#It wasn’t pre-meditated but in that moment he wanted her to die. She was going to tell everyone there was something wrong with him.

[scoobydoodean]

I see this held up as major proof of Dean's badness, but couldn't it also be proof of Cas having faith Dean can get past anything without Cas having to change his behavior? The way it's structured the onus is on DEAN to work through it, not others to change or make amends. ---- CASTIEL: You know, Dean, he – he feels things more acutely than any human I've ever known. So it's possible he could work through this. One day, he may explode and let it all out and breathe deeply and move on.

I see what you mean in a general sense, and it's extremely possible that Cas is thinking about his own past fights with Dean and Dean forgiving him, and from the perspective of the critique you have in mind that you're refuting, I agree. But of course deancrit casgirls will forever insist that Cas has never in his life done anything harmful to Dean either accidentally or on purpose, so any time Dean might dare try to hold him accountable for anything, he's actually just making shit up and being toxic and controlling, so here Cas is just apologizing for his own abusive relationship. You can only get their take by being deliberately obtuse/disingenuous.

That said, the context of that line (from 15.13 "Destinty's Child") is Cas answering soulless Jack's question about whether Dean will eventually forgive him for murdering Mary.

CASTIEL: Hey, Jack. JACK: Cas, you know what's good about being dead? CASTIEL: Uh, as I recall, very little. JACK: Well, when you come back, you – you really get into all that life is. Hot, cold, sweet, spicy, funny, scary. CASTIEL: And are you? "Into it"? JACK: I want to be. But I don't... feel things the way I used to. Before I lost my... CASTIEL: Your soul. JACK: I used to feel things. In my bones. It was glorious, and sometimes unbearable. But I felt them. Now, I understand joy or sadness, but... I know those things aren't in me. I understand why Sam and Dean were angered by what happened to Mary... CASTIEL: By what you did to Mary. JACK: Yes. I see that I've caused them pain. And it's clear that things have changed. Especially with – with Dean. Will he ever forgive me? CASTIEL: You know, Dean, he – he feels things more acutely than any human I've ever known. So it's possible he could work through this. One day, he may explode and let it all out and breathe deeply and move on. JACK: How long will that take? CASTIEL: I don't know.

And yeah—I have seen people refer to Cas's little speech here as "condoning child abuse" and other bullshit. Because how DARE Dean not forgive soulless Jack for murdering his mother (something soulless Jack is unable to actually really acknowledge he did). I mean clearly any time someone murders your mom because she made them mad and threatened their sense of security by asking if they're okay and saying their concerning actions can’t stay a secret… That’s just natural understandable stuff! You need to forgive the person who murdered her instantly and if you don’t idk you’re kinda overreacting don’t you think? :/ I mean your mom probably deserved it kind of anyway for reading the room so wrong and talking about getting a person help. And I mean if you don't forgive the person who killed your mom or do anything trying to stop them from hurting more people you're really a child abuser... toward an adult... who murdered your mother in cold blood and is unable to even understand why it was wrong in any sense other than an intellectual one like he read it from a book... preferring to refer to it as "What happened to Mary" instead of acknowledge it as something he himself did because he was mad and felt threatened—which is what he circled back to in "Jack In The Box" too. It's only when Jack gets his soul back that he's able to actually feel true empathy, acknowledge his real actions and the gravity of them, and give an actual sincere apology. Because his soul is actually important—something this fandom refuses, by and large, to notice.

Anyway, this fandom's take on Mary's murder and soulless Jack vs. regular Jack is overwhelmingly a bag of wet third grader vomit and feces so what can one expect?

#mail #soulless jack killing mary is popularly regarded as an accident... but it's pretty transparent that it wasn't? #or rather it was on purpose but he regretted it the second after it happened. but that is still. Something he chose to do. Not an accident. #He saw her as a threat to his relationship with Sam and Dean and he acted. #This is indicated right before he kills her. He admits it outright also right before calling it an accident which unravels that whole idea. #It wasn’t pre-meditated but in that moment he wanted her to die. She was going to tell everyone there was something wrong with him. #And he did not want that. #It wasn't an accident and he can't handle his own culpability because it threatens his belief that he can make things be the way they were #before it happened. Which is why he killed her to begin with! He didn't want anyone to know/think anything was wrong with him! #And just like soulless Jack just wants everyone to forget about it and act like nothing happened and he's fine... #Many fans want Dean to forget about it. They want Dean to believe and say and feel and think that Mary did not matter. #And that being upset at her literal murder (even if it was an accident—which it was not) is bad and evil. #And Sam's great capacity for numbness (which we already saw in season 13) strengthen's their own lack of empathy for Dean #in a situation that in real life they would understand unless they're actual psychopaths. #It's only because Dean is a character in a narrative representing the need/capacity to be loved and accepted at all #that these demands that his thoughts and feelings bend to everyone else's emotional needs become so disturbingly intrusive #dont feed the stans after midnight #and cas is my best friend #hot girl cas

[spirits-n-giggles]

Fluffy SessRin for you. 🥰

One of the wonderful things about the connection with Rin and Sesshomaru is the ever popular slooooow buuuurn. A slow burn romance is a romance between a couple that takes a looooooooong time to build and they usually stay as friends for a long period of time while growing through changes in the stages of their relationship before something leaps their romance forward. This is a very popular form of storytelling inside of fanfiction and even more popular in the sessrin fandom. Slow burns take their time like the slow burning wick of dynamite; it takes its time as it keeps its audience in anticipation, with a little hint here and a little nudge there, right before getting to the big BOOM! that puts everything in place.

At least that is what I think happened with Sesshomaru and Rin. I don't think romantic intent was on any of their minds for a long time, and I personally don't think that they ever would have done so much as brush one's hand against another unless Rin made the first move.

Can you imagine Sesshomaru actually willing to touch ANYONE?

This is why I am convinced that if (and when) romance starts to take place, Rin is the one to initiate it, be it the way she gently glides her fingers against his claws as she accepts one of his many gifts, or the way her hair teases his watchful gaze in the wind as he is barely able feel the silk-like tresses before allowing them to slip from his touch as she takes off in a field of flowers at running speed.

Rin would be in her own perfect little world when Sesshomaru would visit her. He would see her at the end of each crescent moon cycle (because fanfiction), and there would always be a gift in his hand. Rin appreciates everything that he gives her, but the best gift he could ever give her was his time.

They would usually spend an afternoon together as they go on long and secluded walks. By the age of ten, she would go on and on about the responsibilities that she had been given, or share the new songs that Kagome would teach her. There would be one song in particular that would get stuck in her head, and it was a little tune about raindrops on roses, and whiskers on kittens. He would always listen. He would remain the silent one through the years before one day Rin would ask to hear about the adventures that he had been on since their departure. He would confess that things are quite dull in those days, since he didn't usually venture any longer than a day's travel from her. Even though that was way farther than a human would be able would be able to travel, he would have no idea how this unknowing confession would cause Rin's heart would grow even that much more fonder for him.

Something... something was just a little different after that, but neither of them could really put a finger on it.

Throughout time, their talks would evolve from childish singing to divulging into her education. As she would enter her pre-teen years, she would speak of her extensive human knowledge, as well as her desire to explore other cultures as she hears more of Kagome's culture home from another time. Sesshomaru would have grown more of a voice by this point, mentioning a time or two where he explored and found unique secrets of the known world. Rin's eyes would sparkle at the images that she dreams up in her mind on what it would be like to explore the world with Sesshomaru. He would continue to toss the idea of distant travel around while mentioning to bring back the most unique thing he could find for her. She would smile for him, appreciating the thought, but the idea of him going without her would send an uncomfortable feeling through her. He dangles the idea of travel above her like a fisherman would with bait on a hook, and she would itch to take it. The very idea would cause some aching deep within her. Sure, she always loved the things that he would bring her, but he would still struggle to understand that the one thing that she would ever want from him is his time.

In his entire lifetime, Sesshomaru never cared for any type of affection, let alone touch. He never even considered the idea of yearning for something so trivial and unnecessary. Why would he? Who would dare? He is not so weak to care for such a sentiment. He just never understood...

...until he understood.

He would not understand the warmth of a loving hand until the day of the spring solstice, in her thirteenth year, when she was lazily playing with a large bouquet of wildflowers she had picked. The day would be warm and the skies would be clear. Humming an old tune, she would be in her own little world as she would leisurely put a flower behind Sesshomaru's ear. Though it is the first time she had ever gotten this close to his face, she would do so as if it were something she had done her entire life.

Her touch would be so light and airy, as the brush of her thumb could be felt upon his flesh. It is here that it finally clicks that she is, indeed, very real, and growing at a rapid speed. He had known the pathetic fate of human kind, for it did not take long for humans to grow and die. That was never something he'd care enough to even consider, but the sudden sensation of her electrifying touch proved that simply seeing her with eyes alone was no longer enough for a demon who had always craved his own personal solitude.

And maybe.... just maybe... there would be a quench inside him for just a little more.

Just... a constant touch, be it the way their skin would almost meet as they would walk side by side, or maybe if he were lucky, he would find another blessed brush of her thumb to his cheek.

Just a touch to make sure she was still real....

To make sure she was, indeed, still living... still breathing....

Just to make sure she was okay.

But he would never voluntarily touch her.

No.

But she would.

It would be around the seventh year of her life in the village. It would be in the evening, at a time of merriment, yet in a secluded area. Sesshomaru would not be one for crowds, and Rin would know this. She would set a special place for them at a distance from the crowds, yet close enough to watch the light shows of fireworks and festival poppers. The colorful lights would shine vibrantly in the sky as they would sit beside one another beneath the sheen of the crescent moon. Without breaking her gaze from the light show ahead, she would intertwine her left arm around his right, and thread her fingers between his, locking their hands in the most gentle embrace.

Such action causes pause. Never has she been so bold as to do more than a tap to the shoulder. The warmth would be what throws him off the most, but he would not falter. He would feel her take in a deep breath and gently exhale while settling the weight of her body against his in a comfortable fashion. It is at this time that he starts to feel the soothing lull of her heartbeat through her fingertips, and it would send a brand new sensation through him. The soft rhythm would sooth him to almost a meditative state, feeling at peace through her touch with the knowledge that she is safe, right there, with him. She would lean her head against his shoulder, genly humming a familiar tune with words about packages tied up with string envelopes his eardrums while she draws lazy circles on top of his hand with her thumb. They would stay like that for the duration of the light show, and perhaps even longer. Neither of the two had ever felt so.... content until this moment. Perhaps they fell asleep like this. He would allow her touch for as long as she desired.

That would be the extent of their touch for a long while. As time would string by, she would sprinkle more of her touch, be it the gentle tug of his sleeve as she galvanted in wheat fields, or her delicate fingers as she would straighten the straggles of his hair that would get tangled in the ridges of his armor. Her touch would always be feather-like and instantaneous, but it would never be enough. There would be a twinge deep within the strong willed demon as they would grow even closer with time.

If he wasn't aware of her growth before, he definately would as her teen years would progress. It would seem as though she were very happy around her own kind. Other humans would start to notice her, especially the males. The very idea of any human male scent would be enough to irritate the demon lord for days at a time, so one could imagine the esteemed pleasure of Lord Sesshomaru observing the audacity of those disgusting human males as they pursue her.

But none of them ever seemed to matter to her.

No matter how many young men would stand around her and try for her affection, she would always happily break from the crowd when she would see Sesshomaru just beyond the horizon. There would be the the tiniest bit of pride as he would watch her run towards him with glee.

By now their talks would have dwindled to nothing more than a few comments in the entirety of their one afternoon a month, but nothing would really need to be said. They are content to just enjoy each others company and catch up on mundane life...

Until night would fall and it would be time for him to leave. This is when the goodbye's would gradually stretch with every visit. Sesshomaru would find himself not parting ways until well into the crescent moon nights. It is unknown when the farewells started to become somber and sad, but it would start to become just that much more difficult for Rin every time she would watch him take his leave. He would even bide his time as he would slowly yet surely venture onward for another month of lord knows what, and Rin would have to bear, yet another month of human life, unable to feel completely at peace.

How could she when it was never a garontee that he would return to her?

Yet somehow he always did.

Their first kiss would be in the rain (because at this point, Sesshomaru and Rin are basically the hallmark movie couple of the inuyasha fandom). They would be on their usual walk. It would be her sixteenth year as Autumn makes its way. Rin would guide Sesshomaru to their usual spot, a spot that she would only visit when he visits her. A storm would roll in, and it would be a bad one. It would be such a surprise turn in events, as it would force his visit short since it would be wise for him to beat the storm before his next stop. He would offer to escort her back with the promise of bringing her back something nice as an apology for leaving so soon...

But she would stop in her tracks as she would shake her head "no".

She wouldn't want to go back.

Kissing would never have occurred to Sesshomaru as a form of touching. Truth be told, he wouldn't have seen a whole lot of action with an absent father and a scolding tempered mother. There was no time for affection, there was always battle. Battle.

Battle.

All his father ever talked about was battle.

Sesshomaru grew up in many decades devoted to such strength and the utmost respect for battle. His father was the strongest in the land. It is only natural for a boy to desire to walk in his father's footsteps.

But then to be slaughtered.... because of a human, no less... One of the world's strongest demons to ever roam was killed because of a human.

A human woman.

And a human woman is who Sesshomaru would be looking to now, with thundering clouds rolling in as it would threaten to drench them in a downpour with the smell of moisture in the clouds.

She would not want to say goodbye. Not yet. He would only have been there a meer hour at best. It would be here that she would admit that, even though she had appreciated everything that he had ever gotten her, nothing could ever be quite as precious to her quite like his time.

His time?

Why would they have to go at the pace of his time?

He would have all the time in the world.

It would be she who would be losing time. It would be she that would age. It woud be she that would have to grow old and die incredibly young-

He wouldn't be able to think of things like that.

He would push that thought as far from his mind as it would go.

It would be she who would lose a battle with time.

A battle...

Sesshomaru understands battle.

He would ask what she would want.

It turns out that it is she that would have to make the next move against the game of chess that is time.

He would ask what she wanted.

Silence is what would come, both befuddled as to what to say. His silence is deafening for her. She can't stand it anymore.

She would show him.

She would inch closer to him; he would not falter. He watches her with such intensity as her scent grows closer and closer. Inches away from his face, she would delicately trace her gentle nails up against the sharp looking markings on his face.

He would then quickly grab her arm in shock.

Her eyes would then bulge with a gasp at his sudden grip of her wrist. Her stomach would flip in nervousness at his knee jerk reaction, but all of their nerves would fall as his hand would guide hers to.... cup his face within her hand.

Feeling her touch would instantly cause him to calm. She would watch with wide eyes as his gaze softens as he closes his eyes with a gentle inhale. She could swear that she would hear a soft rumble from deep within him as he leans his face into her touch.

The rain would come crashing down right as her lips touch his. Her eyes would flutter shut as she would gently lean into his strong stature.

The echo of his heartbeat would then suddenly thump through him. Such intensity from this new sensation would cause him to become statuesque, for this... this thing that she does to him...

This is what killed his father.

She would part from him, eyes squeezed shut, slightly afraid of what kind of reprocussion this would bring, but she opens her eyes to find a frozen demon lord.

She would have no voice.

"What was that?" He would ask.

Rin's response would be mixed with confusion and trepidation. "You've... never experienced a kiss?"

He responds fully as he would then touch his lips to hers. His speed would cause her to gasp, and the gasp would push him away. Luckily she would grab a hold of him before he could go far. "Was that not correct?" He would ask innocently.

"You- you... meant to do that?" Rin would be so perplexed.

"I thought that was what you wanted."

He would watch her blink in hurried confusion before she would her question. "Is that what... you want?" She can start to feel her clothing stick to her body as they stand in the soaking rain.

"I want...." Thats a vague question, and unfortunately, he isn't quite adept to being able to correctly express his emotions. He, too, was starting to feel the discomfort of the thunderstorm above their heads. "I want to be dry."

The surprising turn in his response would cause an even more confused chuckle to slip from her lips. "Me too," she would say in a defeated sigh and a sad smile. "Come on, I'm sure everyone is worried about us." She would finally break her gaze to walk past him to head back.

But he would have to stop her.

He would just have to.

He would grasp her swaying hand to stop her in her tracks, which would cause her whiplash. Turning around, she would have no time to react as he would swiftly pull her back close to him, this time with his claws gently tracing the shape of her cheek, just like she had done to him. She sharply inhales right before he touches his lips to hers again. He repeated her actions to the, tee, but this one would linger within the hidden meadow filled with with raindrops on roses. He would hope that this is what she wanted, and he would be lucky enough to succeed.

But such an action comes with a dire price, for he would be unlucky enough to crave her touch for all of eternity.

#sessrin #i might have gotten a little carried away lol #dont mind me #xxiixiii #inuyasha #sessxrin #sesshomaru #rin #sesshomaru and rin #older rin #holy shit i wrote a damn novel

[bobasheebaby]

107 The Good Place Prompts

Eleanor Shellstrop

1 “I just don't think the group thing is for me. I'm better when it's one-one-one and we're both looking at our phones and I don't know the other person and we don't talk.”

2 “The closest thing I could find to herbal tea was a root beer I had them throw in the microwave.”

3 “Whenever anyone tells me a story about their life I always imagine all the people as being super hot. Otherwise, I quickly lose interest. Do you not do that? You can do it for free.”

4 “I'm SO ready to learn, it's like my brain is HORNY!”

5 “What can you possibly say to us that will make up for your actions?” “Pobody's nerfect?”

6 “You don't seem like a ... super genius.”

7 “Ugh, of course your hugs are amazing.”

8 “Oh, so now I'm supposed to be nice and make friends and treat him:her with mutual respect?” “Yeah!” “That's exactly what he/she wants me to do, NAME, wake up!” “That's what everyone wants everyone to do.”

9 “Your friend sounds like he’s/she's one pickle short of a pickle party.”

10 “I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed.” “Oh, come on. Everyone knows that's worse.”

11 “I know it sounds crazy, but if it weren’t crazy they wouldn’t call it a ‘leap of faith.’ They would call it a ‘sit … of ... doubting.’”

12 “Buzz off, Bambadjan.”

13 “Where is everyone?” “Who knows? Maybe they finally figured out clam chowder is disgusting, 'cause it's basically a savory latte with bugs in it.”

14 “First of all, throwing sand is an excellent way to put out a vodka fire.” “Why would you even know that?!”

15 “No, NAME, I used to do that. Now I do selfless things without even thinking about it.”

16 “Why don't I ever listen to people when they talk about themselves? No, it's annoying, and I'm right not to.”

17 “Are you going to talk? Or just walk around like a nerd trying to get a personal best on his Fitbit?”

18 “I guess ‘try and enjoy this’ is a better plan than ‘have the anxiety sweats.’’

19 “I’ve only ever said ‘I love you’ to two men my entire life, Stone Cold Steve Austin and a guy in a dark club who I mistook for Stone Cold Steve Austin.”

20 “Is that some kind of nerd pick-up line? Because it’s only kind of working.”

21 “You know I’m trying to say ash-hole instead of ash-hole, right?”

22 “It’s suddenly very important that I get drunk.”

23 “Well fork you, too.”

24 “Holy mother-forking shirtballs.”

25 “‘You’re not better than me’ was my yearbook quote.”

Tahani Al-Jamal

26 “You guys came to say goodbye because you're my friends.” “Well, I suppose some part of me possibly has a sense of casual kinship with you, much as one might be fond of a street cat.”

27 “I would say I outdid myself, but I’m always this good. So I simply did myself.”

28 “NAME, you seem thoughtful. And that concerns me.”

29 “I, NAME, shall do my level best to make every event too much.”

30 “I just want to sit and stare at nothing, and silently scream for the rest of time.”

31 “I made a complete fool of myself tonight. I interrupted your big speech and badly stained my cargo pants, which, I have to admit, are quite comfortable. Oh, God, what’s happened to me? I’m praising off-the-rack separates!”

32 “Who else feels that NAME has ruined every moment of your existence since you arrived?”

33 “Right now I'm just a boy/girl, towering over a boy/girl, asking him/her to admit he/she loves me.”

34 “My whole life, whenever I encountered any obstacles, I would simply say, ‘I would like to speak to a manager.’ But in our relationship, there was no manager. There was no one who could fix this for me except me.”

Chidi Anagonye

35 “I’m just not a ‘new experience’ kind of guy. My comfort zone is basically like, that chair, and honestly? The arms are a little sharp.”

36 “Here’s an idea. What if we don’t worry about whatever comes next?”

37 “Principles aren’t principles when you pick and choose when you’re gonna follow them.”

38 “If this isn’t a test, then it’s something way worse: A choice! That we have to make!”

39 “I am absolutely paralyzed by decision-making.”

40 “I’m going to ... start crying.”

41 “I am pretty good at turning every place I go into my personal hell.”

42 “You know the sound that a fork makes in the garbage disposal? That’s the sound that my brain makes all the time.”

43 “Well, I’ve narrowed it down to two possibilities: yes and no.”

44 “There's an old Chinese proverb... ‘Lies are like tigers. They are bad.’””That's it?” “I guess it's more poetic in Mandarin.”

45 “I argue that we choose to be good because of our bonds with other people and our innate desire to treat them with dignity. Simply put, we are not in this alone."

46 “I am breaking up with you.” “Why?” “I can't ... It's complicated, but it's happening. Ya dumped!”

47 “I do have a stomachache. Why do I always have a stomachache?”

48 “You put the Peeps in the chili pot and eat them both up! You put the Peeps in the chili pot and add the M&Ms. You put the Peeps in the chili pot and it makes it taste bad.”

49 “Are you alright? You didn't sleep at all last night.” “I got a solid eight minutes. Not consecutively, but still. It's fine. You're not even that blurry.”

50 “We can be colleagues. Associates is pushing it. And by even having this conversation, you're becoming my confidante. I can't have that.”

51 “I am absolutely paralyzed by decision making and it is destroying my life.” “Yeah, I sort of got that when you couldn't choose a chair to sit on.” “Well, I didn't want to offend you in case you had a favorite.”

52 “This whole romantic situation is such a mess. I am vexed, NAME. Vexed.”

53 “I need to step outside ... for some air ... and I will not be back for many days.”

54 “I'm sorry, everyone, I just have some worries as well as some concerns that could potentially turn into outright fears. Ah, there they go, they're fears now.”

55 “When I'm really upset, concentrating on a table of contents helps me calm down. It's like a menu, but the food is words.”

56 “I have never been that certain about anything. I once even tried to rent socks. How did I say that that easily?”

57 “You broke the world. It's not a compliment!”

58 “This is fun. It's a fun party. There's no question about it, this is a fun ... situation. Hey! You guys are here! The fun continues, nay, increases!”

Michael

59 “If soulmates do exist, they’re not found. They’re made.”

60 “I’ll say this to you, my friend, with all the love in my heart and all the wisdom of the universe. Take it sleazy.”

61 “We have no plan. No one’s coming to save us. So ... I’m going to do it.”

62 “It’s a rare occurrence, like a double rainbow. Or like someone on the internet saying, You know what? You’ve convinced me I was wrong.”

63 “Lies are always more convincing when they’re closer to the truth.”

64 “Kissing is gross. You just mash your food holes together. It’s not for that.”

65 “Birth is a curse and existence is a prison.”

66 “Serious question: should we kill them?”

67 “Lonely Gal Margarita Mix for One.”

68 (Holding a plush Minion) “I won this ugly yellow toddler, which is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.”

69 “Hello, everyone. Good to see you all here, mingling around with your various secrets. Who really knows which of you are who you say you are? No way to know unless I pull your skeletons out, right?"

70 “In the words of one of my actual friends: 'Ya basic'. It's a human insult. It's devastating. You're devastated right now."

71 “Where's the H? This keyboard doesn't have an H.”

72 “Dick Tracy called back on his watch phone and said you better "watch" out!”

73 “I got to ride a bike. I put a coin in a thing and got a gumball. And then someone came up to me and said, ‘hot enough for ya?’, and you know what I said? I said, ‘tell me about it!’” “Well I am glad that you got to chew a gumball.” “Oh, damn. I didn't even think to chew it. Missed opportunity, shoot.”

74 “I saw this place that was at once a Pizza Hut and a Taco Bell! I mean, oh! The mind reels! A Pizza Hut and a Taco Bell!”

75 “And what's the significance of the keychain?” “Nothing, I just like frogs. I'm a frog guy.”

76 “I won't let you down.” “I think you will. I think this entire project of yours is stupid and doomed to fail.”

77 “You know the way you feel when you see a chimpanzee and a baby tiger who have become friends? That's how you're going to feel every day.”

78 “You humans have so many emotions. You only need two: anger and confusion!”

79 “It makes sense, right? They're good so they're stupid and trusting.”

Jason Mendoza

80 “I have no idea what’s going on right now but everyone else is talking and I think I should too!”

81 “I can’t believe NAME betrayed us again, why is it always the ones you most expect?”

82 “I wasn’t a failed DJ. I was pre-successful.”

83 “Claustrophobic? Who would ever be afraid of Santa Clause?”

84 “If you’re a devil, how come you’re not wearing Prada?”

85 “I’m too young to die and too old to eat off the kids’ menu. What a stupid age I am.”

86 “Well, my year started about a year ago …”

87 “Dude! We can get mythical animals? Maybe I’ll get a penguin.” “Penguins are real.” “That’s the spirit, NAME. They’re real to me too.”

88 “When I say I'm meditating, I'm just trying to figure out what the fork is happening."

89 “You know, it doesn't matter if you know things. All that matters is what's in your heart."

90 “I'm ranking my favourite Fast and the Furious movies. You said you wanted to know who I am, and this is the best way to get to know me."

91 “He’s/She's my everything. He/She makes the bass drop in my heart.”

92 “Long story short, it was all a dream.”

Janet

93 “I think I might hate things now, too. So far, it’s genocide and leggings as pants.”

94 “NAME told me that instead of being sad, I should ‘go get it, girl.’ So I’m going to go get it, girl.” “Get what?” “Unclear. I’ll get everything, just to be safe.”

95 “In case you were wondering, I am, by definition, the best version of myself."

96 “Ooh, I've never had to walk before, this is fun! [Walks a few steps] Now I'm bored. Walking is dumb.”

97 “Oh, really? Is it an error to act unpredictably and behave in ways that run counter to how you were programmed to behave?”

Minor Miscellaneous Characters

98 “There is some good news. There’s some cake left!” – Neil from Accounting

99 “Well, I'm sure you're busy, you probably wouldn't want to talk to me. I get it, I wouldn't either. I'm as dull as a rock. Ugh, even that analogy was boring. I'm sorry, I'm so dull, and I'm ugly. I'm like a rock. Ugh, stupid Larry! Stop talking about rocks!” — Larry Hemsworth

100 “Oh, and you should smile more. You'll get bigger tips.” — Trevor

101 “Later days, dingus.” — Trevor

102 “Hold that thought. Is it OK if I go work out? I love working out. I gotta stay jacked. It's who I am.” — Chris Baker

103 “This is exhausting. I just want to go back to my container of goo and go to sleep.” — Shawn

104 “So, what's up, what's your deal? Are you single? What's going on?” — Trevor

105 “What up, ding dongs?” — Bad Janet

106 “Hello, imbeciles.” — Shawn

107 “So, we'll just roll on out, and you can get back to putting rainbows up your butt or whatever you do here.” — Trevor

#the good place quotes #the good place prompts #eleanor shellstrop #chidi anagonye #tahani al jamil #jason mendoza #writing prompts #drabble prompts #quaratine sucks and making these keeps my mind busy #i live in covid 19 hell #dialogue prompts

[greyias]

FIC: Smoke and Mirrors - Chapter 10

Title: Smoke and Mirrors Fandom: SWTOR Pairing: Theron Shan/f!Jedi Knight Rating: T Genre: Pre-Relationship, Slow Burn Synopsis: Something’s rotten on Carrick Station, and Theron won’t rest until he finds out what. But picking at the frayed threads of suspicion quickly unravels a conspiracy much larger than even the Republic’s top spy can handle on his own. (A mostly canon-compliant retelling of the Forged Alliances storyline, as seen through the eyes of Theron Shan.) Author’s Notes and Spoilers: See Chapter 1.

Chapter Index: 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 | 07 | 08 | 09 | Crossposted to AO3

In the end, it was a compromise. Highwind’s fancy footwork and insane strategy of playing chicken with the targeting arrays managed carry her through the second target. The third one had to be taken out the old fashioned way, though, with lightsabers and blaster fire.

The Gnarls had been reclaimed, and the Imp’s command platform neutralized. Theron was still untangling the mess the invading force had made when they’d sliced into the shield grid, but they’d managed to open up the reinforcement’s approach vectors and they were able to get troops on the ground safely now. A quick glance over at Darok and the large holotable showed him that the second wave was just starting to land.

It was just a matter of retaking the temple. Highwind was still leading the way, blazing a path through Imperials and Flesh Raider like a wildfire through dry tinder. Now that Theron had his hooks into the system, he was able to monitor their progress on a map on the terminal he’d claimed, but he was still trying to get actual eyes on them in the field. It wasn’t much but it made him feel better. More part of the mission. Rather than just being relegated to tech support.

Most of the Jedi’s security cameras had been damaged in the initial assault, but there was one flickery feed from above the temple steps. Theron leaned back, pretending to stretch out the very real kink developing between his shoulders from being hunched over the keys for so long. The entire room was lined with monitors and terminals, all the metal surfaces shined to an exquisite military polish. Perfect for observing a target while leaving them unaware.

Darok was hunched over the holotable, gaze focused on all of the dots and figures of troops and ships as well as the enemy combatants. Occasionally he’d gesture wildly as he let out a terse string of orders. He was the very image of the perfect Republic soldier, dedicated to taking back the homeworld of some of their staunchest allies while keeping his men alive. After this, someone would probably want to pin a medal on his chest.

“The Savior of Tython” — he might have to wrestle with Highwind for the title.

It was too bad it was all an act. After it had been pointed out, Theron couldn’t not see it. The sudden rush of intel and push to raid Korriban combied with the simultaneous attack on Tython. It was too much of a coincidence.

He recognized the mark of a con — the tantalizing prospect of something too good to pass up, something the target desperately wanted more than anything else. A sudden press of urgency and a ticking clock was meant to bypass normal caution, to push the target into action. It was the tactics of grifters and spies, of someone manipulating things to their own end. 

Except that the target this time was the Republic, and whoever the mastermind of this was had used him as a pawn in this game. That was their big mistake — Theron Shan was no man’s puppet. No one could pull his strings and expect him to jump. Whether Darok was the mastermind, another pawn, or just some unwitting bystander he wasn’t sure. All Theron had right now was an instinctual and instant dislike to the man. Maybe it was just Darok’s grating personality. Or maybe it was gut instinct.

Either way, a good idea to keep an eye on him. Gather the data and surveil the suspects right now and sort through the details later. There was more going on than first met the eye here — something bigger simmering under the surface. He’d find out what it was — no one played him for the fool and got away with it.

Right now though, he needed to get eyes on the other player in this game as well.

Theron finished his fake stretch, satisfied that Darok was occupied at the moment, and returned to the keys in front of him. With a few quick taps, he had patched the feed from the staticky Jedi Temple camera into the HUD on his implants. There was probably no way that the single, damaged camera could accurately convey the havoc wrought on his mother’s home, but that same sick feeling started to churn again in his gut as he got a glimpse of the smoking temple grounds. The lush green rolling hills leading up to the temple had been charred to a dull brown, and dust, dirt, and smoke had kicked up a thick haze. The practice dummies and meditation spots that had been part of the serene landscape were gone, likely buried under the rubble. From the fluttering remains of a brown robe under a large chunk of stone that had fallen from one the large looming statues of knights old — it was possible the landscape wasn’t the only thing buried under the rubble. 

He blew out a long breath, gathered his focus, and analyzed the feed beyond the destruction to try and find his team. The dramatic billowing cape and striking purple hue of the twin lightsabers made Highwind easy to pick out even with all of the smoke and rubble. He turned the audio channel from her comm back up just as she finished slicing through several droids that had rushed the group. Kira bent down to examine them, and let out an anguished sound she couldn’t completely muffle.

“Kira,” Highwind’s voice was soft, pitched low to only where her friend could hear. Not measured and even this time, but both sympathetic and gently warning. “We can’t let—”

“These were Master Dentiri’s training droids,” Kira didn’t bother to disguise the anger and sorrow rising in her voice as she stood.

“I know.” The statement was still soft, and there was a thread of a deeper emotion trying to surface. As if Highwind herself couldn’t completely tamp it all down. Theron wasn’t sure exactly what she was trying to keep restrained, but it still struck something inside of him.

“They are merely droids,” Scourge cut in, disdain dripping from his tone. “There is nothing to mourn in twisted metal.”

Teeseven let out an angry whistle protesting that statement, and Kira stepped up to the Sith. Her expression wasn’t visible from the distance, but it didn’t need to be, because her entire posture radiated an anger and rage that was supposed to be anathema to the Jedi. Theron hated it, but he had to agree somewhat with Scourge’s callous statement — at the moment he couldn’t see any significance in the reprogramming of a bunch of training droids.

“Master Dentiri would never let them be reprogrammed like this! Not while he was alive.”

Oh.

“Kira, please,” Highwind approached her friend hand held out in a complacent gesture. “It’s difficult to see all of this, I know, but we need to stay calm and focus on the present—”

It all happened in the same moment.

Highwind cut her own statement off abruptly, and Theron watched on the feed as in an instant her entire posture changed. Back straightening and head snapping up as if some invisible string had pulled at her. Her outstretched hand jutted out forcefully, fingers splaying out into an expansive gesture as both Kira and Scourge were thrown several feet apart by some unseen force. Or rather, the Force. A barely perceptible shimmer rippled across the camera feed before a long vibroblade pierced the spot where the two Force users had just been standing, wielded by a figure Theron didn’t recognize.

He tried to enhance his visual from the feed, but it was pointless. The signal from the camera was barely operating as it was. He could only watch as purple lightsaber met with vibroblade from the new combatant: a bald woman with clearly visible implants, even from the distance. If he’d had time and a clearer image he would have fed her likeness through a database. Maybe he’d get a name, or maybe not. From the woman’s fighting style, the grade of the implants, and the reprogramming of the droids — maybe an operative from whatever was left of Imperial intelligence. 

More of the reprogrammed training droids joined the fray, engaging with the rest of the strike team. Theron could only watch the battle between the distant, flickering holofigures while hearing every clash and strike over the comm. That same feeling of uselessness started to creep up again. He could add nothing to this fight, the outcome was down to the skill of his operatives on the other end. He had to trust that they’d get the job done. And not die in the process.

Theron swallowed the bitter feeling and glanced back at the nearest reflective surface. Darok was still absorbed in his portion of the battle. Perhaps even unaware of the strike team’s close call. The embers of the fire burning inside him flickered to life, that flame of anger tempering his resolve like durasteel being shaped into finely honed blade.

He turned that fervor back into something useful, delving into the sensor data as the battle continued to play out in his HUD. With each crash of the blade, hum of the lightsaber, and shriek of blaster fire, Theron pierced through more of the Imperial firewalls separating him from the Temple. He flung every new layer of data onto the terminals around him, not bothering to hide his work from Darok. Let the bastard see who he was dealing with, let him know that nothing could hide from Theron when he turned the microscope to it.

Maybe he couldn’t lend his blaster to the fight raging on the temple steps, but he could scrape every single shred of data together. Find the location of every single Sith and Imperial trooper lurking inside and obliterate any chance of further ambush. They might have razed the temple and every single Jedi within it, but they would not keep their bloodied prize. That was for damn sure.

As the battle finished, silence settled over the comm. The flickering chaotic image on the HUD had almost stilled, and if he hadn’t seen the telltale cape fluttering in the wind, Theron might have been concerned about the fate of his operative. A dark mood had settled over the strike team, and he almost felt like he was intruding, but pushed it aside. There wasn’t time for that right now.

“Are you clear?”

“We are,” she said.

While they had been fighting, he’d managed to put together a patchy map of intel from the interior of the building. Without hesitation, he funneled that data stream to his feed to Teeseven, and the little astromech faithfully projected it out in front of him.

He heard a long breath exhaled on the other end of the comm. “Is this what we’re up against inside?”

“Yes,” Theron said, perhaps a little brusquely. “No more surprises like that one.”

“There might be still a few of those awaiting us inside,” Highwind said quietly, a weary note breaking through the practiced calm. “Even with this.”

Theron was a naturally suspicious man. It was a healthy trait in his profession to finely hone paranoia into a tool of survival. Whoever the mastermind was that had orchestrated this bleak tragedy would have be someone wily and almost Machiavellian — capable of seeing the lives of the combatants on the field as pawns on a larger Dejarik board. Unwilling or even unable to view them as people. If that exacted a toll on their psyche, would it even be able to be seen?

As Highwind had stalked out of the warroom earlier, Theron had considered her role in this. Logically it was best to consider and eliminate every potential suspect. Darok was first on the list, having been the one who found the opening on Korriban and suggested the operation to Jace. He’d planned that entire mission. It was only natural to suspect him, especially considering his nearly maniacal drive to get into the Dark Council chambers.

But right after Darok came Highwind herself. Theron still couldn’t figure her out or where she fell into all of this. If she had any contact or involvement with Darok prior to this, it wasn’t indicated anywhere in her file. Of course, there had been those missing six months — anything could have happened then. Including contact with a surly SpecOps officer. Of course, that had to have meant that Darok would have somehow engineered her involvement in the operation. Could he have planted the suggestion to Jace to have a member of the Coruscant Aegis? Perhaps but… that didn’t add up. 

Theron had been the one to make the decision on the recruitment from the Aegis. If the Aegis member was the lynchpin in the plan, Darok would have to had to find some way to have each person on that list under his thumb. It was technically possible — almost anything was with his lack of intel — but that was the thing about conspiracies. They worked best by keeping people in the dark. It was the nature of secrets — the less people who knew, the less chance of being discovered. 

Besides, Darok seemed to set Highwind on edge almost as much as he did with Theron. That kind of thing could have been staged. So could have their bristling anger and standoff over the slave pens on Korriban. All of her wild heroics could have been played up for the supposedly stupid spy observing all of this. Her kind and sympathetic Jedi act could be just that — a way to throw him off the scent. Maybe she realized Theron was observing her closely and she was trying to play to his sympathies. Maybe the stoop in her shoulders as she walked up the temple steps was just an act, and maybe the glimpse of the unguarded expression on her face was also part of the show. Meant to convey the anguish and heavy toll of someone whose home had just been destroyed. That tightly wound control slipping through her fingers was something he was meant to sympathize with because it was a mirror of his own state of mind.

Anything was possible.

But as her eyes closed, he heard the heavy, deep breath she took in, and caught a quick glimmer on her cheeks that was quickly scrubbed away before those following in step behind her could see — and that hard suspicion splintered into a thousand pieces.

Whatever secrets lay in her past, whatever the source of those missing six months from her file was… it had nothing to do with this. He felt that as sure as anything. Deep down in his gut, like those sure and certain feelings the Jedi might feel from the Force. Ngani Zho used to say they were one and the same, regardless of one’s affinity for it.

Theron hesitated, before he keyed in his subvocal mic. “Hey. You all right?”

“Yes,” she said almost too quietly for even the overtuned comm unit to pick up. “I will be fine.”

If they were more than strangers, maybe this would have been the moment for him to say something comforting. Or encouraging. As her handler, all he needed to do was get her to finish the mission. Beyond that, none of this was any of his business. He was a professional. They both were. So he swallowed back whatever that feeling attempting to creep up on him was, and pulled up the sensor data.

“There’s an ambush waiting for you at the stairs. Prepare to get swarmed.”

“Okay,” she said. “We’ll be ready. After that?”

Theron blew out a breath, sorting through the stream of code to pick out the relevance of all the data. “There’s shielding around the Jedi Temple Library. They’re up to something in there.”

“The library,” she echoed softly, footfalls slowing their ascent. “A raid on the Jedi’s stores of knowledge. Just like the raid on the Sith’s.”

If there had been any lingering doubt of her being some sort of clever and dastardly mastermind, that put it to rest. Her constantly putting together the clues of the mystery unfolding before them was not exactly the work of an evil genius, just the opposite in fact. She also had a point. The coincidences were starting to stack up, and the more of them they found, the harder it was to ignore.

“I’m sending the source of the shield’s power to Teeseven,” Theron said, not acknowledging her statement aloud. Too many ears here. “You’ll have to shut it down before you can see what’s going on.”

“We will get to the bottom of this,” she promised, out loud this time as if for everyone to hear.

“Communication is going to get patchy when you get inside,” he reminded her. “So watch your back.”

“I will. Thank you, Theron,” she said, not bothering to hide her gratitude. “We couldn’t do this without you.”

She disappeared off from the view of the camera, entering into the ruined temple. An odd tightness began to settle in his chest. It was both light and smothering, and ideally, he’d be able to be alone to try and sort through whatever the feeling was. Maybe it was nerves. It was probably nerves. Too keyed up about the fate of Satele, the rest of the Jedi even, and not having eyes on his operative as she entered the most dangerous leg of the mission.

He let out the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, and glanced at the reflection closest to him. Then stood back in alarm from the console, abandoning all subtly as he turned to face an empty room. At some point, Darok had slipped out without Theron even noticing.

He glared at the station that the colonel had taken up residence at, considering the merits of pulling the security footage from the room. Maybe bypass a few Carrick Station safety protocols and track down the errant officer. See exactly what he was up to.

Theron didn’t have time for that. He had people on the ground, and despite the mounting suspicion over the colonel’s involvement in all of this, the safety of those in the line of fire was top priority. Once the mission was over, it was going to be Darok’s turn under the microscope. See what sort of dirty secrets were just waiting to be dug up. The truth would come out, and Theron would see justice done for every single life lost today.

No matter the cost.

#swtor fanfiction #theron shan x jedi knight #Theron Shan #Female Jedi Knight/Hero of Tython #oc: greyias highwind #otp: adorkable #SoR Fic O Doom #smoke and mirrors #swtor #fanfic #greyfic

[ksj-com]

The Purge Night-

Gunpoint

- Pairing: Hoseok x Reader

- Genre: ThePurge!AU, Hitman!AU, violence, smut, gore

- Warnings/Tags: pre-meditated murder, dark web hitman mention, (kind of?) slow burn, killing, fantasizing about ripping out someones diaphragm, soft Hoseok, crying reader, eventual smut, fucking over a kitchen counter, light spanking, marking hickeys 

- Word Count: 3649 words

- Summary: There are a lot of black market jobs that really come to life during the purge— including hiring a hitman. When Hoseok sees his target for tonight, will he pull the trigger or make an exception for you?

|| Masterlist ||

A/N: Thank you to my bestfriend Jasmin (aka @pjm-com) for writing out my idea for this story for me because my mentality to do ANYTHING today was not having it. If you like this story, check out her writings because they are amazing 

     Hoseok was excited for tonight, something he could feel in his veins weeks before the actual day came. He spent the prior hours preparing his weapons for that night to keep him alive, and that thought alone made him laugh. He was untouchable. He wasn’t marked by anyone else, but he was known to be dangerous in every way possible which meant work would be heavy in the towns over. The towns who had never seen his face, who hadn’t experienced him standing over someone about to blow out their brains.

     On purge night, there were two types of services that people could order. A protection service, in which someone would be posted outside your house to keep the crazy killers outside. There was another service as well, but it was highly illegal and fortunately for Hoseok, it was his full time job. Even sitting at his computer now, he’s searching through his e-mails on targets he has to kill before the week is up and oddly enough there is only one scheduled for tonight. A sick twisted smile forms on his face as he realizes that, he can take his time with you tonight. He could make it as quick as he wanted, or watch them die painfully tonight. 

     “This poor mother fucker,” he says as he leans back in his chair as he sipped on some alcohol. He’s already thought of five ways he can obliterate the body, man or women, he didn’t care. He could cut the sternum right under the chest plate and flip the diaphragm back, watching them struggle to breath without the main supporting muscle. But he’d save his sick fantasies for later before he gets too excited, and opens the e-mail. No specific information, no specific way to kill, just an address and a photo was all he needed to get the job done. Turning off his computer, he gets up and goes down into a secret room and is flicking the lights on to reveal an armory that he keeps just for his job. It paid in heaps of cash, which was why he had the best weapons known to man, some he’s been saving for special occasions.

     He moves towards the room with familiarity, knowing where everything is as he pulls out a bag that he’s had ready for weeks now. Unrolling the small bundle, Hoseok spreads it out on the table to show two of his favorite weapons. The Ruger SR40c which had its own silencer. It was one of the most dangerous handguns out there and he was honored to have it in his possession, right next to a needle that he can inject into her jugular vein to paralyze her. With confidence, he brings the gun into his view before putting it in his stomach holster that keeps the gun strapped to his back, before pocketing the needle. He’s leaving the room quickly to walk into the main portion of his house and shut it down for the night. He lived in a penthouse on the seventh floor of a large building in the city so he was not worried at all about someone waiting for him to get home. 

     In no time he’s pulling the work address up on maps and making his way down to his car in the parking garage, a black Cadillac that has aided him through many drive-by shootings. He gets into the car and immediately locks the doors out of habit before setting his phone on a mount and pulling out of there. Lucky for him, the house was one in the suburbs not even five minutes from here and given the timestamp in the information file, as he pulls up to the office building and spots his target getting into her car. 

     You hadn’t even seen him following you, and he’s already suspected you’re an idiot— case in point. He’s following you a few cars back to the house that looks nicer than he expected. He wasn’t usually supposed to ask questions on the job, but why would someone want you dead? Pushing the thoughts out of his head, he decides to turn off the main road and find a spot to park in the woods near your house. He could climb in the window when it was safe and slit your throat, or do something else if his mind thought it up. He watches you walk into your house, eyes over your shoulder every few minutes and the clock on his wrist tells him that it’s five minutes till the alarm is supposed to sound. He gets out of his car and starts treading through the thistle and branches to arrive at the edge of the forest right in front of your house. 

     His instincts kick in as he drops to his knees, another figure dressed in a suit and tie just like him, walking up to your house. Hoseok felt anger bubble in his chest. This was his kill, his money, and before he can plan on torturing the other hitman, a thought racks his mind. You fucking idiot, he thinks. That’s not a hitman, but a protection agent and it was like the devil had put this glorious opportunity right into his hands. He takes his gun out of the holster, glad that the agent had chosen to park far away, so it would make it easier for Hoseok to drag his body away. He’s lifting up the Ruger, aiming straight at his head, and he’s thanking the heavens for his silencer because within a split second the man is collapsing to the ground with a hole in his head. 

     Scanning the area, he doesn’t see a soul so Hoseok decides to move quickly since you’re already inside your house. He drags the agent back to his car after searching his body for any documents of concrete evidence that he was assigned to her house. After finding nothing, he shuts the car door and turns to her house before walking the same path the agent had moments ago. His knuckles knock on your door formally, a smile on his features as you open the door with wide eyes. “Miss Y/N?” He calls, extending his hand. You take it cautiously before nodding. 

     “Yes, that’s me. Are you my agent?” Hoseok nods and she’s ready to open the door to let him in before her eyes are fixed on something behind his shoulder. He turns around ready to whip out his pistol before he sees a toddler running from a girl’s car, whom he could only assume to be his nanny, up the stairs and to his mother. She coos at him happily, swinging him up in her arms and planting kisses all over his face. Hoseok can’t help but crack a smile at how happy you both looked together. A happiness he hasn’t felt in a long time. 

     “Hey sport, how was day camp?” He decides to do an outside perimeter check right as the alarm sounds, the boring speech filling his ears. Before rounding himself back inside to meet you guys eating at the dinner table. It must’ve been leftovers since he’d only been outside for all of six minutes, but your kid was chowing down either way. She turns to Hoseok, a soft smile on her face and he can tell she’s tired and worn out, and a little hint of fear lies in her eyes. He’s upset for a second, that he’d be leaving this kid without a mother since the contract only instructed you. He mentally slaps himself in the face. He’s here to kill you, not feel sorry for you. “Would you like any?”

     He shakes his head, putting his hands up. “No thank you, Miss. I already ate. Sit there and enjoy it, I’ll protect you.” She nods and continues to eat, making small talk with her kid about his day. Hoseok tunes it out, because he knows if he pays too much attention to it, he’ll start freaking out. It took him years to get over the death of his wife and kid. Five long years and he’s still scrambling to put his heart back into his chest. 

     He decides to watch the front door while they eat, and she’s getting him ready for bed. He’s doing a check of the halls and the bedrooms trying to find a place that he could hide in plain sight for later. While he’s in her bedroom, looking out her window to make sure no one was haunting the streets before he hears a soft hiccup behind him. You shut your door after tucking in your son, sobbing into your hands before your eyes are wide open at his figure in your room. 

     “Hey, I was just looking out your window to make sure no one’s waiting to ambush you… everything okay?” He asks in the softest voice possible. You look like you’re about to break apart right in his view and before he can ask again, you’re pressed into his chest crying. He short circuits with you in his arms, and he does the first thing he can think of which is holding you closer and sit on the bed. “Hey, it’s okay to let it out.. what’s wrong?” You’re gasping for air in his chest, hiccuping every so often as he rubs your back in rhythmic circles. 

     “It’s just.. my son.. He’s my everything and I’m barely s-scraping by to take care of him,” you sob and he sits there listening. “My fiancé was killed in the purge three years ago and it’s just been so hard without him.” Hoseok feels a jab of pain in his heart at your words. It’s something he knows very well, a pain he felt every night for the past five years.

     “That must be hard.. My wife and kid died in the purge as well, five years ago and that’s why I do what I do today.” He lies a little. The real reason he kills is because he has revenge for the world, cause he’s mad at the world. He screams at the stars every chance he gets, tears in his eyes asking God why he took the only thing keeping him going. They never respond back. Maybe they never will. “I want to protect people to make sure no more loved ones get killed in these sadistic games.” She offers a small hum as an answer, pulling away to wipe her tears before quietly apologizing. 

     “It’s just. I can’t protect him, not like you could. Please, keep him safe.” She’s begging him, tears in her eyes and streaming down her face. Maybe Hoseok breaks in that moment, a small piece of the wall he’s built is crumbling right now. He nods, thumb reaching up to push the tears away. “Even if you have to sacrifice my life over his, please make sure he’s safe.” Hoseok makes a promise to not touch a hair on that child’s head, no matter what happens tonight. He lets you lay in his chest as your breathing slows, and to his surprise you’re asleep within minutes. 

     Setting you straight on your bed, he makes sure you’re warm and cozy before shutting the door and sighing. It kills him on the inside but he walks into your boy’s room, and watches him for a while. He babbles in his sleep, a few words that Hoseok can’t understand. One does tear him a new one, your son mumbling ‘dad’ in his sleep. Hoseok can’t stay any longer but he vows to protect this kid his life if it’s the last thing he does. Pushing the thoughts out of his head, he goes downstairs to check all the doors and windows but the street stays surprisingly empty. That didn’t matter, because the killer was on the inside. 

     Now, as he sits and watches TV comfortably in your home, he wonders if he’ll be able to do it. Kill you in your sleep after you just cried in his arms. After he realizes you guys share the same pain, he won’t know if he has the heart. If he declines the job, he’ll be fired but maybe it’s worth it. A couple hours pass and it’s nighttime now, and Hoseok decides to go up to your room, to watch you for a while. You twist and turn in your sleep and as he inches closer, he’s afraid to wake you up. He kneels at your bedside, needle in his hand but he hasn’t removed it from his pocket. Your face is soft and free of stress lines as it rests against your pillow, hair fanned out against the sheets. The stains of your tears are evident on your face and it takes everything in his power to not wipe the remaining residue away. 

     Before he gets too far, your eyes open lazily before fixating on his figure. You don’t flinch cause you have great faith in how well he would be able to protect you, and you end up offering him a small smile. “Is everything alright?”  As if on cue, her kid starts crying and you’re suddenly on high alert.

     “He’s fine, he’s fine,” Hoseok calms you down instantly since he’s sure no ones in the house. He watches the look in your eyes return to normal and he fights internally with himself. “I’m sure a bad dream or something. Go check on him, I’m going to use the bathroom, okay?” You nod and he steps aside to let you tend to your kid while he slinks into the nearest restroom. He’s honestly nervous right now as he splashes water onto his face. He’s killed people without any mercy, and he’s wondering why the hell he can’t do it. Why he wants to stay outside your door and protect you every night. He opens the window once he decides that he can’t do it, and chucks the needle as far as he can away from the house. After slamming it shut, he pulls out his phone and deletes any trace of himself on the profile as much as he can in that time amount. He texts one of his close friends, asking him to wipe all his accounts clean before he steps into the hall. 

     After seeing your son asleep and your bed empty, he decides to trail downstairs and he spots you in the kitchen with your arms crossed as you wait for the coffee to be done brewing. He joins you in the kitchen and you guys sit in silence for a little bit. “Would you like a cup?” Hoseok nods and you pour him one, pushing the creamer and sugar towards him before making one of your own. 

     “You’re not going back to bed?” He exhales, and you shake your head. 

     “I wanna stay up with you. I can never sleep on nights like these, and I want to be awake should anything happen.. if that’s okay.” Hoseok nods and mixes the cream and sugar together before taking a drink. You sit at the island with your coffee in hand, as you sip from it momentarily. “Sorry for dumping all of that on you.. That’s not professional.” Hoseok shakes his head, leaning against the counter that you were sitting at. 

     “Don’t be. It’s good to know at least someone shares my grief.”

     You laugh softly at that before you exhale, shrugging. “I don’t know.. It’s just been so long since I’ve had a man in my house, or even someone to talk to. To hold me. It’s different, it’s not something I’ve had in a while.” Hoseok nods, looking at you, hyper aware of everything you do from flickering your eyes back and forth from his own and his lips, to your fingertips idly playing with each other on the table. Something in Hoseok snaps and he pushes his face forward to kiss you, something that almost makes him laugh. He was planning on killing you tonight, and here he is kissing you over your counter.

     He’s surprised as you kiss him back with fire, the same amount he had given you. He pulls away, your foreheads together as he laughs into your mouth, kissing you again before pulling away entirely. “I’m sorry,” he breathes. “I shouldn’t have done that.” You shrug as you get up, rounding the corner of the island before running your hands up his chest. He’s watching you with lust and fire as you shake your head.

     “It’s okay..” You were feeling some sort of way with him, and maybe it was desperation or lust but you wanted him. “This is the first attention I’ve had in three years.” His hands are on your hips as he pulls you closer into his chest, no restraint as he kisses you again. Your hands are around his neck in an instant, pulling your faces closer as you kissed him hungrily, wanting to diminish all space between your chests. “Just touch me,” you mumble and his last rope of control snaps as he grabs your thighs and sets you on the counter, pushing his dick into your core. You moan against his lips at how fast this was happening but you couldn’t care less as his hands are pushing your shirt up and over your head. He’s feeling your hips and your back while you’re undoing his tie, throwing it to the floor before working on his buttons. 

     Hoseok’s mind is spinning as he’s unhooking your bra and discarding that to the floor as well with his shirt too. Your tongue is licking up into his mouth which he takes the opportunity to lightly suck on it, making your legs tremble as you feel yourself getting more wet. “God, you’re just perfect,” he groans as he picks you up again and sets you down on the ground, one last hungry kiss to your lips before turning you around. “Gonna fuck you real good over the counter.” You whine in approval and push your pajama pants and underwear down in one go, kicking them around your feet while Hoseok’s working on his buttons. 

     “Hurry,” you breathe, and within seconds you feel the head pushing into you making your head drop into your arms. He doesn’t start out slow, and you thank god for the stamina he has gifted this man because he’s pounding into your pussy hard. “Holy shit,” you moan, your voice bouncing with each thrust into you while his hands grabbing handfuls of your ass. You’ve been so touched starved that you could cum right now if you think about it, but you wanted this to last as long as you could keep it. Hoseok’s bent over your figure, hips shoving you against the counter tops as he’s kissing your spine and marking your shoulders by biting and sucking wherever he could. 

     “You’re really fucking tight,” he growls giving your ass a playful smack and you moan into your own hand, careful not to wake your son. He’s not giving up, if anything he’s moaning louder into your ear as he picks up the pace, thrusting harder into you reaching spots that are making your toes curl into the floor. 

     “O-oh fuck.” You whine, eyes screwing shut as you slam back into his cock so he’d reach farther in you. That earns louder groans from the both of you, and his thrusts are getting sloppier by the second while your stomach is convulsing in pleasure. “I think I’m gonna come soon..”

     Hoseok hums in agreement, growling loudly as he starts to speed up, getting louder. “F-fuck me too.. I wanted to last longer but holy hell,” he whines. With one more slap to your ass, you’re cumming on his cock, clenching around him with a loud cry. Soon enough he fucks you through your high, and he’s cumming inside you, filling you up as he’s moaning into your ear. “Fuuuuck.” He drags it out, chest heaving as he pulls out of you and watches his cum drip from your pussy. He doesn’t hesitate to turn you around, pulling you into a kiss that was filled with passion. One you could feel when his lips first touched yours. 

     You both laugh embarrassed as you pull away, Hoseok cleaning you guys both up as you pull your clothes back on a little awkwardly. Hoseok wanted to stay here. Fuck his penthouse, fuck his job. He had enough money to support you and your boy if he’d give you a chance. He kisses your lips again, holding you close as you’re smiling into his lips. You guys make your way to the living room so he can keep an eye on you, a movie on the TV. No one really says anything for awhile until you speak up, voice wavering.

     “Maybe you’d want to protect me next year too? And the year after that?” Your voice is uncertain, and Hoseok’s eyes are wide as he looks down at you. He presses his lips against yours again, softly before he’s nodding against your forehead. 

     “Of course I will.. for however many years you’ll have me, I’ll stay.”��

     Hoseok found the last pieces of his heart he was scrambling for, something to fill the void. His heart was overflowing in competition now that he had you, and had a little boy that he could protect too. As you lay there in his arms asleep while he watches the windows, he plays with your hair gently as he thinks. Now he can stop screaming at the stars, because the motivation to keep going lies in his lap.

#bangtan seonyeondan #bts #bts smut #bts fluff #bts fanfiction #bts fanfic #bts imagines #Jung HoSeok #hoseok #jhope #jeon jungkook #jungkook #jung hoseok x reader #hoseok x reader #jhope x reader #jeon jungkook x reader #jungkook x reader

[hermitreunited]

TUA Feedback Fest!

💜💜 Favorite Fic Writer 💜💜

I could have split these all up to go under various rec theme posts, and maybe I will, but the gosh darn truth of it is that I love every fic by @sunriseseance​ aka Oceansweather so dang much that I needed to make a post about all of it. A very detailed post. It’s long, but she and her work deserve it. <3

A Hard Rain’s A Gonna Fall

Summary: In 1963, most citizens of Dallas had no idea where Vietnam was. He knew that because none of the people he passes as he walks look particularly dead inside. The sidewalk scorches his feet even though the sun hangs low in the sky. The air is hot and wet and it feels like a jungle growing in his chest.

aka, A Fourth of July fic about Klaus, trauma, family, and history. Takes place in 1963.

Rating: NR⎜Pairing: Implied Klaus/Dave⎜Word Count: 4k+⎜Complete (1/1)

This is true for all of her fics - the writing style is so engaging and good and smart! This fic in particular, though - WOW the narration is incredible. Gets you very deep into Klaus’ headspace for a gripping, panicky experience. He’s dealing with the fallout of a traumatic event that is about to happen to most of the people around him. So complicated and sad and intricate!

He wants to warn her that, hey, in 6 years your little boyfriend is going to get drafted and he’s going to go to a country you couldn’t pick out on a map and he’s going to kill people who he shouldn’t kill and every week he’ll write you a letter promising you that when he gets back you’ll move out of the city and your baby will have a real forest to play in and then he’ll kill some more people he’ll go to hell for killing if there’s a hell to go to, and then, well, he’ll get shot in the chest and the blood will come out of his mouth, too, and you’ll have to know that you weren’t there, weren’t fast enough to hear his last words or offer him some last comfort and he’ll be dead and for what? 

Happy Birthday, Johnny

Summary: It’s a nice place. Allison made sure of that when she chose it the first time. Three stays ago. God, they’re only 23 (And they are 23 now, or close enough). Three times? She may as well be lighting her money on fire.

Still, the chairs are comfortable. The visiting room is empty, of course, apart from a man with deep, heavy bags under his eyes. Fluorescent lights hum above her as she waits. They wash everything out, cast everything in a harsh shadow. Not that anything about the experience isn’t harsh. This is stupid. She knows it, now, as she feels her heart beating in her throat and the backs of her legs and her fingers.

What if he doesn’t want to see her? What if he was asleep for, what, the first time in 13 days? That’s how long it’s been this time, right? What if he hates her? (What if he’s right to do so?)

Rating: NR⎜Pairing: Gen⎜Word Count: 3k+⎜Complete (1/1)

Get ready for your heart to break from the Allison and Klaus feelings (and hold onto them, because she’s going to do this again, Allison and Klaus feelings is her brand). Being Hargreeves siblings is complicated, so so complicated, especially for these two, whose circumstances could not be more different, but when it comes down to it, they are quite similar. It’s pre-series, so it’s Sad, but boy is it ever a detailed look into these two excellent characters.

On their 13th birthday, before everything went wrong, Klaus snuck into her room at midnight with a magazine he stole and a cake he made. The smell of smoke stuck to all of his clothes, his skin, his hair. He gave her the cake, all of it, and the magazine. The smile that accompanied them haunts her.

He asked if he could sit with her, and she said yes. He asked if she’d ever smoked before, and she said no. He asked if she wanted to, and she said yes. He asked if she wanted weed or a cigarette, she said cigarette. That’s what the movie stars did. He gave her a look, a laugh, and showed her how to hold it so it didn’t burn her fingers. Not that he’d lit it yet. He wanted to make sure she had it down before he set her on fire.

Slow is in My Blood

Summary: Dave touches him, sometimes. In dances through root systems lit by a diffused moon, Dave puts a hand on his lower back, his arm, his shoulder. To help, he says. Your balance, he says, it isn’t good. I don’t want you to fall. These pits are endless, he says. You don’t like the dark. A touch to help. It helps.

aka, A meditation on Klaus and allowing himself to be loved. Dave doesn't die at the end.

Rating: NR⎜Pairing: Klaus/Dave⎜Word Count: 1k+⎜Complete (1/1)

I am biased, I suppose, because this fic was a gift to me. But like!!!! This fic!!! It’s sad and beautiful and lovely and so perfect. I can’t not think about Klaus and Dave’s relationship without thinking about the dynamic in this fic, about how Dave initiates and Klaus keeps himself from running away. It’s gorgeous.

Maybe it’s not one sided. Maybe he touches Dave on the back of his neck just to watch his skin react. Maybe he hopes the reaction comes from the touch itself, and not the chill Klaus carries with him. Maybe he lets the touch linger long enough for Dave to smack his hand away. Maybe he knows, somewhere, that smack is the wrong word. Dave doesn’t smack. He holds, and moves. He lacks a violence somewhere at his core. Maybe it’s the only way Klaus has something Dave lacks, and maybe it’s the only thing Klaus wouldn’t share if Dave asked. 

I’ll Be Cleaning Up Bottles With You on New Year’s Day

Summary: Sitting behind him on the windowsill, in a truth that still feels false, is Dave. Quiet, right now. Rubbing Klaus's neck. Kissing it occasionally. New clothes, even, though still only things Klaus saw Dave wear in life. The closest he came to fancy enough for New Year's was the outfit he wore on the night they first kissed. The dates still get muddled in his head.

Dave still smells like Dave. Klaus can bring that back, too. The earthy-clean skin, the slight scent of sweat, the cotton of the polo. Something else, underneath all that. Something that Klaus could recognize anywhere, could follow to the end of the world, could die to protect.

Rating: NR⎜Pairing: Klaus/Dave⎜Word Count: 1k+⎜Complete (1/1)

OKAY Okay okay. This fic was the equivalent of a bottle of wine when I read it on New Year’s Eve, because it just took these 1092 words, and suddenly I was crying and telling my friends how much I loved them. Me talking about it here is not going to do justice to the warmth and love that you will feel from this. You just have to read it. If you want to experience a moment of perfect contentment and peace that will probably put happy tears in your eyes, read this.

His family is together. Really. They sit in the living room, wearing out couches that have lasted centuries. Allison spills her champagne. Luther only moved Klaus to the slightly-opened window when Klaus started smoking.

Diego's puzzle, which he insists isn't his, keeps finding more pieces. Five and Diego work on it together. He watches them work on it together. He watches Luther help, before getting up to change the record on father's phonograph.

Karma, Leave These Kids Alone

Summary: Klaus is right, because he usually is. Their childhood was worth fearing. But it wasn’t all bad, she thinks, and some guilt pangs her. I wouldn’t wish this on us, but I’m glad I got him out of it. I’m glad Claire is safe.

She holds out her hand for him, and he takes it.

aka, A meditation on Allison and her traumas, guilts, fears, and loves. Centered around her and Klaus, their love for one another, and how that changes her love and fear for Claire.

Rating: NR⎜Pairing: Gen⎜Word Count: 2k+⎜Complete (1/1)

Allison and Klaus complicated feelings part deux! Now with added Claire feelings! The story centers around Allison’s fear of her daughter having powers, which I would read 100 fics about, and because it’s an Oceansweather fic, it doesn’t stop there. The Hargreeves are adults now who are trying to understand their childhood, and how they relate to each other. It’s complex and sad and it hurts but also it’s healing and growth and love.

He laughed that familiar laugh.

Why would she see the dead? Well, she has an imaginary friend like you used to. She has nightmares. Klaus, I am terrified for her. How did you know it was real? He was quiet, and then he said, well, I could see them. I always could. If she doesn’t see them, she doesn’t see the dead, right?

And Allison said yes. That makes sense. And then Klaus was quiet for a while longer, and then he gagged, and then he said, well, why are you terrified for her? She heard the venom in his voice.

Same As It Ever Was

Summary: He tries to love the heels. Really, he does. He knows Dave loves him in them. He knows, hey, it’s his job to look good. Right? Dave fixes cars and Klaus fixes dinner and cleans the house and looks oh so pretty. So, yes, he has to wear the heels. He doesn’t own any other shoes and he can’t go walking around barefoot. Not with his toenails painted black. Why were they black again? And, say, why did his wrist look so blank? He traced a shape that he couldn’t place onto his skin and waited for something to appear. Like invisible ink. aka, Life is perfect for the Hargreeves, which must mean something is wrong. How fortunate that Klaus is smarter than anyone gives him credit for.

Rating: NR⎜Pairing: Klaus/Dave, Diego/Eudora, Five/Delores⎜Word Count: 8k+⎜Complete (1/1)

This fic is so. freaking. cool. It’s closest probably to a horror story? It’s definitely creepy and uneasy, but it’s also melancholy and thrilling and - very importantly -it features Smart Capable Underestimated but Badass Klaus! I am willing to bet you have not read anything else in the fandom like this, and that you are going to be absolutely captivated. I know I am!

Klaus doesn’t want to see Dave, which is not a feeling he should have. He knows this. He knows he wants to see Dave every day for the rest of his life. So why is he running? Why are his feet carrying him to the bathroom? Why is he locking the door? The tumblers clang into place. His hands shake and he’s going to fall over and brain himself if he doesn’t catch his balance. He can only remember feeling so terrified twice in his life—except he can’t. He can’t remember it at all. So he can’t remember ever feeling this terrified.

It’s just Dave.

#tuafeedbackfest #long post #tua fic rec #also sunriseseance is a very good and lovely person with an great blog and excellent opinions #soooo probably you should go follow her and read and comment on all her fics? #and then when you are big a fan as me go send her some anons asking for the Allison wedding fic #because you are going to love that too #and anything else she writes!!

[elizapbrooke]

A discovery of pancakes

This is my newsletter from Friday, May 22. You can sign up here.

I am disappointed to announce that the bird call I thought belonged to an owl comes, in fact, from a mourning dove. “One of the most abundant and widespread of all North American birds,” Wikipedia says. It’s an embarrassing but maybe understandable mistake. I figured this owl was out during the day because it was a creature of New York like the rest of us, its circadian rhythm all fucked up by early morning garbage trucks and the blue glow of the Chase Bank across the street. The mourning dove’s coo is low and melancholy, a distinctive series of five notes. I’d certainly forgive you for thinking it’s a hoot. As I was listening to mourning dove calls on my computer and having this horrible realization, one landed on the fire escape and startled me with the loudest, most intimate rendition of their song I’d ever heard. It may as well have pressed its beak up against the glass. (I assume it thought there was a dove in the apartment.) I crept over to the window to confirm with my eyeballs what AllAboutBirds.org had already told me, and, yep, there it was. It felt so special to have a mystery owl in the neighborhood, but I guess doves are lovely birds too, with their plushy throats and elegantly tapered tail feathers. Anyway, my friend Sid tells me he’s heard owls in Gowanus, so I’m keeping my hopes up. This week I published a story for Curbed detailing the history and recent evolution of the home office. As I was fact checking it, I realized I’d accidentally talked to ten hundred sources, so please do enjoy the fruits of my labor. I’m not here to talk about home offices, though. A few weeks ago, I woke up in the middle of the night and discovered I’d been brainstorming pitches in my sleep. I was thrilled. On account of pandemic depression and seeing very little of the outside world, I’ve really been struggling to come up with story concepts, which is problematic because that’s my job. Most of my dream pitches evaporated upon waking, but I managed to hold onto one, and in my sleepy haze I thought it was possibly the greatest idea I’d ever had. It was: PANCAKES ARE HAVING A MOMENT IN QUARANTINE. I decided I’d email the New York Times first thing in the morning. In the light of day, I realized that there wasn’t really a story there. When you’re writing a trend piece, you want to be able to point to, I don’t know, at least four really solid examples from the public sphere. My evidence was:

Alex and I had made pancakes recently

We were planning to make them again

I’d recently discussed pancakes with Molly and Vivian

I’d heard you can make pancakes from sourdough starter discard (which actually does speak to the zeitgeist)

But here’s the thing. Pancakes are a great topic for a newsletter. So here is my pancake article.

***

I’ve always liked the look of a big stack of pancakes, but I never really got why people were so into eating them. I like a breakfast that is hyper-functional and maximally filling. Because I’m an aging hippie, my preferred breakfast is a double-sized bowl of Ezekiel cereal, which tastes like delicious cardboard and fulfills 42% of your daily fiber needs. Pancakes, like pastries, always struck me as glamorous but pointless. I was even somewhat distrustful of my mom’s pancakes, which are dense and nutty, not sweet at all. Her recipe came from a “chiropractor/health nut in San Diego about 31 years ago” and involves grinding your own flour from winter wheat berries, groats, rye, brown rice, and millet. I love them, but a family pancake breakfast still makes me feel very out of control. This all changed a few weeks ago when Alex and I decided to make pancakes for dinner. All I can say is that quarantine has a way of melting away the rigid little fucks you used to give. For once, the chaos I associate with pancakes sounded fun and freeing. Also we’ve been watching a ton of Parks & Rec, and I was feeling inspired by Leslie’s diet of waffles and whipped cream. We made buttermilk pancakes, extra fluffy ones that require you to whip the egg whites on their own for several minutes before folding them into the batter. Two with banana chunks, two with bits of frozen peaches, two blueberry, one bonus plain for me. I had mine without anything on top, enjoying the choking feeling of eating so much cakey carb. It felt like a hug. When I saw my friend Todd post a gorgeous stack of pancakes on Instagram, I asked him if he had any theories about why they’re such a good quarantine food. At first he thought I was trolling him, but when I told him I was dead serious, here’s what he said: “What I love about pancakes right now is that they feel both ordinary and radical at the same time. Ordinary because they are nostalgic, all-American, homey, comfortable, and approachable. Anyone can make them. But there’s also something really subversive about a stack of pancakes right now—the gluten, the non-plant-based butter and eggs, eating breakfast when Goop tells us we should be intermittent fasting, so forth. Eating pancakes in the time of coronavirus brings into focus how overwhelming wellness culture has become in recent years—celery juice and collagen smoothies will never, ever, ever beat a big, buttery, syrupy stack of flapjacks.” I would agree. Given my dedication to breakfast foods that involve sprouted beans—which predates our wellness moment but was certainly bolstered by it—I definitely find pancakes subversive. They make me feel nostalgic, too, but not for anything I’ve personally experienced. For weekends in high school that I spent ensconced in the television world of Gilmore Girls, maybe, where breakfast at Luke’s Diner is a comfortable routine. As I continued my journey into pancake reportage, I sought out the perspective of Sarah Jampel, an editor at Bon Appetit. While pancakes made from sourdough discard have their fans, Sarah is not particularly one of them. She’s also team waffle. I don’t really have a horse in the pancake/waffle debate, but Sarah makes a compelling case. “I have thought a lot about pancakes,” she emailed back when I asked if she had anything to say about the topic. “And yes, I have made them since isolation started—mostly because I'm ‘every woman’ and my fridge is overflowing with sourdough discard. ‘Put it in pancakes,’ I thought. The issue is that I need to add more flour (as well as butter or oil and leaveners) to sourdough discard to turn it into pancakes, so I ultimately end up using more ingredients for the sole purpose of not throwing some stuff into the trash or compost (but really, the trash). And even though pancakes sound nice in theory—why not start the day with a hot breakfast instead of the usual routine, eating a Clif bar with one hand while the other clings bare to the subway pole (huge sigh of nostalgia)?—in actuality they're inferior waffles. Unless you take care with your pancakes—loading them with lots of butter and separating the egg yolks and whites (this recipe's my fave)—they're too mono-textured.” Never fear: Alex and I loaded ours with an alarming amount of butter. I suppose it is to be expected that when you go out hunting for pancake insights, you come back with waffle testimonials. When I asked Alex’s high school friends to weigh in on the appeal of pancakes during a global shutdown, Nico said, “Waffles are the superior carb. They provide greater textural variety and are a better delivery vessel for condiments.” (Dylan has been eating toast all quarantine, and Dan “didn’t understand the question” because the only god he acknowledges is the Joy of Cooking’s pancake recipe.) My friend Molly has been eating a lot of savory pancakes under quarantine, for breakfast or lunch. She sautées a bunch of garlic and kale in olive oil, adding scallions at the last minute, and then sets the vegetables aside in a bowl. In goes the Bisquick, and she adds the kale mix on top of the pancakes as they cook; after a minute, she tops the pancake with shredded white cheddar so that when she flips it, the cheese turns crispy. She’ll eat that with a runny egg or garlic yogurt. I can’t wait to see her again so she can make one for me. Pancakes are one of the few foods that Molly has consistently been able to stomach during this period of immense anxiety. They have a strong positive association for her: in pre-corona times, she would make savory pancakes after playing soccer on Saturday mornings. Those games are one of the things she misses most right now. We talked on the phone while she made her daily trip outside to juggle a soccer ball. Molly likes to chat with friends during these breaks because bouncing a ball on your feet benefits from loose attention. “Cooking a pancake is similar,” she said. “It requires some focus but it’s not that hard. You don’t really need to cut anything. You just watch it.” Alex always says that cooking is meditative for him. I would respectfully disagree—to me, it feels more like hurtling down a mogul course—but I can see it with pancakes. You’re just systematically waiting and flipping, waiting and flipping. After making buttermilk pancakes, we progressed to Sqirl’s buckwheat pancakes for lunch on a Sunday. I can’t find the recipe online, but here’s a photo. For those who are lucky enough to have dodged my Sqirl talk thus far, it’s a phenomenal, semi-healthy breakfast and lunch spot in Silver Lake. Every time I’m in LA, I badger my companions into going right when it opens at 8 a.m. so we’re sure to get a table. When I was there to write about Dax Shepard in November, I high-tailed it to Sqirl right after our interview and embarrassed myself in front of the staff by inhaling bits of a particularly seedy cookie and having a loud coughing fit, after which I went around the corner to die in private. Alex and I thought we had all the requisite ingredients for Sqirl’s buckwheat pancakes, other than cactus flour, but the recipe calls for corn flour and it turns out cornmeal isn’t the same thing. We subbed in whole wheat, so they weren’t really Sqirlcakes, but they were still tasty in a restrained, earthy way. Alex convinced me to try one with raspberry jam, which I reluctantly admit was a great pairing. A week or two later, we made them again. I wasn’t really hungry because it was 2 p.m. and I’d already eaten lunch—Alex had just gotten up—but I pledged to eat my portion cold out of the fridge. Alex thought this was insane, but he sometimes forgets that I like my food a little squidgy. We went grocery shopping the next morning, which was as much of a bitch as it always is right now. Even though we’ve gotten the process down to a science, it still takes three hours from start to finish, with significant angst on my part about the cleanliness of the inbound goods. Finally everything was put away, and Alex headed off to take a shower. I was agitated and crazy hungry. I scrubbed my hands one more time, pulled the pancakes out of the fridge, and promptly dropped one on the floor while trying to get it into my mouth. I ate the rest in big, angry bites, one after another, standing in the middle of the kitchen. I didn’t want to sit down in my outdoor clothes. The pancakes were perfect, though. A shot of sweet, comforting carb straight to the heart.

[thebibliomancer]

50 More Days of Comics! 28/50: Avengers #37 (2001)

I almost feel like I’m cheating, covering this. My Avengers liveblog is so hiatus’d and here I am skipping ahead to the good stuff just because a box told me so.

But the box is as the box does and the box placed this issue in my path so here it be.

Look at that cover!

Shame its symbolical and not- nobody actually crucifies Captain America to a giant sword and swings him around. Its like they saw the opportunity and then didn’t go for it.

And for a change, I actually know the surrounding context of a random issue that I pull out of a box! Because I’ve read this run!

Half of the plot takes place in Slorenia, which got devastated during the Ultron Unlimited story. And by devastated I mean he killed the entire population and then went ‘oh hey uninhabited country, dibs, I call dibs on it!’

And then the Avengers showed up and killed him. Again. For like the fifth time. This time was the time when Thor would have words with Ultron so it was notable for that if nothing else.

The other half of the plot takes place adjacent to Avengers mansion and deals with the Avengers ongoing shadow war with the Triune Understanding. The not-at-all scientology not-at-all cult has a hate-on for the Avengers for reasons I don’t really remember so they’ve been stirring up public sentiment against the Avenger by, among other things, pointing out that they’re awfully white.

The idea that maybe the Avengers should reflect American diversity in some way caused Thor to ragequit the team.

It also allowed the Triune Understanding to suggest that hey their personal superhero Triathlon should join the Avengers.

I like Triathlon. I do not like the affirmative action plot because its retreading a plotline already done when the Falcon was forced to be part of the Avengers, whether he liked it or not, because the big bad government was forcing the Avengers to be diverse.

And I don’t like it because its taking something that should be good, diversity in the general but also in the specific sense of on a superhero team, and putting it in the mouths of people considered bad or antagonistic to make it seem like an imposition on the Avengers.

You’re on the wrong side of history Thor, the Avengers, and Kurt Busiek when you decided to rehash this plot from the SEVENTIES.

Although we’re in the part of the plot where Triathlon has decided after a talk with the Wasp that he’ll get out of the Avengers what he puts in so he has stopped being rightfully peeved that the Avengers initially didn’t want him and hate his religion.

Another part of the Triune Understanding thing is that the cult leader of the Triune Understanding can summon supervillains called Pagan and Lord Templar which he has been sending out to make the Avengers look like fool chumps.

That’s the long version. The short version is that Slorenia was destroyed by Ultrons before he was taken down by the Avengers. And the Avengers somehow pissed off a cult which has been waging a media war against them as well as sending out two jerks called Pagan and Lord Templar. And while Triathlon is a member of the Triune Understanding, his thetans are either too low or too high to be in on the schemes and just honestly sees the Understanding as a self-helpful group that helped him turn his life around and gave him superpowers.

Anyway, Slorenia. Pretty much the inspiration for Ultron ultroning Sokovia in the movies. But this is after the Ultroning so whats up now?

A giant weird looking swordsguy called Bloodwraith is marching through the land yelling about how everything is the Avenger’s fault.

Bloodwraith used to be shorter and used to be Sean Dolan. Somehow he ended up with the Black Knight’s cursed Ebony Blade and joined the UN and SHIELD organized humanitarian effort to clean Slorenia up, bury all the piles of corpses, get it habitable again. In case anybody wants to live someplace where a robot attack wiped out the population?

Anyway, the Ebony Sword ended up absorbing the millions of quite restless and entirely pissed off dead turning Sean Dolan into the Bloodwraith.

Who turns the skies dark and then starts rampaging, killing hundreds of the assorted volunteers, SHIELD agents, and UN people. That’s when Cap, who isn’t an active member at this time due to quitting since he was too old to want to fight a PR war, called in the Avengers.

Bloodwraith: “LEAVE ME BE, AVENGERS. HAVE YOU NOT ALREADY DONE ENOUGH IN THIS LAND? THIS LAND IS YOUR LEGACY, AVENGERS -- THE LEGACY OF YOUR FAILURE TO SAVE IT, OR ITS PEOPLE. MY PAIN IS BORN OF YOUR FAILURE. I WILL SHARE MY PAIN WITH THE REST OF THE WORLD. AND IF YOU TRY TO PREVENT ME -- YOU WILL DIE.”

And which Avengers? Why, Iron Man, Wonder Man, Scarlet Witch, and Photon!

Iron Man even designed a special toaster looking gun specifically to mess up Bloodwraith!

Captain America: “Will this work, Iron Man?”

Iron Man: “Well, Cap – considering I had to design it on the Quinjet over, build it out of spare parts, and haven’t been able to test it at all – yeah it should work. If that creature’s made out of any energy known to science – this should mess him up pretty good.”

-FAILURE-

Iron Man: (Okay… so the Bloodwraith’s not made of any energy known to science. Shows what I know.)

Cap sends Monica Photon Rambeau and Wonder Man to try to contain Bloodwraith. Photon runs the gamut of the electromagnetic spectrum but nothing seems to affect the giant guy.

But when Bloodwraith takes a swing at her, his giant Ebony Blade passes through her energy form intangibly but the cool she feels afterward knocks her down and Wonder Man also gets slapped out of the air just a panel later.

Scarlet Witch wonders what Bloodwraith is even doing here prompting Captain America to explain all that Sean Dolan stuff. But I’ve already covered that.

Cap berates himself and the Avengers for the whole situation. Sean Dolan apparently had a run-in with the Avengers before, not sure when. But the Avengers decided to let him leave with the Ebony Blade because they believed him when he said that he would break the curse. He wasn’t an immediate threat so they let him be. (Movie Cap might have words for you, Cap)

And now the guy that the Avengers let go is using the cursed sword of a once Avenger fueled by millions of restless souls killed by a robot created by an Avenger. This is an Avenger problem which created more deaths for the Avengers to avenge.

That’s where Cap is at right now.

Since science has failed, Cap says they have to rely on Scarlet Witch’s magic.

Scarlet Witch: “Uh, I’ve been studying, Cap – learning to better control the chaos-magic that fuels my hex-power and I’ve been making strides – but I’m not sure I can do that -- !”

Captain America: “Try.”

So while Scarlet Witch starts to meditate and touch the spirits of the Slorenia dead and ask them to rest in peace, Iron Man, Photon, and Wonder Man try to slow Bloodwraith’s march out of Slorenia.

And with Wonder Man’s strength (he punches with the force of Thor’s hammer! As he never gets tired of saying) and Iron Man’s repulsors, they’re actually slowing Bloodwraith down. Slowing. But not stopping.

Bloodwraith: “SLOW ME, PERHAPS – BUT YOU CANNOT STOP ME! THE WORLD WILL JOIN SLORENIA – JOIN IN HER PAIN! JOIN IN HER DEATH!”

And I guess Photon is flying around not contributing anything worth expositing, huh, Iron Man?

But when Scarlet Witch does make contact with the dead, Bloodwraith notices and turns around to march back toward Scarlet Witch. So now Wonder Man and Iron Man have to try to slow him down again except from the other direction.

And they lose Photon. Because they get a call from the B-plot saying that they need specifically her. So off she goes at the speed of light in atmosphere.

With Bloodwraith approaching, Cap tells Scarlet Witch that whatever she can do, to do it now.

So she does an energy thing and while Bloodwraith howls NOOOOOOOOOO! like some manner of Darth Vader, Scarlet Witch tells Cap that they’ve got to get everyone over the border fastlike.

She couldn’t break Bloodwraith’s link to the Slorenian dead. They were just too angry and too restless. Since her magic training was kind of an over a weekend deal, much of what she does is based on instinct and guesswork. Maybe Dr. Strange could have done it but if you wanted Dr. Strange maybe you should have invited him to join the Avengers a couple years down the line like you’re going to do.

So instead, Scarlet Witch strengthened the Bloodwraith’s link to the dead and to Slorenia itself. Bloodwraith is now trapped inside of Slorenia, unable to threaten the outside world. But it leaves Slorenia as a country of the dead barred from the living by a giant angry man with a cursed sword.

But under the circumstances, it was the best she could do.

Captain America: “I know. I’m not blaming you…” -sounding very much like he’s blaming her-

But what of the other half of the plot?

In the other half of the plot, the Avengers (Wasp, Warbird (Carol Danvers pre Captaining), Jack of Hearts, Vision, and Triathlon) are dealing with Pagan and Lord Templar smashing up Avengers Mansion.

Warbird and Jack of Hearts emerge from the river in a punchup with Pagan, apparently having battled through the mansion and then down the tunnel that led to the Avengers�� submarine pen that they totally have.

In the collapsed subbasement of the mansion, Triathlon (with three times the strength, speed, and stamina of a normal person fairly fit person?) holds the collapsed ceiling on his back to keep shrunken Wasp from being squashed like a bug.

Of course, Lord Templar picks this moment to show up and glare menacingly from the shadows talking about how the Avengers will make fine soldiers for him once properly conditioned.

And then Vision pops up from behind and shoves a fist through Lord Templar because if there’s one thing that Vision does really well, its that.

The distraction allows Triathlon and Wasp to regroup at Central Park so further property damage will happen in a public park and not in a building that has already been fairly smashed. I was actually being snide for the first half of that, about how the Avengers are ok with the damage not occurring on their own property but then halfway through I realized it probably does make sense not to fight in a building that has already partially collapsed.

Sometimes single sentences are journeys.

But as they relocate toward Central Park, Wasp wonders where her ex-husband Hank Pym has gotten to. He must have gotten the alarm. And I think there was a recent subplot where Hank got split into Goliath and Yellowjacket personas and the Goliath persona kidnapped Yellowjacket to a tiny lab in a tree in the Avengers’ yard unbeknownst to them. Its Kulan Gath related nonsense.

In the park, while Pagan plants Warbird and Jack of Hearts like dumbass trees, Lord Templar releases the Avatars of Templars, which are six Lord Templar looking guys that have a maximized attribute. Like Strength or Speed or Agility. Although I’m not sure what difference is being drawn between the last two.

When some of the peanut gallery of lookie loos and media wonder aloud what Lord Templar is doing, the guy, no joke, the guy literally bishie sparkles and proceeds to give an interview.

Lord Templar, sparkling: “I, mortal? I bring you the blessings of peace – and of universal law. A new order – indeed, a true order—for all to benefit from.”

The press: “holy pete, he’s giving an interview!”

Lord Templar, still sparkling: “The Avengers are a threat – champions of chaos, and outmoded individualism. But rest easy, my flock – their pernicious influence over you will stand no more!”

And while Pagan knocks around Warbird and Vision like its going out of style, Triune Understanding leader Tremont watches the battle on the news and gloats how perfect this is. The Avengers are being made to look like fool chumps. Granted, Triathlon is in the mix with everyone else and he’s the Triune Understanding’s best-known follower, but Tremont is confident that Triathlon comes off as struggling quite heroically.

It’s a complicated PR game, he plays. Making the Avengers look like doofuses when one of his one people is on the team.

But as things look bad suddenly Goliath pops up behind Pagan, grabs him by the scruff of the neck and hurls him into the sky like Team Rocket.

Because sometimes you just want a problem to temporarily not be a problem.

Plus, he has a really good idea.

And that’s when he calls Cap to ask to borrow Photon and she light speeds across the ocean and THROUGH Pagan.

Having a woman shaped bolt of energy pass through his chest gives Pagan pause and in that pause, Jack of Hearts focuses his zero-fluid granted energy powers into his fist and socks Pagan in the gut.

And Pagan collapses to the ground to the jubilation of the peanut gallery.

Lord Templar decides that leaving is the better part of valor and attempts to skeedaddle but Triathlon doesn’t like the thought that after all this noise Templar gets to just duck out.

He runs the gauntlet of the Avatars of Templar using his three-times speed and agility to make his way through and kicks Lord Templar in his dumb face, knocking the pain in the ass on his ass unconscious.

The peanut gallery loves it and hoists Triathlon and Jack of Hearts on their shoulders to do a hip hip hooray thing, not noticing that the unconscious bodies of Pagan and Lord Templar faded away without a trace.

Goliath briefly considers mentioning it but nah, they can have their moment. They earned it.

And then he offers gum to everyone because he did bring enough for the class.

Later after both plots have wrapped up, the Avengers convene or gather or I’m sure there’s another word. Memetic and alliterative. Ah well.

Anyway, the Avengers discuss what had just happened and Wasp mentions that SHIELD is arranging a cordon around Slorenia ot keep it quarantined until Bloodwraith can be dealt with. I guess nobody has bothered to call Dr Strange yet.

Cap has opinions.

Captain America: -muttering to himself- “Sure. Lock that barn door, boys, lock it tight…”

Wasp: “Cap…?”

Cap: “THIS SHOULDN’T HAVE HAPPENED! The Bloodwraith, Slorenia, Templar – they were all Avengers cases. But they got away, or we turned our back on them, and got surprised. We should have been prepared. We should have handled them earlier. Now look what’s happened. The Bloodwraith has killed scores of volunteers – good men and women trying to better the world. We lost a country. Templar and Pagan escaped again. And we’re still playing catch-up – always playing catch-up. Always two steps behind!”

Wasp: “You’re right, Cap.”

Cap: “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t take it out on you. But there must be a better way. There must be something that can be done.”

Wasp: “Maybe there is.”

Cap: “Hm?”

Wasp: “Maybe it’s time for Captain America to return to the Avengers. And time for us to make some changes…”

DUN DUN DUN!

Leading to the Avengers actually getting organized! Which only lasts until the end of the Busiek run. Afterward, they return to being dumbasses. And then they explode. And then they’re the New Avengers and then they’re really dumbasses.

I’m predisposed and also biased towards this comic but what a good comic that I already liked! Thank you, box!

But there’s a lot of little details in the writing that can be dismissed as cheesy silver age type writing that I think makes things more coherent.

Like early on after Iron Man has gotten his ass kicked by Bloodwraith he thinks to himself that as dangerous as the situation in Slorenia is, he can’t help but wonder how things are going back in New York.

SCENE TRANSITION.

And there’s always a comment or a caption that signals that the scene is shifting.

Another one, while the Avengers are getting their asses kicked by Pagan has a news reporter ask her cameraman if he’s getting this and he confirms that its going out live.

CUT TO TREMONT WATCHING THE FIGHT ON TV.

It’s a small thing but it really adds coherence. Just like people narrating their actions in that goofy Silver Age way makes sense of sometimes confusing art.

Next time: Some questing elves

#Avengers #kurt busiek #50 More Days of Comics!

[dreameater1988]

My Top 10 Twelfth Doctor Stories

I’ve seen other people do this, so I decided to make my own Top 10 of Twelfth Doctor stories.

10. Flatline

I have a soft spot for stories in which the Doctor gets in a bit of a situation and putting him in a shrinking TARDIS was a hilarious plan. I have to admit, I wasn’t that fond of the episode when I first watched it, but to be quite honest, I love it a bit more with every rewatch. I think this really is one of those episodes that you have to watch a couple of times to really appreciate it. I’m also glad that the Boneless were picked up again in one of the comics because who doesn’t love a recurring monster? They were creepy, they were threatening and quite difficult to defeat - which the Doctor eventually did while giving an amazing speech. I think it was the first Twelfth Doctor speech that really struck me because of how fierce and powerful it was. And a cute bonus: Doctor Oswald. All of these things definitely put Flatline in my Top 10.

9. The Zygon Invasion / The Zygon Inversion

Another thing I love about Doctor Who? Kate Stewart! So it would be a shame not to include one of her stories in my Top 10. I have always preferred two-parters over single episodes because of that little heart attack causing “to be continued” thrill and these episodes do it quite brilliantly. The Zygons as monsters aren’t exactly my favourites, but they were really well used in this case. I really enjoyed the storyline and the many jokes that were put in the episodes (Why do you have a Union Jack parachute? - Camouflage. - Camouflage? - Yes, we’re in Britain.) There really are so many things I love about this two-parter: the Doctor’s emotional speech, Jenna marvellously playing two different characters, Kate tricking the Zygons, . . . The final product is a thrilling episode and wonderful entertainment.

8. Dark Water / Death in Heaven

The finale of S8 has to be on this list for one reason alone: Missy. Michelle Gomez really, really rocked that part and I will love her forever for it. I never really liked the Simm!Master because of various reasons (mainly cause his version of the Master collided with the version in a book I’ve read and loved). Yet the Twelfth Doctor and Missy really brought that “true friendship gone horribly wrong” part across. There was also the storyline of Clara losing Danny and later losing the Doctor by letting him go which I think shaped her S9 character to a large degree that I really, really love. The Cybermen were less creepy in this episode than in others (the S2 two-parter has scarred me forever), but this story wasn’t about the Cybermen or an invasion at all, at least it’s not how I see it. This two-parter is about loss and friendship. And it contains yet another Twelfth Doctor speech that I will love until the day I die. He’s my idiot with a box and a screwdriver. 

7. Oxygen

I feel obligated to put at least one episode from S10 on my list and since this was the only one that really stirred something in me, here we go. I loved the space station setting (because I’m a sad sci-fi nerd), I loved the dystopian “oxygen on sale” bit, but you know what I loved the most? The Doctor going blind. Oh my God, how I loved the big reveal in the end when he said he still couldn’t see. The Doctor is a Time Lord surrounded by humans, he is always superior to them simply because of the fact that he’s (like he said to Clara in FtR) “less breakable”, but finally, we get to see that he is breakable after all, that he’s vulnerable, that he’s no longer the superior hero. I love that bit. Sadly, the episodes that followed didn’t really put this plot twist to use in my opinion.

6. Mummy on the Orient Express

Who wouldn’t want to go on a trip on the space Orient Express with the Twelfth Doctor? This episode was beautiful from start to finish: the setting, the costumes, the dialogues, the storyline, the tension between the Doctor and Clara. Every moment of this episode was wonderful and a pure joy to watch. It was also a big turning point in the relationship between the (new) Doctor and Clara because, for the first time, she saw him for who he really was. Now, a couple of weeks ago I bought Doctor Who - The Complete History and I read about the making of this episode and I have to admit that I probably would have loved the original script (in which the Mummy is a life-extending body suit that won’t let people die and Clara briefly gets turned into one) a little bit more because it contains more sci-fi elements than the version they ended up using. But hey, I’m not complaining. The episode is awesome.

5. Into The Dalek

“I see into your soul, Doctor. I see beauty. I see divinity. I see hated.” Just hearing these words in my head gives me goosebumps and I think that is a very good sign that this episode definitely belongs in my Top 10. A lot of things have been done with Daleks over the past 50+ years, but miniaturizing the Doctor and putting him inside one is definitely one of the more brilliant ideas. I also really love the early version of the Twelfth Doctor, I love my grumpy, old alien and he’s at his peak in this one. But he’s also still struggling to find out if he is a good man or not and I really enjoyed that conflict that we saw in Peter’s first season. Rusty the Dalek plays a big part in that conflict and their dialogue makes me shiver even after watching it about 30 times.

4. The Magician’s Apprentice / The Witch’s Familiar 

The Doctor riding a tank into a medieval castle while playing the electric guitar! Do I need to say more? Yes, I’m definitely going to say more, but, oh my God, that was probably one of my favourite moments of the entire show. I sat in front of my telly, gawking at the screen. There will never be a season opened better than this. You won’t believe how much I enjoyed watching it the first time and how much I am still enjoying it every time I watch this episode. The rest of the two-parter is anything but a let-down. I loved the Twelfth Doctor/Missy interactions in this one because up until the end of the episodes you can really see the former friendship, you can see just how long they have known each other, how much they meant to each other back then (I live for this kind of thing). Also, bringing back Davros is always a nice touch. Bringing back Skaro was amazing (and seeing the fear in Missy’s eyes when she realized where she was). The Clara/Missy duo was amazing. The Doctor pleading for Clara’s life on his knees when he thinks he’s about to lose her. Honestly, there isn’t anything that I don’t love about this two-parter. Add “The Doctor’s Meditation” to this and you’ll get 10 minutes of pure, silly fun as well.

3. Listen

This episode was the one where I decided that Twelve was my Doctor. In fact, it was the pre-intro scenes with him that showed him sitting on the TARDIS roof and talking to himself by candlelight that got me. But that’s not why I loved the episode. It was properly creepy. I love the creepy episodes the most and sadly, there has been a bit of a lack in those in recent years, but Listen was definitely one of the best. I first watched the leaked black and white version and even then it gave me chills. This episode also showed how much of an impact Clara really had on the Doctor (apart from getting him to save Gallifrey and asking the Time Lords to help him). She saw him as a young, frightened boy and she put those thoughts in his head that would accompany him for the rest of his life. It was a wonderful, little twist. I also really enjoyed the fact that we never got to know what the monster actually was. I love that some people believe it’s a kid under a bedspread and some (like me, cause I’ve paused and seen a screenshot of what looked like Voldemort) think it was an actual monster. Whatever it was, I’m glad we never got the solution handed to us. That makes it even more interesting to me.

2. Under the Lake / Before the Flood

I don’t think I’ve said it enough, but this two-parter is actually perfect. Everything about it is perfect. The Doctor and Clara are at their peak, they’re having their “glory years”. It’s very likely that there was a large time span between TMA/TWF and this two-parter because we see them in full action, we see them incredibly bonded, we see them trust each other completely. This is the first time we see how intense their relationship actually is (“If you love me in any way, you’ll come back”, “I’m changing history to save Clara.”). They are the perfect TARDIS duo in this one, but we also get a sense of foreshadowing as to what is going to happen to Clara in the future. The minor characters in this story are all perfect as well, I can’t say a single bad word about them. I normally don’t care about minor characters because I’ve learned that many of them end up dead anyway, but in this one, I can’t help but feel for them as well. As for the storyline and plot twist, it was a two-parter full of exciting moments and surprises with a lot of laughs and emotions thrown in as well. And the Fisher King was a great monster. Perfect television entertainment for a Saturday night that almost ended up being Nr 1 on my list.

1. Heaven Sent / Hell Bent

Heaven Sent is, in my opinion, Steven Moffat’s masterpiece and always will be. It felt like he was working his way up from The Eleventh Hour to culminate in the S9 finale with two episodes that actually managed to blow my mind. I am very critical when I’m watching TV and I’m not so easily impressed, but Heaven Sent actually blew my mind. Heaven Sent, an episode that is longer than usual, that features only one actor in only a handful of rooms and it’s the best damn thing I have ever seen on TV. During S10 I often complained about seeing the “plot twist” coming, but this one took me completely by surprise and broke my heart in the process. Oh, the tears I’ve shed over Heaven Sent! It’s that moment the Doctor realizes what he’s doing, what he’s been doing and for how long that always breaks me and it’s underlined by the most perfect Murray Gold score I’ve ever heard. And of course the big reveal that Gallifrey was waiting on the other end. 

I think Heaven Sent / Hell Bent are the perfect depiction of the stages of grief in the Doctor’s 4.5 billion years quest to save Clara. And oh, how he did it! It’s not a secret that Clara has been my favourite companion from the moment she appeared on screen and after watching her become more and more like the Doctor over the course of the seasons, it was such a satisfaction to see her get her own TARDIS and run away. There is something so bitter-sweet, so emotional about this series finale and at the same time, it’s so full of twists and turns and surprises. It’s devastating and uplifting at once. In one word: perfect!

#whouffaldi #peter capaldi #twelfth doctor #doctor who #my top 10

[lunapaper]

The year was 2010. Emo was just starting to die out (long live the scene). I was studying to become a secondary school teacher, and Katy Perry was shooting whipped cream out of her boobs...

Second albums, more often than not, fail to live up to the hype. And yet, Teenage Dream has somehow endured.

While Perry’s 2008 debut, One of the Boys, launched her into the mainstream, it really hasn’t aged all that well. On tracks like ‘Self Inflicted’ and ‘Fingerprints,’ she tries way too hard to emulate Paramore’s bold pop punk. On others, she attempts to rebel against her gospel roots by turning the bawdiness up to 10.

It can also come off pretty juvenile at times. The singer was almost 25 when she sang on the title track: ‘So over the summer, something changed/I started reading Seventeen and shaving my legs/And I studied Lolita religiously/And I walked right in to school and caught you staring at me.’

But let’s be honest: Even though it’s been declared ~problematic~, you still jam out to ‘I Kissed A Girl’ when you hear it, don’t you? I hadn’t listened to ‘Ur So Gay’ before this, either, but its slinky, jazz-infused vibe absolutely slaps.

Like Teenage Dream is also a product of its time, presenting pop at its most sugary, hook-laden and bombastic. It managed to spawn 5 No.1 singles, the second album in history to do so after Michael Jackson’s Bad, as well as a documentary, Part of Me. There’s even a deluxe edition, cleverly titled The Complete Confection. It was Perry at her peak.

You know the title track, of course. Evoking images of cherry red lipstick, tight denim and driving down an empty highway in summer, Perry desperately clings to the memory of young love, breathlessly pleading ‘don’t ever look back, don’t ever look back.’

‘The One That Got Away,’ meanwhile, is its bittersweet sequel, Perry's lovesick nostalgia now tinged with regret. Yet, the only thing I really remember about the song is the video starring Cassian Andor himself, Diego Luna, as Perry’s past love, the beautifully dishevelled and tortured artist of my dreams (Dear God, that penetrating stare...) He’s also the only reason why anyone bothered to watch Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights, if it wasn’t already obvious.

First single ‘California Gurls,’ on the other hand, is pure pop exuberance at its most campy and carefree, indicative of a more innocent time when it wasn’t driven by algorithms or social media. ‘Firework’ is still a go-to empowerment anthem for just about every kind of montage imaginable. ‘ET’ (featuring a pre-’presidential’ Kanye) is heavily-synthesised cyber pop that doesn’t get nearly enough love.

But Teenage Dream, in retrospect, has quite a few misses. ‘Peacock’ is just one big, long, glitchy dick joke. ‘Not Like The Movies’ is big ballad schmaltz. The brassy soft rock of ‘Hummingbird Heartbeat,’ meanwhile, opens with a hell of a line: ‘You make me feel like I'm losing my virginity/The first time, every time when you're touching me.’ And I’m pretty sure ‘What Am I Living For?’ is partly plagiarised from Justin Timberlake’s ‘My Love.’ Even Pitchfork awarded Teenage Dream a rather tame 6.8 in their recent retrospective review.

By the time Perry released Prism in 2013 – her ‘darker, moodier’ record - she had shifted further into ‘inspirational anthems.’ There was the inescapable mega-hit ‘Roar,’ the saccharine power ballad ‘Unconditionally’ and the Eastern-tinged ‘Legendary Lovers,’ complete with wellness and spiritual motifs.

But it wasn’t without its bangers: ‘Dark Horse’ (featuring Juicy J) jumped onto the trap pop bandwagon just in time with its subterranean bass and eerie, otherworldly synths. Even the slick, 90s-indebted ‘This Is How We Do’ has a certain charm.

Prism also marked the point where Perry’s invincibility began to wear off. Where the masses once lapped up her candy-coated antics, they were now calling her out for wearing braids in the video for ‘This Is How We Do’ and dressing up as a geisha during a performance at the American Music Awards.

And they would only get louder during her era of ‘purposeful pop.’ Released in the aftermath of the 2016 US election, Witness was meant to cement Perry as ‘Artist. Activist. Conscious’ - as her Twitter bio read at the time. She had joined Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail. On Instagram, she was quoting the likes of Socrates and Plato. She was Woke now, and she was telling anyone who’d listen.

Yet you’d be hard pressed to find much trace of this ‘purposeful pop’ on Witness, bar the first single, ‘Chained to the Rhythm.’ Written with Sia and Max Martin, the singer implores listeners to ‘put your rose-coloured glasses on and party on’ amid whirling, colourful synths.

The rest of the record, however, is made up of either soppy, overly sentimental ballads (‘Save As Draft,’ ‘Pendulum,’ ‘Into Me You See’), awkward lyrical turns and CHVRCHES/Purity Ring knock-offs (‘Hey Hey Hey,’ ‘Roulette,’ ‘Deja Vu’).

Funnily enough, Purity Ring’s Corin Roddick produced some of Witness’ better tracks: ‘Mind Maze’ and the soaring ballad ‘Miss You More, along with ‘Bigger Than Me.’

Final track ‘Act My Age,’ meanwhile, feels like a pre-emptive strike against the criticism Witness would inevitably receive (‘They say that I might lose my Midas touch/They also say I may become irrelevant/But who the fuck are they anyway?’).

Then there’s the godawful ‘Bon Appetit’ (featuring Migos) with its food-related double entendres. It was ‘Yummy’ before ‘Yummy’ existed. Seriously, I just wanna see Orlando Bloom say he likes this song with a straight face...

But I will still defend ‘Swish Swish’ to the death. Do the lyrics suck? Yeah, but Perry’s never been the strongest lyricist. But its pulsing 90s house beat does a lot of the heavy lifting, along with Nicki Minaj’s spitfire verse.

The promotional rollout for Witness, meanwhile, proved just as messy. Among the most infamous was a 72-hour livestream, where voyeurs got to witness Perry sleep, meditate, do yoga and welcome a random assortment of guests, including Gordon Ramsey and activist DeRay McKesson. Then there was the meme-laden video for ‘Swish Swish. She literally served herself up on a platter in the clip for ‘Bon Appetit.’ She tried reigniting her feud with Taylor Swift on James Corden’s Carpool Karaoke. Needless to say, it reeked of desperation.

Looking back, though, you can’t help but feel a little bad for Perry, trying so hard to please only for it to blow up spectacularly in her face. So devastated, it sent her to the Hoffman Institute, which offers an abridged version of therapy. As she later told the Guardian:

‘I think the universe was like, ‘OK, all right, let’s have some humble pie here […] My negative thoughts were not great. They didn’t want to plan for a future. I also felt like I could control it by saying, ‘I’ll have the last word if I hurt myself or do something stupid and I’ll show you’ — but really, who was I showing?’

But although Witness lacked the perkiness of Teenage Dream or the cartoonish charm of One of the Boys, it shines best on its darker moments.

‘Dance With The Devil’ has the kind of smoky allure that wouldn’t look too out of place on a BANKS album, while ‘Power’ is a revelation. Produced by Jack Garrett, what could’ve been yet another dull empowerment ballad is turned into a gritty, groaning slab of vaporwave pop, with sultry sax riffs that sample, of all things, Smokey Robinson’s ‘Being With You.’ It’s electric as fuck. You believe it when Perry sings: ‘’Cause I'm a goddess and you know it/Some respect, you better show it/I'm done with you siphoning my power.’

If the singer had just done away with the whole ‘purposeful pop’ concept and stuck with Garrett, Roddick and Terror Jr’s Felix Snow as her core producing group, Witness probably wouldn’t have been half the failure it was. It could’ve had a chance to grow on people, the kind of slow burn Perry could’ve gotten away with at this point in her career. The cyberpop dystopian feel also could’ve gone hand in hand with her newfound wokeness, echoing people’s fear and anger in the aftermath of Trump’s win. But alas, we’ll never know...

While the rollout for Witness over the top, Smile’s was lacklustre and wildly inconsistent.

First single ‘Never Really Over’ came out a whole 15 months before the release of Smile to little fanfare, along with a hippie-inspired video to match. ‘Harleys in Hawaii’ later followed, which also stuck with the flower power aesthetic. Other singles - ‘Daisies’ and the title track – seemingly came and went without a trace.

So how did Katy Perry get to this point? And is there any chance of coming back?

It’s hard to say. A lot of artists go through a rough patch or two:   Miley's twerking antics divided audiences when she released 2013’s Bangerz. Taylor Swift’s reputation divided audiences. Only in recent years has Lady Gaga’s ARTPOP been vindicated. Such is the nature of music and pop culture in general. It’s fickle, just one vicious cycle after another; an endless quest for trend-bait that'll never end.

Right now, disco pop is going through a renaissance, while hyperpop reigns supreme. Dua Lip and Charli XCX are basically untouchable at the moment. TikTok has taken over from Top 40 radio when it comes to breaking hits, while the gap between album releases has also grown shorter and shorter. Even the nature of fandom has changed, shifting from old-school elitism to the bloodsport that is ‘stanning,’ along with an unhealthy amount of ‘endless simping’ (to quote a close friend of mine).

Perry, meanwhile, has failed to keep up, choosing to play it safe in order to avoid further scrutiny. But in doing so, she strips away the humour, the mischief and other idiosyncrasies that fans fell in love with in the first place.

But what choice did she have? As Junkee’s Sam Murphy notes in his own piece about Perry’s rise and fall:

‘At that point, you have two choices as a popstar — hunt for relevancy or make what comes naturally to you. Perry chose the former and came unstuck. She inserted vague wokeness into her songs as cancel culture infiltrated pop, tacked on rap features as hip-hop became the dominant commercial genre, and worked with producers who may have been able to find her credibility.’

(Full disclosure: I started writing my piece on Perry back in December 2020, so the timing of Murphy’s piece and mine is purely coincidental).

Even if you don’t believe in cancel culture, no one actually wants to be cancelled. It’s just not good for PR, especially for someone with an image as glossy and as carefully put-together as Perry’s. Even now, she continues to atone for Witness, telling the LA Times: ‘Having more awareness and consciousness, I no longer can just be a blissful, ignorant idealist who sings about love and relationships […] Even my travels have afforded me a new perspective on cultures, class systems and the inequality around the world, not just in the United States,’ though she carefully avoids the subject of politics on Smile.

But redemption is possible. Swift – Perry's one-time nemesis - was a total pariah back in 2016, mocked for her Girl Squad, for diddling the Hiddles while on the rebound from Calvin Harris and criticised for remaining coy on her political leanings. Now she’s earning indie cred with two of 2020’s biggest albums, folklore and evermore, and has thrown her support behind a number of social causes.

The devil works hard, but Swift’s PR team work harder. I might not be her biggest fan, but Taylor works Kris Jenner levels of mastery when it comes to rebuilding public sentiment. Thanks to her newfound indie cred, you’ve almost forgotten about the pastel atrocity ‘Me!,’ her 2019 duet with that insufferable drama kid cliché, Brendon Urie. Shifting her songs away from petty grievances to more original storytelling was also a smart move.

But while Swift has managed to move on, Perry seems to have fallen into the same adult contemporary trap as Gwen Stefani, Kelly Clarkson, Christina Aguilera and Pink, one that ensnares many female artists over 30 (Though many have also managed to escape – Gaga, Taylor, Beyonce, Rihanna, Kesha, Robyn...)

As ‘woke’ as the industry and fans at large might think themselves to be, they’re still pretty ageist. There's still an expectation to ‘mature’ your sound as you age, to become more ‘serious.’ No more fun, no more experimenting, boomer. But when you do end up filing away the edges, you’re called dull, generic and past your prime. Perry said as much on the aforementioned ‘Act My Age. You just. can't. win.

And yet, many female artists over 30 have created some of their best work yet in just the past year or so: Hayley Williams made the dramatic shift from pop rock to low-key, Radiohead-inspired tunes on her solo debut, Petals For Armor. Fiona Apple’s Fetch the Bolt Cutters was hailed by critics as her most bold, urgent and visceral. Jessie Ware’s What’s Your Pleasure? was a cut of understated disco pop elegance. Carly Rae Jepsen, meanwhile, released an equally stellar companion to 2019’s Dedicated.

At this point in her career, Perry could afford to follow a similar path to that of the Canadian singer. Once the meme value of ‘Call Me Maybe’ wore off, along with her mainstream appeal, Jepsen finally had a chance to discover real creative freedom, pushing her sound to greater heights and earning critical acclaim, all without having to compromise her love for catchy hooks and bold synth pop arrangements.

A couple of years ago, a Reddit user made a post about participating in a focus group held by Perry’s label to discuss why she’s ‘no longer one of the[ir] most notable female pop artists,’ and ‘what can [they] do with her image or marketing to make you care about her again?’

It’s depressing to think that an artist as accomplished as her needs a focus group to help solve her identity crisis. There really is no easy answer. Hopefully, Perry will be able to return more vibrant and assured than ever, on her own terms...

-Bianca B.

#music #katy perry #longform #opinion #new #Bianca B

[inawickedlittletown]

Walking The Wire (151/161)

Summary: Tony Stark always knew about Peter Parker. He didn’t know that Peter was going to get superpowers and become Spider-Man, but he always knew about Peter because Peter was his son.

This will span from pre-Iron Man up through the rest of the MCU (eventually including Infinity War) and will be for the most part canon compliant except where I’ve taken some liberties and interpreted canon a certain way.

Pairings: Pepper/Tony, Tony/Steve (endgame), Tony/Mary (past)

A/N: If you want me to tag you when I post new chapters let me know. This fic is also on AO3

I used Collider’s MCU timeline to stay canon and the title of this fic is an Imagine Dragons song that is just so fitting for Peter and Tony

@findmeinthestarss

Masterpost

Chapter One Hundred Fifty 

-

Steve leaned against one of the work tables. Tony had gotten busy with his armor again after they got back from the past and Asgard. After arriving back and receiving a message from Carol, they decided it was best to just take a few days to rest. They were going to go for the next two stones back to back. It also meant they had time to prepare and Tony was working on things for everyone because soon they’d be going up against Thanos and they all had to be prepared and at their best.

Steve for his part just stayed where Tony was. In the lab or in the kitchen or in their room. Sometimes he brought a book along or some art supplies but they never kept his attention for long.

“At some point, you do need to get some rest,” Steve said when he checked the time and realized they’d been in the lab for far longer than he expected.  

“I just have to finish this and this suit is done,” Tony said.

Steve reached over to brush Tony’s hair back from his forehead. “I’ll give you one more hour, Tony. You need to sleep.” Tony leaned into his touch.

“And here was I, I thinking that it wasn’t just sleep you wanted.”

“Sleep,” Steve repeated with some amusement and then he pressed a kiss to Tony’s head, but he stepped back and let him get back to work.

It was a little over an hour before Tony finally got up and closed everything. He stretched his arms and actually yawned.

“So, it’s possible that I am actually tired,” he said.

“I didn’t think you’d ever admit that,” Steve said with a grin. “And I can promise we might have a good morning to look forward to.”

Tony laughed at that but didn’t say anything as they walked towards their room and then Steve who had been ready for bed for a while now just watched Tony as he changed and brushed his teeth and then slipped into the bed.

“You know, a part of me didn’t think we’d get this far,” Tony said.

“With the stones?” Steve confirmed.

“Yeah. And we’re sort of going in blind on this next one.”

Steve intertwined their hands. “You worry too much. It can’t be worse than any of the others. Clint made a good point earlier. We have four of the stones and it might make a difference if we actually use them.”

During a meeting to figure out their next trip into the past, Clint had brought up that they had four stones and that it was possible for them to do something with even just the four stones. While it was a good point, Steve also knew that the stones were powerful and they didn’t know the consequences of using them -- even on their own. They also needed all six to face Thanos and to return everyone that had been dusted.

“It’s risky,” Tony said. “Rocket said that he and the Guardians only managed to hold the Power Stone and not die because they held hands and because Quill is the son of a god or something.”

“But Jane had the Aether in her,” Steve pointed out.

Tony nodded. “And Loki used the scepter without much trouble. Maybe they’re different even from each other.”

Steve could tell that Tony was getting drowsier the longer they were in bed, the warmth and the softness of the blankets pulling him into sleep. His eyes were drooping as he tried to keep their conversation going.

“Perhaps -- we’ll need to use them...eventually, after all.” Tony yawned and Steve reached over to caress his face with his fingers -- easing his brow and lightly touching his eyelids. Tony moved closer and slowly fell into sleep, his head on Steve’s shoulder and his even breaths ghosting over Steve’s neck. Steve watched him for a while before he closed his eyes and let sleep claim him.

---

Bruce dropped onto his back on the mat next to where Thor was already lying. They’d been doing a bit of meditating which Bruce had always found calming after a bit of yoga and which he hoped would help with his Hulk problem. He’d found Thor in the gym lifting weights, but once he saw Bruce, he’d moved over to join him in doing a few yoga poses which was more comical than anything. The meditating had gone a little better.

“You doing okay?” Bruce asked and nudged him.

Thor hadn’t really spoken to anyone about what being back on Asgard had been like for him. When he turned his face to look at Bruce, Bruce could tell that Thor wasn’t feeling especially great.

“It was strange being back home. Seeing all the people. Heimdall. Even just the palace,” Thor said.

“I know,” Bruce said and he did sort of understand it. Perhaps not like Thor did, but he’d been there before and he’d seen Asgard be destroyed. He’d watched the people they rescued be killed.

Some had gotten away but not all and Bruce just hoped that they were okay and that Valkyrie would eventually reach out to them. They’d all been a bit too busy to try and find her and send a signal but Bruce had told Carol to look out for Valkyrie and the remaining Asgardians.

“If we had gone earlier I might have seen my mother,” Thor said after a moment.

“Tony went back to see his son as a baby. You can go and see anyone you want.”

Thor shook his head. “Seeing Loki was hard enough. I didn’t even warn him.”

They were quiet for a long while and Bruce just let the silence go on without breaking it. It was hard sometimes to remember that Thor had truly lost everything. His home. Most of his people. His family. Harder to remember that he wouldn’t get his family or his home or a lot of a his people back if they did win against Thanos and change what his snap had done.

“I keep wondering,” Bruce said eventually, “if Valkyrie got far or if she turned to dust too.”

“After all of this is over, I’ll need to find her and those that are left,” Thor said. “I will create a home for them -- whoever is left.”

“I’ll help you. I’d like to see her again.”

Thor nodded. “Has -- has The Hulk decided to come out yet?”

“I haven’t tried to turn in days,” Bruce admitted. In truth he was scared of what might happen, but he also knew that he needed the Hulk.

“Might be handy to have the green guy around,” Thor said.

“Because he’s your favorite, right?” Bruce asked.

Thor shook his head and scoffed. “No. That’s not true at all. I prefer you, Banner.”

Bruce laughed. All of his work to try and figure out his Hulk problem had done one thing for him, it had made him understand the beast within a bit better -- enough to sort of remember the Hulk’s memories. It was all a bit odd.

“Didn’t do much against Thanos,” Bruce said and he hated that it was true. He and Hulk had both failed against Thanos.

“We were all defeated,” Thor said. “I didn’t go for the head.”

“We will this next time and when I finally do go green we’ll have to have a rematch. We’ll see if you can actually win against me.”

“I did win,” Thor said.

Bruce just grinned.

“I did,” Thor insisted. “I’m the strongest Avenger.”

---

Carol arrived a few days later while they were all gathered for lunch and planning. The thing about the Power Stone was that as Nebula explained it -- Thanos had tasked her and her sister, Gamora, to find it.

“When Quill went after the stone, we were going right after it too. We were on loan to Ronan and he sent some of his Kree soldiers after it. Quill got to it first. Gamora was tasked with taking it from Quill.”

“So it’s complicated,” Natasha said.

Rocket had cackled at that, but Nebula glared at him. “The stone was taken from Quill when we were all arrested and after that we had it on us but we were on the move until we defeated Ronan and saved Xandar and the Nova Corps.”

“And where did it go from there?” Tony asked.

That was when Carol arrived. Tony saw her through the window as she came down from the sky.

“We left it with Nova Corps,” Rocket said. “It wouldn’t be ideal to take it while we were in prison or from Nova Corps.”

Tony thought that Rocket was probably right. It would be too well guarded and it would be more trouble than they needed to deal with. Their options was going to the cave or waiting to take it from Quill, Gamora, and Rocket when they were all fighting for the stone. Either way, retrieving it would be a little bit messy. Tony wasn’t entirely happy with the idea.

Carol stepped into the room then and she nodded at them, but her eyes landed on the screens with the information Friday had for them displayed.

“If the stone is with the Nova Corps, that’s where we should get it from,” she said.

Rocket laughed again and he stood up. “Aren’t you supposed to have Kree blood in you or something? Aren’t you listening -- the Kree are not--”

“I know Nova Prime,” Carol said. “Knew. Thanos destroyed Nova Corps. I also know the Kree. The question is whether I’ll know her when we go. You’re forgetting that I have been protecting other planets and other civilizations for a long time.”

Having Carol onboard made the whole thing seem better and easier. Tony was glad to have her and he could tell that the others felt the same way.

“Okay, then,” Rocket said. “If you’re sure.”

“I am,” Carol said.

Clint coughed. “So, um, who are you exactly?”

“Carol Danvers,” she said and extended her hand out to Clint.

“Oh, you’re Carol. Captain Marvel. I guess you’re giving our old Cap a run for his money.”

Carol grinned and then shrugged.

---

Bucky was telling Peter more about Wakanda. Although Shuri had been able to paint a good picture of her home, it was more interesting to hear about it from Bucky who was essentially an outsider but had also lived there. And been dusted there.

“It is pretty amazing,” Sam said. “It’s different than a lot of the places I’ve been -- although I guess this whole being a stone thing sort of beats it when it comes to oddest.”

Time was still moving and not moving and it felt weird to Peter the longer that they were stuck in the stone. For Gamora it seemed different. She didn’t seem to see the stone the same way the rest of them did and Peter didn’t know if it was because she had been there longer or because she just understood it better.

She explained it to them about how her father -- Thanos -- had decided that getting the stone was more important than keeping his daughter alive.

“That isn’t love -- and doing that would break anyone. It would destroy anyone to give up a person they love and yet for that bastard it was just another thing to do.”

Peter thought that she was wrong and Mantis seemed to think so too and Peter had to remember that Mantis had actually felt Thanos’ emotions. She would know better than anyone.

“Even if he did love me,” Gamora said, “he still did this.”

Peter had to give her that.

Steve leaned against one of the work tables. Tony had gotten busy with his armor again after they got back from the past and Asgard. After arriving back and receiving a message from Carol, they decided it was best to just take a few days to rest. They were going to go for the next two stones back to back. It also meant they had time to prepare and Tony was working on things for everyone because soon they’d be going up against Thanos and they all had to be prepared and at their best.

Steve for his part just stayed where Tony was. In the lab or in the kitchen or in their room. Sometimes he brought a book along or some art supplies but they never kept his attention for long.

“At some point, you do need to get some rest,” Steve said when he checked the time and realized they’d been in the lab for far longer than he expected.  

“I just have to finish this and this suit is done,” Tony said.

Steve reached over to brush Tony’s hair back from his forehead. “I’ll give you one more hour, Tony. You need to sleep.” Tony leaned into his touch.

“And here was I, I thinking that it wasn’t just sleep you wanted.”

“Sleep,” Steve repeated with some amusement and then he pressed a kiss to Tony’s head, but he stepped back and let him get back to work.

It was a little over an hour before Tony finally got up and closed everything. He stretched his arms and actually yawned.

“So, it’s possible that I am actually tired,” he said.

“I didn’t think you’d ever admit that,” Steve said with a grin. “And I can promise we might have a good morning to look forward to.”

Tony laughed at that but didn’t say anything as they walked towards their room and then Steve who had been ready for bed for a while now just watched Tony as he changed and brushed his teeth and then slipped into the bed.

“You know, a part of me didn’t think we’d get this far,” Tony said.

“With the stones?” Steve confirmed.

“Yeah. And we’re sort of going in blind on this next one.”

Steve intertwined their hands. “You worry too much. It can’t be worse than any of the others. Clint made a good point earlier. We have four of the stones and it might make a difference if we actually use them.”

During a meeting to figure out their next trip into the past, Clint had brought up that they had four stones and that it was possible for them to do something with even just the four stones. While it was a good point, Steve also knew that the stones were powerful and they didn’t know the consequences of using them -- even on their own. They also needed all six to face Thanos and to return everyone that had been dusted.

“It’s risky,” Tony said. “Rocket said that he and the Guardians only managed to hold the Power Stone and not die because they held hands and because Quill is the son of a god or something.”

“But Jane had the Aether in her,” Steve pointed out.

Tony nodded. “And Loki used the scepter without much trouble. Maybe they’re different even from each other.”

Steve could tell that Tony was getting drowsier the longer they were in bed, the warmth and the softness of the blankets pulling him into sleep. His eyes were drooping as he tried to keep their conversation going.

“Perhaps -- we’ll need to use them...eventually, after all.” Tony yawned and Steve reached over to caress his face with his fingers -- easing his brow and lightly touching his eyelids. Tony moved closer and slowly fell into sleep, his head on Steve’s shoulder and his even breaths ghosting over Steve’s neck. Steve watched him for a while before he closed his eyes and let sleep claim him.

---

Bruce dropped onto his back on the mat next to where Thor was already lying. They’d been doing a bit of meditating which Bruce had always found calming after a bit of yoga and which he hoped would help with his Hulk problem. He’d found Thor in the gym lifting weights, but once he saw Bruce, he’d moved over to join him in doing a few yoga poses which was more comical than anything. The meditating had gone a little better.

“You doing okay?” Bruce asked and nudged him.

Thor hadn’t really spoken to anyone about what being back on Asgard had been like for him. When he turned his face to look at Bruce, Bruce could tell that Thor wasn’t feeling especially great.

“It was strange being back home. Seeing all the people. Heimdall. Even just the palace,” Thor said.

“I know,” Bruce said and he did sort of understand it. Perhaps not like Thor did, but he’d been there before and he’d seen Asgard be destroyed. He’d watched the people they rescued be killed.

Some had gotten away but not all and Bruce just hoped that they were okay and that Valkyrie would eventually reach out to them. They’d all been a bit too busy to try and find her and send a signal but Bruce had told Carol to look out for Valkyrie and the remaining Asgardians.

“If we had gone earlier I might have seen my mother,” Thor said after a moment.

“Tony went back to see his son as a baby. You can go and see anyone you want.”

Thor shook his head. “Seeing Loki was hard enough. I didn’t even warn him.”

They were quiet for a long while and Bruce just let the silence go on without breaking it. It was hard sometimes to remember that Thor had truly lost everything. His home. Most of his people. His family. Harder to remember that he wouldn’t get his family or his home or a lot of a his people back if they did win against Thanos and change what his snap had done.

“I keep wondering,” Bruce said eventually, “if Valkyrie got far or if she turned to dust too.”

“After all of this is over, I’ll need to find her and those that are left,” Thor said. “I will create a home for them -- whoever is left.”

“I’ll help you. I’d like to see her again.”

Thor nodded. “Has -- has The Hulk decided to come out yet?”

“I haven’t tried to turn in days,” Bruce admitted. In truth he was scared of what might happen, but he also knew that he needed the Hulk.

“Might be handy to have the green guy around,” Thor said.

“Because he’s your favorite, right?” Bruce asked.

Thor shook his head and scoffed. “No. That’s not true at all. I prefer you, Banner.”

Bruce laughed. All of his work to try and figure out his Hulk problem had done one thing for him, it had made him understand the beast within a bit better -- enough to sort of remember the Hulk’s memories. It was all a bit odd.

“Didn’t do much against Thanos,” Bruce said and he hated that it was true. He and Hulk had both failed against Thanos.

“We were all defeated,” Thor said. “I didn’t go for the head.”

“We will this next time and when I finally do go green we’ll have to have a rematch. We’ll see if you can actually win against me.”

“I did win,” Thor said.

Bruce just grinned.

“I did,” Thor insisted. “I’m the strongest Avenger.”

---

Carol arrived a few days later while they were all gathered for lunch and planning. The thing about the Power Stone was that as Nebula explained it -- Thanos had tasked her and her sister, Gamora, to find it.

“When Quill went after the stone, we were going right after it too. We were on loan to Ronan and he sent some of his Kree soldiers after it. Quill got to it first. Gamora was tasked with taking it from Quill.”

“So it’s complicated,” Natasha said.

Rocket had cackled at that, but Nebula glared at him. “The stone was taken from Quill when we were all arrested and after that we had it on us but we were on the move until we defeated Ronan and saved Xandar and the Nova Corps.”

“And where did it go from there?” Tony asked.

That was when Carol arrived. Tony saw her through the window as she came down from the sky.

“We left it with Nova Corps,” Rocket said. “It wouldn’t be ideal to take it while we were in prison or from Nova Corps.”

Tony thought that Rocket was probably right. It would be too well guarded and it would be more trouble than they needed to deal with. Their options was going to the cave or waiting to take it from Quill, Gamora, and Rocket when they were all fighting for the stone. Either way, retrieving it would be a little bit messy. Tony wasn’t entirely happy with the idea.

Carol stepped into the room then and she nodded at them, but her eyes landed on the screens with the information Friday had for them displayed.

“If the stone is with the Nova Corps, that’s where we should get it from,” she said.

Rocket laughed again and he stood up. “Aren’t you supposed to have Kree blood in you or something? Aren’t you listening -- the Kree are not--”

“I know Nova Prime,” Carol said. “Knew. Thanos destroyed Nova Corps. I also know the Kree. The question is whether I’ll know her when we go. You’re forgetting that I have been protecting other planets and other civilizations for a long time.”

Having Carol onboard made the whole thing seem better and easier. Tony was glad to have her and he could tell that the others felt the same way.

“Okay, then,” Rocket said. “If you’re sure.”

“I am,” Carol said.

Clint coughed. “So, um, who are you exactly?”

“Carol Danvers,” she said and extended her hand out to Clint.

“Oh, you’re Carol. Captain Marvel. I guess you’re giving our old Cap a run for his money.”

Carol grinned and then shrugged.

---

Bucky was telling Peter more about Wakanda. Although Shuri had been able to paint a good picture of her home, it was more interesting to hear about it from Bucky who was essentially an outsider but had also lived there. And been dusted there.

“It is pretty amazing,” Sam said. “It’s different than a lot of the places I’ve been -- although I guess this whole being a stone thing sort of beats it when it comes to oddest.”

Time was still moving and not moving and it felt weird to Peter the longer that they were stuck in the stone. For Gamora it seemed different. She didn’t seem to see the stone the same way the rest of them did and Peter didn’t know if it was because she had been there longer or because she just understood it better.

She explained it to them about how her father -- Thanos -- had decided that getting the stone was more important than keeping his daughter alive.

“That isn’t love -- and doing that would break anyone. It would destroy anyone to give up a person they love and yet for that bastard it was just another thing to do.”

Peter thought that she was wrong and Mantis seemed to think so too and Peter had to remember that Mantis had actually felt Thanos’ emotions. She would know better than anyone.

“Even if he did love me,” Gamora said, “he still did this.”

Peter had to give her that.

-

Chapter One Hundred Fifty Two

#peter and tony #peter and tony fic #mcuwriting #mcu fic #iron dad #iron dad and spider son #stony #stony fic #marvel

[thesummerstorms]

2, 3, 11, 19, 28 for Castilla?

Send me questions for Callista, Etain, or an OC.

2.What is/was your character’s relationship with their mother like? 3. What is/was your character’s relationship with their father like?

Callista never really got to know her birth mother that well. She knows that her mother decided before she was born not to be involved in her raising and that the woman went on after having her to complete her medical degree and become a reasonably successful doctor somewhere far from Chad. They exchanged letters a few times as adults, but it isn’t really a familial relationship and Callista doesn’t see any point in resenting her for that.

Callista’s dad loved her, and she knows that. He committed to raising her at a fairly young age, with or without his former partner, and he was always helplessly affectionate in his own way. She has good memories of playing with him as a child, particularly in his happier days right after he married her step-mother.

But he never really understood what it meant, raising a Force-sensitive child,and the older she got, the “weirder” her behavior sometimes was or the more unlikely the incidents happening around her, the more distant he seemed. He didn’t like the intangible, the irrational, couldn’t understand why she was ill-content on the deap-sea arc he and his brothers had happily grown up on.

Callista’s step-mother was an engineer who started out as hired help, married Callista’s father for five or six years, and then divorced him and moved to the Core. The marriage was at its best for the first year, but by the second she had become fairly unhappy and distant. She was never very good with children, but after the divorce her relationship with Callista strangely strengthened. The stepmother taught Callista how to chose lipsticks and strip down and rebuild a malfunctioning inertial compensator. When Callista left for the Jedi, her stepmother was the one relative who expressed any kind of support.

11. In what situation was your character the most afraid they’ve ever been?

She likes to tell people that moment she was most afraid was the moment she died– the first time. About how Geith was dead, and she had watched him die, watched him abandon her twice, and the only thing that pierced the fog of her grief was her anger with him and with the galaxy, the fear she felt knowing that she was alone and that she would have to choose to die.

But that was one moment, and one choice, and she made it even when she wanted to scream and rage. She made it and she thought she could because she thought the pain would be over, after.

The real fear, the moment that is etched into her brain with heart-stopping, electric terror, was quieter.

After she had been reborn, her rescuers carried her away from the ship whose nerves that she had haunted, patched her up with bacta and soothing words, then left her with a clean bundle of clothes and orders to get herself cleaned up. In the tiny little fresher, there was a mirror.

Her flight from the Eye of Palpatine had been too chaotic to stop and process what was going on, to process what had happened to her. To think at all about the choice she had made, or the sacrifices others had made for her to have the choice at all.

But now there was quiet and there was time, and Callista looked in the mirror and saw a stranger’s eyes. A stranger’s hardened and scarred face. Muscles that were clumsy and foreign, a body all the wrong sizes. She almost flinched out of her skin– the dead stranger’s skin.

Instinctively, she reached for the Force, for her place in the current that had defined her long before she knew its name, that helped her define the her own boundaries. But even its echo was gone.

The eyes that weren’t hers looked back at her, and nausea bloomed as she realized, finally, what this meant. What she’d done in order to live again. That there was no after for this choice.

 The terror stitched itself quietly into her foreign ribs, and she never quite stopped carrying its ache.

19. What is your character’s biggest relationship flaw? Has this flaw destroyed relationships for them before?

Callista has a tendency towards the overly romantic view of life- sometimes pushing her into ignoring her own needs or common sense in the name of what she desperately wants to be the right thing.

 With Geith, it meant forgiving his authoritativeness and need to be right as mere self-assurance, even when it bothered her, even when they fought, even when it lead to her death. 

With Luke, it meant rushing into a relationship that was founded on unequal ground between two strangers because she felt alone and afraid after her rebirth and he was kind and wasn’t that what fate was supposed to be?

In both cases she knew better, or some part of her did, but she rushed into commitment anyway because she wanted things to be better, wanted to force the galaxy to make sense.

It’s something she had to work to unlearn during her recovery.

28. How quick or slow is your character to resort to physical violence in a confrontation?

She’s quicker to strike than you’d expect from a Jedi, even an Altisian. She’s  no stranger to defending herself or the vulnerable in a dust up, and she understands sometimes that force is necessary to stop an aggressor. Her every use is calculated, though- never more than she needs to bring the situation to an end.

She does still have qualms. Pre-meditated violence and cruelty are hard for her, as is killing, and she’ll never be the one to initiate the conflict, or to casually use force in petty matters.

#variative #askbox memes #Callista Masana #still accepting these btw

[notagarroter]

The Eternal Problem: A Meditation on Mortality in Sherlock S4

When asked about S4 during the promotional lead-up, Moftiss repeatedly said this new series would be about one thing: consequences.  Now that we stand on the other side of S4, what do we think they meant?  It obviously wasn't legal consequences for shooting Magnussen, or physical consequences of overdosing on drugs.   

In this meta, I argue that TAB and S4 are above all about the moral, metaphysical, and narrative consequences of Sherlock faking his death during the Reichenbach Fall—an act which continues to reverberate through the story two series later, both for the characters and, significantly, for the writers.

Reichenbach Revisited

First, a little review session: What exactly was the "final problem"? 

Ah. Here we are at last—you and me, Sherlock, and our problem—the final problem. Stayin’ alive! It’s so boring, isn’t it?  It’s just ... staying.

We got an answer, but it was hard to grasp without a larger context.  How is staying alive a problem?  It is only in the context of Series 4 that the full meaning and extent of Moriarty's final problem starts to become apparent. 

Moriarty was sick of staying alive, and he wanted Sherlock to feel the same way.  It wasn't enough for Moriarty merely to kill Sherlock (which he could have done at any point on that rooftop)—he needed Sherlock to welcome death, just as he did. 

Moriarty tried to give Sherlock the perfect motivation and opportunity to kill himself.  He went to great pains to threaten Sherlock's best friends, so Sherlock could honorably sacrifice himself for their safety.  Moriarty even stepped first into the breach, hopeful that Sherlock would follow him.  But Sherlock refused his offer, and wiggled his way out of this pre-ordained death. He survived the fall and persisted in staying alive.

Appointment in Samarra

When does the path we walk on lock around our feet? When does the road become a river with only one destination?

 The sinister story of The Appointment in Samarra is introduced early in Series 4, and referenced repeatedly in the first episode.  Some found this heavy-handed, but it was vital to underline the significance of this fable, because this is the heart of our story -- not just The Six Thatchers, not just Series 4, but the entirety of Sherlock since The Reichenbach Fall. 

What happens when someone misses their appointment with Death?  Does Death show up at some other moment to claim what it is owed?  Or does it pass them by completely?

When Sherlock returns from his faked death, he seems to be at least considering the latter possibility.

 You know my methods, John. I am known to be indestructible.

As time passes, Sherlock appears to be testing his hypothesis by actively courting death. Mary threatens to shoot him if he steps forward, and he does.  He accepts Mycroft's promise of a "certain death" assignment in lieu of a prison sentence.  He overdoses on the plane in TAB, enough to potentially kill him.  

It is during this drug-fueled fantasy that Sherlock starts to wonder why Moriarty was drawn to kill himself, and he himself flirts briefly with the temptations of death.

Dead is the new sexy.  

 But in the end, Sherlock doesn't die.

Between you and me, John, I always survive a fall.

 He can fall and fall and fall, and he will never land.

Arthur Conan Doyle and the Fandom Problem

The meta-story about Sherlock Holmes's death and rebirth is so often repeated that it has taken on the quality of myth: Doyle hated Sherlock Holmes, he was sick of writing him, so he decided to kill him off once and for all.  He even titled his story The Final Problem, for good measure.  

We all know what happened next: the fans, to put it mildly, objected.  The stories of people dressing in mourning clothes over a fictional character's death may well be apocryphal, but they are nevertheless an important part of how we understand Sherlock Holmes.  The fans wouldn't let him die, so Doyle was forced to bring him back from the dead.  

Doyle never tried to kill Holmes again, and when he died, other writers took on the project, and in the past hundred years, Sherlock has never stopped being revived.  

"There can be no grave for Sherlock Holmes," Vincent Starrett tells us in that famous quotation.  It's meant to be reassuring, heart-warming even, but looked at a certain way, it takes on the aura of a threat. 

The Final Problem

This, then, becomes The Final Problem, both for Sherlock and for Moftiss.  How do you end Sherlock?  How do you make him mortal again?  Now we see how right Moriarty was: the problem is, in merely "staying alive", Sherlock Holmes becomes inert, stagnant, boring.  We don't need him to die, but the audience needs to feel at least that he can die, or all the tension and drama go out of the narrative. 

As S4 opens, Sherlock has now walked away from three certain-death situations, and he's a bit giddy.  

I’m just glad to be alive!!!

But even as Sherlock is gleefully tweeting and solving crimes and petting dogs, living life to the fullest, there's a pall over the episode.  He doesn't quite trust his good luck—surely Samarra can't be avoided forever.  So when will it catch up to him?  

At last, it seems like it's going to.

But Mary gets in the way, sacrificing herself to save Sherlock, and thus perhaps fulfilling her own missed appointment.  

At this point, Sherlock starts to realize the downsides to his invulnerability: it only protects him, not those he loves.  Nothing he did could protect Mary, because she was destined to die before him.  

Premonition and Predestination

What we call premonition is just movement of the web. If you could attenuate to every strand of quivering data, the future would be entirely calculable, as inevitable as mathematics.

As TST highlights, Appointment in Samarra isn't just about death, it's also about destiny.  According to the story, no matter how far you run, you're always exactly where you were meant to be. 

Series 4 takes up the idea of predestination repeatedly.  In TST, Sherlock appears to be having premonitions—a dalliance with the supernatural almost unheard of in the entire Sherlock Holmes mythos.  Sherlock claims to Mary that, given enough information, he can even predict the roll of a dice.  This thread is taken up again in The Lying Detective, in which Sherlock is suddenly able to predict (with plausibility-defying accuracy) exactly where everyone will be and what they will do at any given moment.  

Really? I correctly anticipated the responses of people I know well to scenarios I devised? Can’t everyone do that?

This preoccupation with predestination serves the narrative, while simultaneously serving as a commentary on the narrative itself.  Predestination is a handy metaphor for what it feels like to rewrite someone else's story. BBC Sherlock is fanfic, and in theory it can go wherever it wants, make any changes the writers desire.  But even as they make the story their own, we know there are some things Moftiss won't change: the Big Plot Points from ACD they feel obligated to respect.  So yes, in a very literal sense, it was predetermined over a hundred years ago that Mary had to die.  

Nothing’s certain; nothing’s written.

But Mary is wrong—her death was indeed written before, and so it had to be written again.  Nothing Sherlock did was going to change that.  He doesn't need to attenuate to a zillion strands of data, he only needs to follow one to its inevitable conclusion: the narrative. The path that has locked around his feet.  Watson in TAB says he always knows when he's in a story; Sherlock is starting to notice the signs as well. 

If this is the case, nothing Sherlock does can seriously put his own life at risk.  He's the hero, so the narrative will always protect him.  But while at the beginning of S4, this idea seemed to thrill him, in TLD he has become much more ambivalent. He cautions "Faith" against suicide, but he also thinks admiringly about Mary sacrificing herself to save him. He goes on a life-threatening drug binge, but doesn't take the idea of his death seriously, despite Molly's chiding. He tells Smith that he doesn't want to die, but he does want Smith to kill him. It's not that he wants to die—he wants to be mortal.  

“Taking your own life.” Interesting expression. Taking it from who? Oh, once it’s over, it’s not you who’ll miss it. Your own death is something that happens to everybody else. Your life is not your own.

This is an anti-suicide speech, but in this context it's also kind of a lament.  Sherlock does not own his life.  Nor do Moftiss.  Nor even does Doyle.  The fans do—he can only die at their behest, and they will never let that happen.

Meanwhile, Moftiss are expressing the same anxieties about the fate of the narrative.  If Sherlock can't die, how do you build to a satisfying, meaningful ending?  The show can't go on forever, but its narrative can't be killed, either.  The twists get twistier, the cliff-hangers ever more dramatic, the stakes grow higher and higher, but how can any of it ever be resolved? 

Samarra, Revisited

The Final Problem is their answer to this question. In interviews since the airing, Moftiss have claimed the key word for the episode was "transgression":  TFP goes out of its way to break all the rules of Sherlock.  There are no loving shots of London, no text messages floating on the screen.  221b gets blown up, and the rest of the episode takes place in a very blank, artificial, alien environment—more like a stage set than the lived-in world we've come to know.  There's no case, no client.  Even the Belstaff is missing for much of the episode. 

As a result, many fans thought that with TFP, the show had finally gone off the rails—that somehow the writers forgot how to write an episode of Sherlock.  But this shift in aesthetic and narrative mode was entirely by design. The writers were deliberately upending everything we know and love about Sherlock in an attempt to convince us  that anything was possible, that anyone might die.  Even Mycroft.  Maybe even Sherlock. 

And so, it is in this context that Sherlock makes one last attempt to find Samarra.

As is only appropriate, it is Moriarty who (from beyond the grave) once again suggests this option.  

And here we are, at the end of the line. Holmes killing Holmes. This is where I get off.

Up until this point, it seems like Sherlock is planning to kill Mycroft, but here he changes course. It's probably not the locomotive double-entendres that spark his epiphany, so it must be the line "Holmes killing Holmes." Eurus tells us that Jim Moriarty thought Sherlock would make this choice, meaning kill Mycroft.  But that doesn't really make sense.  When he was alive, Jim never said anything about wanting Sherlock to kill his brother. What Moriarty always wanted was for Sherlock to kill himself.

Of course. That’s the point of this.

Suddenly Sherlock realizes that Moriarty's original plan for him is the only way out of his current situation. 

And so he "remembers the Governor", who did the one thing Sherlock couldn't do: he killed himself to save someone he loves.  Never mind that it doesn't work—that was his appointment in Samarra, and in doing it he atoned for his earlier misdeeds and became a good man.  Sherlock missed his appointment, but thanks to Moriarty's hints, he realizes he has a chance to do it over, make it right this time.  He must fulfill his destiny and sacrifice himself to save his friends.

Except he can't.  It's what Moriarty wanted, his final gift to Sherlock, the solution to their "problem".  But Eurus/the narrative/the fans won't let it happen, and Sherlock is saved once again.  

The Eternal Problem

And so the Final Problem remains unsolved, as it always will.  The episode wraps up with a kind of coda—not so much an ending as a promise/threat of endless repetition.  Again and again, we see Sherlock walk the path to his sister's cell. The flat at 221b Baker Street, which was so dramatically exploded earlier in the episode, is recreated with finicky, almost neurotic precision. 

And a montage accompanied by Mary's voice-over reassures us that all our favorite characters will continue on ad infinitum.  The idea is comforting and horrifying all at once. 

Fans have made much of Lestrade's full-circle assertion that Sherlock is now a "good man", and Moffat has confirmed that the point of the show was to humanize Sherlock.

But this isn't really accurate. From the very first episode, Sherlock was always a deeply human character—that is to say, he was flawed. He was complex. He did good things for bad reasons, and bad things for good reasons.  He tried and failed. He was vulnerable and sensitive. He was vain and petty and occasionally cruel, but he was also at times unfathomably kind and empathetic.  He inspired loathing in some, but great loyalty and devotion in those who knew him best.  He was playful, funny, unpredictable.  If he hadn't been all those things—if he had truly been a cold, emotionless machine—he would have been a horrible bore to watch. 

The progress of Sherlock Holmes, then, is not from great man to good man, but from a man—a mortal man with weaknesses and flaws—to a mythic hero who is perfectly strong, perfectly wise, perfectly compassionate. 

Who you really are, it doesn’t matter. It’s all about the legend, the stories, the adventures.  When all else fails, there are two men sitting arguing in a scruffy flat, like they’ve always been there and they always will.

Sherlock Holmes will go on forever, in fanfic and pastiche, in other adaptations, and maybe even under Moftiss's pen. This is how the story is ended, how the "final" problem is solved.  Not by killing Sherlock, but by at last submitting to his true, unalterable destiny: Sherlock is fated (or doomed?) to spend all eternity "in a romantic chamber of the heart: in a nostalgic country of the mind: where it is always 1895."

#meta #sherlock meta #sherlock #S4 #the final problem #original post #1000

[mutandis-blog]

Pre Meditation || Kouki || Chapter 2 Trial || Re: Noctem, Andrew

Kouki had not actually thought of the possibility of himself being a suspect, and this was quite odd for him to think about, he didn't really like it much but it was a piece of evidence that Kouki had not considered, he figured it was best to try and clear his name right from the start, or at least try, so to do so he brought up everything he knew about the murder from investigating. “I understand myself being a suspect due to the fact that I am shorter than Susumu, and because of the angle of the knife wound, I do think it would be easy to fabricate something like this but that would mean Susumu death was premeditated, which doesn't seem very likely, but is entirely possible. I uh, I don't have an alibi for the time of the murder, in fact I don't think there is much I can do to entirely prove my innocence aside from me arguing that It doesn't make much sense for me I think to kill somebody, let alone like… like that. To me this seemed like a crime of passion, and well I wasn't very close friends to Theodosia-san which… is quite upsetting, in fact more upsetting than having her die as a friend. She was somebody that I wanted to befriend, just like everybody in this room and all who have died already, my goal in life is to befriend as many people that I can, and to make people happy, taking a life away is not something I have done, or plan to do. However aside from that argument I can't say much on that topic. In terms of further evidence, It's worth noting that the wounds on Theodosia-san are straight down, however some are at odd angles as well, some coming from below, and others from above, so I’m unsure what that says in relation to Susumu murder. I also figured that there was probably a lot of struggle going on, from the blood.” While he spoke Kouki had a smile on his face, it was a familier one, and a fake one, clearly one he sported when he was trying to hide his sadness, it was the same kind of smile he had during the first trial before he had his break down. He figured he might as well bring up his thoughts on the matter as well.

“In terms of the framing, I do suspect a few people in specific for it but nobody well enough to blame anybody and I certainly don't have enough evidence to support any of my thoughts so I’ll avoid saying anything just so I don't make people mad or confuse things more than they already are. From what i’ve noticed, there is little to no evidence pointing at anybody in specific, which is concerning. This tells me that the murder was probably well thought out, on top of that if what you say is true the murder has to be by somebody who is skilled enough to think of framing somebody, or mean enough to do it, not to mention that they chose room four in specific, which I don't think was entirely coincidence or random chance, I think it might be possible that the killer didn't like room four very much but… i'm just speculating.”

He than shifted his attention to Andrew who had brought up the bathroom

“We had asked Yuudai the same thing, but personally, I think that it isnt safe to assume that this was a boy or a girl yet, This murder could have been very much pre meditated, and in such they could have planned ahead of time to go to the boys washroom. Especially considering most of room four was male, this could have been another method for them to try and frame those people. I highly suspect that this murder was planned in advance, even Susumu. But this was just my thinking when I was investigating, I would love to be corrected if im wrong I dont want to mess anything up... im sorry if I do” For a moment his smile wavered at the end there, especially as his insecurities when it came to making people upset began to rise up, but he shadowed them into nothing soon enough as the smile found itself on his face again.

#Chapter 2 #Trial #Kouki #submission