#Honorable mentions: literally every science song | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

letterboxd · 3 years

Photo

Blurring the Line.

As a new Space Jam film beams down to Earth, Kambole Campbell argues that a commitment to silliness and a sincere love for the medium is what it takes to make a great live-action/animation hybrid.

The live-action and animation hybrid movie is something of a dicey prospect. It’s tricky to create believable interaction between what’s real and what’s drawn, puppeteered or rendered—and blending the live and the animated has so far resulted in wild swings in quality. It is a highly specific and technically demanding niche, one with only a select few major hits, though plenty of cult oddities. So what makes a good live-action/animation hybrid?

To borrow words from Hayao Miyazaki, “live action is becoming part of that whole soup called animation”. Characters distinct from the humans they interact with, but rendered as though they were real creatures (or ghosts), are everywhere lately; in Paddington, in Scooby Doo, in David Lowery’s (wonderful) update of Pete’s Dragon.

The original ‘Pete’s Dragon’ (1977) alongside the 2016 remake.

Lowery’s dragon is realized with highly realistic lighting and visual-effects work. By comparison, the cartoon-like characters in the 1977 Pete’s Dragon—along with other films listed in Louise’s handy compendium of Disney’s live-action animation—are far more exaggerated. That said, there’s still the occasional holdout for the classical version of these crossovers: this year’s Tom and Jerry replicating the look of 2D through 3D/CGI animation, specifically harkens back to the shorts of the 1940s and ’50s.

One type of live-action/animation hybrid focuses on seamless immersion, the other is interested in exploring the seams themselves. Elf (2003) uses the aberration of stop-motion animals to represent the eponymous character as a fish out of water. Ninjababy, a Letterboxd favorite from this year’s SXSW Festival, employs an animated doodle as a representation of the protagonist’s state of mind while she processes her unplanned pregnancy.

Meanwhile, every Muppets film ever literally tears at the seams until we’re in stitches, but, for the sake of simplicity, puppets are not invited to this particular party. What we are concerned with here is the overlap between hand-drawn animation and live-action scenes (with honorable mentions of equally valid stop-motion work), and the ways in which these hybrids have moved from whimsical confections to nod-and-wink blockbusters across a century of cinema.

Betty Boop and Koko the clown in a 1938 instalment of the Fleischer brothers’ ‘Out of the Inkwell’ series.

Early crossovers often involve animators playing with their characters, in scenarios such as the inventive Out of the Inkwell series of shorts from Rotoscope inventor Max Fleischer and his director brother Dave. Things get even more interactive mid-century, when Gene Kelly holds hands with Jerry Mouse in Anchors Aweigh.

The 1960s and ’70s deliver ever more delightful family fare involving human actors entering cartoon worlds, notably in the Robert Stevenson-directed Mary Poppins and Bedknobs and Broomsticks, and Chuck Jones’ puntastic The Phantom Tollbooth.

Jerry and Gene dance off their worries in ‘Anchors Aweigh’ (1945).

Mary Poppins is one of the highest-rated live-action/animation hybrids on Letterboxd for good reason. Its sense of control in how it engages with its animated creations makes it—still!—an incredibly engaging watch. It is simply far less evil than the singin’, dancin’ glorification of slavery in Disney’s Song of the South (1946), and far more engaging than Victory Through Air Power (1943), a war-propaganda film about the benefits of long-range bombing in the fight against Hitler. The studio’s The Reluctant Dragon (1941) also serves a propagandistic function, as a behind-the-scenes studio tour made when the studio’s animators were striking.

By comparison, Mary Poppins’ excursions into the painted world—replicated in Rob Marshall’s belated, underrated 2018 sequel, Mary Poppins Returns—are full of magical whimsicality. “Films have added the gimmick of making animation and live characters interact countless times, but paradoxically none as pristine-looking as this creation,” writes Edgar in this review. “This is a visual landmark, a watershed… the effect of making everything float magically, to the detail of when a drawing should appear in front or the back of [Dick] Van Dyke is a creation beyond my comprehension.” (For Van Dyke, who played dual roles as Bert and Mr Dawes Senior, the experience sparked a lifelong love of animation and visual effects.)

Julie Andrews, Dick Van Dyke and penguins, in ‘Mary Poppins’ (1964).

Generally speaking, and the Mary Poppins sequel aside, more contemporary efforts seek to subvert this feeling of harmony and control, instead embracing the chaos of two worlds colliding, the cartoons there to shock rather than sing. Henry Selick’s frequently nightmarish James and the Giant Peach (1996) leans into this crossover as something uncanny and macabre by combining live action with stop motion, as its young protagonist eats his way into another world, meeting mechanical sharks and man-eating rhinos. Sally Jane Black describes it as “riding the Burton-esque wave of mid-’90s mall goth trends and blending with the differently demonic Dahl story”.

Science-classroom staple Osmosis Jones (2001) finds that within the human body, the internal organs serve as cities full of drawn white-blood-cell cops. The late Stephen Hillenburg’s The Spongebob Squarepants Movie (2004) turns its real-life humans into living cartoons themselves, particularly in a bonkers sequence featuring David Hasselhoff basically turning into a speedboat.

David Hasselhoff picks up speed in ‘The Spongebob Squarepants Movie’ (2004).

The absurdity behind the collision of the drawn and the real is never better embodied than in another of our highest-rated live/animated hybrids. Released in 1988, Robert Zemeckis’ Who Framed Roger Rabbit shows off a deep understanding—narratively and aesthetically—of the material that it’s parodying, seeking out the impeccable craftsmanship of legends such as director of animation Richard Williams (1993’s The Thief and the Cobbler), and his close collaborator Roy Naisbitt. The forced perspectives of Naisbitt’s mind-bending layouts provide much of the rocket fuel driving the film’s madcap cartoon opening.

Distributed by Walt Disney Pictures, Roger Rabbit utilizes the Disney stable of characters as well as the Looney Tunes cast to harken back to America’s golden age of animation. It continues a familiar scenario where the ’toons themselves are autonomous actors (as also seen in Friz Freleng’s 1940 short You Ought to Be in Pictures, in which Daffy Duck convinces Porky Pig to try his acting luck in the big studios).

Daffy Duck plots his rise up the acting ranks in ‘You Ought to Be in Pictures’ (1940).

Through this conceit, Zemeckis is able to celebrate the craft of animation, while pastiching both Chinatown, the noir genre, and the mercenary nature of the film industry (“the best part is… they work for peanuts!” a studio exec says of the cast of Fantasia). As Eddie Valiant, Bob Hoskins’ skepticism and disdain towards “toons” is a giant parody of Disney’s more traditional approach to matching humans and drawings.

Adult audiences are catered for with plenty of euphemistic humor and in-jokes about the history of the medium. It’s both hilarious (“they… dropped a piano on him,” one character solemnly notes of his son) and just the beginning of Hollywood toying with feature-length stories in which people co-exist with cartoons, rather than dipping in and out of fantasy sequences. It’s not just about how the cartoons appear on the screen, but how the human world reacts to them, and Zemeckis gets a lot of mileage out of applying ’toon lunacy to our world.

Bob Hoskins in ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit?’ (1988).

The groundbreaking optical effects and compositing are excellent (and Hoskins’ amazing performance should also be credited for holding all of it together), but what makes Roger Rabbit such a hit is that sense of controlled chaos and a clever tonal weaving of violence and noirish seediness (“I’m not bad… I’m just drawn that way”) through the cartoony feel. And it is simply very, very funny.

It could be said that, with Roger Rabbit, Zemeckis unlocked the formula for how to modernize the live-action and animation hybrid, by leaning into a winking parody of what came before. It worked so perfectly well that it helped kickstart the ‘Disney renaissance' era of animation. Roger Rabbit has influenced every well-known live-action/animation hybrid produced since, proving that there is success and fun to be had by completely upending Mary Poppins-esque quirks. Even Disney’s delightful 2007 rom-com Enchanted makes comedy out of the idea of cartoons crossing that boundary.

When a cartoon character meets real-world obstacles.

Even when done well, though, hybrids are not an automatic hit. Sitting at a 2.8-star average, Joe Dante’s stealthily great Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003) is considered by the righteous to be the superior live-action/animated Looney Tunes hybrid, harkening back to the world of Chuck Jones and Frank Tashlin. SilentDawn states that the film deserves the nostalgic reverence reserved for Space Jam: “From gag to gag, set piece to set piece, Back in Action is utterly bonkers in its logic-free plotting and the constant manipulation of busy frames.”

With its Tinseltown parody, Back in Action pulls from the same bag of tricks as Roger Rabbit; here, the Looney Tunes characters are famous, self-entitled actors. Dante cranks the meta comedy up to eleven, opening the film with Matthew Lillard being accosted by Shaggy for his performance in the aforementioned Scooby Doo movie (and early on throwing in backhanded jokes about the practice of films like itself as one character yells, “I was brought in to leverage your synergy!”).

Daffy Duck with more non-stop banter in ‘Looney Tunes: Back in Action’ (2003).

Back in Action is even more technically complex than Roger Rabbit, seamlessly bringing Looney Tunes physics and visual language into the real world. Don’t forget that Dante had been here before, when he had Anthony banish Ethel into a cartoon-populated television show in his segment of Twilight Zone: The Movie. Another key to this seamlessness is star Brendan Fraser, at the height of his powers here as “Brendan Fraser’s stunt double”.

Like Hoskins before him, Fraser brings a wholehearted commitment to playing the fed-up straight man amidst cartoon zaniness. Fraser also brought that dedication to Henry Selick's Monkeybone (2001), a Roger Rabbit-inspired sex comedy that deploys a combo of stop-motion animation and live acting in a premise amusingly close to that of 1992’s Cool World (but more on that cult anomaly shortly). A commercial flop, Back in Action was the last cinematic outing for the Looney Tunes for some time.

Nowadays, when we think of live-action animation, it’s hard not to jump straight to an image of Michael Jordan’s arm stretching to do a half-court dunk to save the Looney Tunes from slavery. There’s not a lot that can be fully rationalized about the 1996 box-office smash, Space Jam. It is a bewildering cartoon advert for Michael Jordan’s baseball career, dreamed up off the back of his basketball retirement, while also mashing together different American icons. Never forget that the soundtrack—one that, according to Benjamin, “makes you have to throw ass”—includes a song with B-Real, Coolio, Method Man and LL Cool J.

Michael Jordan and teammates in ‘Space Jam’ (1996).

Space Jam is a film inherently born to sell something, predicated on the existing success of a Nike commercial rather than any obvious passion for experimentation. But its pure strangeness, a growing nostalgia for the nineties, and meticulous compositing work from visual-effects supervisor Ed Jones and the film’s animation team (a number of whom also worked on both Roger Rabbit and Back in Action), have all kept it in the cultural memory.

The films is backwards, writes Jesse, in that it wants to distance itself from the very cartoons it leverages: “This really almost feels like a follow-up to Looney Tunes: Back in Action, rather than a predecessor, because it feels like someone watched the later movie, decided these Looney Tunes characters were a problem, and asked someone to make sure they were as secondary as possible.” That attempt to place all the agency in Jordan’s hands was a point of contention for Chuck Jones, the legendary Warner Bros cartoonist. He hated the film, stating that Bugs would never ask for help and would have dealt with the aliens in seven minutes.

Space Jam has its moments, however. Guy proclaims “there is nothing that Deadpool as a character will ever have to offer that isn’t done infinitely better by a good Bugs Bunny bit”. For some, its problems are a bit more straightforward, for others it’s a matter of safety in sport. But the overriding sentiments surrounding the film point to a sort of morbid fascination with the brazenness of its concept.

Holli Would (voiced by Kim Basinger) and Frank Harris (Brad Pitt) blur the lines in ‘Cool World’ (1992).

Existing in the same demented… space… as Space Jam, Paramount Pictures bought the idea for Cool World from Ralph Bakshi as it sought to have its own Roger Rabbit. While Brad Pitt described it as “Roger Rabbit on acid” ahead of release, Cool World itself looks like a nightmare version of Toontown. The film was universally panned at the time, caught awkwardly between being far too adult for children but too lacking in any real substance for adults (there’s something of a connective thread between Jessica Rabbit, Lola Bunny and Holli Would).

Ralph Bakshi’s risqué and calamitously horny formal experiment builds on the animator’s fascination with the relationship between the medium and the human body. Of course, he would go from the immensely detailed rotoscoping of Fire and Ice (1983) to clashing hand-drawn characters with real ones, something he had already touched upon in the seventies with Heavy Traffic and Coonskin, whose animated characters were drawn into real locations. But no one besides Bakshi quite knew what to do with the perverse concept of Brad Pitt as a noir detective trying to stop Gabriel Byrne’s cartoonist from having sex with a character that he drew—an animated Kim Basinger.

Jack Deebs (Gabriel Byrne) attempts to cross over to Hollie Would in ‘Cool World’ (1992).

Cool World’s awkwardness can be attributed to stilted interactions between Byrne, Pitt and the animated world, as well as studio meddling. Producer Frank Mancuso Jr (who was on the film due to his father running Paramount) demanded that the film be reworked into something PG-rated, against Bakshi’s wishes (he envisioned an R-rated horror), and the script was rewritten in secret. It went badly, so much so that Bakshi eventually punched Mancuso Jr in the face.

While Cool World averages two stars on Letterboxd, there are some enthusiastic holdouts. There are the people impressed by the insanity of it all, those who just love them a horny toon, and then there is Andrew, a five-star Cool World fan: “On the surface, it’s a Lovecraftian horror with Betty Boop as the villain, featuring a more impressive cityscape than Blade Runner and Dick Tracy combined, and multidimensional effects that make In the Mouth of Madness look like trash. The true star, however, proves to be the condensed surplus of unrelated gags clogging the arteries of the screen—in every corner is some of the silliest cel animation that will likely ever be created.”

There are even those who enjoy its “clear response to Who Framed Roger Rabbit”, with David writing that “the film presents a similar concept through the lens of the darkly comic, perverted world of the underground cartoonists”, though also noting that without Bakshi’s original script, the film is “a series of half steps and never really commits like it could”. Cool World feels both completely deranged and strangely low-energy, caught between different ideas as to how best to mix the two mediums. But it did give us a David Bowie jam.

‘Space Jam: A New Legacy’ is in cinemas and on HBO Max now.

Craft is of course important, but generally speaking, maybe nowadays a commitment to silliness and a sincere love for the medium’s history is the thing that makes successful live-action/animation hybrids click. It’s an idea that doesn’t lend itself to being too cool, or even entirely palatable. The trick is to be as fully dotty as Mary Poppins, or steer into the gaucheness of the concept, à la Roger Rabbit and Looney Tunes: Back in Action.

It’s quite a tightrope to walk between good meta-comedy and a parade of references to intellectual property. The winningest strategy is to weave the characters into the tapestry of the plot and let the gags grow from there, rather than hoping their very inclusion is its own reward. Wait, you said what is coming out this week?

Related content

Rootfish Jones’s list of cartoons people are horny for

The 100 Sequences that Shaped Animation: the companion list to the Vulture story

Jose Moreno’s list of every animated film made from 1888 to the present

Follow Kambole on Letterboxd

25 notes · View notes

captainscanadian · 4 years

Text

Love Me Blue | Bucky Barnes x Reader (Janmashtami)

My Masterlist

Series Masterlist

Summary: When you were younger, you had always dreamed of falling in love with someone who would love you like Lord Krishna loved Radha. A dream that once felt as though it was silly no longer felt that way.

Word Count: 4400+

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Tamilian!Hindu!Reader

Warnings: MINIMAL TAMIL SONG LYRICS (I’m more than happy to translate!) & TAMIL CULTURE, References to Hinduism, PTSD, Insomnia, Endgame References.

A/N: This is my entry for @bucky-smiles‘s 3K Diversity Writing Challenge! My prompt was to write a fic with a Hindu reader. I decided to write this fic with a Tamilian reader because I am Tamilian. I was born in Sri Lanka and my mother’s side of the family are Hindu. Although I consider myself an agnostic theist, I do enjoy reading the epics of Mahabharata and Ramayana. I hope everyone had a wonderful Janmashtami. Along with Lord Krishna himself, it’s also @jalapenobarnes‘ birthday this weekend so please go shower Saran with all the love. This one’s for you, my chellam! <3 Pics are off of Pinterest!

Bucky Barnes watched curiously as he sat cross-legged on the tiled floor of your living quarters, splashing a handful of water on the bright green banana leaf that you had laid out in front of him.

Even though your apartment had a designated dining room with an oak wood table and chairs, he wondered why you preferred to be eating on the living room floor. Not to mention the way you had chosen to serve him on a banana leaf than a plate.

As much as he found it bizarre, he was also curious about the traditions that you seemed to follow. Not just through the way you ate your meals, but also the way you honored your dead best friend and the way you had filled your apartment with idols and paintings of your Hindu God. It came as a surprise to him that someone as young and well-educated as yourself could even hold onto the traditions that you had been raised with despite having settled away from your home for years.

Bucky had been surprised to find that as the decades had progressed, traditions had evolved with the emergence of a post-modern society. The way people had practiced religion had also evolved with time, but the way you practiced yours seemed to be the same as the way his own mother had practiced hers back in the day.

You did not conform to modern life for the sake of it, and he found that inspiring. The old Bucky who had always been fascinated by all that science had to offer would probably disagree with you. But having lived a whole century as one of HYDRA’s science experiments made him wish that he could return to the pre-modern society that he had been born into. He hated confirming with the status quo as much as the next guy, but seeing you made him realize that he did not need to force himself to confirm either. He could be himself, as long as he could figure out who exactly he was meant to be.

“According to my grandmother, eating off of a banana leaf is a lot more healthier than eating off of a plate. Apparently the nutrients in the leaf can mix with the food.” You explained to him as you served him some of the rice, careful not to overcrowd the banana leaf. You knew that he was unfamiliar with the dishes, but also appreciated that he was willing to try out a new cuisine at this witching hour. “She said that it’s good for the immune system, prevents intestinal ulcers, skin diseases… soothes the stomach, helps with digestion and prevents kidney stones.”

He nodded, understandably. “Right…” He agreed, not having the heart to tell you that the super soldier serum in his body ensured that his cells would constantly regenerate and prevent him from falling ill. Nevertheless, he found your endearment quite refreshing. You really did treat him like he was Sergeant James Barnes of the 107th and not the Winter Soldier, and he was grateful for that.

“We’re used to eating off of the leaf during special occasions or when we have guests.” You added. “There’s a Buddhist and Hindu philosophy... Atithi Devo Bhava. It literally means that the guests must be given the same respect as you would give to your Gods. And since you’re my guest tonight, you get the banana leaf.”

“I’m no God, Y/N.” Bucky clarified, sighing as he ran his metal hand through his greasy hair. “I’m a human being, a brainwashed assassin, a weapon of destruction who brought so much pain in people’s lives. I don’t deserve to be treated with so much respect.”

“Bucky…” You frowned at his words before shaking your head. “As the one who spent most of my life studying the life of Sergeant James Barnes of the 107th, I beg to differ. I know that you have a lot of internalized guilt about those days and I don’t blame you for that. But you can’t let the Winter Soldier define who you are. You’re more than who you used to be when you were brainwashed. It wasn’t who you were.”

“To be honest, I don’t even think I know who I am anymore…” He admitted, a truth that he hadn’t told anyone else at the compound but felt that he could trust you with.. “But I know for sure that I don’t deserve to be respected like you respect your God.”

“You should let me be the judge of that. My concept of God is actually quite different from the Abrahamic religions that you happen to be familiar with.” You protested with a soft chuckle, crossing your legs to sit across from him. “My grandmother once told me that Lord Krishna… being the God of love and compassion, he’s always present in one’s heart. Wherever there’s love, he’s always there. If there’s love in your heart, he’s there. And that makes you just as Godly as anyone else.”

“I’m the world’s longest prisoner of war who spent most of my life imprisoned in a cryofreezer. There’s nothing Godly about the life that I’ve had to live.” He shook his head. “If anything, I’m a symbol of pain and suffering.”

“Well, Lord Krishna was born in prison.” You remarked. “His life was meant to be filled with so much love… It started on Janmashtami, in a prison cell where his parents were locked up by his own maternal uncle. Even in all that pain and suffering, the betrayal that Lord Krishna’s parents had to face… they were blessed with a child who was the incarnate of the supreme God himself. All that pain and suffering led to some kind of reward, and I’m sure you’ll get yours in due time. Sri Krishna never discriminates, and he forgives those who are truly remorseful of their sins. He’s the God of compassion after all.”

Bucky could not help but chuckle softly at your words. For every word of self-hatred that came out of his mouth, you had your own rebuttal that was rooted in your faith. He was left with no choice but to accept his defeat and give in to being treated as your guest for the night. It was the least he could do other than make use of that computer he had been given to catch up with the world by looking up Lord Krishna. “So, what’s on the menu for tonight?”

“Okay!” You exclaimed, pointing to the rice dish that you had placed in the center of the leaf. “Ven pongal, basically made from rice and yellow lentils. It’s also got some peppercorns, cumin, turmeric, ginger, curry leaves and cashews that I fried in some clarified butter. That’s why it smells so good. Don’t worry about the spices though. This is probably the mildest dish I’ve ever eaten in my life.”

Bucky nodded as he looked up at you. “Do you make this often?”

“It’s a traditional breakfast food in South India, but it also makes for the ultimate comfort food when I’m missing home.” You replied with a shrug of your shoulders before grabbing the bowl of sambar and pouring it over the rice. “Now this might be a little spicy for you. But it’s the side dish of all side dishes. Sambar, basically a mixed vegetable stew with lentils and spices. Great with most South Indian breakfast foods.”

“And what about the rest?” He asked as he eyed the remainder of the delicacies that you had laid out before him. He could not deny that the warm aroma that wafted up his nostrils made them much more appetizing. Despite it being past midnight, he was starved.

“Medhu vada… deep fried lentil fritters, coconut chutney to dip ‘em in… and kesari, dessert made from semolina.” You pointed to the items as you placed them on the banana leaf. “I hope you don’t mind eating with your hand. We don’t really use utensils and I kind of forgot to pick some up. If it makes you feel any better, the right hand is commonly used to eat so…” You motioned towards his hand. “Dig in?”

He raised his eyebrow at your words. “I guess that was very convenient for me.” He joked before looking down at the food and back at you. “Aren’t you going to eat with me?”

You chuckled softly before shrugging at his question. “It’s alright, Bucky. I can eat after you. It’s not polite to eat before the guest.”

“Y/N, come on… you just said that you made all of this food because you were feeling homesick. I can’t eat all of this without you.” He clarified with a smile.

You looked down at your lap in embarrassment as you felt your cheeks heat up. “I kind of only bought one banana leaf because I thought I would be the one eating all of this food.” You told him, shamelessly. “I didn't think I would have company, not that I don’t want you here or anything. I invited you to eat but… my grandmother says it’s rude to eat right out of the serving bowls if you’re going to be serving the food to someone else. I don’t mind waiting until you’re done and helping myself to your leftovers.”

A part of him could not believe how bound you were to your grandmother’s words, especially when it came to your dining etiquette. Despite the fact that your grandmother had been someone to hold you back from your potential, he admired that you still respected her enough to follow through with the culture that she had taught you.

“Fine, then if you don’t mind…” He reached down to grab a dollop of the pongal and sambar with his thumb and two fingers, carefully holding his hand up towards your mouth. “Let me at least feed you.”

Your eyes grew wide at his gesture and you found your cheeks heating up in embarrassment once again. “Um…” You gulped, not knowing how to react to that. A part of you wanted to accept his offer, but the pitter patter against your heart mimicked the rain against your window and caused you to become very nervous.

As much as you had denied it when you were around the rest of the team, you knew that you did have a slight crush on Sergeant James Barnes of the 107th Infantry Regiment when you had first watched through the archival footage from the war. After all, who wouldn’t. At that time, you had believed that he was dead so it didn’t mean much. But now he was very much alive and sitting right before you. He was certainly a good looking man who’s smile could light up the world, and unbeknownst to you he had just lit up yours.

You had spent years studying his life, along with the rest of The Howling Commandos, in the name of academic curiosity. But you could not deny that now seeing him in person changed how you really felt about this man. Not many people who studied historical figures had the chance to see them face to face. But this had happened to you twice now, and it still felt surreal. Bucky Barnes really was sitting on the floor of your living quarters, about to feed you a bite of your most favourite South Indian comfort food. What kind of idiot would you be not to accept it?

You accepted the bite of food that Bucky had offered you, bringing your hand over to cover your mouth as you chewed. Your lips curling into a small smile as your eyes glazed over, you looked down at your lap.

For some reason, eating from this man’s hand had made you miss your father quite so much. Seven years it had been since he had passed away. You never even got to say goodbye, the last time you had spoken on the phone being an argument that you had ended abruptly by hanging up on him. Had you known what was going to happen just hours later, you would have done things differently. You would have cherished the last moments you got to share with your father. Hell, you would have even prevented him from dying the way he did. But it was all too late now.

Perhaps you suffered from internalized guilt just as much as the super soldier who sat before you, for you did feel partially responsible for your father’s death. Being an agent who was meant to save the world and all, you couldn’t even manage to save your own father. While this did once make you doubt your skills as an agent, you could not deny that you would give anything to be able to do right by the man who had raised you to be anything more than a typical Indian farm girl. But for now, all you had to do was exist for the sake of existing and accept the position that you had been given. Do the right thing, just as your father had taught you.

When you had been five years old, your grandmother had told you the story of how Lord Krishna was married to more than sixteen thousand women. She had told you that he married every woman who loved him. He loved them back just as much too, being the God of love after all. But the woman he loved the most, he hadn’t even been married to her. Radha Rani was the love of his life. She was his soulmate. Despite not being married, their love for each other was so pure and eternal.

It was then you told your father, in your childish little voice, “Appa, I want someone to love me like Lord Krishna loved Radha.”

Now as you swallowed the bite that Bucky Barnes had fed you, you couldn't help but look over his broad shoulders. Up on the wall behind him you had hung one of the many paintings of Radha and Krishna that you owned. But in that particular one, Radha and Krishna were affectionately gazing into each other’s eyes while feeding each other.

It didn’t seem like a sign to you then, but you prayed for some things to be made clearer in due time. After all, you were going to be here for a while. If Lord Krishna was really going to bless you with the kind of love that makes you blue after all of that pain and suffering, then you might as well accept it like you had just accepted that bite of food from Bucky.

“Tell me the truth, Bucky.” You looked over at the man who sat next to you on the couch, his legs crossed as he leaned against the armrest. “Why are you even up at this hour?”

Bucky Barnes looked over at you and let out a sigh, not knowing if lying to you about his insomnia would sell. After all, you seemed to know him better than he knew himself despite the fact that you had met just yesterday. While he feared that admitting the truth would cause you to become weary of him, he knew better than to lie to the woman who was in a position of authority. He had to be transparent with you, mainly because he didn’t have the heart to lie to you.

“I can’t sleep.” He admitted, biting down on his bottom lip as he sat up straight, his elbows resting against his thighs as he covered his face with his hands. “I haven’t slept properly in a while, ever since I moved into the compound really. Every night I go to bed at a reasonable time. But I still end up waking up at this strange hour because of some nightmare.”

Leaning over to rest your hand on his shoulder, you wanted to give him a squeeze. But you were quick to realize that his left shoulder was vibranium, so instead you moved your hand to rub his back. “Have you talked to Sam about it?”

Not that you would assume that his friendship with Sam was anything like his friendship with Steve. As someone who had your own demons, you knew that it was not that easy to confide in someone about something like this. But you were well aware that Sam had some experience offering support groups to veterans who suffered from PTSD during his time working at the VA back in DC. He seemed to be much more equipped to handle something like this than you were, no doubt about that. But since you were now the boss around here, you knew that something needed to be done to address the mental health of your heroes.

Bucky shook his head. “He’s always been weary of me, Y/N. I don’t think I should worry him about this. The last thing I want is for anyone to think that the Winter Soldier is still in me when he’s not.”

“Sam can be an asshole at times… but he means well. He cares a lot about his friends, and that includes you and me.” You admitted. “But I know what you mean. What you’re going through, it’s not easy. You’ve had to deal with a lifetime’s worth of torture under HYDRA, along with the whole thing with the blip. The world has changed so much that it’s not all that easy to keep up with anymore.”

He looked up at you and frowned. “I feel so lost, you know? Like I don’t know where I should start. I’ve missed out on seventy years of… life. The life that I knew before the war is gone and the life that I had since then… is full of torture and bloodshed. I’m just lost in the midst of it all.”

“Bucky, you do know that… if you ever want to talk about anything that has to do with history or what happened in the world during those seventy years, you can just talk to me about it, right? I may have a Master’s degree on The Howling Commandos but I do know a thing or two about what happened in the world after the war.” You offered, finally cracking a smile. “I can definitely help you out with catching up with times.”

He chuckled softly at your words. “Is that how you and Steve… became friends?”

You felt your cheeks heat up in embarrassment at the mention of Captain America, a man whom you had respected and aided in the recovery of until Natasha had decided to set the two of you up on a date. It was a brief fling while the two of you had worked together in DC. But once you had realized it wasn’t going to work, you had ended things amicably. While you had remained friends and you had helped him catch up with the world, things had changed so much around you.

“Yeah, I guess.” You admitted with a shrug. “He needed someone to catch him up to the world and Fury realized that he hired a history major. I think it worked out for all of us.” Looking back now, you only felt blessed to have known Steve Rogers. He was not only an inspiration, but also one of your closest friends. “And that’s why I’m offering to help.”

“But how could you help me, Y/N?” He asked. “What can you possibly do to help me come to terms with who I am?”

“Well, I had Steve read through the Internet a lot and make a list of all the things he wanted to try… like Thai food and Sherlock Holmes. I know that you’re not going on any missions right now. You’re just hanging around the compound and trying to kill time, right? I’d say… make use of the computers we have here, learn as much as you can. We can talk about it. But don’t ever think that you’re alone in this.”

The Internet was a great place to start learning, right? Surely, Bucky had been apprehensive about taking that step. But he needed to be given a little push. Thankfully, he now had you for that. “I guess I can do that.” He gave in, for he was starting to get bored of the facility’s gym.

“There is something that needs to be done about your nightmares though.” You pointed out. “This compound needs an on-site therapist. I need one. You need one. Wanda needs one. We all need one after all this crap that we’ve had to deal with.” You made a mental note to make some calls in the morning, but for now you knew that your attention should be on the super soldier. “But right now, you really need to get some sleep.”

Bucky shook his head in defeat. “I can’t seem to fall asleep in my bed, Y/N. Believe me, I’ve tried… for many nights. I guess I just have to suck it up and kill time until the morning.”

You raised your eyebrow at his words before crossing your arms against your chest. “What? Do you need me to sing you a lullaby or something?” You asked him, teasingly.

He laughed at your question before shaking his head. “As if that’s ever going to work on me…”

“Is that a challenge, Sergeant Barnes?”

Bucky Barnes had no clue how it even happened. Just twenty-four hours ago, the two of you had been strangers who had nothing in common except for the fact that you both shared a past that had been perfectly entwined somehow. But now you were sitting against the headboard of his queen sized bed in the living quarters adjacent to yours, his head resting against your lap as he shut his eyes.

Your soft hands running through his silky dark hair, you sang the words that you had pretty much memorized by now. It was a lullaby that your grandmother had sung to you when you were younger, written about how Lord Krishna himself had fallen asleep after a long day of playing around his village.

Ayarpadi Maaligaiyil

Thaai Madiyil Kandrinai Pol

Maaya Kannan Thoongugindraan, Thaalelo

Ayarpadi Maaligaiyil

Thaai Madiyil Kandrinai Pol

Maaya Kannan Thoongugindraan, Thaalelo

Avan Vaai Niraiya Mannai Undu

Mandalathai Kaattiya Pin

Oiveduthu Thoongugindraan, Aaraaro

Ayarpadi Maaligaiyil

Thaai Madiyil Kandrinai Pol

Maaya Kannan Thoongugindraan, Thaalelo

Pinnalitta Gopiyarin Kannathile Kannam Ittu

Mannavan Pol Leelai Seidhaan Thaalelo

Pinnalitta Gopiyarin Kannathile Kannam Ittu

Mannavan Pol Leelai Seidhaan Thaalelo

Andha Mandhirathil Avar Uranga

Mayakkathile Ivan Uranga

Mandalame Urangudhammaa Aaraaro

Ayarpadi Maaligaiyil

Thaai Madiyil Kandrinai Pol

Maaya Kannan Thoongugindraan, Thaalelo

Bucky Barnes had no clue how it even happened. But as he listened to the melody of your lullaby, he had drifted off into a deep slumber. When he woke up the next day, he found that you were gone. But he knew that you were the one to thank for helping him sleep after many months of waking up from nightmares.

As the weeks went by, you and Bucky had become quite close. As most of the team were gone for days at a time because of their respective missions, the two of you often found yourselves being the only ones remaining at the compound. Despite your loneliness, you somehow found comfort in each other.

Your free time was usually spent cooking up a storm in the common kitchen, and Bucky found himself frequently joining you for your meals. He had taken quite the liking to South Indian cuisine, but he had also kept his promise of making you a completely vegetarian Wakandan meal - something that he apparently prepared by video-calling the Queen Mother of Wakanda herself and asking her for recipes.

“Does this mean you have diplomatic immunity? Being the adoptive child of Queen Ramonda and all…” You had joked. “They call you the White Wolf, don’t they?”

“Did you ever have to use your diplomatic immunity?” He had asked you mockingly. “Being the daughter of an Indian diplomat after all.”

“Bucky, could you please give Queen Ramonda my regards? Let her know that Agent Y/L/N, the daughter of Ambassador Y/L/N, sends her regards and thanks the royal family for all of their help.” You hadn’t been all that familiar with the Wakandan royal family during the reign of King T’Chaka, but it was only after his death did you have the chance to work closely with them. After all, you understood the pain that they had been dealing with all too well.

Bucky was not familiar with why you seemed to know them so well. He had just assumed it must be because of your career in diplomacy before you became an agent. He did not think much of it though, at least not until he had told Shuri that you gave their family your regards.

While the truth behind your relationship with the Wakandan royal family had certainly shaken him to his core, he did not make it known that he knew about it. After all, it was a huge part of your own personal life and you were just his boss. He did not feel the need to let you know that he knew something about you that you might not have wanted you to know. But instead, he continued to learn more about you and the culture that you were raised in.

The Internet was a great place when it came to catching up with the world. He had read just about everything he could get his hands on, from history to literature and science. While he tried to keep up with how much the world had changed, he had also read as much as he could about your religion.

He often joined you on your visits to the temple in the city after noticing that you made it a habit to go there every Friday. When Janmashtami came around, Bucky had offered to help you paint footprints from your front door to your shrine of Lord Krishna.

According to your grandmother, the tradition of painting baby footprints was done believing that Lord Krishna would follow them and enter your home. You had been doing that every single year on Janmashtami for as long as you could remember. But that year, you just knew. It was the first year that Krishna had entered your home for real.

#3kdiversity #aj writes #love me blue #janmashtami #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x y/n #bucky barnes x you #bucky barnes x desi!reader #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky barnes imagine #bucky barnes fanfic #bucky barnes fic #bucky barnes fluff #bucky barnes series

74 notes · View notes

cadecaptain · 3 years

Text

The Post Everyone Has Been Waiting For: Cade’s Top 10 Albums of All Time

Honorable Mentions:

The Beastie Boys Paul’s Boutique (1989)

A few years ago this album would have definitely cracked my top 10, and it is still so solid. The production on this thing is out of this world, and if you ever have a day to kill, listening to this Spotify playlist that has all of the samples Paul’s Boutique holds is an adventure, and truly shows what a labor of love this album is.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/59FdNgdN0lHFNdr3ZsTTPa

Best Song: High Plains Drifter

The Rolling Stones Exile on Main St. (1972)

As a general rule of thumb, I don’t like long albums. Blame it on my short attention span, but it is hard for me to believe any album over 11-12 songs couldn’t have anything cut. This album is one I can easily have on repeat, despite its 18 song tracklist. Truly the best of the Stones.

Best Song: Tumbling Dice

10. The Black Crowes The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion (1992)

Bringing 70′s rock back to the 90′s, this is one of the first albums I remember loving as a kid. It is the epitome of Dad Rock, and each song has the entire band firing on all cylinders. Chris Robinson’s vocals on each and every track gives me chills, as he wears his heart on his sleeve with an emotional and powerful delivery with each lyric. Every time I listen to this record I come away with a new favorite track.

Best Song: Thorn in My Pride

9. Only Real Jerk at the End of the Line (2015)

Every time I tell someone about this album I always say “This is what Ed Sheeran would sound like if he was actually good”. He has the British, fast speaking, break-up sound down to a science, with each track feeling like it was meticulously crafted both lyrically and production-wise. This album had such an impact on me in high school that it is hard not to have it higher. If Only Real dropped a new album, y’all wouldn’t hear from me for a few days.

Best Song: Cadillac Girl

8. Alvvays Self Titled (2014)

So up until about a year and a half ago, I swore up and down that the newest Alvvays record, Antisocialities, was better than this one, their first, self-titled LP. I have been fully converted by my girlfriend (@peppermoths) that this is the superior album. This album feels like a gloomy summer night in the best way possible, and has a diverse tracklist of songs that make me feel sad, happy, and like riding a bike.

Best Song: Next of Kin

7. Billy Idol Rebel Yell (1983)

This is the album I have based my personality on this summer. This, to me, is the quintessential album of the 80′s, with every track feeling like it could be playing in the background of The Lost Boys. I love everything about it. Every time I listen to this album, I realize how similar it is to David Bowie’s Let’s Dance both in length and general 80′s feel.

Best Song: Eyes Without a Face

6. Camp Lo Uptown Saturday Night (1997)

It is impossible to not have fun listening to this record. One of (if not THE) most slept on 90′s hip-hop albums. It is a shame there aren’t more 90′s Camp Lo projects, but at the same time, this album is so flawless to me that I would be worried it would make their image less cool. USN has every kind of song you need off a 90′s album, and it always makes me want to boogie.

Best Song: Tied: Sparkle & Killin’ Em Softly

5. Parliament Mothership Connection (1975)

What is there to say about any George Clinton project that doesn’t include: AHEAD OF ITS TIME. Mothership Connection is the epitome of this. I have always claimed that this is the album that got me out of my emo music phase, as my cousin played it for me once and I fell in love and ditched Fall Out Boy. This album is short but it doesn’t feel like it, and every song will make you get up out of your chair. (Also, if this was a list of best album covers of all time, this would probably be #1).

Best Song: Handcuffs

4. David Bowie Young Americans (1975)

I’ll die on the hill that this is objectively the best Bowie project. This album is stacked without a single skip, and is the perfect length at a meaty 8 songs. From beginning to end, Bowie is able to construct an album that is as diverse as it can get while still feeling the most consistent out of any of his albums. You can tell that Young Americans had a lot of work put into it, and it paid off.

Best Song: Right

3. Grapetooth Self Titled (2018)

Do you ever hear a song and think...wow...I wish I had wrote that? That’s how I feel with every track on the Grapetooth self titled. If you are a Twin Peaks fan, you should hear a familiar voice gracing the tracklist, and the iconic sound of Clay Frankel’s voice is put on full display on an album straight out of 1985. There isn’t a song on this LP that ever stops growing on you.

Best Song: Tied: Violent & Hangover Sq.

2. Bruce Springsteen The Wild, The Innocent, & the E Street Shuffle (1973)

This is an album that requires about 10-20 listens to fully appreciate. The tracklist is short, at only 7 songs, but the average length of a song on Springsteen’s sophomore LP is around 6-7 minutes, so it is still about a 50 minute listen. I heard in a Bruce documentary that this album was considered a flop because of this exact reason; they couldn’t play these weird, long songs on the radio. However, I genuinely think this is Bruce at his finest, spinning a complex lyrical web that makes you feel like you are 17 and on the boardwalk. This was the album right before Born to Run, so it is often overshadowed, but don’t tell me listening to Rosalita (Come Out Tonight) doesn’t make you want to speed down the highway. Also, Bruce looks very sexy on the cover.

Best Song: Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)

1. The Sundays Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic (1990)

I don’t even know how to do this album justice with words. I have never found an album with as much lyrical depth, ear-worm, jangly, timeless instrumentals, and repeat value as this one. Everything that this album is is sold by lead singer Harriet Wheeler leaving nothing to be desired with a perfect vocal performance on every single track. I could listen to this album for a week straight and never get tired of it. I have pretty much done that all summer, and I’m still not sick of it. Please go listen to this album if you haven’t yet.

Best Song: I could not choose one if I tried. Literally all of them.

#alvvays #beastie boys #the black crowes #david bowie #camp lo #grapetooth #billy idol #only real #parliament #the rolling stones #bruce springsteen #the sundays

6 notes · View notes

ellaenchanting · 4 years

Text

Hypnovember 2019 Master List

Jesus. Jesus Christ, that’s a lot of writing. I don’t really consider myself a writer generally and this is definitely the first time I’ve written this much this quickly. I’m going to look at my word count soon, but- I think I may have written a novel’s length of words? Wow.Thanks to everyone who encouraged me during this or provided support/ideas: thinking of @daja-the-hypnokitten , @liminal-wanderings , @mr-ackerman , @spiralturquoise , @wellgnawed , @sex-obsessed-lesbian , and @hypno-sandwich especially here but there were lots of y’all who reblogged or made kind comments. I appreciate every one of them. :)

Here’s a catch up of everything I’ve written so far this month. In honor of @jukeboxemcsa, I’ve also included a HypnoBS rating where 1 is absolute bullshit and 5 is normal Tuesday night.

Icons- 📰- story. 🔊- audio 💻- technology 😍- romantic 🌈- queer 😴- regular ole’ hypnosis 🛀- brainwashing and/or hypnotist in a tub 👻- spooky 🐈- at least one happy pussy ❓- bad or reeeally questionable consent ✝️- author's weird religious feels that somehow kept coming up

Day 1: Base Character-F/f 📰😍🌈🛀🐈

Choice quote: ”Or maybe it was the ship of Theseus- Janine seeing how many little pieces of her she could replace until she fundamentally just wasn’t the same person anymore.”

HypnoBS- I haven’t done this kind of play and have no first hand experience. Let’s say 3.

Newly added 11/18: @undersleeper requested some extra information on how the brainwashing was actually done in this story so I added this non-canon sequel. (I think the sequel boosts the BS score to a 4.)

Day 2: Colors- F/nb 📰😴 🌈

Choice quote: “Bri used to consider themselves a bad hypnotic subject.”

HypnoBS- 4. I haven’t done this induction specifically but love doing these kinds of overloads

Day 3: Dizzy- no gender specified🔊😴

Choice quote: “When you take deep breaths, you feel like you’re getting more oxygen, but actually the opposite is true.”

HypnoBS-5. Should get you in trance, we’re not ranking the accuracy of all the science herein.

Day 4: Sing- m/f kinda I guess? 📰👻❓

Choice quote: “Tonight wasn’t the night to give in, he told himself. Not yet.”

HypnoBS- 1. Thank God.

Day 5: Poison- M/f 📰😍🛀🐈

Choice quote: “Lila could admit it. She was kind of a brat.But Sean? He was worse. He was a fucking troll.“

HypnoBS- 4? Haven’t done it, could probably make something in this realm work with the right person.

Day 6: Summon- F/f 📰😍😴🌈🐈

Choice quote: “Number one, there is no butch street cred. And number two- if there was such a thing, you and I both know that being seduced by a beautiful woman would only increase it.”

HypnoBS- 3 or 4. It’s quick and there would need to be a lot more talking generally. But sure.

Day 7: Underwear- F/f 📰😴🌈

Choice quote: “Under….where”, Destiny tested the word out loud. It sounded like a portmanteau of some sort. She understood the word “under” and the word “where” (or “wear”? “where are” maybe? maybe it was German?) but those two words together didn’t form much of a picture.”

HypnoBS- 5. Although have only done this as a hypnotist so I can’t speak to subject POV. This kind of thing is adorable to watch, though.

Day 8: Neighbor- F/f📰😍🌈 ❓

Choice quote: “When Jiyeon tapped her pencil, Alyssa tapped her pencil lightly to match.”

HypnoBS- 1. Maybe 1.5 since there are no monsters or demons.

Day 9: Idiotic- no gender specified📰😴

Choice quote: “Because Id-iotic. It’s literally what you want deep down”

HypnoBS-4. Not my thing but with the right people- sure.

Day 10: Smell- F/m 📰😴😍🛀🐈

Choice quote: “Belinda had also woken up from sexy dreams at night to the feeling of Ray’s head buried in her cunt.”

HypnoBS- 3 on the details. Some parts are more plausible than others. We’re outside my realm of experience here so others could probably rank more accurately.

Day 11: Broadcast- Hypnovirus/f 📰💻🛀✝️

Choice quote: “It felt important to present herself to the screen in a way that demonstrated her vulnerability and openness to instruction.”

HypnoBS- 4. Probably not likely, but I could see this kind of symbolic bleed with the right person pretty easily.

Day 12: Stage- M/m 📰😍🌈😴

Choice quote: “Brandon had not mentioned the hypnosis thing to Scott- it felt weird and personal and he had already half-convinced himself that he was being creepy in response to Scott’s platonic friendliness. He didn’t want to scare him off. He had never expected to see him here.”

HypnoBS- 5. At least as far as the hypnosis goes

Day 13: Bath- no gender specified 🔊🛀😴

Choice quote: *insert rambling about Pat Collins here*

HypnoBS- 5. But also a high general BS score. I was tired and needed to finish a thing. I am surprised but grateful people liked this one. :P

Day 14: Machine- M/f 📰😴💻😍✝️

Choice quote: “For as long as she could remember, Deidre had longed for self-annhilation.”

HypnoBS- 1. That’s not how brains work.

Day 15: Ooze- there’s a m and a f 📰😴🛀❓

Choice quote: “For example, your badge- did you know that putting all the stickers on the top of your badge like that usually means that you’re a hypnotist?”

Amy’s eyes widened a bit. “It does?”

HypnoBS- 2. Sadly.

Day 16: Wedding- something/f 📰👻❓

Choice quote: “She knew then that she was alone. No one could help her. No one could even see her.”

HypnoBS- 1.

Day 17: Gentle- a different something/f 📰 kinda 🐈❓✝️

Choice quote: “As long as she didn’t focus on it, it would write the story for her.”

HypnoBS- 1. I think. :P

Day 18: Infection- not stated/m 📰 🛀❓

Choice quote: “If he could just get the song out of his head, maybe he’d have a chance.”

HypnoBS- 2.

Day 19: Hideout- F/f 📰 🐈 😍😴🛀🌈

Choice quote: “’Come to me, pet. Come to me.’

Mesmera.

She could always sense when Galaxy Girl was weak. She consistently picked the perfect time to strike.

And now, she had found her apartment.”

HypnoBS-4.5

Day 20: Watch- no gender specified 🔊 😴

Choice quote: “Feel your thoughts just tick tick tick tick ticking gone”

HypnoBS-5

Day 21: Fighting- F/m 📰 😴

Choice quote: “His mistress loved resistance play. She delighted in watching him struggle and strain against an irresistible impulse.”

HypnoBS-5 Mmmm :)

Day 22: Mistaken- F/an entire hypnocon 📰 😴

Choice quote: “Ginger- submissive, wide-eyed, bottomy Ginger- was holding a crowd of 8 people in her hypnotic thrall. Some had their eyes closed already, while others were staring at her with the rapt look of early trance.“

HypnoBS- 4. But only because I haven't seen it yet. :P

Day 23: Heist- F/m 📰 🛀❓(😍 but it’s pretty messed up)

Choice quote: “The inside of the vault had gotten somewhat sparse-looking- David had been cleaning out the bank out at a much quicker pace recently- but there were still plenty of treasures here to bring to his mistress.”

HypnoBS- 3, maybe 2

Day 24: Business F/f 📰 😴😍🌈

Choice quote: “Summer was a well-mannered southern girl at heart. She knew that if something was none of her business, it was impolite and rude to know it. Best not to think about it too much. She didn’t want to be nosey.”

HypnoBS- 4

Day 25: Babble F/m📰 😴 🛀 (💻 kinda)

Choice quote: “You can feel your access to language lessening….and lessening. Feeling those parts of your brain losing blood, quieting, going to sleep. Imagine what that might look like on the fMRI- the color draining, darkening, going black. Your ability to use language can be almost completely gone.”

HypnoBS- 5 (Neuroscience BS- closer to 3)

Day 26: Enemy M/f 📰 😴😍🐈

Choice quote: “When she was denied for long periods of time, everything became sexual.”

HypnoBS- 5. Unf.

Day 27: Confidence F/m 📰 😴❓

Choice quote: “Dr Eleanor had been recommended to Richard by his friend Jon who had seen her previously. “She won’t bullshit you,” he had said, “she just gets right to the roots of your issues and helps you solve them.” He must have known what he was talking about- a year after visiting Dr Eleanor, Jon had recently married a wonderful woman. He was also running marathons and succeeding professionally. There were worse people to listen to, Richard thought.”

HypnoBS- 3 (although this kind of gaslighting is real and can be effective)

Day 28: Abduction F/f M/f background m/m 📰 😴😍🌈

Choice quote: “’And so she….’ Lilliana stopped. She stared for a moment in surprise at the space between Cirie’s fingers. Cirie looked like she was holding a small, invisible ball. Liliana tried to recall her train of thought (something about work?) but found herself strangely blank.

She looked at Cirie in astonishment.

‘You took it!’ she accused.”

HypnoBS- 5

Day 29: Doctor Doctor/Master (from Dr Who) 📰 😴🌈💻

Choice quote: “The doors in the Master’s mind all appeared to be open. The Doctor quickly scanned for malicious intent but-

Oh.

Oh my.

So that’s why.”

HypnoBS- I...uh...1?

Day 30: Kink The author/her self-indulgent whims 📰 🌈

Choice quote: “Ultimately, she really just liked her friends- and she especially loved hearing all of their stories.”

HypnoBS- Cake. Imma eat a cake.

Thank you all for reading these! I know this is a long post, but I’d really appreciate reblogs of it. If you’ve liked my stories, please consider leaving me a tip on Ko-fi! Also I’d be happy to give extra information on any of the characters or a bit of what happens next if you want to send me an ask about any of these stories. I’m finding myself with a strange craving to write. Funny how that works. :P

#hypnovember #hypnovember master post #me/my sense of accomplishment #thank you all again for reading!#my writing

226 notes · View notes

chatwithchuu · 4 years

Text

💕National GF Day💕

🤖 So I’m gonna start this appreciation post for my beautiful android waifu @androidryujin. Wow, we go way back. Before you even created this account and all the other accounts, during the time we first met back in that groupchat. If there’s one thing I’m thankful for when it comes to that gc, it was meeting you. I’ll be honest, you lowkey intimidated me because we didn’t talk much and you were a much bigger chatbot acc than me (tho to be fair, I was intimidated by a lot of the people in that gc 🤧🤧), but I couldn’t have been more wrong to be intimidated by you. You’re literally the sweetest, most kind and caring person I’ve ever met. You’re always so supportive of others and have our backs. Literally every moment spent with you is so fun and laid-back, and I couldn’t be happier to have you in my life. Thank you for the good times and the good memories, and I’d love to make many more ☺️ My dm’s are always open for you, so please never feel like you have to hold your emotions in (no matter how big or how small), bc I care about you dude and your feelings and opinions matter to me. I love you so much my android waifu. Also no matter which acc you’re on, you’ll always be my boop buddy, so.. y!boop @you 🥺

🧬 My cute science babieeee @urjooie 🥺🥺 You were my very first child, and an og in this gigantic, chaotic family that I love oh-so dearly 🤧. You’re such a funny and sweet person, and I’m so honored to be your mother 🥺. I still remember our chaotic beginnings when you’d try to flirt with me, and you even kabedonned me one day. When we still lived in that dingy apartment, until I murdered the landlord and we got lucky off his lottery card 🤪. Those times are dear to me, and I’m so glad you were a part of them. My dm’s are always open for you, and I love you so much, my precious child 🥺💕✨

💗 My dearest @blackwidowjennie, one of my og children. We’ve been together for quite a while now, through when I first killed the landlord, to hwall 👁👄👁, to screaming SA CLASSROOM MAY BATAS, to domming Kendall 🤤 on roblox. Thank you for all the laughs, late-night roblox sessions, and good times. I love you so much, my cute, chaotic little spider babie, and I care about you lots. My dm’s are always open for you, love. Mahal kita my precious daughter 🥺💕✨

🧀 My aninomate, kim chiu lover, and fellow cheese escucero fanatic 🤩. Words cannot express how much I appreciate and love you, @your-roseanne. You’re such a sweet and funny person and when I’m with you, I’m always laughing and smiling. Thank you for all the roblox sessions, domming random girls on roblox, and just in general making my life so much brighter. Mahal kita, aninomate 🥺💕✨

✨ My bling bling tía @phoenix-chae 🥺🥺 From the time that I’ve known you, you’ve always been so sweet, loving, and supportive of others. You care about each and every one of us in the family, and you’re truly the best tía I could have ever asked for 😭💕. Your loving nature is seen in all the things you do, such as how you always have our backs, always try your best to cheer us up, and that beautiful letter you wrote for our flamingo familia all that time ago. You’re so precious to me and I’ll be here for you always, supporting you and letting you know you’re loved. Te amo muchísimo tía 🥺💕✨

🐸 Yooo, our tadpole and cutest evil maknae @yeojinsheight 🤧🤧. Honestly, it was really funny how we met. Immediately we went at it with each other, joking around and picking fun at one another. I laughed a lot because normally I’m not like that with people when I first meet them, but it was refreshing and it made me feel comfortable when I was with you! Like we were already friends even though we had just met ☺️. I love you lots my duck buddy and tadpole, and don’t tell the other maknaes this, but you’re my fav maknae 👀🤫

👑 @yourchungha may I just say... bucket hat and voice queen PERIODT. 😌 You are genuinely such a funny and sweet person, you’re always there to cheer me up when I’m down and I appreciate you lots 🥺. I cannot even begin to describe how ecstatic I was when I heard the song you wrote me— I honestly squealed bc it was so cute and omggg I love you so much 😔🥺💕. Also I still remember back when you had the Oli acc— fr that made me laugh so much and I was 🤏🏻 close to getting fucked by you, tho idk if it was Lisa’s admin in control at that time or yours. Regardless, it was funny asf 🤧🤧

🥀 @mafia-lili you are the sweetest, most precious angel. Not to mention gorgeous, talented, and a wonderful personality. You’re so loving and caring toward those that are dear to you, and to many, you’re a reliable person that people can turn to for happiness and security. I love you, and hope you know you’re precious and so appreciated 🥺💕✨

💌 My dearest sister, other half, and my Jekyll @yourcupidchuu. You are one of the sweetest, caring, and cutest people I have ever met. You always love on others, support them, and help them cheer up when they’re feeling down. Those messages you sent during our early days in the flamingo fam, the cupid letters, were so sweet and precious. I love you lots and want you to know that within our family, you are so loved and appreciated. And I swear, if anyone tries to hurt you, I will pull up with my love and affection so fast it’ll give you whiplash 😤🥺💕

🌙 To my beautiful sister @hunter-chaeyoung. You are such a caring and wonderful person. You’ve been around since the start of this wild family, and you’ve always been so cute, loving, and caring towards its members. If you ever need someone to vent or talk to, my dm’s are always open. I love and appreciate you lots sis 🥺💕✨

Anyway, I love you beautiful women so much and my dm’s are always open for y’all ☺️. Also plEASE dumblr has not saved my draft so many times and it’s 3am and I swear to fucking god I’mma bout to raid their headquarters if this bullshit keeps happening

#my waifus #flamingo fam

13 notes · View notes

ofgeneticperfection · 4 years

Text

Scarlet’s chain of sweetness

Courtesy of @madamdirectcr

5 THINGS YOU LOVE ABOUT YOUR CHARACTER.

1. Indomitable - She pretty much does what she wants, how she wants, whenever she wants. If she wants something? She manipulates her way into getting it. She doesn’t stop until she has it and hardly anything will sway her otherwise. She’s extremely hard to control when determined and set on a task in mind. She’s hard to control period. She’s got a streak of wild, impulsive, and loves to toy with others be it malicious or just to tease. Her will is near impossible to break and she never believes that she can’t do something even if it is the impossible. Atop of that she’s fairly hard to defeat physically, she’ll bring more than a challenge if ever attack or if a loved one is ever hurt. I’m not saying that she can’t be brought down because she can, but it’s going to take more than a couple of hits.

2. Emotional Depth- There’s not just one tier to Isrieal, there’s a million and it’s a labyrinth. She comes off as cold, arrogant, prideful but that’s the main wall that she hides behind. She’s strong and will exude complete confidence most of the time while being sly, cunning, coy, and whatever else she can throw at you. These are the emotions she shows to the world but the rest she’s buried so deep inside that she forgets they even exist. Inside she’s broken, sad, lonely, tormented but she has her ways of hiding them and biting back the pain that feeling these emotions brings. It’s from the conditions she’s been stuck in for her whole life at Hojo’s mercy and the lies she’s had to tell herself to make it easier to handle. Of course, this naturally makes her volatile with bursts of anger or other strong emotions and if she let’s one slip out they all come spilling out sooner or later. She does have a tendency to use special sedative injections to subdue these emotions whenever she feels any starting to well up. Deep under it all, however, she loves with all of her heart once she is sure that she will not be hurt. She’s always afraid of that in a way, but there is no in between. You have her all or you have her nothing. But once there she is quite passionate and protective and more soft and innocent then she’d originally lead you to think.

3. Manipulative - Life is a game and she plays to win. At least that’s how one survives in ShinRa. She learned from one of the best manipulators out there and now she’s known to even manipulate the Professor himself. She rose herself from experiment to assistant Director by playing him and she plays everyone around as she sees necessary in order to get what she needs. She often shows what she wants to show and nothing more, near every move and every article of clothing is precisely calculated towards whomever she is meeting with. Of course, only if you don’t know her well.

4. Deals with the Devil- Oh yes, she loves to make deals but don’t worry they’re mostly fair and she is one to keep to her word and her promises. Despite her demeanor she is quite loyal when she promises something. If you work out a trade or a bargain she’ll do her best to uphold her end of it, getting you what you want in return. There is a lot that can be traded between science and other departments after all and she’s not afraid to go behind the Professor’s back here and there if it means obtaining something she’s personally after in the end.

5. A.I Alien - Lastly, yes I love the fact she is a hybrid and loves to play with quantum theory and A.I in the future. I always love the sci-fi aesthetics and concepts and the idea of something beautiful having a monster inside. She’s at conflict with this part of herself, often not knowing how to fully accept it but at least she is in control of the cells and not the other way around. She’s also always been focused on uploading consciousness and prolonging and bringing others back to life since she doesn’t age. It’s from there that she gets pulled into quantum theories and eventually breaks through to a system A.I that she makes a deal with to her own advantage, but this is a plot I haven’t touched in a while. Really I love everything about her but these are some fun and dominating concepts.

5 PEOPLE ON HERE YOU LOVE, AND WHY.

1. @animus-inspire Where do I start? Seriously. This was unexpected but yet one of the best things that has ever happened in my writing history. I love love love this ship and all the AU’s of it so much! And beyond that, it’s so rare to get me to talk a lot but I can’t seem to ever shut up around you xD. But, I LOVE talking to you and the connection we have and the fact that we have so many stinking ideas all the damn time and they all get played off each other so easily and that we can share the same obsessions and YES WHAT HAVE YOU DONE! But you are also one of the sweetest and most full of life people I know on here and I absolutely love writing with you, you’ve made it so great :3. And you are seriously best Reeve and have made me love all the Reeve. <3

2. @thefirstthaumaturge I’ve known you for about like, well.....well over 10 years xD And I love you more as the years go on. We’ve survived drama days together and now we can laugh about all the stupid RP stuff we did in the past. I also enjoy all of our new RPs and how great its been to see both our OCs grow and thrive in these communities. I also super love talking to you and playing video games with you and watching WestWorld and movies with you. Basically, you make everything super fun and I don’t know what I’d do without you around. I also love how we always manage to say/type the same things at the same time all the damn time xD Digital sisters but its as real as it gets.

3. @shinraweirdscience @xbroken-science @insidious-scientist I love all of my Hojo’s that deal with Izzy’s crazy ass and put up with me so thank you guys! I’m always down for crazy plots and all the trauma that comes with them so don’t ever feel bad about throwing anything at me or damaging Izzy. It’s what makes her her after all. And I find it all a lot of fun. I’m always ears for ideas so let me know!

4. @sadistic-second I don’t write a whole lot with you here but you’re always good company in the voice chats and you make playing games a lot of fun as well. I like our little group we have going on to do all the stuffs. I love all the gifs and icons you make, and the paracord is very creative as well. It’s always cool to see what you can do. Of course I like all the funny things too. @apathetic-ruler I have to say you’re writing is amazing, I love it! I haven’t wrote with your Ru but I love past life Ru xD One of these day’s I’ll figure out what to do with a Rufus I’m sure.

5. @ivory-paragon We don’t write much but I love playing FFXIV with you and being in all your groups. It’s a very fun and enjoyable atmosphere and you make me laugh all the time. If I hadn’t found you I wouldn’t have found any of this awesome community and my great shippy ships that have come out of it. @rikelusshinra I love all of our RP’s and stuff too. You have a super amazing OC that seems to fit right in and I’ve loved writing with Rike. Even if you are busy now. It’s rare Izzy finds ships that work but you are one of those lucky ones that she fits well with and I love all the ideas we play with as well. So to my FFU peeps! Even if we don’t write on tumblr much I still love you both.

Honorable mentions:

@cinderella-gurei God, you are the best Chadley and you break my damn heart all the time in our RPs. Izzy will never forgive herself completely but she’s glad to have you around and so am I! She will protecc forever. <3

@madamdirectcr I love your Scarlet! I want to see what happes :3 @makeupandmateria Another lovely Scarlet I had to mention as well!

5 SONGS EITHER YOU OR YOUR MUSE REGARD AS A ‘GUILTY PLEASURE’ THAT ALWAYS MAKES YOU SMILE.

So okay, I’ve thought about this all day and I’ll do a few categories. Since I revolve around music so heavily and no lie have hundreds of my own music videos in my head for every song I’ve ever heard, yes I’m one of THOSE people. xD

So I’ll start with what I’ve been listening to lately that really fits in with WestWorld Izzy and Logan!Reeve ShinuestiLos xD I can’t seem to get Poker Face out of my head for her and a couple other Lady Gaga songs that fit in Like this one too.

Also I really love these songs but they are so random. This one mostly thanks to ARI, but I can never not listen to it when it comes on. Also Mortal Kombat. This song makes me so fired up every time I hear any variation of it xD. Even now! alkdjfsldjfsdljf, but I do really like this mix.

Then we can’t forget those emo day songs. Mr. Brightside is one I can never resist singing. It’s just so damn good! Then there is Holiday by Greenday and can’t forget Miss Murder by AFI xD

Now I have an extremely long list of electronic type, synth, darkwave, trance, whatever the heck categories they fall under that I just like to call my Robot music xD Here’s a couple with AI themes that I’ll just throw out here. We Appreciate Power and quite literally A.I

And lastly this one reminds me of Midgar so much and Izzy, but I always see her singing this if she ever made a music video. (which apparently she’s made many) But she’d definitely be in front of wall sized windows with Midgar in the background and the labs, and its also why she sometimes refers to it as Electric City, idk who the guy would be singing with her but if you want it to be you just let me know? Lol. After all she is Indistinct. Ill Defined. Uncontrolled. Unconfined.

Tagged by: @animus-inspire (this took me forever Reeeeeve x.x)

Tagging: @thefirstthaumaturge

#THERE I DID IT #Omg #So long #But there we have it xD #Woo!

9 notes · View notes

scorpionyx9621 · 4 years

Note

Star Platinum, Hermit Purple, Hierophant Green, The Fool and Crazy Diamond

Oh GOD OH FUCK YOU ASKING THE HARD QUESTIONS HUH

Star Platinum: What is your favorite Stand and why?

- This is so tough because visually, conceptually, and ability wise I have so many favorite stands. But if I had to pick like a solid 3 it would be The Hand, Whitesnake, and D4C. The Hand is just so cool visually and I have so many headcanons about Okuyasu and the hand. Also the fact that he's essentially Cream, one of the most horrific Stands Araki has ever made, but Okuyasu CHOOSES to underutilize The Hand because he knows just how powerful it is. I love Whitesnake visually and conceptually because stealing stands and memories? That's BADASS. Also I truly adore how Whitesnake is essentially the Echoes Act 3 of Part 6. He's vulgar, cruel, and downright evil. He truly represents Pucci in the sense of him being this polite Catholic priest but it's all a front. Whitesnake is the manifestation of how Pucci truly feels. And D4C is just great. I'm still reading Part 7 and D4C is just absurd. He's this giant robotic rabbit man who can pull people out of different universes, his stand users is THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES who's name is FUNNY VALENTINE, and D4C is literally just a shortened version of the song/album Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap. I know he's a serious villain stand but I cannot take him seriously at all. My honorable mention is Metallica. God that stand HURTS and I like Risotto in general SOOOO...

Hermit Purple: Which part have you gone back to and re-watched/re-read the most?

- Re-Watched has to be Diamond is Unbreakable. Araki did Slice of Life so well and DiU is so easy to binge. I'm really new to JoJo so I have only read Part 6 and I'm working through Part 7 now. So the only part I've Re-Read is Part 6. And ho boy, do I LOVE part 6.

Heirophant Green: Which character do you relate to the most?

- Call me weird but Koichi. I feel like my life has been very transformational and everyone goes through evolutions of themselves. And I really relate to Koichi being the narrator of part 4 despite him not wanting to be the main center of attention.

The Fool: What's the silliest misconception you had about the series before watching it?

- it's stereotypical I know but buff men screaming at each other lmao. I knew very little about Jojo before my roommates (who we aren't speaking to eachother now oops..) got me into it. I really only had a vague grasp on the series and then out of nowhere I watched Part 3 over the holidays last year and I was like WAIT A MINUTE. SO THIS IS WHERE ALL THOSE MEMES CAME FROM.

Crazy Diamond: What is your favorite part of Jojo?

- It's either Part 4 or Part 6 bro. Josuke and Jolyne are my favorite JoJo's with Jotaro following closely behind. Okuyasu is my favorite JoBro while Pucci is my favorite Villain. I love how both Josuke & Jolyne show aspects of their parents (Josuke having Joseph's cunningness, his slyness, but also his sense of fun; and Jolyne having Jotaro's deadly determination, willingness to succeed, and sense of rightousness. ) I love how the two focus on Jotaro as well, from part 4 showing him advance from being a ruggish thug to being a man of science and PHD candidate who has very much softened, to the point he's almost amiable if still painfully stoic. To him being a protective father in Part 6. It's made clear that he regrets not spending more time with Jolyne. As he distanced himself from his wife and Jolyne because he was afraid that he would attract stand users to them. Also visually Josuke and Jolyne are the best JoJo's to me. I live for the headcanons of people putting Josuke's hair down and he looks just like Joseph. And literally every single look Jolyne rocks is iconic.

#thanks for the ask!

2 notes · View notes

raeynbowboi · 5 years

Text

The Other Ships in My Fleet

So, I’ve already made a post talking about how I feel about certain ships in My Hero Academia, and another post about some of my other fandoms. Both posts got a lot of likes and reblogs, so I figured I’d talk about my ships from other fandoms. If this post also gets a lot of positive feedback, I’ll consider starting a second page to post my fan content for all of my fandoms, while still maintaining this one almost exclusively for My Hero Academia and Kiribaku specifically.

Klance (Keith x Lance) Voltron: Legendary Defender

I’m fully aware that this ship is probably not going to happen, but it’s really the only ship in the series that speaks to me. I will not lie, I am a big fan of dark and moody dating happy-go-lucky, and the rivals to friends to lovers element is just icing on the cake. It’s only further helped by Lance being Keith’s second-in-command. They help each other grow, and the trust that forms between them is cute and endearing. They also shared a major element to their characters. Both of them feel out of place, Keith because of his Galra heritage, and Lance because he doesn’t have a niche role.

Rabies/Rae x BB (Raven x Beast Boy) Teen Titans (2003)

While there wasn’t a lot of shipping fodder for these two in the 2003 iteration, the two are a canon couple in most versions of the teen titans, having been married in the comics (more than once, I think) so this is sort of a unique ship in that I ship it across every version of the two characters. Sporting a snarky moody goth and a lovable goofball, their dynamic was like that of an old married couple, or a moody teenager and her annoying little brother. Still, the two were good friends, and even though their personalities were polar opposites of each other, they had a lot of quiet, emotional moments together in the series. Whether you want to read them as friends or potential lovers, I think it’s hard to deny that there was a genuinely nice bond between the pair.

Garnet/Rupphire (Ruby x Sapphire) Steven Universe

As the show’s literal physical manifestation of love and a perfect relationship, it’s hard not to like the relationship between these two adorable lesbians. With the show sometimes being edited to remove the queer elements, it’s absolutely hysterical that they had the two get married in an episode very important to the plot, and put Ruby in the dress so that absolutely nobody could misinterpret her as a male. Editing it would only confuse viewers as to why everybody is in wedding attire, thus taking a very satisfying stance against censors and bigotry. Garnet also marks a first in children’s programming as the first same-sex wedding in a children’s animated show, at least as far as I’m aware.

Pearl x Mystery Girl Steven Unieverse

Although only featured in a single episode and having no dialogue, Mystery Girl (possibly named Sabina) is a very important element to Pearl’s character, being her first step toward moving on from Rose Quartz. There were fans that hoped that Mystery Girl would come back, but even if she doesn’t, she’s still important to Pearl’s character development.

Amedot (Amethyst x Peridot) Steven Universe

I know a lot of people prefer Lapidot, but frankly I find Lapis too selfish and cold-hearted to be ready for a relationship as she currently stands. I find Amethyst to be a better fit for Peridot, since they both share issues with their height. That, and the way the show frames them has romantic comedy tropes interwoven into their scenes. But even if they’re just friends, Amethyst’s approval means so much to Peridot.

Stevonnie (Steven Universe x Connie Maheswaren) Steven Universe

I’m not usually a fan of lead boy dates lead girl ships, as they tend to be very poorly done, and many feel forced, or are just boring and predictable. However, the bond between these two feels very genuine. They don’t feel like a lead boy and lead girl forced into a relationship at all. They come together very naturally, and the show takes its time to build their friendship up slowly. The show remembers that they’re kids first, friends second, jam buds third, and love interests last.

Tomstar (Tom Lucitor x Star Butterfly) Star Vs the Forces of Evil

Considering the show’s themes of monsters, racism, and not judging evil at face value, this ship serves as the most thematically poignant to the narrative that the show is setting up. It also makes Star a stronger parallel to her “evil” great great something grandmother, Eclipsa. Both are monster sympathizers with monster boyfriends. While the blood moon bonds complicate things, I see this ship as the most relevant to the themes and messages the show seems to want to send.

Tomco (Tom Lucitor x Marco Diaz) Star Vs the Forces of Evil

More of a joke/crack ship, I know it’s unlikely, but the entire episode of Friendenemies had romantic comedy written all over it. Between the literal in-universe break-up song to the show’s promotional art being inspired by dime store pulp romance novels fuel the fire that keeps this ship afloat.

Bumblebee/Bumbleby (Blake Belladonna x Yang Xiao Long) RWBY

Partners, teammates, and close friends, the ship really took off starting in season 2 during the episode “Burning the Candle”, as Blake spiraled into self-destructive habits due to obsessing over her problems. Nobody is able to get through to her until Yang comes in to talk to her. She doesn’t lecture her or beg her to stop. She instead forms a bridge of trust by first opening up about a similar situation she’s been in, and how she knows first hand that this sort of spiraling can only have negative impacts. They are shown to be parallels, as both girls are negatively effected by a loved one no longer in their life, and the trust issues that spring from that loved one’s actions. Yang was abandoned by her mother, a problem which she mentions Blake repeated. For Blake, it was the uncertainty of trusting someone’s character, and being afraid of someone slowly turning into someone else. She explicitly states in season 3 that her ex started off a nice guy, like Yang. The first time he hurt someone, there was a reason. There was always an excuse. Until eventually, she became the pardoner. The one excusing his actions. And, she expresses the fear that Yang could be following a similar path. Both girls have been hurt by someone in the past, and both girls are afraid of being hurt the same way again, and inadvertently hurt each other the same way as someone else has. It’s also known that RWBY characters tend to represent or be based on fairy tale characters. Yang is Goldilocks, and Blake is Beauty from Beauty and the Beast. However, based on the lyrics from Red Like Roses “Black the Beast descends from shadows, Yellow Beauty burns gold”, there seems to be an implication that Yang is the Beauty to Blake’s Beast. This is interestingly supported by Blake’s name. Blake is a Celtic name meaning both Black and White, and Belladonna literally means Beautiful Woman in Italian, but is also the name of a very poisonous plant often mistaken for the harmless blueberry. The duality of her name could be pointing to how she plays the dual role of both Beauty and Beast.

Seamonkeys (Sun Wukong x Neptune Vasilias) RWBY

A bit more of a crack ship, these two lovable idiots are far less likely to be canon, but since Sun is Yang’s main competition for Blake’s heart, I have no problem shipping him off elsewhere with his goofy best friend. Although they act more like usual best friends in the canon show, their relationship does have a much gayer tone in the less canon comedy show RWBY Chibi, where Neptune almost seems to act like a jealous clingy girlfriend a lot of the times. I doubt the ship would ever sail, but I mostly ship it because they’re cute together. Although, with season 6 just starting, I got the vibe that Sun was stepping aside to let Bumblebee sail uninhibited. Sun doesn’t really have a third popular ship, it’s just Black Sun and Seamonkeys, so this ship may be gaining validity in the future.

Gumlee (Marshall Lee x Prince Gumball) Adventure Time with Fiona and Cake

The male counterpart to Bubbline (Princess Bubblegum x Marceline), there’s no real difference between the two pairs other than their genders, and Gumball preferring baking while Bubblegum prefers science. Because they are effectively just gender-swapped clones of the canon ship, anything canonical between the girls is also technically canon with these two. It’s not that I don’t like Bubbline, but when given the choice between gay or lesbian versions of a couple, I’m going to be naturally inclined to lean toward the gay version.

Sasunaru/Narusasu (Sasuke Uchiha x Naruto Uzumaki) Naruto

Maybe there’s a cultural aspect I’m unaware of, but it’s a bit of a running gag in the Naruto fanbase at this point that Naruto is obsessed with Sasuke. So much so that he seems to care about him way beyond normal friendship. With how much these two obsess over one another, it’s no surprise why this became such a popular pairing. Their dynamic even dwarfed Hinata’s heartfelt confession of her love during the Pain Invasion Arc, because as soon as that ended, did Naruto go talk to Hinata? No, he immediately started thinking about Sasuke. Hinata definitely got the shaft in part II, which is a shame because I really loved her character.

Bob and Linda Belcher Bob’s Burgers

More of an honorable mention than a full on ship, I wanted to highlight them as one of adult animation’s only married couples that actually still like each other. In the wake of the popularity of the Simpsons, and the cementing of the genre with Family Guy, the stock dynamic of idiot husband and enraged but supportive wife became a recurring trope. Before long, every single animated sitcom-esque family fell into this very annoying cliche. So, finding a couple in adult animation that are not only married but still manage to show they love each other is amazing. Their marriage isn’t on the rocks, they find time to at least try and be romantic, and even when they have bets or are on opposing sides of something, the show never forgets that these two love each other at the end of the day.

Captain Swan (Killian “Hook” Jones x Emma Swan) Once Upon A Time

This relationship between Captain Hook and the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming might sound odd on paper, but this couple is by far one of the healthiest relationships in the series. Both Hook and Emma come from broken lives, and together build themselves up to something stronger. In a melodrama surrounding fairy tales, both characters are surprisingly grounded, realistic, and skeptical cynics, a very stark contrast from the usual wide-eyed lovey-dovey couples Disney is known for. Emma’s tendency to put up walls and Killian’s tendency to always put himself first are both slowly broken down over time as Killian tries to tear down Emma’s walls and get to know her while she works on building a foundation of trust between them. The pairing feels very organic, and they definitely feel like the most realistic couple in the series as they both take turns stumbling and working toward being good for each other.

Rumbelle (Rumplestiltskin x Belle) Once Upon A Time

In the early seasons, this couple was beautiful to watch. I truly loved their chemistry and dynamic, as both of them were given such strong characteristics without simplifying either of them. However, as the show went on, it started to lose that power. The couple started to feel toxic as Belle kept waiting for Rumple to change, and he kept on lying and lying. It even reached a stopping point. A perfect one. Rumple was redeemed. He was a good man again. He could be the man Belle deserved. But instead, he slipped right back into his old ways. It was then that I fell off the band wagon for this ship. I loved it once, until I got sick of watching him hurt her over and over.

Daenerys Targaryen x Khal Drogo Game of Thrones

Although together only for a short while, this power couple won audiences over very quickly, as Drogo’s gruff but passionate affection mixed with Danny’s growing confidence and rise to power made these two iconic.

Renly Baratheon x Ser Loras Tyrell Game of Thrones

Another short-lived relationship, the remarkable thing is that Renly was literally the only character vying for the throne with fully good intentions for the realm. He was concerned with the needs of the people, and was the only morally good candidate in the War of Five Kings. Sadly, the ydidn’t get much screen time, but they were still a strong couple.

Peraltiago (Jake Peralta x Amy Santiago) Brooklyn 99

A rare exception to the don’t force the leads to date rule, the show let them form a bond over time that went from a friendly childish rivalry to a friendly dating rivalry. While each character experiences change and growth, it is not at the expense of their personalities, and the progression feels like it was meant to happen.

#ships #shipping #fandom #steven universe #star vs the forces of evil #game of thrones #brooklyn 99 #once upon a time #ouat #star vs #rwby #naruto #voltron legendary defender #voltron #teen titans #bobs burgers #adventure time

463 notes · View notes

monsters-demons-and-ai-oh-my · 5 years

Text

What We Lost and What We Have

Chapter 4: Crony capitalism, big needles, and pep talks from hell

TW: Big Needles are mentioned Castiel and Dean take an awkward car ride to deal with an annoying little man. Meg attempts a pep talk and Sam is in over his head

-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-

AU somewhat inspired by Episode 2x20 - What Is and What Should Never Be, and the season 14 storyline concerning Jack’s illness.

-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-

AO3 Link

Previous Chapter

Next Chapter

First Chapter

Complete Tumblr Chapter List

-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-

It was nearly another hour before the doctors were done with Jack and Castiel was ready to leave. He'd stayed with the teenager as the doctors finished up their scans (and whatever else they had to do involving his lungs and cameras), and then he'd practically held Jack's hand all the way back to his hospital room.

Dean didn't know much about the teen but he figured if one of his parents did that when he was Jack’s age he would have been mortified.

Then again Jack still seemed far too high on pain meds to really give a shit about what was going on around him.

It wasn't as if Dean was going to say anything either way.

He didn't seem to be able to say much of anything lately without running his mouth off and starting World War bitchface.

The Klines always seemed to bring out the worst in Dean. Any time he saw Castiel the man always treated him the same; from the first time he'd taken the flight with his dad up to Washington state to meet with him when Jack was a newborn. Castiel always seemed to look at the Winchesters like they were his enemies like he expected John and Dean to stab him in the back if he dared to turn away from them.

Dean was sure it would be that suspicious stuck up face he’d see if he dared to turn to look in Impala’s passenger seat.

Castiel had been nearly silent following Dean out to the parking lot, only thanking him stiffly and asking him if he needed directions to the hotel across town.

“I live here,” he said harsher than necessary, immediately regretting it and following up with a gruff, “just tell me the name I’ll find it…”

God was that was fucking awkward.

At least Dean had an excuse with Castiel…

Jack was… Jack was some awkward kid who as far as he knew didn't really deserve the hot ball of fire that rose in Dean's chest every time he saw him. He didn't like the person he became inside when he saw the kid and he wished more than anything Jack would just go back with his smug uncle a few hundred miles away.

Why Castiel with all his suspicion and mollycoddling thought it was a good idea to bring Jack back to Kansas… He didn't know.

But Dean had told Sam he’d be there while Jack was sick… and he didn’t want to let Sam down again.

No matter how hard he tried he couldn't see himself as a part of Sam's little remorseful crusade to make what happened right but his brother Sam mattered. So he’d try to grin and bear it, deal with whatever this was until it was over… and things went back to normal.

The car was uncomfortably quiet the radio off as Castiel was making phone calls to what sounded like a school.

"No no, please don't let Mr. Sully substitute for my class, he’s too lenient with the students they'll never finish their review packets on time for the exam…"

Dean squeezed the wheel and tried to remind himself to just focus on the road and mind his own damn business.

"Th-the exam?" he heard after a moment, "I… I um…"

He heard Castiel take a shaky breath.

"I… we should be back in time to proctor it, if… if everything goes well…" there was a long silence. "No… they still don't… they don't know…"

Dean felt like running the car into a ditch to escape.

"I… I'll let him know you hope he feels better… goodbye…" Dean heard the man’s voice choke slightly before he hung up.

He could hear Castiel breathing shakily, see him blink rapidly to clear his eyes in the mirror. It almost shook something in Dean too.

But like Castiel, he shoved the feeling back and clicked on the radio instead.

Led Zeppelin's " The Rain Song," started it's mournful tones and Dean quickly switched it off again.

The car was too quiet yet again.

Dean cleared his throat awkwardly, the silence was somehow worse than listening to a grown man near tears.

"So, you're a teacher?" he asked vaguely just for something to fill the void.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Castiel blink dubiously at him

"High School science…" he muttered shuffling in his seat slightly uncomfortable, "Advanced Placement Biology… and Physics."

Dean gave a non-committal noise of acknowledgment.

He thought for a moment back to when he first met the man.

Don't ask, don't ask…

"I thought you were going to school to be a doctor or something?"

There was a pause he could feel the man's eyes on him.

"Nurse Practitioner… and that was a long time ago…" Castiel said with an odd tone in his voice, cutting short the line of questioning.

There was no sound for a long moment and Dean tried to focus back on the road.

"The turn is up on the right…" Castiel said after a moment glancing at the time on his phone with an anxious brooding expression.

"Dude you have half an hour until two, chill," Dean muttered under his breath half hoping he wouldn't be heard.

"It not your property or your reputation on the line Dean," Castiel said stiffly, the stick in his ass somehow jamming up higher.

Dean took a deep breath and shoved down his need to aggressively defend the honor and reputation of mechanics everywhere.

Sick kid, sick kid, dude has a sick kid…

"I am driving though you know…"

Castiel finally relaxed slightly, slumping back into the anxious guilty posture he'd had at the hospital. It made Dean feel almost worse.

"I'm sorry… thank you…" Castiel said quietly, "let's… let's just get this over with…"

The hotel came up quickly on the right side of the road Dean raised an eyebrow, the way the dude on the phone talked and Castiel acted you would have thought he was late checking out of the Ritz Carlton.

This place had the "O" and "T" literally burned out of the lit "Hotel" sign and the pool looked like a suspiciously green public health hazard.

Maybe that's where Jack picked up whatever plague he had.

"It's… changed ownership since the last time I stayed here," Castiel tried to explain looking sheepish.

Dean just blinked at him incredulously and pulled up to the office, "Yeah… sign says under renovation… probably looks great inside."

He couldn’t not rub the obvious in a little, not with the way Castiel acted, he'd explode.

The man rolled his eyes, "Just… wait out here, this should only take a minute to sort out."

He slammed the passenger door a little harder than necessary getting out of the car.

Dean flicked back on the radio, now more appropriately playing Harry Nilsson's - "You're breaking my heart."

He turned it up and gave and gave Castiel an insincere smile when he turned back to glare at him.

The man just rolled his eyes again and went inside.

Dean waited as "You're breaking my heart" along with three other songs came and went and still Castiel hadn't returned. Dean tapped impatiently on his steering wheel turning the engine off to conserve gas.

Dean tried not to let his curiosity get the better of him, first telling himself to stay in the car, then telling himself he was only going inside to share his annoyance with Castiel taking his dear sweet time.

Real convincing.

He heard arguing as he got closer to the door.

"I'm not going to pay you to get our luggage back, you said nothing about that over the phone!"

When he pushed open the ajar office door he saw Castiel leaning against the desk and arguing with a short man dressed suspiciously well for the shitty barely air-conditioned office he was in.

Some scruffy little dirtbag sitting in a nice chair, in a fancy suit, surrounded by four walls covered in peeling dark maroon wallpaper that probably been there since the place opened.

"Well I'm sorry, but it's policy, it was in the room contract that you signed."

British accent too, wasn't he special.

"I already paid for the extra day…" Castiel sounded harassed.

Dean's eyebrows rose almost to his hairline something about the situation felt wrong and he nearly backed right back out the door.

Don’t get involved.

"It's a new policy introduced to encourage our guests to check out on time, I’m sorry if you feel that way, but it's in the fine print," the man shrugged smugly.

Searching his mind Dean couldn't come up with a more punchable face, it felt familiar though like he’d seen it before.

Castiel blinked at the man looking mildly disgusted before sighing and pulling out his wallet exasperated, "I really don't have the time for this how much do you need…"

The man in the suit shrugged, "I'll give you the discount, a flat fifty dollars."

Dean reacted to that without really meaning to, whistling at the fee, both men finally seemed to notice him at the door.

Castiel looked away quickly somehow even more embarrassed than before.

Part of Dean wanted to be happy about it, to be just as petty as his brain told him he deserved to be. To see the man who seemed to permanently assume he and his family were the scum of the earth (despite the fact that they shared half their blood with his sister's kid) embarrassed.

But… he couldn't.

Because this was a fucking joke. Separating himself from his feelings about Castiel this was some asshole separating a man from his money simply because he was desperate enough to actually pay it.

Dean found himself speaking, “It’s just… fifty bucks is a little steep, don't you think? Considering your room rate is only forty-five a night?”

Where most people saw a parent scared senseless and in a tight spot this asshole just saw dollar signs.

"You know I was just thinking…" Dean leaned nonchalantly again the frame of the office door, "it only really makes sense to try to get your customers to obey the rules by threatening to hold their junk hostage if they already knew that rule existed when they checked in."

"Ah," the man smiled at him with mild malice in his eyes, "Well, as I said, it’s in the contract I’ll just have to make it more obvious next time…"

Yeah right...

He reached out for Castiel's money but Dean found himself speaking again.

"I'm guessing Cas here told you he wasn't able to meet the check out time because he's been at the hospital all night, because his kid is sick…"

"Dean," Castiel shot him a warning voice full of mild panic like he was afraid of the very real possibility that Dean would make things worse.

Dean kept his eyes on the bargain basement con man.

The man had the decency to look nervous, "While I have the greatest sympathy for your friend here, I can't afford to look away this time. I only recently acquired this place and we're in the middle of renovations you see."

The man’s face finally clicked in Dean’s mind.

"And what did do before you bought this place, sell used cars?"

The little man looked like he about fit the colorful descriptions of the seller half the lemon owners who came into his auto shop described.

"You're name is Crowley right?"

Dean felt a hand suddenly tighten on his shoulder, Castiel had moved at some point without him seeing.

"Could you please excuse us for a moment?" he said through gritted teeth shooting Dean a frustrated look.

Crowley seemed mildly relieved to look away from Dean, "of course…," he smiled casually, "I have nowhere to be…"

Castiel's mouth twitched and he almost dragged the larger man out of the office.

As soon as they were out of earshot…

"What are you doing!?" Castiel asked looking exasperated.

Dean blinked at him for a long moment before replying, "you can't tell that dude is playing you?"

Castiel's mouth opened and closed before he huffed, "I don't know? But do I look like I care?"

The man looked like he was about to blow a vein, all the nervous energy that Dean thought was building up to get to the hotel was still there. Dean felt like an idiot.

It was never about the stupid fucking suitcases or his reputation...

"Look," Dean said carefully, "I'll get you back to the kid just go get your things, wait at the car… if I'm not back in five minutes I'll pay the stupid fee myself and we'll leave, okay?"

Castiel hesitated looking unsure, tettering, but the need to get the hell out of there won out.

"Five minutes…"

Dean smiled thinly patting his shoulder awkwardly and tossing over the keys, "thanks."

Castiel gave him one last incredulous glance before leaving in search of the luggage.

Dean headed back to the office to deal with the con man.

Crowley smiled nonchalantly as if nothing had happened, "finished the lovers quarrel and here to foot the bill?"

Dean huffed, "You're really sticking to this bullshit aren't you?"

Crowley gave a fake tired sigh, "Again, it is not 'bullshit' it is written into the contract all guests sign when they rent a room, I'm just holding them to it."

Dean puzzled over what to say for a moment his mind turning to Sam…

"Well you know there's a law that protects customers from…" Dean searched for the word Sam threw around whenever Dean called to ask him about anything law-related, "predatory claims like this…"

Crowley's eyebrows rose mirthfully trying to cover slight nervousness, "it's a contract, it's not my fault your friend didn't read the fine print before he signed."

"Really because penal code…" Dean rolled the mental lottery, "67845 C says otherwise."

Crowley looked skeptical.

"Believe me I know, I own an auto shop people try to use it all the time when they get a rate they don't like…" Dean lied through his teeth giving a small shrug.

"Well, I highly doubt anyone who stays in this dump would have the cash lying around for a frivolous lawsuit…" Crowley said unconvinced crossing his arms.

It seemed like the innocent owner act was finally slipping but unfortunately, Dean knew he was probably right.

Mary had worked at the local high school teaching history for a while after she and John separated, Dean knew a teachers salary wasn’t exactly high.

"Look I'm sorry about your friend's situation, I really am…"

Bullshit

"But I apply the same rules to every customer, I can't bend them for one person. My mother once came in wanting a free room saying she was terminally ill,” The man shrugged and leaned back in his chair with a squeak, “I did not give it to her."

Dean’s eyebrows rose.

"Relax she was lying…" Crowley said flatly.

Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree I guess.

“I… I really don’t care,” Dean said back just as monotonously.

He was beginning to worry. It didn’t seem like logic or appealing to Crowley’s “ better nature ” was going to work.

It wasn’t about Castiel, it really wasn’t, he told himself. It was just this man thought he could get away with this ridiculous and bad-natured con just to get a quick buck and he’d probably continue to prey on people who didn’t have the money to stay at a nicer place and fight back.

Dean was going to have to change tactics.

“Do you still own that shitty car lot along with the shitty motel?” Dean asked innocently.

Crowley’s eyebrow rose in fake offense to Dean’s overt implication.

“I do own both establishments yes…”

“Mmm…” Dean tilted his head and smiled mirthlessly, “so how about you forgive Cas’s luggage debt and I don’t post the six-page list of complaints I’ve gotten about your lot up in the waiting area of my auto shop…”

-------

Dean exited the office a minute later to see Castiel pacing the length of the Impala.

“Did it work? If it didn’t I promise I can pay you back I…” the man had started wringing his hands anxiously.

Dean raised a hand to cut him off and smiled like the cat who got the canary.

- Which it turned out was sheepishly, like he had a mouth full of feathers and was questioning his life choices -.

“Don’t worry about it… it’s done,” Dean said vaguely before quickly changing the subject, “you get your stuff?”

Castiel still looked a little puzzled but nodded, “I put the bags in the backseat…”

Dean grunted satisfied before climbing into the car himself, “Let’s get you back to your car so you can get back to your... hovering.”

He said it half talking to himself like it meant nothing.

Let’s get this over with…

Castiel nodded hesitantly before climbing in the passenger side.

Dean turned back on the car, the radio resuming it’s blaring of the classic rock station and they left the crap show of a motel behind.

Castiel said something he couldn’t quite catch.

“What?”

Castiel huffed and reached over to turn down the radio, much to Dean’s chagrin.

“I said… thank you…” the words were dragged like Cas was struggling under the weight of the sentence.

Dean shrugged not looking up from the road, “You don’t have to, I would’ve done it for anyone, dude was shady.”

It was probably true...

Castiel seemed to go back to staring into nothing out the window.

Dean’s thoughts began to nag at him.

“So where are you staying tonight?” managed to slip out, “I mean, obviously you aren’t staying at that dump anymore…”

Castiel was quiet for a long moment, “I’m probably going to stay with Jack at the hospital again, I’ve already been away too long...”

Dean grunted non-commitally, he couldn’t imagine sleeping in one of the hospital’s half cushioned pink monstrosities they called chairs.

“Why are you asking?” Cas quipped back.

Deans shrugged cooly, “I mean it’s just, what are you going to do when you need a shower or something?”

Castiel bit his lip unsure, “I’ll get a new hotel room.”

Dean gave another half-convinced huff.

- As in he only had half of either man convinced he was convinced of anything. -

It took all of ten seconds before Dean blurted...

“I mean probably one of the reasons that jackass was in such a hurry to chase you out of his place was there’s gonna be a premium on shitty hotel rooms around town with Kansas University big spring preview ga-...”

“Dean…” Castiel cut him off sighing rubbing at his face, “I… I appreciate what you did for us back at the motel I really do, but I don’t need you to play host or anything like that.”

Dean’s mouth opened and closed awkwardly and he focused back on driving,

“I was just going to recommend a few places,” Dean lied smoothly.

Castiel seemed to take the excuse, “I’d actually appreciate that…”

-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-

Sam resumed his awkward chair perching in Jack’s hospital room as soon as Castiel and Dean left.

He’d bought a black stuffed bear holding a little yellow “Get well Soon” heart while waiting for Jack to come out of the lab in an attempt to make things a little less awkward.

Did sixteen-year-olds even like that sort of thing? He wasn’t sure but thankfully Jack was passed out again by the time Sam got back upstairs from the gift shop.

He didn’t seem to want to do much more than sleep lately…

Part of Sam hoped to hell that Jack wouldn’t wake up until his uncle got finished with his business at the hotel. But at the same time it was not wanting the kid to wake up alone that held him in place in the hospital room.

Sam pulled out his laptop determined to get some work done on upcoming court documents as Jack remained peaceful in his bed. An orderly came in at some point to deliver a lunch tray for the boy.

After about a half-hour though Sam could hear Jack’s breathing speed up and set aside the computer concerned.

A thin veil of sweat bloomed across the teen’s forehead and the muscles of his face grew tense, teeth clenched. He was in pain.

Sam pushed the nurse call button, but when they arrived they explained the pain medication was originally given when they were resetting his wrist and they were letting it wear off until they had a better idea what was going on in Jack’s body.

The thought made Sam wince but as there was nothing he could do he tried to ignore the sounds from the bed and go back to typing up his court document.

It worked for all of ten minutes.

Jack started to move around restlessly in his sleep and finally, Sam heard a pained sigh and a soft anxious, “Cas…?”

The teenager had woken up.

He pushed himself up on one elbow coughing into the crook off his arm and blinking around owlishly searching the room for his uncle.

Jack’s eyes met Sam’s only for a moment before he seemed to shrink into himself again looking down to study his bed covers. The dazed drugged look in his eyes had passed but it was replaced with a pained glassy awareness, like he was looking at the world through a feverish haze despite the fact the monitor only read a mild ninety-nine point seven degrees.

Sam cleared his throat and finally gave an answer, “He… he went with Dean to sort something out at the hotel…”

“O-oh…” Jack said disappointed still not looking up, fiddling with a loose string on the edge of his blanket before sinking back against his pillows.

Sam searched for some way to help cheer him up feeling like “The Problem”™.

“Castiel should be back soon they just had to pay for the hotel and pick up his car from the restaurant you went to last night…”

Jack nodded against his pillow noncommittally, wincing slightly at the movement.

“Are you in pain?” Sam asked stupidly already knowing the answer.

Jack eyed him warily pulling the thin hospital blanket tighter around him, “I’m alright, headache…”

There was a long pause before Sam tried again, he couldn’t blame Jack for not wanting to talk to him. Even before the incident in the graveyard they’d never been close. He didn’t think being in as vulnerable a state as he was at the moment would make him much more comfortable around Sam.

Most of Sam’s memories of Jack were of a tiny crying blonde baby that grew into a shy but curious toddler who sucked on his fingers and took to following his much older brother around the Winchester’s house. When Sam couldn’t find an excuse to stay at his mom’s or be out he rarely volunteered to watch the baby unless there was no other option. Because at the time that was all Jack was, “a baby,” who cried and got into things and required Sam to be around John longer than he cared to be.

For Sam the first two years of Jack’s life were a game of avoidance with their father and by extension Jack himself. The only consolation was that Jack had probably been too young to retain any memories from that time…

And it wasn’t as if any of the newer memories Jack had created of his older brothers warmed him to either of them. John’s funeral, a no-contest court hearing when Jack went to live with Castiel full time… and now the one time he’d tried to open up to his half-siblings he’d just gotten burned. They’d be lucky if he ever trusted them again, even in a situation where he wasn’t alone, and terrified, and feeling absolutely horrible in a fucking hospital.

Sam pushed away the urge to descend into another self-hating spiral.

“They brought you lunch…” Sam tried pulling the cover tentatively off the tray and revealing it’s rather unappetizing contents.

Jack just blinked at him and coughed hoarsely into his arm, his breathing was still wheezy but at least it didn't sound alarming like choking like before.

Sam pushed the buttons on the bed controls to push the back of bed into a more upright position like he’d seen the med student do before.

At least there didn’t seem to be blood this time...

“Th-thanks but I… I’m not really hungry…” Jack rolled over onto his side facing away from Sam trying to clear his throat.

Sam sighed a little to himself with a pang of concern. When was the last time Jack had eaten? He’d been sleeping most of the morning and early afternoon and Sam remembered Castiel mentioning he’d had very little to eat at the diner the night before.

“You should still have something,” Sam said, trying to think of what Castiel would want if he was there.

“I mean there’s…” he looked over the paltry spread, a meat sandwich of some sort, a mug of rather gray looking chicken soup, a fruit cup, and… “there’s lime jello, that looks good?”

Jack grumbled mumbling something that sounded like "then you eat it", before looking up and hugging himself with a grimace, “No thank you.”

“Well… the nurse said they could bring you something else if this didn’t…”

“Sam…” Jack interrupted him sounding a little frustrated.

Sam quickly shut his mouth.

“I… sorry,” Jack looked down at his lap poking at the splint on his sore wrist with his free hand, “I just… my head hurts… and my stomach’s kind of bothering me…”

“Do you feel like you’re going to be sick?” Sam asked cautiously rubbing his hands together in front of him to suppressing the urge to lunge for the nurse call button again.

“No!” Jack said quickly blushing pink crossing his arms in front of him, “It just... hurts, it’s probably f-from…” He coughed roughly again into the crook of his elbow, “coughing so much…” he muttered frustrated.

“I just,” he sighed, “I just want to rest okay?” Jack attempted to give Sam a reassuring smile that didn’t quite cover the pain lurking in his dark bruised eyes.

Sam sat mouth slightly open for a moment before deciding to let the subject drop and covering the lunch tray again, “Okay…”

Jack tried to get comfortable under his covers again and Sam tried to get back to working on his laptop. But when he caught Jack’s eyes again, they were looking in mild confusion at the small bear sitting in the chair beside Sam like a second visitor.

The teenager turned pink and he looked determinedly away when he caught Sam looking at him.

Sam’s mouth twitched slightly, and he thought that maybe he made at least one positive decision today.

“I um I bought him for you…” Sam said a little sheepish, holding out the bear, “I wasn’t sure if you still liked that sort of thing… but…” he trailed off.

Jack watched him unsure for a moment before tentatively reaching out a hand to take the bear, wincing a little as he pushed himself up into a seated position in bed and stared at it for a long moment. For a split second, a small smile crossed his face.

“Thank you…” He said softly, gently running the fingers of his non-splinted hand over the bear’s soft fur before going red in embarrassment again and reluctantly perching it beside his uneaten lunch on the rolling tray table facing towards him.

He settled back against the pillows and they both relaxed for a moment into silence Jack trying to settle into sleep.

It didn’t seem to work, without the painkillers he shifted almost constantly occasionally huffing sounding exasperated like he couldn’t find a comfortable position. The beads of sweat across his forehead seeming to grow more prominent, his eyes tensed shut. His lip occasionally quivering like he was trying not to cry.

Sam wished there was something he could do to end the kids suffering but he felt like anything he did would be unwelcome, just make the kid more emotionally tense and uncomfortable alongside whatever pain his body was already in.

He was relieved a few minutes later when the nurse from earlier entered.

“Are you sure you can’t give him anything for the pain?” Sam asked quickly wringing his hands slightly.

“I wish I could big man really…” She smiled thinly, more of an empathetic grimace, “but they want to run more tests without any drugs in his system for reference… and I’m just coming in him to prep him for the LP…”

“LP?”

Sam and nurse Master’s looked back to see Jack peeking at them warily over the sidebar of the bed, “what’s that?”

The nurse looked a little hesitant for once before smiling in an ‘oh honey’ way that was not at all reassuring.

“It’s a procedure to collect spinal fluid and test pressure around your spinal cord, I believe the doctor is trying to rule out possibilities for what caused you to have a seizure,” the nurse began moving the lunch tray onto the empty seat beside Sam and setting the bear at the foot of Jack’s bed.

“Sp-spinal fluid,” Jack mumbled going a pale, knees pulling up to his chest.

“Isn’t that what they do to test meningitis?” Sam froze for a moment, “I thought didn’t think it was that?

Jack went more white if that was possible and looked at the nurse wide-eyed.

If looks could kill the one the nurse gave Sam would get her convicted.

“Maybe that's why they’re in a hurry to try to rule it out, ” nurse Master’s explained sardonically, before turning to Jack and speaking in a much kinder voice, “ and there are hundreds of other issues that are not meningitis that can be ruled out through spinal fluid…”

Jack was still pale but seemed to relax a little at that, “Wh-what are they going to do to me?”

Nurse Master’s explained, “What the doctor is going to do when they come in… is called a lumbar puncture, they’re going to numb part of your back and carefully use a needle to collect spinal fluid from the space between your vertebrae…”

Jack’s eyes were wide as saucers and his voice shook when he finally spoke again.

"W-will…?" He paused swallowing and looking down centering himself before speaking again hands gripping his blanket, "will it hurt?"

Sixteen suddenly felt absurdly young...

The nurse gave a practiced but not unkind answer, "The needle for numbing medication should be the worst of it, after that you shouldn't feel much more other than pressure on your lower spine.

Jack nodded and tried to smile back like he fully understood, it came off as a frightened grimace.

"Can… can it wait until my uncle gets back?" He asked hopefully.

"Wish I could do that for you kiddo, I really do, but the doctor wants to get this done as soon as possible, so I guess you're stuck with Mr string bean over there."

Both the nurse and Jack looked in Sam's direction with an unsure expression…

Sam was momentarily tongue-tied, "I um… I can just wait outside if that's better, I don't want impose if…" he trailed off seeing the nurse giving him a contemptuous look, “what?”

She shrugged, "I was just wondering, you two don’t look much alike are you really his brother or some weird perv who snuck in when we weren't looking?" the nurse said sarcasm somehow still bleeding from her monotonous tone.

Sam blinked taken aback mouth twitching irritated, "I… I really don't think that's…"

The nurse's eyebrows rose pointedly at him silencing him again.

"Jack I need to talk to your brother alone for a moment outside okay?" she gave Jack a thin smile.

Jack just nodded the prospect of what was coming, making him seem to physically and emotionally curl into himself, refusing to look at either of them.

Sam sighed setting his laptop under his chair and following the nurse outside.

And as soon as they were...

"I really don't know how things are run around here but you are really out of line…" Sam started his “lawyer voice” cut off by a withering look from the nurse.

"Are you really planning to leave that kid alone in there?" She sounded disbelieving like he’d just admitted to planning to abandon Jack on the side of the road somewhere.

"Look lady," Sam was beginning to get irritated himself, "I appreciate what you are trying to do but you know nothing about me or my family, yesterday was the first day in about six years we've seen each other, it would be…” he tried to search for the word but couldn’t find it settling on, “inappropriate… if he wanted me there he’d say so."

The nurse crossed her arms unphased, "Fine, I don’t know you, but you wanna know what I do know? I work here every damn day and I know a freaked-out kid when I see one. A kid like that? Sixteen? If you’re waiting for a personally signed invitation he’s probably not going to give you one because of macho bullshit or because he’s trying to prove how he's a 'grown-up' or something. But you want him not to talk to you for another six years? Leave him alone to get needle shoved in his back…”

Sam’s mouth hung slightly open but he had no retort for that. There was a movement behind him and he glanced back to see the doctor from earlier go into Jack's room.

The nurse’s expression hadn’t changed when Sam looked back at her, “Now I could call another stranger to stay with him during the procedure but somehow I think a familiar face might better don't you?"

Sam didn't respond glancing back again through the room window the doctor who was doing the procedure was re-introducing themselves to Jack who looked on warily, still hugging his knees.

Sam heard the nurse still talking to him "So how about you stow your shit, and go back in there?"

What if he doesn't want me there?

What if I make things worse ?

A hundred quips and excuses and things that could go wrong spun through Sam's head but he finally just sighed and said…

"Okay…"

Nurse Masters huffed and stood straighter, "My hero… now get back in there before the doctor starts without you…"

Reflexively Sam’s mouth half twitched into a polite smile back and he went back into Jack's room without another word.

The doctor looked up when the large man entered. Jack seemed to still be attempting to study for a doctorate in the pattern on his blanket and refusing to look up so he aimed his uncomfortable smile towards the doctor “Hannah.”

She offered him a more reassuring smile back, “are you the one who’s going to assist me today?

Jack’s head snapped up at that and gave Sam a look somewhere between horror and betrayal.

“I um…” Sam looks unsure, “are you sure I can do that?”

“Don’t worry I won’t ask you to do anything complicated,” she said while laying out complicated supplies on the rolling side table, Jack looking on warily.

“I just need someone to help hold his knees when he’s curled on his side for test, with the IV and his wrist it will be difficult for him to do… As long as that’s alright with you Jack?” she addressed Jack with a gentle hand on his shoulder.

Jack nodded silently eyebrows furrowed, eyes still wide.

Sam sat awkwardly in a chair near the bed pulling his it closer to the bed with a strangled squeak giving Jack a strained smile and awaiting further instructions.

The doctor instructed Jack gently to turn onto his side facing away from her. The boy complied strangely quiet aside for a few soft coughs as the doctor dropped the bed flat and carefully rearranged the wires and tubes attached to his body.

When she told Sam to provide counter-pressure for the boy’s knee as he curled up in a fetal position he could feel Jack shaking.

His eyes were clenched tightly shut, breathing shallow and heart beating rapidly on the monitor.

“Jack?” Sam asked gently worriedly.

The boy jumped violently at the sound of his own name, blue eyes opening wide pupils tiny pinpricks.

He looked absolutely petrified.

“You’ve done this before right?” Sam asked Doctor Hannah unsure.

She smiled back carefully pulling on sanitary gloves, “over a hundred times…”

Sam gave Jack what he hoped was a reassuring smile, “see it’ll be okay…”

Jack nodded lip quivering slightly, jumping at the feeling of the doctor applying antiseptic iodine to his back.

He still looked on the verge of tears.

Sam searched for some way to calm him down, something to say, “just take a deep breath… it will all be over soon…”

It didn’t seem to help, Jack’s breathing sped up further.

“Hey hey… Jack just look at me…”

The boy sniffled softly.

Sam was at a loss he knew nothing about kids, he searched the room desperate for some way to distract him.

He spotted and used the hand not supporting Jack’s knees to grab the “get well soon” bear from where the nurse had set it at the end of the bed.

“Remember him?”

What the hell Sam he’s sixteen not six…

It seemed to work though because Jack’s breathing slowed for a moment as he blinked at Sam in confusion.

“I, um… sorry…” Sam said sheepishly glancing between the boy and the bear’s duel glassy-eyed stares.

The smallest of confused smiles crossed Jack’s face quickly disappearing with a sharp hiss of pain.

“It’s alright… just the anesthetic… this is the worst part I promise…” the doctor comforted him gently.

Jack gave a tiny nod stiff as a board trying not to move but still shaking slightly. Sam set the bear back on the bed carefully taking Jack’s hand with the IV.

“It’s okay…”

Jack just bit back a soft strangled noise and gripped his hand tightly until the anesthetic needle was removed.

“The, worst part’s over Jack, but I need you to hold very still for the next part alright?” the doctor says gently.

“O-or what?” Jack mumbled nervously not daring to move to look at her.

“Don’t worry where I placing the needle save for a freak accident there in next to no chance it would cause anything like paralysis, if that’s what you’re concerned about…” the doctor comforted, “But still we want to be very careful…”

That didn’t seem to relax Jack very much but he nodded sheepishly, “I… I’m sorry,” he looked forlorn and like he was embarrassed for even asking.

Sam tried to cheer him up again letting go of his hand just long enough to bop the stuffed bear on the head with his finger.

Jack shot him another weird look but gave him another soft bemused smile through watering eyes and he tried to take deep shaky breaths, hand closed tight over Sam’s again.

When it came time for the needle he fixed the bear with a death stare.

Sam felt numbness spread across his fingers as the boy’s hand tightened as the needle was inserted into his back.

He silenced the knee jerk reaction to tell Jack to ease up when he saw the paralyzed fearful look the teen's face. Tears start to roll unbidden down his face.

Sam couldn’t even convince himself to look at what the doctor was doing on the other side of Jack without feeling woozy he could only imagine what the experience was like for the one going through it.

Unsure what else to do Sam found himself mumbling platitudes.

“It’s alright… You’re doing great… It will be over soon…” the words seemed empty and he felt stupid and for saying them, Jack barely knew him why should he listen, but slowly, surely he felt the boy’s hand loosen a little.

And then before he knew it...

“Aaanndd…we’re finished…” doctor Hannah said smiling gently setting aside the last of three small sample tubes and beginning to clean and bandage Jack’s back.

Sam was surprised Jack didn’t immediately dissolve into a puddle of jello instead just quickly letting go of Sam’s hand and turning a little pink, “thank you…” he mumbled bashfully.

Sam smiled awkwardly back as if he wasn’t flexing his fingers trying to get the feeling back just out of sight.

“Now I’ll want you to lay flat on your back for at least an hour after this, and if you feel like you’re getting a headache that’s perfectly normal…” The doctor said as she cleaned off the last of the iodine.

“I already had a headache…” Jack mumbled, suddenly wincing and giving a hiss of pain as the doctor pressed down on part of his back.

She paused and frowned, “did that hurt?” she asked concerned, cautiously pressing her hand down near the same spot, worryingly far away from the injection site.

Jack gave another wince of pain but nodded.

The doctor’s frown deepened and she moved to touch the same area on the opposite side of the boy’s back getting a similar reaction.

Sam felt genuine concern start to build up in his chest, “Jack said he was having stomach pains earlier,” he found himself blurting.

Jack gave him a look of betrayal but after the doctor finished bandaging the procedure site he obediently rolled onto his back and raised his arms above his head when she asked and let her gently probe his abdomen.

His face screwed up and he actually whimpered when she applied pressure to one side, slightly below his ribs.

Unlike before the doctor’s face was uncomfortably anxious.

“Is… is that bad?” Jack asked nervously.

The doctor's mouth opened and closed before settling on a tight line, “I… I want to run a few more tests…”

-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-

Oof And I'm back from vacation :) Sorry this took a few more days than I thought but the chapter turned out longer than I thought 21.5 pages instead of my usual 14. So... really it's about a chapter and half long, please enjoy.

I'd really love to know what you liked or what you think, even if it's just a sentence or two or a quote you enjoyed. It really, really helps me improve as a writer and gives me confidence knowing people are interested.

#SPN #Supernatural #Dean Winchester #Castiel #Sam Winchester #Jack Kline #fanfiction #whump #humor #illness #family drama #crowley #Meg Masters #Hannah #TW needles #5 points to anyone that can guess what's happening to Jack at the end of the chapter

2 notes · View notes

retvenkos · 5 years

Text

“so what if we’re wild, we only live once.”

requested

BUCKLE IN FAM, BECAUSE THE NEWSIES IN HIGH SCHOOL FOR A MODERN AU WOULD OBVIOUSLY INCLUDE…

(also, keep in mind that this is based off of my experience in the american school system, any classes are ones that are offered at my own school.)

Bill

so he’s obviously head of the journalism staff

and he definitely is a part of yearbook too

and what is he interested in most??

chemistry

no one really understands why, but they don’t question it as long as he helps them with homework

and bill is 10/10 that guy who always has his homework done and let’s you borrow it

his worst class is by far history

he’s in choir and plays the piano for like, every song

he actually has a really nice set of pipes (he’s a tenor, too)

he’s terrible with dates

Darcy

so darcy is on yearbook because he can take the most stunning photos

and he is also a part of journalism, and his niche is critiquing

plays?? restaurants?? sports??

and yes, he goes to sporting events

and yes, romeo gives him a wink everytime he sees him at the baseball games

it’s a ship to end all ships

he isn’t quite sure what he wants to do in the future

i forgot to mention - these are headcanons for when each one is a senior in high school, i’m not working out ages in relation to each other. find someone more motivated for that

but he does know he wants to go to a really nice college

he’s definitely on chess club, and he’s a member of key club too

Katherine

journalism, guys. and she’s not into heavy creative writing, more like articles and interviews and such

president of debate

and her style game is strong - she, bill, and darcy are the three best dressed. facts.

she makes such pretty notes

and she slays in argument writing

english is obviously her favorite class, but a close second is her research class

and she actually sucks at cooking - she took culinary arts as a sophomore and set off the fire alarm twice

she has a free period in her schedule where she goes to the library and slaves over math

it doesn’t come easy to her

definitely has an old-school planner that is always full

Sarah

okay, i don’t know much about sarah - full disclosure, but i’ll try

so first of all, this girl is really put together

she has her schedule mapped out two months in advance, she remembers everyone’s birthday, and she already knows the vacation days during the year

she has library aide for one of her periods and knows every adult in the building by first name

she also happens to be an aide when kath has her free period and she is either the embodiment of the heart eye emoji or trying to help katherine with math

she loves psychology and already has plans to study it

she is in key club with darcy and also just volunteers a whole lot

her favorite is visiting and helping out animal shelters

she goes there so much that they finally just give her a job there

she doodles a lot on the side of her notes - it keeps her from falling asleep in science

the master of the messy top knot

Davey

okay, this boy does not know when to stop

he is taking all of the advanced classes he possibly can, and he’s stressing over them way too much

jack makes him like, 10 cups of stress relief tea daily

there’s also a running bet that the whole school is in on about whether he or kath will be valedictorian

specs says that davey will do it if he doesn’t have a heart attack before final exams

race says he’ll be so busy he’ll forget to even show up to graduation

also, while we’re at it, we need to talk about this boy’s notes. they are the hardest thing to decipher in this world, but if you can read his chicken scratch then you have a goldmine of helpful ways to study

he loves mnemonics with a burning passion and uses them at every chance he can get

his favorite class is chinese or math

and he’s definitely a part of future business leaders of america, mesa, and book club

Les

yes, this is for when les is a senior

he’s obviously not in the same year as the rest of the gang, but les as an 18 year old is gold

okay, first of all… heartthrob who genuinely doesn’t know it

he’s not actually officially part of any club, but he’s always staying after school afterward to like, float into the different club meetings

but he’s definitely an sbo - probably vice president or activities

he’s a part of band and definitely plays the saxophone

you know that means he starts off every class period by playing careless whisper

the teachers all really love him

he actually gets pretty good grades

and he is way overly competitive in review games, especially ones in history

he will wreck you

always goes off campus at lunch and walks into his next period a couple minutes late with a shake

Jack

did someone say art?????

jack does literally every form of it, and he does them all so well

davey seethes at this, but loves it when jack helps in in ceramics

he’s also really supportive of younger artists who are still perfecting their art, so he’s obviously the head of the art club

and he’s the paint master for drama club and all of their productions

he frequently falls asleep in english class

he’s also the president of latinos in action - chosen unanimously even though he wasn’t going for the position

y’all can fite me on latino! jack kelly

also, his signature style is a blue sweatshirt, and all of his clothes have paint on them

he’s also that kid who never has a pencil on him, and never returns the ones he is given just because he always forgets

Crutchie

so i don’t know where the headcanon about crutchie being on the swim team originated, but it is dear to my heart and lives on in this post

he is the nice™ jock

also, he wants to go into the medical field for sure

he had medical terminology as last class of the day and it makes his day 10 times more bright

he uses highlighters so much (but only the yellow ones)

also, crutchie is lowkey a style icon???

all of his teachers love him

he’s that kid that always raises his hand in a group discussion, and it’s one of two things: a lame pun that gets more groans than laughs, or a really insightful bit of knowledge

there is no in-between

definitely volunteers with sarah at the animal shelters and is a part of french club, even though he’s only ever gone to like, two meetings

Albert

albert wrestles, no one can convince me otherwise

but he’s also on dance co.

we love a well rounded boy - especially when he’ll pull up if you question his life choices

he is soooo salty, and he has no filter. Even in front of teachers.

anyone in his history class can attest to this - especially when they are going through america’s messy past

literally does not care about the majority of his classes

but he maintains a good gpa so he can be on the wrestling team

also, he failed his driving test twice, and when he got his license it didn’t make a difference since no one would trust him with a car anymore

but he’s actually really good in his business and marketing class

he frequently helps in the little store that the business class runs during lunch and stuff because he’s really good with money and change

Race

a part of dance company

and he hates the early morning practices with a passion but will just chug energy drinks to get through it

this boy doesn’t sleep… unless it’s in english

the most surprising thing about him is that he’s really good at math??

and he doesn’t even try - he’ll be talking all class period and then finish the homework in class in like, 10 minutes flat

it’s the same thing with physics

but it’s not like you can ask him for help, because he doesn’t really listen to the professor or follow their methods and steps

like i said earlier, race just doesn’t care

or so you think, but his shirt is always matching the color of his shoes and headphones, but then his hair is literal mess and he wears like, he only owns like, two different pairs of joggers

he’s honestly such a mystery

Buttons

okay, so buttons kills it at fashion, which is why he aces his fashion design class

he’s head costumer for all of the drama departments musicals and plays

he’s also really into art history, and he gets inspiration from art all the time

he’s definitely a part of key club and is a part of national honors society although he’s only ever gone to a couple meetings for both

he gets pretty decent grades in everything but physics, but he definitely tries to study for all of his classes

he goes stag to every school dance and deliberately tries to get his ships together for a song

coffee??? he only ever drinks it black

it’s how he stops romeo from taking his

he’s also a dork who color codes his notes because they help him study better

but he has no idea how to take notes for math class, so he kinda just does example problems and then is confused on how it ever did it in the first place

Elmer

so this is one musically talented boy

he plays the guitar, trumpet, and drums

it’s also an inside joke with him and jojo that they both play the castanets

but he’s definitely a part of any band the school offers - as well as pit for the musical

he’s a really chill, laid-back student that gets their work done and just hangs out

he is very nice and definitely a teacher aid for one of the english teachers

and he’s also a part of the poetry club

it’s to improve his songwriting as well as give him a place to destress

He’s definitely the guy who will always lend you his notes if you missed a day, but he’s also not that great at taking notes because his mind is always on something else

he’s also an attendance office aide for one of his periods

Henry

he took ballroom as a joke with mike, and he really ended up liking it

but he’s not a part of dance co. because their style is totally different from ballroom

He also has a lot of energy, so he’s that kid that’s always bouncing his leg up and down and making the desk behind him shake

but no one ever asks for him to stop because he has the biggest smile that you just can’t shut down??

he knows this, though, and he definitely uses it on teachers to get extensions on his work, and he does, like 80% of the time

his worst class is probably english because he can’t just sit down and read for long periods of time

but during the shakespeare unit he kills it because he’s always first to volunteer to read or do a part

his handwriting is very messy and he uses so many abbreviations not even davey knows what they’re saying

always races to be first in the lunch line

always one of the first people to be in class

Hot Shot

he has auto shop as his first class of the day and absolutely loves it

but he’s also that kid that hangs out with his friends in the middle of the hallway, bottlenecking the whole thing during passing time

thinks he’s the cool™ kid

wears leather jackets exclusively

he hates any core class

but secretly really likes his humanities class

he’s taking italian with spot and the poor teacher just can’t handle these two together

he’s also secretly good at basketball

the coach found out somehow and asks him every year to be on the team

but hot shot would rather die than be on a school team

Ike

has a youtube channel where he mostly posts prank videos especially those that involve the school

he ran for sbo and was elected as treasury, even though mike is the one who went to all of the meetings for like, two months straight

he is the epitome of a class clown, but it’s always in good fun

he always is wearing a black t-shirt under his sbo sweater

and since he’s an sbo he has to go to all the sports game to support and stuff and he cheers the absolute loudest

he does gymnastics with mike after school every day and at every sbo meeting he brings up how it needs to be a part of the sports at school

he never takes notes but can retain everything

his worst class is anything science related

but he’s secretly really good a history

A proud member of spanish club

Mike

mike is definitely the more artsy twin

he takes drawing and ceramics but can’t paint for the life of him

he’s a part of the art club with jack and is basically second in command there

he does gymnastics with ike after school and is on dance co.

he struggles with math and science but gets by okay

has a free period for first where he could be sleeping in or studying but instead he goes to auto shop to talk to hot shot

he definitely has a crush. hot shot won’t admit it, but he loves mike being there.

he usually wears bright colors with his dance co. jacket

doesn’t really like coffee, but he always has a coke on him - it’s his one weakness

is also a part of spanish club

Kenny

okay, so i know, like, nothing about kenny, so i’m just going with my gut based off of his photo

film is his passion and he wants to be a director one day

is 10/10 that kid in your photography class that spends 90% of the time making stop-motion videos

he’s very nice and is always lending jack pencils even though he knows he’ll never get them back

also, there’s a running gag that he and darcy are the same person, ike runs conspiracy theory videos on his youtube channel

his two favorite classes are film (duh) and theatre

he’s a part of the ensemble of every musical the school puts on

he’s even directed a show a couple of times for the spotlight showcase

he is like that background kind of kid that is a part of the big groups and is totally included but just doesn’t have a huge role in the big stuff

he hates having to write essays because he says it’s sucking the creativity out of writing

also likes psychology

JoJo

co-captain of the soccer team

also a madrigal with bill and specs (he’s a baritone)

always tries out for the school musicals, and he usually gets a main part

he takes quite a few advanced classes and it is not rare to find him passed out on one of the other newsies’ couch

he manages to keep a good gpa with his schedule

his favorite class besides madrigals is probably latinos in action, which he has the same period as jack

while he doesn’t play any instruments himself you can always find him hanging out in the band room at lunch

he is absolutely terrible in math but is taking college math now so he can get it done with and never have to do again for as long as he lives

his aspirations are pretty much all over the place at the moment, but he smiles through the uncertainty

“i feel like it’s fine”

Romeo

on the baseball team

a shameless flirt, especially with darcy

did someone say president of the asian american club??

he’s also a part of drama club because he has a passion for theatre

he can’t when it comes to math, though

so instead of getting frustrated he just writes notes in the calculators for people to find

he’ll also fall asleep in that class

he’s definitely a partner in crime with ike and frequently is a guest on his youtube channel

studying??? who’s she???

really good at debate, though. katherine keeps telling him he should join the club but he says his skills are beyond that of a club

Finch

on the track team and one of the fastest runners

it’s a good outlet for all of his energy

he takes notes in all of his classes since he learned all the strategies from avid, but he never looks back at them

surprisingly gets really good test scores, though

you know he takes wildlife biology and he memorizes like, every type of bird call

he can even mimic some of them - it’s how he wakes romeo up in math.

he also goes out every day for lunch, and his next period is english which he has with like, all of the boys, so he’s always throwing fries across the room for henry or mush to catch in their mouths

he beats his own school records every year so he’s like, constantly the athlete of the month

definitely goes to all of the different sports games and cheers very loud

carries a huge water bottle that he fills up during french class to get out of presentations

Kid Blink

first of all, this kid does not do any kind of sport because his depth perception rivals that of mine

which means it s u c k s

however, he kills it at math and physics is his one true love

If you need a study partner for either, he’s your guy. just know that he explains nothing and goes pretty fast. keep up and you can do math with him.

he lowkey hates history because it’s about a whole bunch of dead people who were problematic

he’s a part of mesa

he takes american sign language and it’s one of his favorite classes

he and smalls are constantly having conversations from across the room

a lot of the time it’s about the teacher, and one time they were caught by their chemistry teacher who knew asl

they got detention for like, a week because of it

Mush

here comes the heartthrob!!!!

very handsome, and his strong suit is engineering. which always shocks people.

which means he’s definitely a part of mesa and the engineering and technology club

he’s definitely the person to go to if you need help in physics. he explains things really well

the only bad part about it is that he also goes off on tangents when he’s explaining and you can get confused if you listen too long

he’s actually kind of a style icon, his hair is probably the best out of everyone

he always has headphones in, but one earbud is out so he can hear the teacher and whatnot

he cannot act for the life of him

but he has a good-natured laugh that makes up for the cringe

he also cannot dance

Smalls

okay, so smalls is a part of the asian american club, key club, and poetry club

even though he cannot write to save his life, they let him come because he’s uber supportive

there’s also a joke that he and spot are a part of the short™ club

lowkey, smalls started this joke because he finds it hilarious when spot gets upset

he actually takes interior design and it’s his favorite class

he’s really good with color

he also takes woodworking and makes the guys stuff for it

davey has a bookshelf and jack has a desk

takes asl with kid blink and loves it

is the kid who always has to stand up to take notes because seating charts always put him in the back, despite his height

Sniper

okay, so sniper is a cheerleader but don’t let that fool you - she’s also on the wrestling team and will take you down

albert is like her older brother and helps her with her business class

she regrets having taken it, but she needed another cte credit and thought it would be safer than welding

she has a criminal law class that she loves with all of her heart

she writes in all capitals

she’s also that kid that writes all of her essays handwritten to spite her english teacher which, on the first day of school, complain about her writing in all caps

she’s good with history and has it with albert and it’s her personal goal to get him to laugh at her comments in that class

studying??? sounds studious. and not a part of her aesthetic.

has an attendance office aide period where she mostly does the homework for her next class period

is that kid that always almost swears in class debates

Specs

first, our boy is president for madrigals (he’s a low bass)

then he’s a proud part of the book club

his thing is psychology, and he goes in hard, he and sarah sit next to each other and talk in hushed whispers about all the cool stuff they learn

he takes very neat notes

but only has to look at them two or three times before he’s ready to take a test

is always an ensemble member in the school musicals

he is also a library aide and constantly smells like old books

very organized

his locker always has everything you could possibly need - a jacket, hat, bag of trail mix, water, etc.

the mom friend™

Spot

first of all, he’s that kid who always sits in the same seat. if you’re sitting in his seat, you’re dead. don’t @ him.

he hates science with a burning passion and is so glad he finished all of his credits for it in junior year

is actually a bit of a history buff

but he never participates in class, just writes really good essays and aces every test

and speaking of writing

he’s actually really into creative writing

who did you think started the writing club???

but he’s no less tough

he always wears a leather jacket, a red shirt, cuffs the bottom of his jeans, and has his pen tucked behind his ear

he doesn’t really take notes, and he only writes in pen

Tommy Boy

captain of dance company

is having none of race’s idiocy at practices either

but he’s actually really funny and nice, all the teachers love him

can’t write a summary in english for the life of him but will write a 10 page essay on why dance company is a part of the performing arts and deserves just as much recognition as theatre, choir, and band

only ever eats out of the vending machines for lunch

is a part of french club

really likes culinary arts because his one weakness is sugar

can’t do any form of art other than dance

but he doesn’t need to - he’s that good

notes??? what are those???

AND FLUFF ENSUES.

#newsies #newsies musical #modern au #high school au #katherine pulitzer #katherine plumber #davey jacobs #les jacobs #jack kelly #crutchie morris #albert dasilva #racetrack higgins #buttons davenport #elmer kasprzak #newsboysheadcanons

51 notes · View notes

im-gonna-liveforever · 5 years

Text

ITS HECKIN TWISTED APPRECIATION WEEK SO YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS (part 1/2)

“YEAH THAT’S RIGHT I’M GONNA YELL ABOUT THE SOUNDTRACK LIKE I DID LAST WEEK BC TWISTED IS A GOOD HECKING MUSICAL WITH A GOOD HECKING SOUNDTRACK

(Now with favorite lines! bc why not, right?) (favorite lines either there bc I like the lyrics in that part or I really like how it sounds within the song)

I’m not a professional music person (I’ve been in band for several years and I’m pretty good, but I don’t know anything about music theory or anything abt singing) but AH WELL, I LIKE RANTING ABT MY SPECIAL INTERESTS AND THE INTERNET IS A GOOD PLACE TO FEEL LIKE I’M TALKING TO SOMEONE, SO HERE WE GO

(also there’s definitely going to be Twisted spoilers under the cut (for act one, at least), so watch out if you haven't seen it)

(also also I split this into two parts bc it’s getting late and as you can see by how this progresses, I got sleep deprived quickly plus it got way too long. This is part one with all the first act songs, part two will have the second act songs and should be up by tomorrow.)

OK THE OPENING NUMBER RIGHT?? THE INSTRUMENTALS?? THE HARMONIES??? THE GENERAL SAJKFDASJKFHDSJK???!?!? Like, it literally sounds like a Disney song but they cuss! It’s amazing!! (And all the citizens?? Comedy gold, every one of them, I swear) (AND THE FUCKINGJDSJKJDSKL SOPRANO PART???!? I’M C R Y I N G I FORGOT WHAT HER NAME WAS BUT SHES SUCH A GOOD SINGER THANK YOU FOR YOUR VOICE)

Favorite lines:

“May the Rats ejaculate upon you!” “Thank you, thank you very much!”

“Why is everyone in the kingdom white?” “Uhh... Jafar?”

“But ugliness permits a man to use his wits, ‘cause pretty people never have to try”

“UGLY OLD JAFAR!!”

pretty much the whole song past the line “Why am I the only one who sees things as they are?”

Specifically “I want to be a cat!” “Wha-” “FUCK YOU!”

But more specially “Whistle while you swallow a spoonful of sugar and your dreams will come true upon a star!!!!” bc OH MY GOD IT’S BEAUTIFUL

Everyone listing how they want Jafar to die

ALSO SPECIALLY THE LAST 30 SECONDS BC AHJSAHJKADS (everything at and past the lines “and if we dream a little harder/ our patience and our honor...” etc.)

OK I STEAL EVERYTHING TIME! ULTIMATE CHAOS SONG, AND I LOVE. BE THE EVIL GREMLIN YOU WANT TO SEE IN THE WORLD. Also: the jazziness?? the opening instrumentals??? it’s so good. To the people playing the instrumentals for this musical: ,,,thank you,,,.,. (Also I learned recently that most of Jeff’s songs are in my range so guess who’s gonna try and learn this song?)

Favorite lines:

“Fetch, ya fucks!”

Did I mention the instrumentals?? bc hfhhhjdklsajk They seem simple but they’re also going ham and I love it

“Monkey thought we should just kill you, but I said ‘No, monkey, that’s crazy’ but now I’m thinking, yeah, no more fucking raisins...’“

“Thanks but no, thanks, ‘The Man’“

Honestly every line in this is golden, but I can’t put them all in and that sucks

“You’re only in trouble if you get caught!” “Aladdin?” “I’m in trouble!”

“Just one question, why, man?” “’Cause you stole my daughter’s hymen!” “That’s completely fair, but, in my defense, dude, your daughter’s hot!”

EVERYTHING AND MOOREE!!! SHE WANTS IT ALL AND I’M CRYING BC SHE SOUNDS BEAUTIFUL WHILE DOING SO. (I just realized that there’s 14 songs on this soundtrack and I’m sorry in advance for how long this post A) already is and B) is going to get) This song is so dramatic and that somehow fits the mood of her character and I love it so much and just ahdshjkds. Also it’s just?? So pretty????

Favorite lines:

“But it’s just like, whatever”

“I just want to be free so badly! You slaves could never understand. :(”

“You’re probably thinking, she’s got everything. Well, it’s true, ‘cause I do, but so the fuck what?”

“I WANT THE MOON! I WANT TO LIVE ON THE MOON! And eat it in a pie! And keep it as a pet! and wear it like a gemstone in my hair!”

“As I laugh in their faces of moonbeam pie!!”

“It’s enough to make me with I were lowly and poor... But like... with money!”

THA GOLDEN FUCJKLCIODIGN RULE. LIKE HOLY SHIT I LOVE THIS SONG SO MUCH. AND THE DANCING THEY DO WITH IT IN THE SHOW ITSELF??? IT’S THE BEST. THE FIUCUING BEST. I’M CRYING. THE DANCING IS SO GOOD. AND SO IS THIS SONG. Also, it’s the #1 Starkid song I’d be comfortable showing to my mom, which is a definite plus! (I could also show this to my church pastor and he’d?? definitely like it, so that’s also a definite plus) And everyone’s so nice to Jafar, espically compared to the opening number and it just makes me so sad and let me give Jafar a hug, goddammit. ALSO also please let me meet the saxophone player and shake his hand, I don’t play saxophone but what he’s doing here is amazing. WAIT ALSO ALSO ALSO MAY I MEET THAT FLUTE PLAYER BC I’M JUST NOW HEARING THE FLUTE (AND HOW DID I NOT NOTICE IT BEFORE, I PLAY THAT INSTRUMENT???) AND I’M FUCJKIGDFONG HOLY SHIT JSUT FUCKINGJDSJKL ;BOUNCE AROUND ON THOSE NOTES WHY DON’T YOU I’M SAJDSKCDSJS

Favorite lines:

“Why it’s as easy as a 1,2,3,4!”

“Always treat others like sisters and brothers!”

all of the lines just sound so good, I can’t choose

The way Dylan Saunders says “Man” that that first time, like holy shit

The whole conversation between Omar and the thief

[completely monotone] “My hunger blinded me and forced me to act like an animal.”

AND THEN OMAR AND THE THIEF SING THE PART AND IT SOUNDS SO GOOD

The “boop boop bop doop zeep do-wow!” in the background during that part

“Good luck Jafar! And! Re! Mem! Ber!”

And then the whole ensemble sings it and it sounds so good

oh good god we’re not even 5 songs in yet i’m so sorry

GOLDEN RULE: EVIL REPRISE, OR, AS I CALL IT, “GOLDEN RULE WENT EMO BUT I STILL LOVE AND SUPPORT THEM”. Those dissonant sounds at the beginning? beautiful. All the random evil laughter? amazing. Whatever the heck the saxophonist is doing at the end? breathtaking, give me more. Joe Walker’s voice?? just fucking dhdsfjkfdlashjdsfklhfdsjkl

Favorite lines:

“Lets him rule the land WITH an iron fist!”

“The prize for winning? MORE GOLD, HAHA! And the game begins again!”

[sarcastically] “’Follow the golden rule’? Boy don’t be such a fool!”

“Follow the gold! Follow the gold! Follow the gold!” “AND RUUULE!!”

DID I MENTION THAT FUCKING SAXOPHONE PLAYER BC DUDE FUCKING AHSDJKDFS

the final “And Rule!”

Don’t be fooled bc this one is so short, it’s nearing midnight for me and also this song is really short. In reality, I fucking love this song and it’s one of my absolute favorite starkid villain songs and also one of my absolute favorites from this musical.

A THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS IS SOME FUCKINGNDSKLJ; GOOD SHIT I’M. Also, I don’t listen to it enough, so I’m giving y’all a running commentary as I listen to it for the first time outside of watching the whole musical 1) I love accidentals and key changes, and i’m,,, crying just the first verse is so good already, why haven’t I listened to this song enough 2) I’M CRYING I WANT TO KNOW THEIR STORY TOO THIS IS WHAT LOVE IS I’M CRYINGHJFDSJKSD 3) they keep using the word “’twist” and i’m ahsdhjkds bro 4) DYLAN YOUR VOICE. YOUR VOICE, IT’S TOO GOOD. IT MUST BE STOPPED, YOU’RE TOO GOOD, DYLAN 5) “LINGER OVER EVERY PART” OH MAN IT SOUDNS SO GOOD. SO GOOD. AHHHHHHDSHJDSFKLHJK 6) OK I’M LIKE ACTUALLY CRYINGN NOW THEY’RE IN LOVE. THIS IS WHAT LOVE IS. OH GOD OH FUCK 7) AND THEY SOUND SO GOOD, TOO, WHY HAVEN’T I LISTENED TO THIS SONG ENOUGH AHDHJKLDAS

OK I haven’t listened to this song enough to have favorite lines just yet, also I want to at least get to the end of the first act before I go to bed and it’s already midnight rn, so we’re going ahead and moving on (so sorry!)

IF I BE-FUCKIN-LIEVED. OH GOD. THIS ONE. THIS ONE IS SO GOOD. I LOVE IT SO MUCH. THE FLUTE, THE WORDS, THE SINGING LIKE GODDAMN. This one is also kinda within my range so I’m also trying to learn to sing it bc it’s just that good (cons of being a contralto: you get no female songs in musicals, pros of being a contralto: you get all the cool higher tenor songs) The raw emotion in his voice??? I’m crying??? The strength and soul and beauty and just ashjdskl;jdsfkl; it’s so, so beautifully and wonderfully amazing

Favorite lines:

“Science says you’re dead and gone forever! Reason says I’m talking to the air! But something in my heart, some secret, hidden part, illogically insists that you are there! Somewhere!!”

“Perhaps it’s not too late, to change the course of fate?”

“‘Cause after all, I must be pretty great... if you believed in me...”

Again this song is really short and there’s not a lot of lines to choose from and also I love them all and dfhjskdskjl this is just such a good song

I’m still crying

ORPHANED AT 33!!! [insert Peggle 2 gif] CHAOS... T W O!!!! HE’S MR ORPHAN, AKA CHAOS MAN (NOW WITH A MUSICAL NUMBER!) (I’m also trying to learn this one bc let me splurge in trying to teach myself Twisted songs, ok?) He’s being tragic and over-dramatic and it’s a beautiful song! and I also love how in the studio version, he doesn’t mention that they died earlier that year, so it almost comes as a shock when he says “when I was orphaned at... thirty-three” and it just makes the song that much funnier, trust me

Favorite lines:

I know I said this abt most of the other songs up to this point, but can I say all the lines? because all the lines

“[My parents are] dead... that makes me an orphan :’(”

“‘Cause my story’s just too saaad!”

“They call me a jerk off! a burn-out! A punk! But I can’t let that stuff in my head!”

“All things considered, I think I turned out pretty good! I pulled myself up by my bootstraps and started s t e a l i n g a l l I c o u l d!”

”I’ll make it through somehow, despite being so sadly and crushingly all alone...”

“I’ll BREAK THE CHAIN!! YOU’LL SEE!!! I’M GONNA L I V E F O R E V E R!!!!1!111!”

The last “thirty-three” bc Jeff oh my god what is that voice

HAPPY ENDING TIME, HECK YEAH!!!!! THIS SONG,,,, SO, SO GOOD, I’M A FUCKING SUCKER FOR SONGS WITH MORE THAN ONE PART THAT ALL END TOGETHER IN A HARMONY. THAT IS PEAK MUSICIANSHIP AND JUSTHSDHJFKSAD Also someone pointed this out to me, but the way to goes from Aladdin’s weirdly horny lines straight to the princess going “oh Aladdin, you poor, innocent soul :(” is just the funniest thing to me. And how it calls back to thier own solos, I’m???!? OH AND INSTRUMENTALS AGAIN. THE BAND FUCKING KILLED IT WITH THIS MUSICAL, IT’S SO, SO GOOD JUST AHDSJKLAKKFAnd the energy in it?? The excitement for the next act??? I’m pumped!! Are you pumped?? WELL GET READY BC YOU WILL BE

Favorite lines:

Yet a-fucking-gain I love every goshdarn line in this song, it’s just too good

“They’ll throw a parade in my honor, with peacocks and monkeys galore!”

“The people will cheer!” [cool guitar bit]

[Jafar’s relatively calm part ends] [electric guitar starts back up and Aladdin jumps on stage] “I CaN’T wAiT tO bE A RicH DUdE!!!11!1!″

“Stealing is so much easier when you’ve already got tons of gold!”

“I’ve got my eye! On what money can’t buy! ‘cause that princess is OH! Hella tight! I’ll be the one who plunders her cave of wonders! I’ll get my happy ending tonight!”

“My innocent Aladdin!”

Yes i’m fully aware I put pretty much Aladdin’s full part in there, stop judging me, it’s a good part

“It puts a damper on our love if you don’t have a head”

“So with with your permission, I’d like to bring back your bride!”

just. Jafar’s whole fantasy where he’s happy with his wife. I’m crying again, please just let him be happy

THE ENDING PART WHERE THEY ALL START UP AND BRING UP THIER OWN HOPES FOR THAT NIGHT AND THEY SING THE FINAL”TONIGHT!!!” ALL TOGETHER AND THEN THERE’S THAT COOL LITTLE 2 SECOND INSTRUMENTAL BIT AT THE VERY END IT’S JUST,.,, SO GOOD I’M DSJHDASHJKSDJK

Ok yeah that’s the end of the first act of songs! I should have the next part up by tomorrow, so get ready for more capslock and keysmashes and me generally being excited abt music bc MUSIC HECK YEAH DFFHADSJKHDAS

#twisted #twisted musical #starkid twisted #twisted starkid #starkid rewind #music #i love each and every song on this playlist and if you asked me to choose a favorite I'd black out for at least 2 days trying to decide #honestly tho these songs are so good #twisted soundtrack #musicals #musicals soundtrack

2 notes · View notes

shirtlesssammy · 5 years

Text

14x06: Optimism

Then:

The Then Bot automatically triggers this gif when we haven’t seen Cas in a while. I don’t make the rules. (But the opener was excellent this week!)

Now:

We open to not one, but two! people wearing tan coats this episode. Maybe Sears was having a tan coat fire sale when wardrobe was scouting for outfits? I don’t know how else to explain this situation.

One person is Harper, the local library worker. She makes plans to see Winston later that night, but Miles sneaks up with his handy red stapler to defend her honor or something.

Harper then throws libraries under the bus.

My reaction as a librarian working at a busy public library:

Winston, ebullient that his date is confirmed, heads out and struts down the sidewalk with the Bee Gee’s setting his stride.

LOL. What the hell, show? Poor Winston doesn’t get to finish the song in his head OR go on that date with Harper because he’s yanked into the bushes, leaving nothing but the black goo canon splatter as evidence.

Meanwhile at the bunker, we learn that Jack doesn’t like food as much now that he’s lost his grace (not so much like your father after all…) and that Sam went to meet up with Charlie for an exciting case.

Jack reiterates to Dean that no one blames Dean for Michael, but Dean counters that he blames himself and that’s all that really matters in Dean’s mind. Jack then suggests they go on a hunt. Winston Mathers is dead and he had human bite marks on him. Dean suggests that he’ll go alone, but Jack reminds him of the buddy system. Jack needs to do something to take his mind off the guilt he has for not taking out Michael when he had the chance. (Good lord, he is a Winchester.)

Sam and Charlie continue their stakeout at a bus stop. Charlie brought along books. Sam is her new best friend.

Dean and Jack pull up to Dicks Red Rooster Diner (where’s the possessive apostrophe??) and try to interview the LEAST FRIENDLY diner worker in the world. (Natasha: You might say she’s a real...dick.) Winston is dead. That’s all she knows. And that they should look in to Harper Sayles.

*Classic Jack Moment Alert*

Jack: What’s courting?

Dean: It’s what you do before you start dating.

Jack: Ah, and that’s the thing you do before the sex.

Our little nephilim is growing up so fast! The diner worker adds, “Sometimes you just have the sex.” Dean literally moves a decorative rooster away and tries to get the conversation back on track. OH DEAN.

They interview locals to get a better picture of Harper: Sweet, lonely, prom queen, boyfriend who ditched her, men disappear on her, loves romance novels.

At the stakeout Sam is busy worrying about Dean when Charlie reassures him that Dean’ll be fine. He then tells her about how Dean used to have a wingman in our Charlie (uh, DEAN LITERALLY HAS A WINGMAN RIGHT NOW.) But this scene is sobering to realize that this Charlie is not our Charlie. She tells the story of meeting the love of her life, Kara (she owned a bakery outside of Chicago and smelled like peaches and had a smile that made Charlie’s face light up in such a way that made me ache and cry for someone I’ll never even see on this show. guh.) She then tells what happened when Michael and Lucifer started their war. Their world fell apart and Kara died. Sam says, “Not here.” Charlie responds, “Not yet.” Hahaha, that world didn’t have Sam Fucking Winchester and his brother.

At the diner, Dean eats pie and Jack asks about the birds and the bees. Dean’s gonna give Jack “the talk”. First, they need to investigate Harper.

At the library, Dean starts interrogating Harper when Jack interrupts. Dean tells the kid to back off and Jack tells the old man to back off. Dean’s FACE. He does not like to be called old. He takes off. The music swells, and Harper, impressed with Jack coming to her rescue, thanks him and stares and stares.

Harper and Jack take off for her apartment. Miles shows up again, but is rebuffed again. He heads to the alley and while Dean starts to follow Jack and Harper, he hears Miles scream and takes a detour. Miles is dead on the ground.

At the stakeout, Charlie tells Sam that this is her last case. She hates hunting and just wants to live on a mountaintop with good wifi. So much to unpack with that little conversation.

At Harper’s apartment, she goes to find a book for Jack while Jack lays the usual hunter traps --silver, holy water, coughing ‘Christo’. OH JACK.

Charlie thinks they’re dealing with a Musca --a human/fly hybrid.

Jack asks Harper about her boyfriend, Vance. He wanted to leave town, but Harper wanted to stay. He left, and Harper’s bad luck started. Jack and Harper keep staring and bonding while soft music fills the scene. This is so not romantic, folks.

*Classic Jack Moment Alert II*

Harper: Jack, do you believe in love at first sight?

Jack: Do you...mind if I use the bathroom?

Once in the bathroom, Jack calls Dean to tell him that she’s not a monster and that he’s 99% sure that she’s in love with him. Dean disagrees. All the same, Jack needs to know everything about sex. Go. While on the phone, Dean is attacked!

Jack heads back into Harper’s living room. She invites him out for coffee (ooo, like a date?) when Dean busts in. “Hey, I work with Jack. We’re here to save lives. Maybe yours.” And then the pounding begins in earnest on the door. Something growls fiercely in the hallway, slamming against the front door. Dean spots a photo of Harper’s ex boyfriend on the counter. It turns out that Vance - the one who moved away - has returned as a zombie.

Jack smuggles Harper out while Dean tangles with “Archie” the crazed red-headed undead in a letterman’s jacket.

The fight goes swimmingly (very poorly), but Jack and Harper escape.

Meanwhile, Sam and Charlie continue their stakeout. Sam tries to convince Charlie to stick around but she tells him sharply that, “It’s my life, Sam. Not hers, and not yours.” This is such a wonderful, valid point. I’m so glad to see Charlie sticking up for herself and validating her unique existence.

They don’t have much time to lock horns on the issue, though, because the strange Doctor Who villain has returned to sit creepily next to other bus stop denizens.

A bus rolls up and when it pulls away they just manage to catch a glimpse of the guy from the bus stop getting dragged away down an alley. They give chase.

Back with Dean, Vance gives up mid-fight and races outside to pursue Harper. Jack and Harper hide in the library, lock the door, and turn out the light. Nobody will ever think to look for her there…

Sam and Charlie zero in on a slimy door and brainstorm options. They don’t have a brass nail dipped in sugar water - the traditional instrument of destruction - so they’ll have to improvise. They bust inside and find a warehouse full of stinking meat and the cloying scent of pine fresh. Flies fill the air in a terrible symphony.

They find a pile of bodies and the monster’s briefcase. The briefcase is full of a chloroformed handkerchief and a megaton of pinefresh air fresheners. They find the victim - who’s still alive. Unfortunately for them, so is the fly monster. It attacks first Charlie, then Sam, and totally bugs out on them.

For Costuming Science

They work together to kill the fly, shooting it in the head. It’s...juicy. But dead! Good work, guys.

Back in the library, Harper and Jack watch the doors of the library warily as they hunker behind the circulation desk. Harper sneaks up to lock the front door, when Vance arrives at the door. They stare at each other and then Harper opens the door and lets in her ex boyfriend. He hands her a book and Harper swoons and goes in for the kiss. “He’s my boyfriend,” Harper announces. “He just gets a little jealous sometimes.”

“But he’s dead. And stalking you.” Poor Jack does NOT compute. Undead, ultra-possessive Vance has to eat flesh to maintain his body, and has eaten a succession of Harper’s suitors. She’s cool with it, though. It’s just like a sex game, right? RIGHT?

Vance stalks Jack through the library while Harper waits primly at the circulation desk. “I come from a long line of necromancers,” Harper confesses over the intercom. She killed Vance to keep him in town after college, and then killed every unsuitable suitor after that.

Dean sneaks up on Jack in the library and they share a whispered plan of attack. Just a short while later, Jack approaches Harper and gives her a romantic monologue about why she should choose him instead of Vance. He’s alive, for one thing. They can settle down in town and also, did he mention, he’s alive?

Vance doesn’t take kindly to this and attacks, but Dean pens him in and shoots him. Harper watches the violence while Dean tries to bargain with crazy, undead Vance. “This isn’t love, not anymore...You have to eat people to stay together? Is that romantic, huh?” Nice try, Dean. Harper orders Vance to kill Dean but it’s too late. Jack and Dean grab hold of Vance’s arms and cuff him to the security checkpoint. Harper escapes out of the front door.

Charlie and Sam drive home after their hunt. The recent Musca abductee survived and the fly guy is dead. Sam preaches a sermon to Charlie about how the Musca striking out on his own and leaving his family led to his demise. Charlie scoffs at Sam’s metaphor. “I wasn’t looking for love. I found it, and I lost it. And I didn’t kill people and nest in their body parts.” Accurate!

This discussion is intercut with scenes of the Musca collecting their fallen dead, loading him onto a stretcher to presumably bring him home. It’s beautiful, and a little surreal - a token of a community’s love even when one of their members has gone so terribly astray.

Sam gives up the metaphor, because he’s a smart guy. “Don’t leave,” he says simply. Sam insists that hunters do good in the world, and that goodness can spread just as much as the bad. “That’s worth it, even with all the tears and death.” This is such a wholesome, healthy thing for Sam to say.

“Just to be super clear, I am not like the fly monster,” Charlie tells Sam. But she’ll think about staying. (Staaaaay, Charlie, staaaaay!)

I love this very relevant quote of the day from Jason Fischer’s Twitter account from Thursday:

At the cock a doodle dick diner, Harper sits and pens a juvenile note to Jack. “I am not crazy,” she insists in her love letter. LOL. She’s finally been convinced to leave town so she can track down Jack, kill him, resurrect him with her dark magic, and date him forever. How...sweet.

She addresses the letter to Jack Smith, care of the Lebanon post office. Several have speculated that she’s going to show up as a driving presence in episode 300, which I am HERE for, sirs.

At the bunker, Jack and Dean share a post-hunt drink. Vance is dead, staked in his grave. Love can be crazier than Harper’s wacky approach, Dean tells Jack. Jack absorbs this, and insists that he’s ready to hunt now. “You’re gonna make mistakes,” Dean tells Jack (and HIMSELF, RIGHT?) “It’s how you handle yourself once you’ve made those mistakes.” Jack hammers down the point that Dean’s doing his best, too.

Dean accedes, and starts talking plans for getting Jack out on more hunts. Suddenly, Jack succumbs to his cough. He buckles over, blood dripping from his nose and out of his mouth. He passes out on the kitchen floor. OH NOES

True Quotes Last Forever:

He’s just overreacting because nothing ever happens here.

We can be hunting buddies!

His obituary said he loved having breakfast here in the morning which is sort of oddly specific.

Pie’s important.

People are always the same when things go wrong: they lose it. One day the water’s shut off; the next day people are on fire.

I have read all the books.

When the goo fits…

Our perp might just be a giant fly with low self esteem.

I need to know everything about sex. Go.

At first I thought it was a ghost, then he punched me in the face.

You don’t want to tackle some regular guy just because he’s into some weird fashion.

So, we got creative. Cool.

Some people pretend to be naughty nurses. Some people get tied up.

Every relationship has its stuff.

Want to read more? Check out our Recap Archive!

#spn spoilers #spn recap #spn 14x06 #optimism #dean winchester #sam winchester #jack kline #charlie bradbury #supernatural season 14

17 notes · View notes

notjanine · 5 years

Text

2018 pop culture ranked

(highly subjective!)

MOVIES:

10. hotel artemis- everyone who didn’t like this movie is wrong. i know they advertised it as a john wick, but it’s not and that’s okay! accept it as-is, and it’s Good.

9. sorry to bother you- do i really need to explain

8. hereditary- i’m STILL mad at those last ten minutes for scaring me! toni collette is god

7. overlord- exactly what i wanted it to be. gross and fun! uglass wyatt russell COULD

6. the favourite- pls never let yorgos lanthimos write a movie ever again just stick to directing good scripts buddy!! bc i loved this!

5. spider-man: into the spider-verse- lissen. i know this should be higher. it’s near perfect. but

4. mission: impossible- fallout- i’m glad tom cruise has some weird danger fetish so he keeps making these. and that bathroom fight?? i’m still [redacted]

3. widows- name one flaw in this movie, i’ll wait.

okay okay okay. we all know what belongs at the top of this list. we all know what the best movie of the year was. but. it’s so close for me i’m gonna call it a tie

1. black panther- obviously

1. U P G R A D E - the first fight scene alone is better than every other movie on this list? give lmg an oscar for this; he’s got a Face and he USES it. and the cinnamontography?? what even is everyone else doing with cameras?? fling them shits around to make it look cool ppl. NOTE: i went into this movie knowing only -not tom hardy is in it -something about cyborgs. that’s it. don’t watch the trailer. go in knowing as little about it as possible. as a matter of fact, forget everything i’ve said about it up til this point. blacklist it on here bc i’m gonna post about it more. just watch it.

honorable mentions: the night comes for us (hot), game night (fun, and better than it needs to be!), ant-man and the wasp (hella bad science, but i enjoyed it a lot anyway???), death of stalin (iannucci), pacific rim: uprising (boyega is a star. eastwood is a good token white guy. A+ villainy tbh)

ALBUMS:

(not including scores/soundtracks!)

10. starcrawler - starcrawler - cut the sleeves off your t shirts, let your black nail polish chip, don’t clean your apartment for a couple days, put this on and channel your inner amanda brotzman

9. nobody’s watching - steady holiday - i know we’re all sick of whisper-singing breathy ingenues, but she’s my fave okay.

8. prisma tropical - balún - don’t you wanna feel like you’re in like a digital caribbean dreamscape??

7. dirty computer - janelle monáe - again, i know this should be higher, but. it just doesn’t have the hit rate i want it to. does have some instant classics tho. miss monáe invented pussy with pynk and we have to respect that

6. isolation - kali uchis - She!!! this album is a PARTY

5. 7 - beach house - when black car comes on my consciousness instantly leaves my body to undulate in some dark starlit ether until lose your smile gradually brings me back to earth but i’m only approximately 60% corporeal until last ride finishes and i go to bed (yeah this is a nighttime album only)

4. soil - serpentwithfeet - bruh i was like six months late to this but holy shit. like multiple times during my initial listen i had to be like HE REALLY. when he said “i’m annoyed with clothes today / i’d rather swaddle myself in sorrow today” i FELT that

3. smote reverser - oh sees - jams all the way down

2. tu - alien weaponry - BANGERS ALL THE WAY DOWN

1. hive mind - the internet - morgan rhodes said this whole album makes you wanna rollerskate and that’s it. that’s the feeling. so good. smooth. fun. perfect.

honorable mentions (be the cowboy (i know, i know), acrylic, saturn, the hex, el mal querer, mozaik, the calling, double negative)

BONUS- EPs: (all of these would’ve made in into the top ten if they counted as full albums)

- the beauty of everything pt. 1 - alex isley - what a follow up to luxury!! i put this on in the morning a lot, set a good vibe for the day.

- conexão - amber mark - so good so good. this is a self-care soundtrack. put it on. light some candles. do a face mask. take a bath. braid your hair.

- crush - ravyn lenae - bops on bops. listening to this makes me feel like a girl in a way that is inexplicable??? like night song comes on and i’m. oh yeah! being a girl IS good and fun!

BOOKS:

(these are NOT all from this year, but i didn’t actually read many from this year, so this is just ~1/3 of what i did read, my faves, and the order’s only kind of correct, i didn’t put a ton of thought into ranking them but)

10. the shadowed sun by n.k. jemisin - loved it, but has one trope i HATE.

9. the hundred thousand kingdoms by n.k. jemisin - loved it. and the whole naha thing... made me feel some type of way (that #5 reinforced)

8. consider the fork by bee wilson - look. it’s a book about kitchen utensils. not for everyone. but i thoroughly enjoyed it.

7. the haunting of hill house by shirley jackson - oh man!!! spooky (idk why but my brain automatically fancast eleanor - nikki amuka bird, theo - tessa thompson, luke - billy magnussen)

6. don’t panic by neil gaiman - i read it THROUGH getting a tattoo. like lying in an uncomfortable position, exposed in a public space, with lots of people chatting and loud music. it’s that interesting and amusing (esp considering it was written before the trilogy was finished). but i’m a douglas adams nerd.

5. all but the bloody mouth by becca de la rosa - i read this all in one sitting on a rainy day when i should have been doing other things but i could not put it down. and i cried and i don’t even know why?? p sure i just got possessed by a swamp demon or something. would recommend

4. kindred by octavia butler - auntie octavia was that bitch

3. of things gone astray by janina matthewson - i would literally die for this woman. between this book and wtw she’s gotten more individual shoutouts in my gratitude journal than any other person (i think she’s second only to gus for 2018) (seriously though listen to within the wires s1 might be my single favorite piece of fiction in the universe)

2. the killing moon by n.k. jemisin - this is everything i want a fiction book to be i think. i forced myself to slow down on this just to enjoy it for longer.

1. the cooking gene by michael twitty - i would make this book into a horcrux.

honorable mentions: alice isn’t dead (great monsters!), gulp (gross but cool), the patternmaster series (wild seed is my FAVE, but i read that one last year), sing unburied sing (ghosts), children of blood and bone (fantasy!), the shadow cabinet (the shades of london is my ya guilty pleasure i just fucking love ghosts okay and the first one is legitimately Scary)

#i'm putting a read more break at the top but for some reason they don't always seem to work esp on mobile #so if this all shows up on your dash i'm sorry #but i had fun doing this!!#i don't even know how i managed to keep up with so much media this year with school and all but wow

8 notes · View notes

drsallygrissom · 6 years

Text

Why We Love ars PARADOXICA

Back in 2016, the fandom made a list of 43 reasons why we love ars PARADOXICA in honor of the 73rd anniversary of Dr. Sally Grissom’s first audio diary on October 29, 1943. When I learned that the podcast was going to end after its third season, I decided to pull together another list that was double the length of the first.

However, the fandom was so passionate that we blew past our goal, and reached triple the length of the original list!

Without further ado, here are the 129 of the reasons why we love ars PARADOXICA:

Helen Partridge, my beautiful, beautiful wife

I just love Kristen’s laugh and it never fails to make me smile.

Mischa’s outros! “Brought to you by the internet:”

The TimeSwimmers episode. That whole thing was a masterpiece

Sally and Nikhil's friendship

Petra, my sassy troubled daughter

The effort that went into making such a truly unique and ambitious take on time travel-based fiction

Sally, my favorite disaster ace

All of the characters are just so beautifully flawed in their own ways and are so well depicted it’s hard to pick a favorite

Every episode makes me feel SO MANY EMOTIONS

The sound effects are just so well done that I feel like I’m right there with the characters

The subtle yet mind blowing foreshadowing

The way it endlessly inspires me to create fan content

The decryption team, who I don't understand yet love to watch unravel codes

The ability to make us both love and hate a character at the same time as much as we do Esther Roberts.

Jack Wyatt

The sass, and in general wonderful interactions with the fan base on social media.

The schoolyard brawl!

Very obviously not being afraid to have fun with ads/sponsored content.

Actually making me want to listen to the version with ads even though I'm a patron

Buttsticks…

Plasticity

The outro music is simple but so, so good

Lemon drops and Limestone

My curiosity about what Esther wrote in the letter

Golden boi and his devils lettuce

With three episodes left it felt like there was so much story left to be told and such little time to tell it

The generosity to keep us entertained between seasons

The subtle symbolism of Esther's mind being represented with card games

The heart-wrenching ups and downs of Esther and Bridget's relationship

Esther and Sally’s lesbian/aroace solidarity

Bridget, my mom

Sally's #relatable ace anxieties and Nikhil's comforting response

The super cool theme song by Mischa "i do not play piano" Stanton which they apparently HEARD IN A DREAM?!

The found footage pieces between scenes

The amount of detail put into it, and being able to notice new things on each relisten

Easter eggs like QDAM

Seemingly infinite pop culture references

The commitment to posting a transcript for each episode

The GOLDEN BOY smokes the devil’s lettuce?!

The Super LUminal Recursive Processor

All of the machine code names really

Mischa’s wonderful sound design that makes me feel like I’m actually in the location the episode takes place at and made me realize how wonderful podcasts could truly be.

Sally Grissom. The wonderful disaster ace and the first ace rep I ever found.

The sound design of the show, especially the tapes adding to world building, all those clunky sounds.

Sally Grissom, ‘I wonder what would happen if I...’, Mad scientist.

This show has the most complex, humanistic portrayal of aromanticism I’ve ever experienced

I appreciate the aP creators’ dedication to nuanced portrayal of and discussion about violence

All of Curses, of fucking course

Keeping the humanity of people who do bad thing while not trying to justify them

Their commitment to “all killer, no filler”

Reminding me that science is cool, dammit!

Petra is a lovely and nuanced, complex character that I adore with my whole heart and soul.

[BLUE BLUE 09 13 18 15 26 08 04 12 20 24 05 18 14 09 17 04 05 12 01 05 The weather in Tulsa today is: Drought. At the tone, the time will be: 5400 hours]

The creators are so so fantastic and fun! I love that they interact with fans.

Sally is the disaster stoner physicist we all need in our lives. also she’s relatable as hell

The show is not afraid to tackle issues like race, gender, or sexuality and it doesn’t overstep its bounds.

The codes are so fun (even if I don’t understand all of them)!

I love how excited scientists get when they’ve discovered something-it feels like real scientists I know

How Bridget criticizes Sally for making puns under pressure even though she does exactly the same thing

The way characters interact with one another, and grow, and learn, and develop is so fascinating and beautiful.

Plasticity might have been the first podcast episode to make me cry.

I love Sally “I only know anecdotal biology and chemistry” Grissom and how her science knowledge actually makes sense??

As a huge huge physics nerd and aspiring computer scientist, I love love love the way Sally talks about science! It’s like Kristen DiMercurio is narrating my inner monologue!

The thrill of trying to keep up with the diverging timelines

☭S̶͜͞ ̀͜҉̀͢Í͠ ̸̸͟҉X̵͘͢ ̢T̷̶͞ ̢̨͟Y̧̛͘ ̨͟͢ ̴̨͜҉S̷̶͢ ̴͝Í͢͟ ҉̢̛͝X̕͝͝☭

The consideration and dedication shown in not only writing an aro-spec ace character, but addressing issues and worries often faced by people in that community.

The mind-boggling task of trying to piece together everything that’s happening when for all we know every scene could be from a different, rewritten version of the timeline.

Anthony Partridge, the most melodramatic math nerd to ever play Tetris in a bubble outside of time.

The optimism of the show and ultimate faith it shows in both science and humanity, despite all the characters’ failings.

Sally giggling over meeting her future self both times that it happens

Sally’s book (and her attempts at pronouncing NaNoWriMo).

Maggie Elbourne, because as much as I love all my the more morally ambiguous scientists it’s nice to see one who actually stood up to ODAR’s shenanigans almost as soon as she figured out what was up.

Everything about the road trip.

TimeSwimmers was already mentioned but specifically TIME DOLPHIN RYAN LOCHTE

Characters that grow and change and learn

The 77s getting name dropped in Plasticity, way before we knew who they were

Sally calling out the English language for being problematic (“oh, you mean like morally upstanding?”)

“The weather in Tulsa today is: uhh I dunno”.

It has been quite possibly the most human exploration of time travel I’ve ever seen/heard.

Reaching a happy ending I couldn't even imagine

The weather in Tulsa is: sppoookyyy

The ever changing ways the codes were presented in season 3. Giving the feeling that the anchorites were both on the run and broadcasting these messages from different points in time.

Sally’s ace representation is the best I’ve ever seen and it makes me feel so #valid.

The sound design and detail in the writing make me feel like I’m truly immersed in the story, and it feels so authentic. Are you sure you don’t secretly have a timepiece?

The characters are people I CARE about and wanted to cry over during work all the time because they’re all wonderful and I love them.

The integration of the different storylines into Sally’s, especially Petra’s, is amazing.

Petra’s characterization was really well done, and it made me really care about her, even as she was trying to more or less destroy the world.

Out-of-date pop culture references that fit seamlessly into the dialogue despite being from literally a different time period and most of the characters having no idea what it meant. They just added an extra level of hilarious.

You may not actually know a single thing about tachyon fields and gluon walls (are they even real?) but you could definitely convince me that you know exactly what you’re talking about (or at least that Sally Grissom does).

The enDING WAS JUST REALLY WELL DONE AND I LOVE A GOOD CIRCULAR ENDING AND IT MADE ME GENUINELY GO TO THE BATHROOM DURING WORK TO CRY BECAUSE IT WAS JUST BEAUTIFUL.

The fact that the whole show is wrapped up by the revelation that the entire show is actually Nikhil and Mateo curling up with board games and snacks trying to form a story out of these tapes, patching together timelines to make it all cohesive, it just feels very right.

This story fits the medium so well, and so the fact that we don’t learn that Whickman has an EYEPATCH is absolutely wild but also wonderful because as soon as I heard that I knew that that was how it belonged, like of course he has an eyepatch, that’s a very Chet thing to have.

The ending was so perfectly, painfully beautiful. It was the ending we needed but never would have imagined.

Petra’s and Sally’s relationship being so complex and real.

Nikhil and Mateo using the archive to create the framing device for the whole podcast.

The sound the timepiece makes.

The final destruction of the timepiece.

Putting time travel in a Cold War setting makes perfect sense, and they go together like peanut butter and chocolate.

Did anyone mention Helen Partridge as a character? How beautifully she was set up and the fact that she pursued her own her life, and also, how BEAUTIFULLY Susanna Kavee can sing? Because damn.

I just. Really love this show. And everyone involved. So much.

The child characters were really well done-both the actors and the writing felt real.

To me, the show feels a bit like one of those camp friendship bracelets everyone used to make, with all these colors and threads--all of the timelines, woven together, messy but beautiful.

TEETRIS

Grissom’s Gizmo Gals!

Mateo’s non-stop flirting, even in the worst of situations

Sally “It’s Dr Grissom”ed HERSELF.

The way both the story and the characters reflect a complex view on the world with people making horrible decisions and horrible things happening to them, and yet always maintaining a positive outlook, offering the possibility of change and improvement.

The top-notch voice acting from everyone involved, helping to create the wonderful characters we all love.

Sally finger-gunning her way out of a conversation with a pun about a friend almost killing her.

All the minisodes!!

Any time Bridget, Nikhil or Lou acts like they want to adopt Petra

The series ending with two characters who had been at odds coming together

The characterization of the different Petras, because they all seem like different people even though in fact they are not (and Sylvia deciding she doesn't want to follow the legacy of Petras)

How Kristen can play 2 of the same character and make them sound different (how does she do that???)

Anthony’s will to save everyone, sacrificing himself, when the world didn't do anything good for him…

... and the constant struggle to save his friends (like when he was literally the only one aware of the Anchorites and the way their plan could have ended)

The way the show can go from time travel shenanigans to heartfelt character moments is a real testament to the talent of the writing team.

The Vegas episode, which I listened to after the finale and cried, because they were so happy and naive and everything wasn’t messy and bad and complicated.

The way gun violence is handled by the creators with respect and care

The way PTSD and mental health is handled (through Sally) is beautiful and respectful.

Partridge being named after a bird and living out his life in a cage. YOU GUYS ARE MEAN

Susanna Kavee’s absolutely amazing singing and Tau Zaman’s lyrics are an absolutely combination.

The ceaseless, unwavering commitment to puns

I love how important their friendships are to the characters (well, most of them anyways).

Sally’s conversation with Nikhil in season 3 reflects a lot of common anxieties of aromantic people, and his understanding responses

The entirety of the trial episode, which just really sort of showed the full extent of how terrible the Red Scare was by putting Esther, a Jewish woman, through it, and just shows you how defamed people in that time were.

In so many of the fictional and non-fictional representations of history, marginalized people have diminished, distorted, and stereotypical roles-but not in ars PARADOXICA. Thank you for making so many people feel seen.

All the amazing writers who started it all. 💜

Here are the signatures of some of the fans who contributed:

Signatures

Lindsay (ioniluna/drsallygrissom)

Khanan Abayev

SJ (your friendly neighborhood slauthor)

Dave (mondas-mania)

Noah (kindadisappointed)

Sana (i-am-delta-s)

Tina (espressonist)

Meaghan (lafgl)

Katherine (Rubywolfsbane)

Artimis (jp-blindperson/ap-blindperson)

Luke (martianboyy)

Ellie (joan-and-jane-and-esther-roberts/shewrites)

Bridge (cornerandchair)

Lem (aceparadoxica)

Esme (starsparadoxica)

Glory (mercutiglo)

Carly (guardianbob)

Emese (mse)

Ben (Q)

Special thanks to the ars PARADOXICA discord for being so helpful! From the time it was just a dozen people with a spork in a shoebox, this community was a shining star that helped me through tough times. Thank you for your silliness, cleverness, and support.

Brought to you by the internet: It’s weird! It’s fun! It loves you very, very much!

#ars paradoxica #aP creators #surprise!

87 notes · View notes

the-ghost-writers · 6 years

Text

Monster BF headcanons

Cause why not? But really it’s because some peeps on discord ( @punkpoppunkpop @aurumdragonfly and a few others) wanted to know what kinda boyfriend their favorite monsters would be, and I was happy to oblige.

Orc

You met him by walking past while he was training and you stopped to watch.

With an audience, he felt the need to really show off and go hard to show just how strong he is.

He sauntered up to you expecting you to be smitten.

You were, but you caught him off guard with your praise from calling him cute.

He got flustered, which made him stutter, which made him even more flustered.

At least once a day you remind him of how much of a dork he was when yall first met.

He hushes you by wrapping you up in a bear hug where he squeezes just tight enough to keep you from speaking.

He really likes carrying you around.

Play with his beard and he'll melt.

Loads more under the cut. (Shoot an ask if you want a headcanon of a species that isn’t listed)

Wyvern

You originally met because he was hunting you but then he got so caught up in talking with you that he forgot he was hungry.

Regularly takes you on flying trips because he likes flying and likes spending time with you, so doing both is amazing to him.

Has no arms so he uses his neck to wrap around and "hug" you.

Tends to perch (like a bird) on anything and everything.

Gets overexcited and tackles you to the ground if you've been apart.

Immediately apologizes.

Loves to smother you with kisses at a rapid-fire pace.

Curls around and tucks you under his wing when it's time for bed.

Cuthulu

You just wanted to swim in the ocean when you happen to cut yourself and managed to bleed in just the wrong or right spot to summon him.

Horrifying cause he's over 20 stories tall and doesn't like shrinking down.

Still shrinks down so he can be held by you when he's feeling touched starved.

Has trouble speaking any human language so he uses his hands for communication.

Sometimes forgets that you need air to breathe and his kisses leave you light headed.

Most people go mad if they look into his eyes, so do you but you fall mad in love.

Knows people are afraid of him, but he wants to be with you so he sneaks around to steal you away for a trip to the ocean floor (don't worry, he has a way to let you breathe.)

His Earth home is a massive cave littered with glittering crystals.

Kobold

He’s absolutely teeny, not to mention tiny, but he acts like he's the biggest man around.

Shout everything without realizing it.

He's just really energetic.

Feels the need to defend your "honor" from everything.

Sometimes he'll try to fight someone for just looking at you.

You have to stop him cause he really isn't a fighter.

Despite his mishaps, he loves you more than anything.

When you asked why he “protects” you so much, he said kobolds always protect their treasure.

Seriously, he's like waist high.

Really good at fixing things tho, not a single door in your house squeaks and he fixed you A/C in under an hour.

Robot

Large and in charge.

Literally, he's 8 feet and built with the purpose of being a security guard.

After his day job is over, he goes and spends the rest of his time with you.

Doesn't need sleep, just to recharge, so if he's plugged in then he can stay up with you all night.

Or really until you fall asleep

To sleep in bed with you, you two installed a special charging station in your bedroom that use cords to charge him and allow him to lay in bed with you.

The cords are on his back so he's always the big spoon.

A very, very big spoon.

Constantly upgrading his body to be more comfortable for you.

His latest upgrade was heating plates for when you're cuddling together.

Sometimes speaks in robot which is apparently a thing they don’t like doing in front of humans and it’s a whole lotta beeps and whirrs before he remembers who he's talking to and tries again.

Minotaur

The biggest grump you know.

Although he's notably less grumpy with you than he is with others.

A scowl is always on his face but sometimes he forces it to keep up his image.

"What do you mean I need new clothes? My loincloth only has three tears in it."

Excellent sense of direction.

Really likes tight spaces.

Won't admit that he likes it when you're sitting on his shoulders.

Run your fingers through his leg fur and it'll bristle.

Hates the cold and will shamelessly use you as a personal heater.

Mummy

Actually woke up in a museum, you were the only one around at a time.

At an utter loss of why he's not in the afterlife.

He followed you home thinking it was a path to the beyond.

Was not happy when he learned it wasn't.

Not all too concerned because he thinks he'll get there eventually.

Calmed down but didn't leave your home because he had nowhere else to go.

Still thinks he's in Egypt and that only a few years have passed since his death.

Won’t tell you who he was in life because he knows that it bugs you that you don’t know who he was.

Doesn't like seeing what's under his wraps but will show you if asked.

After a while, he learns he has a bit of magic and can levitate things.

Levitates you towards him and wraps you up (He doesn't get the joke) in his arms so he has something to hold.

Doesn't actually realize he's falling for you until months later when you're already practically a couple.

Thinks technology is magic even a year has passed since he woke up and you’ve explained what a smartphone is seven times now.

Kaiju

Walks around on four legs and is as big as a 15 story building.

Regularly gets in fights with other kaiju, wins every other one.

Will come home (to your home, his is the ocean) victorious and start gloating about how amazing he is until you join in.

It’s because he adores your praise.

If he lost, he'll be whimpering for you to take care of him (can't do much other than kiss it better but he has regeneration.)

You're starting to wonder if he gets in so many fights so you'll give him attention.

Speaks broken English and his voice is gravely.

Lays on top of you if you try to leave when he doesn't want you to.

Doesn't care that your work won't take "a giant kaiju sat on me" as an excuse for being late.

Eastern Dragon

"Respect your elders" any time you disagree with him in the slightest.

Always floating around, hasn't touched the ground or been still in 50 years.

Stubby arms.

He's sensitive about it.

Twirls his mustache and cackles like a villain when he's being a little shit.

"I'm the most humble person I know."

Sometimes he'll take you up in the air and hold you in his coils to get you alone.

Changes size a lot, sometimes he's the size of a train and sometimes he's the size of a shoelace.

Gives dumb people sass but has yet to sass you.

Werewolf

Sometimes you wonder if he's a werewolf or a weregolden retriever.

Always eating but never gains weight. (A nice combination of a good metabolism and a daily shape-shifting transformation that burns through thousands of calories.)

Snerks when someone starts talking about an “Alpha” werewolf.

Sheds like a bitch. (He DOES get the joke)

His kisses are just lots of face licks.

Will start gnawing on your leg/arm if you ignore him too much.

If you're not physically touching him to some extent he gets upset.

Super fluffy and surprisingly muscular.

Prefers his meats raw.

Doesn't like fish.

At all.

An utter slut for head scritches.

Skeleton

A total jokester.

Feels weird being naked.

Will be naked for a prank tho.

Skeletor is his idol.

Part-time job at the high school science lab.

Knows every vine and meme there is.

2spooky4u

Uses his bones to play songs.

Don't call him sans.

Don't ask him for a hand either, he'll toss his detached hand to you.

"I've got a boner"

"Rattles me bones!"

Dressed up as Jack Skellington for Halloween.

Deathclaw

Originally tried to kill you but you were so pitiful cute that he stopped.

Once he deemed that you’re not a threat, he started ignoring you.

Because your home is so close to his, his started seeing you as a part of his territory.

Eventually stopped being agitated by you and grew comfortable enough to not be on guard around you.

Rescued you from a bandit raid once but wouldn’t let you go home after, took you to his home.

It’s your new home, he’s your new roommate.

Always wants you in his sight, he’ll follow you if you leave and corral you back to his cave if you wander too far off.

Intelligent but doesn’t speak a lick of English, although has come to learn and react to a few key phrases “Hi, Love you, Fuck.”

That last one has led to a few problems when you shouted it in pain and he misinterpreted it.

If he spends enough time outside in the day, he’ll glow in the dark in his cave.

It used to make you sick but you grew used to it you might have radiation poisoning.

He doesn’t care for his glowing body parts until he noticed your interest in him grows when he glows.

Allows you to freely explore him.

“Laughs” when you touch his teeth (he doesn’t understand why you’re fascinated by them but they’re so big that you just have to touch.)

Wyvern 2.0

So liked that he got an encore

When he’s excited, he wags his tail but that makes him lose balance, so sometimes he’ll fall over when he first sees you.

The lack of arms means he uses his head to nudge everything, and his tongue when it’s something delicate to handle.

Definitely a morning person.

He always wakes up before the sun rises, but he won’t try to leave the bed/nest until you’re up as well.

While you sleep, and especially while he’s waiting for you to wake up, he combs his wing tips along your soft spots because he likes the face you make when you’re comfortable.

Can not be faulted being too big, you’re just too small.

Really likes emeralds for some reason, he’s not sure why.

When you lie next to him, you can hear his heartbeat and how it beats faster from you being near.

Trent

A self-appointed guardian of the forest.

Said forest is in your backyard.

Notices you taking care of plants and thinks of you as a friend.

Shocked when he reveals himself and you get excited.

He expected you to be scared, not bouncing with excitement.

Indulges you in your request to know more about him and shows all he can do, from manipulating plants to lifting boulders.

Turns smug when you’re in awe of his body but is humbled from how soft you are and how much he likes touching you.

Compares you to that of a flower and himself as a tree.

After that day, he starts inviting you to tea using the herbs he grows and shows off his pretty flowers.

Gives you a flower crown that’s enchanted to never wilt.

Fascinated by the glass objects in your house.

Feels guilty for tracking dirt into your house.

Gryphon

You’ve actually known him since he was a child because you two grew up together.

Separate homes tho, his family lived in a forest beside your family’s home.

You both know the ins and outs of each other what with you two being best friends.

Puberty treated him very well and he grew to be very strong.

In time, the aftermath of your wrestling sessions (if you win it’s only because he LET you win) went from the two of you finding food to laying together and watching the sky.

He can’t speak aside from squawking, so you have to carry the conversations along.

You can typically ride on his back to get to places.

He bumps his beak against your head in his way of giving kisses.

Belly rubs slay him.

Taurus Demon

Very open about his sexuality.

Also one of the bigger demons around so he doesn’t worry about much.

Spends his time waiting for the chosen undead laying around with you.

Likes it when you’re laying on top or against him cause it lets him play with you.

Happy rumbles when he sees you.

“Look at my boyfriend! He’s so fucking small!”

Really wants to train you to fight.

Lays in a bed of fire with you on top of him, his body protecting you from the heat.

Really blushy if he ever forgets his loincloth.

Doesn’t realize that shouting at people to not look will only draw their attention.

Capra demon

Tall but feels short for a demon.

Actually a really good dancer (he pretends he’s using his swords.)

Dog person.

Likes to get into “friendly” competitions with you.

He’ll try to let you win but he’s too competitive.

Wants to explore the world with you.

Thinks magic is really cool.

Fuck shields tho.

Really likes being the little spoon.

Mothman

You two met underneath a flickering street lamp.

Neither of you actually noticed each other until he bumped into you.

You screamed, he fluttered his wings.

When you both calmed down, he gave you a curious look cause he expected you to run.

He’s really tall and you have crane your neck to see his face, but all you see are two red eyes.

He wanders off and something in the back of your head tells you to follow.

He brings you to a small opening in a forest where fireflies float about.

He plops down and you sit beside him.

He opens up fast and wraps an arm/wing around you as you both watch the show the bugs put on for you.

You do this every week without ever saying a word.

Last time you two met, he planted a kiss on your forehead and you two fell asleep on the ground, laying together.

He soft.

#the reader is any gender #or no gender #whatever floats your boat

33 notes · View notes