#Edit. At least I thought I did. My queue got shuffled again :(

[the-bau-quinjet]

Round 2: Tik Tok

Bucky x reader

Part 2 to Round 1: Fruit Snacks

Summary: You enlist Peter to help you prank Steve, Sam, and Bucky.

Warnings: Language!

Word Count: 1795

a/n: Ahh, part 2! Gotta love tik tok. This entire part was inspired by the first Chris Evans tik tok I linked... I linked all the tik toks I referenced, but the descriptions in the fic have been edited a bit to better fit the scene!

Masterlist

"Peter!" You called to him from the other end of the hallway as he entered the elevator. "Hold the door!"

He smiled back at you, holding the doors open as you ran down the hallway.

"Perfect. I need your help." You whispered as the doors closed, never knowing if a super soldier could hear you or not. You had an evil glint in your eyes that clearly said you were scheming.

"Oh, okay. What do you need Ms. L/N?" His eyes were wide, never having seen you this devious before.

"Peter. How many times have I told you to just call me Y/N? You make me feel old, and I am not old." You huffed, stalling for time.

"Right, Y/N. Got it. What do you need my help with?" He asked as the elevator doors opened.

You peaked your head, looking both ways before exiting. You gestured for him to follow you, exiting the compound and walking toward the gate where May was picking him up after a date with Happy.

"I need you to play the video on this flash drive at Tony's next party." You said when you reached the end of the driveway, handing him the mentioned flash drive.

"Why?" He took the device, albeit with a bit of hesitation.

"Because, I'm pranking Steve, Sam, and Bucky. They tried to get me the other day and failed miserably. Honestly, just watching them on edge has been great, but it's time for payback." You smirked, knowing the prank wouldn't do any real harm.

"Oh, Mr. Stark told me about that!" His eyes were wide with recognition. "Good job with the fake crying, I would've loved to see it."

"Well, you can help me get them back if you play that on the projector screen at Tony's next party." You nodded toward the flash drive, wanting to confirm the plan.

"What is it?" Peter looked nervous, unsure if he should get involved.

"Don't worry, it's nothing bad. Just a few tik toks I found from fans. Three for each of them." You smirked, already picturing the blushes. This would really get Steve and Bucky more than Sam, but when you came across the first video you couldn't not do it.

"Alright. I'm in!" He smiled, happy to help you. "But, why can't you just play the video?" He questioned, obviously not well versed in the world of pranks.

"Because, if they see me doing anything out of the ordinary at the party, they'll know something's up. I have to act normal, so it's a surprise." You outline the plan, explaining the need for two people.

"Why me?" He asked again, genuinely curious.

"Because, they won't think I'd go to you for help. They think you'll do anything to get them to stop teasing you, so they won't see it coming."

Peter nodded, understanding your logic. "Wow. You've really thought of everything." He smiled as May pulled up.

"I know. It's going to be great." You smirked, turning and running back inside before anyone could see you.

-

The night of the party, it took everything in you not to wear the world's biggest smirk.

Sam, Bucky, and Steve have been on edge ever since your warning, waiting for you to strike. They were huddled by the bar, appearing deep in conversation.

"Hi boys." You greeted them from behind, causing them to jump at the intrusion.

Sam recovered first, smirking at you. "Y/N. We've got a theory."

You raised an eyebrow, waiting for him to continue.

"You warned us about your next prank, and then planned nothing." You bit your lip, trying to appear deep in thought.

"Interesting theory. What do you have to support it?" You tilted your head to the side, waiting for more of an explanation.

"It's been a week, and you haven't done anything." Steve started, less confident than Sam, but still sounding sure.

"I haven't?" You questioned, enjoying watching them squirm. "You sure?"

Bucky shook his head with a grin. "You're doing it again. Trying to make us paranoid."

Your gave them your sweetest smile, running your hand up and down Bucky's arm. "Whatever you say, dear." You said it with mock reassurance, then walked away grinning.

The three men shared a look, trying not to seem overly paranoid, but failing.

-

You felt eyes on you for the entire party. There was never a minute at least one of them wasn't watching your every move. You were fairly certain they were even keeping tabs on Wanda and Nat, just to make sure you hadn't enlisted their help.

You chatted with Nat, Wanda, and Pepper, danced for a bit, and ate some food, all while ignoring their stares.

Around 9:30, Peter managed to get the video queued up. All eyes were on the projector screen at the sudden noise.

A tik tok started playing, flashing different images of Steve as the music played.

"Hush hush hush, blush blush blush, you are now my big fat crush."

Steve's face grew redder as the video played, turning into a tomato by the end.

"Love me, and hug me, and touch me. And well, fuck me."

Another video immediately started playing, also featuring pictures of Steve.

The caption read "Let me present to you: Steve Rogers Walking" backed by some sexy music.

"When marimba rhythm starts to play, dance with me, make me sway."

Clips of Steve walking, whether it be in uniform from a news clip or in suits from press events, graced the screen.

He was hiding his head in his hands, too embarrassed to even think you could have done this. He had been watching you all night, you couldn't have set up the video.

Bucky and Sam laughed as a third video started to play.

The on screen text read as follows:

"People: how do you sleep at night? Me:"

A girl fell into her bed, swaddled in a blanket covered in pictures of Steve.

The screen flashed black for a few seconds, making everyone think the impromptu display was over. That is, until a new video began playing.

A heavy bass started thumping as a girl appeared on screen, counting down with her fingers along with the sound.

"3, 2, 1."

Sam appeared on screen, a plethora of his most used interview and press clips being played.

He was enjoying the praise, although slightly embarrassed at the video being played in front of all these people.

Another video began playing, showing Sam acting out different Avengers in a game of charades.

"Oh!" It was highly edited to draw attention to his amusing sound effects.

Finally, a clip from an interview Sam did with Steve and Scott came up.

"The problem isn't the kids, the problem is the parents."

You knew he wouldn't be embarrassed by the same things as Steve, so you chose a few random videos you found to call him out for not always thinking before speaking.

The screen flashed black again, transitioning to videos of Bucky.

A clip that had gone viral from Sam's account was edited with new music, resulting in the crowd hearing Bucky say:

"Suck my dick!" Followed by the song "if you gave me a chance, i would take it."

These videos were really just for you. You watched them so many times while looking for the three best ones.

Although, Bucky's wide eyes and rosy cheeks definitely didn't hurt.

The next video began with Sexy Back by Justin Timberlake.

"Take it to the chorus. Come here girl."

Pictures of Bucky flashed across the projector screen, showing off his physique. You don't know where fans find this pictures, but you loved them for it.

The last video of Bucky was a pov someone made about yours and Bucky's relationship. Although the two of you were flirty, nothing had been discussed.

Maybe that's why you chose this one.

You and Bucky were having a fake conversation that went as follows:

Y/N: "Bucky, I like your last name."

Bucky: "Oh thanks, that's sweet."

Then, in sync with the music in the background:

Y/N: "Can I steal it from you?"

Bucky: "Of course, doll."

Y/N: "What'd he sayyyyy?"

The crowd laughed at that one, knowing how the media and fans speculate about your relationship.

Finally, the screen went dark, no more videos lined up to play.

You made your way over to the guys as everyone resumed their normal party activities.

"What a show guys. Really well done. Don't forget to thank your fans." You slow clapped, enjoying their flustered faces.

"How long were you planning that?" Steve, blush just beginning to fade, questioned you.

"I've had the video made for 6 days. I started planning the second you left for the store." You grinned, enjoying the high of a good, harmless prank.

"We've been watching you all night. How did you manage to queue the video?" Sam questioned, eyes narrowed.

"I had help." You shrugged noncommittally. You wouldn't give up Peter's role in the prank unless he wanted you to.

"From? We had eyes on Nat and Wanda." Bucky questioned further, but you just shook your head.

"I can't reveal my sources." You laughed again at their matching looks of annoyance.

Suddenly, something clicked for Bucky.

"So, you chose all of the videos?" He sounded so curious, you couldn't help but fill him in.

"I did. It didn't take long. The internet is full of videos of the three of you. They were pretty fun to look through." You laughed at a few videos you opted to leave out of the montage.

"What's this about you liking my last name then?" Bucky had a new confidence about him with this question.

Having expected this question at some point, you had already thought of how you would answer.

"Well, the fans want what they want. Maybe we should give it to them." You stepped closer as Sam and Steve awkwardly shuffled away.

"You think so, doll?" Bucky relied, hands moving to your waist.

"I don't see why not." You closed the distance, pressing your lips to his in a moment you had been thinking about for months.

You moved together, pulling each other closer even when you were already chest to chest.

Eventually, the sound of a throat clearing caused you to break apart.

Tony was playfully glaring at the two of you.

"L/N, if you ever use my protégé to pull a stunt like that again, at least include some videos of me." He whined.

You laughed at his statement, having expected him to be annoyed at you interrupting his party.

"Can do Stark."

He walked off as you turned back to Bucky, whose mouth was hung open like a fish.

You gave him a questioning look as he sputtered.

"Parker helped you?!"

Permanent tag list:

@averyhotchner

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x you #bucky x y/n #bucky barnes x y/n #bucky x you #bucky x reader #bucky barnes #sam wilson #steve rogers #peter parker #natasha romanoff #wanda maximoff #pepper potts #tony stark #mcu #marvel #marvel fic #avengers x you #avengers x y/n #avengers x reader

[dragonofyang]

ABTV Feb 25 Transcript

A complete transcript of the ABTV Voltron interview with Joaquim Dos Santos and Lauren Montgomery on February 25 2019 is under the cut.

@crystal-rebellion @voltronisruiningmylife @felixazrael @leakinghate

KC: The series is over, but we’re not quite done. We are the Afterbuzz TV Voltron: Legendary Defender after-show and we’re here to talk to you guys about season 8 as a whole. We’re gonna talk about character arcs. We’re gonna talk about the end of reality. We’re going to talk about some of our favorite moments, and we’re gonna talk about them with two very special guests. So let’s get this ball rolling and team, it’s time to form Voltron!

KC: Hello, everyone! Welcome back. We are the Afterbuzz TV Voltron: Legendary Defender after-show. This is the season 8 review. We are gonna talk about season 8 as a whole. We are going to have a grand old time doing it. I have with me a green lion, Megan Salinas.

MS: Hey, everybody!

KC: I’m black lion, Katie Cullen, and we have two wonderful, fantastic, returning guests that we are so thrilled to have in studio. Our showrunners: Lauren Montgomery and Joaquim dos Santos.

JDS: How’s it going?

MS: [cheers off-screen]

JDS: It’s nice to see you guys.

LM: Yeah, thanks for having us. We’re happy to be back and talking about the final season.

JDS: Yeah, and we have to sort of give a pre-warning that we haven’t really watched it in a while, so we aren’t really sure what season 8 is anymore.

LM: Yeah, I did, I refreshed myself on the, uh, episode thumbnails on Netflix, so at least I have like, a slight reminder.

JDS: Yeah and they spoil everything for you.

KC: No, just me.

[laughter]

KC: Things I will never be over: when Netflix marketing screws up that bad. Well, welcome back. Before we get started we are gonna do a little bit of housekeeping. As always, we have the livechat going for those of you who are watching live on YouTube. We have the hashtag for those of you who are watching live or listening later. That hashtag is #ABTVVoltron. If you’ve got something to say, throw it in the hashtag, throw it in the live chat, you may well get a shoutout. I will say that we do check the hashtag throughout the week, and it lasts longer than the livechat does, so art, links, fun stuff, throw it in there if you want it to be a little more permanent. And as always, we have our tavern of lions house rule: be nice or get out. We--[laser sound effect]--there we go. Yeah. Everyone has opinions. I firmly believe you can express your opinions in a respectful manner and if you find yourself unable to do that, you will be banned from the channel. No more Afterbuzz animation for you. Buh-bye. Most of you have been pretty dang good at that, which I appreciate. Keep it up and we’ll continue. Season 8, though, you guys.

MS: Oh my goodness.

KC: The series finale. What was releasing this last season like for you?

LM: It was…

JDS: Exhausting.

LM: Yeah. Releasing it was really easy because we were, like, out of, you know--

MS: It’s done!

LM: --out of work for, like, a month and we were like, [noncommittal noises]. We were relaxing, we were kind of like--things were nice and slow. Making it was a whole different scenario. This was where we really procrastinated a lot on a few things, like, we thought we had this beautiful idea that we’d have all this time at the end where there’s no new episodes coming up that we’d have to make and like, we’ll have all this time to, like, reboard all these things that needed to be reboarded and focus all this attention. And we had none of that time, and I don’t even know how that happened. I think what we forgot to realize was doing our regular producer duties takes the whole day, and the end of the day was when we did all of our storyboard stuff.

JDS: I think, I don’t know how the math worked in our head, but I think we assumed that, like, as soon as season 7 was done, we reverted back to being, like, storyboard artists or something, and then we’d just be like, “yeah, we’ll just, like, draw and stuff again.”

LM: Yeah, we’ll have all this time to just, like, make the finale the best it can be. Like, I remember us talking with Eugene, like, “Oh my god, Jean. Eugene, when we’re done with, like, this last batch of episodes can you imagine how much time.” And he’s like, “Yeah, it’s gonna be so great!” And then, like, there was none of that because we were still making the frickin’ show and finishing, like, episodes just in editing and in post.

JDS: Balancing act was still happening, you know, like three spinning plates at a time.

LM: One day, I’m gonna figure it out.

KC: Sending it in at 11:59 before it’s due.

JDS: We’re gonna be, like, 80-year-olds like, “We figured it out!” And they’re gonna be like, “What’s this crazy old person doing here trying to make a cartoon?”

KC: That’s what we’re all trying to do collectively. We’re making a cartoon.

JDS: That’s right.

KC: So you had a lot of story threads to bring together and resolve as well as a lot of new information to give us. Was there… was there anything that got lost in the shuffle? Was there anything you would have liked to emphasize a little more that there just wasn’t time for it?

JDS: A lot, I mean yeah. It-it’s tough. We had this massive Honerva backstory to sort of really set up and queue up, and-and we were able to do that a little bit, sort of, leading up, but season 8 was really our big push to-to get that all set up. I think, you know, that came at the cost of, like, I would have loved to have spent more time with the MFE pilots and sort of figure out what made them tick. And we got a little bit of that with, you know, like, “Day 47”, but…

LM: Yeah.

JDS: I don’t know. There was stuff like that, like incidental side characters that we just were-we were super fond of.

LM: Yeah, it’s one of those really tricky things about having a show this big. As you introduce all these characters, and we had all these great ideas of, like, they’re all gonna come into play in these many different ways. And-and so you would be, kind of, in the writers’ room with the writers, like, talking about all these things. And then slowly but surely as we needed to just kind of whittle it down and make it understandable and get the strongest points across, like, these little things would fall away and so suddenly you’d lose that-that kind of side character involvement. Like, we had this idea of, like, Slav was gonna kind of be, like, with them and figuring out all of these, like, crazy interreality traveling stuff and like he would know all the realities, he would know exactly where to go, he’ll be in the cockpit with them--

JDS: Right, right, right.

LM: --it’s gonna be crazy. And then we were like, “Oh, no. We need to just, like--do we really need Slav in the finale? Like--

KC: Yes you do.

LM: --with all the paladins? Like, we love him, but that might be a little awkward. So, uh, yeah. And honestly, just, like, the finale itself, just that last episode, like, we’ve always…

JDS: Yeah.

LM: With every finale we’ve done, um, in-in our three, like, big seasons, we--you know, Zarkon we consider to be one season, Lotor is the second season, and then this big, like, Sendak Earth/Honerva arc--each of those had a big finale and every time we would write that big finale and we would run out of time. Like, we would overwrite it and I would always try to say, like, “Guys, we need, like, at least an act of wrap-up.” And then for the big series finale, like, it would have been awesome to have an entire episode where we could just dedicate to, like, tying up loose ends, but you can’t do that. We-we wrote an episode and then we got notes like, “Hey, there’s only action in act 1, can we have action in act 2 and 3?” And we’re like, “No! No we can’t!” Like, like, we gotta wrap up 78 episodes! This isn’t just a, uh, a 26 episode wrap-up. This is a 78 episode wrap-up.

JDS: But when you-when you look at that final episode, it really is just the first act of, like, fight stuff and the rest is pretty much wrap-up. Uh, I mean, we were just saying to each other, we wished that the conversation in limbo almost could have had its own episode. How awesome would that have been to really, like, explore, deep-dive into Honerva’s POV and make that transition when she, you know, sort of decides to go along with Allura. Sell that. Uh, but, you sort of deal--

LM: It was--there’s a ton of stuff that just hit the-hit the, kinda, cutting room floor, storyboard-wise, just because we didn’t have the time and so we’re looking like, it’s a kids’ show technically still, even though we’re trying to make it more than that. You have a-a scene that’s basically an act long that’s just in a white floaty space with people talking about, like, you know--

JDS: Bigger emotional stuff

LM: Yeah. And, uh, you know, letting that go any longer than that is just like, “You can’t do it!”

KC: Yeah.

LM: “Kids are sleeping right now!”

JDS: No it’s, what’s interesting, though, is that it seems like we’re in a--I don’t know--sort of social situation now where those types of shows are becoming more and more of a reality. And we were on this, like, weird precipice where we were always working on shows that were pushing the boundaries, and maybe Voltron was on the tipping point. It seems like now animation is way--it’s broadening, like, every day, so hopefully we’ll be able to see more shows that can, like, lean in and get really, really character-centric and still have all the sci-fi, like, big action stuff to go along with it. Um,

LM: I was telling Joaquim how, you know, we were just talking about how during our time on Voltron we-we started in a very specific point in the industry where we were very used to working inside of our boys toys animation box and trying to push the boundaries. And those were literally the only jobs that were available to us because those were the only shows that studios had in animation and during our time on Voltron, like Castlevania came out and changed the landscape and now suddenly there’s all these studios. Netflix opened its own studio here. We were making a show through DreamWorks for Netflix and now, you know, we could have just gone straight to Netflix and made a show that was more geared towards, like, young adults and-and more, but that wasn’t available to us when we started.

JDS: We were, like, trying to, like, like, sneak it in the back door like “this is secretly a much deeper show, everybody.”

LM: But it’s exciting that--because that’s--it’s a reality that we didn’t know if it would ever be a thing because we were working on Korra and we would say to ourselves, like, “This is the last time we’re ever gonna get this chance, you guys.” Like, Korra is, like, a crazy creature where Nickelodeon knows they’re not making it for kids, it has no toy tie-in, has no consumer products tie-in, it’s just meant to be kind of an art project at the studio. And so it was allowed to be this very mature, different show for an audience that they didn’t really understand. And-and so when it was over we were like, “Alright, well, back to the old way.” Uh, you know, we were prepared for it and we, you know, we definitely had more of, like, a fun campy vibe to Voltron, but we still wanted to try to push those bigger themes--

JDS: I think we maximized as much of the, like, sort of pathos and-and sort of hero’s journey and sort of deep character introspective stuff as we could.

KC: Yeah.

JDS: But, you know, it’s-it’s funny too because it just seems, maybe even to ourselves, but it seemed like the lines got blurred even in how it was, uh, uh, received by the fandom and received by, even like, the media outlets. It was-it was sort of, like, on the cusp of being talked about, you know, with other shows that were way more mature like, “Oh, the Game of Thrones of it all” and it’s like “[hesitant honking noise].”

[laughter]

KC: “We didn’t kill that many pe--oh we did kill that many people. We ended reality!”

MS: [indistinct] way more people than Game of Thrones.

JDS: So we did. We did-we pushed the boundaries.

LM: Yeah, and we would--we’d find ourselves getting compared to shows that we were… like live-action shows where, like, “Oh, they should have done it like this,” and it’s like, “That, that would be awesome if that were an option at all--”

JDS: Right, right, right.

LM: “--in any way.” But, uh, us-us to consider our, like, little robot lion show being made, us trying to make this show for as many people as possible under the guidelines of a “boys toys” show, it’s never gonna be able to have, like, quite the ability to push farther that, like, a live-action, like Walking Dead on AMC that’s at 10 o’clock at night specifically for adults where you don’t have to worry about “how are my kids gonna do with this?”

KC: If your kids are watching Walking Dead, you have other problems.

MS: Either that or you’re the best parent in the world.

KC: Uh, disagree.

MS: Agree to disagree!

KC: Disagree!

MS: But was it that sort of desire to push the boundaries that, sort of, resulted in this climax where, “Yeah, we have the big action set piece leading up to it,” but ultimately the resolution is one that’s brought up from empathy and understanding.

JDS: I think so. And I think--I will say DreamWorks was incredibly patient with us with regards to us broaching a lot of these subjects. They were, you know, maybe still figuring things out in terms of how they would approach, you know, other topics that we can-we can get into a little later. But I would say the finale is almost--I don’t know, I don’t want to say unlike anything you would see in other like-minded shows, like, let’s say Transformers or Power Rangers or something that, like, Voltron was by outward appearances being compared to--but it was something, I think, really exciting for us to be able to explore because we did create villains and create heroes that worked within this very, kind of like, shades of gray spectrum. There was-there was-there was black, there was white, but we played in this really weird, morally-ambiguous zone a lot of the time and that was, I think it’s important for, kind of, audiences of every age group to see that.

LM: And, you know, we also came from working on shows like Avatar: The Last Airbender and Korra which very much pushed those boundaries as well, and were extremely groundbreaking for, you know, children’s programming and it was not something that was coming out of western animation. So, uh, I mean we, I would say we learned an insane amount from Mike and Bryan.

JDS: We just had to reverse-engineer that into the goofy cat lady. [Hosts laugh] You know what I mean? That was, like, that was our, like, little-little trick to the industry. It was like, “How do we do all that cool stuff that-that we were able to do in those shows and sort of cram it into this package?”

LM: Yeah, and honestly, like, a lot of it was just us knowing that our ability to, like, show everything on-screen, like, every type of representation we might have wanted to show. We might not get our way on everything, but at least through having these larger lessons we can-we can still push those messages of acceptance and of understanding and of, like, looking beyond. And you know, those are just important messages. I think, like, everyone kind of learns them in their life in their own way and, uh, I don’t know, like, I was such a little, like, asshole kid [Hosts laugh] that, like, I, like, didn’t understand empathy. I didn’t understand why people cried when they were happy, I was like, “Why would you cry when you’re happy? Like, you’re happy.” And then, of course, now I’m the woman who watched a T-Mobile commercial today and friggin’ cried, so--

JDS: I want to know what this commercial was.

LM: It was beautiful. I’ll describe it to you after because I don’t want to take time.

[Laughter]

LM: But uh--

KC: Advertising other brands, uh, [concerned noise].

LM: But uh, you know, there-there are things that come through, I think, life experience and through learning and our paladins had that, kind of, on steroids with their whole Voltron journey, so you know, to really show how that manifested and how they learn from it was… it’s important, and it-I think it’s just important for kids to see it, even if they’re not there in their life yet, to know when they get there they look back and, like, “Oh, I-I saw that, like--”

JDS: “I saw that happening to that character.”

KC: To be able to see it happen to someone else and someone that you’re invested in because, “Oh, it’s Lance! He’s my favorite!” and then you watch him grow from this brat to the right arm of Voltron. Yeah, actually I think this is a good point to start talking about character arcs in this season.

MS: I think so! Yeah!

KC: Let’s talk about Honerva. Let’s talk about this horrorterror! She’s-she is amazing and horrifying and not the villain I expected to make it to the very end. Here we are, I’m impressed.

JDS: Let me ask you, though, were you at all sympathetic to her and her, sort of, cause [indistinct]?

MS: 100%. Um, it-it’s so--she was one of the most fascinating characters to watch because once she gets her memory back and she realized--you know, contextually-speaking we as the audience find out who she is at the same time she does--uh, you, you slowly start to realize how much of this entire scenario she’s responsible for whether inadvertently or not. And so it’s so fascinating watch her refusal to take responsibility for her part in it but still desperately wanting that sym--you know, the human connections that she was denied. You know, human, so to speak.

JDS: Sure.

MS: Altean!

JDS: Altean.

KC: It’s telling that the perfect world that she found to slot herself into is the dimension where she died. [MS makes an agonized noise] Where-where this whole--

JDS: She was taken out of the equation?

KC: Yeah, it’s possible that it’s a dimension where the comet never happened because Voltron was obviously a surprise. The alliances were still there but the giant robots were, “You’ve brought this monster down upon us, what are you?”

JDS: Right.

KC:  So it’s-it’s telling that that’s the perfect dimension that she found is the one where she died super early on.

MS: And correct me if I’m wrong, but her--to obtain the perfect world--she was also basically willing to kill infinite versions of her son and her husband in order to get what she deemed she was worthy of.

JDS: Well, I--that’s, and that’s sort of like the misdirected love, right? Like, she was in one hand looking for the acceptance and the love of family that she never had, but she was blind to everything else, all the other chaos that she was causing as a result. That to me is-is interesting. I feel, you know--

LM: Yeah. It’s an interesting character. It’s not necessarily, like, the most honorable by any means, but you know, characters, when you can understand why they want it but then you see them doing things that are absolutely unacceptable to get it, it’s like you know it’s wrong but you know, you can-can kind of understand--

JDS: We’re hearing crackle in our ears, everybody. [Hosts laugh] That might be me, I’m just gonna go ahead and put it on the floor.

MS: It’s probably mine.

KC: It’s--your phone case doesn’t like the table. It-it’s, no seriously, it’s super weird and I’m pretty sure it’s your phone case. Sorry, I was trying to do that silently so I didn’t interrupt you.

JDS: I was going to call attention to it, please carry on, sorry.

LM: Oh no, we were talking about Honerva, or something.

KC: Great podcasting.

LM: Yeah, there-there’s something really incredible, like, interesting to me about her, kind of victim mentality where she-she really won’t accept that, like, a lot of this is her fault. She just looks at, basically, like, she’s lost her whole life. She’s witnessed it not knowing that it was hers, realizing looking back on all the things she should have done differently, that she could have done differently and it’s kind of, you know, she’s kind of trying to point that blame. I was like, “Well, if I--the quintessence hadn’t, uh-duh-duh,” you know, she-she’ll turn it on everyone except her, even though she was right there, you know, kind of diving into this whole quintessence research and bringing this whole thing about.

KC: “It’s Voltron’s fault.”

[MS laughs]

JDS: But it was also cool, I think, you know, one of the things that I was really surprised of in the room--I don’t really remember how it came up--was the notion that when she shows up in this reality and then Voltron follows, they’re like, “Why have you brought this, like, demon monster to our world?” It’s a-it’s-it’s a-it’s a crazy, sort of, flip of the script where really, you know, Voltron was doing good, but in a lot of people’s eyes and it’s, you know, in a certain people’s eyes, it could be seen as--

LM: I mean, you wouldn’t know. You wouldn’t know any better.

JDS: --bringing chaos.

MS: Voltron was the robeast in that scenario.

JDS: That’s right!

MS: You know, it’s like, “Look at this giant monstrosity that’s gonna wreak havoc on our planet.”

KC: Because Honerva parked hers out back.

LM: She was smart enough to store it off-planet, wink wink.

JDS: And we were talking a little bit before this about, you know, how there’s this portion of the fandom that’s like, “How could you, like, justice for Lotor!” and-and where, you know, “where is his redemption” and “how could you kill him off?” and obviously, you know, we feel we’re coming from a point of, you know, he’s gone so far off the deep end that-that death was really the only, sort of, salvation that he had on some level. But it’s interesting that it was-it was Lotor in that reality, there was a version of Lotor that was, you know, unaffected and uncorrupted, and-and you know, doesn’t come from that-that kind of horrific background that our Lotor did that, uh, was in essence, kind of kicked off everything being turned on Honerva’s plans.

KC: Yeah.

MS: It really does highlight how a person’s, like, the circumstances that they find themselves in really do have an effect on the person they become.

JDS: Right.

KC: But it’s also a matter of choice. Like, this up--these awful, awful things happen to him, like there’s no question that Lotor would have turned out better had his parents been physically capable of empathy. They’re kind of zombies, so it’s an issue.

JDS: There’s nature versus nurture.

KC: That’s not the weirdest thing I’ve said today.

JDS: Aww.

KC: That’s not the weirdest thing I’ve said today. Um, but even after all that happened, he made the choice to go, “You know what? Fine! Violence it is!” And lean super hard into that curve, even while he was still going, “Oh no, I don’t want to mess with my Galra heritage. Oh no, I’d rather be an Altean. Oh no, this.” Like…

JDS: Right. And-and that’s--I think that noncleanliness of, like, where he fits in and, like, the villain category, or the hero category, or the character that’s going to be redeemed, or… That is an area that we like to play in and sometimes does not have the answers that everybody’s sort of hoping for, you know.

LM: We’d like to blur those lines, but sometimes, you know, the lines are blurred, therefore the fans have their own interpretations, but ultimately it’s a story, guys. And not everyone gets to have a happy ending in the story.

JDS: I will say he was beautiful.

[laughter]

JDS: He had beautiful hair.

KC: He did!

JDS: And him and Allura together look beautiful together.

MS: Mm-hmm!

KC: This is very true.

LM: Oh, you’re treading into some dangerous territory there, buddy.

JDS: But, you know, I will--that, you know, that isn’t from a story perspective, sort of, place to, uh--

LM: Yeah.

JDS: --to work back from if that makes sense.

KC: Yeah, but, you ever see those beautiful flowers and then you go to smell them and they smell like death itself? That’s kinda that.

JDS: Hell of a point. MS: I still ship it, but no! It does not work within the framework of the narrative in any capacity.

JDS: Sure, sure.

KC: Look, there is a universe in which it happened and it was fine, this is not that universe.

MS: And that’s the--

JDS: And that’s the beauty of more--

MS: Multiverse stories! There’s an AU where it totally worked out and everyone was happy.

LM: Yes, and there’s comics to be written, fanfics, go crazy.

KC: Yeah.

MS: Yeah, well, and ultimately it’s the memory of what he was trying to do that brings Honerva around.

JDS: Exactly. Yeah. And so there was, there was goodness in him, like, you can’t-you can’t deny that. But, um, some actions are, you know, really your only way out.

KC: You kinda gotta--

JDS: From a story perspective is you gotta, you gotta kind of pay that ultimate price.

KC: Well, for Lotor there was some good in him, but uh, cool motive, still murder.

MS: So much murder!

KC: Lots and lots of murder!

JDS: Totally involved a ton of murder.

KC: Yeah, pretty sure all of the battery Alteans are super dead because I don’t think anyone else found that moon.

MS: Yeah!

JDS: Right.

MS: Talk to Bandor if you wanna hear about why Lotor doesn’t get a redemption arc.

[KC makes uncomfortable noises]

MS: I’m sure Romelle would love to hear your thoughts on that.

JDS: By the way, when that episode came out, and when we were getting, like, the recording, we couldn’t stop saying to each other, “Bandor! Bandor!” Like, we loved that read so much, like, and we love that name.

[Hosts laugh]

LM: Bandor.

JDS: Oh, Bandor.

MS: Well there were-there were a lot of fun--talking about that--there were a lot of fun references to the original series in this season. Like at the very beginning we actually have a clip from the original series playing.

KC: We did! “I don’t sound like that!” God bless Bex and their ability to sound like that.

JDS: Yeah.

LM: We, uh, we love the original show and we always had this silly idea because we played with so many different realities that, like, what if in our reality the show it’s, it’s technically live-action to them and it’s being made about them. And so it’s like, because here we are making a show that’s based on that show, and I was like, “Ooh, what if that show was based on our show?”

JDS: It’s super meta, it’s like inverse meta.

LM: It was just funny to us that, like, we could work it in. And we always wanted to work it in in some way just because, you know, we love it and we like to pay homage to it. But that, like, we-we joked about it and we actually had a few more references, like, in the episode. I ended up way super-overwriting that episode, so we cut a bunch of stuff, like, you know like the rookie writer mistake. Um, but, uh--

JDS: It was all gold, it was all gold. It just had to go.

LM: Yes.

[Hosts laugh]

LM: I paid him to say that.

MS: You have to kill your darlings.

KC: Yup.

LM: But, uh, there was a scene where they were gonna see, like, the Sven dies scene. Shiro wasn’t there, though, but like, Eddie was like, “Hunk and Keith were, like, at little viewing party with, like, Hunk’s family.” And uh, and then they see the scene, they’re like, “Wow, they’re really taking some liberties” like--

[laughter]

LM: “--they were making their own story about the paladins.” And it was just--

KC: There wasn’t a space hospital!

JDS: That’s right.

MS: I would have expired. I would not be here right now if that had happened because I would have died laughing.

KC: I would’ve been doing this show on my own this season.

JDS: There-there was a version of it.

LM: It never made it, it never even really made it past, like, the roughs and storyboard, ‘cuz again, like, I so overwrote that episode that we just started hacking stuff out.

JDS: There was also, Tim Hedrick did an amazing Pidge in the room and a lot of, like, us being so obsessed with him was just going like, “Waaaahhhh?” If ever something was, like, confusing he would just go “waaahhhhh”. Bring in more OG Pidge. Bex.

KC: Yeah, Bex’s ability to emulate that voice.

JDS: Oh, she nailed it.

KC: Oh yeah, they are just wonderful.

MS: They’re amazing.

LM: Yeah, we got to do that, we got to have the little nod to, like, Pidge’s outfit and Allura’s outfit that, like, kind of goes by real quick.

MS: Those are so fun.

KC: That was pretty great.

MS: That montage. And then we got Chip at the end, too! And Vehicle Voltron!

LM: I know! Like, we’re the biggest trolls ever, like, “here’s a show we’re never gonna make!”

KC: That and the epilogue about, “They made the next generation of Voltron!” and it’s like, “it’s happening. It’s happening!”

JDS: We queued it up real nicely for whoever wants to do it, by the way.

LM: Yeah, you know, if anyone wants to take that. But, uh, we, you know, I, so, I’m just gonna admit I never watched Vehicle Voltron.

JDS: How dare you.

KC: Same, I had to google what Chip was.

LM: But, uh, you know, like, I did my research. Like, there’s a cool idea to-idea to it there and-and my husband and I were originally recently watching Patlabor--how they call it, that’s what they call it on the thing--Patlabor.

JDS: That’s probably close.

LM: They call Labors. Patlabor was what we always called it, but they’re called Labors and it’s this, like, cop mech show and it’s really clever, like, it’s fun because they have mechs and they’re cops and they just, kind of, episode to episode do cop things. And I was like, “Well, if you’re gonna make a vehicle Voltron, you’ve got these three teams, they could basically be, like, cops in mechs.” And it would be a lot of fun.

MS: You just described my dream show, oh my god.

LM: But, uh, yeah, we queued it up and then-and Chip I just, I loved the idea, like, Pidge’s one goal in life, you know, going out into the world and seeing sentient AI, like to create one of her own and she’s doing it, like, with her brother and it’s this, like, nice bonding moment. And then the fact that Chip was, like, what, Pidge’s cousin or something?

JDS: Yeah, that’s right [indistinct].

MS: I think it was her brother. I believe it was brother in the loosest--it was really just--

JDS: I thought it was just cousin.

MS: It was--it might’ve been cousin.

KC: Well, I mean Sven had “a brother” that they found later on.

MS: It’s a little hard because they started cutting together different series to continue Voltron, so it’s hard to say.

LM: It just made a lot of sense that, you know, she would pursue that and that would be her passion. Technology is her passion. And then you’re with her family and then obviously being such a huge part of the Galaxy Garrison with Voltron, kind of, you know, taking itself out of the equation, they would then--

JDS: Sort of take up the mantle.

LM: Yeah, and then really--

JDS: I do think there’s a pitch, though, where Chip ends up taking over Earth as, like, a sentient AI and becomes the villain a thousand years later.

MS: And it’s the singularity!

LM: Hey man, I was just about to say, like, the dark version is that, like, the Voltron that Sam and-and everyone creates ultimately is, like, you know, the police and then they--yeah--they become the power-hungry, power-hungry Earth.

KC: And there’s a scrappy Galra resistance.

JDS: And they flip the script and become the good guys.

LM: There you go.

KC: Living long enough to see yourself become the villain.

MS: Oh my gosh, I love it.

KC: I don’t have time to get into how much I love this AU because we are gonna run out of time here in a hot second. I--there’s so much I want to talk about and I’m having such a hard time deciding things.

MS: Let’s talk about Allura.

KC: Oh, Allura. She had such a rough season. Incredibly well-telegraphed, very rough.

LM: For sure, I think, you know, we-we knew, like, coming down to it that with Honerva being the final villain, and basically we have two female Altean people who have had a very similar thing happen to them. They’ve lost their families, they’ve lost, like, the life they knew, and it’s just two very different ways of how they handled it.

JDS: That’s right. They’ve had very, in a weird way, similar circumstances and come-and approached it from very different angles.

LM: Yeah, it’s a storyline we wanted to originally do, kind of with Keith and Lotor back when, like, our kind of original story pitch where Shiro was gonna, kind of, exit the show, Keith was gonna be here, he was gonna stay with the team so he wouldn’t have jetted off and gone into the Blade of Marmora, and it was gonna be a big, like Lotor season where you got Lotor, half Altean and half Galra, Keith, half Galra, half human. And it’s like, you’ve got--

JDS: They sort of were--

LM: --yeah, the duality of those two and, like, how does it work out? And, you know, you see Lotor seems like the guy who has it all together in the beginning, but then ultimately Keith evolves and becomes a better person. So we got to play a little bit of that here with Allura and Honerva, who… very similar situations, but Allura going about it, like, the way that it’s-it’s painful to her. She did lose her entire family, she lost her planet, her home, and even now there’s-there’s a sense in the first episode where she realizes once this war ends, she might not even have, like, her Voltron family. It’s like, they have families--

JDS: They’re all gonna go on their ways.

LM: --like, “what are they gonna do? They don’t need me anymore.” And it’s this, kind of, very--it’s selfish in a way, but it’s beautiful because she can feel that way, but she’s not acting on it.

JDS: Right. She’s allowing herself to feel it, but she’s not acting on it.

LM: She’s not sabotaging the war effort to keep them, which, I would have loved to do that. That dark, sick, twisted version of, like, Allura sabotaging the war effort to keep her Voltron family, but, uh--

KC: There is a universe where that happens.

JDS: Yeah, sure.

LM: But uh, but yeah, it was just beautiful to kind of see how much she was willing to take onto herself

JDS: And at the end of the day, like, you know, we keep sort of using this term “boys toys show” because that’s sort of the reality of what we came into. We sort of were taking on this--this franchise that was very merchandise-based and trying to sell toys to young boys essentially. And at the end of the day it became this story, almost Allura’s story solely when you-when you really sort of, like, step back and look at it, but it was-it was this, sort of, face-off of two strong women that were approaching these problems from very different angles and who the heck would have known that that would have, you know, that would have been the--

LM: Yeah, we didn’t even really know it at the beginning.

JDS: We didn’t. We really didn’t. It evolved.

LM: But, but, yeah. It was nice. It was nice because when we-we told Kimberly, and of course she was sad and like, listen, we know it’s--we never--it’s never personal, we’re not like, “You know, I don’t like that Kimberly, let’s kill Allura.” It’s never that.

KC: At the very last minute.

LM: But it’s, like--

JDS: We also told Neil when--

LM: We told Neil, and we try to be kind and, like, let people know and so we let her know ahead of time and so she’s not just reading the script like, “What the hell?”

KC: “What?!”

LM: And she was sad, but we just let her know, like, “Listen, this is Allura’s story, like, she is literally the hero. She’s not dying to further another hero’s story, she is the hero. Like, this war ends with her.” And then I made her a completely, um, fake promise that I couldn’t really make her. But it--

JDS: I think I know what this fake promise is.

LM: Because I have no control over what they do with Voltron, but I was like, “Listen, if we do any more episodes, I’m bringing her back. We’re not--I’m not making this show without her.” But then, like, I have no control.

MS: But there’s no Voltron without Allura.

LM: I have no control after this point.

KC: Eight seasons, now we need a movie.

JDS: Honestly that the, sort of, post-credits thing was leaving that door open.

LM: Yeah.

JDS: The Lions taking off and seeing the, you know, Allura nebulae, I think, in our minds, it was sort of her quintessence coalescing and--

LM: Reforming. It’s, like, kind of coming back together, so you can do whatever you want with that, like--

JDS: Yeah, but it was--

KC: Have fun, guys!

JDS: Honestly it was-it was a door left open. Like, there’s nobody ever really dies in comics or animation.

LM: I mean, yeah. I feel like comics and animation and sci-fi in and of itself is a door left open.

JDS: Right, right, right.

LM: If the word sci-fi exists in a definition of your show, there is a door left open.

JDS: This was like one step back from the ending of Iron Giant. [hosts going “ohhh”] Like, we didn’t actually, like, show all the pieces going and the thing.

LM: Yeah, like there isn’t an Allura hand that’s just, like, crawling through space.

JDS: Yeah, there’s no hand, like, jumping through the snow.

MS: That would have been terrible! Oh my gosh. But yeah! I think there’s this misconception because Allura is a woman of color and so I think a lot of fans only looking at it superficially were like, “Oh, the woman of color was killed off.” And it’s, like, yeah, there is a trope of people of color dying to save the stupid white people around them, like I understand that trope. But the problem with that superficial interpretation is that they’re ignoring the fact that she’s the main character here.

JDS: Well, there’s that and also just to put it on the table, our original pitch was that they were all gonna die.

KC: Woah!

[Hosts scream and cackle]

JDS: And that got taken off the table.

KC: I love it!

LM: It’s teamwork! Voltron! And honestly, in my opinion, that would have been an easier, like, window to bring them back. If they all disappeared, you could pop them all back anytime and you got the team again. Easy-easy spinoff. But, uh--

JDS: Sorry if the board is blowing up.

KC: So it wouldn’t have been, like, literal bodies, it would have been just disappeared.

LM: Yeah.

KC: Okay.

JDS: We’re not showing, like--

KC: We’re not showing Lotor.

JDS: We showed, like, the melted, like, Lotor body, but--

LM: It would have been the same--

MS: Nobody’s getting Cronenberged in this scenario

KC: Except Lotor.

LM: --same scene except that we, you know, instead of Allura taking it upon herself, they all would have agreed to do it together and-and they would have gone in and essentially taken Voltron out of the equation.

JDS: Right.

LM: That was something we actually really believed for even from early on, we introduced this idea that Alfor had helped to create this thing, not realizing how dangerous it could be; kind of like, you know, the person who created the atom bomb, and, like, having that guilt. And so having Allura be part of the team that took Voltron out of the equation and now that weapon isn’t available to anyone, that was a big deal. We were told that was too sad.

[Hosts laugh]

KC: Uh, you broke chat. Alexis is in chat going, “*rocking back and forth, broken*”. Like, congratulations. Everyone, take a drink of your nonalcoholic beverage of choice.

MS: Oh that is-that is a line of gibberish that she typed.

KC: Oh yeah, no. Everyone’s just losing their noise, it’s great. I love it.

JDS: It was, you know, in a strange way I think, a beautiful sacrifice that Allura is allowed to make. And also really when you think about it, if it had to come down to any one person, she’s from, like, a logistical standpoint she’s the only one powerful enough and we’ve sort of through, you know, being a life-giver.

LM: So, we’ve had a lot of characters, like, who’ve been on, like, the death table. We’ve thrown them all out there at some point.

JDS: Right.

LM: But they all had to, kind of, get thrown out at a point in the story where it made sense that their death would have been worth it. Like, for Pidge, it would have been saving her family. Like if she had died to save her family. For Hunk, it would’ve been saving Earth, which almost happened. Um…

JDS: Hunk was, like, inches away.

[Hosts go “ohhh” and laugh]

LM: We got a yes, and then, like, you know, they were like, “Who’re you gonna replace him with?” And we were like, “A lady,” and then they said, “No.”

MS: Ohhhh.

KC: Would Romelle have been the pilot?

LM: It would have been, it was gonna be Acxa. Yeah, it was gonna be a redemption arc that takes place over this last season of, “It’s not about who you were, it’s about who you are,” and the fact that she’s done some bad things. But she truly believes in doing the right thing and moving forward and she could have been a viable part of that team.

JDS: But I-I also would argue that, like, there’s no--there wouldn’t have been enough time, I think, for everybody to, like, absorb that. If we had, like, a three season run at, like, bringing her in, getting her settled, and then having her, that would have made more sense.

LM: Yeah, that was a hesitation.

JDS: But Hunk’s was especially tragic, like, it was the moment where they were gonna--where they were taking robeast up and there was, like, that ticking time-bomb going off. He literally sees his family, but he’s never actually, like, interacted with them. So he only gets to look at them and see that they’re alive, and then he’s like, “I gotta get this thing out of here.” Sorry everybody!

LM: But he didn’t die! We didn’t kill anyone.

MS: And speaking of dark storylines, princesspony in the hashtag did some fanart of evil Chip.

JDS: Oh wow!

[laughter]

KC: They are very fast.

LM: World domination.

MS: Check out the hashtag #ABTVVoltron to check that out, it makes me very happy.

JDS: Are there red glowing eyes?

MS: No, it’s black and white, but he does look very happy.

LM: But Allura’s death was the only one that made sense from a power standpoint and even from a story standpoint that we were setting up with Honerva. And then also just on--I know, like, it’s probably gonna be highly contested--but on a feminist level from my standpoint, the-the man is always the one who gets to be the hero. Like Armageddon, Bruce Willis sacrifices himself to send, you know, friggin’ Ben Affleck back. And if-if basically Keith had gone like, “I’ll do it,” and then, you know, Allura had to stand on the sidelines and say, “Good thing Keith saved the day! I’m happy!” Like no. I want my women to be able to save the day, too, and even if it’s about making that ultimate sacrifice, if people want to interpret that as sexist, then that’s fine. But we’re just gonna have to agree to disagree.

KC: I mean, Keith tried to do the heroic sacrifice at one point and it didn’t work.

MS: They went, and you guys went, “No! Don’t do that!”

KC: Lotor was just like, “Excuse me.”

LM: We tried to kill Keith, though.

MS: This was--

LM: That’s not a lie.

MS: You guys apparently tried to kill everyone!

LM: We did. It was because we were told we couldn’t kill Shiro. Like, well, we don’t need two leaders, we’ll kill Keith. And they said, “You can’t do that.”

[Hosts laughing and sputtering]

JDS: Also by the way, we’re not kill-happy people. We’re not. We don’t kill for the sake of killing, like, there’s something--it���s a journey and there’s something meaningful, I think, to everybody’s death. And-and so when you even look at, like, melted Lotor corpse. Like, he basically had done to him what he had done to so many other people, so there’s, like, a sort of a give and a take there.

MS: And like a show where--I don’t want to rag on any other shows that skirt around death or anything like that, because again, they are writing for certain demographics--but I always appreciate when shows have, you know, actions have consequences. And sometimes character death is a really good way of conveying that. And I think for a lot of other people, people forget that Allura in season 1 is the same character that picked up Shiro, threw him out of a room right as the doors were closing, and basically could have died in that moment. She was sacrificing herself, so it’s not like this is out of character for her.

LM: Yeah, and Coran said, like, 15 different times, like, you know, “What about the risks? You could-you could not come back from this. If you give all your quintessence to the balmera, if you give all your quintessence to making this gigantic wormhole to transport Zarkon’s ship.”

JDS: “If you take the darkness into yourself.”

LM: And every time, she would say, like, “I know the risks.”

KC: Yolo.

[laughter]

MS: Until she walks into the west with the other elves.

KC: Or into the void with Honerva. I love that she had to do a hard reset on Honerva’s brain and then we could fix things. Like, she’s the only one that would have been able to do that in any capacity.

LM: Yeah.

JDS: Yeah, and it’s allowing Honerva to maybe experience the consequences that came as a result of her actions and really understand what those--

LM: It’s allowing her to get past, like, the cloud of all of the pain she’s felt, realize, like, remember the good things because sometimes you can get so bogged down with the negativity that you can forget what it was that you loved about a thing in the first place. And she was Altean and she loved discovery, she loved knowledge, and she-she reached out with Alfor and she helped multiple people before, you know, they started this quintessence project that kind of messed everything up. So she just kind of had to show--

JDS: She had hopes, she had dreams, she had heart.

LM: Yeah. At one point.

JDS: [quietly] At one point.

KC: Is there anything else that you--’cuz we’re hitting the end of our time--is there anything else you guys want to touch on now or should we save a few things for next week?

JDS: Uh, yeah, I mean, you know, look, we, I think, Lauren made a really good point in that, you know, sometimes you sort of lose sight of the good things for, you know, some of the negative things. We’d only hope that, you know, the sort of big post-mortem from the fandom at large-- even those that are super unhappy with the way season 8 turned out--sort of looks back on the series with positive feelings because I think there’s, while feelings might get hurt and feelings might--people might feel betrayed by, like, story decisions, like, the show was made with nothing but, like, love and good intentions and positivity and yes we told some hard stories to tell and characters came to certain conclusions that weren’t, like, the most popular decisions, but we were just trying to tell a story that, like, looked beyond the campiness and beyond the colorful robotic silliness to tell something that felt a bit more true and a bit more real and had, as one of our execs would always say, stakes and consequences.

LM: No, stakes and urgent stakes.

JDS: Stakes and urgent stakes.

LM: That was gonna be a restaurant.

KC: That’s one of Vrepit Sal’s new chains. It’s part of Hunk’s food empire. “Steaks and Urgency.”

JDS: But we can, you know, leave all the other stuff for our other show.

LM: Good times.

MS: Yeah, and princesspony has made a new version that’s got red eyes.

JDS: Ah! Red eyes! Red evil eyes!

KC: You asked for red eyes and in-chat they went, “I’ll add red eyes!” All for the red eyes. Well, yeah, thank you for joining us this week. This has been absolutely lovely. Are there any other projects you’re working on that you can tell us about?

JDS: No.

KC: Okay! NDAs it is!

LM: I am working on getting my floors re-done, and I’m getting the popcorn scraped off my ceilings, which is a lot more expensive than I realized it was gonna be. And-and moving all of my crap out of the house so that these people can do this work and that is a hell of a project that I would not wish on anyone.

JDS: And I just took a week off with my wife to Marie Kondo our entire house.

KC: Dang!

MS: Nice!

JDS: She didn’t come over or anything, but we definitely--

LM: Did you actually put it all in a pile?

JDS: She did with her clothes, and it was pretty epic, like, my pile went to your sister to eBay off, so that was. And my pile of toys.

LM: Oh, right, right.

JDS: Her sister is a sweet human being and like, will like, yeah. During the course of Voltron, during the production, like, super weighty dark times, I would just go on, like, eBay and be like, “buy, buy, buy, buy” and a pile of toys stacked up behind me that I never opened up.

LM: Yeah, me too. We had a cardboard box fort.

JDS: Yeah.

KC: Oh, goodness.

LM: And then he had a kid and said, “Oh no, I don’t need all this stuff.”

KC: And return to sender.

JDS: Yeah.

KC: Sounds fun.

MS: eBay.

KC: Where can the people go on social media if they would like to keep up with you?

LM: Um, all of the same places: @artofLaurenM on Twitter, @thebestlaurenmontgomery on Instagram, though I will say the Voltron posts are kind of over at this point. So maybe don’t follow me now if you’re just coming for Voltron. You’ll probably be a little disappointed.

JDS: Same for me. Um, @jds_247 on something and @jds_77 on the other thing. There you go. Underscore in between those. Sorry.

KC: So I’m gonna follow you guys now for Voltron. [laughter] No, no!

JDS: That’s fine!

LM: But if you like any of my other artwork, you’re more than welcome to stay.

KC: I like all of your other artwork.

MS: It’s so pretty!

KC: Alright, thanks again for coming, you guys.

JDS: Thanks for having us, you guys have been awesome this entire time.

LM: And we’ll be back next week.

JDS: That’s right.

KC: Yes we will! I was gonna save that announcement for a little bit. Uh, Megan, where can people find you?

MS: You guys can follow me on Instagram and Twitter at @themenguin. I was gonna say, I wanted to give a quick shoutout to Mark and Emma and Alexis who all were wearing the hashtag tonight. We miss you guys and we love you and we’ll be seeing you soon!

KC: And on the live chat in Alexis’ case.

MS: Love you, Alexis!

KC: You can follow yellow lion Mark Donica at @MarkBDonica, co-red lion Emma Fyffe at @EmmaFyffe, and blue Lauren--blue Lauren--blue lion [unintelligible]. I am Katie Cullen, you can follow me all over the social medias as well as on YouTube and Twitch at kiaxet, I am also on Overwatch podcast called “On the Point”. Guys, we will be back for the final episode of ABTV Voltron. Next week we are doing a series retrospective. Same lion time, same lion channel, thank you so much for watching and we’ll see you next time.

Voiceover: Our founder: Keven Undergaro and me, Megan Menounos, would like to thank you for tuning in to Afterbuzz TV. Remember, we’re not just the first, we’re the biggest in the world and we’re the only destination for all your favorite TV shows. Whatever you crave, we’ve got it, so go to afterbuzztv.com and check out our lineup. Buzz you later!

#dragon's ramblings #TeamPurpleLion #ABTVVoltron #abtv #voltron #vld #jds #lm #joaquim dos santos #lauren montgomery #voltron legendary defender #voltron: legendary defender #afterbuzz tv #strafe

[sfiddy]

What's your favorite chapter you've ever written? What fic is it from? Why do you love it? Copy and post it here!

Hi Anon!  I’ve got a LOT to choose from but I’ll confine myself to more recent, multi-chapter works. 

One of my favorites is the first chapter of Balcony Duet!  I love how the whole work turned out, but the first chapter just has such a mood, an atmosphere, and a charming ribbon of humor wound through it that, for me at least, it really offers a wonderful summary of Erik’s life  It’s a lot like another favorite of mine, Gold Restoration. 

So here it is, in all it’s spottily edited glory.  Thank you, anon!

Chapter 1 

The Maestro

Evening fell in a soft cascade of yellows, oranges and pinks as Erik showered off the dust and scuffle of the theater. After applying a layer of protective cream over his fragile face, he shuffled off and relaxed into his couch. Managing a busy theater was a draining job, even when done mostly through others to avoid the stares and side glances of the morbidly curious, and left little time for what he really enjoyed. Even if he could, he wouldn't want the grinding job of day to day collaborative piano work. Not in a theater, anyway.

He poured a drink and carefully replaced his mask. If pressed, he would admit that he missed the moments when just a few people gathered at the piano and made music together. The intimate play of skill, interpretation, and talent that took what was on the page to a different level. The moment when the written score no longer ruled and the music, the music, led the way.

When his music led, people tended to notice his face less.

With a sigh, Erik walked across his living room towards the balcony doors, side stepping the piano that lived where anyone else would have… whatever it was that they had in their homes. Desks, coffee tables, cabinets; the pedestrian and mundane. He had a small couch, a tiny end table, and a piano. It was enough. He hardly sat in the couch anyway.

With a gentle press, his French doors swung open silently and let in a cool breeze. The courtyard below was dark, and the gardens many floors below were lit with tiny fairy lights strung from the tree branches. They hung low here and there, illuminating the bushes and flower beds. All around, balconies staggered drunkenly up the sides of the apartment buildings. Dim outlines jutting from otherwise smooth concrete façades.

It was funny how apartments boasted about their balconies, yet hardly anyone stepped onto them. Occasional glows followed by a puff of lazy, curling haze betrayed the smokers. A handful of others took in the evening autumn air that spiraled through the courtyard walkways and down from the sky above. Most of the jutting platforms were vacant.

As the evening settled violet shadows to the world's edges, Erik turned back to his rooms. Nature had exhaled and let the remaining shreds of day pass by. Darkness was gentler, kinder. Blurring the details. Everyone was the same in the dark. He flexed his hands and stretched his fingers.

He settled on Haydn, for the cool air felt like a lullaby. The notes danced in the courtyard, echoing playfully into the garden and up to the deepening purple sky. Variations evolved the music into a fugue that fused itself to a thoughtful motif he'd heard once, and finally Haydn once more. Erik ended his concert gently, for himself and, perhaps more practically, to avoid noise complaints. Then he toasted the accommodating night, finished his drink, and gathered the fortitude to finish his work. If he was quite fortunate, he'd manage a few hours of sleep before doing it all again.

…

The next morning passed in a blur of budget shifts and retroactive justification. It was followed by hasty medical attention for and filing the medical claims on behalf of his prima donna who, after her leading man bungled a set piece, ended up with a chipped tooth and bloody lip. Then more budgeting to replace the set piece after being bested by the prima donna's face.

Erik pulled his keys from his pocket and gave serious consideration to arson. When he reached his door, he unlocked it with a sigh and reminded himself that he loved the arts and his theater, loved music, and this was just the business side. Music took talent and training, and neither were free. He pushed the door open and looked down.

Damn. He had a note.

A scrap of cheap notebook paper had been shoved under the door with enough force to send it a foot beyond the threshold.

With a grunt, Erik bent and picked it up. If the little fart took issue with his playing they should have complained the day after he'd smashed out some Rachmaninoff and transitioned to Metallica, not after an evening of lullabies. He'd show them what a noise complaint should sound like.

He unfolded the note.

...

A humble request to the Maestro: Liebestraum No. 3 in A flat.

...

Erik immediately took back the little fart comment. It was the nicest scribble, really. Loopy enough to be artful, but with enough spike for efficiency. He hurried through his shower, threw on some clothes, and sloshed too much red wine into a glass.

Liszt. Who didn't love Liszt? Erik even had a hard copy of it somewhere, but immediacy demanded he queue it up on his laptop. A glance at the first bar and his mind filled in the rest; a conversation with an old friend. Then he flung the French doors open, only just stopping one from smacking against the wall to his bedroom.

The night again was violet-cool and breezy. The drunken balconies shared no secrets, and the smokers and shadows kept each other company. Somewhere though, somewhere in this was his audience, and they must not be kept waiting.

With a few deep breaths, a healthy swallow of wine, and a splendid neck crack, he was ready.

Erik gave the keys a light stroke as he placed his hands for the piece, then eased into the music, letting it flow through him and out into the courtyard; relief after a day of pounding power chords and paperwork. Such a deeply satisfying refrain, elaborated by flourishes that made the core seem simple, then repeated to emphasize their breathtaking beauty, the pearl in the oyster. Six little bars; love at the center of the dream.

He did not look at the music, all one needed was the six bars and after that it was frills and ribbons. Magnificent and transcendent to be sure, but decorations for what lay at the center.

Erik closed his eyes, letting Liszt spill into the cool evening air without really playing it, for in moments like these he became the music. There was no more theater, no paperwork, no mask and no Erik. He spread himself out in the song, a thin veil across the darkening evening.

Across a courtyard.

He let the last notes linger, hanging in the air, as long as he could before he reluctantly released the sustain. As they silenced, Erik opened his eyes and raised his mask to gently wipe the collected moisture underneath, caught in the misshapen twists and ridges of his… face.

Applause. One person. There was applause for his playing.

His audience.

Erik rose from the bench, replacing his mask as he walked to his balcony. The clapping grew louder as he stepped out, but he could not tell where it came from. The concrete walls of the courtyard bounced the sound in every direction. He was uncomfortable being watched, but the clapping did not stop when he stepped to the edge of his balcony, and came faster when he bowed.

It slowed, and finally stopped when he retreated. Erik was tempted to play an encore, considered seeing if his listener would offer another round of appreciation, but decided they had already pressed their luck with the other residents.

Besides, if he left his audience with an appetite, there may be another request.

His smile raised the mask over his cheekbones for a moment, and he closed his balcony doors gently, bidding a fond goodnight to the stars and his charming fan.

…

Though he tried not to, Erik couldn't help feeling a little disappointed when there was no note under his door the next day. He played jazz classics and sipped a gin and tonic. There was no note the next day, either, and he soothed his soul with a melancholy air and tea before retiring early.

After a dull day coordinating maintenance work and city inspectors, Erik trudged to his door with a substantial chip on his shoulder. It was irritating work, lacking even an intersection of art and business. It required calendars, carefully scheduling work away from stage time, and the quick diplomacy necessary to juggle multiple contractors on limited resources. It was dull without the good manners to be mindless.

Thus primed, his hands itching to play and his nerves begging for a stiff drink, Erik slid his key into the door. Perhaps a good pounding of Holst or some Mahler tonight. Either way, he'd have a shot before his shower, just to burn the day away.

The door swung open and Erik glanced down.

Oh. He had a note.

His bag smacked on the tile floor as Erik dove down for the folded paper.

…

Dear Maestro, Thank you for Liszt and the lovely jazz. Would you consider Shubert's Ave?

…

Well, wasn't that just jarring. Smashing out the loudest hot mess he could to… this. One does not easily trade a tirade for prayer. His fingers flexed impatiently.

Would he consider it? He was already debating which arrangement, the musician's equivalent of 'how high?'. While the request would be honored, he couldn't be blamed for taking liberty with it. Besides, he was an artist.

Showered and comfortable, Erik patted his face gently with cream and opened his bar cabinet. The first shot of tequila was far from smooth, but it burned so good and cleared the sticky, clinging day from his mind. The second shot burned, too, and he set on the third on the table near the piano, then he eased the mask into place and headed to the french doors.

The evening was warmer. A thick blanket of cloud overhead had trapped the daytime warmth. Storm season approached, or maybe it was the energy of expectation that crackled in the air. It was eerily silent in the courtyard, as if the smokers and crickets had all taken a vow of silence for the night. He could even hear the wind as it whistled through the hallways and down stairwells.

Erik imagined he could feel the eyes on him as he stepped into the soft darkness, making sure it was obvious that he, the Maestro, was about to play.

How little it took to capture his imagination these days.

He sat at the bench and removed the mask again. The Virgin Mother was about to be invoked and he wanted her to know who was calling.

The first notes came easy, reverently, but just before reaching the first 'benedictus', he added power, bass where it had not been, and Erik pounded into a crescendo and let it die back and sweeten for the refrain.

As he let the notes hush and prepared to really let go for the second half, a sound caught his ear. A sound he did not make.

A voice. From outside. Soprano.

Erik's hands froze for only a moment, his ears tingling, trying in vain to find the direction, but he knew that was pointless. Even if he wasn't inside, sitting in front of a piano, the concrete square outside would ricochet.

So he played on, softer, to hear the voice. He changed the arrangement to accompany the singer, not plow over her, and then repeated to give her a go at the entire song. As she grew more confident, her singing grew bolder, and she adapted and threw in trills and improvised around him. She was skilled. She was strong.

She was bewitching.

Too soon the song ended again, and Erik hopped from the bench and ran to the balcony. His applause joined that of his singer, their noisy clapping ringing around the courtyard.

"Brava!" he shouted, and heard a light laugh.

Oh, she was a diva.

It wasn't until he raised the third shot to his lips that he realized he wasn't wearing his mask.

…

The next day, there were two notes under his door.

...

My dear Maestro: Brava indeed! Perhaps just a lullabye tonight? -Your singer

...

The other was a noise complaint. Erik grinned and eased into some Brahms.

…

Erik stayed home the next day. After another day of repairs, he had no doubt the errors would make themselves apparent quickly. He assured his production and stage assistants of his full confidence in them and, knowing the hellscape they were in for, ordered pizza to be delivered for lunch. Then he ordered sandwiches to be delivered for dinner. His confidence in them went only so far.

He was absolutely not staying at home because the diva had seen him without the mask. But his sensitive hearing had not detected a gasp of horror and she'd kept clapping.

Conclusion? She was blind.

Error. She'd clapped louder as he stepped onto the balcony, and tapered off as he retreated.

Mad, then? Whatever she was, she was a delight. If he was lucky, she was in the market for an accompaniment.

Erik dragged his sofa and turned it to give a view of his door. He wasn't going to let her get away this time.

…

It was approaching the late afternoon as Erik replied to a reasonably coherent email from a stagehand. The current project needed more sophisticated rigging than they usually ran, but Erik was never without a plan, and had personally designed the modern fly system. It was worth a call.

"There's more capacity up there. Check the store room and you'll see crates labeled 'expansion'. If you run into trouble before I'm back, call the number on the plans and ask for Khan."

As he hung up,he caught the sound of movement in the hallway. Rustling.

By the time he heard paper tearing, Erik had his hand on the doorknob. When he whipped the door open, a young woman with soft brown curls piled atop her head jumped and dropped her notebook and pen. Erik bent down and picked up the notebook.

Same handwriting.

The woman stood up and straightened her glasses. She peered up at him as she plucked a curl from under a lens. She took a breath as if to speak but Erik held up a hand to stop her.

"Are you warmed up?"

She blinked. "I, ah… no. Not yet."

He pushed the door wide and stepped back to give her a view of… his couch. Erik swore under his breath and pulled the thing out of the way to give the woman a view of the small grand piano. "Never neglect a proper warm up. Come."

She hesitated. "I don't know…"

"Of course. I'm a stranger. A stranger wearing a mask no less. Look, I'll make this quick because I'm rather impatient to begin," He stuck out his hand. "Hello, I'm Erik, and I'm a very ugly musician. I'm very pleased to meet you miss…?"

She giggled and turned pink when her hand disappeared into his. "I'm Christine, and I'm a… a failed soprano."

He released her hand and stepped back. "Who told you that?"

Oh heavens, now she was blushing. "Fifteen years of vocal study, thirty failed auditions, three coaches, and an ex husband." Christine tilted her head. "Who said you were ugly?"

"God decreed it and my mother, good Catholic that she was, did not argue. Your problem is probably stage presence, not your voice. Your coaches were imbeciles, and I assume your ex is an ex for a reason."

Christ, his rapid fire was making his own head spin. He held the door a bit wider. "Are you going to sing or not?"

Christine hitched her bag higher on her shoulder and watched him carefully. "Okay. Maybe we can avoid a noise complaint if we're not serenading the entire complex."

Erik felt his uneven grin nudge the mask. "Philistines," he sniffed.

...

[glimmerkeith]

(hahaha last one i promise, obviously you can do 1 or zero of these

ty for the indulgence, as always…omfg

***

Staying up until two in the morning to write a term paperwasn’t unheard of in the world of uni students, not by any stretch of the imagination,but most of them were likely doing so because they had procrastinated and putit off until the very last minute. And all right, perhaps some trouble mighthave been saved if Mick had started his economics paper just a bit earlier,  but he had gotten started with plenty of timeleft—the trouble was that he kept going back to edit it, to add moreinformation, to re-edit, to make sure it was perfect.

And he set an alarm for early the next morning, to look overhis final version one last time. He’d even forgone his usual early-morning tripto the gym to glance over the monstrosity again, all twenty-plus pages of it,lips moving soundlessly as he read parts of it over. This couldn’t last long,however, the class started at eight o’clock sharp, and the lecturer wouldn’ttolerate late arrivals on so crucial a day.

Throwing an outfit together and pushing the binder with thepaper in it inside his backpack, Mick bolted from his tiny flat with what washopefully plenty of time to spare. The brisk walk to the train station thatwould take him further into the city was marred by gray clouds alreadygathering above, no trace of early morning sunlight visible at all. He didn’tstop to worry about that much right now—what was more urgent was fighting hisway onto the first train compartment he could get on, hauling his all-importantcargo along.

By the time he got to the station, his head been nodding offagainst his seat more than a couple times, the result of a long night up andnot near enough sleep. Checking his watch indicated that there was enough timeto squeeze in a quick visit to the usual coffee place where he would stop by toget a drink in the morning, and his feet were carrying him there without hiseyes bothering to look up at the sky again.

There was a queue already lined up in the warm, brightly-litshop, a sharp contrast to the darker, chillier day outside. By the time Mickwas thinking that perhaps this hadn’t been the smartest of ideas, it wasalready a bit late—he was so far ahead in line, he might as well just stay herenow. It was a popular enough destination for many of the students at variousschools nearby, and he could spot some familiar faces even here now.

The guy in front of him was dressed all in black, with aguitar case slung over his shoulder. When he turned a little, Mick thought theprofile looked vaguely familiar…he’d seen him in here from time to time,sometimes with a skinny blonde woman, but always with the guitar case. Anotherfriend, Andrew, had been in here and said he vaguely knew him through a friendof a friend at the local art college—Keith, maybe? Something like that.

He shuffled forward and gave his own order, leaving Mick toall but fidget with impatience on the spot as he checked the time on his phoneagain. He’d be fine if he hurried. There wasn’t any need for concern.

A few minutes later, he was grabbing his own coffee orderand hurrying outside the shop and onto the pavement—and just in time to noticethe now-sinisterly dark sky, accompanied by a rumble of thunder. There was onedrop, then another…and within moments, the rain started to come down inearnest. Mick swore profusely and moved faster, his wet hair starting toplaster to his cheeks as he tried to remember if he had an umbrella in his bag…butstopping under a nearby awning for a moment proved the answer to be adefinitive no. He cursed again, and looked out frantically into the rain thatwas now starting to come down in sheets.

He hadto be on time, there was no way he could dawdle or even wait for a bus inthis. But he had little doubts that the rucksack was far from waterproof, andif he did rain damage to the critical and godforsaken paper he hadworked so hard on…

His eyes landed on a solution in the next moment. Underneaththe awning of the building next to him, the art college student (Keith?) was stompingout a cigarette under his shoe, and preparing to go back into the rain…with ahuge umbrella opened over his head.

Mick moved as fast as all his sports training had evertaught him, darting over to Keith in a blink. “E-excuse me, pardon me! Listen,it…it’s Keith, is it?”

He looked utterly gobsmacked for a moment, and Mick didn’tblame him. “Er…yeah. How the hell d’you know my name?”

“Andrew. Oldham. He knows your friend Ronnie. I…are yougoing in the same direction LSE is?”

Dark, almost dangerous eyes looked him up and down. “…yeah,thereabouts.”

God, he could have been a little more talkative—but hehad better things to worry. “Look, I hate to ask, but I’ve got the one and onlycopy of my bloody term paper probably falling apart in my rucksack right now,and I could use…I could use an umbrella to get to school. Please.”

Keith gave an incredulous snort at that. “Are you winding meup here?”

“No, not at all! I’m fucking serious—”

“And what am I supposed to do, walk all the way in the raininstead? I don’t think so.”

He was tired, so tired and frazzled and overworked, healmost contemplated throwing himself on Keith and wrestling the umbrella fromhis hands before peeling off down the street. The thought—or else hisdesperation—must have been written all over his face, as Keith studied him oncemore.

“…you look like a drowned fucking rat.”

“Jesus…thanks for that.”

The rain had showed no sign at all of letting up, and mostpeople were opting to take shelter in nearby buildings as cabs and cars rumbledpast on the road, headlights glowing in the torrential downpour. Maybe, Mickthought, he could nick a newspaper or something and use it for a feeble amountof cover—and then, to his surprise, there came a ragged sigh behind him.

“Oh, god…I must be going soft. Look—I’m going the same wayfor a bit. If you want we could���share, I guess.”

Mick whirled around, fully prepared to defend himself fromany joke that might be trying to be pulled on him—but Keith looked sincereenough, and he’d moved the umbrella forward a bit. It really was quite large,there was space enough for both of them under it, and a wild, grateful smileunfurled across his face.

“Thank you. Oh mygod…thank you.”

Now under the relative cover of the umbrella, they set offdown the street together, Mick taking care that his rucksack was definitelyreaping the benefit of this new arrangement. There was room, but not much tobrag about, and Mick found himself increasingly all but pressed up againstKeith’s (dry) side as they walked briskly along. But of course, he was wearing aleather jacket, and it smelled like cigarette smoke and surprisingly, somethingwarm like cinnamon. Maybe it was whatever was in his drink. In any case, it wasan almost comforting sort of sensation, and it was everything he could do notto try and huddle even closer up to him.

“So you know Andrew, huh?” Keith asked him as they werewaiting at a crosswalk, and Mick nodded.

“Yeah. We…go back a bit.” If that was one could say aboutsomeone you used to fuck on a semi-regular basis.

“He’s a character. But, uh…guess I can see why he’d be intoyou.”

Mick blinked at that. “What does that mean?”

“Um, well…don’t worry about it. Forget I said anything.”

It seemed stupid to argue with someone who he now owed, soMick kept any further thoughts to himself. Stupid Andrew.

One of the familiar buildings that belonged to LSE’s campuswas soon looming just ahead, and of course, just as the rain finally started tolet up. It began to slow down to a fine, still-steady patter, but at least onecould reasonably see where they were going now. Mick’s teeth were stillstarting to chatter, as he’d only put on a thin shirt this morning beforeleaving in a rush. Keith glanced over at him more than a couple times, andfinally came to a halt just outside the building with a sigh.

“I really must begoing soft…but Christ, you really do look tragic.” He shrugged his jacket offand held it out. “Just put it on, all right? You’re making me cold just lookingat you.”

Mick’s mouth fell open a little, almost about to stammer outa protest—but at this point in the day, he was still too frayed to turn anoffer of kindness down, and the jacket was plenty warm. “I really don’t…Ireally don’t know what to say, you know.”

“Say you’ll give it back to me, I want to keep the damnthing.” But Keith’s grin was friendlier, not feral. “You know where to find me,apparently.”

Yes, he certainly did—and Mick was surprisingly grateful forthat for more reasons than one by the time they finally parted ways. He bid Keithgoodbye and thanked him again before ducking into the foyer of the building,shaking his hair almost like a wet dog and still wearing the jacket. Peeringout the rain-slicked windows and out to the pavement revealed a distant figurewalking away with an umbrella held aloft, and he had to give a small smile evenas water continued to drip steadily off him.

Maybe the morning hadn’t been a total wash after all.



#my fic #god...i really am a giant sap tho #but ngl umbrella-sharing is one of my favorite tropes sooo u_u #i'll do my last prompt tomorrow #the glimmer twins #✨✨

[writingsofmyimagination]

Scorpio |12|

Summary:  How will The Joker deal with a woman with a mind as deadly and criminal as his own?

Jared Leto Joker x Reader

Warnings:

Words:

I wrote this about this series about a year and a half ago. I have slightly updated and edited as I intend to do with all the other parts

ENJOY :) Comment, Reblog :)

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 Dylan’s POV | COMPLETE

It was now early evening the night before ‘the job’

The day has been ridiculously hectic; constant flurries of men in and out gearing up. You couldn’t think of ten minutes going by where J hadn’t scolded someone or flew into a blind rage about something meticulous.

At least he hasn’t killed anyone

 There is still time. There was a constant buzzing around the place of excitement; criminals will be criminals. Adrenaline breeding more adrenaline. Dylan had stayed the night in one of the guest rooms with Ted, It was actually pretty great having both your favourite guys around; with that said Ted had taken a strong liking to Frost. On the complete other side of the spectrum you could tell J wasn’t too happy with Ted’s presence and he made no attempt at hiding the fact either. You were also not his favourite person as he is not allowed in the bedroom, he always slept at your feet. Dylan was quite tense after J had informed him of the threat and the risks; as a result he didn’t want you out of his sight. You hated it. You were smothered, by both of them.

 Apparently you were going to his club for the evening; with a threat above your head you wasn’t quite so keen to be out longer than necessary. J assured you he’d made arrangements for extra security and is satisfied with what’s in place. He was irritatingly adamant that he must go and show face.

So here you were, stood looking in the mirror in J’s bathroom; hair down,messy fringe. You was not feeling this at all and wanted to dress down and wear more casual clothes but when you’re with The Joker that is not an option. He wants to show you off to everyone, at what he’s got but at the same time he wants no eyes on you, only his. In the end you go for a bright blood red lipstick and a gentle flick of black eyeliner which draws out the opal of your eyes. Once again you had the task of covering bruises with copious amounts of concealer, you fast becoming a pro at it. J had chosen a silk lilac dress which fell soft on you skin, more of a sexy night material than a going out in public one. The bottom of the dress was diagonally cut and the longest side finished just below the knee. Finally onto the shoes. They were stunning!; they should be seeing as they were Dior. They were elegant black toe pumps with heels. The heel itself is adorned with faceted studs creating a subtle shimmer; its fine trio of feminine straps accentuate the instep. At the front in the middle of each strap was a delicate metal star finished with rhinestones. While doing up the small zip fastening you caught J gawking in the reflection of the mirror. 

“Anything you like? you asked purposely slowly brushing up your soft legs with delicate fingertips and smirking.

“All too much princess, you look beautiful” He smiled a genuine smile, if you’ve ever seen one from him.

“Although there is something I would like to add” He pulled out a box and opened it and picked up its contents and dangled it in front of him behind which he had that mischievous grin on his face.

“Curious?”

“Always” you walked over to him and grabbed it. It was silicone, purple and was the shape of a slightly elongated egg with at one end a malleable length of tail. You got the gist of what it was, not that you’ve ever used one. 

Looks like tonight might not be so bad after all 

“Want me to show you?”

“I think I’ll manage myself” Smirking and heading to the bathroom. With the door closed you slipped down the lacy hot pants. After making the egg wet you slowly pushed it inside. Straight away it pushed on your walls making you inhale sharply. You took a moment, adjusting. You flexed the tail so the tip rested lightly on you clit. You fully redressed, keeping your underwear on for once. Every move you made consequently you felt down inside. J was at the edge of the bed smirking as you tried to keep face

“After you” he motioned to the door, as you passed him you stopped dead. Arching yourself slightly forward, letting out a large breath as strong pulses vibrated through you clit and inside you. You straightened back up when the waves passed. His red shirt exposing half his chest which was tucked neatly into his trousers; his heavy gold rings on his fingers which were curled round a little purple rectangular device. 

“Daddy is going to have fun with this” he smirked almost cruelly and continued

“Let’s get going doll” The nervous laugh that escaped you, in turmoil whether tonight was going to be fun or own right torture.

 //

When you arrived at the club the extra security presence was immediately apparent. There were more doormen and they were checking bags, there were metal detectors and ID card scans. Consequently the queue was larger than normal and consisted of cold and fidgety people. You on the other hand were ushered quickly through the back door; as soon as we were inside the security backed off and you had your own space back and could breathe. 

The familiar buzz of the club eased the anxiousness away somewhat. The club was busier than usual; all the booths were occupied, the dance floor was packed out, bar men were frantically trying to keep on top of the queue. People turned to look at The Joker and You but they will not look for long before continuing with their group and gawking at the dancer podiums.

As you sat down in his private booth the egg shifted upwards slightly, causing you to clench your fists in an effort to diffuse the sensations, to control your breathing and pleasure from being too obvious. J was in your peripheral vision smirking as you discreetly shuffled in you seat and ordered an apple martini. When the drinks arrived you wasn’t consciously aware of how quickly you drank it down. Obviously he did as you caught him smirking again; it was getting slightly irritating how much he was enjoying this while you was trying not to show you arousal which was growing ever stronger with every movement you made.

“Dance for me baby-doll” He commanded with a devilish smile.

“What? Here? With this thing?” You have never been one for public displays nor do you enjoy bringing attention to yourself. He did not reply, he just glared at you; he wasn’t going to take no for an answer and with those eyes part of you didn’t want to refuse.

 Like a switch in my body, You consciously switched off all inhibitions and went into confidence overdrive. It certainly was helped along by how turned on you were. You focused only on him, drowning out the background noise and spectators. 

“Does daddy want a show” you whispered in his ear while leaning over ensuring he had a nice clear view down your dress.  You pulled under his chin bringing his lips to yours and teased them softly making him press harder. You pulled away with his lips chasing. You leaned in and gently bit his bottom lip. 

“He does indeed” he purred.

You started to tease him getting up slowly and ran your hands like a delicate feather over his crotch. You stood in front of him and let the music take over, your body swaying in sync in a seductive trance. Blocking out further thoughts of you being in a public place you slid both your hands down your sides to the bottom of your dress and teased it up slightly before turning away from him and teasing it up further just to show him the lower mounds of your ass. You knocked your head back when you cupped and grabbed it. Knowing he’d be riddled with jealously. The shockwaves of the damn toy shattered through you in three strong slow pulses. It made you almost lose balance as it pulsed against your walls. Your exasperated breaths were not heard, drowning to nothing against the background noise of the club.

How good it would be to be across his knee...

You could half see him shifting in his seat; his eyes fiercely fixated on you, not even blinking.

Composure Y/N

 Your hands made there way up your legs so tentative and slow, swaying around to fully face him. You stalked closer to him, abrupt in your turn to sit in his lap. When your hips began to gyrate he absorbed a heavy breath which you only saw as encouragement. You swept your hair over your shoulder, freeing a pleasant aroma of coconut. You went to slowly unzip your dress when he suddenly grabbed you wrist tight stopping you.

“No one else gets to see anymore of you, that’s mine” he snarled. 

“Come with me now” He jolted up; your wrist still in his grasp. As soon as the beaded curtain of his booth was disturbed Frost turned to J.  

“We’ll be in the interrogation room” his words were rushed and impatient. He lightly pulled you in his desired direction, as you passed Frost with J’s hand in your he smiled.

This is awkward

 Your smirk in reply spoke only of embarrassment and awkwardness.

A section of the wall on the ground floor was a mirror; much like that you would find in a ballet studio. As you was allowing yourself to be dragged  round the back of the club you could just make out a door to the left of the end of the mirror section. You could sense people looking curiously over at you; no sooner you could worry about that before you was thrust through this concealed door which was swiftly locked behind you with a loud CLICK

In the dim light you could barely make out a semi circle; a black seated booth with a small table in the middle at the far end of the room, to the right of you were two single leather chairs. You shuffled out of his way and leant up against the one way mirror while he moved one of the chairs to the centre of the room. He spoke no words, the music from the room next door was now a low throb in the room.

 He came closer and purred; the one sound that made you disregard any rationality and sense. You snapped, control gone. You grabbed his shirt where it was open and pulled him into you. He followed his weight slamming into you pushing you hard against the wall.  Breathes heavy with moans escaped your lips as he lifted your arms above your head.  Arms pinned tight he kissed hard and thrust his hips into you. Your chest was heaving chasing the breaths you lost in desperate gasps. Your underwear was soaked. 

“My, my kitten you do want daddy bad don’t you? We’ll definitely be using this again” His hand wandered into your underwear and tugged the toy out of you; you wailed into his kisses and bit down on his bottom lip, emptiness seeping in rapidly. Leaving you empty and chasing his departing lips with a pout he went and sat down on the chair he’d moved earlier. 

“Now where were we?” he said catching his breath; raising his eyebrows and the corner of his mouth.

You threw him an sulky glare which quickly diffused into a coy smile. You felt much more at ease with less eyes gawking at you. You shuffled to resume your last position, his hand lightly wrapping around the back of your neck before unzipping the dress and delicately brushing the straps of your shoulders. He tapped at the side of your thigh UP!

You got to your feet allowing the dress to slide off and drop to pool on the floor. He purred as your body was now a free display for his eyes only. Your want...need for him rushed through you like a nicotine craving as your ass sat back on his lap. You felt his bulge, eager for more space and you ground into his groin coaxing the tightness to continue. he cupped both his hands on your breasts and squeezed. A growl escaped him;  it wasn’t a happy one. He slid his hands down your sides and dug his fingers into your hips hard, pressing down to hinder your movement

 “I’m going to have to fuck you instead”

“Instead of what exactly? Just teasing me?” you turned your neck slightly to see his face delivering your word dripping with sass.

“Well daddy did have other plans yes, but I can’t seem to control myself because of your teasing, I said I wanted a show and now I want to fuck you” Stern annoyed words. 

“I see” You replied trying not to let the sudden raging urge to slap him reach action point. You stood, turned and leaned forward and without saying a word ran your hands down pale soft chest of his scratching as your fingertips glided over his skin. His head rolled to the side and purred. You leaned into his neck and kissed softly before biting hard; he gasped before your eyes met. His eyes were like the devil, blazing with rage

 “Just fuck me...” you whispered.

 “Daddy” you added after a brief pause. That was it. He grabbed one of your hands pulling you up and twisted you round. It was aggressive enough to leave your wrist feeling bruised. Your heart was racing, frantic; you could feel it hammering into your chest. He shifted and stood behind you a moment, the skin of his exposed chest felt cool and smooth on your bare back. He dropped down yanking your underwear the same way. He stood and swung you around again by your already compromised wrist. A delicate hand stroked your cheek before placing his hand over your mouth to align his smile tattoo. You grinned, rolled your eyes before pushing him back onto the chair. You got to your knees in between his legs and undone his belt and trousers in a rush reeking of desperation. He was enjoying how bad you wanted him and was just about to let you put him in your mouth 

“Ah ah” he waved his index finger side to side

 “I want to feel you on the inside” he motioned with his hands to turn and swivel. 

So much turning you internally complained.

You obeyed, which had you was facing the unbeknownst dance floor and gently lowered Yourself down. He grabbed your hair, yanking you down onto his cock. He grunted, you cried.

 “You feel so good ” He whispered in you ear, trying to suppress a growl.

“Mmmhmmm” you breathed as you started gyrating your hips making sure he hit every point your walls craved; his fingers were dug into your side controlling your speed while the other was constantly caressing the front of your body, constantly teetering to your neck knowing it's a weak spot. He softly moved one of your hands and guided it down to your throbbing bundle of nerves; 

What?

 You were hesitant to think twice as he started guiding your hand in small circles. He let go of your hand as you continued with his permission. He sporadically tugged at your hair gently which caused you both to moan. You could hear his breathing in your ear; the hot breath rolling off the shell of the your ear in firm waves. 

“Don’t stop princess” he stuttered. With those deadly words your strength dissipated and you collapsed  harder onto his length; his head thrown back, mouth agape with the shine of his silver teeth. The heat was extinguished as his cell phone started ringing in his pocket. You had no intentions of stopping until he grabbed your hand and stopped all movements. The dramatic whine you panted was no exaggeration to your true feelings. He leaned to the side and rummaged in his pocket 

“Sorry doll” he panted exasperated, treating your neck to a soft kiss. 

“This better be important!” He snarled. You heard broken muffles of what Frost was saying; you could only ascertain that something to do with chemicals had gone wrong. 

Well whoever fucked up will be lucky to survive the night

The Joker, someone not known for his calmness certainly seemed just that. You hoped he wasn’t mad at Frost and that the interruption was needed. He gently nudged you to get up. With the heat diffusing from the atmosphere it quickly became drafty and cool very quickly. You redressed, there was something so disappointing about the zip on your dress being up.

“Sorry kitten, we’ll have to finish this later”

 With a soft gentle kiss on the forehead he was gone.

#the joker #joker #the joker fanfiction #jared leto joker #jared leto joker fanfiction #jared leto joker imagin #imagine #joker imagine #joker smut #smut #DC comics #Suicide Squad

[noodlenutter]

i met my childhood idol TWICE this weekend and i dont think im gonna be the same ever again

super longwinded and probably kinda cringey/obsessivly detailed post under the cut

ok so when i was 11 there was a show on cbbc called mission 2110 and the main character, caleb, was this cyborg dude w a robot arm and headset and he was fighting against evil robots who’d taken over the world, and most importantly, he was played by stuart goldsmith. 

i saw a sign around uni for a comedy show at the basement, york, by (you guessed it) stuart goldsmith. so of course i had to go, if only to make childhood-me happy

i turned up alone and Very early. i waited outside the venue for a while and saw stu leave and go for a walk around york but I wasn’t 100% sure it was him so i didnt approach him then

when we finally got in i sat on the front row between a group of elderly people and a drunk hen party - as soon as stuart got on stage, he started his introducing himself/the show, talking about the venue and warming up the crowd spiel, but instantly froze when he saw the hen party (he was surprised that they were there and kept sort of forgetting his train of thought and going back to the fact the entire front row was a hen party, cos they’re not his usual audience)

he started the gig and im not gonna go into huge detail about that in this post cos there’s no way i’d do any of it justice thru words (plus theres gonna be a tour dvd sometime ;) ) but at some points he interacted with the audience (usually the front row) so i’ll mention those 

the first Direct Interaction was when he spat directly onto my shoe while talking. he looked right at me, stopped his joke, and said ‘yes, i know what just happened. i know. it was Entirely Intentional.’ and kept going as if nothing had happened at all (it was fuckin hilarious cos no one else even saw it happen so the crowd was like ?????)

& for the part where he asked about jobs, he asked me and i said i was a student so he firstly asked what i wanted to do after - but straight away asked what i studied. i shrugged as a response to what i want to do after the degree (cos who knows lmao) but he took that as a response for what i study and made some quip about me not even knowing what i study n how that’s just a Typical Student Thing isn’t it?

(apparently when robots take our jobs, psychologists will be replaced by tape recorders on legs)

during the break (NOT an interval) i was talking to the people beside me (not the ones in the hen party) about york and scarborough and floods and bands and everything, they were so nice 

not much happened in the 2nd half of the show (other than the fact i almost CRIED laughing, honestly that dude is SO funny), but he said he was gonna hang around afterwards to sell tshirts and say hi to people, so i decided to ask him about cbbc’s mission 2110 (which was my favourite show ever and also the place i know him from)

so, after he’d told his last joke (one about raisins, which i remembered on the drive home and had to pull over cos i was laughing so hard i thought i was gonna crash the car), he said goodbye and got off stage etc etc, i queue up to say hi. straight away he reaches out to shake my hand & say ‘hi mate, thanks for enjoying the show’, that kinda thing

i asked him about m2110 and his face LIT UP, i thought he was gonna hate me for reminding him of it but he was happy and said that was his dream job, all the robots were played by his street performer friends, and he cant wait for the day that one of the kids from the show turns up to his gig

i asked him for a photo after that and he was like ‘yea, of course!! ill even do the pose!’ and put his hand to his face like caleb from m2110 did (im grinning at the memory while typing this, its such a dumb photo but i look insanely happy and he looks exactly as i remember caleb looking)

i asked how m2110 ended (i never got to see the last ever episode), and he looked like he was going to tell me but when i said i hadn’t seen the last ep he said ‘i’m not gonna tell you then!!’ (cmon mate its been deleted off the internet for like 8 years now :(!! )

all in all i think the first show was just how a typical comedy gig goes, but the 2nd show things got different (in a good way)

i decided to go again when i found out he was going to be in leeds 2 days later, and i took my friend who was disappointed that she’d missed the first show

we got to the front row and had to sit directly in front of him (we were gonna sit a bit further across but other people wanted to sit there first), so when he came up on stage to do his intro he glanced at me, then snapped back to do a double take - ‘are you BACK???’ he asked, pointing at me, ‘you were in york the other day, weren’t you?’

i gave him a thumbs up, high enough for most of the crowd to see, and he grinned, crouched a bit and started talking to me about the york show’s crowd - the fact there was a hen party, how surprised he was about them, and then that the weren’t as rowdy as we both thought they were going to be - after a minute or so, he stood up again and said ‘this is more of a chat than a show, isn’t it?’ & got on with the show.

i honestly can’t stop thinking about the “what’s your name, where you from, where d’you do your howling?” part of the show cos it’s never something i thought of before, but every day since then i’ve screamed in my car to a song and it’s kinda therapeutic (he pointed at me when he asked about howling, he points at a random audience member for each question) (also SOIL) (also also the bit about wanting to do a mic drop but with a microphone made of meringue) 

in the break, the person behind me tapped me on the shoulder and asked whether it was different from york or better/worse than york, and whether i’d been a fan for long, etc etc 

after the break, stu got back on stage and thanked us all for coming back - then asked whether there were any ‘guilty empty seats’ next to anyone. the guy in the seat next to mine didn’t return after the break, so the person next to him and i pointed at the empty chair on the front row (he said something about how he respects that decision cos the guy came alone anyway) 

“shall we mix this part up a bit? could you shuffle these?” he asked, and gave me the flashcards while explaining how this part of the show worked (he workshops jokes from flashcards, they’re in a set order for every other show but he wanted to make it different for leeds, and so gave me the cards to decide the order)

i panicked a bit though cos I was so shocked, so i just shuffled them randomly instead of reading the cards and what they said (oops), and i put an interesting one on top - it just said ‘R’ in a circle and i couldn’t think what joke that would have been so i put it first.

i gave him the cards back and he looked at the top one like ‘uhh, no, i cant do this one first, that’s possibly the best bit of them all it’s gotta go at the end’ (which made me realise it was the raisin joke at the end of the show, so i told him how it really is because I had to pull over on the drive home it made me laugh so much - to which he fist pumped and yelled ‘now THAT’S a review!’)

before moving onto the content on the cards he talked about how he wishes he could go on stage to an audience who’s already ‘warm’ to him so he doesnt have to waste his 2nd best joke so early in the show, so he was planning ideas to get the crowd hyped before he even came out. he sat on the empty chair next to me and talked about how if everyone’s hyped enough then he’ll get a standing ovation etc etc, then stood back up, jumped on stage, and we all stood with him and clapped - ‘yeah, keep going!!! no one sit down! dont do it!’, after a few seconds i was losing my balance but i thought it’d be Funny if someone sat down, and Funny if that someone was me, who everyone knew had been to the show before. so i sat. 

‘NO!! she’s sat down! that’s it i guess, it’s over isnt it, alright then, you can all stop now i suppose’ (tbf i feel slightly bad for it BUT it made it all funnier anyway so it’s chill, i hope)

because i hadn’t looked at the cards every time there was an unexpected one he glanced over to me, ‘is this really what you want? you want this one?’, sighed ‘okay then’ and did the bit. the one about the squirrel (’you really want the fuckin squirrel one???’) kinda flopped cos it built off a previous one in york so he said that at least he’s learnt that it has to be in a certain order to be funny (youre welcome)

after the show when i went to say hi & thank you for letting me control the cards etc (i never actually said that cos i got distracted, ended up talking about how one of my twitter friends & her family is friends with him and his family but he asked who i was talking about and im like ‘uhhh i dont know her name we use nicknames online uhhhhhhh sorry’ lol), when he saw me he lifted his arms and went straight in for a hug (I HUGGED MY CHILDHOOD IDOL) & thanked me for coming back again so soon

i asked if he could sign something for me but all i had was a yellow envelope (’oh! a yenvelope!’) nnd a sharpie wrapped in tissues cos it leaks (’uhhhh lucy, why is it wrapped in tissue? oh, it leaks? well, if i were you i’d wrap it in something, maybe a tissue?’) & signed the envelope with ‘you are too big a fan! :)’ which is the most true thing anyones ever said about me, ever. he also asked if i wanted a photo or anything but i said i’d already got one n he was like ‘oh of course you do’ lol

anyway yea we left after that and i’ve been screaming internally ever since cos i never thought id ever even meet him but then i saw him twice in 3 days and he recognised me, let me influence the show AND hugged me. im still amazed. im in awe. stuart goldsmith is such a wholesome guy and im waiting (im)patiently for his next tour

EDIT: i just remembered that during the last joke i was laughing so much that i was crying and i was fanning my face, and he saw and was like ‘are you ok there?? you good??’ which made me laugh even more, jesus,

#probably the longest post ever im writing it all down cos i have a shit memory for details #i listened to darkshines on repeat while writing this too cos everything else was too distracting #i warned u that its lik embarassingly detailed i didnt wanna forget any of it so u dont have to read the tldr is baso all u need to know #this is mostly for if anyone asks me how my weekend was i can read this to them n not forget anyhting lol!! #personal i guess #uni tag #stuart goldsmith #not even proofread #like if u read i guess but also i dont thnk i wanna know who read it lol