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joels-shitty-puns · 7 months

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The Key To Your Heart - Track 2

Pairing: Pedro Pascal x Musician!Reader

Series Summary: After writing your feelings for Pedro into a song, it gains a lot more popularity than expected. Ultimately it brings both criticism and support, with new possibilities around the corner.

Series Warnings: 18+ only (MDNI). Potential for puns/dad jokes (name of my blog, and the fic) should give that away. This is my first fic which should be its own warning, lol. Also some cursing. Mentions of masturbation (f) maybe more smut later idk. Sadness, reader is pretty depressed. Poor body image. Rude people. Bullying-ish and just lack of support? Anxiety. Age gap! Reader is in her mid 20's, Pedro is current age (48).

Other stuff: Reader is plus sized. AFAB. Inexperienced. Also has a dog, but you can pretend it is another creature probably. Further, in case it isn't clear, italics almost always are the reader's inner thoughts!

Word Count: 2.8K

Series List: Here!

Miss last chapter? Here!

I had a real rough time figuring out the proper voice for Pedro's dialogue and I hope I did him justice. Either way, the support I received for part 1 is astounding and completely unexpected! Thank you all for reading and let me know what you think :) I plan to continue until the story wraps up, but I don't know how many parts that will be. I hope to post every couple days, but with my work schedule it may be less speedy. Here we go!

You walk in the door, unclipping Skip's leash, slipping off your shoes, and dropping your keys on the countertop before flopping onto the couch and unlocking your phone. No. Fucking. Way.

Pedro Pascal (pascalispunk) replied to your message.

You dissected each letter of the username, assuming it couldn't possibly be THE Pedro Pascal… but it was. It really, really was. You clicked the message, holding your breath.

Pedro Pascal replied to you: "Hey, you don't need to thank me. I didn't say anything that wasn't true. That guy was out of line. You deserve happiness and I'm sorry for the harsh words you've been hearing. I appreciate you sharing your vulnerability with the world and hope that you will continue to be your genuine self and ignore the comments trying to make you be someone else. Don't listen to those people."

You stared in disbelief at his words, once again wondering why he would ever be so kind to someone he doesn't even know. Someone so childish and stupid to write a song about a man she doesn't know. I can't imagine he'd think these things if he knew it was about him…

You: "Thank you Mr. Pascal. I'm a big fan of yours and hearing that you're in my corner has me completely at a loss. I can't imagine why you would risk damaging your image by defending a girl…" No… don't say girl, it makes you sound like a child. You want this guy to like you! You backspace with a slight feeling of ridiculousness over the whole scenario. Ugh it's all wrong… calm down... calm down… it's just a conversation. He doesn't know you. He doesn't like you. Don't make it weird like you always do.

You try again.

You: "Thank you Mr. Pascal. I really admire your work and for you to say such kind things to me… to think that you're in my corner, has me completely at a loss for words. I don't know what I did to deserve this treatment when you don't even know me, especially when coming to my defense could potentially harm your image… but thank you."

He read it almost immediately. Your heart was beating out of your chest and you felt like you could throw up from the anxiety and adrenaline. After a few seconds, those stress-inducing dot-dot-dots appeared to show you he was typing.

He's actually replying to me?? Again? Doesn't he have better things to do?

Your mind wandered to what he might be doing while he's messaging you. Sitting at his home, relaxing, taking the time to reply to you? Why? Maybe he's on a plane or waiting for something and killing time. Maybe he's- *ping*

Pedro Pascal replied to your message:

"Please, you can call me Pedro.. and as far as defending you, it doesn't matter to me that we don't know each other personally. You seem like a woman with a good heart, and all you did was share your true self. Nobody deserves to be talked poorly about for something harmless that they feel. If something like that hurts my image… then my true self wasn't being represented. I think we all just want to be seen, and I hope that you will feel comfortable to be yourself and show yourself more."

You don't know when you started crying, but you hiccupped with the overwhelming wave of emotions. He sees me.. you had just scrolled to the bottom of the long reply, when you noticed the "..." of typing again. He has more to say?!

Pedro Pascal: "As far as the subject of your song.. whether you choose to reveal that to him, or the world, you deserve love and respect. Being vulnerable and putting yourself out there is a terrifying thing to do, and I myself tend to close myself off from relationships to avoid that potential for getting hurt. But if that's what you want, you've already taken a big step and you should go for it. I hope that whoever he is gives you the respect and love you deserve."

Holy crap…

He doesn't… he doesn't know it's him right?? No. There's no way. He's just being nice… he's too nice. He's too genuine..??

Your thumbs hover over the keyboard, doing a little dance in the air, pondering what to say. How much can I share with this man? Between this crush and his kind words, it's feeling tricky to hold back from spilling too much information.

You: "Thank you Pedro. You're too kind and I can't properly explain how much I really appreciate it. I'm having trouble coming to terms with all the sudden attention, and finding it hard to ground myself. But your words are helping me a lot. I - "

You hesitated over your next words, wondering if you should open up or just leave it. Don't be weird… don't scare him away like you always have with everyone else. As much as you think of disclosing your hesitation and lack of experience with relationships, as well as your reasons for trepidation, you decide to spare him of your self-hatred. Instead, you delete that last letter and hit send.

Then you send another message, like he did. "And as far as the guy… I know I don't know him personally, we've never met, but I can already tell he would treat me right. I just hope maybe someday he will love me back."

Immediately after sending it you regretted it. That felt way too open and vulnerable. What are you thinking!?! Shit… what if he sees through you!?

You hold your finger down on the message, ready to hit unsend before he sees it. But it's too late. He's already replying.

Pedro: "He would be stupid not to love you back."

What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck

You: "Thank you, Pedro. 🥺" Play it cool… Play it cool…

Pedro: "Of course, sweetheart. Feel free to message me if anyone else gives you trouble or you just want to chat. I enjoyed talking with you."

???!!!!!?????!!!!! SweetheartSweetheartSweetheart

You grabbed your nearest pillow and screamed into it. "SKIPPPPPEERRRRRRR!!!!!! I JUST HAD A CONVERSATION WITH PEDRO AND IT WAS MAGICAL AND AAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!!" You squealed.

Skipper lifted his head at you and sighed before setting his head back down. He was no stranger to your shenanigans. Napping after a good walk was a better use of his energy than to deal with your drama. He closed his little brown eyes again.

You lay back on the couch, kicking your feet and squeezing your pillow to your body.

Fuck, this is going to hit me like a truck if it goes sour. If he even realizes it's about him, probably. Crap… what am I going to do?

The next day, you woke up and checked your emails before work. Thankfully nobody at your workplace has seemed to place your singing voice to your speaking voice, or pieced together the fact that several people know you have a crush on a certain celebrity and are a musician. Thank goodness. That’s the last thing you need.

You closed your eyes for a few minutes, trying to calm your breathing, your nerves, and your heart rate, before relaxing and shaking out your body. Finally, you decided to get ready for bed and see what tomorrow brings.

Your emails come in, one by one, with one intriguing email at the top, from a well known pop-culture show called The Jazz & Ally-Kat Show. They want to do an interview with you, live, as soon as possible.

Great. They probably just want to see what I look like or have me spill my guts about my crush. You roll your eyes, and you can’t help but feel like the Mandalorian with his lack of face reveals. If only you had a cute little space baby to accompany you. I guess Skip is my own precious cargo in a way, you think, while looking at your still sleeping pup. You're being silly… Not everything needs to relate back to Pedro, you think with a sigh to yourself.

Yet despite your anxiety, you agreed to their interview, with the exception that it was done as a podcast style interview, where simply your voices are featured. Surprisingly, they agreed. I guess everyone likes some drama, and what better way to get views than by having a little mystery.

The interview was scheduled for three days from then, and in the meantime you focused on work and your album, which was mostly finished after years of writing songs. All it needed was some editing.

As the days went by, you wanted desperately to message Pedro again. You wanted to tell him your feelings. Have him confess that he loves you too. Ask him about his family, his friends, his favorite things. Meet him, kiss him, fall in love, and finally be happy. But ultimately you knew that was silly. You had one little conversation, and although it was nice, you still didn't know each other. There was no way he loved you back. Yet…? you asked yourself, hopeful, almost asking for permission to let yourself try and earn his love.

Despite Instagram drawing you in like a magnet, you held back from messaging him. You didn't want to come on too strong. You messaged him first last time. He doesn't know you. Literally… he doesn't even know your real name, or what you look like. But maybe that's a good thing…

_____The day of the interview:_____

You woke up around 9:30 in the morning; nervous, slightly nauseated, restless, and jittery. Why did I agree to this??!

You decided to pass on the coffee this morning, figuring it would make things worse, and instead decided to take Skipper for a walk. After some fresh air followed by a refreshing shower, you looked at the clock. 11:30 AM. With the interview at 1PM, you still had some time to kill and sat down at the piano, letting your mind wander to Pedro while you plunked chords out with nimble fingers. I wonder if Pedro has ever wanted to learn any instruments… I could teach him, you daydream.

Your hands dance across the piano while he reads through a script in the other room, eyebrows furrowed as he highlights another line. You look up over the grand piano and see his soft brown curls blowing under the fan haphazardly. The sun is shining in through the window, which Skip bathes under, and reflects a golden brown undertone with gray streaks in Pedro's hair. He really is beautiful, you think. His tongue swipes across his lips as he makes notes and erases, before finally feeling your eyes on him. He glances up from the script, giving you a soft smile and a wink; with those chocolate brown eyes that frequently cause you to lose your train of thought. Your eyes drift down to the keys again, feeling a soft blush creep over your cheeks.

"That music sounds beautiful, baby.." he says softly while padding up to you behind the piano. He places his large hands on your shoulders, sweeping them down over both your arms before settling on your hands, still resting over the black and white keys. You look over your shoulder and he leans in, closing his eyes as he presses a gentle kiss to your lips. Just like that scene in Narcos… you think. Yikes, I really am obsessed… anyway… you think back to your daydream…

He sits down at the chair next to your piano bench, kissing your lips again gently, then the corner of your mouth, your cheek, and your jaw. Your stomach gives a wave of butterflies and you lean in more to kiss him deeper, tugging on his hair while his hands find the small of your back, gently running his palms up your spine. A chill overcomes you and he-

~Beep beep. Beep beep. Beep beep.~

Fuck. You snap out of your fantasy and turn off the alarm you set to go off ten minutes before the interview. At least I gave myself time to use the restroom and wash my face, you think, hoping to clear your head a bit now that you're slightly frazzled.

Unfortunately the feeling that replaced it was nerves as you sat down at your desk, typing into your keyboard, turning on your mic, and hoping that Skipper doesn't throw a fit over the wind or something while you're on this call.

Jazz: "Hi there listeners! We're joined by the artist of the moment, our favorite lovesick lady, the singer responsible for "Imaginary Love!"

Both women on the other end of the call applaud.

Well… not sure I like being called a lovesick lady but what else did I expect, really?

You: "Thank you guys for having me, I appreciate you wanting to get to know me better."

Despite the rough start, the ladies turned out to be really respectful and fun. You think that if the circumstances were different, you could actually be friends with them. You discuss casual things like your dog, your favorite activities and favorite pop culture topics (careful to avoid mentioning Pedro or any other actor that could be perceived as your lyrical subject), and they even mention celebrity crushes they've had growing up.

At the mention of their celebrity crushes, you can feel the interview funnel into a dangerous alley with little to no escape. Jazz was the first to broach the subject. "So… we've just discussed our celebrity crushes, and I think I speak for all of us here when I say we're all very curious to know who-"

-an air horn blares-

What the hell is that? You wonder, both thankful for the interruption, yet startled by the disruption.

They both chime in: "Viewers!!! Do you all know what that sound is!?! We have reached 1 million listeners!!!!"

To say you were astounded is an understatement.

You: "You're kidding!? 1 million people are listening to us right now?"

Ally: "You bet they are! And listeners… I don't know about you guys… but I can't help but wonder if our celebrity heartthrob is one of those million?"

They turn their attention to you again. "What do you think? Think he's listening?"

You're thankful for the lack of a camera, because you can't help but blush at the thought. You'd be lying if you hadn't already considered (hoped) that he was listening too.

Jazz: "So as we were saying… I think we all are in agreement that we want to know who he is. You sound like a nice enough girl, so what's holding you back? You've made it. You can contact him now and he'll probably reply."

I already have… you thought with a smirk.

Jazz continues: "Which brings me to the next point... I know you've had a lot of attention lately. You were signed to a record company, you were contacted by us, you've been mentioned by a few talk shows and celebrities. Pedro Pascal even publicly defended you. The radio has been playing your song nonstop and people can't get enough. What do you think of all this attention?"

You: "I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a bit surprised and maybe a little scared," you answered with a nervous laugh. "But I am so thankful for the kind words that I receive and I love hearing from people who can relate to my music."

Ally: "You've certainly received your fair share of criticism too. It sounds like you received that before your song was ever published as well."

You: "I have, and it's been challenging to try and not let it get me down. But I'm trying my best, and the positives seem to be greatly outweighing the negatives," you state, your mind thinking of Pedro and how his messages were really the only positive you needed to get you through the dark storm of criticism.

Ally: "I guess what I'm wondering is.. among all these people contacting you.. has he?"

You try to play dumb: "Has who?"

Both interviewers laugh before Ally continues. "Nice try. You know who we're trying to find out about. Has he, the man of your dreams and star of your lyrics, contacted you at all? Will we see a romance blooming?"

Your stomach flipped. You were not expecting this question. Should you tell the truth??? It's not like they could know who has contacted you, short of hacking your account. You have had a lot of people contact you, after all.

You take a deep breath before answering. "I uh… I have received a lot of messages, some of them from celebrities."

They reply, and you can practically feel them leaning in. "Yeeeeaaaah?????"

You consider your next move, your heart really working overtime since this whole thing started. Finally you decide your answer.

"Yes. We've talked."

Looking for Track 1? Read it here!

Next chapter: Here!

~Thanks for reading! Stay ~tuned~ for more!

Taglist: Let me know if you want in :)

@pedrotonin @starcrossed02

#pedro pascal #pedro pascal fanfic #pedro pascal x you #pedro pascal x reader #pedro pascal fanfiction #pedro pascal smut #pedro pascal x afab!reader #pedro pascal x y/n #pedro pascal x musician!reader #pedro pascal fluff #pedro pascal x plus sized! reader #pedro pascal fic #A! wrote a fic #rpf #pedro pascal rpf #key to your heart

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becomewings · 3 years

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The Most Beautiful Moment in Life <I’M FINE>

BTS Universe Story Highlights, pt. 1 / 4

» pt. 2

Introduction

BTS Universe Story, a mobile game published by Netmarble, was released on September 24, 2020. While the majority of the app is essentially a sandbox and engine for users to create their own interactive stories, it also includes official and canon BU content. The first eight segments were introduced between the release date and December 2020, gathered under the title The Most Beautiful Moment in Life <I’M FINE>.

“I’m Fine” is half of the I’m Fine/Save Me ambigram introduced in the Love Yourself era. Notably, all of the BU content available in the game so far falls between events of the webtoon Save Me (also called HYYH0 in its logo) and The Notes 1—chronologically, that is, while bearing in mind that time resets to the morning of 11 April Year 22 whenever SeokJin fails to avert a tragedy among his six friends. I want to assure anyone who is unable to play the game that you are not missing any new, major plot beats from the overall BU narrative. Instead, the stories provide more insight into the motivations and consequences of SeokJin’s decisions in the earlier time loops, as well as more depth to individual characters and their circumstances.

The goal of this guide is to summarize each of the eight stories and highlight noteworthy details, especially if they are not yet present in other BU media. Within each story (which I often refer to as an arc, due to their character-focused nature), episodes must be played successively, but the stories themselves can be played in any order. I will present them over a series of posts in the order they are listed under the <I’M FINE> heading. The Prologue and NamJoon’s arc are free to play; the rest are paid content. Please note that due to the app’s Terms & Conditions, I will not include in-game footage here. The images in this guide are sourced from the official trailers/videos and the live action MVs as appropriate.

Content warning: contains references to death, suicide, suicidal ideation, child abuse, domestic violence, blood, homicide, depression, trauma, PTSD

This guide contains major spoilers and includes references to other BU media

Do not repost, copy, or quote without permission

Game Mechanic

Before diving into the summaries, I would like to address the primary mechanic of the game: the user’s control of character choices at designated moments in the stories. It’s a primary marketing point that the player can influence the progression of the narrative, with a frequent in-app tip also declaring, “stories’ endings can vary depending on your choices.” The latter is not strictly true—and it cannot be true due to the structure of the game. Choices are presented within most (not all) episodes, but each episode is an isolated unit: episode 2 provides the same content regardless of what you choose in episode 1. Since the consequences of your decisions are not cumulative, each episode reaches the same ending, and each decision inevitably rejoins the “main” story path (effectively reducing the script size).

So what is the point of this mechanic? While the system is not nearly as complex as what major platform titles are capable of nowadays (I suspect due in large part to the story creation portion of the game), it does foster a sense of interaction with the narrative that isn’t present in static visual media like comics or film. The episodes with choices also have incentive for replay to discover the impact of changing a character’s dialogue or action. Sometimes the differences between the outcomes are inconsequential, but other times you unearth new details, interactions, or memories that are missing in the other path.

I say this partially in reaction to all of the comments and tweets I read for the game trailers and even Smeraldo Book twitter’s choose-your-own-adventure style teasers with The Notes 2 excerpts released last summer. Many users expressed excitement, through words or memes, about finally being able to give the boys the happy ending they deserved. I don’t fault anyone for wanting that happy ending—I wish for it, too. But no matter what the rather overzealous marketing has claimed, I don’t believe that the canon ending of BU is ever meant to be in the audience’s control. But I do feel that this mechanism fits the BU narrative. It echoes the “countless loops” SeokJin has experienced in an effort to save his friends, the choices he must make at every crossroad, and the butterfly effect those actions have on all of their lives. I think it is reasonable to interpret the simple branching paths in the game as alternatives SeokJin has explored across multiple loops in his struggle to find the “right” way forward. I’d love to hear if you have theories of your own!

Prologue

The prologue is a brief episode introducing SeokJin’s repeated struggle and failure to save his friends. He wakes up yet again in his bed on 11 April Year 22, the beginning of the time loop. After reflecting on the tragedies that keep befalling the others, SeokJin realizes that he has only tried to fix the problems he can see. He wonders: “Have I tried to understand the root of my friends’ misfortunes? How much do I really know about my friends? Maybe I was never brave enough to confront their real scars and the worlds they’ve been living in. But I need to do it. Because it may be the key to saving them all.”

How to Offer a Hand

In this story, SeokJin attempts to prevent NamJoon’s arrest after he gets in a fight with a rude customer at Naeri Gas Station, his place of work. The first episode opens on the night of 11 April Year 22 with NamJoon curling his fists, glaring as crumpled bills lie untouched on the pavement. (The money looks similar to the shot from the I Need U MV.) SeokJin reaches for his shoulder, but NamJoon shrugs him off and strides away to punch the customer who deliberately dropped the bills for him to pick up. The gas station owner runs over at the customer’s furious shouts and orders NamJoon to apologize. He refuses, and police officers soon arrive and charge him with assault. No one listens to SeokJin’s protests that the customer started it first. The man sneers as NamJoon enters the police car. “Do you even have money for a settlement? Hey, you’re done for.” NamJoon is sentenced to prison again, and SeokJin hears glass shattering before the loop resets.

Rising from his bed on the morning of 11 April, SeokJin reflects on his failed efforts so far. He has hit the customer’s car, called for NamJoon in the middle of the incident, and stopped the fight himself, the latter of which caused his friends to avoid him later. The fight has even escalated; the details are unspecified, but the audience is provided an ominous shot of SeokJin speaking to a police officer alone at the scene. NamJoon is not the kind of person who would normally respond to that kind of provocation with his fists. SeokJin realizes that he cannot merely stop the fight but must discover and fix the true cause of it.

With this in mind, SeokJin heads to Naeri Gas Station during the day and tries to engage NamJoon. This is their first time meeting since they both returned to Songju, although SeokJin has experienced it in many loops already. “It’s been a while,” he greets (as he does at the end of the Blood Sweat & Tears Japanese version MV). Before SeokJin can dig deeper in their conversation, NamJoon is called away by his boss. SeokJin enters the small employee break room which serves as NamJoon’s living space when he’s not at the container, hoping to find some clues about his friend’s life. SeokJin locates something bundled in newspapers. If the player chooses to open it, he sees a strange shard of glass inside that may belong to a car or motorcycle headlight. He continues on, finding the book Cosmos by Carl Sagan and a notebook. SeokJin hesitates over the invasion of privacy but decides to read it since he needs all the information that he can gather. The journal entries detail NamJoon’s daily life since returning to Songju: his work at the gas station isn’t too bad despite the occasional rude customer; he purchased a book and hopes to get more in the future; he picked up a second job at a wedding hall to help catch up on bills; his brother NamHyeon got in trouble again, leading to more expenses; and his dad’s health has worsened, with hospital bills after an emergency surgery rising to levels that the family cannot afford. SeokJin knew that NamJoon was the de facto head of household due to his father’s illness but was unaware that it was to this degree. He feels sorry for NamJoon yet is also impressed by his maturity, for NamJoon never writes how difficult his situation is.

NamJoon arrives and asks what SeokJin is doing in the room. If the player chooses to answer “reading” instead of “just sitting there,” SeokJin privately observes that the conversation flows more easily when they talk about books. NamJoon says he must leave and declines when SeokJin offers to wait for him there. SeokJin knocks over a pile of books along with money and receipts as he stands. He thinks it is unusual that NamJoon picks up the books before the money. The books seem to be more than a hobby to NamJoon, holding special meaning. Walking to his car, SeokJin wonders if it is pride or determination not to falter that keeps NamJoon from journaling his grievances. He realizes that money is a constant source of frustration and misery to NamJoon, and that’s why he can’t stomach being insulted over the customer’s dropped money. SeokJin’s new plan is to prevent NamJoon from picking up the money. He also calls Palgok County Hospital and offers to pay the patient bill for NamJoon’s father. Anticipating that NamJoon will be angry if he finds out, SeokJin says the payer is Songho Foundation.

That night, SeokJin returns to the gas station with the excuse that he forgot to fill up earlier. The luxury car arrives with a honk, and NamJoon hurries over to assist. He shakes with anger when the customer drops the money on the ground. “Why aren’t you picking it up? You don’t want it? What’s with that look? Pretty arrogant for a part-timer, aren’t you?” goads the customer. SeokJin intervenes. Whether the player chooses to have him advise NamJoon not to pick it up or to order the customer to pick it up himself, the end result is the same. SeokJin asks the customer, “Why are you harassing a pitiful part-timer?” The customer drives away, and something about NamJoon seems off. His face is expressionless, not mad or humiliated. “SeokJin, you…” He stops. “Never mind. Thank you for your help.” The words sound difficult for him to speak.

SeokJin believes that he has saved NamJoon, although this ending feels sloppy. He continues on in the loop to rescue JungKook and later YoonGi, but uneasiness plagues him. Though he meant to help NamJoon with his actions, SeokJin wonders if he hurt him instead. On 5 May Year 22, he returns to the gas station and follows NamJoon when he leaves work early. NamJoon enters a bookstore, and SeokJin sneaks in after him to watch from afar. He overhears employees talking about NamJoon, worrying that he might dirty the pages of the book he’s perusing. NamJoon is too absorbed in the book to notice one of them calling for his attention. SeokJin recalls a memory from their school days when he found NamJoon reading alone in their classroom hideout: he asked why NamJoon read so diligently, and his friend explained that he found it comforting to empty his thoughts of everything else while focused on the book. In the present, SeokJin wonders how he forgot how much books mean to NamJoon. He sacrifices some of his food and transportation budget to afford them, but they enable him “to endure the weight of the world he’s forced to bear on his shoulders.” After realizing this, SeokJin wants to apologize for carelessly sympathizing with the reality that NamJoon has weathered alone.

The next episode is from NamJoon’s perspective, revealing his excitement over being able to purchase a book for the first time in two months. He wants to buy two but can only afford one. The employee at the register sighs and asks why he leafed through a book he wasn’t going to buy. NamJoon apologizes, and she mutters, “So dirty.” He notices his reflection, clothes worn and smelling of gasoline, and realizes she’s talking about him, not the book. He tries to shake off these depressing thoughts, but he is still not accustomed to this treatment despite experiencing it regularly at work. As NamJoon begins to exit the store, the security alarm goes off. The employees demand to check his bag despite his insistence that he didn’t steal anything. Their certainty of his theft angers him. NamJoon allows them to look through his bag, and they are suspicious of the like-new book in it which he brought from home. One begins to call the police until SeokJin appears, vouching for NamJoon by saying he saw everything. The employees accept that the alarm malfunctioned and excuse their suspicions as a mistake.

Outside, SeokJin asks NamJoon if he is all right. NamJoon is thankful but wonders how SeokJin materialized right when he needed him. “How’d you find me here?” he asks aloud. SeokJin explains that he happened to notice him while walking through the neighborhood. NamJoon wonders if it’s because they said goodbye on a weird note last time. He thanks him and turns to leave. SeokJin calls after him. “I’m sorry. I wanted to apologize. I didn’t mean to upset you that day at the gas station. It was a mistake to have called you pitiful. If my rash actions hurt you, I’m really sorry.” NamJoon accepts his apology, believing it to be sincere, and says that things would have turned out a lot worse if SeokJin had not intervened. Thunder rolls overhead, and NamJoon uses the impending rain as his excuse to depart. He declines SeokJin’s offer of a ride and runs home, feeling his friend’s eyes on him.

Before he can settle down to read at home, NamJoon receives a call from his cheerful mother. She thanks him for paying off the entire hospital bill. NamJoon is perplexed and asks what’s on the receipt, since he didn’t pay it. His mother wants to leave it be, but he insists that they investigate so they don’t get in trouble or sued. She reads that the Songho Foundation is credited as the payer. NamJoon calls the hospital, introducing himself as the guardian for Kim YoungMin, but they can’t transfer him to the administrative department at this time. Disappointed, he looks up the foundation’s website, unable to recall why it sounds familiar. He wonders why a scholarship foundation in the city would get involved with him. Spotting photos of a recent launch ceremony on the site, he recognizes a few people: Songju High School’s principal, the familiar-looking face of the foundation’s chairman, and SeokJin. First, NamJoon forces a laugh, and then it’s difficult for him to breathe. He thinks that SeokJin really had pitied him at that moment. The only thing keeping NamJoon going is the idea of getting through life on his own strength. Why does he have to live like this?

The last episode opens on 5 May back in SeokJin’s perspective. He is confident now that he has saved NamJoon, although it occurs to him that a better alternative may have been to simply pick up the money himself instead of stepping forward. (This decision is enacted in a later loop and depicted in the Euphoria MV.) While reflecting on what comes next to save his other friends, he receives a text from NamJoon. “What’s your account number? I’ll pay you back for the hospital bills. I don’t need your help. I’ll handle my concerns on my own.” Heart sinking, SeokJin wonders how he found out. With a sense of foreboding, he tries calling NamJoon, but no one answers. SeokJin texts him back, pretending that he doesn’t understand, and tells NamJoon to call him. SeokJin’s second attempt connects while he’s gathering his car keys to visit the container. “That’s enough. Just send the account number over text,” NamJoon instructs. SeokJin coaxes him to talk for a moment, and NamJoon asks flatly, “Are you going to apologize again?” SeokJin attempts to salvage the situation, but his friend turns cold when he insists that NamJoon is misunderstanding and that he just wanted to help. “So, why? Why are you helping me?! Yeah, you’re always a good person. You’ve done nothing wrong and I’m the one misunderstanding.” SeokJin apologizes again. NamJoon refuses his request to meet in person. “No, I thought maybe there was a reason for everything you did… But I guess I misconstrued it. I’ll pay you back, so I’d prefer if you stopped contacting me.” Long after the call ends, SeokJin stands holding his phone, feeling that the glass is going to break at any moment. He wants to believe that it’s not over, but hope is slipping through his fingertips.

The episode finishes in NamJoon’s perspective. On 8 May and 9 May, he accepts part-time delivery work and reflects on his three jobs. Whenever he thinks he’s at his breaking point, he focuses on his new goal of returning SeokJin’s money. On 10 May, NamJoon wakes up to his buzzing phone and is called in to work. On a scooter, he passes by a bus stop and notices graffiti. (This is the same bus stop, with matching graffiti, that appears in the Highlight Reel.) Mesmerized, he wonders if it’s TaeHyung’s. As soon as NamJoon looks up, the scooter’s brake fails, and he crashes. The shattered glass on the cold pavement reminds him of the headlight shard and the kid who looked like TaeHyung. (So the piece of glass SeokJin saw in April was really a memento NamJoon retrieved from the scene of the crash in the mountain town, where the delivery boy whom he privately called TaeHyung died. This event is described in NamJoon’s 17 December Year 21 entry in The Notes 1.) NamJoon’s vision grows blurry, and the distant sound of an ambulance doesn’t come any closer.

The arc concludes there, but it obviously marks another reset for SeokJin. It is interesting to note that in this failed loop, NamJoon suffers the same fate that he narrowly avoided in the snowy mountain town before returning to Songju.

Please stay tuned for the next Highlights post featuring JungKook and YoonGi!

#armiesnet #networkbangtan #bangtanarmynet #armysource #dailybangtan #bts universe #hyyh #bangtan universe #bts universe story #bts universe story highlights #seokjin #namjoon #namjin #bts theories

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my-sherlock221b · 3 years

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Supernatural Rewatch Ramblings: Bloodlust

2020-21 has been a huge transformative time for many of us. Whether we wanted it or not, we have been forced to stop, switch gears, rethink, reflect, let go, make new priorities, discover who we really are and who we want to be in the face of adversity.

One of those transformations for me has been giving up on control and finding a way to surrender to the power of the universe. Another has been to not let perfection be the enemy of good.

You may well wonder---What does all this have to do with the Bloodlust rewatch and review??!

Probably nothing LOL except for the fact that I still have to write up my review on Bloody Mary and have been unable to write for various reasons. And then because the Bloody Mary review was still incomplete I could not write about the next one etc etc etc.

So when we watched Bloodlust two days ago in the continuing re-watch, I decided that I am going to re-start the review, and from exactly where I am right now!

If time and life permits I might fill in the gaps later. If not, well, life is unpredictable and weird and we keep calm as it carries on….Thank you for coming to my Philosophy talk….:)

Read below for the Boodlust review, Season 2 episode 3 and look out for the post from @soulmates-for-real on this rewatch too!!

The opening scene is the perfect switch and bait because we as an audience have been trained to latch on to types and identities and representations.

Woman in white night gown screaming and running--victim

Person who brutally beheads her—villain.

A few minutes into the episode we realize that we were wrong.

A good few minutes later we realize that we were wrong about being wrong.]

Haha.

We are idjits, swept away on the eddies and currents of this masterfully written and directed episode. Thank you Sera Gamble and Robert Singer!

The acting and the mesmerizing beauty of the two leads is worthy of an entire essay of its own but in order to have a life and finish this review I shall only say this—Oh my goodness HOW gorgeous is Jensen Ackles?!!

It is sometimes impossible to look at him in this episode because my eyes didn’t know where to land! That perfect face? The lips? Those eyes?? The quirk of the eyebrows? Those micro expressions that are constantly weaving across his face? The smile? The way his lips move when he talks?? His hair? The Samulet?

And then the shot pans out and includes his hand and the ring and honestly it’s a miracle I could follow the plot at all.

So the images I am going to include in this review, much as I love Sam Winchester and Jared Padalecki, are all of Dean Winchester. It’s a criminal waste to not do so when the man is just an ode to perfection.

Sheila O’Malley’s review of this episode is in itself a work of art and a thing of beauty so I will direct you most enthusiastically towards it and only add here my little pennyworth bits. Do click on this link but be prepared to sink into a one hour read which will make you feel like you were dropped into the episode itself.

https://www.sheilaomalley.com/?p=87187

Here is a quote from her review which is so insightful.

These are the details that a director like Robert Singer never misses, and at this point his relationship with Ackles and Padalecki would be almost telepathic (it’s probably 100% telepathic now). He has said before that he and Kripke were such a good team because Kripke’s primary concern is Plot/Gore/Horror and Singer’s primary concern is Character/Relationship. And they both end up in the same place. It’s a good mix. If Singer were also Plot/Gore/Horror focused, we wouldn’t have the depth of relationship which is the real point of the show, its real hook.

For a much briefer and far less technically adept and analytical review, read on here!

The opening of this episode shows us the Impala from every possible angle. Gleaming, gorgeous, road -worthy. This is mirrored by Dean. He is also gleaming, gorgeous and roadworthy. He is in a happy mood that not even Sam’s little brother snitty comments can deflate.

Here is the soundtrack of this episode for those who are interested.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0835248/soundtrack

Here is some random but fun trivia:

Dean tells Sam in one scene "If it's Supernatural, we kill it." One of the rare times the title of the show is actually spoken in the dialogue.

This is the first episode where Sam began parting his hair down the middle, the hairstyle he'd keep the rest of the series.

( I didn’t like his hair too much in this episode honestly but then again I could barely see anyone beyond Dean :D)

During the filming of this episode Jared injured his hand when he fell badly during a stunt. He thought it was merely sprained and went straight into filming the next episode without having it checked. But it got more and more painful and finally he went to the doctor and discovered that his hand was, in fact, broken. Because he had already begun filming, he couldn't bandage the hand until filming for that episode was finished. The writers ended up writing in an accident for Sam and his line "I think she broke my hand" to explain the fact that for the following few episodes he would be wearing a cast.

When Dean kills a vampire, blood is sprayed on his face, mostly on his right cheek. In the next shot the pattern is different, and notably the right cheek is almost clean. Furthermore, his mouth was agape when he made the kill, risking the blood getting into his mouth and turning him into a vampire. While the brothers didn't yet know how a vampire is made at that point, Gordon did and should have been alarmed that Dean might have gotten some of the blood in his mouth.

A random behind the scene shot from the episode:

Guess who she is? Apparently this is Jensen’s sister in a super brief role in Bloodlust!

On to the review, or rather some of my thoughts during the re-watch.

The first scene with the Sheriff they are interrogating him about the cattle mutilations is hilarious. The way they bluff their way into the morgue is hilarious. Dean always leading and Sam following.

Random trivia: When Dean enters the morgue with Sam and sees the name tag of "J Manners", it has been thought the name was to honor Jeffrey Dean Morgan and series producer Kim Manners. Dean guesses "John" - Jeffrey's character name - and the intern corrects with "Jeff"

It a testament to the way Supernatural has trained its audience that we barely blink when they pull out a decapitated head in the morgue, squabble over who is more chicken, dig into the mouth and eventually discover vampire fangs.

Yes, of course they do.

Next scene: Two hot guys walk into a bar…..

…….where the adorable Benny, who is not Benny in this episode but a random dude ( spoilers—later we find out the dude is a vampire), gives them directions/ mis- directions to a possible vampire nest.

We see the first glimpse of Gordon Walker, amazingly played by Sterling K. Brown, and making us worry about and dislike him almost right away. The way he is shown with the light and shade bars on his face from the window blinds is so menacing.

The next few scenes continue to build that sense of unease where the Winchester brothers, apparently telepathically, decide to double back and catch him following them, then he shows them his car and his weapons, where he references their dad and then refuses their offer for help.

The scene where he shows them his car is like a painting. (The car by the way is just as inconspicuous as the Impala –which is to say NOT AT ALL!! How do these people stay below the radar of the regular law enforcement is a mystery….).

The dust highlighting the rays of light, the two brothers on one side of the car and Gordon at the other, it’s all so consciously set up for a few seconds worth of screen time. Impressive!

Next comes a truly brutal kill, at Dean’s hands, which we don’t even see except as a spray of blood on his face. Poetic! But it is Dean’s expression that makes my stomach clench. His eyes are dead and he is somewhere deep that even Sam can’t reach, as we can see from the distress on Sam’s face.

Gordon of course is all chipper and full of bonhomie and offers to buy them drinks.

That following scene is the one which gives Wincest brother-wives vibes like 100%.

Sam plays the role of the disgruntled ‘wife’ to perfection. No one but hubby is allowed to use the nickname. He hates the male bonding going on with Gordon and the more Gordon seems to slip into Dean’s inner circle, the more uncomfortable Sam gets, until he finally decides that he just cannot physically be there any more.

Dean’s smug expression when Sam tells Gordon off for calling him Sammy, his instant worry at Sam going back alone, his hand raised in exasperation to convey to Gordon—look what I have to put up with-- the tossing of the keys to his car----it is all a symphony of Dean playing his part in the brother-wives orchestra.

The last line?! ‘Remind me to beat the buzzkill out of you later.’ And Sam’s expression at that? That’s exactly the way a bullying /abusive husband would react to a nagging wife who doesn’t like his toxic friends and wonders how he can be so blind as to not see them for the bad influence they clearly are.

( Bad Dean!!!)

Sam goes back to the motel and does his due diligence by checking with Ellen, gets kidnapped by vampires, released and on his return is disgusted to find Gordon inside their motel room.

The next scene is where Dean erupts, having clearly had enough of the shifting power dynamics between them over the evening. Sam has been silently judging him since the kill and Gordon has managed to ‘other’ Sam and make Dean feel validated in his own bloodlust as a hunter.

Dean clocks Sam one.

Wow. I did not see that coming. And what shocked me at this re- watch is that Sam just takes it.

Like an abused wife, he just takes it. Not only that, sometime later in the episode he tells Dean to hit him again if it is going to make him feel better.

NO Sam! NO!!! This is NOT healthy and this is NOT the way to deal….ugh. Sigh.

Then the second half of the episode swings in and the moral dilemma they face becomes clear when the victim and villain switch roles and Dean is shook enough to question his dad’s judgement!

Dean is still kind of trying to give Gordon the benefit of the doubt even though he sees him literally torturing the vampire. But of course all bets are off the instant he touches Sam. Dean pulls his gun on him. I was surprised that he didn’t shoot him just on principle later simply because he hurt Sam even if it was a small cut.

That is Dean’s definition of monsters-- Anything that hurts Sam. 😊

We don’t know it at this time, and spoilers ahead, but maybe Dean has been so annoyed and violent with Sam at the idea that he is standing up for MONSTERS is because he might also be one….and the way he looks at the end when he realizes that his whole life’s philosophy has been upended.

There are the details about the vampires who drink cattle blood so they don’t harm humans and therefore want to be treated as the good guys. Of course it is all about the inherent struggle between who you are and what you do—something that shows up hugely magnified in the later seasons when Sam is struggling with his own demon blood addiction and the knowledge of the demon blood inside him.

He needs desperately to believe in this as the utmost foundation stone of his life and its purpose—what you DO is more important than what you ARE!

So even if you are a monster, if you don’t behave like one—that is your redemption.

But it’s not just anybody whose faith he wants in his struggle to prove to himself that he is not a monster. He needs it from Dean.

Remember the dialogue from the panic room “Don’t you say that to me. Don’t YOU say that to me.”

And the fake voicemail set up by Zachariah exploits this at the time of the breaking of the last seal.

Of course he doesn’t know any of this yet, but that’s Sam fucking Winchester for you –always purer and better than his circumstances allow. Always struggling to do better, be better.😍

It is fascinating how the visuals and the roles these two play are of rugged handsome men, badass heroes-- Dean of course super macho role playing all the time. But there are so many layers upon layers and honestly if it wasn’t for Jared and Jensen’s fine nuanced and impeccable acting adding depth to the characters, the show would not have held our interest for this long.

We are shown Sam as the brains with his lore and research, but then in the very next episode (Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things), we see Dean connect dots faster than Sherlock Holmes.

Dean is shown as the instinctively violent one with the gun under his pillow, trigger happy, and in this episode even that brutal kill of the vampire on the docks. But then please remember the way Sam kills Gordon finally. Or the insane way he bites himself to get blood for drawing sigils. Or the way he just simply shoots the crossroads demon point blank!

We see Sam as the soft hearted one and he does rescue kids once in a while, but he is never shown to bond with them even a fraction of the way Dean does—so effortlessly. Also the ladies of course, all of whom have a soft spot for Dean. The exceptions being Sarah and Madison, both of whom completely ignored Dean. Oh and that doctor from Sex and Violence.

Dean has had his share of bad dates of course with Cassie, the woman who gave birth to his magical superfast growing daughter ( who was killed by Sam), and the whole Lisa arc, but somehow we are shown Sam as the one who is invested in relationships. Hello?! Sam was planning to marry Jessica without having told her a thing about his life while Dean told Cassie the secret as soon as he thought he was in love and wanted a relationship.

So anyway, just to say that a rewatch is so brilliant because we know more about them at this point than they do and the character arc is such a thing of beauty to see unfolding!

That last scene where Dean is in a thoughtful frame of mind, the sun is rising overhead ( as a metaphor for him seeing the light, maybe?)--that insanely gorgeous shot of Dean with the ring of fire and light and his absolutely perfect face in a close up…sigh.

Then he thanks Sam for pushing him to see this grey area and for the first time in that episode Sam finally smiles.

His big brother is back with him.

And then he commits to Dean too. Ah…how it warms my heart to hear this dialogue!

DEAN I wish we never took this job. It's jacked everything up.

SAM What do you mean?

DEAN Think about all the hunts we went on, Sammy, our whole lives.

SAM Okay.

DEAN What if we killed things that didn't deserve killing? You know? I mean, the way Dad raised us...

SAM Dean, after what happened to Mom, Dad did the best he could.

DEAN I know he did. But the man wasn't perfect. And the way he raised us, to hate those things; and man, I hate 'em. I do. When I killed that vampire at the mill I didn't even think about it; hell, I even enjoyed it.

SAM You didn't kill Lenore.

DEAN No, but every instinct told me to. I was gonna kill her. I was gonna kill 'em all.

SAM Yeah, Dean, but you didn't. And that's what matters.

DEAN Yeah. Well, 'cause you're a pain in my ass.

SAM Guess I might have to stick around to be a pain in the ass, then.

DEAN Thanks.

SAM Don't mention it.

Transcript here http://www.supernaturalwiki.com/index.php?title=2.03_Bloodlust_%28transcript%29

Guess Sam does stick around for the next 15 years to be a pain in the ass 😊

Some quotes from the writers about this episode:

· "The episode was really about what Dean would become if he didn't watch out: that Gordon was Dean in ten years if Sam didn't ask the difficult questions and keep him from getting too militant." - Executive story editor Sera Gamble

· "We set out to create a monster episode where you weren't entirely sure whether these monsters should be killed." - Eric Kripke

· "For me, the show is at its best when the supernatural story reveals something new about the brothers, or forces them to change in some way. Sam and Dean's realization that they've basically been raised as 'monster racists' was really meaty stuff. Exploring these characters' flaws is just as important as showcasing their heroism - these are the things that make them human, that make us invest in them." - Raelle Tucker

Check out this site for more amazing trivia and stuff

http://www.jonescave.com/supernatural/Episode/Episode.php?s=2&e=3#PopCulture

I have already finished watching the next episode ‘Children’s Shouldn’t play with Dead Things’….so let’s hope I get around to writing a review sometime soon !

#spn #spn review #spn meta #sam and dean #bloodlust #the epic love story of sam and dean #wincest #brother wives

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smallheathgangsters · 4 years

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Habits | M.G.

A/N: So, I combined my submission for @maggiescarborough‘s writing challenge with a request that I got. It’s pure angst, but I still hope you enjoy. Also, I’m glad I’m back to uploading regularly!

Pairing: Michael Gray x Reader

Word Count: 1649

Type: angst

Summary: Michael leaves for America and when he gets back, there is nothing left to save.

Tag List: @livingforbarnes @multi-fandom-iimagines @lovemissyhoneybee @peakyblindersengland @lucillethings @callmesunshinexx @simonsbluee @anyasthoughts @sophieshelby

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

You had never met Henry. You had never met the sweet, innocent boy who knew nothing about guns and murder and violence, who knew nothing about the Peaky Blinders and their business. The boy that had helped his foster mom pick apples from trees and his foster dad cut the lawn. The one that had worn colourful ties and light brown trousers with suspenders.

But you had had the privilege to meet Michael before everything went south.

You had helped him find his mother’s home after he had escaped from the country. Birmingham was big and easy to get lost in. You had run into him while he had been wandering cluelessly around Small Heath, a piece of paper with an address in hand.

“May I help you?” you had asked him.

There had been uncertainty in his eyes. “I’m looking for my mother.”

“Is that her address?” you had said, pointing at the note between his fingers. Michael had nodded and passed it over to you. Only a quick glace was necessary for you to realise who he had been looking for.

You had huffed surprised. “Polly Gray is your mother?”

“That’s what the man had told me …”

His voice had been a little shaky. You had quickly noticed that he was from the city. “What man?”

“He said his name was Thomas Shelby.”

You had inhaled deeply when the two last words had left his lips. If this young man really was Polly Gray’s son, then he clearly did not know what he was getting himself into. And of course, Tommy had made sure to take this boy away from his foster family just to expand his army. At least that’s what the Shelby family seemed to have become.

Still, you explained the way to Mrs. Gray’s home to the quiet stranger in front of you. Though, you couldn’t hold back a comment. It had hung at the tip of your tongue. “Be careful …”

He had noticed that the unawareness of his name was the reason for your pause.

“Michael.”

“Michael,” you had repeated. “The Shelby’s are living a very dangerous lifestyle. You don’t seem anything like them. Don’t get caught up in their business. It’ll ruin you.”

You had saw him gritting his teeth. Probably not what he wanted to hear from some random girl on the street in an unknow city.

So, he had simply thanked you for your help and took off.

After that, you didn’t see Michael for a while. And you had almost forgotten about the handsome country boy, when one day you spotted him walking towards you on the street. You were on your way to get some groceries at the shop nearby, planning on baking a lovely apple crumble for your family.

At first, you were unsure if you should keep your head down and ignore him. Walk past and act as if you didn’t recognise him. But your eyes wouldn’t obey. They kept moving to the young man, now dressed in a clearly expensive suit. His hair was slicked back, making him look like a million pounds.

You cursed under your breath for being so captivated by him and tore your gaze away with much effort.

Since Michael was not born yesterday, he had spotted you looking at him. He stopped in his tracks just as you were about to pass him and greeted you kindly.

“Oh, hello Michael.”

“How have you been?”

You shrugged. “Normal?”

Michael chuckled at your response.

“What about you? Have you settled in with your new family?”

“Well, technically they’re my real family,” he corrected you promptly. “But yes, they have been very welcoming. I even got a job in Tommy’s company. Since I went to school the longest, I’m pretty good with numbers.”

“Sounds great,” you said. You felt uneasy knowing he was a Shelby now. The ones who people avoided when they went to the pub or walked down the Small Heath alleys. The ones that made their blood run and their heart beat faster. That made deals with men even more fearsome than themselves.

“Are you on your way home?” he asked.

You shook your head. “I’m going to the store to buy a few things for dinner tonight.”

“I could accompany you, if you like,” Michael offered, giving you a gorgeous smile. You frowned at his proposition. “Don’t you have to be somewhere? You look rather put together to pick up some groceries.”

He laughed. “I don’t mind. And I’m sure waiting half an hour won’t hurt John either.”

Michael went with you to get groceries and escorted you home. He “accidentally” bumped into you the next day again and you had lunch together in a café just a few blocks from your home. Michael invited you to the Garrison one Friday evening and introduced you to his family. He made sure you felt comfortable around the men that intimidated you so much. He started telling you more about the work they did and slowly but surely opened up to you about the aspects that obviously clashed with your morals. He understood and accepted the fact that you could and would not identify yourself with the illegal side of their business.

Nevertheless, you fell in love. You fell in love with Michael because he cared about you so much. He was attentive and gentle and interested in hearing about your day. About the things you liked to do and were passionate about. He was there when you were feeling down and he was there to enjoy the days that simply could not get any better.

You didn’t believe in soulmates, but if they were real, Michael was yours and you were Michael’s.

Then he left.

Fucking America.

Fucking Wall Street.

Fucking stock markets and money and drugs.

He left without an explanation that would help you sleep at night. That would help you with getting up in the morning and going to work. That would calm down the burning anger you had towards the Shelby family.

With Michael leaving, you decided to leave the Shelby’s. As kind as they had been to you, they did not bring any positivity to your life. Not anymore.

Michael did not call. Michael did not write. It was as if he had never existed. But your heart was aching so much, you knew he wasn’t gone. Your heart in his hands, fingers squeezing tightly around it. Almost stopping it from beating.

You had noticed him changing. You had felt his touch getting colder and his words getting fewer. He came home later and went to work earlier.

As foolish as you were, you told yourself to ignore the signs. And in the end, whatever you were trying to save, came crumbling down.

You had counted the days after he’d left. But you eventually stopped. How many years had it been? Two? Three? Four even? You had lost track of time. And just as you thought you were over Michael Gray, he was back in Small Heath.

With a woman.

You tried to push through the busy crowd of a sunny Saturday morning after accidentally locking eyes with him. You wanted to get away. Erase the images that were now spinning around in your head.

Just as you thought you had saved yourself from an unpleasant encounter with the man you had once called yours, a strong hand placed itself onto your shoulder.

“Please wait …”

You spun around, holding the handle of your basked tightly, as though it was giving you the support you needed in this situation.

“I have nothing to say to you,” you spat. Against your own expectations, you didn’t look away.

“Y/N, I’m sorry,” he said, pulling back his hand awkwardly.

“There’s nothing to be sorry about if you did it willingly and on purpose. And since you’ve never officially broken up with me, I take your new girl as an indication that our relationship is over, eh?”

You were never one to mince your words, but you knew where to draw the line. Usually. Whereas Michael, standing right in front of you, seemed to be triggering the worst in you. You would not try to be nice. You would use words that hurt. That would stab into his chest and rip out the little of a soul he had left.

Michael winced at your remark. You could see that this conversation was painful. Too bad, he didn’t understand the pain he had put you through when he left you. “I never meant to hurt you–“

You rolled your eyes.

“You know that this business changed me, Y/N. You knew I wasn’t the same man you met when I asked you about Pol’s address,” he continued.

“Oh, how romantic, referring to that day?”

“Please don’t be like that,” he begged. You knew he tried to sound pitiful. It wasn’t working. You were over and done with this theatre.

“It wasn’t the business that changed you, Michael. You yourself decided to change. And you decided to be cruel,” you told him, the tone in your voice harsh. Merciless even.

You watched him close his eyes for a moment, most likely annoyed at your unwillingness to talk this through, maybe even come to an understanding.

There was not one fibre in your body that was having any of it.

“I can’t change the man I am deep inside,” he tried explaining his behaviour. You huffed and shook your head in disbelief. “You’re an asshole, Michael Gray. And just for the record: Cruelty isn’t a personality trait. Cruelty is a habit. And you deliberately made it your habit.”

Then, you turned your back on your former boyfriend and began walking away. Taking the largest and proudest steps possible.

“Where are you going?” he shouted after you, baffled by the outcome of this dialogue.

“Home. To bake a fucking apple crumble.”

#Peaky Blinders #peaky blinders fanfiction #michael gray #michael gray x reader #polly gray #thomas shelby #Tommy Shelby #John Shelby #Arthur Shelby #Ada Shelby #finn shelby #isaiah jesus #michael gray one shot

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yukidragon · 3 years

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Our Life Snippet - Surprise Aquarium Trip

Just because the Step 3 DLC dropped doesn’t mean I’ve stopped writing for Our Life: Beginnings & Always. Figured I’m past due to post another first draft clip for those who enjoy my novelization self-indulgence.

This particular clip was of an original moment for Step 1 that I started even before @gb-patch dropped the teaser image of Cove at the aquarium. After playing Happiness in the new DLC, I now find this scene I wrote fairly amusing for various reasons that will be apparent for those who have also played it. I guess this would add a few extra lines of dialogue to that DLC scene wouldn’t it?

...

Weekends had little meaning for kids on summer vacation, except for those with parents or guardians who were off from work for two whole days in a row. For most kids, these days were an opportunity to go out and do something special with the family, such as take a trip to the movies or a theme park.

For Cove, that was the last thing he wanted if it meant spending time with just his dad.

Mealtime with his dad had become tense since the move, but this morning Cove found Cliff absolutely insufferable. First he was woken up with an obnoxiously excessive amount of cheer. The big breakfast his dad made was fine - pretty tasty actually - but it was the constant battering of conversation during the meal that grated on his nerves.

Things had finally settled into something of a routine at the new store, which allowed Cliff to take the Saturday off. His plan for the day was to spend as much quality time with Cove as possible. He came to his son with a laundry list’s worth of suggestions for fun father-son activities to share.

It was a shame that Cove rejected every single one of them.

Not all of the suggestions were bad. A few sounded kind of fun, but Cove still refused on principle. He hadn’t forgiven his dad for uprooting his entire life and taking him away from his real home and his mom. Being offered to do things that they used to do as a family with only the two of them just reminded him of how broken his family was now.

“I’m going to go play with Jamie,” Cove said, raising his voice as he rose from his seat. He was finally finished eating, so he didn’t have to sit through this annoying conversation anymore.

Cliff faltered mid-sentence at his son’s declaration - he hadn’t even gotten to finish his latest pitch. He had been so sure that a visit to the aquarium would do the trick that time. “Are you sure?” he asked, not hiding the disappointment in his voice. “I heard the aquarium has a big shark exhibit. It might be pretty cool, don’t you think?”

It did sound cool, but Cove shook his head with a displeased grunt, refusing to be swayed, no matter how tempting it was

If his dad was actually giving Cove the option to choose not to go, then he was going to reject anything Cliff threw his way regardless of what it was; it was only fair after what his dad put him through without giving him any choice in the matter.

It was clear to Cliff, as he watched his son walk swiftly away from him, that he would have to resort to drastic measures if he was going to have a day out with his son. “Hey, I have an idea,” he said as he got out of his own seat. “How about we see if Jamie can come with us?”

That suggestion brought Cove to a halt. That… actually wasn’t a bad idea from his dad for once. Jamie had a way of making anything fun, and he knew she loved the ocean as much as he did. He had little doubt that she would be thrilled to come.

The prospect of looking at all the amazing creatures the sea had to offer became just a little more exciting than it already was when Cove pictured doing it with Jamie. It would even be worth putting up with his dad.

“Okay,” Cove said, fighting to hide his smile as he looked back at Cliff. Just because he was now looking forward to the suggestion didn’t mean he could let his dad know that he was excited.

Cliff beamed at his son, easily crossing the distance between them to ruffle Cove’s hair, much to the little boy’s chagrin. Jamie saved the day once again. “That’s great! How about we head over right now and ask her moms for permission and see what Jamie thinks?”

The Leimomis were good people. Noelani and Pamila were all for encouraging the friendship between Cove and Jamie, so chances were good they would agree to let Jamie come on the trip. Sure, it probably would probably mean that it would go from just the two of them to six, but Cliff could still squeeze some father-son bonding in there; he could even offer to pay for admission for all of them to seal the deal.

As long as Cove was happy, that was all that mattered.

Father and son had barely stepped outside the house when they spotted activity at the Leimomi house. Pamela was loading something into the trunk of the car, while Jamie was walking swiftly down the sidewalk in her direction.

“Hey, good timing,” Cliff said to Cove, though his son wasn’t even looking at him. He turned to wave across the street, raising his voice. “Hey neighbors!”

Pamela looked over her shoulder and waved back. “Morning, Cliff. Morning, C-”

“Cove!” Jamie shouted happily, unintentionally talking over her mom. She waved energetically before dashing past Pamela to meet up with her best friend in the middle of the street. “Hi!”

Cove gave Jamie a shy smile. He could never quite match her enthusiasm, but it always made him feel good to see her so happy to see him. “Hi Jamie.”

Cliff grinned at the exchange between his son and his friend before shifting his focus to Pamela. “I hope we’re not interrupting anything, but Cove and I are planning on taking a trip to the aquarium today, and Cove was thinking of inviting Jamie along.”

The suggestion put stars in Jamie’s eyes, and she looked from Cliff to Cove as she let out an amazed gasp. “Really?”

Cove nodded, happy to see Jamie so excited. “Mm hmm. There’s supposed to be sharks there too.”

“Cool!” Jamie cheered as she bounced onto the balls of her feet. “I can’t wait!”

Pamela placed her hand on her daughter’s shoulder and shook her head when Jamie glanced up at her. “Sorry, kiddo, but I’m afraid that’s gonna have to wait for another day. You’ve got a lesson in half an hour, remember?”

Jamie blinked before visibly deflating with disappointment. Not only was she going to miss out on spending time having fun with Cove, but she was going to miss out on something cool as going to the aquarium. It wasn’t fair.

“Lessons?” Cove repeated, brow furrowing in confusion and displeasure. “But it’s summer vacation.”

“Guitar lessons,” Jamie explained with a sigh. “I have them all year ‘round.”

“That’s right,” Pamela said wryly. “Jamie’s Saturday mornings are reserved except for holidays and special occasions. Sorry. Guess it’ll be just you two boys and the fishes today.”

Cove folded his arms over his chest, not bothering to hide his scowl.

Jamie looked up at her mom, giving her best puppy dog eyes. “But… going to the aquarium with Cove is a special occasion.” She made the argument tentatively as she anxiously twirled one of her pigtails around her finger.

Pamela wasn’t swayed by such adorable charms into changing her mind, but it did make her honk Jamie’s nose lightly. She chuckled at her youngest daughter’s indignant squawk at the playful gesture. “Sorry, kiddo, but Mx. Morgan is waiting, and you don’t want to be rude and cancel on them right before you’re supposed to see them, do you?”

Jamie sighed and wilted as her last ditch effort failed as well, but her mom had a good point. Her guitar teacher was a nice person, and she didn’t want to be rude to them just because she wanted to play with Cove - it might hurt their feelings.

Cliff rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly as he tried to figure out how to salvage the situation. He probably should have expected the possibility that the Leimomis could have other plans. “I guess it can’t be helped,” he said after a moment. “Sorry to disappoint you, Jamie. Next time I’ll try to remember to give more notice.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Pamela said with an easy smile. “We’ll just have to shelve it for another day. Have fun, you two.” Gently, she nudged Jamie’s shoulder in the direction of the car. “Come on, Jamie, or we’re gonna be late.”

Jamie reluctantly went along with her mom, but she gave Cove one last regretful look over her shoulder and waved with far less enthusiasm than before. “Bye, Cove. Have fun at the aquarium.”

Cove gave a small wave in return, but he couldn’t return the weak smile Jamie sent his way, not when he was too busy being unhappy about this development. “Bye.”

This wasn’t fair. Why did adults always have to make them do stuff they didn’t want to do all the time just because they were kids? Cove wished they were older, then he and Jamie could go to the aquarium by themselves and spend the whole day there having fun together.

Cliff tried his best to rekindle Cove’s enthusiasm for the aquarium, but it was clear that his son was in no mood to go anywhere after the one thing he wanted to do the most - play with Jamie - got cancelled. Cove never reacted well to a change of plans once he had his heart set on them.

Although Cliff was unable to talk Cove into going on an outing, he did manage to coax his son into a couple card games at home. Winning a few rounds of go fish did brighten Cove’s mood enough that the grumpy boy let a few smiles slip.

It might not have been the big father-son day out Cliff was aiming for, but he counted himself a winner anyway.

#Our Life Beginnings & Always #Our Life #ourlifeba #Cove Holden #Jamie Last #Cliff Holden #Jamie Leimomi #My Writing

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humanmosquito · 4 years

Text

this is definitely gonna be a ramble-y post but i’ll neaten it when i’m done. (edit: didn’t really but I’m sick of this sitting here already)

I’ve put this under a cut for obvious reasons. There’s more things I didn’t like about this book but I forgot most of the plot immediately after reading it.

Given the usual time skips in Clare’s work you’d think this would be 6 months down the line and Livvy would have been completely forgotten about and is mentioned sporadically to motivate the main characters.

I’m not really buying the shock of Livvy’s sudden death i would say Clare’s done a job here and she’s certainly tried, but i’m not buying it.

Her treatment of Gay Characters (capitalisation necessary) is bad but so much worse with Alec than any others and i hate reading about her Alec bc of the way she infantilises him. Also has Clare seriously not found any way to solve problems in her own fictional universe without constantly reintroducing the same guy??? (who is also just a bunch of stereotypes of queer men) (Magnus)

you don’t need to use two separate images to describe people moving in the background, it’s fine.

why is Christina using Spanish pet names when we’ve never seen her using Spanish conversationally before? also, ( and this is a very specific thing to to be so worked up about like 4 years after i read it the first time) but why do whatshisname and Christina have to talk in English instead of implying the conversation was in Spanish but had been translated or even mention it at all? (okay, coming back in later to say that she does use Spanish randomly in this book, Clare has a habit of making Latine characters use Spanish randomly to show they’re Latine.

isn’t Mark 20 or something? I’m legitimately confused about these lines.

there’s no need to suddenly start using fancier language for two whole sentences. also you can just say she visited a wax museum or even Just Madame Tussaud’s (which i’m guessing is the place we’re talking about). also: why is all the dialogue in this book so stiff and overly formal? I know they’re in shock and some of them are functionally strangers but it’s still so off from how people normally speak. (I’m willing to excuse the faerie characters because everyone who writes faeries makes them speak super flowery but that’s it)

there’s no break between Mark and Helen’s POV.

I’m pretty sure than Simon is secular, why is he suddenly sprouting hebrew? (CC makes no effort to show him engaging with judaism in any form and has him Christmas shopping at one point in tmi)

wouldn’t that make it much easier to break in? (this is needlessly pedantic, I know)

A lot of people said that Emma just becomes a way to talk about how amazing Julian is and I’m beginning to see that. She focuses on the sound he makes walking along a hallway way too much. (Also: coming back a week later to add that Julian just gets worse and worse and for a character that we’re supposed to love(?), he has absolutely no redeeming qualities.)

Doesn’t witchlight only light up when a shadowhunter is holding it? I remember that from TID.

The rally with Dearborn feels like an attempt at the bit at the beginning of 1984 where they’re watching the propaganda video and the woman is crying out for big brother. also, there’s no way to write people chanting someone’s name that doesn’t make it feel like mediocre fanfiction, huh? The whole scene is very over the top and not at all like the actual process of radicalisation.

who thinks like this? Who thinks about themself like this?

The descriptions of the shadowhunters at the funeral are weird. Emma is described as putting on gear then wearing a dress, Christina has a gear jacket over a dress and Ty is in full gear.

she’s not even being subtle about stealing plot points from the tv show, is she?

why does she keep choosing random words to translate into Spanish? It isn’t necessary unless the word also means a specfic type of that word. A vela isn’t a specific type of candle, that’s just the Spanish word for candle.

Doesn’t Jonathon Shadowhunter creating runes go against tsc canon? No one could make new runes except Clary because of her extra angel blood. (I should know, I read the fucking Shadowhunter codex). (there are more instances of CC creating thing that go against canon but i kinda got bored of making this list after here)

(I know the answer to this one is just CC’s incest fetish but) Why did everybody just let Christina get engaged to her cousin?

I have to say that my suspension of disbelief lasted longer than I thought it would but it ends with Julian killing a Rider with a D&D figurine.

The whole Thule bit feels like it was copy-pasted from ao3 (While we’re on the subject of copied from ao3 “Ragnor Fell lives” is such a “saw it on Tumblr” cop out)

how did the cohort get Jaime? It’s not explained and I wish it was.

Julian sucks. capital-S Sucks. For the guy Emma is facing Losing her Shadowhunter life for and going into exile for, he’s a dick, with emotions he comes off as creepy, over-sexed and obsessed. Without he’s somehow even worse.

Zara calling Cl*ce disgusting and being called wrong for it is such an obvious dig at the people who criticised Clare when she wrote them nearly fucking in a ditch when they thought they were bio siblings. (I’m p sure they’re also adopted siblings and they consider the same man their dad, so it would still be incest.)

Also, she’s so one-dimensional and every scene with her, especially in the last 1/2 of the book was exactly the same. (emma attacks her but decides to let her go which was a ~mistake~ with consequences (consequences being “we see Zara again”))

It's not even a subtle D*mbl*dore's Army rip-off, huh?

I take back all the things I thought about Clare improving as a writer, chapter 33 makes literally no sense, also cannot do dialogue or consistent characterisation. (how did any of these get published, TMI especially)

Once again, Clare seems to be stealing plot points from the TV show. (Of course there’s going to be some overlap between the show and books even after it diverged from book canon but it’s getting pretty ridiculous at this point, isn’t it?).

Okay, every woc in this book is here to further the white protagonists’ story (which i guess is the purpose of supporting characters but the white supporting characters do fuck all) And i get they have their own love interests but it was super forced (don’t @ me for this, Kierarktina had potential but it was all rushed in the second half of this book because Clare realised what a cash cow it was)

Diana gets a little tropey (Speaking as a trans person) but her treatment b Vlare and the other characters was okay. I do wish she was allowed more personality than “no one can love me or know me because I’m trans” (it’s stupid and overused) and “helps the Blackthorns and Emma”. (also Clare knows that you don’t stop taking HRT, right? it isn’t a limited course, it’s not Gender-Changing Antibiotics.)

My final thing is that it went on way too long, like, insufferably long. (you’d think long enough to explain some plot holes, but no.)

#cursing out 12 yr old me for picking up clockwork angel now until forever #the dark artifices #tda #cassandra clare #anti cc #this was an experience i would not wish on anyone #book review

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shikai-the-storyteller · 4 years

Text

WFC: Siege watch!

Part 1: Episodes 1, 2, and 3

[Part 2] (Linking because Tumblr isn’t even showing the post on my blog or on my dash 🙄)

As a side note: every single person in this fandom is horrible at tagging their spoilers, you guys really need to do a better job at that because I’ve got a bunch of blockers on and I was STILL almost spoiled multiple times. Come on you guys...it literally came out today, be better about this.

Alright going to try and keep expectations low because I feel like the target audience for this is G1 dudebros who take a series about transforming cars way too seriously, but I’m still cautiously optimistic because a friend vetted for the dudes working on this show so WE”LL SEE

Episode 1

Aw man there’s only 6 episodes??? Bummer, I wonder if they’re already working on Season 2 or if they’re going to see how this does and let it die in the water if it’s not popular enough.

Things I know going in: Skyfire / Jetfire is in this, Megatron has big lips, and Elita is in it. That’s literally it, I’ve managed to avoid spoilers thusfar (though a few of the promo images implied Skyfire’s a Decepticon, so you KNOW that’s gonna break bad eventually)

WHEELJACK Wednesday THURSDAY

OH MYG OSH IS THAT SKYWARP??? EXPECTATIONS ARE NOW SKY-HIGH

The transformation sequences look so reminiscent of those stop-motion videos people do of their Transformer toys transforming. This isn’t a dig at the animation style, I think that’s rather charming and I wonder if it’s intentional.

Wow Bumblebee sounds like a jerk. I’m instantly on-edge, please don’t make all the characters ~hyper-masculine mean guys who don’t know how to have fun or talk about their emotions~

“The Autobots aint paying you for attitude” YOU TELL HIM WHEELJACK

Yooo Velocitron exists!

Ahh so Bumblebee IS just a mercenary, not an Autobot

OHOHO HERE”S JETFIRE

Wow Jetfire you’re really going the bad dude route huh

Ayyyyyy there’s Starscream

YOOO THERE”S THUNDERCRACKER

Thundercracker I appreciate that you’re using fancy tech to identify wheeljack but his Autobot badge is literally Right There

WTF

WELL THAT DIDN”T LAST LONG HUH...that’s a bit disappointing

OH NVM THAT WASN”T A HEEL-TURN THAT WAS JUST A STRAIGHT UP “I”M THE BOSS” MOVE

huh so they’re making Skyfire the target of Starscream’s desire for power. hmm

WHY ARE YOU GUYS RUNNING JUST TRANSFORM INTO CARS unless they’re too low on energon to do it??

There he is...Mr. Big Lips

Well that’s a surprising take Megatron

Isn’t that Cybertron and Luna 1 in the sky though?? Are they on Cybertron rn or not??

Megatron’s voice is really throwing me off, if it weren’t for his helmet and color I’d really think that was Overlord

ITS TRUCK DAD

OHOHO HE SAID THE THING!!!!

Why does bumblebee have lips too

“What do you know of slavery?” Alright that line did make me go “OHHHH”

“Alpha Trion would be ashamed!” “Of us both, I think” ouch, but nice to see Alpha “Grandpa” Trion back in a series

Megatron PLEASE don’t say “I’m enjoying this, Prime” in that voice while I can hear Optimus groaning in the background

AYYY ELITAAAAAA

Why are the Seekers chasing these guys, who are running on foot, ON FOOT??? CHANGE INTO YOUR DANG ALT MODE

WHEELJACK SWORE

man I’m only like a few minutes in and I’m already bored. I’m going to watch the whole thing, but I feel like this is really lacking soul or personality so far. It very much feels like the script was written by people who aren’t familiar with these characters, so they’re writing them how they EXPECT them to sound, not writing them as they actually are. It’s more than a little disappointing, but this is only the first episode, so I’ll keep going and see if this is consistent throughout the series.

Oh man, just listening to Elita you can tell she was written by a dude. Oof.

There’s the Ark!

Dang everyone’s running low

Jeez Optimus and Elita wouldn’t just walk by all these injured Autobots!

And Optimus wouldn’t brush off his officers!! Agh!!!

YO Ultra Magnus!

Chromia!!!!!

oh my gosh is THAT Red Alert??

Hey where’s Ratchet though

Gosh the writing is so STIFF!!!! I can’t stand this, if I wasn’t a die-hard Transformers fan I would’ve bounced a few minutes ago

It might also be the way the VAs pause between words, please speak normally, these constant pauses between words are frustrating

Ok but where the frick is Soundwave

“His arrogance I actually like” pfft

Annnnd here comes Ultra Magnus to accept the treaty on Prime’s behalf, where he’ll get held hostage and probably wind up beefing it.

Episode 2

SOUNDWAVE!!!! BABY

And Shockwave!!!

YO SKYWARP ACTUALLY GOT A SPEAKING LINE

I want to know where Megatron got all this fabric for those stupid flags and where Ultra magnus got that cloak

Is. Is that Prowl with a weird paint job

Wow bad aim dude

Ultra Magnus you dummy....

Ok but if it was a battle then who were they fighting against???

Wow you’re really just gonna stand there and take that Magnus?

I know they’re on a time-crunch because they only have 6 episodes, but they have to do more to make me care about the characters. I’m inclined to care about them already because I’m familiar with the series and because as a stand-alone, even I’m like “Ok. So?” whenever new problems come up for them. I’m not invested!

Not to compare the two, because I feel like this entire liveblog will turn into a comparative essay, but Cyberverse got me invested in characters within the first episode! They were on an even TIGHTER time-crunch because their episodes were only 10 minutes, and yet they did a great job weaving a tight narrative and making good use of their time to tell a story and have characters charm the audience.

Optimus: Til All Are One Rodimus, coming out of nowhere: TIL ALL ARE ONE

WELL THAT”S NOT THE VOICE I WAS EXPECTING FOR SHOCKWAVE he sounds a bit reminiscent of his TFA version

What does de-rez mean

Ok but that’s assuming that this thing will automatically reprogram them?? Reformatting doesn’t automatically mean someone will turn into a Decepticon!

You know, there’s a lot of talking in the show but the dialogue doesn’t actually say a lot. It doesn’t reveal much about the characters or tell me who they are.

YOOO THERE”S SOUNDWAVE

AUDIO BOOB

It really annoys me that characters always pause after saying “I”. It’s always “I.........[long pause] rest of their sentence.”

what do you mean “Teams” Optimus there’s like 5 of you guys

I love you Soundwave!!!

Whoa wait was that Impactor in the background?

ughHHHHHH I HATE THAT MY BIGGEST PET PEEVE IS “what have you done?” SAID UTTERLY MONOTONE WHEN IT’S NOT EVEN A BIG DEAL!!! YOU CAN”T FLIP THAT LINE OUT WITHOUT ACTUALLY PUTTING IN THE FOOTWORK TO EARN IT!!! AGH!!!

Again, it feels very much like the writers read the wikipedia page for Transformers and maybe the first sentence of each character’s bio page and then wrote the entire script from there. It’s frustrating. I hate being so severe in my reviews because I hate dunking on my fellow writers because they don’t always have final say in what happens, but this is astonishingly poor writing.

Like, I can see what they’re TRYING to accomplish, but it feels like they whiff so badly.

YO IT IS IMPACTOR

oh thats Barricade that’s why I thought that was Prowl

Chromia!!!! My darling!!!! I can’t believe there’s only two girls in this show so far

Oh that’s Cog, I wasn’t sure if that was Beachcomber or what

Nice one Chromia

Oh is that Mirage?

Ugh ANOTHER WRITING PET PEEVE: Constantly having characters start to say something but then then their dialogue gets cut off. It’s fine if it’s once in a while but over and over it’s annoying

I also feel like a lot of the VAs lack...emotion. They don’t emphasize the lines. Like, “Get him into the repair bay” is one example. Depending on how you emphasize certain words in that sentence, you can infer a lot! Emotion, the state of mind of the character, etc. But when it’s delivered in such a bland way, it’s a bit like “ok whatever”, which is how I’m starting to feel about this whole show. This doesn’t go for all the VAs or all lines, but it’s consistent enough that my mind’s wandering.

RAVAGE??? RAVAGE???? RAVAGE?!?!?!??!?!

It was probably Bumblebee.

Not to be nitpicky but it should be “Neither we nor the Autobots”

The idea of reformatting is so stupid!!! It implies that Autobots and Decepticons are inherently different, which is stupid!! It’s so dumb WHY DO YOU GOTTA GO THAT ROUTE IT”S SO STUPID (ESPECIALLY SINCE THEY”RE TACKLING THE TOPIC OF OPPRESSION??? THEY”RE SAYING THEY”RE LITERALLY DIFFERENT SPECIES AND USING IT AS A PLATFORM TO SAY ONE GROUP IS INHERENTLY BETTER THAN THE OTHER. THAT SUCKS)

Episode 3

RATCHET!!!!!!!!!!!!

Lmao love your lipgloss Megatron

Ohh is Ratchet going to fix Impactor??

PROWL??? HE”S SO SHORT

Gosh please, please don’t have humans in this show

lmao Skyfire called Starscream a tool

RATCHET!!! :D

I’d like to see who was on the writing team of this show

Isn’t that Mirage?

YEAH THAT IS MIRAGE

Again with the sentences consistently being cut off....

Is that Sunstorm?

Points to Chromia and Mirage for showing the first bitof personality in this show.

Yooo Ratchet! Oof he’s not chummy with Prime huh

YOO CAMINUS EXISTS TOO

LMAO FEISTY GRANDPA

Oh Mirage come on

Actually no, don’t shut Impactor up he’s right

“I didn’t patch you up just so you could blow a valve here” *snorts*

Wouldn’t it be frickin hilarious if Magnus just popped open a panel and Minimus came out and just dipped outta there

lmao nice lightsaber Jetfire

LMAO “PULL THE TRIGGER MAGNUS”

JEEZ JUST PUNCH HIM RIGHT IN THE FACE WHY DON”T YOU

Ratchet is the ONLY character they’ve given personality in this show so far.

Jeez Mirage cool your jets

Oh for frick’s sake Optimus be cool

Megatron please stop torturing your ex boyfriend

Ok but who did they rise against??? Were there Quintessons in this universe too?

oh come on you guys

Oh boy something tells me Skywarp isn’t going to survive the rest of this episode

Oh jk, Skyfire just let him go. Well alrighty then

I’m not sure how they found the Autobot base, they implied that it was because of Impactor but that doesn’t make sense

This post is getting long so I’m going to spit it between two posts

#i talk #I'm watching WFC #Primordial robot hell #WFC Spoiler #That's how I'll be tagging my spoilers #but I'll throw a few more spoiler tags in here for good measure #transformers spoiler /#Siege spoiler /#wfc spoiler /#WFC siege spoiler /#ask to tag any other spoilers

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raintherainywriter · 5 years

Text

Au where Betty works at the register, Jug with his dad and Chic is Betty's real brother. Alice sent him to the sisters when she found out about him obsessed with Betty

It had been a long day of work at the Register. Who could say that writing the newspaper of such a small town could be so exhausting?

I guess if there was something interesting to talk about from time to time, it wouldn't be so horrible ...

Betty thought, letting out a long sigh of exhaustion as she took the keys out of her purse and pushed it into the lock, struggling until she heard a clean "click."

Betty Cooper, you've won a delicious and loaded glass of delicious wine with a movie and blanket. She urged, allowing herself to draw a smile on her lips as she closed the front door and left the keys and purse on the table by the entrance.

Her clothes seemed to have turned to pure marble while shedding them with great weariness; hanging her coat on the rack and getting rid of her boots as she walked towards the kitchen.

I could prepare some cheese... Cheddar? Camembert...?

Betty licked her lips, closing her eyes to surrender to the tentative imagination that drew the delicious smell of her appetizer.

When she reached the kitchen, she pulled her phone out of her back pocket, leaving it on the countertop as she undid her ponytail too, dropping her lush, golden hair in waves over her small shoulders. Her scalp seemed to have an orgasm when the tension dissipated, a sweet surge of pleasure spreading across the length and breadth of her head.

And maybe I could watch a movie.– She thought, approaching the pantry first to get a clean, shiny glass cup and then go to the fridge and open it to take out the bottle of wine. -Casablanca, Gone with the wind ...

Betty opened the bottle of wine with an iconic and glorious "pop", tilting the bottle over the lips of the glass and watching the scarlet thread fill the transparency of the container.

Absentmindedly, she looked up at the kitchen clock hanging on the wall in front, on the countertop. It was eleven o'clock at night, but it seemed to be the morning itself. She had been trapped in the Register all day and couldn't be more tired.

Taking her cup, lazy, she walked (or, rather, dragged) to the living room. Nothing was visible on the other side of the windows; and not because the blinds were down, but because the street was extremely dark. You wouldn't see anything if it weren't for the streetlights, which barely illuminated four meters.

Betty reached out as she leaned over the table to catch up the remote, taking the glass to her lips. Returning to lean against the back of the couch, Betty turned on the DVD, giving play to the next movie on the list recorded on one of the few albums that she managed to take from home without her mother noticing.

Soon, the producer's logo appeared on the screen, illuminating the room and highlighting the features on the tired face of Betty, who was taking another shot of her drink.

As the film progressed, Betty began to gain sleep, feeling as her eyelids began to weigh and her eyes were closing little by little. She could barely hear the dialogues of the film, and she felt her head drop to the side, without will or control.

Suddenly, Betty flinched on the couch when she heard someone knock firmly on the door: three clear, dry blows. Three. Knock, knock, knock.

Frowning, and forcing herself to regain her common heartbeat, Betty turned on her own shaft to look over her shoulder, confused, waiting for whoever was outside, to knock again.

Nothing. Silence, absolute silence.

You dreamed it... "She told herself, rearranging herself on the couch, sinking her hand behind her back, searching for her phone. Nothing. Shit, it's in the kitchen.– She cursed, growling as she stood up.

Betty wasn't afraid of living alone; She wasn't like her mother, who, despite her heartless beast shell, was terrified of being left alone at home, even more so during the night or during a storm. "Even more so when Southside is a bridge away ..." She explained once, making Betty roll her eyes in exasperation.

»However, Betty was still not especially a fan of starring in a perfect horror movie scene.

Maybe it was from the movie. The volume was a little high...– She tried to convince herself, driving away (or, trying) the dark ones fruits of her imagination.

Betty reached the kitchen, quickly grabbing the phone to return to the living room; She didn't know why, but she didn't like to stay in the dark in a room. She felt...

Observed

Betty returned to the living room, unlocking her phone to distract herself with Instagram, letting the brightness partially blind her, feeling grateful to be more awake than ever.

@ aarchie.andrewss liked your post

@chic.watson is now following you

@chic.watson has left a comment on your post

Betty clicked on the last notification, dropping on the couch again. The movie kept playing, far from her interest.

@chic.watson: You look tired

Betty felt her pulse slowly freeze; her breathing stirred, her mind went blank with a single thought hovering over her head.

"You look tired."

Betty swallowed, still unable to look away from the screen. And, more specifically, from the comment.

"Calm down Betty, for sure it's a coincidence, you can't get paranoid and start thinking nonsense ..." She told herself, in a soft tone, which inside shivered with pure panic. "Calm down, everything is fine."

Betty repeated that phrase in her head like a mantra, over and over again, as she scolded herself for having an accelerated pulse.

Click

The lock of the entrance.

Betty felt a chill run through her body like an electric current; Cold sweats now suffocating her.

She looked, wide-eyed, at the entrance door.

Her heart would be thrown from her chest at any time.

Bpum ... Bpum ... Bpum ...

She felt the pulse in her temples, suffocating her.

Betty got up slowly, her gaze now fixed on where the door should be. Her steps were slow and cautious, but not for that reason.

It is a coincidence. It is a coincidence. It is a coincidence.

Betty swallowed, feeling her throat completely dry as she slowly approached the door, reaching out, barely able to see, until she reached the doorknob.

It was closed. Completely locked.

You see? It's all in your imagination, Cooper. You're tired and it's late, your head is playing tricks on you ...

Betty rubbed her eyes, defeated. Maybe her inner voice was right. Maybe she was exhausted and everything was the result of her imagination. Maybe.

Maybe.

Betty stepped back slowly, rubbing her temples in a desperate attempt to clear her mind and rid herself of the sudden headache that haunted her. She could still hear the movie in the background; a man and a woman spoke and a soft melody slipped between their words.

And as much as she really wanted to finish the movie, a good rest definitely urged more; she reached the remote and her phone, turning off the TV with the simple press of a button.

The house was completely dark. Betty was alone, surrounded only by the deafening absence of noise. She heard her pulse inside her own head.

Bpum ... Bpum-Bpum ... Bpum-Bpum ...

Betty swallowed and grabbed her phone, repeating a thousand times that she was alone and safe at home. She was troubled by the dream and her mother. Everything was fine. Everything would be fine. She would be fine.

She stumbled blindly up the stairs, climbing carefully step by step.

Then, a message arrived.

Betty unlocked her cell phone and entered WhatsApp, entering the new conversation with an unknown number. There was an voice message and a photo.

Betty pressed play.

As soon as the recording began, Betty felt a chill run through her body as she heard the air outside, clogging the microphone. You could hear leaves. There was water.

And finally, a voice.

"Goosey, goosey gander ..." Sang a deep, dry masculine voice. It was young, however. "Whither shall I wander?" While the voice message continued playing, Betty still frozen in place and with tears already gushing from her eyes, she clicked on the picture he sent along with the voicemail. "Upstairs, downstairs ... In my lady's chamber ..." Betty waited for it to download while her pulse increased and increased. "There I met an old man, who would not say his prayers;" As soon as the image loaded, Betty's heart stopped.

The only thing that could be heard in the house was that gloomy voice message.

Betty turned slowly, feeling tears welling up.

In the photo you could see her, on the stairs, looking at her phone; the screen illuminated her face. Part of her living room was also visible in one of the lower corners.

That picture was taken from the window in the living room. The one next to the couch.

"I took him by the left leg," continued intoning the voicemail. Betty came down the stairs slowly, as if she feared that under each plank there was a trap that would sign her death sentence.

Betty swallowed hard and prayed to all the gods she knew so at some point she woke up, drenched in sweat and late for work.

The last step creaked when she stepped on it.

"And threw him down the stairs." The voicemail sang it's last note. Betty looked, petrified, at the dark and tall figure on the other side of her window.

She wanted to scream, she wanted to scream desperately, but voice didn't come to her.

It passed one, two, and three seconds in which they only stared at each other, without blotting out any one apex of their body. Both anchored to their axes.

Until Betty ran up the stairs letting out a shattered, agonizing and terrifying "help" that mutilated her throat.

As she ran up the stairs, she heard heavy blows hamper her door–nothing to do with the subtle knock on her door–. They were furious, they were hungry ... And they were breaking their door.

With the pulse at the nape of her neck throbbing at an odd frantic compass, Betty ran with the tears already running down her cheeks, moistening the reddish burn. Almost sliding on the landing, she turned in time to avoid slamming herself against the front wall and ran down the hallway to the last room, thinking that closing wouldn't other than to reveal her hiding place, Betty simply jumped into the guest room and locked herself in the closet.

The lights of the house went on just as everything fell back into paralyzing silence.

One step. Another. They crushed the pieces of door.

"Good evening, Miss Cooper ..." purred a voice, like a specter in pain that came to torment her. Betty held her breath. "Excuse my manners, but we have to talk." He scoffed.

Without giving himself the freedom to wander around the house, Betty soon heard his footsteps approaching the stairs; No hurry, though. They were painfully slow.

Betty trembled as she fumbled out the phone, hardly entering the app to call.

"Let me introduce myself, Miss Cooper ..." He hummed; his voice with sovereign mockery, climbing one ladder and another, abusing the steps under his weight. "My name is Chic, Chic Cooper."

Betty was completely ignorant of his words as she frantically dialed the number of the police station and held the phone to her ear, covering her mouth to suppress a desperate cry.

"Exactly, I'm your brother, Elizabeth." Betty swallowed as she heard the phone connecting. One step. And other. Closer and closer.

Please, please, FP, answer the phone ...

"And you'll ask yourself: Why would my brother interrupt my delicious night of wine and relaxation?" The voice asked in the distance-but not so far away. Betty closed her eyes.

The phone was picked up on the other side of the line.

"Betts?"

Jughead.

It was Jughead.

Betty felt a heat surge through her body as she recognized his voice, the nuance of concern at being aware that she had dialed his father's office number instead of his own.

Betty choked on the words.

"Betty, I can't understand anything, what's going on?"

Tears began to descend more quickly, uncontrollably, down her cheeks.

"Jug-Jughead," Betty stammered, choking on the crying she was still trying to suppress. Don't breathe too loud, Betty, remember you're not alone. "I-I need you to tell your father to send a car to my house ..." She whispered, barely inaudible.

Another step, and another. The creaking of the wood was becoming more physical, more real. Betty felt it inside her bones.

"You see little sister, it turns out that you and I, we were always very close, we always played together, we had a wonderful connection," Chic was explaining. His voice was becoming clearer, firmer. It was like waking up from a dream and little by little going feeling the sheets on the skin; Chic was the sheets, like a large cobweb that had her totally trapped.

"A police car? Betty, tell me what's going on." Jughead's voice was firm, but he was as terrified as Betty herself.

"T-there's someone in my house, Jug." Betty stammered, scanning the small interior of the wardrobe. "He h-has an arm-weapon ..."

"But then you fell in love with that Serpent boy," Chic said, and it was more than enough to leave Betty paralyzed in sheer terror.

Jughead.

Her eyes widened with horror as she realized what Chic was doing at home.

Chic and Betty were inseparable from children, right. But that was until Chic began to become obsessed with Betty; every minute of the day, every second, every day, Chic was going to see Betty. And those blue eyes caught her like an ice coffin.

Chic never knew how to accept that Betty fell in love with Jughead.

Chic never knew that Betty wasn't his.

"You see Betty-Betts, I've been waiting, day after day, for you to realize that that son of a bitch doesn't deserve you." His voice was becoming less serene, more gloomy; more twisted, corrupted and broken.

Less human

"Betts? Betts, are you still there?"

Betty couldn't answer. Tears fell on her knees, reflecting the light of the corridor.

His steps were already on the landing; Betty saw a large, faded shadow appear. But, little by little it was moving away in the other direction.

Don't. Breathe.

"And I'm tired of waiting, little sister ..." Chic hissed, away in the hallway. However, his shadow was still visible from the closet. "It's a torture to see how that Jones blemishes your precious body. Did I mention that I love your skin, Betty?" He purred. Betty felt her stomach churn. "You're so tiny ... Just a sparrow."

"Betty? Betty!! ... Ok, that's it, I'm coming."

Betty reacted without thinking.

"NO!" She screamed, and shouted with the strength that she has been repressing in that weeping.

The slight swaying of the shadow stopped at the same time as the creaking of the floorboards; the hint of laughter that used to be heard, like an echo, under each comment, died instantly.

Betty clutched her hand to her face, covering her mouth so hard that she hurt herself.

Jughead fell silent with her.

There was absolute silence for a moment, and Betty did nothing but look at the golem in shadow that reflected the light of the hall. He didn't even seem to breathe.

Betty closed her eyes tightly, cursing herself silently. The tears kept flowing, her breathing was still drowned.

"If I can't have you, Betty ..." Chic's voice said, calm, but dark. It made Betty shudder; It was like looking directly into nothing. One step, and then another.

The wood continued to creak under his weight, bouncing its sound against the walls. The shadow was becoming sharper, blacker, firmer.

Until the big silhouette was placed in the door; the parts of light that covered his body reflected in the form of shadow on her face, outlined by a thin line of light that came from the corridor.

Betty's green eyes widened with horror.

"... Nobody will have you."

And Chic walked quickly to the closet where Betty was hiding, ax in hand, raised.

Throughout the neighborhood, only Betty's torn cry of terror was heard. The ax cutting the wood. A hit and then silence.

Minutes later, a patrol car was spinning at full speed down the street to stop in front of Betty's house.

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bullets-and-masks · 5 years

Text

Lilith’s Character Analysis

Hey, guys! As requested by @valoscope I’m taking a deep dive into Lilith’s character. Differently from Krieg, that had as an objective creating a plausible backstory for,I decided my goal with Lilith is to look further and perhaps clarify the biggest divide in regards to her in the fandom: Why did Lilith do what she did in the end of TPS? (Spoilers for all games and the Borderlands comics anthology.)

Let’s go by this order - Borderlands (when she first appears), BL2 (we get to know her), Comics (to further what we know), and then TPS (oh the discourse) Borderlands: Lilith is a playable character in Borderlands (1) and unlike BL2, the first game doesn’t include ECHOs with extra bits of backstory liying around. As a result, anything that can be grasped about Lilith is from the main story - that has very little to do with WHO the original Vault Hunters are and her quotes. Lilith’s quotes are mostly all centered around her being a badass with a short temper, often hushing things to happen and going after danger. She celebrates victories and thinks highly of herself and her siren powers. In short, Lilith in Borderlands is cocky, self assured and short tempered, enjoying what she does and proud of being a siren. Borderlands 2 (oh how the tables have turned) In Borderlands 2, Lilith becomes a NPC deeply connected to the story, assisting the player and being one of the main characters related to what’s going down. We also get DLCs and tidbits of her personality outside a conflic situation. Lilith in Borderlands 2 starts as presumed dead. We learn later that her and the other vaulties decided it would be best to hide. Under the alias Firehawk, she gives up being with Roland and her friends to draw Bloodshot bandits away from Sanctuary. It’s under this alias that she first meets the player. She appears with flaming wings and greets the player with “Sup”, something we learn she likes saying before or after using her powers. After Lilith goes back to Sanctuary we start to get a better grasp of her personality as her friends gather up. Lilith likes saying stupid/mean jokes but actually worries about her friends and saving Pandora, helping as far as she can. In the mission In Memorian, the player picks up old ECHOs of Lilith after she hid as firehawk, all of her trying to talk to Roland after their relationship has gone cold and awkward. Lilith is also awkward, seemingly searching for reasons to see Roland, but quotes like “I liquified a guy”, said with surprised/fearful tone, even if she says it was awesome later, show that she trusts Roland and is the kind to actually search for help - and that she doesn’t quite undertand the extent of what she is. And that maybe she was also lonely among crazied bandits. In the mission Where Angels Fear to Thread, Angel warns the player and the Vault Hunters that no siren should go in the mission. Lilith debates this and then complies, only to show anyway. This has caused great divides in the community, many blaming Lilith for allowing the Warrior to be woken, but with all we learned the conclusion is: Lilith’s confidence and love for her companions makes so she goes, she wants to help terribly and ends up as doing things work. Lilith makes a mistake. Then, we have the DLCs. The biggest points of interest in the DLCs is that they happen after there’s no more danger, so we get to see Lilith more relaxed. In Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep, Lilith disciplines Tina, wants to help with her grief. She also admits to being a nerd, and that she was bullied when little for liking geek stuff and for her tattoos, going so far as to keep Mr Torgue from playing because he doesn’t seem like a nerd and she’s worried his only interested because geek is trendy. In Sir Hammerlock and the Son of Crawmerax, there’s a small dialogue involving the original Vault Hunters and showing that Lilith really likes Talon, Modercai’s new bird. She doesn’t mind being bit and sounds really proud of how Talon is going. In short, we learn in Borderlands 2 that Lilith’s own nature is still a source of confusion, surprise and pride for her. She’s still cocky and violent, not taking long to make decisions, but she seems to want to stick to the plans, she really wants to make a difference for Pandora and she’s terribly awkward with feelings of any kind, but likes being near her friends and even seemed lonely. Comics: Borderlands Origins Lilith’s chapter in Borderlands Origins starts by her telling the reader she’s a siren, followed by this monologue:

(Image Description: A starry sky with yellow text boxes that read “There are six of us in the entirety of the universe. Or so I’m told. Prophecies can be fuzzy with the specifics.”)

(Image Description: A starry sky with yellow text boxes that read “It seems when you’re a little girl, you can look up at the stars as if they will live on forever. As you grown into a woman, you reaize that stars die just like anything else. Thrashing, heaving, clutching at anything not to go quietly into the black.”) This text already shows not only a deep sense of loneliness - the only out of six like her in the whole of existence - but also that much of Lilith’s personality might come from this stuborness to not die quietly. Enter the flashback to when she was little. By her size and inteligence, I’m willing to guess 6/7yo+. Lilith watches as her dad dies (not specified of what). His last words are “Promise me you’ll see the galaxy” and “I’ll see you among the stars”. Right after that, an old lady, the oldest siren, walks up to Lilith. The old lady had been looking for her. Lilith watches as she dies and simultaneously gets her own siren tattoos. She asks the old lady what she should do, too, but the only answer Lilith gets is:

(Image description: white speech bubbles over a orange and yellow background. they read: “That is up to you. Do as you will and grow as you might. We siren have no code, we’ve only our song. It is yours to sing now.”) From this, we gather that Lilith has no one else to be with her. As the old siren dies, it’s understandable that Lilith has now two very different types of loneliness; literal and the one that comes from being turned, unwillingly, into something not quite human, and something that makes her unique and alone. The old siren also tells Lilith she will NOT be seeing her father among the stars. The flasback ends and takes us to Lilith in a bar in Pandora. Later she gets in Marcu’s bus and Borderlands the Game starts from there. In short, what we understand from Borderlands Origins is that Lilith had to fend off on her own since little, probably making so she’s really proud of her habilities and surviving. With time she starts enjoying this power, which comes with the short temper and will to keep going after challenges to push herself. Coupled with this comes the great sense of loneliness of being a siren, and of carrying her father’s wish forward. In my opinion, this turns many of Lilith’s actions into a search for a sense of purpose, of place. (not that she’s not having fun with it). Also, wether one considers the comics canon or not despite being written by one of Borderlands writes and being considered so, nothing above is news. It’s all in her behavior and extra game content. On to Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel TPS is told by Athena, one of the people (and playable characters) hired to help Jack. Lilith’s actions in TPS are short and sweet. She’s actually barely in the game. Lilith and Roland are helping Jack because he wants to stop Zarpedon from blowing up Elpis, Pandora’s moon. Shortly before they defeat Zarpedon, though, Jack gets word that one of Hyperion’s scientists might be a spy. He proceeds to throw all of them out in space and then says something about how it felt good. His tone is also glad, truthfull. Among other actions and commentary, this makes so Lilith, Roland and Moxxi decide not help anymore - because Jack might actually be... Not their brand of good. This decision culminates in Lilith later phasewalking into the Vault and punching a vault relic Jack’s found. It’s unclear wether or not her intention was to brand his face, but clear she wanted to destroy it - too much power for not a very good man. Pre-Sequel Epilogue: The TPS Epilogue goes down after BL2. Lilith’s pissed about Roland’s death, and her conclusion is that killing Athena for having helped Jack is what she wants to do. What she wants because it’s cleary a harsh action decided with anger, as many of Lilith’s actions. Mordecai and Brick note that this isn’t like her. (All is stop by eridians that say war is coming and we’ll need all the vaulties we can get) In the Claptastic Voyage DLC, Lilith also apologises to Athena, admitting her blame on Jack’s rise - should’d killed him, not just branded/punched the relic. Her apology comes with the realization and admission that ordering to kill Athena made her just like Jack; Lilith understand’s her shortcomings and tries to fix it. She doesn’t shy away from blame In short, TPS Lilith along with companions took actions based on their own morallity and what they thought would be best to Pandora and Elpis. In the epilogue, Lilith displays high levels of anger and impulse decision making - she’s very led by emotions, BUT is able of seeing her wrong doings and wanting to do better. Conclusion: Lilith is a very harsh person, both proud and short-tempered. She has fun with violence and her powers, but also goes out of her way to help people and those she holds dear. Many of her actions can be pointed towards not having enough interactions and education, specially in patience and strategy; and certain interactions. Lilith is a nerd and well intentioned, some of her behavior even seeming like what someone would do to look cool. Her temper gets the best of her. She’s the kind to look for purpose in quick missions, friends and helping. While much of Lilith’s character can be explained, it shouldn’t be excused. People can grow and change out of what they are. Lilith is a great, flawled character, and I’d like the conclusion of this analysis to be that she can grow as a person and character. She did what she did in the end of TPS because that’s what she ( and Roland and Moxxi) judged as the best to do at that momment; making sure an unhinged man didn’t have so much power in his hands. Regarding the Discourse: No, it’s not her fault for Handsome Jack being Handsome Jack. She didn’t make it any better, and it’s her comment that names him “handsome”, but the man was already dangerous and unhinged. It’s not the fault of her character and temper either; it was a decision taken by at least three people.

#long post #borderlands #lilith the siren #spoilers #bl2 #mmar talks #by request!

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sheridans-boys · 5 years

Text

Thank you for explaining it to me…..well! Here i go-

Alex could not help but panic. She felt like the world was closing in. She needed space to breath but at the same time she did not want to be alone and her heart wanted to reach out to grab an anchor before she lost herself. Her best kept secret, was suddenly exposed and her walls came crumbling down. She was panicking and sobbing in the arms of Sheridan. The events of the disasterous evening kept playing in her mind again and agian.

She and Sheridan had gone to her house to work on a project. She had thought that it would be fine as her father was out on a business trip and her step mother was usually out of the house, spending hours entertaining herself. Alex was afraid to bring Sheridan home, but this time they were working on a deadline and her house was the closest to the campus. Immersed in work, both of them lost the track of time, but finished the project just before dinner time.

Looking at the clock Alex said, “Lemme go and get something for us to snack on!! I am starving! After wrapping this up, let us go out for dinner to celebrate the completion of this evil, soul-sucking homework project!”

Sheridan laughs,enjoying her best friends joy at completing their homework,“ Sure Alex, whatever you want! But don’t let the boys hear you! I doubt that they would be happy when you compare evil with homework. That reminds me, what happened the other day when Kookie came to pick us up? I saw that you two were sort of arguing?”

*rolls eyes* “Jungkook was being annoying, Sheridan!”, Alex complains,“ I don’t know why but he suddenly beacame hostile when James came to return the book he had borrowed from me in the class. He kept glaring at him till he went away and then turned to me, and started scolding me!! Scolding!!! And me!! Going on about how I should stay away from such creatures called human boys! I told him that James was an aquintance who wanted help in class nothing more but he would not listen!!”

Sheridan laughed and said, “ He came and complained at home that you were not listening to him any more and how his fav little sister had turned rebellious! Tae and Jimin were escatic at the news and started making bets on who would your new fav as they claimed that Kook had himself to blame for that!”

Alex smiled, touched that she had found such caring people. Hearing her growling stomach, she barked a laugh and ran out of her room towards the kitchen just to collide with something. She heard something fall and shatter but when she looked up, all happiness drained out of her.

Her father was standing near a broken glass of whiskey and was glaring at her angrily. Alex felt helpless, she knew that her father was drunk and no amount of begging or pleading or apologising would stop what was going to happen. She tried her best to remain out of the way of her family, because she knew that her father hated her and only torelated her beacuse of his so called image in he society. But behind the doors, she had become intimately familiar with her father’s temper and his heavy hand. Even a slight provocation, like even being in the same room, set her father off, and he would usually blow out his fuse. Staring from verbally abusing her and then beating her senselessly with whatever he could find. Thankfully up till now, he had stopped before she could land herself in hospital but remained in constant pain the coming days. Being always happy and surrounded by friends, people could never imagine what happened behind the doors.

Today was not a good day, Alex could sense it. Seeing her father furious, she became paralysed with shock and fear, “ D-Dad….i-i am so sorry…” was all she could utter when the screaming profanities started. She felt helpless and afraid and trembled all over.

Sheridan dropped the books she was packing in shock when she heard the screaming. She rushed downstairs and was utterly shocked when she saw Alexandria’s father screaming at her and Alex just standing with hunched shoulders. Everyone who had previously met Alexandria’s father had said nothing but good words.

But Sheridan had felt something was off when she met him coz of the snide remarks he had made about demons.

When she saw him lift his hand to slap Alexandria, Sheridan felt like someone had poured cold water at her, and she rushed to intervene. Sheridan believed that regarding abuse there were three types of people in the world- The Abuser, The Abused, and the Bystander. Take even one of them out of the equation, and the world would be a happy place. Sheridan refused to be the Bystander and the determination to help her best friend out of here gave her a clarity on how to proceed. She jumped in between them and took the hit. Her father was shocked speechless and Sheridan took the opportunity to kick him in the balls hard and proceeded to drag Alex out of there. Sheridan knew that the boys would be furious on Alexandria’s behalf, coz they had come to love her too as their little sister, proclaiming that she was one of the humans who were sincere in their feelings. All of them loved spending time with Alex when they could, she could give them human company and indulged with them in their hobbies without drooling over them. Sheridan could not wait to tell the boys.

(Well, I hope that was something that you can work with author-nim! Thank you for providing me with an opportunity to write. I want to write about how the boys cuddled and comforted Alexandria, but I was not confident enough to write that out. (I screamed like a banshee when i had read Jimin saying to Alex “sweetheart, we will not……! Oh!! The FEEEELLLLLSSS!! How can I write such amazing dialogues! *pouts*) I had also imagined someone in hyung line chiding Alex coz of some self depreciating remarks she makes abt herself, but then I drew blank!!

*groans* writing is such a hard task! I definitely have a new found respect for you!! I had fun though! Please do not hold back from criticising what i have written. *puppy dog eyes* I would love to hear about how I can improve on my writing work. ‘Be my teacher’ ;)

-----

Sheridan was no fool. Not when it came to her friends and those she cared about. Sure; she was naive to a fault and often oblivious and never saw the bad in anyone when it came to herself; though thankfully the boys made sure she didn’t really have to worry about that anymore; but when it came to others? She didn’t enjoy reading body language for nothing and the way Alex would nimbly avoid meeting up at her house every time didn’t go unnoticed by her.

She let it slide however and was ecstatic when she invited her over; figuring whatever had upset her or held her back was gone or that her situation had changed. Working on the project and their conversation came easily...they weren't best friends for nothing after all. She couldn't help but smirk as they talked about Jungkook and the others and she explained.

Getting those boys to open up to humanity was one heck of a task; Namjoon and Hoseok especially were vehemently against it; and even Yoongi had his doubts but eventually, they all came to care about not only her but Alex as well though in more of a sibling way rather than the sexual and… dare she say romantic relationship she shared with them. But it had happened.

Then their easy suddenly all came to a screeching halt as Alex descended the stairs to get snacks for them. An uneasy feeling settled in her gut. When she heard something shatter that was the last straw and she hopped up; rushing downstairs just as yelling began. She shivered, feeling herself begin to tremble at words all too familiar as she flashed back to her own mother's abusive ex. She quickly got ahold of herself when she saw Alex’s father raise his hand.

She lunged.

“Alex!!”

The loud smack of skin on skin filled the air and he looked down at her in shock and vague disgust at her presence though it quickly turned to pain as Sheridan snarled and kneed him hard like Yoongi had taught her. While he was distracted she swiftly grabbed Alex’s hand and guided her out safely; knowing it wouldn’t be long before the boys found them thanks to the harsh hit causing her cheek to bruise.

"Let's go. You're staying with me and the boys tonight." She mumbled. Once she arrived the boys were on both of them instantly as she knew they would be.

"What the fuck happened to you two?"

Yoongi's voice was cold but only because he was so angry on your behalf.

Sheridan spoke up and explained so Alex wouldn’t have to as they all got together on the couch; voice quiet and somber as she did so. Seokjin tended to her cheek despite her grumble that she was fine and it didn’t really hurt as she explained everything.

“Well, she’s obviously not going back.”

Namjoon snorted out once Sheridan finished her explanation.

“You can stay here however long you need; you know we have the room for it.” Jimin piped up; offering the girl comfort by smiling gently and giving her shoulder a squeeze.

Jungkook couldn’t even form words he was so pissed; merely glaring holes at the front door as he tongued the inside of his cheek in a further show of his irritation. Hoseok walked out quietly, leaving the other 6 boys with her and causing Sheridan’s brow to furrow in worry as she saw a vivid pain that was rare for any of them flash across his face. Seokjin pulled back from checking Sheridan’s bruised cheek; turning his attention to Alex as his expression turned from gentle focus to dark determination.

“...Can we take care of him?”

It was a loaded question and one that had all the boys and Sheridan staring her down. Sheridan had no doubt if she answered yes the boys would all be out the door to make him regret his choices...but she also knew how hard making the choice could hurt; as her own abuse once again flashed through her mind.

She winced.

No matter how she hated Chris...she still didn’t have the strength to not feel frightened at the mere sight of him or the sound of his voice. It made her feel pathetic and weak but she also had ever told the boys...and had no intention to. It was in the past, and it wasn’t like she was even in contact with her Mother(who was still friends with him) and her new husband now anyway so she wouldn’t have to see him again.

She had a new family now.

“It’s 100% your decision. Feel free to take all the time you need.”

She mumbled quietly as she threw an arm around her shoulders; empathizing more than Alex probably even realized.

(Lmaooo you did just fine!! Just so you know in the future though; there’s no need to control either the boys or OC(Sheridan)! That’s my job so it makes it a bit confusing to respond to. No biggie though! I was once a beginner at full-on descriptive roleplaying too many years ago so I get it! I’m getting back into roleplaying myself so forgive me if this isn’t my best work lol.

The boys will be more integral once you respond again I was just handling setup but I’ll be sure to include what you mentioned! It’s always best to just respond to what’s directed at your character last; since that’s basically where I’m leaving off the story for you to pick up if that makes sense? I hope I’m explaining this well enough lol. Don’t feel pressured to match my length by the way! My starters are always hella long...I adapt to my partner!)

#submission #tempus anon #tp! sheridan answers #tp! boys answer

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thesffcorner · 5 years

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Running with Lions

Running with Lions is a YA contemporary written by Julian Winters. It follows Sebastian, a senior in high school, and the Bloomington High School Star Goalie, during his last summer at camp. Sebastian is determined to make this his best year, before the team drifts apart to college and an uncertain future, but when his estranged childhood friend Emir Shah shows up to camp, things get complicated. Two things before we start. Nb. 1: I love football. It’s my favorite sport, You Will Never Walk Alone. Nb. 2: It’s football, not soccer. If you disagree... I don't think we can be friends. I picked this book up, completely at random; I saw that it’s queer, and revolves around football, and after Real’s disaster game last night (wow this review is either going to be immediately dated, or hilariously relevant) I needed something fun to pick me up. And boy, this book delivered. It’s exactly what you think it will be; a fun, summer romance between two boys at football camp, with all the corniness and cheese that come from these books. For the most part, I think this book was executed well; there were some flaws, and I think we should start with those, because I want to recommend it, so let me get the negative out of the way first. This is Winters’ debut novel, and it definitely reads like one. The biggest problem is the writing; the first two chapters especially, were a pretty bad start. It’s never good when a book opens with a mother fussing about her child who’s off to something, whether it be college or camp; the opening here reminded me of the opening of Afterby Anna Todd, and that’s never a good start. To make matters worse, the book is written in present tense: Sebastian grins at his mom from the bottom step, so it makes all the flaws in the writing that much more apparent, like they way the characters talk (”Are you certain you packed everything?”) or the way things are described (Sebastian rolls his pale brown eyes; Sebastian groans, unable to hide how mortified he is). I’m confident with time, Winters’ writing will improve dramatically; it even does so by the very end of the book. The sentences become a lot less clunky, and it seems to more time he spent with his characters, the better his grip on the way they speak got, so I had no problem distinguishing their personalities through the dialogue alone, by the end. I know the start of the novel is a bit clunky, but I found it worth to push through to get to the story which was very good. To start off with, I enjoyed all the practice related nonsense. It’s clear to me that the author either played football or did his research, because the way practice was conducted and described, felt pretty genuine to me. There’s not too much about the team actually practicing strategies, and the bulk of the novel takes place off the pitch, but it was still fun to read about practice, and watch Sebastian teach Emir how to dribble, how to pass, how to block, etc. I liked a lot of the arguments about what players are better, what teams are better, the discussion about the different positions on the team, and my absolute favorite activity: making fun of the strikers. It’s ok, their egos deserve it. The other thing I really liked about this book were the discussions of queerness, masculinity and body image. Our lead, Sebastian was fat when he was a child, but lost a lot of weight due to puberty and starting to play football. He still carries a lot of the shame and insecurities for his body however, which is normal, but rarely presented in media, especially media that centers men. I know boys struggle with body image too, and it was really nice to see a main character who went through a drastic body change and still feels insecure. One of my favorite scenes was the scene where Emir catches Sebastian looking at himself in the mirror and they have a really positive discussion (well it’s mostly Emir talking at Sebastian) about bodies, and men being beautiful. That line men can be beautiful, girls can be handsome is echoed throughout the book; it’s a look at being a teenage boy, and some of the pressures teenage boys deal with. The book discusses who you want to be, who your role models are, what are acceptable and healthy ways to express emotions, all the things that broadly fall under toxic masculinity. It’s a very positive message, and I really appreciated that it was delivered like this, where I can plausibly see teenage boys reading it and feeling not like someone is preaching, but rather talking to them about these things. Queerness is a big part of the book too; characters identify as anything from questioning, to bi to gay, and the environment of the camp is very accepting. There’s talk about acceptance in the industry, in other schools, and even between teammates. As Sebastian is bi, he struggles a lot with feeling accepted and comfortable sharing his love life with his friends, even though he’s already out. I related a lot to that; being out isn’t always the same as being visible, and as I feel a lot of bi people will agree, pursuing a relationship with someone of the same gender can feel a lot like coming out a second time. As for the romance itself, I found it at times frustrating at times sickeningly cute. It’s messy and complicated, as romance tends to be between confused, horny teenagers, and as such there were a lot of scenes, especially at the start of the book where I wanted to jump out of my skin due to secondhand embarrassment. It doesn’t help that at the start, Sebastian and Emir are in really bad relations with each other, as Emir is even needlessly hostile and defensive around everyone, but especially Sebastian. The explanations why are all very understandable, but I liked too that Sebastian at several point in the book points out that sometimes you have to give people a chance to show you they can be better. It’s a tough line to walk; as Emir is English, brown and Muslim, there’s a lot of really horrific bullying involved, especially concerning his religion and skin color, and I’m always weary of messages that aim to tell marginalized folks to give people a chance, if those same people were involved in or perpetuated the bullying. But I think the book did a great job of showing that most of the boys are not against Emir because of any racial or religious issues, and that a lot of their prejudice comes from ignorance, rather than malice. Let’s quickly go over some of the characters. Grey is the one girl in the group, the coach’s step-daughter. She’s a great player herself, but for reasons that are never explained in the book, she doesn’t want to play on the girl’s team. I liked her a lot, and I found her presence refreshing in the sea of testosterone, though I must say she doesn’t really escape the “not like other girls trope” which kind of irked me, especially because her presence isn’t too relevant for the plot. Hunter is one of the other players, who I liked but I found a bit bland. He gets a good scene with Sebastian towards the end of the book, but for the most part he didn’t stand out much, other than being nice. Mason is the striker on the team, and I liked him and hated him in equal measure. He can be a real asshole, and I liked that the book didn’t shy away from showing that to the readers. His subplot about being more or less bullied into liking Grey was funny, but mostly it’s there for one scene where he realizes what his behavior could lead into. Will is Sebastian’s other friend, and I actually wish he was in the book more. He’s the friendly guy, the one who’s on good terms with everyone, and everyone likes. There’s some unrequited feelings with him, but what I found most interesting was that, in spite of being a great defensive player that could go pro, because of a knee injury his dreams are essentially shot. On the one hand I liked that he took this rather well, but on the other I wish we had gotten more time to really explore what something like that would do to him as person. Emir was an interesting and complex love interest. I ended up relating to him a lot more than I did Sebastian, mostly because I tend to gravitate more towards characters that mask their shyness and anxiety with anger, like he does. I liked that he was a Muslim character who is openly gay, while also still practicing his religion. The one thing that bothered me about him, was more a product of the writing; I found it hard to believe that he and Sebastian being inseparable for years would require him to explain basic things like what prayer mats are, what Abbu or Inshallah mean. Sebastian as a lead was again, sometimes infuriating, sometimes endearing. He is a ball of anxieties, insecurities and hormones. He has this really annoying tendency to think about sex and Emir’s body in really inopportune moments, which is annoying in female led YA, and is annoying here. He’s also a bit of the stereotypical good guy, who is always breaking up fights, playing peacemaker and everyone’s dad. I liked that he got to relax and do some selfish things, and his confession at the end bordered on the ridiculously implausible, but for the most part, he was a good lead. Also, who doesn’t like a goalie (Well me, with Neuer, but that’s a story for another day). If you are looking for a cute queer romance, and football, then this is the book for you. It’s short, it’s sweet and it packs a surprising punch; I highly recommend.

goodreads

#running with lions #running with lions review #moni talks #book review

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popculturespiritwow · 5 years

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THE WICKED + THE DIVINE #33: YOUR DERIVATIVE SHIT (AKA TWIST AND SHOUT)

This cover. Black to me signals death, or something awful. And I was certain that we get all-black pages somewhat regularly in WicDiv, but you know, it’s not true. Both when Luci gets “killed” and Laura herself “dies”, we get pages that are black but for two tiny almost exactly duplicated comments.

The Underworld is obviously a land of darkness, and there are two moments – during Laura’s first trip down there and then when Persephone first gets her hands on Woden – where we get a splash page of endless black into which the character is falling.

But the only time in WicDiv that we’re given a non-dialogue-y black page is when Sakhmet takes out her dad in issue 17, and again in issue 28 when she massacres her party people after coming to believe they’re all laughing at her. That last one does give one tiny little glimpse of her, though.

So if there is a “language” to the all-blacks (non haka version) (love you Kiwis), it would seem to be something to do with violence and lost time.

But we’ve already done all the blood and nightmares in this arc, and this issue is instead filled with twists and reveals and honest soul-rending conversation and reunions and new friends and overall kind of a lot of reader satisfaction. So a very different thing.

Another take on the all-black is this is what you put on your cover when you’re terrified anything else will give something away. But for as much anxiety as Kieron talks about in his notes about “keeping the secrets” of this issue (and also his sense of what nonsense that fear is), he and Jamie have never had any trouble obscuring reveals before.

So here’s my thought: Maybe it’s like Disneyland. Disney theme parks are built in such a way that on the way in you have to go through a tunnel of some kind, and before you do you can’t really see inside to all the happy happy joy joy good stuff.

The idea is, Disney wants you to feel like you’re entering into a whole different world than the one you left behind, a better world where you can be happy and spend money and want to take the same picture in front of the castle that everyone else does and still feel like it’s special. And part of that is creating a clear sense of boundary; there was where you were and there’s where you’re going, and the tunnel stands as passage in between.

Maybe that’s why you do a black cover: Not to hide anything or signal violence but to create a boundary, a sense of a passage into something new.

PHALLUCIES

So we begin with the Vibrator as key. I want to say it might be the perfect Gillen/McKelvie image – it’s naughty and seems like a joke and has been sitting there for so long that we no longer think much of it when in fact it is absolutely essential.

Nothing in WicDiv is superfluous, minor or irrelevant. Everything is trying to express something important. (TELL US ABOUT THE VEILS KIERON.)

A bigger question: does the fact that Jon (and not only Jon but the truth about Laura) is released into the story via a phallic device that vibrates have even more to say? Is pleasure or self-care in a sense the key in WicDiv, a path to freedom and life?

Have I not mentioned already I was an English major?

READ ONLY MIMIRY (#SorryNotSorry)

After an arc that seems very caught up in how the characters are all caught up in/pinned down by stories, suddenly out of nowhere we have Jon, this breath of fresh air who sees that path for the garbage it is and refuses it. He will not fit the options Ananke poses, or any duality, thanks very much.

He is the one who builds.

Of course he is then force-wrapped into stories – the Pantheon (I love the horror of his reaction to his ascent), this weird Odin/Thor thing (complete with the nod to Thor’s alter ego Donald Blake) and also the biblical Abraham and Isaac story, the father sacrificing his son to God (now comes with beheading!).

And if I understand the father/son dynamic, as much as Jon sees the Mimir thing for the lie or trap it is, he still can’t quite help himself from being a builder. There are rules he can bend (see: vibrator) but he can’t quite enact a full break.

His call is really quite beautiful. “You walked among your foes for the sake of love,” the spooky Ananke heads say. “Struck down you are raised up, the Sky King’s grandest treasure.” It’s pretty much the absolute opposite of his Dad’s call.

How crazy is it that we’re 2/3rds done with the series, we’ve just been introduced to a major new character (okay we saw him once before but still), and he fits in so well?

Probably we’re being set up for betrayal and heartbreak, but for now I love it with all the loves.

MACK THAT KNIFE

Can we just talk about the knife for a second? Like, how exactly does it work? Clearly it somehow enables the user to disengage the head from the body while keeping the head alive. But whereas with Jon that might have happened literally – put your elbow into it, David! – in the case of Luci, Tara and Inanna Ananke used her signature head pop. So what’s the deal? It’s enough to have the knife in your possession when doing with the murdering, or something else?

Also, post-beheading, we see Ananke referring to Jon as “it”.

Is this because he’s now “just” a living head? Or is this how she actually honestly sees all the gods? It’s um, upsetting to say the least.

Of course so is Woden’s take on things: Jon stole my life (by being born, you horrible human looking meat puppet), so now I get to steal his.

I don’t know how it would have been possible Woden could sink lower in my estimation than he has (#Dio4Vr), but in fact it is and he has.

CASSANDRA VS. THE DESTROYER ROUND II

As much as I love the Jon reveal, the thing that really rocked my world was actually not that but Laura explaining what she’s been going through. I just – this poor girl. And though we still have two arcs to go, in a way this moment is the heart of the series. Kieron seems to say as much in the notes, talking about how the artist lives in this awful reality of getting what they dreamed of, but it involves awful stuff happening to oneself and others.

“I’ve talked about having mixed feelings about WicDiv’s success. Laura’s arc is it writ large. I hate that the definitive work of my career is this. If my Dad was not dead I would not have written this book. There is a guilt and anger that is hard to articulate directly there, and is the material I was mining for this.”

Art is built on suffering and loss—and that means on the back of horror done to others. To wish to be an artist is in a sense to sacrifice those relationships in a fundamental and sometimes literal way, in fact that seems a necessity to one’s success. Being a storyteller may be incredibly nourishing for others, but it’s built on harm done to those you love.

Jesus Christ this is dark. And we haven’t even gotten to the point yet of facing the question that society’s survival is supposedly built on those artists’, those children’s destruction. We love you so much, you inspire us, but what cements that for the century is your deaths.

What do you make of this follow-up moment where Laura suddenly turns it to 11 with Cass?

It only happens after Cassandra calls Laura Persephone for the first time, which seems like it’s meant as a kind of respect. Knowing what she’s been through, she is now worthy of her name in Cassandra’s eyes. She is an equal.

Except it seems to set Laura on the path of what – connection, for sure. But through sex, which is actually more escape than intimacy.

What is “The Destroyer”, in the end? Less a malevolence associated with Laura, it seems to me, than the character of all the gods when they get lost in their stories about themselves.

(More to the point: What the heck is the Machine? Jon says it does nothing. Whuhhh?)

A STEP A HEAD/STOP MAKING SENSE

So, after quite some issues away from it, in the end we return to the heads. Lots and lots of heads. Jon’s head (god that’s a delightful reveal), then Sakhmet’s slice of head – and Minerva – and then finally, the big finish.

I would say my head exploded except I feel like that gag has already been played.

As he has mentioned often in his notes, Kieron loves to hide much bigger reveals within the reveal we know that’s coming. In this case, we knew there was this other Daft Punk member hiding in the darkness somewhere, and we knew there was something up with Laura we needed to hear about.

So we get that and say thank you, and then there’s still four incredible jaw dropping can we please do a happy dance for Luci pages.

Kieron goes into a ton more detail on this writing strategy here, and the particular nightmare challenges posed by this issue. I’ll post excerpts below, but you should read them in full. They are fantastic.

But if I can just ask one question: What the hell happened with Minerva? Am I to believe she did not feel bad about Sakhmet, that she’s that good an actor? Je refuse! And also isn’t the point of the Sakhead reveal that still-Minerva blew it with her fearfulness and lack of skill?

#CRAFTSERVICE: ON TWISTS

Okay… twists.

In reality, for me, it’s a case of once you’ve decided that this is the plot, the only way to do it is dovetail towards an issue like this. Any of these individual beats provide too much connective tissue to the other ones, meaning all must be revealed or none.

(You could argue about Minerva, I suspect. Maybe.)

It’s been strange writing a book like this – when so much is there early on. Seeing who got what and who didn’t, and how people reinforced people has been interesting. That the core WicDiv tumblr community has never really suspected Minerva was off is in some way a surprise – though I’ve had people talk about that directly and personally. Blake/Jon and Minerva-is-Off-In-Some-Way were the two twists I would guard, but their primary importance was in how they led to the Heads.

When Ray Fawkes told me “There’s a reason you’re doing all the decapitations, right?” circa issue 2, I suspected that I’d overplayed the hand by having a literal talking head in issue 3… but it turned out fine.

“Played the hand” is interesting phrasing, and telling. Writing something as intricate as this is like doing a slow-motion card trick, in public, constantly. It is a form of constant stress. I have been paranoid of fucking it up in stupid ways, and it’s impacted every single conversation I’ve ever had about WicDiv. Like just writing one name when I mean another or something. There was a hilarious panic when I added ‘Killer Queen’ to the playlist, just thinking of it as a quite funny Ananke song… and then realised there was only one character in the cast with a connection to the band Queen, and that was Minerva. Should I take it off the playlist? No, someone may notice that, and it’s against my rules anyway. I quickly added a few other things to camouflage it.

As if anyone is watching that closely, y'know?

That’s an extreme example, but an entirely characteristic one. I have lost sleep over it. Even a year ago, I wished I could just get to 33 and not worry about it. When 33 dropped, it was simultaneously excellent (the response was basically what we expected) and an anticlimax (The amount of emotional and intellectual effort you put into doing this is not worth it. It could never be worth it.) I’ve been telling friends that I’ll never write a story that operates like this again. Partially that is because I wouldn’t want to repeat myself, and partially because – as I said above – I think twists are less effective in long-form serialised work in 2017, but mainly as I don’t think I want to do this to myself again. I’ll find some other way to torture myself.

So apparently Mini has been off all this time. I’m stunned by that.

#CRAFTSERVICE: MORE ON TWISTS!

I’d note that setting up twists that *are* easily guessable by the hardcore is part of the methodology. Having a nice big twist foreshadowed heavily is a good way to hide another twist behind it. “Hey – pay attention to this less subtle sleight of hand while I perform the actual sleight of hand over here.”

Oh you’re expecting a big reveal are you, cool cool cool here it is and also SURPRISE.

He talks about this again later, in response to the reveal that Mimir is just a talking head.

When thinking of plot structure, I talk about a few ways to disguise twists. Earlier, I mentioned a Big Twist can make people suspect the twists are over. This is something I tend to think of as a revealed move. As in, you create a machine of logic with a missing part. You add the missing part as late as possible, and then immediately move to what has been concealed before the audience is able to process the new information.

Oh you’re blown away by Mimir are you? SURPRISE, there are three other heads. And also Minerva is not Minerva.

It’s a great insight, too – if you fear one bit of new information is going to naturally lead to others, drop it all right now before they even have time to think about it.

#CRAFTSERVICE: ON WHAT WRITING IS FOR

I know this is a lot of quoting the author, but hey it’s a big issue and the author has some great stuff to say and it is helping me.

How do I actually feel when someone guesses something that’s going to happen? Well, this is long enough already. Let’s put the personal stuff beneath a cut…

I’d say you sigh “Oh, poop” and shrug.

And then you get over your ass, because you know all the above is true. Writers are often megalomaniacs who think they can control everyone’s response to their work. We don’t. We can’t control everything. We can barely control anything. We really have to let go. I’ve said WicDiv is a device to help me improve as a person, yes? It would include in this area. I have to learn to let it go, and internalise all of the above. If I can make most of my readership have the vague emotional response I’m looking for, I’m winning.

Certainly I’ve heard many writers talk about their writing as coming from a personal place. And as a writer myself I’ve had to learn (again and again) that having a sparkly fun idea is not going to be enough to get me up and writing every day, even if people like it. That I need what I’m writing to come from something more specific in me.

But I don’t know that I’ve ever heard an artist talk about their work as well, their work. The journey they’re taking to try and deal with something or figure something out or to let go and get free and be a better version of them. It makes so much sense, and man does it challenge me to have another think about my own work. Because I think most of the time I almost think of the journey as the thing that has to come before the work, the thing that prevents the work – Ima just get my act together and then write this script in fifteen years or so. And reading this it strikes me oh wait, that’s just the thing I tell myself so I don’t have to do the work.

There’s so much more to say about this issue. But it’s taken me the better part of a week to say this much already so maybe I’ll just leave it there. Suffice to say, it’s a giant of story.

(And yes, that’s my exhausted end of words attempt at a Mimir pun.)

I’ll be back next week with the two specials. And then, Mothering Invention!

#wicdiv #kieron gillen #jamie mckelvie #masterpiece theater but with severed heads

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echoes-of-realities · 6 years

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8, 14, 20, 31, 44, aaaand 45 to give us a sneak preview of some #Content we all deserve?!

8. what time are you most productive?

Any time after, like, 8pm lmao. This goes for schoolwork and writing fic, but like before that I Drag My Feet so much to do anything! But one 8pm hits??? I can write So Much. (This also means that I have an Awful Sleeping schedule and that I subsist on coffee and pure rage at myself in the mornings but sacrifices for the creative process you know.)

14. easiest character to write

Similar to the hardest character to write, if you had asked me in January I wouldn’t have said this, but 10000% it’s Brittany now. Like. I don’t know if it’s because I worked so hard to Understand her or if something just Clicked at some point, but Brittany’s voice comes really easily to me now so. She’s both the easiest character to write for me and the most fun because I just love her and her voice a lot!!! (Special shoutout to Santana though. I feel like I Always got her voice from the beginning just because I related to her storyline so much. (Not that I was mean and popular when I was a closeted teen though lmao, I just had this very specific image of myself when I was closeted that Wasn’t Who I Was at all, so.) Which makes Brittana so much easier to write when I feel like I Get the voices of two characters who make up the ship lmao.)

20. favorite character to write

Okay, again, it’s definitely Brittany but since I just talked about her, and Santana, aside from those two it’s probably Mercedes! She’s just like, the Most Put Together of the glee club and the one Most Likely to Side Eye everyone else’s Messiness and I Love That about her. So outside of Brittana, it’s 100% Mercedes to write. (Special shoutout to Maribel though as well because, even though I don’t write in her pov very often it feels like I’m stepping into my mom’s shoes of knowing you’re raising a gay kid but also knowing not to push them. When I came out to my mom she told me “duh, I was just waiting for you to catch up” and honestly? That gave me A Lot of insight into her raising me over the years, and it allowed me to see that while I was struggling, she was too because she didn’t want to push me further into the closet, so she just patiently waited all these years and supported me where she could when I faltered. This is turning into a special shoutout to my mom (who Deserves it tbh), but basically all of this gave me the insight and ability to write Maribel too, so.)

31. easiest part of writing

Oooooh that’s a hard one tbh. Um, I would say editing but that can be Difficult sometimes too lmao. For me, I guess fic titles maybe? Like, I usually have a fic title from a song lyric long before the fic is even a couple sentences done because that’s usually what inspires me for said fic. Oh! Another one for me personally is, like, writing the tiny details of a scene or characters moving. Like dialogue and plot comes hard to me sometimes, but being able to imagine a scene and characters moving around in a scene is so easy to me for some reason. Like I might not Know what’s going to happen next, but I sure as hell know which part of a character’s fingers are twitching and how people walking down the hallway sound bouncing around an empty classroom.

44. do you write linear or do you write future scenes if you feel like it?

Lmao fuck my writing process is All Over the place. Like I’ll be writing one scene and have an idea for another scene and quickly hit enter like seven times and write that scene (or whatever tiny part came to my head). My docs are a Mess until I finish the fic. I jump around A Lot when I write, and usually my process is something like small chunk of a scene here, some new lines, a large chunk here, some new lines, two lines here, and then some new lines and an entirely new scene here. Most of my writing is literally just me writing transitions between two scenes that jumped into my head and I furiously wrote down.

It usually looks something like this with dumb notes throughout and me jumping around a whole heck of a lot:

britt and santana on first sleepover in santana’s and maribel’s new house —> a week after britt and santana’s first kiss

Brittany shifts again and her knee brushes Santana’s bare thigh and promptly bursts into so many tingles Brittany briefly wonders if it had fallen asleep and Santana had just woken it up. “Yeah, like you’re still kinda sad that he’s not around but you’re like—” Brittany sighs in frustration when she can’t find the words she’s looking for. “It’s like

Santana is silent for a moment, and Brittany can almost see her thoughts even though it’s still pitch-black in the room. “You’re a genius, Britt-Britt,” Santana finally says, and Brittany’s skin heats up right from her ears all the way to her collarbone.

“Yeah, well,” she mumbles. Santana shifts

“Britt?” Santana breathes.

The next flash of lightning shows that Santana’s face is a lot closer than Brittany thought it was, eyes wide and deep, and it sends something deep within Brittany’s chest fluttering like a thousand butterflies are slamming into her ribs.

45. share the synopsis of a story you work on that you haven’t published yet

(Fuck you caught me I don’t really have Any ongoing wips rn lmao)

I have a request for the s6 newbies’ views on Brittana that I really wanna write. I’m working on the next (and final 🙁) seasons fic too right now (which covers spring, like circa 3.15 to graduation; also spoiler alert Brittany is graduating and there will be no sex tape so). And I also have an interlude of sorts planned within the same universe that covers Brittana’s first kiss and Maribel’s divorce from Santana’s father and their move to the house in Lima Heights Adjacent (which is basically me trying to explain the show’s canon for Santana’s family within the context of how I write them, so (that’s also what the example of my process from the last question is from)).

So because I have like Nothing to share rn, I’ll give you the current first part from the next seasons fic instead lmao:

Santana’s pretty sure stargazing is, like, the most stereotypical lesbian date ever, but she can’t really find it in herself to care; not when Brittany’s curled against her, pressed all along her one side, warm and sleepy, their curfews lifted for the night for once, laying in the field beside the train tracks a couple neighbourhoods away from Santana’s house. She thinks both of their parents feel guilty about the whole thing with Karofsky, and then with Quinn, mostly because her mom held her really, really tight every evening this week, and the Pierce’s hugged her in greeting and farewell too whenever she came over to study with Brittany.

(Santana thinks her mom feels guilty most of all, because it wasn’t so long ago that Santana grew quiet at home and mean at school and she’s sure her mom knew about the moments when she would lay on her bed and stare blankly up at the ceiling and wonder and wonder and wonder—)

Brittany shifts against her as if she can sense Santana’s thoughts, and they quickly fade and are replaced by Brittany’s warm breath across her collarbone, eyelashes fluttering against the sensitive skin of her neck. Brittany draws patterns across Santana’s stomach, hearts and then stars and then their names and then what Santana thinks might be a cat. She nuzzles closer and occasionally points out a constellation and recites everything she knows about the stories behind them, Greek, and then Roman, and then the ones her dad made up for her too.

Stargazing might be the most stereotypical lesbian date ever, but Santana kinda really loves it when Brittany’s the one stargazing with her.

#ask #anon #my writing stuff

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landofquartzandmelody · 7 years

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ok i finished hiveswap act 1 lmao. i actually liked most of it a lot i think? and there’s a lot to talk about and there’s also a few things which were like.. Incredibly annoying. my overall impression was good tho! i’m going to dump my thoughts under a readmore though so no one accidentally gets spoiled

obvious warning for that !!

the setting is actually incredibly detailed and i occupied myself for a long time clicking on everything in the background? the art was really pretty and the actual gameplay itself was really smooth and not glitchy at all.

the video cutscenes didn’t play for me at all lmao. I had a few tabs of text-only websites open, and join.me, and that was it. i couldn’t easily lower the settings to make it run smoother either? which was really annoying, and i don’t see why the cutscenes were sooo much harder for my computer to get through than the actual gameplay.

the only other glitch i had was a framing glitch in jude’s treehouse i think

i liked most of the puzzles a lot and it all seemed very organic and fun. using items on other items was pretty cool, and i only got stuck like once or twice.

i really did not like the snake game mainly because i had to swap to using my keyboard for that and that alone lmao.

the monster fights were REALLY fun, i thought. they had a really classic homestuck feel.

it was kind of hard to walk up and down the stairs, actually. there wasn’t enough room to click where you needed to go and that was a bit irritating

i really really really loved the harleyclaire mansion!! everything about the first part of the game was REALLY good!!!

there’s so much to get into with jake and joey and jude and anna claire that it’s nuts tbh. but i really liked everything about that. imo it dealt with parental issues in a lot more depth than hs ever did, and surprisingly nuanced parental issues is definitely an hs thing. but joey’s problems with jake are a lot more fleshed out and realistic.

definitely one of the themes is that the adults in joey’s life have never been there for her. her mom isn’t there because she’s dead, roxy isn’t ‘there’ because she’s irresponsible and is already developing drinking problems, and jake isn’t there because he’s always been somewhere else. so there’s something interesting when xefros talks about parents there

i think i was expecting jake to be a decent father so i was definitely really sad when it became obvious that he was kind of.. not? and it’s evident that he’s really screwed joey up, but i think that it’s also very in line with how canon portrays jake. like his biggest flaw was being unwilling to put in the emotional work and commitment that his friends needed.

sometimes he was definitely scared of those, so i can easily conceive of jake taking the easy way out and heading out to trawl the pacific for a meteor baby.

the line about how ‘having a second thing which is sort of like the first thing but somewhere else is exactly the same as having the first thing’

it’s interesting that jade and joey both do the same thing by projecting on their dead guardians. jade’s thinking is a lot more magical than joey’s, but it really shines a light on how everything we assumed about grandpa harley was through the eyes of a girl who never really got to know him.

and like he died well before he could disappoint her, so.

it was REALLY really sad but i don’t think i actually have a problem with it.

part of the reason i don’t have a problem with it is bc it made joey claire’s characterization SO much more compelling

because she’s very angry at her father for doing the things he did, and is openly disparaging about him, and even chooses to use her mother’s last name instead of his? but she’s not angry or hard or bitter

i love my hard trauma girls but it’s really nice that joey just gets kinder and better in the face of a childhood full of neglect- without being pushed to forgive or minimize the damage that was done to her

the detail about joey absolutely refusing to use guns because she doesn’t want to be like her dad, and choosing to love animals and heal them was so good. and how that’s framed as an act of rebellion?

like the idea that kindness can be radical but that =/= forgiveness.

we didn’t see a lot of jude but i loved everything about him so much

like it was pretty subtle so i don’t know if y’all would consider it ‘canon’ but the bit where joey says that ‘when things got bad with my brother, our babysitter took him to see a doctor, and he was better for a while’ seems like it’s saying joey is being treated for a mental illness of some sort?

which seems completely in line with his character! he almost falls into the trap where it’s like ‘we all called this person crazy for seeing all these conspiracies but he was right all along’ but he doesn’t and that’s nice. it’s very subtle and pretty respectful imo. (also, fox mulder)

he and joey are the cutest siblings in the entire universe, and he was so sweet to her. he seems very earnest about wanting to protect her and caring about her.

the part where his birds left him made me SOOOO SAD. it was so sad. i felt so bad for him. I named dammek’s catdeer Frohike to pay my respects even though frohike was the worst gunman.

i’m really worried about him tho. i hope he’ll be okay without joey around

joey claire is such an obvious lesbian

honestly i know a lot of people were nervous because it seemed like it was setting her up to have a relationship with xefros but i absolutely don’t think that’s the case, just because she’s definitely gay.

every time she looked at a picture of a girl in the harleyclaire mansion she had one gay thought or another, and her entire room was plastered completely in images of pretty girls. not ONE guy.

there was also a lot of dialogue which implied she felt guilty or ashamed of how she felt when looking at girls, or like she wasn’t sure if she was allowed to, or if people would judge her for having pretty pictures of girls on her walls.

also her password being the name of a boy she has certainly never met or talked to, and who we never saw an image of (despite said guy being an actor? i think) or heard mentioned before

the scene where xefros mentions he is a boy who likes boys and joey is like ‘oh. huh’ seems to me like it’s very obviously from the pov of a lesbian who had absolutely no idea what a lesbian is, or that she is allowed to be one.

i think joey is definitely going to realize she is gay at some point in the future acts

i didn’t expect to like or care about xefros as much as i did?

he was obnoxious at first but basically as soon as we figured out what was up with dammek and that xefros thought he’d been speaking to dammek he became 100% less annoying and i started liking him a lot lmao.

he and joey had a really sweet friendship, actually.

homestuck breezed over a lot of the more horrible things about troll civilization, but hiveswap did a very good job of making it patently obvious how horrible troll civilization is for xefros and other lowbloods, and i think it has a redeeming effect on the Other Stuff.

i like that they made it obvious what’s happening is horrible and needs to like, stop or whatever, and don’t like... condemn the revolutionaries.

his situation isn’t really played for laughs or mocked.

that being said a lot of the writing for dammek was really really annoying and dumb.

people like dammek definitely exist and i think hiveswap does a faaairly decent of not conflating dammek being a shithead with the rest of the movement? the joke about personal property was very very annoying lmao but the movement itself is portrayed as legitimate and necessary. it’s a dumb reactionary type of joke but it doesn’t ruin the game for me

i do think he’s going to Learn To Be A Better Person while he’s hanging out with jude. i don’t think he’s going to get a vriska type arc at all but i do think he’ll learn the error of his ways.

i wish that we’d gotten to see a bit more of his personal motivation for being so intense about revolution.

i ALSO wish they hadn’t used like actual symbols of movements in the bg that was really annoying and crass imo. and if they had to, i wish xefros had had an anarchist flag or whatever.

abuse / neglect are big themes in hs so i’m not really surprised at all that they came back? they definitely shouldn’t have advertised dammek and xefros as being cute moirails though because it’s kind of scummy to do a bait and switch like that.

i don’t think the game’s going to be hetero though. xefros and joey would be incredibly ugly and i doubt it’ll happen

i also think homestuck the original thing is actually pretty on the nose about class stuff, even if it does feel the need to like couch that in Fake Alien Racism? at the very least i’d be surprised if hiveswap tried to pull the You’re The Same As Your Oppressors thing

i’m still annoyed that there was so much promo art of xefros and dammek being cute together when the actual game condemned every interaction they had. i think that it would have been possible to say the same things as they wanted to while also not making dammek a crazy leftist stereotype and grounding him in reality like a real person.

to be fair, we are going to get a sequel game with him, so he’ll probably be fleshed out a LOT better then.

trizza is somehow so much more evil than expected? how evil she is feels a lot more real than like, the condesce, tbh. she feels like a real person

i’m SUPER curious about cridea now and i can’t wait to see what she’ll be like

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wannabe-cartoonist-blog · 7 years

Text

Reactions to Official SBM Recordings

A bit spoiler-y if you haven't seen the show or listened to the new recordings of the songs. So proceed with caution.

ACT 1

Intro/Bikini Bottom Day

-here we goooooo

-ahhhhh ze narrator

-love how they include sb's foghorn alarm, just gonna say that

-award goes to Ethan for the cutest yAWN

-ethan is using such a soft tone of voice and it's honestly perfect

-"meow"

-the shoe squeaks!!

-the laugh was a little weaker than other performances but I'll let it slide cause he's so cute

-I thought it was "where the sun shines down" not "when" but apparently not

-MY BOI PATRICK STAR

-"oOOO OOOO I want a verse!!!"

-I love the difference between his singing voice and the Patrick Voice (tm)

-the chorus harmonizing in the bg

-sQUIDY

-Gavin Lee sounds a little strange...like Squidward sounds like he could't care less about anything and is so resigned to his loud neighbors

-which...he is....but he sounds off idk. Still a good performance tho

-like with Pat, there's a distinction between his singing voice and speaking voice

-he sounds good though but not like the live performances....idk if that's good or bad

-the fart noise strikes again

-RIGHT INTO SANDY'S PART

-love the country track

-she sounds so nice 10/10

-that "daaaaAYYYYY" 10000/10

-they didn't include the explosion or like all of the dialogue that follows it but I like it. Keeps the flow of the song going

-KRABS

-THE WALKING NOISE

-plankton's voice is so deep and smooth, I love it

-KAREN'S "forever" WAS MADE TO SOUND COMPUTERIZED THAT WAS A REAL NICE TOUCH

-"CLeeeeeveeeeerr" melted butter

-I love krabs, Karen, and plankton singing together

-Squidward is so depressed 10/10

-pearls deep voice is 10000/10

-spongey sounds so sad after being shot down, perfection

-"everyone would say GOOD MORNING MR. SQUAREPANTS"

-the CHORUS!!!!!!

-I freaking love this song

-it captures the town so perfectly

-they finish the song without being interrupted by the volcano, very nice choice

No Control

-the panic

-Perch Perkins could punch me in the face and I would thank him

-velvet voice. Pure velvet.

-sandy, sponge, pat, sandy, THE BABIES

-all of krab's parts sounds much better than the live versions, not gonna lie

-smooth-voiced plankton once again. He and perch need a duet but I think I'd actually melt from it

-kAREN

-I love the bg singing, heck yeah

-"the end. Is. Coming!"

-spongey

-ETHAN'S "WOOOOOH" OMG I WASNT READY

-there are 3 ticks instead of 2, that's interesting

-David Bowie did a really good job with this. So sad he didn't get the hear the finished product.

-Thank you, David Bowie. Rest In Peace.

B.F.F.

-oh, boy I'm ready

-that cute acoustic sound oh yes

-classic Plain White Ts

-I love how they remember that spongebob wears glasses sometimes 1000/10

-their voices compliment each other so well wow

-I love pat's singing voice, did I mention?

-the best friend dance part kills me every time

-the instrumental bit 1000/10

-"feeling good" part literally knocked the breath out of me

-"you're my best friend forever!"

-"B.F.F that stands for"

"Spongebob and Patrick" <33333

When the Going Gets Tough

-"give me some muuuusic, Karen"

-KAREN IS PERFECTION

-"exCUSE ME?"

-"e-he-he"

-this sounds so freaking cool

-for the 700th time, I love plankton's voice

-the sponge rap!!!!

-"you've got one day left go home and pack"

-plankton changes his tone slightly near the middle/end and I almost had a heart attack cause it sounded so good

-they included the krabs and plankton interaction about the sleeves, good choice

-"I'm a one-celled organism...I don't even HAVE sleeeeVES."

-the MAYOR!!!!

(Just A) Simple Sponge

-I've listened to this about 100000 times already

-but I'll do this anyway

-again, Ethan always sounds so pure

-he really nails the innocence of sb

-the bg chorus is fantastic

-I love all the references in this song

-Brendan Urie did a great job

-I really love how this song is in reference to krabs' opinion of sb. That's always been a really cool relationship dynamic

-sb is like a son to krabs and krabs is kinda a father figure? (I know sb has a dad but) sb is always looking to krabs for approval and when he looses it he gets real down (the second movie has a cool nod to this; "you were like an underpaid son to me")

-all these artists could've just written songs that these characters could sing, but they all wrote songs that these characters would sing. They all really nail the characters and I’m so grateful for that.

-the last note is so damn powerful I love ethan slater

Daddy Knows Best

-this song always sounds good

-love how pearl made sure to always keep her voice deep

-"money, money" that's 100% pure Eugene Krabs

-LOVE THE CONTRAST BETWEEN PEARL'S SINGING AND SPEAKING VOICE

-opposite of Patrick's

-she sings so softly

-THE BEAUTIFUL SCREECHES OF "DADDY"

-I love Krabs

-the cries

-"DADDDDDDYYYYYYYYY"

"MONNNNNEYYYYYY"

Hero Is My Middle Name

-spongey, I love you

-this song is such a cute bop

-it's so 80s, thanks Cindy Lauper

-"yeahH"

-"mine's Jennifer" was included heck yeah

-the slide whistle sound

-WHEN THEY SING TOGETHER

-"alriiight!"

-the way sandy says "courage" and "myyyyyy middle name" I love

-"us go!"

-love the instruments at the end

-the bandstand-y type music for when Pat dances, SO GOOD

SuperStar Seastar Savior

-this is one of those songs I didn't really care for live

-but MY GOD ITS AMAZING AS A RECORDING

-LISTEN TO THOSE HARMONIES

-it really does sound gospel-y

-pATRICK

-he sounds so pure "my new friends"

-"does anybody bake?"

-GOD HE SOUNDS SO GOOD

-THE TWANG

-"ME"

-"uh, I dunno"

-"figARO"

-the wrestling announcer towards the end

-"y'all praise pink!"

-the explosion what a perfect way to end it

Tomorrow Is

-lili, slay me

-oO the shift!!!

-the sb and sandy harmony yes very good

-squidy still sounds a little strange but I love him

-krabs always on point

-"oooo"

-god, plankton's voice is velvet

-"victoryyyyy"

-spongey boy, god, he's so hurt by Pat im crying

-tHE CHORUS

-bikini bottom day reprise, I'm in actual tears

-gOD

ACT II

Poor Pirates

-another one I didn't care for live

-but the recording captures it so much better

-it just sounds so different

-the KAZOO

-"en-c-i-n-o"

-"h-winds in our earrings"

"don'tcha know pirates have feelings?"

-"p-o-o-rrrrrrr people too"

-bg guy who says "we've too many too gold teeth"

-I really really love this

-"the BLOOMIN ONION"

-Talk Like A Pirate Day is now a fully international holiday idc what anyone has to say

-god, the instrumentation is on point

-Sara Bareilles did an amazing job (listen to some of the songs from The Waitress if you like her stuff. She wrote for and stared in that too. "She Used To Be Mine" is amazing)

Bikini Bottom Boogie

-okay, this also sounds better than it was live

-that guitar, man

-really does sound like a good ol' rock ballad

-nice job, Aerosmith

-IM FEELING IT ALRIGHT

-"rad, gnarly, and tIGHT"

-"kiss my JELLYFISH"

-what a freakin bop

-yEAH

Chop To the Top

-the banjo oh yes yes yes

-I'm in love with it already

-tHE FIDDLE

-sandy is so pure

-"keep it moving don't stop till you drop" that's new I love it

-sPONGY YOU CAN DO IT

-"way" the TWANG HAS PASSED ON TO SB NOW

-F THIS IS THE REAL BOP

-pURE TOO PURE

-LILI, GOD YOURE KILLING ME

-ehem, yes this was fantasic.

-Great job, Lady Antebellum

(I Guess I) Miss You

-oh boi, here we go feels

-just imaging John Legend writing this while playing piano while Chrissy Teegan watches on in the bg is hilarious to me

-pat, my boy I'm in tears

-the "I"s in this song are good no matter how you're listening to it

-sponge is so HURT

-"nobody can make me laugh like you" :((((((

-the har-mon-iES

-IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII-e-I'm in pain

-"bring my sunshine back again" the sad twang :,((((((((((((((((((

-nobody talk to me for a month I need to recover

I'm Not a Loser

-the piano, oh yes

-he's really doing the nasally thing

-it works tho

-he sounds much more put together and sure of himself than live, yet not, if that makes sense???? Gavin Lee gave it a different performance and I give him props

-the CRYING

-"huha?"

-*monotone* "this is weird"

-*just going with it* "okay"

-"look at me now mama!"

-okay, this is just my opinion but I think squidy just sounds better live???

-"I'm not a loooossar"

-the "stay at home" girl is always great

-"hey. Shhhhst."

Best Day Ever

-oh, we're here already omg

-pure sponge boy, pure

-I still get all choked up when the "best day ever" tune starts

-he sounds so SWEET

-sandy chiming in

-Pat joining heck yeah, yeah

-"dum, dum, dum, dum"

-really like how they changed "just tying my shoe" in the tv show version to "just being with you"

-I LOVE WHEN THE CHORUS COMES IN EVERY NOW AND THEN

-the Elvis impersonation is always great

-that bg girl after Squidward comes in? Amazing.

-"this is it, everyone" IM GONNA DIE

-this is so soft and so dark

-the soft countdown that gets more and more scared omg

Bikini Bottom Day Reprise

-the ukelele gets me every time

-it's the perfect instrument for sb

-"busy day" I'LL SAY

-I love everything about this

-Mr krabs?? I forgot he had a line in this?? Did he ever??? I LIKE IT

-the cymbals, play it pearl yes yes

-Pearl, you're killing it

-"a simple sponge can be handy when you're cleaning up spills" omg

-"sometimes you need a hero with some management skills" squidy that was such an amazing thing to say

-"hey there, that's me" it sure is, my son. It sure is.

-I LOVE BIKINI BOTTOM DAY JUST SO YOU KNOW

-the ending, the ENDING OMG

-"meow" I LOST IT

-the crazy instruments all at once, god it's great

-everyone in this town is a child

The SpongeBob SquarePants Theme/Closing

-*HEADBANGS*

-oMGGGGGGGGGGG

-THIS IS THE THEME REDUAL I NEEDED AND DIDNT EVEN KNOW IT

-THE GUITAR AT THE END

-well, I'm in tears and throwing all my money at this show

-and you should too

-also congrats if you made it this far with me on this incredible journey of pain, references, and fluffy feelings

#the spongebob musical #broadway #spongebob broadway #ethan slater #the spongebob musical soundtrack #wannabe writes

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