roman's situation isn't necessarily a time loop, more that he's stuck in a sitcom/children's cartoon reality where the passing of time simultaneously happens and doesn't happen. The events of "one" episode may or may not have any real consequences in the next. He's a noble knight of the realm who mostly goes on lighthearted but daring adventures trying desperately to ignore the empty hollow feeling in his chest. Things turn weird though when an "evil twin brother" pops up in his life and won't. ever. stay. dead.

#kat answers #anon #chasm of the night au #remus: hello brother how are you?#Roman screeching as he wildly swings his sword around: Away you unholy heathen!

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waywardwrestlewritingwaif · 3 years

Text

Fall and Prey

This is the one I was mentioning that kind of got away from me. I seriously did not think it was going to get this long and when I first had the idea, it was really just the last part of it without much of the backstory. Sigh. Discipline is not my forte.

This is obviously set in a very specific time frame but for some reason, I waited until more than half way through the writing process before checking the exact dates. When I did check them, I realized that I’d completely screwed up the timeline and I had to go back and fix things. I did what I could but I have this awful feeling that I missed things and that I’ve ended up making it more confusing to read. It’s set between NXT War Games (2020) and the episode of NXT that aired the following Wednesday.

Ok... self-indulgent whining sequence ended, beginning basic details sequence.

Pairing: Karrion Kross x OC/ reader x Damian Priest

Word count: 18,322 (Ok, maybe I should have broken this one up)

Content advisory: explicit sexual content but the thing that’s most likely to make people uncomfortable is that it’s about an extremely unhealthy, emotionally and mentally abusive relationship.

“Hey, three,” you shout into your headset, “you don’t have anything like that kind of time to move between positions! And for the last time, the hard camera is losing focus when the lights shift. This is not a show where you can just check the fucking shot every two minutes. Do your goddamn job!”

A lot of people were surprised when you were hired as Floor Manager for NXT’s weekly shows. It wasn’t that you lacked experience, but that you lacked testicles, which had generally been seen as a prerequisite for bossing talent in an overwhelmingly male and masculinity-fixated industry. Even when the talent and behind-the-scenes workers had met you, they’d seemed a little bit surprised. You got it. You weren’t just a woman in a man’s world. You were quiet and thoughtful and didn’t come off as a masculine hardass the way that other women who’d pushed their way to the upper echelons in wrestling seemed to be.

It wasn’t lost on you that your position covered a lot more than what was usually meant by “floor manager”. Above you were the Directors, who theoretically controlled the look of the show, but who were really just concerned with getting storyline angles done properly and keeping everything on time. The responsibility for dictating the shots, the camera movements, and the look of the show had fallen on your shoulders. Unfortunately, all that would show on your resume was that you’d done a decent job keeping the ground-level details in order. So it was fortunate that you didn’t have any desire to move on to greater things.

Your coworkers had quickly discovered that your soft demeanour went right out the window when it was (literal and figurative) show time. You went from pleasant and understanding to barking orders like a drill sergeant in a snap and you did not tolerate fallibility in your ranks. You’d already fired two camera operators and one production assistant. People took your warmth and openness as weakness at their peril.

“What the fuck are you even doing, three? All I’m seeing is feet? Get your ass in position ten seconds ago at the goddamn latest!”

After the show is over, you’ll make a point of approaching Andre from Camera Three and you’ll tell him that you know it’s War Games and that it’s probably the most difficult thing to shoot in pro wrestling. But for now, you’re in the middle of one of the biggest shows of the year, you need to cut to camera three and all you’re seeing in your monitor is feet. Andre slides guiltily- you can feel it even through the lens- into his proper position and holds the line.

“Ok, two, I need you to start shifting left. We’re following you, so watch the focus.”

Whenever you have a second, you find yourself gulping water and croaking out orders so that the workers on the floor know what to do. Your own focus is so intense that it makes you dizzy and after two and a half hours of this, your head hurts.

“You make sure you caught my smile?” Damian jibes as he exits his dressing room, a towel slung over his shoulder to catch the moisture from his freshly washed hair.

“Oh of course,” you groan, sliding off the stool that’s supposed to relieve the stress on your back, but seems to do the opposite. “Your teeth were the only thing we focused on all night.”

You dodge the slap on the head he tries to give you, as both of you laugh. He knows his match was fantastic, a real star-making turn. And he knows that you know.

“Fine, Ms. Exalted Producer,” he groans, “just inform your lowly meat puppet what the plans are for the rest of the night.”

You giggle to yourself and immediately embark on the game of one-upmanship that the two of you are constantly playing. “I don’t have any use for you off camera. What makes you think I want to do anything now that work is over?”

“Well I’m pretty damn sure you haven’t eaten, Puss, so I’m guessing that both of us want to fill our bellies somehow.”

If anyone heard him use that nickname for you, they’d probably be shocked. They’d assume it was a misogynist slur and many people would want to punch him in the face.

In fact, it had nothing to do with sex or gender or anything remotely controversial. It had evolved from your obsession with pupusas, the central american wrap that occupied the space somewhere between a burrito and an empanada.

“I know what you want,” Damian would tease. “You have your pupusa puss on.”

“I can’t help what I love!” you’d retort. “I grew up in San Francisco. It was like a Latin American food fair. I developed particular tastes.”

Gradually, having your “pupusa puss” on devolved into just being a “puss” when Damian could tell what you were craving. That was fine as far as you were concerned because it showed a progression in your friendship that you’d been unable to reach with a man in a long time. It showed your ability to finally move on and accept that men could be people just like anyone else and that they weren’t automatically predatory and vicious the way your ex had been.

When you’d been hired to manage ground zero execution at NXT, you’d easily been able to make friends with the women there but you’d avoided the men. You were slightly more friendly towards the ones who you knew had partners within the company but just the presence of testosterone made you a little panicky. Anything with a Y chromosome immediately reminded you of Him and of the fact that you were eventually going to have to come face to face with the bastard who had ruined you.

You’d accepted your job offer from WWE just as the entire world had shut down, which meant that your first weeks had been like some nightmarish caricature, a sort of “dogma” challenge that no one could succeed at. At first, you’d bounced between Raw and Smackdown, assisting the executives in charge but after the big Summer Slam show, they had moved you to NXT, to a job that was more senior but less lucrative. You’d spent the entire first month convinced that you were going to be fired because what you were producing was so many levels below what audiences expected.

As much as you loved the idea of having the run of things, you never would have accepted the job if it weren’t for the fact that He’d been injured and was expected to be out of action for a year. A year was more than enough time to prove yourself and would allow you to return to Raw or Smackdown at a higher level. Neither your poison ex or his blonde trophy would be there. They couldn’t hurt you anymore than they already had.

Still, you’d felt a little nauseous in the presence of any man until Damian had managed to get you to chill the fuck out. It was weird, because he projected that alpha male persona that made your stomach churn. And at the same time he was such a nonchalant individual that his antics with groupies, trashy hot tub celebrations and cocky behaviour seemed more like a piss-take on masculinity. He’d also made a point of constantly trying to make you laugh, all the more so when he’d sensed your reluctance to give any man so much as a smile.

The first time he’d managed to get you to crack up had been a watershed moment in your relationship and you’d both felt it. It had been a sort of dumb, gross joke that had finally made you fall apart but the subject matter hadn’t been important. What was important was that Damian Priest was the first man to make you feel relaxed enough around him to really lose yourself. What better foundation for a friendship could there be?

Once you’ve wrapped for the night and debriefed the troops on a pretty positive outing, you gather up your belongings and find Damian, who’s flopped in a chair that would look comfortable for someone with a normal-sized frame but which seems to contour around all the wrong parts of his. You wonder if he has to special order all his furniture because the things they make for regular humans can’t accommodate him.

He pretends to be asleep, grunting when you shake his wrist to get him to move.

“Come on, I’m hungry and thirsty and impatient,” you groan.

He shakes his head. “Too late, I’m tired. I’m gonna sleep here tonight.”

“I’m paying,” you coo.

He jumps up from the seat and you’re so startled that you jump yourself. He laughs a little but looks for a sign that you’re alright.

“What can I say? I get excited when a lady wants to buy me dinner.”

He gives an exaggerated shrug and seems gratified when you smile and roll your eyes.

“Don’t you call me a fucking lady!”

As you turn to go, you catch a glimpse of a computer screen, a distorted black and white image of a raptor occupying the whole thing.

“What’s that?” You hiss, to no one in particular. Your pulse quickens and you feel a prickling sensation in your extremities. Only one person has that effect on you and that person has often used the imagery of birds of prey for his entrances and vignettes.

“Oh, that’s nothing,” comes the voice of the AV tech, a scrawny guy in a hipster beanie and worn t-shirt, as he returns to his seat in front of the computer. “It’s for Wednesday. Big surprise coming.”

You nod and even manage a weak smile as your insides melt like roads hit by lava. It’s not possible. It’s been three months. No one can recover from that kind of injury in three months. It’s someone else. You know that Aleister Black, also someone who uses dark-tinged imagery, has made noises about wanting to come back to NXT. There certainly hasn’t been anything official but it’s a possibility. It has to be more likely than a man recovering from a serious injury in a quarter of the projected time. You’ve seen the teases here and there but you tell yourself it’s misdirection. They want to make people believe it’s one person coming but it’ll turn out to be someone else.

“You ready?” You ask Damian, trying your best to ground yourself in the present again.

“Lead the way.”

It’s little things that make Damian the perfect guy to help you be able to deal with men again. He does a lot of quaintly gentlemanly things like hold doors or insist on walking on the side closer to the street, things his mother, aunts and grandmothers taught him that a mana just does. At the same time, he’s aware that women often have a rough time in this industry and that he’s a big, scary-looking guy, so he’s careful to maintain physical distance. He doesn’t try to hug you or lean into you or other things that you see male and female friends do all the time. You’ve seen him hug other women, but only if they initiate it. Sometimes, you’d really like to have a hug after a hard day, or bury your head in his shoulder when he insists on watching horror movies with jump scares. But then you think of the idea of being held, of feeling like you can’t escape, and at the same time of how detached those gestures can be, how they can make you feel like nothing.

That’s His legacy.

Damian knows that you had a “bad experience”. You’ve told him that much. You thought about saying that you were with someone who beat you but that was a lie. If you started lying about that sort of thing, it was an insult to women who really were battered. At the same time, what had actually happened between you and your ex felt complicated to explain. It was manipulation and dependence and cruelty and loss and it had left you feeling wounded from the inside out. But that sounded nuts, so you just told him that it had been a very bad situation and that you didn’t want to get into it. Somehow, not saying what happened seemed to convey the damage you’d sustained more than talking about it.

And Damian’s a good enough friend that he respects your injuries even though he can’t see them. He doesn’t fuss about the fact that you’ll sometimes see something that makes you go silent, or that you have to get away from. He doesn’t know who your ex is, or even that he’s a fellow wrestler let alone a coworker, but he’s developed a habit of steering you away from tall, shaven-headed men, or positioning himself so that he’s always between you and them. He’s never said anything, of course. Maybe he doesn’t know that you can tell he’s doing it. Hell, you’ve never specifically told him that your ex was tall with a shaved head. He just noticed how jumpy you got when you’d see one.

The two of you take a table close to the door at a hole in the wall place that has a couple of visible holes in the walls. Damian chooses the table. He knows you like to sit near the door. He holds out the chair closest to the wall because you hate having your back exposed.

You haven’t tried this place before but you know others who have and insist it has the best empanadas in the city. No pupusas, though. Those remain hard to find and you’ve already dragged Damian to the places that do have them on a regular basis.

“How’s the shoulder?” You ask, aware that he’s been trying to shake off a knock for the better part of two weeks.

“It’s a bit better. Been stretching it out more, yoga stuff.”

“Good.” You smile at him warmly so he knows you care about his welfare.

As usual, he’s kind of sprawled, trying to fit into a chair that is clearly not up to the task. His long legs project out from the table. You suspect he assumes that position because if he put his legs under the table like a normal person would, they’d be brushing against yours throughout dinner. You want to tell him that you don’t mind but the truth is that your response to even fleeting contact with a man is reflexive and visceral. No one’s touched you since He did and now every touch with a man seems like a threat.

The food is delicious and filling and it’s easy to enjoy a relaxed time together, gossipping a little about what’s happening backstage and imagining what’s coming in the near future. It is such a weird company to work for. If you didn’t have a friend you could vent to, you could see yourself becoming anxiety-ridden and bitter about the instability and contradictions.

“That graphic that was on the computer,” Damian muses, placing his napkin down. “Do you think it means Kross is coming back?”

All night, it’s been niggling at the back of your brain that he might bring this up. You know he saw the same thing you did. As much fun as you’ve been having, there’s been this undercurrent of dread. You’re not ready to talk about it with Damian or anyone else. You have an ex. It ended badly. No one has to know that it’s Karrion Kross, the one the company’s strapped a rocket to.

“Seems pretty early,” you grunt, shoving the last of your food into your mouth. This gives you an excuse to look down as you say it, so that Damian can’t catch sight of the fear you know is in your eyes.

“I know, right?” Damian scowls. “There’s no way. Someone would have said something.”

“I mean, I would hope so. Would be a pretty shit thing to do to just let this guy come back with no notice and everyone has to drop everything so we can focus on him.”

You feel a little guilty about that last bit. Damian has his own reasons for being anxious about Kross returning early. Right now, he’s the big man, both literally and figuratively. He’s finally getting a substantial push after a couple of years of lower-mid-tier work. When Kross comes back, he becomes the centerpiece just as he was before, and everyone gets kicked down a notch. So when you mention it, you know you’re feeding a real sense of insecurity that Damian has, and fueling the low-level resentment that he and others developed towards Kross during his meteoric rise. But it’s not like you’re saying anything he doesn’t already know, you rationalize.

“I haven’t heard anything,” he muses.

“Neither have I. And I’m not saying they’d tell me details but a head’s up that I should be planning how to do some segments for him… they’d do that for sure.”

No, you think, they wouldn’t. They drop things on you last minute all the time and Damian knows this because he’s the one you go to when you feel like you’re about to have an aneurysm.

He shrugs like it’s no big deal who comes back. “Whatever. It happens when it happens.”

You mumble something reassuring as you go to pay the bill, which is shockingly low.

“Cool that we had the whole place to ourselves,” he says as you head out.

“I don’t know if they’re allowed to have any more people in there right now.”

“Yeah, that has to be rough.”

“Well you ate enough for a restaurant full of people,” you chuckle.

You’re not quick enough to dodge him this time and he taps you lightly on the back of the head. That’s the only way you touch, and even as he does it, he steps back a little so that he’s a full arm’s length away. You both joke and swat at each other and that’s as far as you’ve been able to progress. You’re exorcising the evil spirits of a mentally and emotionally abusive relationship through gestures that mimic physical violence.

You get the feeling that Damian would really like to hug you when you’re upset, to wrap you up in those long, muscular arms and cradle you so that you could feel safe, because he’s got a healthy streak of old world masculinity that dictates women should be protected. But he knows that you’d feel anything but safe with a man holding you. Doesn’t mean you don’t think about it, and wonder what it would feel like.

The two of you say your good nights and you crawl into your car. It’s a stupid car and you hate it, but you’ve had to haul gear around in the past and that means you need an SUV that makes you feel like a kid pretending you’re big enough to drive.

Your travel mug sits in the console with the dregs of your morning coffee still in it. You grab it immediately and wrench off the lid as your stomach and throat spasm. Nothing comes up but this continues for several minutes. It’s not food poisoning. It’s Him. He’s coming back and you can feel it.

He wasn’t Karrion Kross when you met him, he was Killer Kross but really, he was just Kevin, the big man with the shaved head and tattoos and the eyes of a soldier in the midst of a full-on flashback to a warzone. The first time you’d seen him had been at a show and you’d had the incredible honor of working the door.

It was the lowliest of the lowly jobs but you loved the atmosphere and the personalities and while you knew that in-ring work was never going to be your thing, you were desperate to be close to that world. So you were the door girl.

That first few times you’d been at the same shows, you’d definitely thought he was hot but in the way that a lot of guys at those shows were hot. People who take care of their bodies all the time tend to look good. And he wasn’t the handsomest. You’d found him too sharp-angled to be handsome and in the ring he was always making stupid faces.

It was him who had pursued you. Of course, he was as confident about winning you over as he was about everything but he wasn’t arrogant. He always found ways to talk to you without seeming desperate or awkward and by the time he’d suggested that the two of you go out for a drink sometime, you’d been so charmed by him that you hadn’t been able to sleep that night.

He didn’t immediately make a move, either. The two of you hung out, chatted a lot, and he would always suggest things that seemed novel for dates but that ended up feeling special and fun.

In retrospect, you wondered if he’d had a girl or two on the side when he was wooing you. His sex drive was always through the roof, but his self-control was impeccable. Whatever method he employed, by the time he’d taken you into his bed, you were desperate for it. But it wasn’t the sex, fantastic though it was, that fueled your addiction to the man. It was the whole package: the intensity, the ability to create unique experiences, the hints of inner darkness that he let you see, the way part of him remained perpetually out of reach.

And he loved having you around. You were smart enough and interested enough in the world of wrestling to be able to share that with him. You were crazy enough about him that he could convince you to do anything. He used the first aspect to make you feel like you were a partner on equal footing. That way, he could exploit the second, getting you to do absolutely anything he wanted while stripping away all the parts of you that existed independently of him.

Promoters or bookers that didn’t want to push him became your enemies even more than his because you were the one who took on the burden of confronting them. The friends and networks you had, you had together. Of course, you were on the fringes of that world because you worked as an agent (his agent) or as a part-time booker, or as a glorified roadie. He was the talent, not you.

And there was the sexual stuff. He loved the idea of watching you with another woman, so the idea of being with another woman excited you because of how much it would turn him on. The first couple of times, you’d even been the one to take the lead. Later, he also liked fucking other women while you watched. Every second of that had felt painful but seeing how much pleasure he took from it made it feel good at the same time.

It wasn’t until much later that you realized how much of what he’d done was a process of seeing how far he could push you, seeing how you’d shift your boundaries to please him. You’d figured that out in therapy and it was the first breakthrough you made, the first thing that made you believe that the money you were spending to put yourself back together might actually yield results.

There are still things you did for him that you can’t bear to think about. You’ve never told anyone, not a friend, not your therapist, you won’t even acknowledge them yourself. Any time certain memories poke their horrible snouts above out of the waters of your unconscious, you force them back down immediately. You know they’re there. You know what they are. But if you let yourself think about them then you’ll have to deal with the fact that you were the person who participated and that would be unbearable.

You’d spent your entire relationship thinking that the two of you would be together forever and that he was about to leave you at any moment. He’d encouraged you to think that he was in it for the long term but you never quite believed it. As far as you were concerned, he was the most talented man in the business, capable of anything he wanted. You thought that someday you could play a strategic role. But you’d never be on his level.

You met Scarlet before he did and the instant you saw her, you hated her, because you knew what was coming. As soon as they met, you could feel what was between them. You could barely even speak when she was around. You made no secret of your feelings about her to him. You couldn’t stop from spilling gallons of bile about how disgusting you found her and the fact that he didn’t seem to agree with you felt like a betrayal.

He’d started talking about breaking up in the most nonchalant way, like the two of you were roommates. You weren’t, because you weren’t living together despite the fact that he was at your place all the time. He needed to know he had his own place and increasingly, he spent time there. You knew it was because he was seeing her. You felt it on a level beyond the rational and that was what he said you were being- irrational.

So one night you’d gone by his place with takeout Chinese from a restaurant you’d loved for ages. You’d walked into the building as another person was leaving and knocked on his door for what seemed like an eternity. You could hear movement and murmuring inside, including the sound of someone stepping into clothing.

He’d answered the door looking annoyed and tired, shirtless and with his belt still undone and you’d been able to catch a glimpse of her inside. And just like that, your relationship was over. More or less.

He’d ghosted you for a few weeks. You’d pathetically tried to reach out under the guise of asking him to pick up the stuff he’d left at your place. You’d resorted to joking that you couldn’t move on with your life because it looked like a man lived there. You both knew that you weren’t moving on with your life.

Then he’d turned up, cool as ever, asking you to meet him for coffee. He’d apologized without hesitation for cutting off contact and said he felt terrible about the way you’d found out he was with Scarlet, but that he’d worried about telling you that he was leaving you for someone he knew you hated. He’d told you that you meant very much to him, and that he hated the idea of losing what the two or you had beyond “just the couple stuff”.

How you made yourself believe him and not seen his actions as those of a man who wanted to keep things as smooth as possible within the business was a mystery to you. You were certain that there were four year olds who could have seen that he was just making sure that he wasn’t going to get punished for ditching you. It was much later that you’d realized that you were much more respected in the scene than you’d thought. People loved working with you because you were no-nonsense, because you were resourceful, and because you worked hard. But when you’d listen to Kevin telling you how important you remained to him, that was all you could hear.

So you’d tried to stay his friend and that was when things truly went to hell.

You told yourself and him that you could just flip the switch and have a new kind of relationship. The truth was that you were desperately trying to find a way to be part of his life and that you did so hoping that the Scarlet infatuation would just blow over. Perhaps he’d helped you believe that. He’d certainly made you feel like you were the most important person in his life every time the two of you were alone together.

You hadn’t handled things well. You’d go to pieces every time he would leave you to return to the woman who really was the most important to him. You did whatever you could to make him feel responsible for you or afraid to leave you, threatening to harm yourself or to do something to put yourself in danger. It didn’t matter. He still ended up leaving.

Worst of all was your idea to run yourself down as unattractive, as ugly, as undesirable when evaluated among women who worked in the industry. He’d reassured you, of course, and it wasn’t long before reassurance started to take on a physical form. He’d buried his head in your neck and whispered that it was unthinkable that you couldn’t see how desirable you were. When he casually mentioned that he and Scarlet were fine keeping things open, you’d immediately taken him back into your bed.

Secretly, you’d hoped that keeping things open meant that there wasn’t any real connection between them. In fact, it had meant the opposite: they both felt confident that what they had couldn’t be diminished by just having sex with someone else. And for him, that’s all it was: fucking a random person because he could.

Once the two of you started sleeping together again, you’d assumed that it was only a matter of time until things went back to the way they had been. It had never occurred to you to question your ability to put everything behind you. If you got him back, nothing else was important.

But no matter how you sobbed and begged, oh how you’d begged, for him to take you back, he had no interest. He’d moved on. Yes, he was happy to have your support professionally. Yes, he was happy to put his dick in you since you were so eager to offer. But as far as he was concerned, things were over.

You shuddered to think of the number of times you’d called him crying and screaming, demanding that he come and talk things out. Or the number of times you’d gone to pieces in public, slapping him and telling him that you were never going to speak to him again, even though everyone knew it was a lie. You’d put your pain and vulnerability on display. You’d made yourself pathetic.

Finally, he and Scarlet had had opportunities that led them to another city and after that, you didn’t hear from him. He was gone from your life, or what was left of your life. As you soon realized, if you weren’t his sidekick or his supporter, you didn’t know what you were. You’d puttered around doing the same things you always had and finally had shown that you were capable of running shows. At the same time, you’d gotten a diploma in communications that trained you in television work, among other things. That was something that was uniquely yours, you told yourself. He’d had no hand in making the decision to do that.

You sit in your stupid car, parked in your driveway, for a long time before you finally go inside. In your fantasy, he wouldn’t have arrived in the WWE until you were established as a senior producer. You’d loved the fantasy of him having to kiss your ass to get ahead, and of denying him opportunities he felt he was due.

As much as you might want to deny it, the man who’d torn your heart out was coming back early and you were going to have to work alongside him. Your perfectly laid plan lacked a safety net.

You don’t have to wait long for your worst fears to be confirmed. At the next morning’s staff meeting he’s there, showing off how well-recovered he is for several of the trainers.

He sits in on the staff meeting but no one says anything beyond acknowledging that he’s there and way ahead of schedule. You hang near the back of the room and flee as soon as the meeting is over. No reason to hang out, where you could accidentally get roped into a conversation with Kevin and his wench. You run back and report the necessary information to your troops.

You’re going over the shot list that your assistant has prepared, having locked yourself in a literal closet, still nursing the remains of your coffee that you’ve had to reheat three times in the microwave when Damian finds you.

“Did you get demoted or something?” He queries, leaning into your tiny space.

“I had to find a place where no one was going to bother me. Guess I didn’t do a good enough job.”

You screw up your face in an exaggerated display of annoyance, but you push the door open to allow him in. He stays pressed against the wall, which is as much space as he can give you.

“Seriously, why are you in a closet?”

“Seriously,” you mimic, “I wanted some place where I could focus on the shot list and make sure that we’re going to have enough coverage on Wednesday.”

“Sorry to bother you.”

“Yeah, well, it turns out that the shot list is pretty straightforward and that I just like being by myself, so I’m stretching this out for as long as I can.”

“I feel like they were really weird about what segments they needed me for.”

“Weird how?”

“I mean, they told me what bits I’m in but everyone was really concerned that I was aware I could be called in for an extra bit at the last minute.”

“Ugh,” you groan, running a hand through your hair, “that explains it.”

“Explains what?”

“The program looks to be short. Like they’re planning on throwing something in at the last minute. If they’re telling you and other people that there could be something else, then that’s probably my missing time.”

“And it’s probably a massive headache for you because you don’t know what to expect.”

“Why are you the only person who ever listens when I talk about the problems this sort of thing causes?”

“Because I don’t like seeing you upset any more than I like having some weird surprise pulled on me at the last minute.” Damian folds his arms and exhales pointedly, like he wants you to know that what he’s about to say is important. “You think all this is because the big man’s coming back?”

“You’re bigger than he is,” you sniff. “I don’t know, maybe. I figure they don’t know how they want to reintroduce him so they’re leaving their options open.”

“If he’s back, he’s basically going straight into a feud with Balor for the title, though.”

“That would be my guess. He never lost it, so his only focus is going to be getting it back.”

Damian stares glumly at the floor and for an instant he looks so hurt that you want to grab his hands and ask him what you can do to help.

“I’m supposed to be in a bit this week where I’m one of a few people asking for a title shot. I guess that’s not happening.”

“Well it’s on my breakdown, so it’s happening whether or not Kross makes an appearance. Besides, you’ve earned a shot. You had the North American title, you looked like a total badass at the last Takeover. You took Balor to the limit once already. You should damn well be getting a shot.”

“But I’m not The Guy,” he grumbles, and for that you have no response. People way above you in the food chain think Kevin is the Next Big Thing and have pushed him ahead of everyone else in the queue. A year would have given a lot of people a chance to flourish, but apparently that’s not what fate has decided.

You want to get in the faces of your superiors and make a case for staying the course, for delaying Kross’s big comeback a while, maybe until a crowd can be present. And there would be some logic to that, but you know damn well that Kevin and Scarlet would be happy to brand you as the “crazy ex-girlfriend”. They’ve done it before. Maybe they weren’t wrong, either, because looking back on that whole episode in your life, it feels like you weren’t in control of your own mind.

The worst part about that now is that it robs you of an opportunity to help Damian. Yes, he’s your friend but he’s also really good at what he does and everyone else is always pimping their favorites but you can’t because you can be dismissed as the dreaded crazy ex. Years after your last contact, the sociopathic bastard is still able to control parts of your life and it’s unbearable.

The rest of the day made up of running through camera angles and cuts, making decisions, making new decisions when things get changed from above, and identifying as many escape routes and hiding places as you can. Whenever you catch sight of Kevin or his princess, you slip away like a ghost and reappear somewhere you won’t have to risk coming face to face. You’ll have to eventually but you need to build up to it. You need to feel more secure, more content, and more sane than you do right now.

You splash some water on your face, staring at the edgy woman in the mirror, wanting to tell her she needs to switch to decaf or something. No, that woman is decidedly not ready for a casual encounter with her toxic ex, especially not in the workplace. That’s why she’s using this bathroom in the bowels of the building, rather than one of the ones conveniently located on the ground floor. It was a great find, right next to the staircase, so you can slip away and reappear like it’s nothing unusual. If you feel really trapped, you can scurry off and take another staircase back upstairs, like how a mouse learns to navigate the inside of walls in a house so she doesn’t get caught by the people. She adapts because she knows in the open that she’s easy prey.

You dry your hands fastidiously and smooth your shirt down. As you leave, something moves on the edge of your peripheral vision but before you can turn to see what it is, you feel a thick arm around you, pulling you into the adjacent men’s lavatory. At almost the same moment, you get angry at Damian playing a prank on you and feel a little sick because the feeling of that arm is so familiar and you know it isn’t Damian’s.

He places you back on your feet as soon as he has you through the door and you spin away like a cyclone.

“Don’t you touch me!” You spit, waving your arm in front of you to establish your space.

And there he is, leaning back against the wall with a snide expression on his face, black jeans, unadorned black t-shirt, black leather jacket, black predator’s eyes and the same black heart. He raises his eyebrows a little, looking at you like you’re a child throwing a tantrum, which immediately makes you feel like that’s what you are.

“Don’t touch me,” you repeat, most of the fire gone from your voice.

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he drawls.

You tilt your head as it dawns on you: he thinks you’re angry because you’re startled, not because it was him grabbing you. It hasn’t occurred to him that you’ll be angry, that you might hate him. It’s been a while. It’s ancient history. Nothing that happened was that big a deal. You aren’t the crazy ex who is going to try to bring him down. You’re a girl he used to date in the Before Scarlet era. You’re part of the BS era.

“Can I get a hug or a hello or something?”

The gleam in his eyes betrays that he’s sounding you out: trying to figure out if you’re still an ally and how much of an ally if so. If you wanted, you could just laugh and say hello, welcome him aboard, express how remarkable his recovery is. And maybe that would be safer: if you reassure him that you can be useful, he has no reason to pay much attention to you. But if you do that, you’d also be validating his narrative that you were no big deal.

“You can get a go to hell, Kevin, that’s what you can get.”

He rolls his eyes. “Come on. Don’t be like that.”

“Be like what?” You snap, aware that there are tears rippling through your voice. “I get it. You’re here, I’m here, we have to work together. Let’s go to work and avoid each other as much as possible and we’ll both be fine.”

“Well I won’t be fine with that,” he retorts, scowling.

Ah, yes, you think. Kevin’s world. There is no such thing as a neutral party. He needs to put you in his camp or in a ditch.

“Grow up,” you mutter.

“I’m serious. I’m not ok with us acting like we barely know each other or like we hate each other.”

You’ve fallen into one of his traps and hate yourself for it, because it’s one you’ve found yourself in before. You knew that in order to heal, you had to cut things off, as painful as that was going to be, but if you tried to do that, and you had a few times, it meant that you were an icy bitch who didn’t place any value on your friendship.

You want to say that he’ll have to figure out a way to deal with it. You want to tell him that if he wanted the two of you to be friends, he should have stopped putting his dick in you when he dumped you for another woman. You want to tell him that his feelings aren’t important because they’ve never been very deep.

But you know that if you start to say something like that, you’re going to really start crying and that would be worse than anything, so you stand still with your hands on your hips, consciously avoiding eye contact with him.

“Come here,” he says softly.

When you don’t immediately react, he holds his arms out and beckons you forward. “Come here,” he repeats, a little more insistently but still gently.

Seeing those arms reaching out to you churns up a lot of feelings at once: fear, longing, anger, sadness, nostalgia, and more. Your mind remains oddly clear, repeating the thought that moving even an inch closer would be dangerous, but your body feels like it’s caught in a tractor beam, and you step into his waiting embrace fully aware of the terrible mistake it is.

When you’re close enough for him to get a grip on you, he pulls you flush against him and wraps his thick arms around you. You don’t return the embrace. You rest your hands against his chest so that you can push back at a moment’s notice. But you don’t push back. You let him hold you and nestle his face in your hair, lips grazing your ear when he speaks.

“I missed you,” he whispers, closing his arms tighter around you. “You look good.”

“Thanks,” you mumble. You won’t commit to anything more than that.

One of his hands finds the back of your head and the fingers wind softly through your hair.

“I mean it. I like the shorter cut.”

Like almost every broken-hearted woman in history, you’d dealt with your pain in part with a new hairdo, a sort of messy layered bob that looked kind of chic but was also easy to take care of on those days when you couldn’t manage to do anything to make yourself feel human. He runs his fingers through it, humming a little in appreciation.

“So what’s with the cold shoulder? I feel like you’ve been avoiding me.”

You pull your head back a little and stare at him incredulously. There’s no way he can be that thick.

“Kevin, you really messed me up.” It comes out much gentler than you wanted, more like an excuse for not calling someone back than telling a man he tore your heart to pieces. “I thought it was better if we had minimal contact, at least for a while.”

“How many times have we gotten in screaming fights? How many times have we sworn that we weren’t ever going to speak to each other again?”

You give a noncommittal grunt in response. It’s more times than you can count and you both know it.

“And haven’t we always ended up talking things out?”

“Yeah, I just don’t know if it’s been very healthy.”

“Well I think that ignoring each other and pretending we’re strangers is a lot less healthy.”

He loosens his hold a bit more and you step back, but he places his rough hands on either side of your head, cupping your face and making you look at him.

“I mean it,” he says, his lightless eyes boring into your soul. “I really missed you. You must have told me a dozen times that I was going to regret hurting you and treating you the way I did and you were right. I want you to know that.”

You shiver at his words, remember every tearful incident where you promised him that he’d feel miserable for his actions. You hadn’t ever believed he would. You don’t know if you can believe him now because you’ve never met anyone so capable of seeming sincere as he can.

He doesn’t wait for you to think of an answer. He leans forward and pulls your face up to his, lips melding into yours for a few moments before he eases his tongue through them. You hate yourself for it, but you return the kiss and slide your hands up around his neck. Sensing his victory, he pulls you closer and his movements become more passionate until you both break away, gasping for air. Once again, he wraps you up in his arms, trailing kisses over your hair and forehead.

“I don’t know if your girl would approve of this,” you grumble.

He laughs a little. “She wouldn’t care. She’s probably getting her pussy eaten by some eager recruit at the Performance Center.” He plants a firmer kiss on the crown of your head. “I told you, things are open between us. She’s my soulmate. We both have other people in our lives.”

As soon as you hear the word “soulmate”, you feel your heart going through the meat grinder again. You hadn’t realized that you’d let yourself hope that him saying he regretted hurting you meant that he wanted to give a relationship another try. No, what he wants is a side dish. What he wants is to have all options available to him. Nothing has changed. Your whole body stiffens and he senses it, holding you tighter.

“You think me being with her means I can’t have feelings for anyone else?” He grasps your chin and forces you to make eye contact once again.

Finally, your sense of self-preservation kicks in. “Yes, that’s pretty much it.”

“Stop it,” he gasps. “I care about you so much.”

You’re kissing again, greedily, sensually, grabbing at each other, animal noises coming from both of you. You run your hand between his legs, taking a sick kind of pleasure in how much you obviously still excite him. It makes you smirk a little watching his head fall back, eyes closed, and hearing the needy moans coming from him as you run your hand over his rapidly hardening length, so familiar and yet so thrilling. That sudden adrenaline rush, that feeling of pride and power, drives you onward, and without reflecting on it, you undo his belt buckle and loosen his pants enough that you can slide his cock out. It’s like nothing ever stopped between you. It’s natural.

You stroke him, twisting your hand around the swollen head of his dick, exactly the way he’s always liked, elated as he shudders and curses, face twitching in a way you know means he’s already in ecstasy.

“You missed me?” you tease, crouching down on the floor in front of him.

He’s about to say something when you slide your mouth around him, and his words are lost to a sharp little cry of pleasure. His moans get louder and you’re just conscious enough to be worried that someone could just walk in to see what the commotion was, but it’s too much of a rush, feeling how much he wants you right now.

“Fuck,” he rasps, “that feels so good. No one is as good as you.”

You glance up, quickening your pace a little and basking in the look of pleasure and gratitude in his eyes as he stares down at you.

“Oh sweetheart, I was not expecting this,” he moans, one hand lightly playing with your hair.

He doesn’t need to guide you to do what he wants. You know what to do. You’ve never forgotten. You loosen his jeans and boxers a little more so that you can gently stroke the seam between his balls, making them twitch in your hand and drawing the most forceful groan yet. You keep teasing him this way as you press him further back into your throat, drawing your tongue down his length and moving your free hand along the portion of his shaft that you can’t swallow. An increasingly disconnected flow of thanks and praises passes his lips.

“Fuck, baby, I’m gonna cum,” he grunts, but you knew that was imminent. His body language hasn’t changed a bit. And when you do feel that hot liquid filling your throat, you suckle and lick to clean every drop off him.

You rock back on your haunches and take in the expression of surprise and bliss on his face as he tries to catch his breath. Rising to your feet, you gently tuck his member back inside his clothes, zip him up and refasten his belt. It makes him laugh a little, how coolly you set everything back in its proper order.

“Thank you,” he murmurs, hand in your hair once again. “No one does that like you. No one.”

In one smooth movement, he turns so that you’re pinned between his massive chest and the wall.

“I want to return the favor,” he hums, sliding his hand easily inside your leggings and your panties.

Having him touch you is not at all the same as touching him. His fingers connect immediately with your most sensitive places, trailing paths to the apex of your opening, lightly pinching and pressing on your clit before he presses two just inside your opening, so very close to the place he could always find with eerie precision. In this position, you have no power. You’re the one whining and desperate and the extent of your vulnerability crashes over you like a wave.

“Stop it,” you hiss, pushing weakly at his shoulder.

“Let me do this,” he purrs. “You can’t tell me you don’t like it.”

He pumps his fingers quickly inside you that amplifies the wet sound of your aching folds and at the same time makes you gasp with pleasure.

“You deserve it.”

He gives your neck a sharp little bite, just below your ear, forcing another little cry from your throat, which in turn encourages him to intensify his touches. It’s frightening how he’s forgotten nothing about where and how you like to be touched, every motion perfect. How is it that the connection between you is so automatic, so instinctive?

“No,” you whimper, “you have to stop, we can’t do this.”

He doesn’t even pause, but pushes his face close to yours so you can feel the heat and moisture of his breath against your skin as he whispers, “You’re holding back. Don’t. Just let yourself go, let everything go. No more pretending like we don’t know each other.”

“I can’t.” You feel yourself tearing up in frustration that you can’t make him do what you want and that you can’t commit to making him stop. You wriggle a little to get free of his grip but at the same time, you’re moving in such a way that it increases your pleasure, madly chasing something you know is poison.

Endless hours of therapy, cutting off contact with people from your past, assiduously avoiding physical or emotional contact with any male. It’s taken him seconds to dissolve all that. The last years of your life might as well not have happened. You’re still the pathetic girl begging for scraps that will never be enough to fill her need.

Finally, one determined gesture: you dig your nails into the nail bed of his thumb, the only digit you can reach. Doesn’t matter size or strength, it triggers a sharp pain in anyone and it makes him pull back enough that you can slide away from him.

“That shithead doesn’t deserve your loyalty,” he growls.

“What?”

“That dollar-store wannabe playboy you’ve hooked up with. Not even close to your level.”

It takes you a minute to realize that he’s talking about Damian and you have no idea how he’s worked out that the two of you are close. Clearly, he thinks you’re more than friends and that seems to bother him.

“You don’t even know him. At this point, you barely know me.”

He strolls the few feet you’ve put between you and cages you against the wall again.

“Oh I know you.” He trails a finger down your throat pausing at the hollow at its base and touching his lips to the same spot. “I might not know what you do every day, or what book you’re reading right now, or what kind of apartment you have, or where you like to eat in town, but I know,” he taps lightly on your breastbone and once again kisses the spot he’s touched, “what’s in here.”

The look that passes between you seems almost cinematic; smouldering, fraught with sexual tension, ravenous. He gives a queer, cautious little smile, able to tell that he’s winnowing through your protective layering to your core. Yes, dammit, he does know you very well. He knows how to turn you against yourself.

So if denying him won’t work, you have to try for mercy.

“Please, Kevin, I can’t handle going through this again. And it’s not that I don’t care about you, you know I do. I care too much. I lose my head when I’m with you.”

“You’re obsessed with being in control all the time. And I’ll bet your new boy is great at doing what he’s told. I’ll bet he does everything you want without you even asking because you, my darling, are terrifying. But you also need to get away from that. I know you were happy when we were together.”

“I didn’t say I wasn’t. And I am not a control freak. I’m not some sad, uptight head case who needs to cut loose and run with the bulls or some bullshit.” You bury your head in your hands, trying to clear away the fog of emotion, the warmth of his body and his subtle, familiar scent that evokes all those happy memories you had together. “And you’re wrong about Damian. We’re not even a couple. We’re friends.”

“Sure. You’re friends until you decide differently. He’s just waiting for instructions.”

“You know what? Just leave him the hell out of this. This is about me and you and what happened between us. And I’m telling you that it’s over and it has to stay over.”

“Are you seriously going to tell me that there’s not still something between us?”

And you’d love to snap back “just air” but it would be the least truthful thing you’ve ever said. So you decide to embrace the stupidity for another few moments and run your hands up his chest and around his neck again, eagerly leaning in when he presses his lips to yours. He seems completely unbothered that the taste of his cum still lingers in your mouth. The kiss starts slowly but starts to build again, the low, soft moans both of you are making rising in pitch and intensity until your brain intervenes again to pull you back from the precipice.

“No, I can’t do this, not now.”

He runs his hand along your jaw and gives you a final kiss. “Well, when the time comes, you know where to find me.”

Your skin is prickling all over, like you’re having a heart attack, and from the way it’s beating, you can’t be sure that it won’t just give up. But you back slowly away from the scene of the crime while he stands motionless, watching you go.

You walk back to your office in the most straightforward way and sit with the door open enough that people can see you’re there. No point in using secret passages and hideaways now. You read through the revised script that’s been left for you and try to focus on comparing it to the last iteration of your shot list. A few changes to be made, here and there… You can still smell him on you, that mix of leathery cologne and sex that was once such a normal part of your life. Thinking about it causes your already aching, unsatisfied core to quiver. For all that happened, you might as well have let him finish you off. It’s not like he could be in any doubt as to how you felt about him.

No, you tell yourself, pay attention to the work in front of you. This is what’s important. You had a naughty little incident and that’s all. Looked at another way, he’d observed you and stalked you and trapped you like some sort of obsessed fanboy. He’d been obviously jealous of Damian. Was it possible that his feelings for you were deeper than you realized? You force yourself to think of the moment he called Scarlet his soul mate. It was fine for them to have little side flings. He was going for you because it was easy. You wouldn’t even last as a sideshow because he’d find a new challenge. You were a landing pad. A safety belt. In case of emergency horniness, break this woman.

You scan over the same eight lines for the third time because you haven’t taken in a word of it when something further down the page catches your attention.

“Kross appears, attacks Priest from behind and throws him to the floor.”

That sure as hell wasn’t there earlier but it’s so eerily tied to what’s been happening in your head that you wonder if you’re imagining things. Regardless, it’s a segment that wasn’t even in the damn show eight hours ago and it seems like it might be pretty significant.

Rather than bother trying to get someone to pick up a phone, you head straight over to the room where the show execs are having coffee and joking like they didn’t just spring something like this on you.

“Brian,” you address your direct boss, “did you add a whole new angle to the show?”

“We added a run in from Kross. It’s not like a segment or anything.”

“It is a segment. I know you think that it’s only important to let me know if you add a part with dialogue but I keep telling you: if it’s a series of shots that need to be blocked and if it adds time, you need to give me some warning.”

“That’s what the updated script is for.”

“I meant you have to tell me more than twenty-four hours before we go live. I have to figure out how to shoot this and I need to cut something back to make room for it.” You feel like you’re being a petulant child, all the more so because this happens a lot and their reaction is always to pat you on the head and send you on your way. “You know by this time of day that I’m up to my neck.”

It’s pointless, of course. The powers that be have spoken and all you’ve managed to do is eat up precious minutes begging for a reprieve. It’s completely unfair because Kross’s return to television is a big deal and you should have time to think of how to play it up. His return is a big deal for everyone. But you can’t start changing things around just yet because there’s someone else you need to talk to.

“D?” You lift one of the headphones off his ear, which makes him start.

“Oh hey, Puss, what’s up?”

“Chaos and destruction loom, the usual. I just found out you got a new bit for tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” he answers with a bewildered shrug. “Kinda came out of nowhere.”

“I mean, this looks like it could be something big.”

“I don’t know. I think it looks like Kross wants to blow through a jobber before he gets the title back.”

“Don’t you ever call yourself a jobber in my presence.” Something else occurs to you. “Wait, what do you mean “he wants to”? I thought this came from Brian or one of those guys.”

Damian shakes his head and for the first time you realize that he’s feeling quite dejected about this. “Nope. All Kross’s idea.”

You sit down next to Damian and try to collect your thoughts. It’s not possible, you tell yourself. But that’s stupid. It’s not only possible but probable. Kevin was the one who brought Damian up to you. He’s the one who chose him as a feud. Everyone had assumed that the second he was back, he was just going to stake his claim to the title and that would be the story. He doesn’t have to insert a stepping stone story, but if he does, it’s a given that he has to win. And that means that Damian has to lose, effectively killing off the momentum he’s built up. This is your fault.

“Well it’s a stupid idea and they shouldn’t be letting him make changes this late.”

You can’t tell him anything beyond that. Part of you wants to put your hand on his and since you’ve apparently gone from barely being able to stand close to a man to being able to blow one in a basement bathroom, you think that maybe you should indulge that urge. But that’s when Kevin’s words creep up on you: Damian is your friend until you tell him to be more, which means he’s not really your friend at all, just a guy waiting for the green light to put his dick in you.

Kevin saying it doesn’t make it true, you tell yourself. And yet, there’s something about it that haunts you. So you place your hand next to his on the table. He glances at it and looks even more glum. Does that mean that he really is just waiting for his chance to make a move?

“I’ll see if I can get it changed,” you promise.

“Nah, don’t worry about it. Taking one hit and landing on my ass isn’t exactly a difficult night.”

The truth is that you would have precisely no chance of changing anyone’s mind about this but you wanted Damian to know you were willing to try.

“Hey,” he calls as you head for the door, “wanna come over tonight? Hang out or something?”

You wonder what that means, if invites to his palace have always been made in the hopes of getting more from you or if they were exactly what they appeared to be on the surface, and you wonder if you should decline the invite until you’re more certain about the intent behind it. But you don’t want to go rushing headlong into crazyville, so you just say, “Sure, that’d be fun.”

You leave work late and so you show up at Damian’s with apology pizza since you know he won’t have eaten without you. He gives you an appreciative grin as he ushers you inside. You catch your brain questioning if you can see any lustful intent behind that smile and order it to stop. Besides, Damian always looks a little bit lustful, even when he’s being a complete goof. He constantly has women trailing after him because the man just exudes sexual energy. It’s just never something you thought about before because it wasn’t part of your relationship.

You set about unpacking the pizza while he grabs a couple of beers from the fridge, opening them effortlessly and placing yours in front of you rather than making you take it from him. That’s something he does because he recognizes your discomfort with physical contact but now you wonder if he does out of respect or because he’s sensing some kind of directive from you.

He flashes you another smile and heads to the living room and you follow, plates of pizza in hand. You sit on the sofa with him, he’s given you plenty of room on one side, as he always does. At some point, you’d been able to move from sitting balled up on the adjacent chair to sharing the lengthy sofa but you can’t remember what brought that on. He never mentioned it, you’re certain.

You eat and joke a little about work but by the end of the meal, you notice that he’s uncharacteristically quiet and fiddling with the label on his empty bottle like a shy girl going to a bar for the first time.

“Ok, mister,” you say jovially, “spill it. Something’s bothering you.”

He screws up his face, aware that you’ve caught him. “I don’t know, it’s kind of weird.”

Is this it? Is the man about to confess feelings for you? You’ve only thought about the possibility for a few hours and suddenly it’s going to come to a head.

“Tell me,” you croak, unsure you want to hear what comes next.

“I never ask you about your previous… about your relationship before.”

This is worse than hearing he has feelings. A lot worse.

“Sorry,” he stammers, tearing away at the beer bottle label. “I know you don’t want to talk about it and I’m not asking you to share anything but… I know it’s Kross. I know he’s the ex.”

You feel your insides tremble. “Was I that obvious?”

“No, not at all. This wasn’t from you at all.” He shakes his head a little and the motion ripples through the dark tendrils of hair hanging around his neck. “Thatcher said… he always thought he knew you from somewhere but today he realized that he’d seen you at some shows on the circuit and that you and Kross were a couple then.” He looks a little panicky. “I’m not trying to pry. It’s just that when he said that, I realized that the bits you’ve mentioned about your bad ex, it made sense that it was him.”

You take a long swig of your beer, trying to figure out what you should say and wondering why this is even coming up. “I didn’t want to make it awkward at work or anything. Not for you.”

“For me? Puss, don’t even think that way. You owe me nothing. Besides, I thought he was kind of a dickhead anyway.” He winks at you. “And she’s not all that either.”

“It’s ok, it’s… I guess it was rough for me and I don’t like to talk about it because I feel like I was an idiot. These things happen and it’s not like-”

“I think I wanna hurt him.”

He arches his neck back and looks at you as if he’s waiting for validation.

“Hurt him?” you echo.

“Yeah. If he’s the bastard who fucked you over I want to hurt him for that. Too bad our spot has him knocking me down.” His eyes narrow a little. “How made would Brian and them be if, rather than go down at the first hit, I turned around and punched him?”

“I think they’d be livid. And I would be tearing my hair out in handfuls because that would make the segment a couple of seconds longer and I am already shaving everything ridiculously close. The show might end in the middle of a word, it’s so tight.”

“That’s why I’m telling you. I’m serious. I wanna fucking punch him.”

“Stop being such a guy. I don’t need you to fight my battles. I don’t need you to punch my ex. Yes, I do think it’s kind of adorable that you want to but just get that idea out of your head.”

“It’s not just for you,” he mutters.

“What does that mean?”

“I want to hit him because you’re an awesome person and it makes me angry that you’re so shaken up by what he did to you. That shit makes all men look bad and how am I supposed to get anywhere with awesome women if pieces of shit like him are ruining it?”

It’s not lost on you that “shaken up” is the gentlest possible way he could have described your behavior. “Traumatized” would have been appropriate. But he uses words that are unlikely to make you feel badly about what’s happened to you and the sweetness of that makes you want to hug him, more than ever.

“D, please don’t punch him… or anything that’s not on the script. I don’t need him thinking he’s more important than he is. And by the way, I think it sucks that you’re the one that has to take the L, if that’s what’s happening. But, you know, I don’t think that the existence of assholes is stopping you from getting any women.”

He laughs, the deep baritone sound rising from his chest. “Well, the ladies aren’t made of stone. They see this and…” He waves his arm along his body and cracks up laughing.

You laugh too but at the same time, your eyes move over his long frame at their own pace. It’s amazing how much of him there is. WWE seems to prize men that look like shaved bison, and compared to them, Damian looks lean but when the two of you are alone, it’s almost intimidating how large he is. The bottle in his hands looks like it’s part of a child’s restaurant playset. And it’s not the first time you’ve thought about what it would feel like to have those hands on you but you don’t remember ever feeling your temperature rise from thinking about it the way it is now.

“Thanks,” you murmur.

“For what?”

“For wanting to kick my awful ex’s ass. For not insisting that we talk about it because we both have to work with him. For being ok with all my weird hangups.”

“My Great Aunt Gloria used to insist that we all pray for the soul of whatever animal we ate at dinner when she cooked. That is a weird hangup. Yours are nothing.” He leans his head forward a little, the way he does when he wants you to know what he’s about to say is serious. “And hey, I might not know exactly what happened, but I can see enough to know it’s bullshit what that asshole put you through.”

“It’s in the past,” you sigh, shifting a little, and as if on cue, you catch a whiff of Eau de Kevin that was apparently trapped in your clothes.

Acting on impulse, you reach out and squeeze Damian’s shoulder. His head snaps towards you but he immediately smothers the look of surprise he has. He doesn’t want to make you feel awkward. You do feel awkward, but not as much as you thought you would, so you let your fingers graze along his bicep like you’re following a pattern. He gives a little laugh under his breath and maybe, just maybe, a bit of colour appears in his cheeks.

So was Kevin right? Did Damian have a crush on you that he’d been hiding? Now that you’re thinking about it more, though, you’re wondering if there’s something you’ve been denying to yourself. His arms look smooth, the way that one defined muscle curves gracefully into the next. You’ve never noticed it before, or at least, you’ve never had this sort of feeling in your stomach when you have.

You press your hand against his and lace your fingers together, resting your head on both of them.

“Cool,” he says quietly, smiling.

“What?”

He nods in the direction of your hands. “I know you’re a bit put off by affection. So it’s cool. I’m flattered.”

“You really do have the kindest ways of describing my compulsions. Because I am not ‘put off’ by affection. I was actually a pretty demonstrative person. Now I avoid affection from my female friends and I’ll go out of my way to avoid any kind of physical contact with a man.”

“And that’s why I’m flattered by this.” He lifts your hands a little.

“It’s not that I don’t want affection, you know. I want a hug after a rough day the same as anyone. I just don’t want to… I feel like keeping my distance is safer. I feel like I’m dumb enough to get into the same situation.”

“You’re not dumb.”

If you only knew, you think, images of your afternoon indiscretion flashing through your mind.

“When you think, do you hear it as a kind of monologue in your head? Like you’re telling yourself what to do, or talking to yourself about what you think?”

“Yeah, I guess so.” He furrows his brow a little.

“When Kevin- when Kross and I were going out, the voice in my head turned into his. To this day, when I’m thinking about anything, it’s like I can hear him telling me how full of shit I am, or how I’m wasting my time trying to get ahead at work, or that I’m the sort of person that people settle for.”

“He said that?”

“No, never in so many words. But it was there. I was a girlfriend. This one is his soul mate.”

Saying the words out loud feels bitter. You’d’ actually never heard him say it before this afternoon. Maybe that was his version of being kind: sparing you that truth when you were so distraught over him.

“Damian?” You ask meekly.

“What?”

“Can I have a hug?”

“Shit, of course you can, Puss.”

You release his hand and he opens his arms for you to position yourself in them as you wish. It’s strange at first because you can’t really remember how to do this well, or you can’t figure out how to do it without seeming too impersonal or too forward, especially because you can’t figure out what’s too impersonal or too forward for you. So for a few seconds, it’s like you’re trying to squirm into a complicated sleeping bag in the dark. But then you settle against him, arms wrapped around his shoulders and you feel his arms close around your back, hands on your shoulder blades, and his biceps tense just enough that you really feel held. So you incline your head against his, enjoying the scent of his shampoo and the unexpected silkiness of his dark locks. Your heart races a little at first, that sense of being trapped kicking in again, but you’re able to dismiss it and just enjoy.

Since you figure there aren’t any rules for your first hug after so long without contact, you stay like that until you feel like you’ve had enough, until it feels kind of normal.

“Thanks,” you say as you rock back.

“Any time.”

And when you meet his eyes, you can see it there, that spark. He likes you. You haven’t seen that spark in anyone in a very long time because you’ve carefully avoided looking for it. It’s thrilling to think that someone can desire you but it’s even more thrilling because you realize you want him too. You want him a lot. What the hell have you been doing? And how the hell did your ex know how you felt when you didn’t even know yourself until this moment?

“You want another beer?”

Still off in the clouds, you nod and watch as he gracefully rises from the sofa, collects your empty bottle and goes to forage for more.

“You can do better than him,” he drawls, giving you a wink.

“I know.”

Show days are always frantic but in a positive way, like you’re a bunch of children about to go to the beach for the first time in months. People are wound up and sometimes there can be little outbursts of tension but they dissipate quickly the closer it comes to zero hour. Of course, you’re more aware of that manic energy today because you have so much of it yourself.

You arrive early but not as early as you usually do because, for the first time since you started working for the company, you had a crisis over what to wear. You always try to look good but today, it was very important that you look a bit sexy, or at least kind of fetching. But you didn’t want to make it noticeable. You didn’t want people guessing that something different was going on in your head, or that something had happened, or that you wanted eyes on you. Balancing those things turned out to be more difficult than you remembered and the more you thought about it, the worse your ideas seemed to get and by the time you did find something that you liked, you were worried that people were going to get suspicious because you were later than usual and you looked different.

No one notices. You’re still there ahead of most people, for one thing, and for another, it’s not like you’re wearing a clown outfit. Besides, the talent is running around in athletic wear that shows off huge swathes of tanned skin and taut muscle. It is not scandalous that you’re wearing a skirt that falls above your knees and tall boots.

“Get away from me, you’re sweaty!” You dodge Damian’s mocking attempt to wrap an arm around you, both of you laughing. He loves to bug you that way but this time you wonder if he’d actually go in for the hug, now that that wall has been breached.

“You are in the wrong industry if sweat is a problem for you,” he grins, his voice seeming deeper and smoother than ever.

“I worked in a restaurant when I was in college,” you reply tartly. “Doesn’t mean I wanted to have someone pour soup on me.”

This sort of playful interaction between the two of you is normal, although it feels different now. Does it feel different for him? Did it feel this way for him before?

Much less welcome is how often Kross seems to pop up in your field of vision. Frequently, he has Scarlet pulled close to his side, and he doesn’t even acknowledge you. Based on their body language when they’re together, it seems unreal that the day before the two of you were… You tell yourself not to think about it. But you can’t stop yourself from looking at him, looking more powerful and more dominant than ever. You wish that didn’t make you feel the things it does.

“So is the cute outfit for me?”

You grab your chest because for a second you think your heart has stopped when the voice comes out of nowhere in your makeshift office. You turn to see that Kevin’s installed himself in a chair like he belongs there, eyeing you with a self-satisfied look on his face.

“Sorry, did I startle you?”

“Screw off. You know how high strung I am. You did that on purpose.”

He smiles and advances toward you, maneuvering himself between you and the door when you instinctively back away.

“OK, maybe I wanted to see if I could still make you jump like that.” The back of your legs hit the desk and he comes to a halt a couple of feet away from you. “And you do look really good.”

“So you automatically assume it’s because of you.”

He rolls his eyes. “How many men did you have encounters with yesterday?”

“That was a mistake.”

“You know I was thinking about you all night.”

“Well you shouldn’t.”

He arches his neck a little and you see a slight palpitation in the hollow of his throat, below the Adam’s apple. You can remember very well how sensitive that spot is for him, the kind of appreciative sounds you’ve elicited placing your lips and tongue there, the way he’s dug his fingers into your skin from the sensation. Unwittingly, you press your thighs together, trying to fight the reaction the memory stirs in you and you can see that he notices.

“So, if this,” he waves a hand to indicate your clothes, “isn’t for me, does that mean it’s for your little friend?”

“Little? He’s taller than you are.”

“Well, stature isn’t just about height.”

“Ugh, your ego. Have you considered that maybe what I’m wearing is just what I felt like wearing? Maybe I’m not trying to impress a man? It’s not like I’m walking around in a bikini.”

He steps closer, looming over you like a storm cloud. “I know you.” He brushes a calloused thumb over your cheek and you’re incapable of reacting, caught in the thrall of those dark eyes.

“Did you finally make a move on him?” he goads with a sinister smile. When you don’t respond, he raises his eyebrows a little. “Was I right?”

“You… this is not your business,” you croak. You hate how he always seems to get you to talk about other men, almost as much as you hate the fact that you really want to talk to someone who knows you about what you should do about Damian.

“Whatever,” he says breezily, “I just hoped you brushed your teeth first.”

You backhand him so quickly it takes both of you by surprise. He grabs hold of your wrist and for a second you’re actually scared by the look on his face.

“This again? Seriously?” he snarls.

He takes hold of your other wrist, digging his fingers into the pressure point there and making you yelp.

“You have a problem with violence.”

“Only with you,” you spit back. It’s hard not to feel humiliated that he’s made you lose control again, that he’s still able to make you lose control in every way. “You need to get out of here and we need to stay the hell away from each other when it’s not absolutely necessary.”

But no sooner are the words out of your mouth when you’re kissing again, coming together like you’re pulled by a magnetic force. You slide back so that you’re seated on the edge of your desk, which allows you to wind your arms and legs around him. The low groans and growls he makes as he feels you wrapping yourself around him are enough to make you see fireworks on their own, let alone the sensation of his hands running down your body, grabbing hold of your ass and pulling you against him like he wants to devour or possess you.

You’re so consumed with desire that you only notice the voices in the hallway when they’re right outside the door.

“No, sorry, I haven’t seen her.”

“No big deal, she’ll turn up.”

You’re not entirely sure whose the first voice is but the second is definitely Damian’s. There’s a light knock on the door and Kevin looks like he’s about to say something, which makes you press your hands over his lips.

“Don’t you make a sound,” you whisper harshly. “Don’t you dare.”

He laughs quietly, licking and nipping at your fingertips. The shadow at the door moves away and it feels like you’re going to faint with relief.

“Dude’s a loser and there is no reason why he should get a say in what you’re doing.”

“Jealous much?” you snap.

“It’s not jealousy. I have a wife, remember? I just think you could do a lot better and I think it would be a shame if you let a guy like that prevent us from having some fun together.”

“Well I’m not going to kick him aside because you don’t like him. Maybe I’m not just looking for someone to have fun with. Maybe I’d actually like to find someone who wants to be with me.”

He wraps his arms around you again, nuzzling against your cheek with that tenderness he fakes so well. “Do you know how irresistible you are to me?”

Light as butterfly wings, his lips move down your neck, ending in a kiss at the tender point where your collarbone meets your shoulder. Instinctively, you dig your fingers into his arms and gasp. He hasn’t forgotten anything about your body and what drives you crazy. It’s infuriating.

“When you make a decision about what you want, let me know,” he murmurs.

And then suddenly you’re alone in the office, lips burning from friction and your core pulsing with want.

You return to your desk and start responding to emails, approving changes, and making notes with a dramatic flair, like the work you’re doing is the most important work ever done by a human being ever. It’s the only way you can think of to relieve some of the pressure in your head, of clearing some of the haze that’s developed in the last twenty-four hours. Everything you’re doing is very, very important and requires extra hard hammering on the keyboard or extra firm pressure of pen on paper.

The fact is that none of this needs to be dealt with today. You’ve done everything you need to do. You’re completely prepared. But you need to take a bit of the edge off or else you’re going to explode. When you finally run out of things to distract you, you find yourself brooding. Had your ex given you an ultimatum? Had your hug with your closest friend the night before changed things between you?

Without even thinking, you find yourself standing and wandering out into the hallways, no conscious destination in mind. Your body seems to know where to go and you’ve learned that sometimes it’s best to just allow it to do what it wants. A few minutes later, you find yourself entering one of the lounges where the wrestlers relax before the show. It’s a sort of an antechamber to the dressing rooms, which you would never enter uninvited. And, as you somehow knew he would be, Damian is draped over one of the chairs, fiddling with his phone.

“Hey, Puss,” he greets you, a warm smile spreading across his face, “I was looking for you before.”

“Yeah, I was just, you know, last minute shit.” It’s a bit embarrassing that that’s the best you can come up with.

He adjusts himself on his chair, obviously expecting that you’ll sit in the one opposite him. Instead, you walk over to him and place your hand on his shoulder, leaning in for another hug. He doesn’t hesitate, sliding his arms loosely around your shoulders, but it’s clear he’s not about to take any further liberties. He knows your limits, he just doesn’t know that they’ve shifted.

With a hard gulp, you crawl onto his lap and without pause press your lips against his. There’s a tremor that runs down his body and after a couple of seconds he pulls back from you, a confused expression on his face.

“Oh my god,” you rasp, “I’m so sorry. I thought you were… I thought you wanted me to… D, I’m sorry.”

You move to stand up but he locks you in place with his hands on your hips.

“This is what I want. I just didn’t think you did.”

“Really?”

“Oh hell yes.”

You kiss him again and this time there’s no awkwardness or hesitation. It’s amazing how everything about him has a serpentine grace: the way his long arms coil around you and pull you closer, the easy way his tongue glides and flicks against yours, the way that the muscles of his chest undulate under his touch. It doesn’t have the ferocity of that kiss from earlier but it’s perfect in a different way, in a way you haven’t experienced before with anyone.

“Pfft,” comes a man’s voice, “about damn time.”

You and Damian pull apart awkwardly and it takes your eyes a minute to focus on the two figures who’ve entered the room. Tim Thatcher and Tomasso Ciampa are both chuckling and the warm grins on their faces reassure you that there’s no ill-will behind the teasing.

“Guess this means we don’t have to lock them in a closet together,” Ciampa jokes.

“I always figured you guys talked about weights and reps and that kind of thing in your spare time.”

“Nope,” Thatcher grins, “all gossip all the time.”

You smile, partly because bantering with these two gruff guys is amusing but also because you’re enjoying the fact that Damian’s kept his arms slung around your waist. Like this is something he wants the guys to notice. Like it’s real.

A couple of hours later, though, perilously close to Go Time, you’re thinking that maybe you should have locked the damned door behind you because even though no one says anything, it’s obvious that word of your little romantic encounter has spread like fire in a match factory. People give you little smiles and winks and by about the fourth time, you’d like to box someone’s ears and scream that the two of you haven’t even done anything that warrants all these mischievous glances.

Instead, you turn your focus to the show, getting everyone in position, drilling the sequences into them so that everything up to the first commercial break can unfold like it’s automatic. And maybe you have just a bit more of an edge to you because you’re uncomfortably aware that being the subject of romantic scuttlebutt calls attention to your femininity and that that could undermine you with some of these people.

When it comes time for Damian to enter, you feel your stomach flip. You’ve never liked the idea of what’s coming but now you like it even less. But it’s one hit. The monster reappears, the shocked audience sees his return (so much earlier than expected) and you cut to ads.

You smile a little when Damian comes out, all bravado and confidence, smack-talking the guy who cost him his match at War Games. You wish he could be that guy for longer. But then Karrion Kross appears from the shadows and, as planned, nails him, dropping him to the floor. The blow looks hard, harder than it needs to be, but you tell yourself that you’re letting your own fears put thoughts in your head.

The plan, what you’ve gone over with everyone, is that you linger on Kross standing over his fallen enemy for a long few seconds, letting the announcers’ patter trail off and giving a pause for the audience to take in what’s happened. But that’s when things go haywire.

Rather than standing, Kross leans over and hauls Damian to his feet, throwing him into the set. Damian slumps down again and it’s impossible to tell from this angle if he’s playing along or really hurt. Your face feels hot and you notice Luis, your assistant, staring up at you with a slack jaw.

And it’s still not over. You see Kross going in again.

“Go to ad?” Brian’s voice sounds like he’s choking on something, so what should have come out as an order is a question.

“No,” you blurt, shocked at the volume of your own voice. You’re hating this but you’re also mesmerized by the look on Kross’s face, the personification of rage. It’s very good television. The bastard knows it, too. “Camera two, stay steady where you are. Camera three, start moving in to get a closer shot.”

It shocks you a little that Brian isn’t cutting you off to insist you go to ad but maybe he can see what you do. Or he’s so livid about Kross changing plans on the fly that your insubordination seems minor in comparison.

As you feared, Kross goes back again, hauling Damian’s carcass up just enough that he can get him in position for a power bomb maneuver. It’s always been a move you liked for its simple brutality. Once long ago, you’d gotten him to do it to you, so you could see if it felt as bad as it looked. You’d taken lots of moves before, because you were always curious, but even though he told you what to do, when to exhale, how to ensure you landed correctly, you’d bitten your tongue and the landing had knocked every bit of breath out of you. You’d hit the mat in a shower of purple sparks and flashes of black and Kevin had actually been mortified that he might have hurt you. If Damian is half as out of it as he looks, he’s liable to end up in the same position you had.

It’s not possible, you tell yourself, there’s no way he remembers your penchant for the move. There’s no way he’s doing this for your benefit. It’s just that it is a powerful move.

Damian’s a big guy and you can tell it takes every bit of strength in Kross’s still recovering body to lift him into position but once he’s there, rather than slamming him down to the floor he pivots and you see with horror what’s about to happen.

“Camera Three, step to your right. Focus on the table.”

Luis turns to look at you again but you close your eyes, reopening just in time to see Damian hurled through the table adjacent the ramp. The table shatters on impact and he’s lying motionless, unconscious.

“Ok, three, push in a little. Close on Damian.”

On your monitor, you see Kross finally turn to leave and before Brian can get in another desperate plea to cut to an ad, you issue the command.

“Two, follow Kross, now. Stay behind him but stick with him.”

You can’t imagine what your team thinks of you right now. You’ve hung them out to dry on live television. They’re flying blind. Then again, so are you.

Kross rushes down the hallway towards the exit and the cameraman dutifully tails him right out the door where there’s a car waiting.

She’s inside. The woman whose very presence unleashes all of your insecurities. The person you blamed for your own unhappiness for months because it meant you didn’t have to blame him. She’s laughing in a way that’s halfway between glee and madness in the passenger seat. He slides into the driver’s side and smirks a little before taking off. He never acknowledges the camera.

“Ok, cut to ad. Team two, get ready for the interview segment, we come straight to you when we’re back.”

You breathe heavily and look around for water, coffee, anything at all to drink. Meekly, Luis pulls a bottle out and offers it to you. He looks like he’s seen a ghost.

“You want to explain what all that was?” Brian’s voice, still sounding a little shaken, crackles over your headset.

“Evening at the improv?” You take a long gulp of water, trying to hide the sound because you’re not supposed to drink near the equipment even though everyone does. You don’t want to advertise any other rule violations at this moment.

“You two didn’t plan that?”

“You don’t seriously think I’d keep everyone in the dark about that. Please tell me you don’t think that.”

“But you didn’t cut.”

“It felt like it was working. I went on instinct.”

There’s a long, painful pause before he responds. “Good call.”

Luis raises his eyebrows and mimes applause. Overriding a director and delaying an ad break is the sort of thing that gets people fired. You might be a woman in a sea of testosterone but right now you have the biggest balls in the building.

It’s a hollow victory, though. You can’t see what’s happened to Damian. All you know is that he took a beating he wasn’t expecting. Worse still, you feel like an imposter because it didn’t feel like you’d made a brave decision at all. It felt like you got wrapped up in a moment with Kevin, as you always did, and that you’d ended up giving him what he wanted.

The rest of the show feels like it stretches out for a day. All you want is to find out if Damian’s ok and take him somewhere you can take care of him. Or at least, that’s what most of you wants. A small part of you wants to find Kross and smash a chair over his head to see how he handles taking a move unprepared.

By the time things are over, though, you can’t find Damian at all. One of the production assistants informs you that he was taken to the hospital for observation. Which hospital? She has no idea. Why? Not sure but it looks like he smacked his head when the table broke.

Sadly, that’s all anyone seems to know. All this happened in the middle of a show. People were doing other things. The doctor would know, but the medical staff are gone by the time you emerge from your booth. So all you now is that Damian is hurt. All you can do is text him and beg him to let you know he’s ok. You also want to beg him not to blame you for what happened. In his position, you’d probably blame you.

It occurs to you that, from Damian’s perspective, your decision to keep rolling rather than just cut away looks kind of exploitative. There he was getting beaten down way beyond what was planned and rather than just putting an end to things, you started shifting your cameras around to get a better look. Maybe he’ll assume that call came from above you. But it didn’t. And it was exploitative. You wanted to get that close up look at his battered body. In that moment, you were just following the action and it was exciting.

You retreat to your office and prop your legs up on the desk. If you had a bottle of liquor stored in your desk, this would be the time you brought it out but you’d never thought you’d feel like you needed one. So you sip on the can of ginger ale you grabbed in catering and sit by yourself. You don’t even turn on the light because you only want to concentrate on your phone, to know if Damian’s alright and if he hates you for the fact that your ex attacked him or that you made it into a TV moment.

At some point it goes from waiting for a message to staring at your phone as the battery slowly drains. Nothing is coming. If he’s injured, he’s in no shape to assuage your guilty conscience and if he’s fine… well, maybe it’s best that he does stay away from you.

You scroll randomly through social media and a few apps without really noticing what’s there. What you’re really thinking about is the feeling of Damian’s lips, the way that his long fingers pressed into your back. If that’s the only thing that ever happens between you, it’s a beautiful memory but it’s also a painful hint of what could have followed.

“I can’t tell if you haven’t seen me or if you’re just ignoring me.”

The voice makes you jerk upward, almost tipping yourself off the chair as your feet slide from the desk and hit the floor with a thud. There’s a horrible, guttural chuckle as you try to catch your breath. He can hear it.

“Twice in one day,” he hisses. “You really should cut out caffeine entirely.”

He moves into the office at a deliberate pace, a snake lazily getting into place to trap its prey. You can barely make out his face as he reclines into a chair that barely holds his hulking frame, but you can make out the triumphant sneer.

“I suppose you think you’re very clever with that stunt tonight.”

“Actually yes. I look like the toughest bastard in the company, I turned a ten second hit and run spot into a great segment, and I have a warm-up opponent before I take my title back.” He leans towards you with a leer. “Of course I couldn’t have done it without you.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Brian’s the director. He decides when we cut.”

“Oh sweetheart,” he purrs, “I’ll bet you think you’re a good liar right now. Brian’s thinking about a show that’s packed too tight and keeping everything moving. That bit was done on the fly by someone who knew it was exciting. Someone who was excited by it. It was like some kind of understanding. A partnership. Like magic.”

“Shut your damn mouth. No understanding. No partnership. No magic. Ever. Yes, since you want your ego stroked so badly, it was a compelling bit. My job is to make good television and I went with my gut. I wish I hadn’t. So the next time you feel like seeing how far you can push things without getting fired, I’ll stick to cheering you on from the sidelines.”

“You know, we watched that whole bit back two or three times, Scarlet and me. Couldn’t get over how well it turned out, how ever detail was just exactly the way we envisioned. Even down to where you can see Scarlet in the car. She figured you’d do something to cut her out of the shot.” The hint of a cold laugh creeps into his voice. “She thinks you don’t like her.”

“Right then. Good show all around. And now this conversation is over, so you can just go back to roaming the halls or playing hide-and-go-seek with your girl or whatever the fuck it was that you were up to before you came to harass me.”

You’re surprised when he stands but then he circles around the desk as he speaks.

“Harass? Now that’s uncalled for. I came all the way back here to congratulate you on a job well done.”

He towers over you and as small as you feel, you wish you could be even smaller, small enough that you could just fall to the floor and slip away like a silverfish. You know he’s waiting for you to look up at him but you refuse to give him the satisfaction. It’s a tense minute of this standoff before he huffs exasperatedly and just plucks you out of the chair, setting you on the desk where you’re almost at eye level with him.

“Let me put this another way: I came back here because I couldn’t wait to see you. And you can act all tough and snarky because I don’t care. You know there’s a connection between us as well as I do.”

“You made your choice.”

“I chose someone who understands that strict monogamy isn’t an indicator of a healthy relationship on its own.”

“Oh so if I was fine being part of a harem, you would have stayed with me?”

“One never knows.” He kisses your forehead. “How’s your friend?”

“Why ask? You don’t care.”

“You’re right, I really don’t. But I know it’s bothering you and I care about that.”

“I don’t want to discuss anything about him with you.”

“Aw, has he not called or texted you to tell you that he’s ok? That it’s no problem that your awful ex beat him down and humiliated him on national television?”

“What you did was unsafe and unprofessional. You could have really hurt him.”

“Yes, I could have. Did I?”

You squirm in position as he trails a finger along the shell of your ear and down your neck and under your jaw, pushing your face up so that he can see it full on.

“He hasn’t called, has he? You have no idea if he’s alright.” He drags his lips along your throat. “He needed to stay in his league anyway.”

You’re feeling more than a little intoxicated by the scent of his skin, the traces of cologne, the leather of jacket. You can feel your breath getting choppier and that toxic desire raising its ugly head.

“You don’t get to decide who I do and don’t get involved with. I’m quite capable of attending to my own happiness without your assistance.”

“He won’t make you happy. He might make you feel like you could be a nice girl with a nice relationship and you think that sounds like a great idea because it’s what you think you wanted and couldn’t have with me. But that’s not who you are.”

“Oh please. You’re trying to warn me off him because you’re a complete hypocrite who doesn’t want anyone else playing with your toys. If there’s a man around who makes me feel good about myself, it could undo all that work you put in making me think that the best I could aspire to is to be your side hustle. One of them. Stop that!”

Very delicately, he’s started swirling his fingers around one of your nipples, teasing the bud so that it protrudes from your shirt like a button.

“Stop it.” This time, it comes out as a soft moan as your back arches and pushes you further into his hand. You can’t help it. Your moans rise in volume and he seizes the invitation to caress both of your breasts, gently, the same way he always starts, the way he mows drives you crazy.

“You think he’d be ok with this?” He hisses.

“God you ruin everything,” you snap, pulling back a little.

He leans over and presses his lips to yours, still softly, sweetly. “Is he ok with this?”

He catches your head between his paws as he sees the indignant light flare up again.

“Is he going to be ok when he hears that five minutes after you saw me again, you were on your knees in front of me?”

“He’s not going to hear that, ever. He doesn’t need to know about all my stupid mistakes.”

“I disagree. If he can’t love you when he sees all your flaws, how do you know he loves you at all?”

“He is not going to hear about that.”

“Maybe not from you. But I think he should know.”

“You wouldn’t fucking dare.”

Something sparks in his eyes, that same triumphant look he had before but it’s more. You run through the scenarios in your mind. Of course he’d tell Damian what happened between you. Because Damian would hate that. And he’d retreat to safety because he’d be able to see you for the head case you really are, the one who acted so traumatized by her ex that she wouldn’t let a man touch her and then couldn’t keep her hands off him once they were in the same room. Even if Damian didn’t give up entirely, it would eat away at him, it would be in his head while the two of them sparred in the ring.

“You want to get him riled up like that when you have to fight him? You don’t think that could get a bit dangerous?”

“I can take care of myself. He’s a big boy. He should be able to focus on his work no matter what. If he doesn’t, he could get in an accident.”

“Is that a threat?”

He can’t be serious, except that he is always serious and this is exactly the sort of hideous trap he likes to set for people.

“Forget him. You know your instincts are good. You knew it tonight on air. What happened yesterday happened because you were acting on instinct the same way.”

“I need you to promise me no matter what happens that you’re not going to tell him anything happened between us. Please, just do that for me.”

He pulls you off the desk and turns you around, and you brace your hands against it, thinking that he’s about to bend you over and bring this to it’s awful conclusion. But instead he wraps his arms around you and slides a pen into your hand.

“Here,” he murmurs in your ear, pushing a piece of paper in front of you. “You’re going to write down your address. We’re going to meet there in twenty minutes and then we’ll have a nice discussion about what you’re willing to do to convince me to keep your little secret.”

And there it is. You care about Damian far more than you realized. You can’t maintain any kind of separation with Kevin. And you hate the idea of Damian thinking of you the way you’re thinking about yourself. The trap snaps shut with a sickening finality and you’re the one who’s put yourself in it.

#karrion kross imagine #karrion kross fanfic #killer kross imagine #damian priest imagine #damian priest fanfic #nxt fanfiction #nxt imagine #wrestling fanfiction #wrestling imagine #wayward wrestle writing

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waystobuild-blog · 4 years

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Top 7 CN Shows That Would Work Better in Live Action than PPG

So I think everybody’s talked about why CW Powerpuff Girls doesn’t work, whether or not it’s a real thing or not? Who even knows. But while thinking about how this:

is kinda awful for Powerpuff Girls, I got thinking what shows that this style of a reboot would work for. In which it’s live action, the character is depressed and has sort of resentment towards their childhood now and that sort of thing.

So what are the top 7 shows that I think this

Number 7:

Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends

At Number 7 we have Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends. Seems fitting that we’d start the list with another one of Craig McCracken’s biggest hits. Why do I think the premise of “Oh, life sucks now and I kinda wasted my childhood” would work for Foster’s? For the plain and simple fact that for a few episodes of the show, there was a focus on Mac growing up and whether or not he should leave his friends at Foster’s behind him. You could play a lot with that concept combined with the live action reboot thing. Maybe an older version of the character is dealing with whether or not to let go of both Bloo and the past and move on with his life. Frankie being a young adult during the time of the original show could also be a pretty instrumental character since it was a matter of living there, caring for the friends, having that job and balancing this life with the life that she had outside of the house.

Not quite a coming of age story but a sort of “Hey, my life has gone nowhere and where could I go with this now? Do I keep the friends I loved and cherished as a child or move onto other things? Is there a way to do both?”

Only thing I wouldn’t want though is CGI monstrosity friends. Those would be kinda the worst…

Number 6:

Okay, let’s actually talk about a real superhero show this time around. Or would this count as a superhero show? Well, they certainly do a lot of cool time travelling so I’m gonna say it’s a superhero show. Of course, I mean Time Squad.

Now if you haven’t guessed, I don’t have the most experience with this show but I know enough to think that this is something that could actually work well. I mean, Otto was a kid who was basically running around all over history protecting the balance of time with a stuck up robot and a dude who is a little too into all of this. Imagine if he just sorta did this for all of his childhood and realizing as a young adult that “Crap, I didn’t really have a childhood.” With the dynamic of the squad, the potential to expand the greater organization as a whole and just all the time travel shenanigans that could happen, I don’t see a reason not to do it.

Plus, CW already has Legends of Tomorrow and that’s awesome so even less likely to screw it up if they’ve already got a model to do it off of right?

Number 5:

The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack

Yo ho ho, it is a sailor’s life for me. And in this sailor’s life we’re coming in with Number 5: The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack. Now this is a bit of an odd choice, right? But hear me out.

Flapjack as a child kinda had only Bubbie and K’nuckles as guides for his life. While they mostly spent their lives at Stormalong Harbor, they also constantly spent their lives looking for Candied Island. What if they never stopped looking and eventually, little kid Flapjack is a grown up now and he’s like “Oh wow. I wanted adventure but I was kinda manipulated to follow this creepy old man’s dreams of candy.” I think going heavy and hard on this sort of found family between them would be kinda fun. How K’nuckles wasn’t the best role model and how they’ve still only got each other in this world, that sort of thing.

Plus, a live action Stormalong would be sooooooo cool.

Number 4:

Ben 10

As the old saying goes, it started when an alien device did what it did, stuck itself upon his wrist with secrets that it hid, now he’s got superpowers he’s no ordinary kid, it’s Ben 10.

And unfortunately in CW’s Ben 10, he’s not a kid who just wants to have fun. Nah, he’s got a lot of emotional stuff to deal with and all of that depressing stuff. Isn’t it great? Now I do think that this could work especially if you work it in where maybe Ben enlisted into the plumbers after his summer vacation and it just kinda escalated from there to the point where here he is now.

Say what you will, but at least with Ben 10, we’ve seen it hit a more grounded and emotional place with Ben 10 Alien Force and Ultimate Alien so I don’t believe that this would be too far of a stretch with how that show worked and a lot of people happened to really like those iterations of the show.

Granted, I actually do want a CW styled Ben 10, but less edgy Arrow style and more along the lines of The Flash, but I’d still take this too.

And now before we get into the top 3, let’s get into a few honorable mentions.

First up, we’ve got Steven Universe. Now honestly, this could work really well, the only issue with that is that we’ve kinda already seen this story told and that was with Steven Universe Future. Good stuff and a lot of potential, but we’ve seen it and I don’t think we need to see it again with a live action coat of paint.

Next up there’s Codename Kids Next Door. Honestly, I think the only real spinoff we need for Kids Next Door is Galactic. That’s it. Anything else is unnecessary. Still, with this sort of concept an older KND who has been decommissioned and feels like there’s something missing in their lives that they just don’t understand would be really cool. Although maybe that would work as like a movie or special or somethin’ I don’t know.

And finally for the last of the honorable mentions we’ve got Teen Titans. While I am trying to keep this list to CN Originals, I couldn’t help but bring this one up. How Long is Forever is one of my all-time favorite episodes of the 2003 series so I think seeing a series taking place in that timeline or something similar would be a lot of fun maybe for like a miniseries or something. And honestly, anything’s better than Titans.

With those three out of the way, back to the list.

Number 3:

The Life and Times of Juniper Lee

In a world full of monsters and demons, June is the only one who sees them. This is the Life and Times of Juniper Lee and it makes number three on my list.

Now, like Time Squad, I didn’t watch much of this show. But what I do know about this show is that June is cool and she’s got this whole legacy and destiny by being the newest Te Xaun Ze, which are basically the magical protectors of her town. Only problem, and why I think that this direction for this show would actually be kinda cool, is the whole thing that the Te Xaun Ze is never allowed to leave the town at any point in their lives and oh boy, you could actually go really hard on that with this format since it’s literally built into the show.

Juniper Lee all grown up and just straight up depressed because she’s got the cool powers and grabs all the monsters but everyone around her has moved on in their lives. Friends have gone off to college and started all their lives and she’s got nothing but her family in Orchid Bay. You’d have a story of someone who once was big on their destiny who has accepted it but wishes that it wasn’t theirs anymore. I do know the show dealt with this a bit but with a new continuity and an older version of the character you really could just go in and deep on this.

I stand by that this would actually be pretty cool and kinda want it. Honestly, I like this idea so much that I wasn’t sure whether to put this in the number three or the number two spot, but y’know what? The next show told me a little secret that gave it the edge.

Number 2:

The Secret Saturdays

That’s right, it’s the Secret Saturdays.

Zak Saturday went all around the world with his parents discovering ancient cryptids, protecting the world and everything. He got some cool siblings in Fiskerton, Komodo and Zon. And then to add on top of that that he’s also the reincarnation of an ancient cryptid set to rule and control all the cryptids in the world? Yeah, that’ll do it. Definitely not the type of life he asked for and kid went through a lot because of it especially after losing those powers and apparently getting them back if we’re to count the Omniverse crossover TGIS to be canon.

But having parents like Zak’s, everything with the community of Secret Scientists and not really having many friends his own age or well, his own species will do that.

Exploring Zak and maybe Argost coming back for powers he might not want anymore and learning to embrace his destiny while also trying to patch up the Saturday family would be awesome.

Number 1:

Dexter’s Laboratory

Now while I know we already have a live action Dexter and it was an incredible hit, I- Wait, not the same show.

Ahem, Dexter’s Laboratory makes the top of this list. Partially because of it being PPG’s sister series but also partially because of the whole thing of there’s a lot you could do with Dexter’s character in terms of depression. If someone with such a high intellect were to somehow lose it all or just in some way, never really got forward in life, that would do it. Dexter could be a type of character that’s too stuck inside his own head in order to move forward. Alternatively, maybe Dexter is highly successful but has found there’s something missing in life or something. I dunno.

But whichever way you decide to go with Dexter’s character, you could have Dee Dee be pretty much the opposite of that. Maybe she’s found herself a place in life that she’s content with and Dex doesn’t understand why but wants it. I think going deep on this sort of emotional aspect of his life while also having all sorts of fun crazy science stuff would be a good watch.

All in all, gimme a Dexter’s lab show but we gotta make sure he keeps some form of an accent. No accent is a dealbreaker.

Although, I think that at the end of the day, animation should really just stay animated and that we don’t need to go live action for anything. All of these ideas I’ve presented, I’d of course rather prefer as cartoons with a more balanced tone more than anything but I figured with the announcement of a PPG show, this would be a silly but fun idea to talk about rather than ranting about it like most have. Granted, I’ve got some rants of my own since I still think it’s a bad idea. Haha. But you know how it goes.

At any rate those are all the shows I think would make better CW PPG style reboots than CW PPG. When it comes to the edginess and potential for drama, I feel these shows fit the bill better than the innocent, buttkicking action that was the Powerpuff Girls.

But what do you all think? Do you have any shows in mind that I haven’t mentioned? Do you think I’ve opened Pandora’s Box and given The CW more awful ideas?

Now, this was originally a YouTube video so you can probably see that in the way that this post, especially the ending was written, but I just still don’t really have the energy to edit stuff so have this post instead. It’s something I really wanted to discuss and just decided, hey, why not make it a Tumblr post?

#Cartoon network #PowerPuff Girls #live action remake #cw powerpuff girls #Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends #time squad #The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack #ben 10 #steven universe #steven universe future #kids next door #codename kids next door #codename knd #knd #galactic kids next door #Teen Titans #The Life and Times of Juniper Lee #secret saturdays #dexter's laboratory

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arctimon · 3 years

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Mischief...Managed?

So tomorrow, June 9th, the six-episode series Loki is going to start. Taking place with the alternate continuity Loki that cropped up during Avengers: Endgame, it will follow him as he worked with the Time Variance Authority (TVA, and an actual comic thing as I found out today) as they try to preserve the timeline that I’m sure he’s going to screw up unintentionally. It’s the same length as Falcon and the Winter Soldier (six episodes), but a second second is apparently in pre-production, so it looks like they already plan on getting more out to us for Phase 4. Loki has grown into one of the most popular characters (antagonist or otherwise) in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, so it would make a ton of sense for Marvel to keep him in the spotlight with his own series.

He has also been a character that I’ve taken a passing interest in for the sake of (you guessed it) his visit to Fanfiction Land (TM). But of course, you guys can see the problem, right?

He’s a god. And I’ve been able to get away with putting Avengers and side characters from Marvel into my stories, but this isn’t just some normal character. You’re crossing a pretty big line once someone like Loki gets thrown into the picture.

And I think the gods are interesting characters, just like normal human ones.

The conundrum is how you make them a part of the story without being the story, if that makes any sense. God are...well...gods. And even having one of them in a universe like Big Hero 6 would throw off the status quo. This is a verse where, barring Boss Awesome, didn’t really have superheroes, much less people living in Rainbow Land lording over the people of the universe doing whatever they do.

So I had to draw a little inspiration from San Francisco proper. And that led me to discovering this: The Yggdrasil Urban Wildlife Rescue.

Yggdrasil is a volunteer-led rescue facility in the Oakland-San Francisco area that services, treats, and cares for injured wildlife. They also deal with a lot of squirrels.

Now, who do we know that loves squirrels?

Not the person that dressed up as them or anything. So here’s the Big Hero 6 rub of it: Doreen is Karmi’s friend that she first meets working at Gramercy, Chef Bolton’s restaurant. They meet, they become friends (mostly because Doreen forces her to be), and things progress. After cameoing in Honey Lemon’s e-mail in Part Time (Chapter 5, “Honey Lemon and Fred Are In The Market”), she makes her first actual appearance during Hiro and Karmi’s “friend excursion” in Overnight (Chapter 6, “Candlelit”). Doreen also happens to be the only member of the Beta Team that hasn’t gotten their story yet.

But she will...because it’s going to involve her place of employment:

Time to make a quick stop to her boss's office.

“Mr. Laufeyson! Mr. Laufeyson!”

The tall, lanky man sighed loudly as he turned his chair away from the screen and toward the newcomer. “What is it, dear child? Can't you see I'm busy?” “I know. I just wanted to ask if I can take my break right now.” Doreen clapped her paws together. “My friends are here and I want to give them a tour and allofthecoolfancythingsbeingavolunteerhere-” “What have I said about speaking haphazardly in here?” “...That if I don't breathe, my brain will turn to mush?” “Exactly.” The man slicked back his hair and motioned at the crowds of people on the cameras. “It appears that you have done your rounds, so I don't see why you cannot-”

“Thanks, boss!” Doreen leaned over and gave him a quick bear hug. “I won't go far. I'm going to go meet them in Jotunheim at Mount Winterfire.”

As she hightailed it out the door, the man smoothed out his shirt, returning his gaze back to his work. “That girl is a handful and then some. I do not know how you were able to tolerate her, brother...”

It’s a good thing that he had a regular name that can be reliably used, huh?

For those of you who may be confused by what Doreen is saying, Yggdrasill is the World Tree, connecting the Ten Realms (or Nine Worlds in Norse Mythology) together into one big happy family. I thought it would be nice to make the Realms into areas of the Refuge. For example, Jotunheim has all of the concessions and restaurants. Niffleheim has all of the burrowing creatures. And so on and so forth. The Marvel Wiki has two pictures that I draw inspiration from for the Big Hero 6 version of the Refuge:

It sort of goes into the image that I want; a giant, sprawling lobby with exhibits and rooms, all surrounding by the largest tree anyone has ever seen. It’s not the real Yggdrasil, but that won’t stop certain villains from wanting to claim it as their own. Roots Of Your Labor (the title of Doreen’s story) will start after the set of one-shots that I’m doing right now. I want to get all of those out because the last of them (Artifact) will also touch on some subjects in Doreen’s story, but I’m not going to touch on that just yet. Now...if I could only draw buildings. Or giant trees. (By the way, just like Granville mentions in my stories, the real Yggdrasil is funded entirely on charitable donations, so if you would like to donate, you can go here, if you would like.)

#big hero 6 #big hero 6 the series #doreen green #squirrel girl #yggdrasil #yggdrasil urban wildlife refuge #yumr #mr. laufeyson #loki #donation #big hero 6 fanfiction #karmi #the best of friends

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imagineaworlds · 4 years

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I Love You (Part Twelve) -- Aaron Hotchner

Written By: @desperately-bisexual

Request: None.

Warnings: Murder. Kidnapping. Literally everything Criminal Minds.

Pairing: Aaron Hotchner x Greenaway!Reader

Word Count: 9160

Timeline: Season 2 Episode 15. Morning after part eleven.

In the morning, Hotch opened the trunk to the car and crawled back in beside me to start coaxing me awake. I wasn’t sure of when he had left in the night, or if he stayed to sleep with me but got an early start, and I hadn’t even realized that he closed the trunk while I was asleep so as to ensure that no one disturbed me. He was dressed in a new suit, though, and his hair was combed back, so he had clearly been up for some time. The sun was out, and it seemed like it had been for hours. I couldn’t believe that he let me sleep for that long. He promised that it would only be a few hours and then he’d wake me up and we would get back to work. But it was already late morning and I was just being told that it was time to start working.

I hurried out of the SUV’s trunk and scrambled to my feet. I patted down my hair to get rid of the frizz and adjusted my clothes as well as I could. Hotch crawled back out of the car to tell me what was going on since I clearly had no clue. There was another black SUV parked in front of Tobias Hankle’s house now, along with the Sheriff’s Department. When I asked if the new car was for Garcia, he told me that she was already inside with Morgan, trying to see what they could get off the computer.

Hotch slammed the trunk shut as I stormed back up towards the house. Inside, JJ and Emily were just waking up in the living room, too. They were both sitting upright, but neither of them looked alive enough to have been working for hours on end like Hotch had been. Garcia was sitting in the computer room with Morgan hovering over her shoulder, just like Hotch told me. I walked further into the house and found Gideon sitting at the kitchen table, going through some papers and books he found laying around in the house. He must have had the same thought I did last night that there was something in one of the thousands of papers scattered about where Tobias might have taken Reid.

“What did you guys find?” I heard Hotch ask back down the hall in the computer room.

I retraced my steps back into that room to find Hotch leaning over Garcia’s other shoulder as she started presenting everything she found.

“Well, if I’m being honest, we’re looking at a pretty smart kiddo who got his hands on some very expensive hardware. This setup is absolutely brilliant, but everything on the computers relates to kids shows, online shopping for toys, pictures of cute dogs, and so on. I didn’t find a single hint of evidence that this guy had been watching anything concerning— even the video games he plays are the cutsie ones, not the murder ones you would expect.”

“It would make sense if Tobias’s submissive personality is the one who is tech savvy,” Hotch put the pieces together. I guessed that he had told the team about my suspicions of Tobias’s first personality being a child because everyone nodded like they knew what he was talking about. “But it doesn’t explain how his other personalities can be so violent. Garcia, keep digging. Look for any kind of conflicting searches or odd times when he’s not at his computer. Just keep digging. There has to be something there.”

“There’s not, Hotch,” she insisted. “There’s nothing. Not even the videos he posted to the internet.”

We all furrowed our brows and tilted our heads slightly in confusion. “That doesn’t make sense,” I said. “He would have kept them for Raphael and his third personality. They would have wanted to watch them over and over again to relive their suffering.”

“Well, sugar cakes, I don’t know what to tell you. This guy is completely clean.”

“He must have another computer hiding somewhere. Y/N, take Prentiss with you upstairs to go through all of the bedrooms, see if you can find anything else,” Hotch said to me.

I nodded and headed back to the living room. Emily was on her feet finally, but JJ was still sitting down, staring at the wall opposite her. I wondered if it was really the best idea to keep her at the house and not just send her back to the hotel, but it was Hotch’s choice to keep her on the case. If she wanted to stay and he was letting her, there wasn’t much I could do beyond worry. Emily saw me standing in the doorway, though, and when I made a gesture towards the stairs down the hallway, she caught the hint and joined me.

“Hotch wants us to go through everything upstairs,” I told her on our way up.

“Everything?” she questioned.

“Everything. If we find another computer, we’ve hit the jackpot.”

“Garcia couldn’t find anything on the computers downstairs?”

I shook my head. “Nothing. He has to have everything stored somewhere… It’s just a question of where.”

We started with Tobias’s bedroom, the very same room I had gone into last night to start looking around before Hotch made me go to bed. Emily confirmed my suspicions of Hotch telling the team about what I discovered about Tobias’s submissive personality when she went through the list of things I found in order to find her bearings. I listened as she ran through it all in her own mind while simultaneously walking circles around the room to see if anything would catch my eye suddenly. I walked over to his bookshelf and ran my index finger over all of the different spines while reading through the different titles. He had a lot of what you would expect a middle schooler to have in his bedroom, whether it be from an assignment at school or general interest in reading. What stood out the most, however, was all of the journals on the bottom shelf. They weren’t clearly marked in any way, but as I pulled one out to investigate further, I realized that each of the journals was from a different year of his life. Every single day, every single detail, every little thought he ever had was in those journals.

Emily walked over to the bedside table as a thought occurred to her while in the midst of running through my own evidence with me. She pulled the drawer open and started digging through whatever was in there. I put the journal back where I found it and started circling the room again.

“Hey, look at this,” she told me.

I walked over and looked over her shoulder. She held up a list of Narcotics Anonymous groups in the area. So Mr. Hankle was an addict. It would explain the mental stability and how the different personalities were constantly fighting for power rather than being controlled by the abuser. There was a name, phone number, and an address on the piece of paper— likely a sponsor if Tobias ever ended up taking his NA meeting seriously. The list looked old, though, and Emily seemed to notice it, too. I backed away and scanned the room with my eyes.

“We’ll take any lead we can at this point, though, right?” she asked.

I shrugged. “Something’s always better than nothing. Maybe the man listed on there will know something about how to find Tobias and Spencer.”

“I’ll go visit him later, then.” Emily set the paper down on the table so that we could keep it for evidence when we would leave the room. “I think I’ll take JJ… I think she needs to get out of this house.”

“That’s a good idea.”

Emily knelt down on her knees next to the bed and lifted up the comforter to see if there was anything hiding under the bed. I approached the bedroom wall opposite the bed and started at the art work. The art was just drawings of cars, planes, and trains— similar to Jack’s bedroom wall. If Tobias’s first personality was a kid, then the wallpaper made sense, but there was something off about it. The seam between where the wallpaper started and ended around the room was dirty and worn out, like someone had been constantly touching it and picking at it. I stepped forward and started peeling at the top corner. It came off the wall easily, no pull or stick to it.

“Emily,” I called her attention over. She pushed herself up to her feet and gasped when she saw what I saw. “Honora Patrum Tuum…” I didn’t know what that meant, but Emily was the linguist of our team, and she was standing right there. “Do you recognize it?”

She walked up to my side to get a better look with me. The wall beneath the wallpaper had been covered with the words: Honora Patrum Tuum hundreds of times, all in steady cursive— not like you would see from a kid. Someone else wrote it. Either Raphael or the abuser personality did this. Perhaps the translation would tell us which of the two did it.

Emily handed me something that she found under the bed before pressing her palm to the way. “Honor thy father.”

I looked down at what she had handed me. It was a full pill bottle with Tobias’s name Sharpied onto it. I spun it around to look to look at the label. It was certainly for Tobias Hankle, but that wasn’t what caught my attention. It was medicine to help him with his mental health and to help control the voices in his head. Since it was full, it made sense that he had flown so far off the handles. Not to mention, the expiration date was almost as old as the NA list we found. If he started going to NA, he probably realized that pills just weren’t for him, so rather than find a way to stop abusing them, he just stopped altogether, which was how Raphael and the abuser took over.

“There’s still no computer,” Emily sighed, stepping away from the wall. “Maybe in the father’s room?”

I shrugged again. Our best bet was the father's room, because if there was nothing in there, then we were screwed. We would have to start from square one. The computer wasn’t downstairs, that much we knew, and after just tearing apart Tobias’s extremely clean room and coming up empty handed there too, there was only one lasat place to look and pray to find answers.

I set the pill bottle on top of the NA list on the bedside table then followed Emily into the father’s room. Tobias and his father’s rooms were polar opposites.While Tobias’s room was perfect and neat in every way, his father’s room was a wreck. It looked like a hoarder threw up in there at least three times. Nothing was organized, papers and books were scattered everywhere, and his bed wasn’t made. If there was a computer or any other clue in that room, it would take forever to look. There was really no time to waste, so we got to it.

Most of the junk lying around was meaningless. There were dozens of old newspapers, food wrappers, old and broken computer keyboards, and so on. What was of interest was the bibles stacked neatly on the bookshelf, but there were torn pages and passages scattered all around, just like we had found at both of the crime scenes. For a second I stopped to think about how that could be, and came to the conclusion that one of Tobias’s personalities must have been picking up these pages and passages from the bedroom and picking the ones that made sense for each sin and took them to the crime scenes. Raphael was the archangel personality, he was most likely to do so .

There was no computer, unfortunately. We probably combed through that entire room twice over the span of four hours, and nothing of use actually turned up. Just as I predicted, we were going to be starting back at square one, which just meant that we were much further from finding Reid than any of us would have cared to admit.

“What now?” Emily asked in defeat.

“Take JJ with you and figure out if that name on the NA list is worth anything,” I recommended.

There was a knock at the door. “Find anything?” Hotch asked us, peeking into the room.

Emily and I turned to him. “No computer,” I answered, “but Emily has a lead and wants to take JJ to go take a look.”

“Alright.”

“There’s a bunch of journals in Tobias’s room, and even more in here. It might be worth looking through them to see if we can find anything out about his favorite spots around town, see if there’s anywhere that we could check for Spencer.”

“We’ll start going through those with you while Emily and JJ head out, I guess.”

I nodded. Emily and I filed out of the room after Hotch and followed him down the hall. She went back downstairs to go talk to JJ, meanwhile Hotch and I started collecting all of the journals in Tobias’s room. I carried as many as I could and he grabbed the rest before grabbing a few more from the father’s room. We headed downstairs together and dropped everything on the table in the kitchen where Gideon had just given up on his task of looking through the loose papers laying around the house. I guessed that he didn’t find anything of use, and I was just hoping that wouldn’t be the case with these journals.

I sat down next to Gideon and Hotch headed back into the hallway to grab more journals from upstairs, but we were all stopped in our tracks when we heard Morgan yelling Hotch’s name outside like he found something of interest. Hotch turned around and headed for the front door. Gideon and I stood from the table and chased after to see what was going on.

Both Morgan and Hotch had their guns already out and pointed down at a cellar door that was half covered by leaves. Morgan looked to Hotch for a silent signal, and Hotch gave a small nod up. Morga opened the cellar door and took a step in with his weapon raised and his finger on the trigger. Gideon and I watched from the side, my fingers crossed behind my back that we would find Spencer down there alive. I knew that it sounded far fetched and entirely possible, but I just had to hold out hope, right?

“Tobias Hankle! FBI!” Morgan warned, moving further into the cellar, Hotch close on his tail. “Tobias!”

“They won’t find him down there,” Gideon said to me, already turning back to go into the house.

I didn’t budge, though. I stood my ground and watched the cellar to see who would emerge. There was movement again on the ladder in the cellar, and Hotch came up. Morgan followed shortly after, but there was no Tobias and no Spencer. Just empty hands and defeated faces. I asked them what was down there, and Morgan told me that they found Tobias’s dead father, which wasn’t very helpful to our case. Hotch stepped off to the side to call the sheriff and the coroner so that they could clear the scene down below. I sighed and walked back into the house. Gideon was right, and he knew it, telling by the look on his face that said: “I know I’m right, but I wish I wasn’t.”

Morgan and I sat down with him in the kitchen and each picked up a journal. A few minutes later, Hotch came back in to tell us that the sheriff was on his way with the coroner, but we should start looking through the journals for any clues. He sat down next to Morgan, across from me, and we all started skimming. A thought occurred to me as we were all reading that if Spencer were with us, he would’ve read all of the journals in under two hours and had the whole case solved even before that.

Square one was just as shit as I thought it would be. Tobias and his father had written hundreds of journals, each depicting every hour of every day for years. I was taking notes on anything I found slightly interesting, but for the most part, it was all religious ramblings; and for Tobias, there were many entries about his father’s “punishments”, and each of them were described in graphic detail. I couldn’t believe that anyone would do those things to their own children… One would have to be the worst kind of deranged monster to think that any of those “punishments” were alright.

While we were all reading, the coroner was in the cellar, taking a look at the body. We knew that it wasn’t ideal for him to look at the body down there, but we needed answers fast, and we couldn’t afford to wait around for them to drive an hour into the city just to tell us the time of death. It, unfortunately, had to be then and there. Few hours later, the sheriff came into the house with his hat off to tell us what the coroner found before leaving to finish up some more examinations and tests.

Tobias Hankle’s father had been dead for about six months when Morgan and Hotch found him. Something about that time frame struck me as odd and I started sifting through my notes to find what I was looking for. Six months ago, in Tobias’s journal, he went for two weeks without writing anything. And then suddenly it started back up again. Something happened during those two weeks. Tobias’s stressor was his father’s death, and his father abused him, and Raphael always wrote for Tobias when he was the forward personality, and—

“I’ve got it,” Hotch said with a eureka-moment-like tone. He started reading from one of Tobias’s journals, “‘Father is sick. He wants me to put him down, but I say that the bible tells us we shall not kill, and he tells me to honor thy father. I don’t know what to do.’ That was on December 6th. Two months ago. Tobias’s father had already been dead for four months according to what the sheriff just told us.”

The bedrooms, the journals, the behaviors, and the crime scenes all pointed to one thing: Tobias’s abuser personality was keeping him in check. Outside of his delusions, Tobias was actually abused by his father, and now Hotch was claiming that two months ago, Tobias was still writing about his father as if he never left. And maybe that was the case… technically. Tobias’s father died, but lived on as Tobias’s third personality: the abuser. Tobias was the submissive, Raphael was the dominant, and Tobias’s father was the abuser. That was why they were so scared of him— That was why he took over the commentary in the first video. And that was why he could make Tobias do all of those horrible things.

“Garcia!” I called, scrambling to my feet. I nearly tripped over the journals we had laying on the floor as I ran out of the kitchen and across the hall into the computer room. She spun around in her chair, putting down her nail filer before I could catch her using it. “Try logging into the computers as Tobias’s father— Charles Hankle.”

She scrunched her brows, “Didn’t the killings just start, and he’s been dead for six months?”

“I know. I know. I just have a hunch about something. Humor me?”

She shrugged, figuring that there was no harm in trying. “Sure thing, buttercup.”

Originally, we thought that there had to be another computer somewhere in the house that would have all of the videos and concerning evidence on it, because Tobias’s computers didn’t seem to have anything bad on them— but that was because Tobias didn’t like those things. His father did. His father was the psychopath, he was the reason they were killing, and he was the one who would want to watch the videos again. If there wasn’t another computer, it was because they would just log into different accounts.

“Y/N?” Hotch questioned as the three men came into the computer room. “What is it?”

I turned to them, excitement coursing through my veins. “Charles Hankle is the abuser personality. Think about it, Tobias’s room upstairs is in tip-top shape because his father would beat him if anything were out of place— but the Latin on the wall was written by an adult, telling by the handwriting and the use of cursive, and also the fact that Tobias wouldn’t have done that. His father did it. His walls say “Honor thy father” in Latin, and that was Charles’s argument when he wanted Tobias to kill himself, taking all three personalities down with him. When Tobias finally refused, that’s when the stalkings started, and later the killings.”

“I got it,” Garcia cheered quietly. We all changed our focus to the computers, which were all playing different videos of murder, rape, bombings, Church sermons, and so on. “Holy moly.”

“We need to start profiling Charles. He’s likely the one who decided where they took Reid,” Hotch said.

“We’ve got a problem,” the sheriff told us, walking into the room while still pocketing his phone. “I just got a call from the station. A local electronics store was robbed last night. The suspect took one camera, one tripod, couple of SD cards, four computers, and a satellite.”

“Sounds like everything this guy would need to start up his operation again.” Garcia commented, shutting of all of the horrific videos playing on the computers. “Wait—” The screens went entirely black, and I figured that she had just shut them off, but when she seemed shocked, I knew something was wrong. “Oh, my god…” she whispered under her breath as the computers all turned back on remotely and started playing one video.

I gasped as I saw Spencer sitting in front of a camera, tied to a chair, his face all bloodied and beaten. He looked tired and defeated, his head hanging low and his shoulder drooping. His wrists were bound together, his feet tied to the chair beneath him, and his mouth gagged by a cloth. Garcia started typing as fast as she could, knowing that we would want answers just as much as she did.

“Garcia, can you track this?” Hotch asked calmly, but he was keeping his fingers close to his lips, which was a telltale sign that he was silently panicking.

She shook her head, “He’s streaming this from his home computer. It’s just for us. I won’t be able to find him.”

Spencer raised his head as someone walked into the room with him. Tobias stepped in front of the camera and pulled the gag from Reid’s mouth. “Your friends are watching,” Tobias told Reid, pointing to the camera. Reid made eye contact with the lense, which was virtually us, though he didn’t know it. “See those vermin?” he pointed to something behind the camera. Reid nodded shortly. “Choose one of them to die.” Reid shook his head this time. “Do it,” Tobias violently pinched Reid’s face in his hand. “Do it, boy!”

“That’s Charles,” I whispered, pointing at the screen. “Neither Tobias nor Raphael would lash out like that.”

“I won’t choose who gets slaughtered and have you leave their remains behind like a poacher,” Reid hissed bravely in Charles’s face.

Charles let go of Reid, “Choose one to die or they all die.”

“I’ll… I’ll choose who lives,” Reid compromised. He swallowed hard and looked at the camera again before looking at whatever was behind. “Far… Far right screen…”

Charles grinned, knowing he had won this round. “Marilyn David. 4913 Walnut Creek Road.”

Garcia was typing a mile a minute to pull up information about Marilyn David. Gideon pulled out his phone and started dialing the number Garcia found for Ms. David. “Marilyn David. This is Agent Jason Gideon with the FBI. If there’s a computer open near you, I need you to close it right now— Please, ma’am, just do it. We’ll be sending another agent over to make sure you’re alright.” He hung up as fast as he could without bothering to give her any answers as to what was going on.

“You’ve done your part for now,” Charles said, moving towards the camera. “Now it’s my turn.” And the stream cut out.

“So now what?” the sheriff shrugged. “Wait for a 911 call and hope we get there in time?”

Morgan huffed, spun around on his heels, and stormed out of the room. He hit the wall with a closed fist on his way out of the room, and I chased after him to make sure that he was alright. He kicked one of the wooden chairs in the living room, sending it over onto its side, and then he just kept kicking at it. I ran over to him, grabbed his shoulders, and pulled him away from the chair. He stumbled back before trying to catch his balance and push off of me.

“You can’t do this right now,” I told him, my eyes following him as he went to kick the chair out of the way one last time, then sat down on the couch angrily. “You need to keep a cool head if we’re going to find Spencer.”

His foot was tapping against the wood floor as anxiety coursed through him. “They shouldn’t’ve split up,” he finally admitted. “They knew better… If they knew Hankle was the Unsub, they should have stayed together.”

“No one could have known. This isn’t anyone’s fault, Morgan, just like we told Hotch yesterday. We can’t keep blaming ourselves when it’s not going to help anything.”

“Reid is out there right now, being held against his will and tortured, and you want to talk to me about calming down? How am I supposed to do that when one of us is out there, waiting for our help?!”

“It’s valid to worry,” I told him as I sat down beside him. “We’re all worried, and we’re all doing the best we can to find him. But if we lose our minds, who’s going to help him, huh?”

“We should be out there right now, knocking on every door.”

“That won’t help and you know that.”

“We have to do something! We can’t just sit around and wait for something bad to happen—”

“We just got the 911 call,” Hotch informed us from the doorway. “Someone has to stay with Garcia and the journals. There has to be something else of use in them.”

“We’ll stay,” I offered. Morgan looked at me with his jaw practically on the floor. “You’re not thinking clearly enough to go out there,” I whispered to him. “Do you trust me?” He nodded. “We’ll stay here with JJ,” I turned back to Hotch. JJ wasn’t going anywhere either. She needed to get out of the house, and she did with Emily for a bit, but she didn’t need to go to another crime scene quite yet; not after what happened in the barn last night, at least. Hotch nodded and left to go meet Gideon and Emily in the car. “Let’s see if Garcia can get back into Charles’s computer,” I patted Morgan’s knee before pushing myself off the couch. I held my hand out for him and he stared at me for a fleeting moment before taking my offer. I pulled him to his feet. “Reid’s a smart kid. He can handle himself. I promise.”

“I’ll believe you when I see it for myself.”

Garcia, Morgan, and I were all sitting in the computer room together while she worked on searching the rest of Charles’s computer and we read through more journals. The rest of the team had been gone for hours at the crime scene, and the sun was already down, bringing another day without Reid to an end. Reid’s chances of survival fell significantly as the sun set and the moon rose. We all knew it, JJ most of all as she worked quietly on her own in another room. She was still beating herself up for not being with Reid, and I wished that there was something I could have done to ease her conscience, but I also knew that she just wouldn’t get over it until this was done and we were all home safe.

Around hour four of sitting uncomfortable in that stuffy computer room, Morgan accidentally let out a yawn. He hadn’t slept in days, and even though I was worried about him and I wanted to tell him to get some rest, I knew that he wouldn’t listen. Even if I begged and pleaded, or even decided to drag him onto the couch myself, he’d find a reason to not go to sleep. It wasn’t worth wasting my time to try and argue with him. And even though we had all heard him yawn and we were all reminded of how tired everyone was, he dodged Garcia’s attempt to send him to bed by saying that he was going to make some coffee, and offered us some. Garcia quietly passed on his offer, but I took him up on it before returning my gaze to the journal in my lap.

A few minutes later, Morgan came back and handed me my coffee before silently turning to leave again. When I asked where he was going, he told me that he needed some air and some time alone to think. JJ came in a few minutes after that. She looked upset, and I pieced together that they must have had an argument of some sort in order to shake both of them like that. We didn’t like fighting amongst each other. We all loved one another like family, and we knew that fighting like children was just a waste of time when we could always be spending that energy on solving the cases. But whenever emotions were high and we didn’t get enough sleep, tension always seemed to build in the team. Morgan had been trying to put blame on different people all day because he was so stressed about Spencer, and JJ had been blaming herself anyhow. It wouldn’t have surprised me if one of them told me that their argument was about who to blame and why.

JJ sat in Morgan's seat, “I want to watch the newest video.”

Garcia and I turned to her. We hadn’t even watched it yet. We were waiting to hear from the team about the crime scene before watching it— but also because Garcia wasn’t sure if she wanted to watch it yet, and Morgan was still battling with the fact that Reid had to make the choice of who had to live and who had to die. That shouldn’t have had to happen in the first place, but watching the video was just going to be the nail in the coffin for everyone’s already shitty moods. But JJ wanted to see it for some reason, and I deduced that it had to do with whatever she and Morgan talked about.

“If I can’t watch this video and stomach it, then I have no right to be in the field,” JJ admitted.

“It’s not a competition, JJ,” Garcia said.

“I know. I just need to see it. Please.”

Garcia brought up the video, but she didn’t play it yet. She stepped away before she could start it because she knew she didn’t want to watch with us. If JJ wanted to, and I was willing to stay, then that was our choice. But she wasn’t going to stick around, and I couldn’t blame her, honestly.

I pressed the spacebar and the video began. There was a couple sitting on their couch in their home. From what I could tell, the computer was sitting on a table in the corner, just out of their field of view. The man stood and left to get something off camera while the woman got more comfortable on the couch. After a minute or so, the man returned with a bottle of wine and a corkscrew. The woman smiled at him as he sat down beside her. Tobias snuck into the living, wearing all black, and covering his head with a hood. He approached the back of the couch and immediately slashed the man’s throat. The woman screamed and tried to get away, but Tobias grabbed her arm and forced her back on the couch.

Headlights from the road outside of Tobias’s home turned towards the room we were sitting in as the team came back from the new crime scene. I could hear Morgan outside asking Hotch about what they found after the car turned off, but my gaze didn’t pull away from the computer screens. Tobias grabbed the female victim by her hair and started dragging her over to the computer in her living room. She sobbed and slapped his hands in an attempt to make him release his grip, but he didn’t let up. He commanded her to stare into the camera. The front door of Tobias’s home opened just as he slit the female victim’s throat in the video.

JJ and I jumped in our seats before turning to the hallway behind us. Hotch and Morgan walked past while discussing the new evidence. Gideon came into the computer room to see what progress we had made over the past five hours or so. There wasn’t much to tell, though, besides the fact that Tobias had posted the video to the internet. To everyone’s disappointment, we hadn’t made much practice since Tobias originally took Reid, and it was clearly starting to annoy everyone.

Gideon asked me to play the video for him after I told him about it, and I obliged. JJ stiffened in her seat as the video started over. She had to know that she didn’t have to watch it again, right? I didn’t understand why she was trying to push herself and challenge everyone, even though we didn’t think any less of her like she only assumed. Watching it a second time wasn’t going to prove anything, and it certainly wasn’t any easier to watch.

As Tobias sliced the male victim’s throat open, the video cut out. Gideon asked what happened and I insisted that I wasn’t sure. I stood and hurried to the living room in search of Gideon’s technical aid. As I started to explain to her that the video turned off half way through Gideon’s examination of it, we heard JJ yell for the rest of the team in a panic. Everyone ran to the computer room. Gideon was sitting in my seat, JJ in hers, and Garcia hurried to her own right in front of the keyboard. I stumbled a few steps in the room as I realized what JJ had called us in for. The video of the murders had cut out because Tobias took control of the computers again, and now he was streaming live footage of Reid again.

“Confess your sins,” Charles said. I knew it was him and not Tobias or Raphael because of the voice. Charles was more baritone and Southern, like how a stereotypical Southern priest would sound.

“I haven’t done anything,” Reid responded calmly. Charles raised his fist into the air before landing a punch of Spener’s jaw. Reid moved with the punch to avoid more damage and pain. Smart kid. “I haven’t done anything!” he yelled more desperately this time. Charles punched him again. “Please… Tobias, help me…”

“He can’t help you. He’s weak.”

Garcia was shaking at the keyboard, trying to find a new way to hack into Tobias’s set up. I believed in her. I knew she could do it, even when she was panicking like we all were. She just needed some more time.

Charles slapped Reid around a few more times before grabbing his long hair and pulling on it to make him sit up straight. “Confess. Your. Sins.”

When Reid refused again, Charles punched him straight in the nose, so hard that it sent Reid and his chair flying backwards. With Reid’s wrists tied together, he couldn’t protect his body from the impact, so he had the wind knocked out of him. He gasped for air desperately, but he couldn’t get enough oxygen in the short breaths that he could manage. He started convulsing on the ground and foaming at the mouth. What had Tobias been doing to him when the camera was off? We were missing something crucial.

“He’s killing him,” Garcia cried, taking her hands off the keyboard after failing to find them again.

Spencer suddenly stopped moving and breathing. Charles grinned widely before stepping out of the room they were in. The video didn’t end, though. We just had to watch as Reid laid… unconscious… or dead? I don’t think any of us were sure. Either way, if he wasn’t dead yet, he would be unless someone helped him soon. Even if we wanted to, we wouldn’t be able to save him on time while he was like that. If, by some miracle, we happened to find them at that exact moment, by the time we got to wherever they were hiding, it would be too late. Charles wanted us to know that, and we wanted us to watch our friend die.

JJ turned away from the computers and hid her face in her hands, Morgan punched the wall as hard as he could again, Garcia cried harder as Gideon put a comforting hand on her shoulder, and Emily, Hotch, and I just watched in shock. It was going to end soon if it hadn’t already. The son of a bitch had won.

Charles suddenly hurried back into the room and crouched beside Reid. He put his ear up against Reid’s chest to listen for a heartbeat before sitting back up and putting his hands on Reid to start performing CPR. I mumbled to myself the question of what the hell Charles was doing. Why would he want to punish and kill Reid, only to come back moments later to help him? Because it wasn’t Charles… It had to have been Raphael or Tobias. They would have been the only ones who would care enough to help Reid. And then I remembered how Reid begged for Tobias’s help… Tobias had been helping Reid while the camera was off. They had befriended each other. That was why he was trying to resuscitate him.

Reid gasped for air and woke back up. Garcia gasped and sighed with relief. Everyone else released the tension in their shoulders, too— myself included.

“Wait,” Emily said. We all turned our ears to her, but kept watching the stream. “When were the last murders called in by Tobias?”

“9:04,” Hotch answered.

“And when was the video of the murders posted?”

Garcia typed away at the computers for a moment. “9:23.”

“That’s only a nineteen minute difference,” I said. “Garcia how long would it take to upload that video?”

“Two to three minutes, maybe.”

“Let’s call it two,” Morgan said. “That means that, even if you’re going approximately 60 miles per hour, Tobias would have to be within a 19 mile radius of the crime scene.”

“Garcia, pull it up on a map,” Hotch ordered. She pulled up a map of the area, then narrowed it down to the nineteen mile radius. “JJ, call the sheriff and tell him to put roadblocks surrounding that area.”

JJ nodded and ran out of the room to go call the Sheriff's Department.

“Look,” Gideon pointed back to the stream of Spencer.

Tobias was helping Spencer back up into the chair. Reid coughed and wiped the spit around his mouth away with his sleeve. “Thank you, Tobias,” he whispered breathlessly.

“You came back to life…” It wasn’t Tobias’s young, child-like voice that spoke, nor was it Charles’s deep, commanding Southern accent. It was something more proper.

“Raphael…” Reid identified him. “Thank you.”

“I didn’t do anything. Someone brought you back from the dead. Something brought you back.”

“It was CPR. Science. Just science, Raphael. Nothing else—”

“How many members are on your field team?”

Excluding Garcia, since she hardly ever came out into the field with us, our team included: Hotch, Gideon, Morgan, JJ, Emily, Reid, and me. Seven of us. Seven archangels— including Raphael— vs the seven angels of death. Raphael was one of the archangels, he would know that we weren’t angels, but his delusion made him believe that we were the seven angels of death, and that was how Reid was brought back to life.

“Tell me who you serve,” Raphael demanded.

“I serve you,” Reid answered, calm again.

“Then choose one to die.”

“What?”

“Your team members. Choose one to die.”

My eyes raced between the entire team to see what they were thinking. They all just looked shocked. None of them seemed to be thinking of ways to help… And neither was I, I supposed. What else were we supposed to do?

“Kill me. I choose me.”

“No. You’ve proven to me that you can’t die. Satan favors you. Choose one of the others. Now.”

“No.”

Raphael pulled out a pistol from his jacket and pointed it at Reid’s forehead. Everyone was tense again. Charles wanted Reid to suffer when he originally tried to kill him, but Raphael was only trying to do one thing: prove that the archangels were better than the angels of death. In his mind, it didn’t matter if he shot Reid, because he would come back to life and they would start over. But from where we stood, we knew that wasn’t the case. If Raphael were to have shot Reid, he’d die immediately.

“Choose one of them.”

“No,” Reid answered again.

Raphael pressed on the trigger, and I jumped in response, but nothing fired from the weapon. My brows furrowed in confusion. Raphael pulled the hammer of the pistol back with his thumb and demanded once again that Reid choose. When Reid refused again, Raphael tried to shoot again, but nothing happened. They were playing Russian Roulette. Reid was one of the smartest people on the planet. He knew nearly everything about the world— but had a proclivity for science and math. Russian Roulette was technically a game of chance, yes, but Reid knew the odds and statistics of the game. He knew how to push his luck. So when Raphael asked again and Reid denied again, I didn’t jump when Raphael pulled the trigger again.

“Alright, fine,” Reid gave in. He found it. “I’ll choose.” He lowered his head in defeat, “I choose… Aaron Hotchner.”

I let out the breath that had been building in my chest and instinctively grabbed Hotch’s hand from his side. Hotch squeezed my hand reassuringly. Why Hotch? Why? They had been through so much together. He could have picked me. We weren’t close. He had no reason to like me— In fact, he actually disliked that I challenged him so often since he was Mr. Know-It-All and always had to be right. He could have picked me, but he chose Hotch… Why…

“He’s a classic narcissistic,” Reid began explaining, “he thinks that he’s better than everyone else, and he treats Y/N better than everyone else on the team, which puts us all in danger. Genesis 23:4— ‘Let him not deceive himself and trust in emptiness, vanity, falseness, and futility, for these shall be his recompense.’ That’s why I choose him.”

Hotch let go of my hand and stormed out of the room. Everyone watched him leave, but I was the only one who chased after him. “Aaron, you can’t take what he said to heart. He’s just doing what he has to do to survive.”

Hotch turned away from the bookshelf in the family room in order to face me. He was holding a bible in his hands, skimming through a few pages. “I don’t care about that,” he insisted to me. “I know that he had to give an answer.”

“You’ll be fine here with all of us. Nothing’s going to happen—”

Hotch looked up from the bible as the rest of the team came in. “I’m not a narcissist.”

“We know, Hotch,” Gideon responded. “He’s not in his right mind—”

“No. Stop. Listen. Alright, everybody, right now, what’s my worst quality?”

We all glanced at each other silently. Did he really want to know? And why? It would just hurt his feelings. Spencer had already hit the nail on the head just a minute ago, why would Hotch be searching for more answers?

When no one answered his question, Hotch spoke up again, “Fine, I’ll start. I have no sense of humor.”

Only sometimes, I thought to myself. But that was because I knew him better than anyone else on the team. He liked to smile around me and we liked to have fun together, but our home life was very different from our work personalities.

Everyone took Hotch’s first words as their chance to speak up about what they disliked about him. JJ said that he was always too bossy and he felt like a bully, Morgan said that he acted like a drill sergeant, Emily said that he never trusted women as much as men— which… good on her for bringing it up.

“Right. So I’m all of those things, but none of you said that I ever put myself before the team, because I don’t. There was a time when Reid and I argued about the definition of classic narcissism, and he knew that I would remember that. Genesis 23:4— ‘I am a stranger and a sojourner with you. Give me property, forbear a place among you that I may bury my dead out of my sight.’ He wouldn’t get it wrong unless it was on purpose.”

Reid quoted something about how narcissism was a sin in the eyes of God, knowing that it would blind Raphael and catch Hotch’s attention. The real quote, however, was about cemeteries and how to properly dispose of the dead because they’re impure. Reid was telling us that he was being held in a cemetery. I should have seen it sooner. Earlier, during the first stream, Spencer said something that I should’ve caught. He said that he wouldn’t choose one of the four potential victims Charles had been eyeing to be slaughtered and have their remains left behind. His voice had fluctuated on the words “slaughtered” and “remains”. Originally, I just thought that it was because he was nervous, but I realized that he was trying to tell us before and we didn’t notice.

“Garcia!” I called, running back towards the computer room. “Look for slaughterhouses inside that radius.”

When Emily and I first met with the coroner to examine the first two victims, we all noticed that they had been killed in a way similar to animals in slaughterhouses, and we really thought that it was a dead end because there were so many possibilities, it would have been impossible to narrow it down to one slaughterhouse in Georgia where Tobias had been before. But now we had a smaller area to search, and we had something else: the cemetery. It had to be a family property if there was a cemetery on the farm grounds.

“Found it. Marshall Perish,” Garcia said.

“Tobias said something in his journals about staying clean and keeping away from Marshall,” Morgan said. “That has to be it.”

We all hurried to the cars outside while Garcia sent us the address of the plantation. With six of us going there, and seven of us coming back, we needed two cars. Gideon drove on with JJ and Emily riding with him, and Hotch drove me and Morgan. Hotch led the way, speeding down the dirt road and for the highway. It was dark out, but the headlights and the flashing police lights lit the way.

Hotch was quiet during the drive, and Morgan cleared his throat and shifted in the back seat uncomfortably. He had asked them all to tell him the truth about himself, and they did just to help him prove his point, but now everyone seemed on edge because of it. It isn’t easy to look your friends in the eyes and tell them what their worst qualities are, then move on like nothing happened. I hoped that Hotch knew that he wasn’t really those things all of the time. Just because the work personality he had built for himself painted this image of him being a constant hardass, it didn’t mean that was who he was. I knew that he liked to smile, laugh, joke around, tease, have fun. He liked to hold my hand, kiss me, hold me, tell me how much he loved me every chance he could get. I knew that he was a good dad who would do anything to give Jack the best childhood he could possibly have. He liked to tell me not to give Jack too much attention or gifts, but he liked it even more when I would do it anyhow. It made him happy that I was happy, and that Jack liked me. That was who Hotch really was.

The plantation was practically abandoned when we arrived. There was a farmhouse on the front of the property where the family lived, but everything beyond that had been neglected by them, including the slaughterhouse out in the woods. We sped up to the decaying building and all jumped out of the cars.

I adjusted my vest slightly by pulling it down from my neck before following Hotch and Morgan inside. Reid wasn’t there. The chair that he had been tied to, the camera that was recording him, and all of the computers Tobias stole were all there, but not Dr. Spencer Reid. I cursed under my breath and lowered my weapon.

Hotch told us that there was no time to waste, that they had to be hiding out in the woods somewhere, and we needed to go looking for them. Morgan and I broke off together to head towards the left, Gideon and Hotch paired up to go towards the middle path, and JJ and Emily went towards the side. The cemetery was just out in front of us, where Hotch and Gideon would likely end up meeting Morgan and I. We decided to start there, to see if they were trying to hide behind the gravestones or the trees that guarded the cemetery.

Suddenly, a gunshot echoed throughout the woods, sending the wild animals nearby into a frenzy. Morgan dashed before I could towards the sound of the gunshot. I was hot on his heels, trying to keep my flashlight up for him so that he wouldn’t trip on something while running. Hotch called Reid’s name from just right of where we were running, and I knew that they were all close to us.

We found the cemetery. Morgan jumped the gate after noticing that Hotch was struggling to get the gate open. Just as the rest of us were about to jump it, too, Hotch kicked the gate open forcefully, and we all filed into the cemetery with our weapons and flashlights raised.

“There they are!” Hotch yelled, aiming his flashlight at the opposite end of the gated area. “Reid!” Hotch hopped over a short gravestone before holstering his weapon. Spencer was crouched over Tobias’s dead body. “Reid,” Hotch repeated with relief. He helped Spencer to his feet. “You okay?”

“I knew you’d understand,” Reid croaked before throwing his arms around Hotch.

Hotch patted Spencer’s back, “Of course I would. You did the smart thing, kid.”

They parted and before anything else could happen, Morgan grabbed Reid’s shoulder and turned him around before engulfing him in a hug. We all watched as they swayed slightly, Morgan holding Reid as closely as he could without breaking him. Hotch bowed his head and silently made his way out of the cemetery and towards the cars. My eyes followed him as JJ went to hug Reid now. I caught Gideon watching me and he stared at me like he was daring me to not go after Hotch, but I couldn’t help myself.

Hotch was leaning against the grill of the car, his arms crossed over his chest, and a frown glued to his face. I walked over to him silently and leaned against the car, too. “You know that I love you, right?” I asked him, both of us staring straight ahead. He hummed a “yes” while nodding slightly. “You’re not a bully.”

“I’m fine,” he insisted.

I wanted to tell him everything that I loved about him, everything I had thought about in the car, but finding the right words to tell him seemed impossible. There was so much I wanted to say, and there weren’t enough words or ways to go about it. It didn’t matter if he had the toughest skin on planet Earth, he couldn’t actually stand there and tell me that his team telling him that he treats them like shit didn’t bother him. I knew him better than that. But I was failing to find the right words to make it clear to him that he was the best person I had ever met in my life. There was no way I could have ever loved him if he weren’t the amazing, kind, funny, and perfect man I knew. He was a great leader, partner, father, and person overall. The entire team respected him, and they knew that he always meant well when he was being too much of a hard ass. But I knew that wouldn’t ease the feeling of slight betrayal that was grabbing a hold of his heart as we leaned against the car together.

I reached out to grab one of his hands and uncrossed his arms. There was one way to tell him everything I meant. One way that would stick and actually matter. One thing that would only matter most to him. One way to make him forget about what the team said and just focus on the positive. One thing that I was always dying to tell him during every second of every day.

I grabbed his chin between my fingers like he always did for me when he wanted my attention, “I love you more than anything.”

His eyes softened, his shoulders relaxed, and his frown faded before turning into the slightest of smiles. “I love you, too.”

#criminal minds #criminal minds imagine #criminal minds imagines #criminal minds fanfiction #criminal minds fanfic #aaron hotchner #aaron hotch x reader #aaron hotch hotchner #aaron hotchner imagine #aaron hotchner imagines

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wepreeshjohnegbert · 4 years

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The Complete Tragedy of Lord Egbert

Your feedback has inspired me to craft an entire story for Evil!John so here you go.

After the game, John Egbert tries to go back to living a normal life, only to discover that he can’t. He’s literally worshipped everywhere he goes, so just living in a normal house is out. He tries to distract himself from that by hanging out with his friends, but he can’t help but feel like he’s third wheeling. Between Rose and Kanaya being all lovey dovey and Dave and Karkat always being this fucking close to just kissing already, John can’t help but feel awkward. Even Jade never seems to fully focus on him. He figures he shouldn’t hold it against them and decides to make new friends instead.

This similarly doesn’t work out. Vriska is now focusing on patching things up with Terezi, while the other trolls just show no interest in him. The Alpha kids are similarly focused on fixing their relationship kerfuffle, not to mention Jane’s Dad tends to bring up painful memories, causing John to spontaneously leave. John eventually decides to isolate himself, figuring that his friends will visit once everything is in order, but it never happens. He’s still invited to parties and such, but he’s always just… there. He’s hardly even acknowledged or talked too. No one pays him any mind.

Constantly neglected, John is just left to fester. His old life and everything he enjoyed doing is gone. Gone. Gone forever. Every second of every day forces that thought to sink in. He’s left staring out the window and pondering. Everyone else got a happy ending, why not him?

He decides to fix it. Using his Retcon Powers to mess with Doomed Timelines, he tries to see if it’s possible to get a happy ending. It is…. but not without screwing over someone else. There are timelines where he and his friends talk daily, only for most of the trolls to die. Timelines where he ends up friends with everyone, only for Dave or Dirk to end up neglected. Each time he thinks “No, I can’t do that. That wouldn’t be fair to them.” He eventually settles on trying to find a way for everyone to get a happy ending and goes scouring Paradox Space for an answer. The conclusion he comes to is that he needs to control the narrative so that everyone lives happily ever after and begins planning to accomplish just that. It’s only after studying as much of Paradox Space as possible that he puts his plan into action.

Knowing that his friends wouldn’t approve of his upcoming actions, he decides to distract them to keep them out of the way. He just occasionally sinks a city or obliterates and a planet with a storm to keep their attention. It’s okay, once he controls the narrative, he’ll just undo it. No harm done. In the meantime, he travels across the multiverse gathering as many heroes as he can. Whether they be random players (“Hey, I’m John Egbert, Hero of the Multiverse! And I need your help!”) Or alternate versions of himself (“I’m you from the future! No time to explain! Follow me to the secret basevand join the resistance against evil!”). He also begins gathering up some of Caliborn’s followers. He claims to be Lord English, having possessed John as a last ditch effort to survive his death. In order to never be defeated again, he needs his followers to gather up various JuJu artifacts to increase his power.

Eventually, he sends his Heroes against a Lord of Breath, claiming him to be a threat to the Multiverse. They defeat him and lock him away, giving John opportunity to use his JuJus to absorb his powers. With newfound power, John adopts the moniker Lord Egbert, mostly as a front to appease the LE worshippers. Lord Egbert promises his newly dubbed Egbert Armada that he’ll gather them all again once another threat to the Multiverse is found and then orders LE’s apostles too gather more JuJus. He repeats the process continuously, absorbing the powers of several Lords and Muses with intent on becoming the most powerful being in Paradox Space, strong enough to eventually bend the narrative to his will.

Eventually, some of the more cosmically aware players in his session, such as Aradia, Terezi, and Rose, become increasingly aware of something related to breath becoming dangerously powerful in the outskirts of Paradox Space. As such, John needs to step up his distractions. He find the ancient Beforan Empire and starts pulling strings. Playing to Beforan Feferi’s ego, claiming she’s the only one “kind” and “wise” enough to show humans the way. Meanwhile, he frames Beforus for the atrocities he commited in the Alpha Timeline and leaves them to sort things out. After all, Beforus is huge, but it’s no Alternia. They’ll only last so long against a bunch of God Tiers.

Eventually, Dave figures out something is wrong with John and confronts him, leading to a similar scene to the one you dipected. Dave travels back in time to meet up with John before he starts slipping into his funk and the two begin gathering up players from past, present, and future to defeat Lord Egbert. Will they succeed? Or will Lord Egbert get his Happily Ever After?

Personality wise, I’d compare Lord Egbert to Hank Scorpio from The Simpsons. Kindly chatting up a friend and colleague one minute, blowing up bridges the next. Look up the episode “You Only Move Twice” or even just Hank Scorpio to see what I’m talking about. He’s hilarious, friendly, and utterly ruthless in equal measure.

In conclusion, Homestuck^2 would’ve been better if John Egbert was the main villain, thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

—

Mod Sky: DUDE OH MY GOSH I NEED THIS TO BE A THING I NEED THIS TO BE A THING - FANFIC OR COMIC OR OTHER, I LOVE IT!

Dude.. christ, this is absolutely amazing! Not only did you give a method to HOW he’d to ultimate BUT you also gave him a strategy to do it all!! You also gave him a sad backstory AND good..ish morals to stand by, dude you achieved it ALL here! I cannot stop going back and rereading things, gosh.. Like the comparison to Hank is amazing, at first I couldn’t remember so I had to look it up but as soon as I saw the dude’s face I knew and gosh dang it dude you’re correct.

There’s so much I can say but I’m gonna be honest; I want John to win. I’m not biased! As much as I love John and just automatically want him to succeed, I want him to win because I want a bad guy to win for once, they have their reasons just as much as good guys do so why not? Besides, it would make for a GREAT story, don’t you think?

I would like to personally thank you for this evil!John anon, for writing this all out and for sending it to us I preesh it SO much honestly! If you can make something of this I would be on it in a FLASH, I swear! So thank you so much.

P.S. I love the name Lord Egbert! It’s.. perfection :D

EDIT: This post was NOT submitted by me, it was submitted by Evil!John Anon!! I don’t know why it says me

#preesh submission #homestuck #john egbert #evil!john anon #mod sky #evil!john #LIKE SERIOUSLY THIS IS AN AMAZING CONCEPT!!#i am SO sorry it took me so long to get this out trust me i wanted this out MUCH sooner but things got in the way #and i wanted to give you a good response too!!#i wish i could respond to every little thing but MAN that would get SO long #just.. the fact that you'd bring beforus into this too.. and allow john to get so powerful and have his own army..#evil!john anon i love you #i really do #i wanna give you a big hug dude #i am just SO happy you came here honestly i am SO happy dude!! my lil john blog's attracted some GREAT concepts!!#dude i really preesh you i preesh you so much #i love this i love this #mod fav #huge preesh #BOOM #i also didn't want to take up TOO much of the spotlight with my reply because this is your work so :D #OH YEAH DUDE BY THE WAY I LOVE HOW YOU CALLED YOURSELF THE EVIL!JOHN ANON THAT IS AMAZING #long post #text post #like.. imagine lord jake english meeting lord egbert.. just.. imagine that *eyes emoji*#submission #i'm so sorry evil!john anon i'm so sorry #i hope i didn't do anything wrong?? i literally have no idea why it says that..#first ever submission aaahhh.. D:#okay now it says submitted by anonymous on mobile?? tumblr please fix yourself

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michelles-garden-of-evil · 3 years

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Episode 43 Review: Curiouser and Curiouser

{ YouTube: 1 | 2 | 3 }

{ Full Synopses/Recaps: Debby Graham | Bryan Gruszka }

Maljardin, an isle of mystery. Much remains unknown on Jean Paul Desmond’s isolated island, including the locations of the conjure doll, silver pin, and the missing cyanide, the contents of the final week of Dr. Menkin’s missing notes, and the true cause of death of Jean Paul’s beloved wife Erica. Now that a mysterious black rabbit has appeared on the island which has known no wildlife for three hundred years, new mysteries arise, including one that literally surrounds that rabbit’s neck.

In Ian Martin’s original timeline, this would be the point where the Reverend Matt Dawson exorcised Raxl and Quito’s writing box (although whether that would have revealed the Conjure Man’s also mysterious original message is anyone’s guess), but executive meddling required him to negate that timeline and write about the Rabbit of Evil instead. Come, let’s follow the black rabbit into the increasingly bizarre rabbit hole that is mid-Maljardin-era Strange Paradise.

A minute and a half in, and Cosette Lee is already in top form. Chew that scenery, Cosy!

We open with a recap of the séance from a week and a half ago, courtesy of Raxl and Jean Paul. Raxl gives us the great line above comparing the falling chandelier to “a fist of the devil,” which she delivers beautifully. She connects the falling chandelier to the rabbit who just appeared--or, as she calls it, "this THING that mocks the problem!"

This is Jean Paul’s concerned face.

When she reminds him that the black rabbit appeared out of nowhere on the island which previously harbored no wild animals, he looks increasingly concerned. Whereas in yesterday's episode, he dismissed her claims as superstition and the rabbit as a harmless animal that probably came over on the boat, now he appears willing to think them over. At least that’s how it appears in this part of the scene, although it’s also possible that he’s just worried about Raxl’s sanity. Raxl may be melodramatic and she may sometimes go to extremes in her efforts to protect her home from THE DEVIL JACQUES ELOI DES MONDES, but she is arguably saner than you are, Jean Paul.

"Oh, master, believe me!" she begs. "This…thing, this…thing in the form of an animal is a manifestation of evil!"

“Evil, in your eyes, Raxl,” corrects Jean Paul, or so he thinks.

“Not only mine. Look at Quito. He has eyes, too. He knows. Oh, master, believe me! This black rabbit is an emissary of DEATH!”

Jean Paul continues his mansplaining.

Oh, Jean Paul! To think, I had so much hope for you! I guess that, even after repeated possessions, Dr. Menkin's mysterious death, a leaking capsule, a falling chandelier, and all the things that have happened to Holly, you still refuse to believe in "superstition." You know that, down in Hell, Jacques is kicking back in his peacock chair, gloating about this again:

Jacques: “Jean Paul, what was that again about your IQ of 187?” *evil laugh*

"Then how could it be on Maljardin?" she asks.

"The supply boat, perhaps," he repeats from last episode. "Holly Marshall had no trouble in hiding herself in order to get over here. Surely a small animal like this would be even less likely to be noticed." It sounds plausible, but it’s still doubtful that the rabbit would have lasted so long after the supply boat returned to Maljardin without eating some poisonous plant and dying. I doubt that Quito leaves fresh produce just lying around on the boat.

"If you want to, believe that," replies Raxl, "but I believe it is possessed by EVIL!"

"Raxl, it seems that you are the one who is possessed by fear.”

"It seems the Devil is possessing us all, quietly, cunningly, and each day just a little more," she says, before leaving for the crypt. Quito follows behind, carrying the rabbit, who is just as enthusiastic as it was last episode about being part of one of Canada's first domestically-produced soaps. The way it squirms trying to escape from Quito’s arms in the crypt scene is priceless:

ROFLMAO

Meanwhile, Jean Paul argues with Jacques about the rabbit. Jacques agrees with Raxl on the rabbit's supernatural origins, which further angers Jean Paul. He asks him why he wants to convince him of that, and Jacques gives this cryptic reply: "Big beings have little beings on their backs to spite them, and little beings have smaller beings, and so on, ad infinitum."

"Now, perhaps Raxl is right," Jean Paul muses. "Now just what is in your mind?"

"Perhaps you'll find out at the séance," Jacques teases. He goes on to suggest to him that perhaps Erica did not want to be frozen in the "ridiculous" cryonics capsule. Jean Paul gets all defensive in response and accuses him of trying to break their pact. "Isn't it about time that you delivered her back to me?" he demands.

"We'll find out at the next séance," says Jacques, and Jean Paul demands that he not attend. Jacques implies that there may not be another séance (but why not?), and Jean Paul flips out on him:

FEAR the finger of DOOM!

The acting from both Colin and Cosette in this episode is so over-the-top that it’s somewhere in outer space.

And then...

The Reverend Matt Dawson walks in on him arguing with Jacques and thinks that he was talking to himself.

How does Jean Paul respond? Why, by gaslighting him, of course! “It’s hard to imagine that a man of the cloth would lose control so easily,” he says as though Matt were the one with a screw loose. Now, isn’t that charming?

Matt warns Jean Paul that the people on Maljardin--himself included--are looking for an escape. "We are not children, and we are not completely powerless," he tells Jean Paul. "We will find a way to cut the knots that bind us here."

He also says that his faith, which was challenged when he arrived on the island, is returning. Jean Paul uses this as another opportunity to gaslight him: “You are not regaining your faith. You are merely losing your faculties.” One would think that was a Jacques line, but it’s not. There’s neither a shot of the portrait disappearing, nor any Jean Paul headache faces followed by Jacques’ beringed hand grabbing his face, nor is Fox-C grinning psychotically like Jacques would probably do while saying that. It’s Jean Paul at his most unpleasant.

“On Maljardin, only I speak,” he continues. “Others listen.” It’s like he’s determined to be as much of an asshole as possible in this episode. Bless his heart.

But all the despotic orders in the world won’t shut the Reverend up. “Now I know why I came to Maljardin,” he replies, and it’s not to stalk a twenty-year-old teenager. “It was my destiny to be a force of good among all the evil here.”

“A savior?” Jean Paul asks.

“Perhaps,” he replies. “Is there one here who needs saving from himself?”

Sometimes I wonder if Reverend Dawson was intended to be the real hero of SP.

Raxl and Quito enter the Not-So-Hidden Temple of the Serpent with the rabbit. She pleads and begs for the Serpent to give her answers about the Rabbit of Evil, calling the adorable animal a “monster.” This scene is classic Raxl and belongs on any list of Raxl’s best scenes. Here are my two favorite lines from it:

Raxl: "Speak to me, Great One, for the sake of my master and his beloved visitors and for all the spirits in this house who are roasting on the spit of the fire of evil. OPEN YOUR SPEECH TO MY UNDERSTANDING!"

"Quito, TAKE THIS EVIL THING! Its foulness has stilled temporarily the voice of the Great Serpent!"

But it doesn’t stilt the Serpent for long. The mysterious locket at the beginning of this review appears around its neck, where it wasn’t before. When Raxl touches it, it stains her hand with blood.

Meanwhile, in Jean Paul’s hidden monitor room...

Jean Paul: "Erica, my darling, I wonder how you will find me when at last we are together again? I fear the strain of all this has made me hard and cynical. The Reverend is good, twice the man he was when he first arrived. If only he could see the rightness of my cause, he would make such an ally for my purposes." [You’re deluding yourself, Jean Paul. You have zero chance of convincing Matt that your cryonics scheme is anything but blasphemy.]

"Some serve me, to their honor and reward. Some cross me--to their death!"

*reading Teleprompter* "No one understands. There is an inner circle, my love, and it is big enough for just the two of us."

Jean Paul: "My darling, the second séance is very close at hand. The Conjure Woman recovers and this time nothing will stop us!"

*more obvious Teleprompter reading* "You will come, you will speak, and at last for the first time, for just a little while, you and I will be together."

He’s so cute! <3

Like the previous episode, it’s obvious that they rushed this one even in comparison to the others, because of how often Fox-C reads the Teleprompter. I’ve noticed that he does so more often starting during this week of the show and increasingly until Cornelius Crane takes over writing the show--which won’t be for another two weeks--before slowly petering out until Desmond Hall. I see this as a measure of how hastily an episode was slapped together, although I could be making assumptions.

Anyway, Raxl asks Quito if he noticed the bloody locket before, and he shakes his head. “I am right!” exclaims Raxl about her belief that the rabbit was a demon. She follows this up by asking the Serpent, “Where did it come from?” and we cut to the camera panning over the cryonics capsule:

Obvious foreshadowing is obvious.

Quito leaves the temple to find Matt and Holly sneaking into the crypt, and chases them back up to the Great Hall. Holly demands to know where the rabbit is and Raxl (who enters just then) announces that it ran away!

“Discovered something, didn’t you?” Matt asks Raxl. He asks if she found the doll and pin or the week of missing notes, to which she answers no and no. “For Heaven’s sake, what? Another demon?”

Just as baffled as I am that a Christian minister like him doesn’t believe in demons, she accuses him of mocking her. He accuses her of turning irrational, which means that Jean Paul’s “everyone is irrational but me” delusion must be rubbing off on him. Holly accuses Raxl of having already killed the rabbit.

“Foolishness! Madness!” Raxl shouts. “I tell you that-”

Matt interrupts to point to the rabbit, who, despite its tall ears, is somehow able to sleep through this argument. Must have selective hearing.

Holly grabs the rabbit and Raxl starts screaming for her to hand it over. “IT IS EVIL! IT MUST BE KILLED!” she cries as Matt restrains her. “IT MUST BE DESTROYED BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE!” Fortunately for Holly (but unfortunately for Raxl), Jean Paul hears the commotion and comes downstairs to take the rabbit from them.

When he does, we hear the sound of a small object dropping. He leans over to pick it up and reveals the strangest detail so far in this mystery:

Jean Paul: "This locket…" Raxl: "Yes, master, I-" Jean Paul: *more pained* "This locket…was…Erica's!"

Everyone’s jaw drops--which we see in a series of close-ups of all five human actors in this episode--and the music swells. After commercial, Raxl tearfully reveals that Jean Paul gave Erica the locket on her birthday, and tells Jean Paul and the others that she knows that the locket was not around the rabbit’s neck until after she called upon the Serpent. Holly accuses her of being superstitious, and they get into a fight where Raxl tells Holly that she and her fellow Christians don’t understand the spirit world and Holly calls Raxl’s beliefs “mumbo-jumbo.” Matt also accuses Raxl of lying about how the locket appeared “so that we would believe in spirits and demons.” I know that not all Christian denominations believe in the literal existence of spirits and demons, but it’s still odd hearing the Reverend deny their existence.

Raxl calls him a fool, too, and says once again that the rabbit must be killed. She and Holly are about to go back to arguing when Jean Paul cries out, “YOU ARE ALL WRONG!” And then we have yet another shocking revelation: Erica was wearing the locket upon her death, and still when she was entombed in the cryonics capsule!

Somehow he’s able to get the rabbit to hold still for a few minutes, even with all the shouting in the final scene.

In case anyone’s wondering why this entry took so long, it’s because I’ve also been working on a couple posts reviewing Ian Martin’s entire period headwriting this show. That’s what I plan to do at the end of each arc or at the end of each writer’s stint on the show (with the exception of those writers who only wrote a few episodes, like James Elward, Joe Caldwell, and the team of Ron Chudley and George Salverson). You can expect my two-part review of Ian Martin’s SP shortly after my review of Episode 44, which may also be slightly delayed because of it.

Coming up next: Ian Martin’s final episode, the much-anticipated second séance and its shocking conclusion.

{<- Previous: Episode 42 || Next: Episode 44 ->}

#strange paradise #review #maljardin arc #ian martin #week 9 #episode 43 #the bloodied locket #jean paul's monitor room #foreshadowing #great serpent #lost episode summaries #the not so hidden temple #passive aggressive jean paul #rabbit of evil #scenery chewing #times infinity #sp and religion #tape recorder journal #teleprompteritis

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afaimsarrowverse · 4 years

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My 30 Favorite Arrowverse Episodes:

This list reflects my personal opinion and is in no way objective. Everyone has their own taste. Also Love is Love and can not be measured – except on stupid lists like this one. If an episode is not on it, that does not mean I don’t like it (unless it does). Everyone ist entiteled to their own opinion, so please respect mine and don’t reblog or answer to that just to tell me how wrong mine is.

30. The Fellowship of the Spear (Legends of Tomorrow Episode 2.15/31, Written by: Keto Shimizu, Matthew Maala, Directed by: Ben Bray)

This episode is “Legends”-Homage to Tolkien and his works. However the most quotes and nods go to the Peter Jackson Movies, which is no problem, because we love them too. The Legends recruit Tolkien out of the trenches for a treasure hunt, however things go bad and some fans were not to happy with one of the team betraying their own at the end of this episode. But don’t you guys remember Boromir? I really love this one, because it combines two of my favorite things: “Legends of Tomorrow” und Middle Earth.

29. Flashback (The Flash Episode 2.17/40, Written By: Aaron Helbing, Todd Helbing, Directed By: Alice Troughton)

In this episode Barry travels backt to the time of Season 1 and therefore changes the outcome of the Season 1 Episode in question and creates a new timline, which no one but him notices. Later on stuff like this would happen all the time, but this was the first instance, and it was very very wild to have Barry knock out Barry and pretend to be Season 1 Barry. Also we got Eobard and Eddie back and given how much I love both of them it no wonder I love this episode.

28. The Last Temptation of Barry Allen Part 1 (The Flash 6.07/121, Written By: Jonathan Butler, Gabriel Garza, Directed By: Chad Lowe)

Here Barry is infected by Ramsay who gets in his head and in the Speed Force which tries to help but ends up getting attacked by an paranoid and confused Barry, who finally gets to voice all of his frustration about the Speed Force and the way it interfered in his life. This is a very emotional episode that confronts Barrys immanent death, all the losses he had do bare and his conflicted feelings about everything that is going on in his life at this point of his story.

27. The Once and Future Flash (The Flash 3.19/65, Written by: Carina Adly MacKenzie, Directed By: Tom Cavanagh)

In this episode we get to visit the future in which Iris was killed by Savitar. Barry ends up there while trying to find out more about his foe. It’s a dark and depressing „What If“, where we get to see new sides most of our characters and this episodes dives deep into the immanent darkness of the seemingly so bright „Flash“-TV-Series.

26. The Adventures of Supergirl (Supergirl 2.1/21, Written by: Greg Berlanti, Andrew Kreisberg, Jessic Queller, Directed by: Glen Winter)

This essentially is a Crossover Episode, even though it took Superman three more years to get his own show. However the episode acts as if there is an existing Superman-Show that crosses over into „Supergirl“. This version of the character is as adorable as Kara and a very good antidote to the Snyder Version of the character. Oh, and it does help that the episode is good as well.

25. Nora (The Flash 5.01/93, Written By: Todd Helbing, Sam Chalsen, Directed by: David McWhirter)

Season 5 opens up extremly strong with this episode where Barry and Iris meet their future daughter, who has some secrets up her sleeve that change everything for next one and a half seasons. Nora is perfectly portrayed in this one as a mixture of both of her parents and manages to screw up the timeline imediatly, while everyone is still reeling from the fallout oft the last season finale.

24. The Brave and the Bold (Arrow Episode 3.8/54, Written by: Greg Berlanti, Andrew Kreisberg, Marc Guggenheim, Grainne Godfree, Directed by: Jesse Warn)

Crossovers were the moments „Arrow“ had a chance to let ist hair down and just be a little bit different for a while. This one has Barry, Caitlin, and Cisco visiting Starling City and the Flash and the Arrow teaming up against Captain Boomerang. It’s still Arrow, but with a splash of „The Flash“ in it, which makes it funnier and nerdier then „Arrow“ usually is. I always loved it.

23. Haunted ( Arrow Episode 4.5/74, Written by: Brian Ford Sullivan, Oscar Balderrama, Directed by: John Badham)

John Constantine crosses over in the Arroverse in this episode which reveals Olivers dealings with him in the past and shows him restoring Saras soul. With this episodes the show started to embrace it supernatural arc, which many fans weren’t too fond of in latter part of this season, but this episodes remains a favorite because here „Arrow“ got mystically weird. Also Johnny Constantine tends to make everything better and we got Sara back, so it’a clearly a win.

22. Kapishon (Arrow Episode 5.17/109, Written By: Brian Ford Sullivan, Emilo Ortega Aldrich,Directed By: Kevin Tancharoen)

This is the episode in which Adrian Chase manages to break Oliver. That sounds painful and yes it is very painful, but it’s really really great at the same time. This episodes asks all the uncomfortable questions the show seemed to shy away from in the previous seasons, builds on Season 5s solid Bratva-Flashback Arc and even presents us Anatoly meeting Malcolm Merlyn. It’s cleary a highlight of the show.

21. The Bottle Episode (Supergirl Episode 5.10/97, Written by: Derek Simon, Directed by: Tawnia McKiernan)

The Post Crisis Carzyness lived in this episode. We got a lot of doppelgangers, most of them Brainys, and a lot of chaos, I mean more chaos then most other shows usually have, except for „Legends“. So I guess this episode was „Supergirl“ trying to do an episode of „Legends“. Also Brainy evolves in this one, so it wasn’t just for the laughs. In short: There was nothing not to like in this one.

20. Welcome to Earth-2/Escape from Earth-2 (The Flash Episodes 2.13-14/36-37, 36: Written By: Greg Berlanti, Andrew Kreisberg, Katherine Walczak, Directed By: Millicent Shelton, 37: Written By: Aaron Helbing, Todd Helbing, David Kob, Directed By: J. J. Makaro)

This two parter is the first time we ever visited a parallel earth. We visit Earth-2 in this, where pretty much everything and everyone is different. Adorable Nerd Barry, Cop Iris, Singer Joe and many more ahoy. But Deadshot of Earth-2 is the best thing about this reality. Too bad it pretty much everyone from over there was done away with later, but we will always have these episodes, so that is something.

19. Out of Time (The Flash Episode 1.15/15, Written By: Aaron Helbing, Todd Helbing, Directed By: Thor Freudenthal)

Time Travel is an important plot element of the Arrowverse, but it wasn’t always so. This is the first episode where Barry discovers that he can time travel, after kissing and losing Iris and witnessing the end of Central City. Which is one of those „everyone dies“ instances that are always cool and I always love. Also it’s Season 1 of „The Flash“, where they really couldn’t go wrong most of the time.

18. Starling City (Arrow Episode 8.1/ 161, Written by: Beth Schwartz und Marx Guggenheim, Directed by: James Bamford)

In this one we are essentially reliving the „Arrow“- pilot with a few signifcant changes. Turns out we are actually on Earth-2 and Oliver pretends to be his doppelganger in order to do a thing for The Monitor. Until the shocking ending, this on is like everyone favorites „Arrow“ fanfic come to live. Even the flashforwards were not bothering me in this.

17. Flash VS Arrow (The Flash 1.8/8, Written By: Ben Sokoloswki,m Brooke Eikmeier, Greg Berlanti, Andrew Kreisberg, Directed By: Glen Winter)

This one was the first real Crossover Episode of the Arrowverse and it blended classic comic book action which Season 1 „Flash“-Style, meaning it was beyond great. We never quite saw Oliver like this before and not very often after, and seeing him and Barry connect is just one of the joys of this superior episode.

16. Worlds Finest (Supergirl Episode 1.18/18, Written by: Greg Berlanti, Andrew Kreisberg, Michael Grassi, Directed by: Nick Gomez)

Speaking of the first seasons and Crossovers. This was the Crossover we always wanted, but never believed we would get, because back then “Supergirl” was on another network. But we got it anyway. Barry gets stranded on Karas Earth, which leads to a lot of chaos, many nice moment and fine jokes. This was one of the clear highlights of Season 1, and it paved the way for the season finale as well as future crossovers.

15. Myriad/Better Angles (Supergirl 1.19/19-1.20/20, Written By: Yahling Chang, Caitlin Parrish; Ali Adler, Andrew Kreisberg, Robert Rovner, Jessica Queller Directed By: Adam Kane; Larry Teng)

Season 1 of „Supergirl“ ended with this „all or nothing“ two-parter where everything came head to head. Driven and energatic „Supergirl“ cemented itself as one of the superior superheroe shows of it’s time. I loved the show, I loved Kara, I loved Cat and especially in this one.

14. Camelot 3000 (Legends of Tomorrow Episode 2.12/28, Written By: Anderson MacKenzie, Directed By: Antionio Negret)

From the far future to Camelot and King Arthur – this episodes travelled far and mixed those two areas up quite nice. In true Legends fashion Ray became a Knight of the Round Table, Sara got to hit on Guenevere, and Mick got to beat the adversary army with his brain. Yes, you read that one right. Just ask poor Martin about it. Given how much a love both Arthurian lore and the Legends this one remains one of my favorite up to today.

13. Meet the Legends (Legends of Tomorrow Episode 5.1/69, Written by: Grainne Godfree, James Eagan, Directed by: Kevin Mock)

In this episodes Ava tries to race money for the Time Bureau by making a documentary about the Legends and their work. This episode is the documentary and the making oft he documentary. Think Arrows „Emerald Archer“ only way carzier and funnier. The Legends meet Rasputin who kidnappes the camera team, while Ava writes Sara a very weird condolence note, everyone is acting weird(er) because cameras, and well it’s „Legends“ only even nuttier than normally. I love it.

12. Invasion! (2) (Arrow 5.8/100, Written by: Greg Berlanti, Marc Guggenheim, Wendy Mericle, Directed by: James Bamford)

In the middle of the big „Invasion“ Crossover „Arrow“ celebrated its 100the episode by looking at a world where the Gambit never sank. While the writers cleary had fun with Barry and Kara in this one, the heart lies in the dream reality, where things are better but sadly not real. Oliver, Thea and the others need to chose the life they want and weg et rewarded with a really great episode while they do so.

11. Raiders of the Lost Art (Legends of Tomorrow Episode 2.9/25, Written by: Keto Shimizu, Chris Fedak, Directed by: Dermott Downs)

This is officially the episode where „Legends“ went nuts. Oh and it’s a delicous one. George Lucas never became a filmmaker after being scared of by Malcolms and Damiens attempts to kill amnesiac Rip Hunter who thinks he is an American filmstudent, whose script is basically the plot of the shows first season. Too bad he can’t find a decent Vandal Savage. And that everyone thinks he is this Rip Hunter guy. Also Mick gets a brain surgey, Ray and Nate change occupations, and Amayas babysits their attempt to get George Lucas back to film school, and thanks god she does otherwise … well otherwise there would be no „Star Wars“ or „Indiana Jones“, would there?

10. Beebo the God of War (Legends of Tomorrrow 3.9/42, Written by: Grainne Goodfree und James Eagan, Directed by: Kevin Mock)

This was supposed to be the sad goodbye to Martin Stein and it still is that as well, but mostly it’s the episode about Beebo Day. You know, the blue god, who hungers for war and conquest? Whose birthday we celebrate once a year in december and … wait? What was I talking about? Oh, yeah Leo tries to make Mick quit drinking and Beebo get’s squeezed a lot. Well you have to see that one to know why it’s a great one, but believe me it is great.

9. Elseworlds 1-3 (Flash, Arrow, Supergirl, Part 1: The Flash Episode 5.9/101, Written By: Eric Wallace und Sam Chalsen, Directed By: Kevin Tancharoen und Tom Cavanagh, Part 2: Arrow Episode 7.9/147, Written by: Marc Guggenheim und Caroline Dries, Directed by: James Bamford, Part 3: Supergirl Episode 4.9/74, Written by: Mac Guggenheim, Derek Simon und Rob Rovner, Directed by: Jesse Warn)

In this Crossover Oliver und Barry switch identities which no one on Earth-1 believes, but Kara’s help leads to an evil not-quite Superman and a brand new reality. Also we are introduced to Batwoman and Gotham. And Lois Lane. Well, there is a lot going in there - even Gary guest stars on „Supergirl“ – but mainly Oliver is Barry and Barry is Oliver and that if fun and Kara makes a connection with the Elseworld version of Earth-1 Alex Danvers which is also great.

8. Legends of To-Meow-Meow (Legends of Tomorrow Episode 4.8/59, Written by: James Eagan und Ray Utarnachitt, Directed by: Ben Bray)

Sulky about missing out on the Crossover the Legends crossovered with themselves in Season 4. John and Charlie destroyed the timeline for selfish reasons, and now everything is wrong and everything they do makes things worse instead of better. Zari gets to spend most of the episode as a cat, the rest of the Legends get turned into puppets, we meet the Sirens of Spacetime and the Custodians of the Chronology, and a gay kiss saves all of spacetime. Why can’t all shows be more like „Legends“?

7. The Scientist/Three Ghosts (Arrow Episode: 2.8/31-2.9/32, 32: Written by: Greg Berlanti, Andrew Kreisberg, Geoff Johns, Ben Sokolowski, Directed by: Michael Schultz, John Behring)

This two parter introduces us to Barry Allen and culuminates in the „Arrow“-Version of a „Christmas Carol“ Oliver gets visited by three ghosts and Barry gets hit by lightning. Among other things. All very good stuff – I watch „Three Ghosts“ every Christmas, if I manage to get around to it. But this also is very the Arrowverse was born. And back then it was the best of „Arrow“ they ever did. And it still stands out today, combindes strong Flashbacks with a strong Main Story, which is all we ever wanted from „Arrow.“

6. Resist/Nevertheless, She Persisted (Supergirl 2.21/41-2.22/42, Written by: Derek Simon, Jessica Queller, Andrew Kreisberg, Robert Rovner, Caitlin Parrish, Directed by: Milicent Shelton, Glen Winter)

Season 2 of „Supergirl“ ends with a very strong two-parter that features the Daxamits Invasion of earth. Superman is in it, but these are all about Kara who get’s inspired by Cat Grant again, goes on to inspire everyone else in turn, faces of against the truly evil mother of the love of her life, and has to make a big sacrifice. The two parter was especially well written and no season finale of the show later ever measured up to it afterwards.

5. Reset (Arrow Episode 8.6/166, Written by: Onalee Hunter Hughes und Maya Houston, Directed by: David Ramsey)

Yes it’s a time loop episode in „Arrow“! Yes, it’s still „Arrow“, it will still break your heart. But it’s probably the moment the show embraced it’s funny pages origin the most wholehearted. It will make you cry in all the right ways. We get to say goodbye to Quentin in a prober way in this finally and that is beautiful. And Oliver gets around to accept his destiny which is heart breaking, but still this is my favorite episode of „Arrow“ if you get right down to it.

4. Fast Enough (The Flash 1.23/23, Written By: Greg Berlanti, Andrew Kreisberg, Gabrielle Stanton, Directed By: Dermott Downs)

Season 1 of „The Flash“ has the strongest Season Finale in the history of the Arrowverse. In a very real way it could only get downhill from here. This one will break your heart in so many ways, but it’s the good sort of pain, that makes an impact, may even destroy a part of you, but makes you come out stronger in the end. The whole season comes together in this one and never falls apart (that will only happen later, if you think about it, but it’s explained away by later reveals). Sadly neither this show nor the others could ever measure up to this one, but on the other hand that is exactly what made it special.

3. The Faithful (Supergirl 3.4/46, Written By: Paula Yoo, Katie Rose Rogers, Directed by: Jesse Warn)

This one is my favorite episode of „Supergirl“. Mainly because this is what a certain director tried to do nut failed at in three movies: An exploration of the idea that Kryptonians are essentially Gods compared to humans. This episode is always respectful and has much to say, it touches on Karas own faith, shows us a new and intriguing side of James, and creates a villain that should have ruled the show and the season, but who sady stumbled later. In this one though Coville is just perfect. Like the whole episode.

2. Duet (The Flash Episode 3.17/63, Written By: Aaron Helbing, Todd Helbing, Greg Berlani, Andrew Kreisberg, Directed By: Dermott Daniels Downs)

It’s the Musical Episode! This „Flash“/„Supergirl“-Crossover has all the jazz – singing, dancing, kissing, opening up about feelings – and also a mini „Glee“-Reunion. Kara and Barry are trapped in a Musical Dream World and doomed to follow the plot, while Wally has to confront Darren Crisses Musis Meister. For vocals sakes the episode also includes John Barrowman and Victor Gaber of course, because there was no excuse to make this episode without them. I love this one just as much as it was to be expected and I will never forgive them for never making another Musical episode in any of the shows.

1. The One Where We are trapped on TV (Legends of Tomorrow Episode 5.13/81, Written by: Grainne Godfree, James Eagan, Directed by: Marc Guggenheim)

And the award for the Craziest TV Episode of all time goes to this one, where the Legends are trapped on TV. Charlie put them there to protect them, and so we get very familiar but strange versions of „Friends“, „Downtown Abbey,“ and „Star Trek“ with the Legends as the main characters instead. We also meet a murderous Mister Parker, get another musical number lead by the Tarazi siblings, and are as amazed as Mona about everything that is going on here. Can „Legends“ ever top what they did here? Or anything else in the Arrowverse? Let’s not challenge them, I am sure they can. But until then, we have this one, which of course is not only my favorite episode of „Legends“ but also the whole Arrowverse.

#Arrowverse #favorite episodes #Arrow #The Flash #Supergirl #legends of tomorrow #everyone is entitled to their opinion #please respect mine

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jbuffyangel · 4 years

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The Good and the Bad: Arrow 8x09 Review (Green Arrow & the Canaries)

Arrow did another backdoor pilot for the spin-off even though 7x16 felt like one,

but it’s clear from this episode things have been… retooled.

Not always for the better. I liked Green Arrow and The Canaries more than I disliked it, but I’m an easy sell. If Olicity’s progeny are available via my television then I’m watching. Period. End of discussion.

There’s good content for the writers to mine, but there’s definitely some kinks to work out.

Doing things a little different with this review. Yes, I can change.

It didn’t feel like a fully fleshed out episode and I have a feeling we’ll be repeating this pilot in some form if Green Arrow and The Canaries is greenlit, so for now we’ll just hit the highlights – the good and the bad.

Let’s dig in…

What I Loved

This is the first episode immediately after Crisis, so we don’t entirely know how the present day is impacted, but the future certainly is bright. Mia and William have grown up in an almost paradise. Star City is the safest city in the country. There’s been no crime for almost twenty years and it’s all thanks to the city’s hero – Oliver Queen.

Source: feilcityqueen

It’s nice to see Oliver being honored years later by the ungrateful twats of Star City. They are slightly less ungrateful in my eyes. However, it’s even more wonderful to see that Oliver’s children grew up safe, protected, and maybe even a little pampered. It’s everything he wanted for them.

The big stick with this carrot of course is Oliver not being able to raise William and Mia.

Mia Smoak is the princess we were promised and she is ready to ascend the throne. I loved everything about her character.

Source: kathmcnamara

The alternate timeline/universe (?) has softened Mia. There’s no anger. No dark and twisty past. No hatred of vigilantes. No resentment over lies and betrayals.

Mia knows her father was a hero, but she hasn’t grown up hiding out in a cabin with Felicity. Instead she grew up with William in the Queen Mansion (where she currently resides). On the surface, Mia’s life has been pretty friggin perfect, even if she’s a little adrift. That said, the Grand Canyon sized hole in her life is that her dad is gone.

Source: oliverxfelicity

Mia blissfully wakes

Source: kathmcnamara

and is proposed to by… JJ DIGGLE!

Source: kathmcnamara

We have a scantily clad naked Diggle boy and he’s already dropping down on one knee. This show is my crack.

This also means JJ Diggle isn’t evil! Plot twist!! Dun dun DUNNN!!!

Source: kathmcnamara

Mia says yes after a brief hesitation and the DIGGLE BROTHER LOVE TRIANGLE HAS COMMENCED. I know I’m the only person who wants this love triangle, but I don’t care.

JJ is the “good” brother and Connor isn’t “evil” but he seems like a colossal screw up with questionable facial hair.

But also maybe I like the facial hair?

It’s clear he has an adversarial relationship with Mia, but so many romances have been born from loathing. Enemies to lovers is a classic trope. I’m all in.

Of course, we’re supposed to expect Connor in Mia’s bed since the Season 7 flash forwards more than hinted at a brewing romance between the two,

but instead it is JJ. A plot twist the Olicity fandom called ages ago.

John Jr. is new and improved though. There isn’t much to dislike about this version of him. He’s kind, sweet, sexy, attentive and pulling out expensive jewelry in the first five minutes. What’s not to love? There’s a smol and tol aesthetic happening too. Everyone knows that’s my shipping jam.

Things immediately get rocky though (pun intended). First, JJ gives Mia the Queen family engagement ring.

Source: arrowdaily

Mia makes a point of saying it was her mother’s which gives me the feels.

I never had the same issues with Moira’s engagement ring others did, but even I can recognize there’s some bad juju in it

Next, Mia gets her memories back (more on THAT later) and officially remembers her fiancé was a psychopathic killer who ran one of her friends through with the pointy end of a sword. It’s a little difficult to kiss JJ after that visual.

Things don’t get much easier after Mia accuses JJ of being the mastermind behind Bianca Bertinelli’s kidnapping. (Yes, she’s Helena’s daughter). He’s not the kidnapper. All his secrecy revolves around the honeymoon JJ is planning. It does lead to a truly hilarious moment between the two characters.

JJ: Jumping to conclusions is I’m cheating on you not that I’m a kidnapper. For the record, I’m neither.

It’s a heavy moment, but I died. It’s going to be a little hard to pick out cake now.

The scene itself is heartbreaking. Charlie and Kat acted their asses off in it too. JJ thinks Mia doesn’t want to marry him. She hesitated before accepting his proposal (Yes, he noticed that Mia. So did I). JJ believes Mia is commitment phobic. It’s not wildly unlike how Oliver’s story began. Thank God there’s no cheating with siblings though.

Mia is merely struggling with the idea that her fiancé was a cold blooded killer in another world. She just needs some time to… adjust. She’s also a little commitment phobic. After stopping the real bad guys, Mia reassures JJ, but she doesn’t tell him the truth about who she is.

Mia: I couldn't imagine spending my life with anyone else."

I see your not-so-subtle wink at SmoakNHawke writers. I AM SO HERE FOR THIS.

The truly awesome moment with JJ’s character is when he gets his memories back too. I was not expecting this and was genuinely surprised. Charlie Barnett is a PHENOMENAL actor. He played that scene perfectly.

Giving JJ his memories back is a stroke of genius because now he's a more complicated villain (I hope). He gets to struggle with his love for Mia and his loony tune desire to take over the city.

Katherine McNamara also does a fantastic job of blending the two versions of Mia after she gets her memories back.

Source: supercanaries

She’s reeling from the suffering and loss, but Mia is still our bad ass princess who takes no crap.

Source: oh-my-hades

She is still every bit the hero Oliver and Felicity raised her to be.

Source: feilcityqueen

She’s just a little more pragmatic. Her communication skills are much improved. One of the best moments of the episode is when she gets to show up L*urel with her “new” experience.

Source: supercanaries

Mia telling L*urel where to stick it was a long time coming. We had to wait twenty five minutes for it to happen, but it was GLORIOUS when it did.

Source: arrowversedaily

William is a perfect cupcake, excited to be Mia’s man of honor, but bummed his boyfriend cheated on him. We hate Kevin.

Source: arrowdaily

He encourages Mia to join Smoak Tech, but she’s not sold on joining Mama’s company. William running Felicity’s company fills me with a deep and abiding joy.

William Clayton-Harris-Smoak-Queen is perfection from start to finish.

Source: oliverxfelicity

The chemistry between Ben and Kat is so natural. William’s good natured teasing about their “family heirloom” exuded warmth and love.

Source: feilcityqueen

I adore how comfortable the two characters are now. Erasing William and Mia’s separation is the best thing to come out of Oliver’s Crisis retcon.

ZOE IS ALIVE because I said she would be and I like to get my way.

Source: oliverxfelicity

Din*h owns a bar (Thea’s old club) and lives in the apartment upstairs (Thea and Olicity’s old loft).

Source: canarynetwork

She woke up in the future after Oliver’s funeral and discovered she doesn’t exist in 2040. I’m only mildly curious about this. The bigger shock is Din*h is tolerable. She’s compassionate towards Mia and often serves as the peace maker between her and L*urel. She feels like an older and wiser Din*h Dr*ke. More like Season 5 Din*h, but not so angry.

Also, hello that voice? She can be like Lorne on Angel and randomly break out into show tunes. Juliana did a beautiful job.

E2 Oliver cheated on L*urel with Sara too. There is no universe where L*urel & Oliver end up together. Nobody hates L*uriver more than these writers.

What I Hated

L*urel. I hated everything about L*urel.

At first, I thought I was being too sensitive, but after a certain point it was clear she is just an asshole. L*urel being unbearable in Arrow pilots is a tradition apparently.

It starts with how Mia gets her memories back. There were some spoilers out on this, but I wasn’t entirely sure how it would play out onscreen and yeah… total dick move.

Source: supercanaries

L*urel destroys Mia’s life by forcing unbelievably painful memories on her without discussing it with her first. And for what? So, Mia can help L*urel find her kidnapped friend.

Even the newspaper article L*urel drops about the Green Arrow failing the city doesn’t excuse the way she gave Mia her memories back. I understand she is trying to convince Mia to be a superhero, but I feel a more effective approach would have been to sit down, grab a cup of coffee, offer the pros and cons of getting her memories back and then let MIA DECIDE.

Source: supercanaries

L*urel didn’t need to grab her from behind at her graduation/engagement party. It had the uncomfortable vibe of mind rape and no amount of “girl power” makes that okay.

Oh hey - if J'onn J'onzz from Superg*rl is going around and zapping people’s minds without clearing it with them first -

What was with L*urel insulting Mia every two seconds? UGH. Where is that damn bird baton?

There’s a fine line between snark and nasty. L*urel was just nasty.

L*urel decides Mia is a lazy, self absorbed, idiot because she’s not immediately jumping at the chance to be the Green Arrow. She literally blew this kid’s life apart, gives her no time to process, and immediately begins insulting her because she’s not following all of L*urel’s commands.

On what planet does L*urel have any authority over Mia's life?

They have a warm and fuzzy heart to heart about choosing to be a hero to smooth over L*urel’s wildly unpleasant personality, but it’s ludicrous. L*urel didn’t even rate a goodbye from Oliver. I find her suddenly being an expert on what Oliver would want for his daughter pretty tough to swallow.

This conversation should’ve been with William. PERIOD.

Source: oliverxfelicity

It’s insane L*urel is judging anyone about anything because SHE IS A MURDERER. But sure, being a socialite is the real crime. Thank goodness L*urel is here to stop all the shopping.

The show was desperate glaze over Bl*ck Sir*n’s history with bizarre explanations.

L*urel: I wasted a lot of time pretending to be something I wasn’t because it was easier.”

So, Bl*ck Sir*n was pretending to be a murderer because it was easier?

That’s not a thing. You don’t pretend to a murderer. You just are one.

Bl*ck Sir*n wasn’t like Oliver Queen. She killed good and innocent people. We’re just supposed to accept she was always a good person simply because she says so? Sorry sweetheart, the evidence does not exist. I would send your ass to prison for a good 25 to life, but the network didn’t ask for my opinion about your participation in the new show. THEY SHOULD HAVE.

Then there’s the way they casually avoid things Bl*ck Sir*n has done.

Din*h: I can let go of the people I lost and mistakes that I made.

Din*h lost her boyfriend because L*urel murdered him. They ate French fries and drank milkshakes in a ten second scene and now we’re supposed to believe they’re best friends. Umm… no. If you want to make this friendship believable don’t pretend their history doesn’t exist. Most of your viewing audience is coming from Arrow. We remember that L*urel killed Dinah’s boyfriend.

L*urel: D you’re up. You ready?

Din*h: Never not.

Ugh. Cringe. Arrow was effortlessly bad ass because Stephen Amell made Oliver Queen look effortlessly bad ass.

The action was show, not tell, and that includes the dialogue. There is no making L*urel and Din*h cool, so just-

And POSE. It’s like mannequins in a Macy’s window. YIKES.

Source: canarynetwork

They force this “Ra Ra Girl Power” nonsense with clunky lines and empty camaraderie while at the same time; L*urel eviscerates Mia’s life choices by insulting her all hour. If you want to bolster “female relationships” on this network then start with the women treating each other with respect.

There was a criminal lack of William, Zoe and Connor. TERRIBLE DECISION.

Hopefully, this changes dramatically if the show goes to series. This is what I meant by “retooled.” It is clear two different concepts are being slapped together. The one we saw in 7x16 and whatever KC pitched to the network. The biggest flaw in this backdoor pilot is how disjointed it feels.

It’s like there are two shows. Mia has her life with William, Zoe, JJ and Connor and the other show is Din*h and L*urel. It’s similar to Oliver and L*urel/Tommy/Thea versus Diggle/Felicity in the beginning of Arrow, but it feels really unnecessary to make that mistake again. I do not feel Green Arrow and The Canaries is Marc Guggenheim and Beth Schwartz’s vision for what they wanted the spin-off to be and it is GLARINGLY obvious.

No mention of Felicity or Diggle. Yes, I understand why. We have to watch the Arrow series finale to find out what happens to our beloved characters. Mia and William never mentioning Felicity and JJ and Connor never mentioning Diggle & Lyla is WEIRD. Particularly since it was Mia’s graduation and her engagement party with JJ.

Stray Thoughts

I vote for this to be Mia’s next tattoo. Source: amunetblack

Well… that’s new information Din*h. Source: shawgroves

Why is L*urel calling Din*h “D?” When did that start?

Rene is running for a third term. Do we need to be concerned about a utilitarianism regime happening?

I will never believe Din*h can do “Felicity stuff.” Where the hell is William?

“Oh frack you.” FINALLY.

The adversarial relationship between Mia and L*urel is a wise choice given how KC and Katherine McNamara interact online with each other. Or don’t as the case may be.

What is happening with L*urel's boots? Are there bombs attached to them or something?

The lipsticks on L*urel and Din*h are not good. There's a lot of eye makeup happening too. Let's tone it down makeup department.

This is my face whenever I see L*urel too. Source: supercanaries

You killed her fiancée L*urel. Pay your fucking tab.

Female Big Bad. Could be awesome. Just have to wait and see.

I'm really glad William and Mia are rich again. I missed billionaire money. It's fun.

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