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anyoneseenadam · 3 years

Note

Hii

Can you please write something for fenrys? first meeting maybe? And the bond clicks? Thank you 🥺🥺

pairing: Fenrys x reader (throne of glass)

warnings: implied smut, kissing and nudity, lil bit of blood and injuries but mainly pure fluff

a/n: fenrys is my fave and u can tell in the fic omg!! i hope you enjoy it cause it’s probs my fave one i’ve written yet :))) (i also made it a teensy bit ddlg but that’s just cause i want Fenrys to baby me lol)

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Shit

Fenrys pressed his hand to the wound in his side, feeling the slow pump of blood seeping between his fingers as he stumbled through the woods. He had won the fight. The other guy now lying in the dirt, however not without consequence. And he wasn’t entirely sure he would stay alive unless he could find a healer soon.

He stopped to lean against a tree, breathing heavily as he held himself together. He transformed into a wolf, moving faster, and trying to pick up a scent, any scent, that could possibly help him, when he caught the sweetest smell he ever had. It was a female, smelling like peonies and blackberries, sweet but with an underlying smoky smell. She smelled of long days in flowers fields and even longer nights beside campfires, evenings spent curled in hand woven blankets and mornings spent drinking dark coffee and eating sweet toast.

He whimpered and began running in the direction of the scent. If he wasn’t so focused on not bleeding out he may have stopped to consider why the scent was pulling him in the way it did. He would have considered the direction he was running into, the direction of his future, his past and his present. But he just kept up, going as fast as his injured body would allow, concentrating on the sweet smell and putting one foot in front of the other.

He felt the change almost immediately, the cold snow and rough bark being swapped for cool moss. The pine trees swapped for tall, oak trees teeming with life. The silence of a frozen forest swapped for the rustling of bushes as nocturnal animals moved silently under the guise of darkness. The chill of the snow-covered woods swapped for the warmth of a summer evening. He pushed between two bushes and found himself facing a clearing, in the middle of which stood a wooden cottage, the wood dark and the roof covered in more moss, flowers growing from every surface and ivy peeking out of the crevices in the house. He stumbled down the path to the cottage, turning back into a male and crossing a small bridge over a stream that separated him from the intoxicating scent he chased.

He let out what he could only describe as a bark, calling for the female that carried the scent he was growing addicted to, collapsing onto his knees, feeling his conscious fade as he held to the side of his stomach, searing pain replaced by fiery veins as his head swayed. He barely heard the door open, only noticing the scent get so much stronger. He attempted to look up, the movement making his head spin as he collapsed, the last thing he saw, a girl in the halo of the moon.

Fenrys awoke in a foreign bed. An unbelievably comfortable bed, but foreign all the same. He pushed up on his forearms, gritting his teeth at the reminder of his wound.

The room he was in was dark, not just in light source, but also in décor. The window was cracked open with lacy curtains half closed, there was a tall bookshelf sat next to a desk with leather-bound books lining it, and tall candles flickering and casting the room in a golden glow. The bed he was in was small, clearly just for one, but so soft. He had blankets surrounding him and copious amounts of pillows, some that appeared hand made. In fact, upon closer inspection, a lot of the room looked handmade. Art covering the walls depicting crying women or bloody scenes that he presumed had been done by the owner of this house, given the pallet and assortment of brushed he saw on the windowsill.

And then there was that scent. It was stronger here and he pressed his face into a pillow tentatively, breathing in through his nose as he picked up on the deeper undertones. Fresh picked daisies, melted wax, the pages of old, worn books and something he couldn’t describe. Something so intoxicating he felt tears spring to his eyes, his body reacting in an unheard-of way, so overcome with emotion from scent alone.

He heard footsteps approaching the closed door and hastily put down the pillow, sitting up straight and readying himself to fight whoever it was if they were an intruder. But when you entered he faltered.

Mate. The word clanged through him as he came face to face with an angel. You were wearing a dark brown broderie dress with white hearts lining the hem, your feet bare and toenails painted black. Your hair was falling around your face, messy and untamed, and you had dark smudges around your eyes, makeup that accentuated your features and made you look like a character from the scary books he read as a boy. However right now you looked more like a teddy bear.

He briefly remembered the tail of a witch he had read. An evil witch who lured men into her house with whispered words and sweet kisses, only to steal their hearts and use their blood to keep her skin young and eyes bright. This girl however was no witch, you had elegantly pointed ears and a graceful way of moving that only came from being Fae. He watched as you moved to his side, silent on your feet, putting a tray down beside him before moving an opening the curtains further, letting in more natural light.

“How are you feeling?” your sweet voice interrupted his thoughts. His mind coming to a halt as he heard you speak.

“I- er fine..?” His voice was rough, and you smiled, a reserved smile. Moving to his side and sitting at the edge of the small bed he was on, pouring him a glass of water from a small decanter you had brought through.

“(Y/n.)” you answered his unspoken question.

“Fenrys.”

He muttered a thanks as you passed the glass to him, noting the crystals that hung around your neck and adorned your fingers.

“Crystals?” he asked, and you looked down, playing with the rings you wore nervously.

“My mother taught me about their meanings, they’ve always helped me.” You bit your lip and Fenrys decided he would never meet anyone as cute as you again, it simply wasn’t possible.

“Me too, my mother used to carry them everywhere.” You smiled at him shyly, a beat of silence passing between the two of you as he listened to the birds outside.

“Can I see your wound? I want it make sure it’s healing properly.” You asked and he nodded, pulling the blankets down slightly, grinning as your eyes widened as you took in his physique.

“I’m presuming you’re the healer I have to thank for letting me see another day.” He flirted playfully but you shook your head,

“I’m not a very good healer I’m sorry, but I did stitch it up and it should do the rest itself.” You pressed gentle fingers against the skin surrounding his wound and he glanced down, seeing it was already practically healed.

“You still saved my life.” He said, completely serious and you looked up at him with wide, innocent eyes.

“I’ll let you rest.” You said quietly, standing to walk away and he smiled, feeling more at ease than he ever had since the war, watching his little mate leave.

He woke up again a few hours later, wound completely healed and puckering into a scar. Standing he stretched his arms above his head, not bothering with a shirt as he left the room in search of the girl that had occupied his dreams.

The rest of the house was alike your room, tall candles and worn books everywhere. He passed a kitchen filled with copper utensils and a living room with an old armchair, a half-filled mug left next to it, but still no you. He saw the front door was cracked open and wandered over to it, pulling it open and stepping into the fresh air, barely feeling the chill on his body as he found you kneeling on the moss-covered ground facing away from him.

You were muttering under your breath and as he got closer he saw you were cradling a small bird with a broken wing. He watched as you closed your eyes, the ground and air seeming to still as you called upon your magic, a soft white light flowing from your hand into the bird until its wing was healed and it could flutter away.

“I thought you said you weren’t a healer,” he broke the silence and you turned to him with a small smile.

“I said I wasn’t a very good healer.” You replied, standing with green stained knees, your hair now piled atop your head and lip gloss coating your soft lips.

“What are you then?” he came closer to you, unable to resist holding his mate, even if you weren’t aware yet.

“My mother said we were natural faeries.” You said, looking at him shyly, “we derive our power from the earth, crystals, sea water, dirt, fire, stuff like that.”

He hummed, “So technically you could have any type of magic?”

“I guess, but I’m not very good at magic,” you muttered, hands fiddling with your rings again as he wrapped his arms around your waist. “Fenrys?” you asked, all pouty lips and wide eyes.

“Have you realised yet darling?” he asked, and you bit your lip. He knew he could tell you, but he wanted to hear you say it.

“I- we’re mates I think.” You were practically shaking, and he didn’t know why he suddenly had this burning desire to scoop you into his arms and protect you against the horrible world that was out there. He nodded with a smile, watching as awe took over your stunning face.

“Can I kiss you princess?” he asked, and you felt your face heat up, looking down as he pulled you closer. “Have you ever been kissed before angel?” he asked, his face hurting from the grin that was spreading over his face when you shook your head.

He tilted your head up to his, looking deeply into your eyes as your breaths came out quicker. “Not many people can find our cottage, my mother put up wards when she got ill, our family wasn’t well liked by the king. You probably only got here because we’re mates,” You muttered.

“Can I kiss you?” he asked again, running a soft hand over your head, smoothing your hair away from your face as you nodded sweetly.

He smiled before leaning down and kissing you gently. Pulling away and feeling as smug as a thief when your lips followed his, pouting at the loss of contact so quickly. He chuckled at your put out expression and leaned down to kiss you again, deeper this time, his tongue slipping into your mouth when you gasped against his lips, quickly beating your own in a battle for dominance and taking his time exploring your mouth.

He laid you down that morning and took you for the first time in the soft moss. Then again in your even softer bed. Now you were sitting in his lap, eating strawberries of a bush you had in your back garden as he pressed dizzying kisses into your neck, both of you still as bare as the day you were born, Fenrys having forgot how much he missed skin to skin contact, when you suddenly remembered.

“Fenrys?” he hummed in response, completely enamoured with the feel of your soft skin against his rough calluses. “Why were you hurt last night?”

“I didn’t tell you my job did I angel?” he asked, the pet name making you giggle as you shook your head, “I work for the queen of Terrasen.”

You gasped, “But she was killed!”

“Oh angel, when was the last time you left this cottage?” he asked, worry coming over him as he realised you had been holed up alone for so long.

“Not since my mother died. She said the king was dangerous and that he would hurt me if he found me,” your bottom lip was wobbling and Fenrys quickly kissed it away, shushing you as it dawned on him just how innocent his little girl was.

“No baby, he’s gone now, the new king of Adarlan is a very kind man and the Queen of Terrasen is wonderful,” he promised, “Will you let me take you to meet them?”

You nodded enthusiastically, bouncing slightly in his lap making him groan. He nipped at your ear lobe and you squealed as he pushed you down. You could meet them another day, today he was too busy with his little mate.

#throne of glass #tog #fenrys moonbeam #fenrys x reader #fenrys moonbeam x reader

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dreamsmp-au-ideas · 3 years

Text

Teddy Bear Anon has purposed yet another interesting addition to the Immune AU which gives me plot ideas! In particular, a scene that would really help give past Dream a strong push into his character arc.

I like to image that immune!Dream’s character arc starts with the death of immune!Puffy. Sure, maybe he’s not sad yet, but he feels something for the woman who declared herself his pseudo mother. It’s what helps to crack the shell enough for the rest of the immune gang to start weedling their way into his heart. Immune!Dream after spending enough time watching the group he, starts to realize that yeah, connections to other people isn’t a weakness. It really is a strength. It’s something that takes time for him to come to terms with because Techno seems like a testament to the fact connections are a weakness. He was unbeatable until his horse got kidnapped. His only connection, his only weakness. But then there’s Tommy who seems to represent the complete opposite.

Where Dream represents strength from caring too little, Tommy represents strength from caring far too much. Now I’m a sucker for bamf Tommy, and I like to personally imagine that maybe the Immunes hold out for a year or two before they cave and try to make the portal. So Tommy has what really boils down to a two year training arc on top of already being a child veteran (I like to canonize SMP Earth as well because personal preference and it gives me even more room to make Tommy suffer. SMP Earth being canon? God, so much fucking trauma considering how the others treated him, a 15 year old child, like an adult.) Anyway Dream slowly realizes connections with one another are what kept the remaining Immunes alive, and he tries to force his younger self to understand that. Tries, but doesn’t really get far. Up until what everyone else calls The Fight.

Tommy’s always just kind of screwed around in fights as long as there’s only a threat to him. We know he has a tendency to throw if MCC is any indicator. But then they time travel and maybe they spend some time in the past trying to get the situation sorted and the past’s Dream maybe just kinda does something to Tubbo. Doesn’t even have to be big, it just needs to clock as a threat to Immune!Tommy who’s already lost his Tubbo and refuses to let his younger self go through that. So Tommy goes completely ape shit on the younger Dream. Sure, it’s only been two years for this Tommy. He’s probably, like, 18 or 19 at most. Still a child as far as a lot of people are concerned. He shouldn’t be stronger than Dream or Technoblade, and in the few cross group sparing sessions they’ve had he isn’t. He’s stronger than his younger self but no where near these two demi gods of combat. But then Dream suddenly registers as a threat to Tubbo in Immune!Tommy’s eyes and he makes the mistake of mocking Tommy while he’s at it. He knows that immune!Tommy lost his Tubbo and maybe the past Dream is lashing out slightly or trying to get some kind of foothold in Tommy’s psyche. He isn’t doing anything near what immune!Dream has done, but it’s enough to piss Tommy off. So immune!Tommy challenges Dream to a fight and Dream immediately realizes the mistake he’s made when Tommy starts to destroy him.

Say even Techno’s there for some reason or another and he realizes what’s going down so he tries to calm Tommy down, joining the fight just as Dream is loosing it. The situation quickly turns into the first time Techno’s ever gotten his ass thoroughly kicked by Tommy, leaving everyone spectating baffled (Tommy’s younger self partly included). They’re certain this kid is going on some rampage and none of them can stop him but the moment Dream and Techno are both taken care of (wounded, not killed, the older Tommy is always careful about that. He even throws a splash healing on them with some indifferent kind of disgust that hides the fact he does still care to some extent even hurting as he is.) Tommy immediately just switches focus to outright doting on Tubbo, ignoring any muttered Clingyinnits in favor of ensuring Tubbo is fine. Tubbo is completely find and just as confused, but the point stands and neither Tommy ends up leaving Tubbo’s side for the rest of the day. The younger Tommy, after all, is the only one the older Tommy’s told the full story to regarding the future (even when he couldn’t trust his own family he was always able to trust himself with the secrets that mattered, so he prepares his younger self in case the worst comes to pass.)

The older Dream, immune!Dream, he doesn’t get involved. He sit on the side lines and just kinda laughs, the sound drowned out by Sapnap’s loud encouragements and Sam’s half hearted attempts to get Tommy to stop (he could have stopped Tommy immediately if he’d stepped in. Sam is after all the only person on earth Tommy listens to without hesitation, but Sam lets it happen and pretends he tried.)

Immune!Dream just kinda smirks at his younger self later that night and mentions something about attachments really making you weak. After all, it’s not like the only time Tommy takes a battle seriously is when someone he cares about is in danger. It’s not like Tommy would turn the world into a seared ball for Tubbo, and Tubbo would do the same in return. It’s not like they’ve watched the people they care about temporarily rebuke the Crimson just to give the Immunes those precious extra seconds needed to survive in a fight. Attachments, they’re just a weakness.

The younger Dream doesn’t know how to respond to that. It’s the first time he thinks about his older self maybe being right.

Before I go I wanna leave you with two more ideas for the Immune AU

First up, Wilbur is eight years older than Tommy give or take. Wilbur had Fundy when he was around 16 and Tommy was around 8. Tommy was the best damn uncle he could be and for a while Tommy and Fundy were really stupidly close. They were both apart of the raised by Wilbur club and Wilbur was trying his damn best. Fundy aged/matured (physically and mentally) faster than a regular person for a while. They believed it was because he was a fox hybrid and Wilbur was ready to lose Fundy too soon. When Fundy was equivalent to 18 in human years though his aging process suddenly slowed to a crawl and his tail split into two, at which point the group realized he was actually a kitsune and it was just those first 8 years that passed by quickly (and Wilbur had a lot of questions for the now missing Sally who he’d thought was a salmon hybrid, genuinely, but became exceedingly less sure.) His family knows he’s a kitsune, but Fundy hid it from most of the rest of the server. A good thing considering later events.

Fundy was part of the Immune group for a while and I like to imagine that he and Tommy had a falling out during the Pogtopia era but after the egg started to take over they started bonding again and acting like, well, family. Unfortunately when it came time for them to activate the portal, Fundy ended up getting separated from the group and getting caught. The eggpire didn’t actually know Fundy was fully immune or a kitsune so he just kinda pretended to get infected, using his illusions to make his fur look crimson. I personally like the idea that Fundy at some point managed to get back to the time machine and being a little code wizard manages to get the thing working and yeets himself in. He shows up a little late but after fixing his appearance manages to catch up with the rest of the group.

Fundy is underrated. Tommy being a good uncle is underrated. Sam would absolutely adopt the traumatized fox baby in Eret’s honor. What’s not to love?

The last concept I wanna bring up that I really like is hybrid Tommy. Tanuki would be good since it’s another reason for the Sam Nook bit. Maybe Sam specifically picked Sam Nook since Tom Nook was Tommy’s favorite character on the grounds he was the only representation Tommy had ever gotten and it made the kiddo happy. However, I also personally really like phoenix Tommy and it would make an interesting plot point. Tommy accidentally losing his third life at some point and realizing he’s an immortal creature of fire would have led to him taking a protector role for his new family. He can’t die, but he can burn anything around him, why not send him out to get supplies when the worst the eggpire could do would be capture him. Even then he just literally cannot hear the egg. Which could lead to both some interesting comedic moments and some really good angst if Sam agonizes over his desire to protect Tommy and let him be a child suddenly being at odds with the fact Tommy is literally the best person for the job so to speak. Not to mention Sapnap, who I headcanon as a Blaze hybrid, would be even more attached the moment he found a new fire proof friend to burn forests with him. Regardless of which hybrid type he is, I could see him hiding it from everyone except for Fundy when he was a child and only ever admitting it later to the other Immunes once they become a found family.

Personally I like the idea of Tommy being part tanuki hybrid and part phoenix hybrid, but is that too mary sue? Is it just a little bit too cheesy to have him be both? I will never not try to incorporate phoenix Tommy into my fics but also tanuki Tommy would be such a mood for this au.

Like image Tommy just builds a den that’s in reality a vault/panic room a la Techno and he hides it under Church Prime since that is The Safe Spot in Tommy’s mind.

~Snapdragon & Firefly

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undertaker1827 · 4 years

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Hi, it's me again! :D grell has a human partner who is the mother figure of ciel unfortunately in a case they were investigating they stab her in a vital organ (the rest I leave to your incredible imagination) Grell that day checks the book where it says that the name of the soul he has to be collected (also left your imagination) I hope I expressed good luck with the other requests! sad ending please!

Hello again!! You said unhappy and you sure have got it! Seriously though, this is completely different to what I normally write and if anyone’s feeling at all bad about themselves, please don’t read this. Links to happy Grell stories in my masterlist 😂 Also, male pronouns for Grell as requested and a gender neutral reader.

EDIT; Part Two

❗️Warnings; aaaaangst, all the way through. Very sad. Blood/injury/violence. Death.

Masterlist

How. How could this possibly happen? Grell’s mouth was dry, his fingers gripping the dreaded black notebook so hard his knuckles were starting to turn white. This was some sort of mistake, right? Had to be. Because Grell had already been through so much, had barely managed to claw himself back from the edge of despair and had continued doing so through finding you - you couldn’t possibly go now. This was not your time.

“So where are we going now?” You were walking next to Ciel through the cobbled streets of London, Sebastian half a step behind. A recent string of murders were proving more trouble than they were worth and all you kept coming across were dead ends. The police force had really tightened their ranks around this case and were not giving the earl any more than the bare minimum of information, despite his position as the Queen’s Guard Dog.

“The authorities aren’t going to help us with this,” Ciel informed you gravely. “They appear to have lost their faith in me and as such are using it as an excuse to not cooperate. There is only one other person I know who will help us with this.” A few minutes later, you were standing in front of an out-of-the-way shop, the sign of which loudly proclaimed ‘Undertaker’. You raised a questioning eyebrow at Ciel, who dismissed your confusion with a light wave of his hand.

Sebastian held open the door for you both to enter and you thanked him as you walked through, ignoring the chill curling up your spine at the creaking of the old hinges. The room was so dark you could hardly see anything, but the earl didn’t seem concerned.

“Undertaker, are you here?” He called, glancing around for the man in question. As it turned out, you would be the one to almost collapse in terror when the coffin propped up on the wall behind you slowly swung open, revealing someone dressed as though he were attending a funeral standing inside it. Your reaction was enough to make him giggle, which Ciel simply tutted at. “We’re here for information about your most recent guests, the police are refusing to hand anything over.” After a good twenty minutes of trying to make him laugh, Sebastian finally succeeded and you were once again on your way, this time with both a lead and destination in mind.

The people you were chasing were a notorious circle of smugglers who excelled at their craft and whose organisation had been doing so for the last century. The people being murdered were those who had tried to escape from the ring, bound only to it by their predecessors’ decisions to join it. The circle dared not let them escape, lest they hand over any information to the authorities and disrupt the entire ongoing operation. Their current storage unit was hidden in an abandoned warehouse at the dodgy end of the Thames, nestled between two disused docks. It was perfect really - they could take a boat by night to pick up and drop off their goods and nobody was any the wiser. Not until now, at least. But your downfall came in not realising they had their own network of eyes and ears.

The warehouse was empty when you got there; no smuggled goods, no people who were smuggling them. Not so much as a scrap of paper to be used as evidence. You had split up to search the main floor, you insisting that Sebastian stayed with and protected Ciel, given that you were something of an old hand at this. Pistol in hand, for precaution’s sake, you carried out your search quickly and efficiently. You found nothing of any interest, until you came across several large stacks of crates. They secluded you from the rest of the warehouse, but you were so intent on finding something to help further the investigation that you didn’t even think about it, certain the whole place was empty. But oh how wrong you were.

In a split second, an entire stack of wooden crates fell forward, more than enough to crush you to death had you been any slower in jumping out of the way. On your hands and knees and breathing heavily from shock, you crawled back to your feet only to let out a strangled whimper of pain. Searing agony was pulsing through your lower back and you were hardly able to look back over your shoulder to see the face of your assailant. The man, dressed all in black with a piece of material covering his face forced the knife further in until you both heard something crack sickeningly. With that, he let go of the hilt and watched you collapse to the ground, body twisted helplessly and incapable of doing anything more than wheeze in pain, desperately trying to fill your lungs with air that didn’t want to come. Your mouth was filling with blood even as you weakly tried to spit it out, your vision starting to distort. You just had to hold on a bit longer, just until Ciel got here and caught the man, no doubt one of the smugglers…

When butler and earl had heard the almighty crash, they glanced towards each other for but a second before they started running towards the source of the noise, Sebastian ahead of Ciel. Ciel was fighting back a nausea that he didn’t want to admit to having at the thought that the noise had come from the direction in which you had gone.

You kept your eyes locked on the man for as long as you could, him doing to the same to you as he watched the damage he had caused slowly consume you. You had never felt so sick in your life. Grell meanwhile, was running as fast as his already inhuman speed could allow him too. He was not going to let you die, no matter what. You were too important, your death would be a loss to this world. To his world. He was not going to allow it.

You watched the man even as he turned tail to run, as he was met by Sebastian’s fist and help off of the ground by his throat. Ciel’s shattered whisper of your name was enough to bring tears to your eyes, should your body have been capable of producing them. Even Sebastian’s eyes were wide. You could imagine the state your back was in, but had you not, the look of horror and guilt rising in the boy’s, no, your boy’s eyes was enough to tell you. The earl couldn’t even put a hand to the wound to stem the blood flow; it was so deep and wide, so cruel, there wasn’t even a discernible area to apply pressure to. It took every ounce of concentration you had left to look up at Ciel, to try and convey through your eyes alone that you loved him, that he would be alright. There were tears in his eyes.

Just as you could feel your mind starting to fade, a shattering of glass managed to grab your attention once more. There was a blur of crimson, lighter than the patches of your own no staining the concrete around you, and a deafening screech as the perfect chain saw, the one Grell was so proud of, was dropped with its chain still whirring to the ground. The reaper’s hands were cupping your cheeks in seconds, wiping away the moisture your eyes had given out and trying to get rid of the rosy red, the red he loved so much on you, from your sickly face. It was hopeless and somewhere deep within his heart he knew it, but he wasn’t giving up yet. Your lips formed Grell’s name once, twice, but you were too weak for your voice to come out.

He was sobbing, teeth bared and face wrenched in agony and Sebastian and Ciel were there but he didn’t care, because it was you, it was his Y/N who was bleeding out before his very eyes and there was nothing he could do. He was a god of death and you were dying and there was nothing he could do. He couldn’t have gotten here any faster, couldn’t have punished his lungs or his legs or his heart any more than he already had and he had only seen that God forsaken To-Die list ten minutes previously, while he was thinking about which restaurant to take you to for this evening’s date night. His hands shook as he remembered the silly teddy bear he’d bought you only yesterday, the plush one holding a heart that had ‘I’ll love you forever’ embroidered on it in gold thread. It had been in his cupboard for a month now because he hadn’t been able to pick the right time to give it to you - he’d wanted it to be perfect.

“I got you a bear,” he choked out, watching the speed of your blinking become ever more lethargic. “It’s holding a heart.” A dry sob, a pale face slick with a stream of tears that wouldn’t stop coming, turning red as they mixed with your blood. “It - it says, ‘I love you’. I love you, Y/N, you know that, right? I-” He couldn’t breathe. His ears were ringing with white noise and the only real sound were your gargled breaths, each one taking less oxygen into your blood than the last. “Don’t go, Y/N,” he whispered out at last, voice coarse and rough but he didn’t care, because this was the last thing he was ever going to be able to say to you. “Please, please don’t go. I can’t.. I don’t know what to do without you. I’m nothing without you. Please Y/N- Y/N? Y/N look at me. Look at me. Sweetheart open your eyes, plea--” A whimper tore itself from the back of his throat as your hand went limp in his. Your chest no longer moved, your laboured breathing ceased; he heard your heart stop beating. That didn’t stop the raw, feral howl of pain the reaper gave as he curled his arms around your body, as he begged you to wake up. It was over. He barely registered the muffled sniffling of the boy crouched next to him, nor the way Sebastian for once held his tongue. One glance towards that wretched death scythe was enough to bring a burning fury to every fibre of his being.

“I will not,” he hissed out, hand subconsciously smoothing down your hair. “Not to you. There is not a being in this world or any other who could make me.” With that he reached into his pocket and drew out the black, leather bound notebook, opened it to random page and ripped it in two clean down the spine. “I will come back for you my darling,” he whispered before standing up, “I swear.” The reaper stooped down to haul his death scythe over his shoulder, allowing the gleaming chrome to get scratched as he dragged it for a moment against the concrete. It was barely a few minutes before he stormed into the office of one William T. Spears.

“Haven’t you ever heard of knocki - oh, Sutcliff, it’s you,” was the bored, uninterested greeting he was given and when he didn’t reply, the other reaper eventually looked up from his paperwork. “I’m listening, Sutcliff, what’s the-” he cut himself off abruptly. It wasn’t the fact that Grell was covered in blood, that was a fairly normal occurrence for those in collections. It wasn’t really even the scratched and bloodied paintwork of the scythe he cared so much about, though that added to the image. It was that Grell’s perfect makeup was flawed beyond repair, that his eyes were puffy and red in a way that only tears which truly hurt can cause, that his hair was tangled and his chartreuse gaze was wild with anger and defiance, fuelled onward by unadulterated agony.

“You monster,” he spat out, “you knew. You knew what they meant to me when you gave me that list, don’t you dare try to deny it. I knew you were cold and calculating, but how could you do this?” Grell was for once talking quietly, albeit with a growling quality, for he knew if he raised his voice now he could never stop. He didn’t give William a chance to respond. “Well do you know what? Enough’s enough. I quit.” Grell dropped the scythe on the desk, denting and splintering the polished hardwood surface and scattering the carefully organised piles of paper. He then picked up the book one last time and with a look of fury William thought even he couldn’t rival, Grell slammed it down on the free section of desk between his hands. As his former class and work mate left his office with tears flowing once again, the management reaper was left staring at a profile page, your smiling face looking past him and into the distance. The ‘uncollected’ stamp was still written next to your name, two drops of dried blood marring your death date.

#grell sutcliff #black butler #kuroshitsuji #black butler x reader #kuroshitsuji x reader #Grell #black butler reapers #black butler grell #black butler grell x reader #kuroshitsuji grell #kuroshitsuji grell x reader #black butler reader inserts #grell x reader #grell sutcliff x reader #anime #manga #black butler anime #black butler manga

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nothisis-ridiculous · 3 years

Text

Take Me Home

Chapter One: Almost Heaven

Set after the events of ME3.

A rewrite. Ao3.

FemShepxKaidan

"When this is over, I'm going to be waiting for you. You'd better show up."

Those confident words felt hollow, moot. A disguised plea to the universe that she could accomplish the impossible. A prayer to return to the arms that were home.

That was before the searing burns, the blood, and the pain that struck with each beat of her heart. Oh god, the blood was everywhere. Each blink was a calculated risk as the blood threatened to cloud her vision; it meant having to stop find a clean - clean enough- patch of skin to push the liquid from her eyes. Each moment of pause tempted her body with respite, a siren's call for her failing body to expire.

Shepard had to keep moving.

To keep fighting.

They were waiting for her.

He was waiting for her.

"You'd better show up, Alenko. I'm dying here, don't make me die here." They would have been words if she could manage the strength to speak them. Instead, it became a silent anthem. A memento of strength, hope, anything to make her scraped, bruised, and battered body move against the tide of her fading consciousness.

It kicked back.

Eeeee, high-pitched electric screaming flooded her headspace, eeeee, her head swam and pulsed. The jerking motions of her head frivolously searching for the illusory flashbang was only damaging to her weakened state and sending her swirling vision into a nauseating torrent of colors and light.

Mary knew she was a corpse walking. There was no way she could keep moving, yet she did. Tripping, stumbling, and blundering her way through the unrecognizable streets and buildings of what she assumed was London. The warmth of the smashed bits of Crucible fueling her away from what was a ticking time bomb.

But she wasn't moving fast enough, and she was too weak, too fragile to continue. A clumsy boot caught the upturned slab of road, and down she went. Crying out as her knees absorbed the blow, her elbows proving to be poor breaks as her form collapsed against the warm concrete. This wasn't right. She wasn't meant to die pathetically watching the blood pool and congeal around from her mouth like a drooling child. She wasn't supposed to be alone. Left without her squad, her friends, Kaidan...her home. She, if anywhere, was meant to die atop the burning Crucible... Dying like a hero, not out like a person forgotten...left behind.

What she would give not to be alone, to have someone's hand to grasp as she slipped away into the beyond.

Where the fuck was Alenko?

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

The glow of the blue light was comforting, illuminating but not to the point of brightness. She had succeeded in swallowing the first wave of panic that hit her nervous system, using the time to instead survey the room. It was empty, but there were visible signs of another living in the room- a cot lazily angled at the corner nearest her, the space sectioned off by a small table. Enough room to work with, but intended to give her a little bit of distance without cornering her.

Her armour rested in the opposite corner of the room, cleaned to whatever degree it was worthwhile. The set was junk- most of it bubbled and charred in whatever miracle brought her back to Earth. It was good enough to last another fight or two if it had to. Nothing remained of the color or scores from battles that had marred the pieces into something she recognized. Now, the weapon left on the table was blessedly pristine. Well, besides the old wear and tear left from months of battle. But her faithful Paladin had yet to let her down. The dog tags left at the bedside spiked shame, an emotion Mary was not ready to process.

Her head was tender, but that was the only physical complaint on her list. Outstretching her arm to inspect that area for more injuries and to test her field of vision. It seemed in order, even clearer than she was expecting. To test her theory, her hands explored the planes of her exposed scalp. Not even the most delicate fuzz had resurfaced. Mary bit back a scream willing her apathy to wash over her in a numbing blanket. It was only hair- it would grow back.

"I do apologize for shaving you," The voice interrupted her from the soliloquies that must have lasted much longer than the Commander had realized, "it was terribly singed."

"I had meant to change it for years anyway," the Commander dismissed.

The older woman ignored her remark, taking a seat near her feet, "you're THE Commander Shepard, aren't you?"

"That is a safe assumption," pulling herself to sit upright with her words.

"It's hard to tell without your red hair and that eye can-." the woman stopped, her demeanor turning from happiness to grief quickly, "honestly, it was the dog tags."

Years of well-intended crap through the military had spurred the change in hair color. Rather than being the dumb blonde, she could be the feisty redhead, which she had liked much better. People took her more seriously with red hair, and once she had reached Spectre status, the look had become her signature. None of her crew, even Kaidan, knew the original color of her hair. It was never a huge secret, just something that was now a part of her. Saving the world didn't allow all those little things to come to light. Or time to consider a change in appearance. Even Cereberus had found reason to keep up the ruse.

"I have to ask a favor," the woman's voice wavered, "I used most of my medigel. You're a hero-"

"When you put it like that, how could I say no?" Shepard gently teased.

Saddened beyond belief when the soft clearing of Kaidan's throat did not accompany her uncouth answer. But Mary had caught the slip of a tear from the woman; her eyes took in a deeper study of the room. A teddy bear lying in the middle of the room seemed less and less out of place. The woman's motivations became obvious.

"Well, let me start from the beginning." Or course she would. "After the Reapers attacked Earth, things have not been easy. I was the supply manager for a local hospital, so I knew where all of the medical equipment was. It kept me safe, but at a cost. When I found you, I was meant to deliver medigel to a gang of-" The woman searched for a suitable word.

"Raiders? Thugs? Ruffians?" It wasn't hard to guess.

"Yes, but I saw you. And, and I had to help you. Especially when I saw your tags, you," her voice stuttered into a soft coo, "saved everyone. I couldn't let you..."

"I don't see why you need my help," she stated, peppered with a cross tone the anger an unfamiliar bitter taste in her mouth; it didn't belong here.

"They took my son because I couldn't deliver, and now...now," the woman finished with a flurry of tears.

"How long ago?"

"Two days," the woman sobbed.

"Fuck," Shepard hissed, ambling from her cot, "we have to leave now."

Eyeing her armour then the woman and another pistol shoved haphazardly under the covers of the larger cot. Civilians did not belong in a firefight, but against forces she was unsure of, she had to take any help. Testing the fabric bunched around her arm with a sigh, she looked at the woman.

"Get in my armour, and grab that gun."

The woman balked, looking up to her in the empty and hopeless way. Without another word, Shepard placed the bear within the Mother's arms.

"I'll get you both out."

The march to the Raider hideout was a short one. Easy. Shepard was glad to find that her breathing and movements were unhindered without any unusual stings of pain. The woman following her had also proved adept at following instructions; luckily for them both, the months of lean allowed her to fit into her armour comfortably. A few inquiries later, she found the woman to be the same age as her, and the child was barely eight years old. She lost her husband in the chaos of the Reaper attacks, for all that mattered to the mission presented, but it stopped the woman from dramatics. Shaky emotions did not lead to straight shots.

But even talk of the lady's child soon fell to the side as the hideout loomed closer. Shepard could not shake the feeling of dread that hounded her. This was risky, and her health questions pushed at her, doubts consuming her usually clear battle state. But retreating was not an option, and it was not in her nature to abandon the person who had saved her, even if it was a suicide mission.

Four lookouts taken down silently later had not managed to ease her nerves. The options were down to one of two doors; testing either for locks was pointless; they would be caught at that point. So it would have to be hard and fast. Unfortunately, that was difficult when she was utterly blind to the layout of the room. Where was her son in the room? How many? What kind of fortifications? All crucial questions without answers. With no reliable source to watch her back.

"Look, we have to storm the door. Stay behind me at all times; I can use barriers to shield myself," but now came an essential part; Shepard made sure to look her square in the eyes, "I'm already going in blind; I cannot watch you. So stay on my six. No. Matter. What."

The woman nodded. Mary pat her shoulder, putting on the brightest smile she could manage, "you have my armour, a trusty sidearm- you can do this. Just stay calm."

She slipped the dog tags around the woman's neck.

Shepard moved toward the closest door, carefully placing each step so that a stray piece of rubble or siding would not alert the enemy to their presence. Sidestep, sidestep, sidestep, and the familiar tingling of the energy field pooling around her. The droplet of red absorbing into the fabric covering her chest went unnoticed. Three fingers in the air for five seconds, each finger went down with the space of one second between them.

Luckily, the door was unlocked.

One bullet took down the man watching the door. As that man fell, Shepard blasted into the building, taking a quick tactical appraisal of the building. It was almost pathetic; they were stationed in one large and open room. The child was in the far corner of the chamber, silent and looking glassy-eyed. The other men clustered around the table at the opposite end of the room; well were huddled, they all scattered for their weapon. Shepard's next move would make it difficult for the woman beside her to keep up, but she had no choice in the matter. She had to strike while they were still grouped.

Tendrils of energy snaked at lightning speed through her body, pulling the combined biotic energy into the mass of her chest. Their table was close enough not to merit a full charge at the men who were now her targets. Running would get her there quickly enough. Additionally, her barriers were still full. If she could manage to decimate the men all at once, this would be over without the loss of more thermal clips. She wouldn't need to worry about keeping up a barrier either. It was simple.

Release coiled from her core outwards. It was sweet as any orgasm. Tingling and electrifying in one move, though the heat was quite different. It burned through the Raiders, engulfing each before they could manage to scream. The table was gone, submerged in the same Nova of energy. Shepard slipped to the floor, sated, drained, and head pounding as blood dribbled from her nose.

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

"Who's that, mum?"

"Don't be rude," she admonished with another kiss to his forehead, "it's Commander Shepard."

"She's staring at me."

The Commander was the rude figure in the room, and her eyes stopped on the child. Her body seized in fear. The blue eyes and sandy brown hair the visage that had haunted her sleep. Mary's vision turned red, the beacon's first assaulting visions filling her mental space. Her foot retreated, backing herself into the wall, her head suddenly slurring back into a splash of colors.

The silent room then crashed into oblivion. Neither of the entrances barricaded, and the front door remained unlocked. Shepard had enough time to roll out from being on her side -had she laid down?- before the ten more men filed into the room. Each carrying an assault rifle that was primed and loaded. Groggily she moved to her feet, needing the wall as support.

"It's the bitch with the supplies!" shouted the first man to survey the room, "and some friend she dragged along."

He didn't seem to mind the smoldering piles left behind from the corpses of his men. But the next man, taller and burlier than the rest, frowned deeply. His steps were more confident, more decisive.

"'The fuck happened?" The question directed toward the woman who placed herself in front of her son. The struggling Shepard dressed in civilian clothes wasn't on his radar.

The female quaked, unable to speak.

The large man grew tired of her silence. The smoldering bullet hole through her skull glowed as her body fell limp, the body of her son fell in line behind it. Now, Shepard was on his radar.

The female scrapped at the wall, blue energy congealing beneath her fingertips as they dug into the wall. Tears forming in her sky blue eyes. No words, just horror. Mouth clamped shut to suppress any reaction, anything to give her away.

Clip, clip, clip. The man stood before her, studying the shrinking female before him with disdain.

"What do you boys think?" his hand tightened around her neck as he lifted the Commander with ease "think this bleeding freak was responsible?" The still-hot barrel seared into the side of her skull

He would never get an answer; the person he held aloft glowed the last blue he would ever behold. Carrying his folded body with her as she trucked for the gaggle of men that stood across the room. Barriers refilled, and the devastating Nova swallowed each of the bastards into the azure wave of energy. If only it could swallow her too, but it didn't...Fate left her kneeling on the floor, alone again.

But now, she could scream. Alone, she could cry without shame. Blue tendrils wavered from her body. Illuminating the darkening room around her. Each shout fanning the blue flames with renewed vigor. Scorching the remaining biological and flammable material left in the room the scent of burning flesh drowning the room.

Where was the Normandy? Why was she still here? Shepard didn't belong here; Shepard was nothing without her crew. Nothing, pointless, useless. She couldn't even protect these civilians against these simple thugs. That wasn't who Shepard was; she didn't lose. Shepard didn't feel weak or have her ears explode on even the slightest provocation of her biotic powers. She sure as hell did not shudder as the thumping of gunfire surrounded her location.

What was the point of fighting? What could she defend? She couldn't save two civilians, couldn't save an entire galaxy. Shepard had failed. Was a failure.

In yet another cloud of judgment, the door whirred open. Engulfing the entire room in bright daylight blinding Mary from counting the targets coming through the door. It was a rookie mistake, and on top of expending all her energy on a naive temper tantrum, left her with limited options to defend herself.

But why should she?

She was exhausted.

Spent.

Empty.

Alone.

With gumption foreign or encouraged by lack of coherence from bloodloss, Shepard bull-rushed headfirst at the door and the person blocking her exit. The first shot fired over the leader's shoulder, the second absorbed by shielding, and the third went wide as the weapon flew from her grip. The Paladin clattered to a location somewhere behind her. The Commander fell to her knees quickly after it.

"If you had any balls, you'd shoot me now," it was a plea, not a challenge.

The second gentlest set of brown eyes caught her before she wrenched her attention away.

"Get up, Soldier," the graveled voice ordered gently.

Shepard struggled to her feet, completing the order. But the strain of following such a command came at a price. Staggering drunkenly, she collapsed into the hard encasing of his blue and white striped armour.

#mass effect fanfiction #femshep x kaidan #kaidan alenko #commander shepard #mass effect #mass effect spoilers #mary shepard #take me home

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micheleblack · 4 years

Text

Black? No. Brown? No. Blond? Maybe...

This was the part about being a Metamorphmagus that Teddy disliked the most. Too many choices. Not just an outfit, but an entire person to go with it.

Glancing at the clock, Teddy cursed at how much time he’d wasted in front of the mirror. To match his frustration, he settled on black hair, styled into a fauxhawk, even sharpening his facial features. A final look in the mirror revealed no trace of Teddy Lupin. With a leather jacket, transfigured from a worn jumper, in hand, he cast a Disillusionment Charm over himself—not even bothered anymore by the sensation of a cracked egg traveling down his body.

---

CRACK!

“Jesus! What was that?” someone yelped.

Shit! Teddy cursed his recklessness. He should have known a few patrons would have found a bit of privacy in the alley beside the club by now. Breaking the Statute of Secrecy was not on his to-do list tonight. He held still, thankful he’d taken at least some precaution.

“Probably just a car backfiring. Now get that pretty mouth back where it belongs,” came another voice. The telltale sounds of blowjob followed. Teddy had no interest in sticking around to watch though, he was already late.

---

Teddy dropped the charm once safely inside the club. It would have been impossible to sneak through the wall of bodies, and besides he needed to be seen for this part. He swept the crowd with his eyes, searching. Not spotting what he wanted, he headed to the bar.

“What can I get you?”

“I’ll take a mar—I mean I’ll take a pint.” Stay in character, he berated himself. He sipped the beer while scanning the club more, hoping he hadn’t missed his chance. There! On the dance floor, practically glued to another man was the brown-haired man he was after. James Potter always came to this muggle club to destress after a Quidditch match. And in one form or another, so did Teddy.

Now that he had found James, Teddy was content to wait and watch. James moved with grace, be it on a broom or on the dance floor. The man behind him, in contrast, did little more than grind into James’s behind. A spark of possessiveness flared up inside Teddy, but he remained where he was. He wouldn’t break them up. It was James’s choice who he danced with. When the man gestured to James to head off the dance floor though, James shook his head. Nothing could be heard over the music blaring, but the rebuff was clear. Teddy left his mostly full beer on the bar and went to try his luck.

---

“Care for a fuck, hot stuff?” Teddy growled into James’s ear, draping his arms around him as they both began moving along to the throbbing beat.

“You too?” James chuckled as he glanced over his shoulder but gave no sign of recognition. “I’m just here to dance.”

James’s body was so warm, it seared any part of Teddy it touched. Gladly, Teddy threw himself into the heat, pulling James flush against his front. “Then let’s dance.” They found a rhythm and moved as one, not always in sync with the music—Teddy could barely hear it with his head so far in the clouds—but always together.

At some point Teddy realized he’d gotten hard. His erection now pressed against James’s backside, but neither of them acknowledged it and their dance continued. From his vantage point behind him, Teddy could see the sweat building on James’s flushed skin. Feeling bold, Teddy added an extra inch or two to his height, so he could properly envelop James. He felt James shiver all along their connected bodies.

James turned his head to the side. “I’ve changed my mind. I could go for more than a dance.”

“Your place or mine?” Teddy said it with such confidence. James always chose his own place. He was so predictable that way, Teddy thought playfully as he ground his erection harder into the soft flesh of James’s ass. Drawing a moan from the smaller man. Teddy was getting better and better at this. Soon he’ll be—

“Yours,” James finally said and Teddy froze. Fuck...

---

The cab ride was long, but by the last few blocks Teddy had regained his confidence. Keep him occupied and he won’t have time to notice anything else, he repeated in his head as he trailed kisses along James’s exposed collarbone.

With a nonverbal Alohomora, he pulled his front door open and held it for James. His eyes locked onto James’s ass in his tight jeans as he walked past, but soon regretted the polite door gesture when he realized James had a clear view of his flat. Teddy raced in after him and pushed James up against the closing door, their lips meeting for the first time that night.

“Someone’s eager,” James chuckled against his lips but happily joined in, opening his mouth to allow Teddy’s tongue access. James’s hands buried themselves in Teddy’s black hair as Teddy’s snaked their way down to grip James’s firm ass. They kissed with wanton abandon, filling the room with harsh pants and the occasional clink of teeth. Teddy’s erection was back, and this time he could feel a matching hardness against it. He thrust his hips against James, who broke the kiss to bury his face in the crook of Teddy’s neck.

Without James to kiss, Teddy’s eyes stared at the familiar sight of his front door. James was in his house. The realization made him feel light-headed, but it also reminded him that the game could be up at any moment. James started sucking on Teddy’s neck, no doubt trying to leave a mark. Teddy let one appear—he could always remove it later. Taking advantage of James’s newfound endeavor, Teddy shouldered the other man’s weight, having to grow his muscles just a bit to bear the load, as he carried his brown-haired prize to his bedroom.

---

“Fuck!” James moaned loudly, face buried in one of Teddy’s pillows as Teddy’s face was buried between the cheeks of his ass, lavishing praise against the pucker. “So good!” He loved how responsive James was to him. James gave him his all each and every time. The tip of his tongue finally slipped inside and James let out another string of curses, “Merlin’s balls!” to which Teddy couldn’t help but chuckle.

“Merlin, huh?” Teddy teased. James squirmed under him, reeling from the momentary loss of the hot tongue against his hole. Face down on the mattress, ass in the air, and pants pulled down around his thighs, James was the sexiest sight possible. Teddy planned to bottle this memory and wank to it every chance he could. “Tell me what you want next.”

“Just fuck me already,” James whined.

“I need to find some lube first,” Teddy replied, but James ignored his words. Teddy watched as, with a wave of his hand, James wandlessly cast a lubrication charm on himself. His hole glistened and accepted Teddy’s first finger with ease. What in the world—

“More!” James demanded and Teddy quickly added a second finger. “Yes, right there.” Teddy didn’t feel in control at all anymore as James rocked his hips, fucking himself on Teddy’s fingers.

With effort, he found his bearings again and started meeting James’s hips with sharp thrusts, drawing sharp gasps from the man under him. Teddy’s stiff cock strained against his tight pants, which he quickly vanished—not wanting to pause the action to take them off properly. His fingers withdrew from inside James, who scooted back, trying to follow the retreating fingers. He lifted his head off the bed to try and see why the pleasure had stopped, but quickly collapsed back when Teddy thrusted inside in a single stroke.

“Ahh...” James moaned and his toes curled as his body accepted Teddy’s long cock. Balls deep, Teddy stalled, overcome with pleasure. Inside James felt amazing. Hot, Tight, Slick. He pulled back, teasing the rim with the head of his cock, before thrusting back inside. This time he didn’t wait at all, laying into James’s ass with a barrage of powerful thrusts. James took them all, pressed further into the mattress and babbling pleading words into the pillow.

Without James’s loud moans, the room suddenly felt quiet, despite the sound of skin slapping together or Teddy’s labored breathing. “Your ass feels amazing,” Teddy moaned directly into James’s ear and the walls surrounding his cock tightened, confirming he’d been heard. Getting close, his body told him, and he planted his knees between James’s thighs and hoisted him off the mattress and onto his lap. The room once again filled with the sounds of James’s voice.

“Fuck!” James shouted as Teddy lowered the man back down onto his cock, the new position allowing him to go even deeper. He reached around and found James’s cock. The tip was slick with pre-cum, which he gathered in his palm and used to slick the shaft as he stroked in time with his own thrusts. “I’m close,” James confirmed.

“Where do you want me to come?” Teddy wasn’t sure why he suddenly asked, but he just needed to hear James speak more in this moment.

“Inside. Come inside me,” James panted, and then he was coming, shooting jets of come over Teddy’s hand and all over the pillow in front of them. Completely spent, James collapsed backwards onto Teddy’s chest. He released James’s cock and moved his hands to James’s hips, holding him in place as he thrust into James’s quaking body.

“James,” Teddy moaned as he came, holding them together as he pumped his load as deep as he could into the man he loved so much. Both clearly exhausted, he gathered James into his arms and laid them both down on the mattress, being careful not to pull out. Brown locks tickled his nose as he snuggled closer. He felt ready to tell James about all this, confess his feelings, and let him choose if the next time could be for real.

____

altober Day 30: Choices

WeakRevolution’s gloriously smutty goodness.

@altobers-blog @clemandben @eleonorapoe

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allyvampirelass29 · 4 years

Text

Goodnight, Chris McQueen

A NOS4A2 Review By: Allyssa J. Watkins

I love you, Brat I hope you know that....... My biggest fear was becoming my old man Drinkin', philanderin', livin' for nothin' I wanted so much more for my little girl But Babe, I'm just like him A haunted soldier That never came back from the war I tried so hard to make you laugh Just so you didn't see me cryin' Funny names, and stupid jokes I guess, don't band-aid the holes Punched through the walls and in Your mother's heart Jesus, maybe this dad thing Was a cosmic hoax right from the start I love you like a big dog I'd die twice just to give you a hug Before I go, I want you to know I'm proud of my kid I could never do what you did It's like you told your ma You're made of steel, Vic You threw the bottle away You sure as hell didn't need me But you let your broken down dad save the day I ain't half the hero to you though As you are to Wayne Give 'em HELL, Babe Fight the good fight Don't cry over me I won't die as I lived A good for nothin' It's gonna mean somethin' I gotta believe Don't stay here, Brat, trapped in my death scene Remember the good stuff, when they say "Goodnight, Chris McQueen."

In the words of the illustrious Linda McQueen........ "Holy HELL." It's been days, and I've been in a morose fog, only just now emerging, shaking and fighting the tears, even as I write this, half numb, and half agony. I'm shocked, dismayed, and altogether fragile. The second I saw that this episode was going to be called, "Chris McQueen," I couldn't have been more thrilled, and my heart soared, excited! Chris McQueen has SHINED this season, our own resident white knight, slaying Vic's demons, both of the vice, and supernatural variety. It was no mistake, or random shuffle of fate, that her magic bridge led her back to her dad. He's been a gun-wielding, bomb-making, godsend!!! He helped her quit drinking, heartbroken that his little girl had inherited his disastrous coping mechanisms, refusing to let it drown her the way it did him. He's fought at her side, let her lean on him, he's become her safe place. He's given her the best advice about fighting for Lou, choosing her family, and oh yeah, he SINGLEHANDEDLY took on Bing Partridge, not just once, but TWICE!!!

If NOS4A2 has a CHAMPION, a dark horse in the game, it's hands down Chris McQueen. If anyone is deserving of their own personal, entitled episode, it's the vindicated father who did the work, fought like HELL for his redemption, made himself a better person for his daughter. That rush of flooding joy, cooled to wary concern, and hesitant dread, however, when I realized....... This honour could be his final tribute.......

Don't kill Chris McQueen........ I pleaded over and over in my mind, the frantic cry, resounding, even as I pressed play. I hadn't been able to shake that sinister, creeping feeling all day, and when we opened onto Chris at a funeral, my relief flooded in, graciously thankful to see him alive!!! Wait, he looked younger, like WAY younger, even younger than the first season, and oh my god, hold on, whose funeral is this!? Someone died........ my stomach knotting again, trying to figure out who, and we realize that this is Chris, decades ago, speaking at his Dad's funeral.

I loved, and I mean LOVED this opener. It's just so beautifully real, and one hundred percent Chris McQueen, as he muses about his father's life, and his own, and how the two came to mirror each other. He's funny, irreverent, vulnerable, and by the end, absolutely heartbreaking. It's a searing portrait of a broken man, and everything that caused his life to fracture, every death, that made him wish he was never born.

"When I came back from the gulf, I finally understood why he was pissed off all the time, because he knew there was no reason for him to born, and that nobody was going to give a shit when he died."

Chris' voice cracks, and my eyes sting, because I feel it, his greatest fear, and I know he's not just talking about his father, he's talking about himself, effectually delivering his own eulogy, and again I implored the fates...... Don't kill Chris McQueen.

Aaaaaaaaah, and HELLO Baby Vic!!! Oh my gosh, she's so precious, about eight years old, frowning as her father speaks, huddled close to her mother, and then when Chris becomes too overwhelmed with his anger and emotions to go on, tearing out of the church, she frantically chases after him, calling for him!!! Even then, she was her daddy's girl!!! Once again, I must COMMEND NOS4A2 for choosing the perfect miniature of our badass leading lady, because this girl is the very IMAGE of Ashleigh, and it was such a joy to see her fierce features, and resolve, in a dear little face!!! More Baby Vic, PLEASE!!!

Flashforward to the present day, and Team McQueen is ready and raring to hit the road. I loved this entire scene. The love between her and Lou as she tells him goodbye, and says, "I'm going to go get our boy." An achingly beautiful moment, these two give me life, and have become my FAVOURITE couple on the show!!! I may have been purely Team Drew Butler, Season One, but now I can't imagine our beautiful badass without her Teddy Bear Man, and I ship McCarmody so freaking hard!!! Vic revs the Triumph's engine, testing it, gearing up with her Dad, and it hits me....... She doesn't have to hide it, sneak away to go do her Creative Hero thing, he accepts her for exactly who she is, believes in her gift enough to go with her. For the first time..... Vic McQueen isn't riding alone........

Linda is an absolute rollicking delight, emphatic in her protest, and I have just come to LOVE her so much!!! "I don't know about this Vicki, taking explosives across a magical bridge IN THE RAIN!!!!" God BLESS this woman, she's so maternal here, and I love it, I see how much she's changed, becoming this mother and ex wife even, that isn't afraid to express her feelings and doubts, no longer shackled by the fear that she's destined to be alone.

"You're my only kid, Vicki, My Baby."

"You know me, Ma, made of steel, remember?"

Awwwwww oh my gosh, so freaking CUTE, and for the first time, they feel like a real family, The McQueen Clan on a Mission, slaying psychotic kidnappers, and rescuing lost children, becoming the family business. Linda's still unsure, hurrying after Chris and Vic, still thinking they're both CRAZY, when she sees it for the first time....... Her eyes widen impossibly, as a rickety, wooden, covered bridge, appears on the street in front of them, and her reaction is EVERYTHING we've been waiting for, I found myself, leaping off the couch, cheering as she says it. "Holy HELL!!!"

Chris' childlike wonder, as he looks up into the dark eves, and watches the bats flutter, the Triumph roaring through the beams of breaking light, weaving in and out of shadow, is such a joy to behold. He believed in it, believed in her, even without seeing, and it means that much more to Vic, you can tell. It's also symbolic, Vic sharing her world with her father, bringing him into her inscape, fighting the good fight TOGETHER, both soldiers. I loved it, every second.

Surprise, surprise, when they roll up to the junkyard, Bing Partridge isn't dead, because some cockroaches just won't DIE!!!! Like an AVENGING ANGEL, Chris McQueen is all of us, flying off that bike, and assailing Bing with murderous fury, backhanding his stupid face with the gun, over and over, impaling him deeper with the protruding rod, and I swear, I wanted to run to him, and HUG him so tightly, so freaking PROUD!!!! THANK YOU, CHRIS MCQUEEN!!!

"Where is he, you SICK, Son of a BITCH!?!?"

"HE CAN'T HELP US IF HE'S DEAD!!!!!"

Vic screams at her father, angrily chastising this good and proper beating that has been a LONG time coming!!!! I'm sorry, isn't that how ANY sane person would react to a sadistic, murdering, rapist whose made their life a LIVING HELL!? What gives, Victoria!? Chris falls back, as confused as I was, and then shakes his head, as he apologizes vehemently, which Vic is having none of. She's AWFUL to her father from this moment forward, rude and spiteful, blaming him for everything, and as much as I love the girl, in this unjust punishment, she REALLY lives up to her nickname, Brat.

This Kids Glove approach to Bing Partridge is MADDENING enough to make me PSYCHOTIC!!! BING. IS. EVIL. Say it with me, NOS4A2!!!! It's like they are hellbent on redeeming the ONE character that is beyond saving, a man that even God, himself, would look at reviled, and say, "Get thee behind me, SATAN!!!" Last week they failed, first through the deus ex machina epiphany, and then through the attempted murder/suicide, so they tried even harder, using a meeker approach, making him say manipulative propaganda like, "I wish I'd never met Mr. Manx, because then Vic McQueen would still be my friend." and "I'm all alone in here, and it's really scary." Ughhhh somebody, anybody, put us out of our misery, and put one right between his beady little rat bastard eyes.

I almost understand Tabitha's need to keep things professional, and speak to Bing, in a reassuring way that reaches his simple, monosyllabic mind. I get that beating the living hell out of him like he so obviously deserves isn't an option for her, but this man is a HEINOUS criminal, who's kidnapped kids, drugged and raped their mothers, KILLED both of his parents, not to mention TORTURED Charlie within an inch of his life, only just last week!!!! But by ALL MEANS, Vic, go HOLD HANDS WITH HIM, and see if that will help get your son back!!!! Cringe.

I HATED this, so, so, SO much!!! Bing was her friend, he betrayed her, violated the trust between them, became her worst nightmare, shot at her, traumatized her, duct-taping her to a chair, she should HATE him, despise the sight of him far more than Charlie Manx!!! I CRAVED a reckoning, even if it was just a verbal assault. But no, instead, Vic decides to play nice, and I get that most of it was an act to convince him to help her get her son back, but I could also feel NOS4A2's misguided hand in her actions. Look, see, even Vic can find the good in Bing!!!! Sigh. Not gonna lie, I was going to scream bloody murder if she said she forgives him!!!

Good Cop pays off, however, and Bing, desperate for Vic's forgiveness, reveals there is one more stop before Christmasland, one last chance to grab Wayne, when he gets out of the Wraith at Sleigh House to hang his ornament. It's a dawning revelation, intel quintessential to their success, and for once they know where Charlie is going to be, before he gets there, and can lay a trap for him and his indestructible car. I hate the way they arrived at the information though, I'd have much preferred to see Bing suffer for his sins, and the whole interaction is just so laughably implausible. I will say this however, there was a rather BEAUTIFUL line in this scene that Bing couldn't begin to deserve, but I LOVED it all the same. "I miss the person I thought you were." My god, that's powerful.

"Chris McQueen," is a STELLAR episode, full of beautiful lines like this, including my FAVOURITE thing that Maggie has EVER said to Vic, which perfectly exemplifies their eccentric friendship!!! "I'd shank a thousand assholes for your mopey ass!!!" YES!!! I LOVE THAT SO MUCH!!! I will say though, that I was SHOCKED at how cool Vic was with Maggie's scary new trick of hurting herself to use her powers, sans seizures. I thought she was going to kick her butt for that!!! I'm really worried, Guys, this is a dangerous addiction, that's going to be the hardest one yet for Mags to quit!!! The break-up with Tabitha was bittersweet, but it did not come as a shock to me. They'd been drifting apart for awhile now, and I feel like Maggie was so scared of losing her, that she was afraid to be herself. "I want to live in the real world all the time." For me, that was the nail in the coffin, having only heard it about a thousand times myself. Maggie will always be living in two worlds, and whoever she's with MUST accept that. They love each other, yes, but they just want different things. I do respect Tabitha so much for not demanding that Maggie give up her tiles, threatening to leave her if she didn't. She'd rather let Maggie go be herself, be happy, than try to stifle her, shove her into that hateful, constricting little box called normal.

Vic continues to be petty, and spiteful towards her father, treating him WAY too harshly, punishing him, when he's done nothing but fight for her, a literal action HERO, avenging Wayne, and kicking ASS!!! It hurt my soul, and I could see the pain in his eyes, thinking he'd failed her, apologizing again, just wanting her forgiveness. The second scene at the McQueen house is a far less fuzzy one, as she forbids her father to come with her, placing all the blame of every bad thing that's happened thus far on his shoulders, and she cuts him with razor edged words, saying the worst thing that she could have possibly said in that moment, something truly unforgivable, that I already know she will spend the rest of her life, regretting.

"I lived eight years of my life without you, Dad, and I can just as easily do it again." She sneers, and even Linda stares, aghast. "Vicki, no, you don't mean that!!!"

I felt the pangs in my heart, stunned that she could be that vicious to her own father, after all he's done for her, getting sober, changing his whole life, hell, getting HER sober!!! Linda is again so adorable, insisting she take Chris with her, like "Vicki let your father play on your magical bridge, if he wants!!!" not wanting him to feel left out, and while I want more father/daughter explosive awesomeness, I'm conflicted whether or not he should go. If he stays here...... he's safe. Eventually Linda's persuasion wins out. "Don't let your anger towards your father, keep you from getting back Wayne." With a frustrated sigh, Vic shoves a black helmet in Chris' hands, and we're off to the races again. "Bring them home," Linda whispers sweetly, embracing him tight, and as they hug, I get the most sinking feeling that it's for the last time. Dont...... Don't kill, Chris Mcqueen.

Vic and Chris work in silence, once they get to the charred foundation of Sleigh House in Colorado, burying the handmade bombs, and finally Chris can't take it anymore. "Is this how you want it, Brat?" He asks her, heartbroken, and Ashleigh's acting is PHENOMENAL, as she breaks down and reveals the truth behind her unprovoked animosity.

"It's easier to be mad at you, than to blame myself."

"None of this is your fault. Charlie Manx is not your fault."

"I want to forgive you, because if I don't, how can Wayne ever forgive me. But I can't just let myself off the hook!!!"

It's not entirely a make-up, but it's an important conversation, something she's been wrestling with for a long time. Chris is again AMAZING, consoling her, easing her guilt, even while she's the one that's been impossible. Again Vic, I love you, but your father did the absolute RIGHT thing, and he's the only one that did right by Bing, as far as I'm concerned.

Maggie and Lou join the dynamite father/daughter duo in Colorado, and I LOVED all of their scenes together, the two people in this world that Vic McQueen loves most, and there's something magical about it, something iconic, seeing all three of them together, the Creative Dream Team, united in their crusade against Charlie Manx.

"Every one of these ornaments represents a kid in Christmasland, lost forever. Do you think there's a way to get them back? The other kids?"

WHEN SOULS FALL.

Maggie stares down, perplexed at the tiles, as she arranges them, revealing to the oracle this cryptic, mysticism, and I myself, could NOT breathe. Holy SMASH. Ever since the end of, "Gunbarrel," where Vic wanders through the trees outside Sleigh House, frowning at them, the hundreds of glittering ornaments, swaying in the wind, glowing as she drew near, I just knew...... I KNEW the souls of the Lost Children, were trapped inside each and every one of them, and this suspicion was ever further confirmed, when she found Bradley's canoe ornament, broken open on the ground, after he burnt up in the Wraith. My prediction? To turn the kids back, they have to smash every single one of these ornaments, and only then can the escaped souls return to their vampire shells, and make them human again. The minute a child hangs an ornament, the transformation is complete.

I also LOVED the transcendent scene between Vic and Millie, a scared little girl, in over her head, calling, pleading through the static, and I couldn't help but MARVEL at how much has changed between them. Last Season Millie Manx was very much her father's daughter, cruelly taunting Vic, on her father's behalf, even appearing to her while she was awake, stabbing her with an invisible sword. Now, she calls out to her to be her saviour, her father's greatest enemy, the iron wrought armour of her inherited hatred falling away, and Vic sees her as she always was, not a hollowed out demon spawn, but just a frightened little girl that needs to be set free. I was also THRILLED that dear little Millie imparted the knowledge that Charlie CANNOT die, else all the children, including his daughter, will die with him. Vic abhors Charlie with a screaming vengeance, but now that she knows his death comes at the cost of every child he's ever taken, she won't kill him, she CAN'T kill him, because then all of this, everything she's fought so hard for, bled for, would be for nothing.

The final act is both the thrilling BEST and the incoherent WORST of the episode, as the chaotic music ominously heralds our man's arrival. Charlie Manx, cutting a dashing, imposing silhouette, dark against the hazy dusk, exits the Wraith, turning every which way, striking in profile, floating smoothly across the front of the car, to let Wayne out. I loved this aesthetic, Charlie moving swiftly through the mist and dying light, rising as the threatened dark, enclosing. It's beautiful, and serves two clever purposes. One, to shroud our debonair dark menace in all the more intrigue and mystery, and the other, to conceal just how bad Wayne's gotten. Charlie clasps his hands around Wayne's shoulders lovingly, the picture of paternal pride, and my heart caught, seeing Wayne in the cast light, his boyish curls, frayed and almost white, his skin covered in white blue veins, every one of his teeth, coming to a sharp point.

"Go on, My Boy, it's time to hang your ornament," Charlie chortles handing Wayne the CUTEST little gray, baby bat ornament, I have ever seen, urging him forward. "Choose any branch you like, just make sure it's a SPECIAL branch," Charlie crows, and my heart melts, so in love with both of them, and the way Charlie dotes on him, knowing that while this began as a revenge plot, Charlie has come to love and favour Wayne, like the son he never had. "Don't dilly dally," He warns adorably, with an eyebrow raise, and even this mild scold is too precious for words.

Charlie waits by the Wraith, already nervous, as little Wayne disappears into the grove of trees. I LOVED the Wraith's ADORABLE warning system, as it flashes danger, the car horn honking, and even more I loved Charlie's distressed reaction to it, hurrying over, brow knit, like a father racing to tend to and protect his frightened child. Can I just have this impossibly PERFECT man, that darling little curly-haired boy, and this pretty, shiny car, PLEASE!?!?

"Smart Car," I whisper to myself, as the Wraith senses Vic's presence, and the waiting bombs beneath the ground. Charlie, alarmed, jumps back into his car, to seek out what's got the Wraith in such a tizzy, racing away, and leaving young Wayne behind. If there was ever a time, to save Wayne, it is NOW!!! NOW, Maggie, grab him NOW!!!! Here's where things start to unravel for me as far as character motivation and realistic ability is concerned. Yes, I get that Wayne's appearance is terrifying for her, that she doesn't know what she's walking into as she approaches him, but there is NO WAY Margaret Leigh, Oracle Extraordinaire, Hourglass SLAYER, would just cower, and watch as Wayne hangs his ornament. Nope, sorry. Wayne isn't even all the way a vampire yet, he's in transition, and the FEARLESS girl that I know and love, would have grabbed him, reassured him, while she wrested the ornament from his hands, and SMASHED it!!! Wayne's soul flies back into his body, crying as he clings to his Aunt Mags, Charlie is thwarted, and everybody lives happily ever after. End Scene.

But no, Maggie, in an uncharacteristic move, waits until Wayne has ALREADY hung his ornament, and then approaches him fearfully. I will admit I was a little nervous too..... Wayne, Darling, NO BITING Aunt Maggie!!! Wayne bares his vampire teeth, and raises his vampire claws in an adorable scare, with the cutest little growl ever, laughing cheerfully as he chases Maggie through the trees, clearly thinking it's a game.

Meanwhile, Charlie bristles as he sees the glowing headlights of Vic's motorcycle up ahead, piercing through the descended dark. His annoyance is obvious, but you can almost sense his secret excitement, at having one last chance to kill her.

"Gunning for Mother of the Year?" Charlie scoffs, amused, looking hot as hell behind the Wraith, clenching the steering wheel, his head down, eyes narrowed and full of smouldering, black intent. It's a FANTASTIC face-off, as the Wraith screams down into the open field, Chris pressing HARD on the detonator, and the first bomb goes off in a spray of dirt and billowing smoke. Again here's where I found myself more than a little bit incredulous, wondering WHAT THE HELL IS THE WRAITH MADE OF!?!? I even giggled to myself, remembering what Chris had said. "I don't care if he's in a GOD DAMNED tank!!!" The Wraith remains unscathed, the gleaming black paint, not so much as scratched, as a second bomb, and then a third go off beneath it, to no detriment. Really!? The Wraith is NOT a tank, it's not even armoured, and while yes, it's a supernatural entity, it CANNOT DEFY THE LAWS OF PHYSICS!!! Baby, I'm sorry, I'm so don't want to see you harmed, but you put a blast beneath that undercarriage, it is going to send that car FLYING, flipping it over at the very least!!!

Back in the grove of trees, Wayne, still chasing Maggie, stops cold when Lou calls out to him.

"Dad..... is that you?" THANK GOD, I cry out tearfully, as Wayne recognizes him, and in a very human moment, runs and hugs his father so tight, snuggling his little head to his shoulder, Lou sighing relieved, as he holds his son at last. Happy tears become angry ones, however, and at first I was LIVID with Wayne, horrified as he sinks his tiny little fangs into Lou's shoulder, biting him hard. DON'T BITE YOUR FATHER!!!!! Why, Wayne, WHY!? But the second time I watched this episode, I noticed something soooo very important. Wayne doesn't show any signs of hostility, poses NO threat, UNTIL the first bomb goes off. This is NO coincidence. Charlie, you're too clever for your own good!!! I suspect, that once the transformation is complete, and the kids are connected to Father Christmas, they can sense when he's in danger, and their innate attack instinct takes over!!! Freaking brilliant, and yet also terrifying!!!

Vic curses under her breath, her foot slamming on the gas, helplessly, as the Triumph won't start, her knife failing her, as the Wraith, screams at her like a shot bullet, promising vengeance, and Charlie smirks, sadistic, knowing he's about to end this....... "Say Goodnight, Vic McQueen."

My heart clenches in my chest, barely breathing, the tears flooding my vision, watching through blurry eyes, knowing what he's going to do, before he even does it. Chris McQueen hurtles himself in front of Vic, selflessly sacrificing his life for hers, and the Wraith runs him over, crushing the back of his legs. as he collides with it. I screamed, I sobbed, and shook violently, stunned because my prayers had been answered....... Chris McQueen, has miraculously SURVIVED. He's alive...... he's alive...... I whisper, reassuring myself. While he's far from okay, surely suffering two crushed legs, unable to move, I'm just so happy to see him still breathing, still fighting.

"Perfect timing, Wayne," Charlie snickers, Vic screaming, "NO!" as Wayne hops back into the car. This is it, this is the moment, where it all goes so wrong. Charlie's holding all the cards, he's got Wayne in the car, he's subdued Vic and her father, neither of them can so much as move, and he listens, drinking in their anguished cries. All he had to do was drive away....... It was over. It was SUPPOSED to be over.

"Chris McQueen, a disappointment of a man, just like your father," Charles snarls, and I AM BEGGING him to stop, bawling, pleading frantic, my terrified voice shrill. "BABY NO!!!! BABY STOP!!! DON'T KILL CHRIS, PLEASE GOD, CHARLIE!!!!!" Tapping into a darkness, donning a heartlessness, unbecoming of our gentleman villain, Charlie looks Vic in the eye, as he does it, snapping Chris' neck with lethal force, killing him purely out of spite. The episode ends with her broken, mournful sob, and Chris' slain gaze, his eyes still full of tears, staring blankly at the camera.

My pain is deafening, my sorrow beyond all hope of any coherent expression as NOS4A2 suffers its greatest loss to date. It's an empty gesture, a callous act, uncharacteristic of the man that I love with all my heart, but who has hurt me something profound with this senseless murder. In what kind of CRUEL world, does an innocent man, who sacrifices himself for his daughter, who fought for eight years to be the kind of father she deserved, have to die, while an indecent evil like Bing Partridge gets to live!? Charlie, HOW could you!? This...... There's no honour in this. Charlie kills only as a last resort, and only in defense, he has a strict moral code, and is vehemently against violence without cause. This was unfeeling, unnecessary, and soulless. Yes, he knew Chris was a bad father from before, but surely in witnessing the valiant manner in which he'd flung himself in front of the car, with no thought for his own life, Charlie would have found him redeemed, he would have seen a father who'd do anything to protect his daughter, not so different from himself, and he would have felt SOMETHING!!!

Goodnight, Chris McQueen. You fought the good fight, you changed and made things right, and now at last you can find peace....... My heart is so heavy, I can't hold it, and crying here, I want him to know how wrong he was, thinking nobody would mourn him when he died. A thousand cry out, stricken with grief. Husband, Father, White Knight Redeemed, here lies Chris McQueen, a HERO who didn't die for nothing.........

#nos4a2 #nos4a2 review #chris mcqueen #vic mcqueen #linda mcqueen #wayne mcqueen #charlie manx #maggie leigh #bing partridge

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forgedwild-arch · 4 years

Text

𝑪𝑯𝑨𝑹𝑨𝑪𝑻𝑬𝑹 𝑺𝑯𝑬𝑬𝑻.

repost, don’t reblog

basics !

FULL NAME. August Wesley Wilder NICKNAME. Gus. Gus the Grizzly. GENDER. Cis-Male (He/Him) HEIGHT. 6′9 AGE. unknown, physically appears around 55-60 years old. ZODIAC. taurus sun / libra moon / virgo rising. earth sign dominant chart babey!! SPOKEN LANGUAGES. fluent English, Spanish, and French. has picked up a little Dakota-Siouan from frequent run-ins with the Ghost Nation over the years. he’s not really fluent in it, just knows enough to talk himself out of trouble lmao.

physical characteristics !

HAIR COLOR. salt and pepper grey, with natural black undertones. EYE COLOR. light hazel that fade to a deep forest green around the edge of the iris (central heterochromia) in both eyes. SKIN TONE. he’s white but he’s very sun-weathered and darkly tanned, with lots of sun spots and freckles all over his body. BODY TYPE. broad, big, bold and bear-ish. just the dictionary definition of a Gentle Giant. well, mostly gentle unless pushed. ACCENT. southern appalachian drawl. VOICE. deep, husky, and gravelly yet nothing short of soothing. his voice claim is Colter Wall. DOMINANT HAND. he’s ambidextrous! POSTURE. Gus is always generally seen standing tall and proud. he’s definitely a man who’s comfortable in his body, and the stark juxtaposition of his formidable physique and utterly gentle nature often catches the townsfolk and westworld guests by surprise. SCARS. deep, jagged scars that run diagonally across his back and over his biceps. supposedly a bear gave him the scars when he fought one off a young boy. in reality, he fought a guest off one of the teenage hosts in one of his first loops, and said guest struck August down with a searing hot fire poker from his forge while the young android ran for safety. that was the first and last time Gus was ever killed during his loop, and he has rarely been updated since. TATTOOS. he has some beautifully intricate tattoo sleeves on both arms, each image representing one of his favorite western tall tales that he often retells to his forge guests (especially crowds of kids). Gus actually gave himself the tattoos to hide the scars on his arms (the ones he could reach anyway), and the westworld writers never corrected the feature since they found them aesthetically pleasing and appropriate for his host role as both a blacksmith and self-proclaimed cultural mythologist / historian of the town. MOST NOTICEABLE FEATURE(S). we stan a sweet old android with dimples and laugh lines. and those bright eyes of his visibly twinkle when he smiles!

childhood !

PLACE OF BIRTH. Technically? The Westworld Mesa Hub. But for his written backstory, his birthplace is unknown. HOMETOWN. Hinton, West Virginia. a small railroad and coal town that sits at the edge of the New River in the Appalachian Mountains. when Gus was a boy, the town was essentially split between “trash” and “old money”. Gus came from the run-down side of the tracks, raised as a laboring blacksmith’s son, but he had a happy childhood. FIRST WORDS. “god dammit” after hearing his father shout it when he struck his thumb with a hammer. Almanzo found it hilarious, but also spent days trying to get the baby to say something else, ANYTHING else because the town population at the time was made of a few hundred southern baptists. suffice to say, Almanzo’s efforts were fruitless, and little baby August shouted it to the world in the middle of that sunday’s church service. his hometown community loved him dearly, but he’d always been labeled a little troublemaker ever since. and he was quite the prankster in his youth. all harmless of course. Gus hardly has a cruel bone in his body, but won his peer’s attentions and affections by being a bit of a class clown. SIBLINGS. none that he knows of. PARENTS. Almanzo “Manny” Wilder. should be noted that Almanzo is not August’s biological father. Gus was dropped at the door of his forge as a baby, and the identity of August’s biological family remains a complete mystery to both him and his caretaker. Almanzo played himself off as his biological dad for some time, but once Gus shot up to be about twice his old man’s size at age fifteen, well. he kind of figured it out on his own. he never resented Manny for it, though. in his mind, he is his real father. his only father. since he was the only one who was ever there for him. PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT. Almanzo was a very attentive surrogate father and loved Gus with everything he had. Gus always had a sharp mind and vivid imagination as a kid, and Manny told him time and time again that his brain was far too big for a place like Hinton, always urging him to apply to those fancy universities along the coast or over in England and become a novelist or engineer. August looked up to his father however, and wanted to grow up to be just like him, and therefore was not only Almanzo’s child, but also his apprentice. He stayed in Hinton until Manny died from lung cancer, and by which August was about 25 years old or so and a freshly professional smith. He took over the family business, sought to pave his own way out west, and has been tending to the needs of the people in Sweetwater ever since.

adult life !

OCCUPATION. a blacksmith and self-proclaimed “cultural mythologist”. fancy way of saying he really loves to wow kids with the tall tales of the west. CURRENT RESIDENCE. his forge that sits on the edge of town. CLOSE FRIENDS. well he spends a lot of time with his two pets, Teddy Bear and Sundance Kid. they’re about the closest friends he has. oh he cares about the other hosts of Sweetwater, dearly! and he craves human connection something fierce. but his work (and his emotional walls) keeps him a bit too busy to really... dive deep in any of those friendships. sadly. RELATIONSHIP STATUS. single, although was married to @forgedwest in a past loop. FINANCIAL STATUS. he’s definitely not filthy rich, but growing up poor taught him to be good with his money and while he doesn’t have a luxurious life by any means, he has all he needs. lower class but not at all bothered by it. DRIVER’S LICENSE. N/A. CRIMINAL RECORD. a few bar fights, but he was never guilty of starting them. just ending them. VICES. if you ask August, he’ll say he sleeps in just a little too long on Sunday mornings, rolling and smoking hashish to unwind. if you ask me, i say don’t buy him more than three amaretto sours if you wanna have a drink with him. he can generally control himself and hold his liquor, but he can get to a point where he won’t stop lmao. luckily, he’s a happy drunk. also enjoys cigars, but smokes them more for celebration of special occasions.

sex and romance !

SEXUAL ORIENTATION. bisexual ROMANTIC ORIENTATION. biromantic PREFERRED EMOTIONAL ROLE. submissive | dominant | switch PREFERRED SEXUAL ROLE. Submissive | dominant | switch ( he’s primarily a service top ) LIBIDO. average, i guess? i wouldn’t say his libido is anything insane, otherwise he’d REALLY be suffering being the lonely bachelor he is lmao. but he likes sex! TURN ONS. he loves a good sense of humor and has a weak spot for well-meaning troublemakers TURN OFFS. people who take advantage of others. that’s a broad category, but it’s a personal thing. LOVE LANGUAGE. gift-giving, physical intimacy, protection and quality time! he’s not so good at expressing his feelings with words, but you will absolutely know if he fancies you because his actions will show it. you will NEVER wonder about his intentions. the old boy wears his heart on his sleeve. RELATIONSHIP TENDENCIES. despite how obviously loving he is, August has a tendency to assume people don’t want to be with him. one could argue it’s likely rooted in an abandonment issue of some kind. Almanzo was a plenty attentive and very caring dad, but the knowledge that one was orphaned and dropped off on someone’s front step is would be a little jarring when just about anyone hears it. though it’s likely less so much that, and more so how his peers in school were downright TERRIFIED him just because of his intimidating physique alone (despite his kind nature). he was taken advantage of a lot in his youth due to just how naturally people pleasing he can be to compensate for his scary appearance, and his kindness was therefore mistaken often for stupidity. its a compulsion that he’s gotten better about controlling as he grew older, and is now much more discerning re: who deserves the clothes off his back. but little insecurities regarding it remains, and as such his assumption that no one harbors affections for him has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. August is very sweet and outgoing, plenty handsome, great with kids and would make a very loving husband and lifetime best friend! but he doesn’t exactly make himself romantically available.

miscellaneous !

CHARACTER’S THEME SONG. “ take me home, country roads ” by john denver. shocker, i know. HOBBIES TO PASS TIME. he’s a blacksmith by occupation, but August can make just about anything with any material you can think of. he’s a jack of all trades type, and spends a lot of his rare spare time gardening, sketching while he’s people-watching, writing stories, blowing glass, and creating little animals and character figurines from his stories out of hide / wood/ metal. the latter are gifts that he gives to any young park guests who come to the forge. he also likes playing his guitar or banjo and singing to himself on warm summer nights. MENTAL ILLNESSES. i mean. everything truly traumatic that ever happened to him was basically wiped clean from his slate so u kno. none. for now lmfao. PHYSICAL ILLNESSES. N/A. LEFT OR RIGHT BRAINED. right-brained, i guess. he can be plenty logical, but he’s definitely a creative type! FEARS. there is a Vague Fear that he will die alone but it’s not pertinent enough to cause him a lot of anxiety. because he’s generally pretty independent. more so, it’s just a source of intense longing when he’s got a crush, but then he never actually acts on it. also, he’s got a bit of a fear of vulnerability. mostly because his kindness has been used against him plenty and no, it has not made him any less kind, but he doesn’t want that kindness tied into real emotional potency and then turned against him. vulnerability and intimacy also come with the pre-conceived knowledge of loss, because relationships ( be they romantic, friendships, family etc ) either end in break ups or death. and yes, it’s better to have loved and lost than never loved at all, but that doesn’t make August’s unease re: loss any less real. SELF CONFIDENCE LEVEL. hmmm. i’ll say about an 6 or 7 out of 10? he’s plenty sure of himself and his abilities, he just keeps himself humble like the well-mannered mountain boy he is. VULNERABILITIES. best way to hurt him is to strike anyone close to him. cares WAY MORE about others. though on a kind of....emotional note? personal note? idk. he’s quite aware of how he’s perceived to be a bit “simple-minded” all due to his accent. it’s something that Gus will get defensive about if you poke at him for it. not out of pride, but out of love for the people and culture from where he hails. he LOVES Appalachia deeply, and while he admires the west for all of its available adventure and promise, the people of the Blue Ridge Mountains remain the kindest he’s ever known. don’t talk bad about them, he’ll be quick to knock you into next tuesday.

tagged by: @noiseofthunder thank u grunk u always tag me in the Quality Shit (n this really helped me finally flesh some character basics out) tagging: @forgedwest bc i’m the worst friend n force erin to do every dash game ever. also @copiesofme @defactomatriarch @bountyman & thieves are valid.

#( character study. )#( dash games. )#those of u who have been writing with me for some time #kno that i use these memes to talk abt my characters for ages #one word answers whom bitch??? WHOM????

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singledarkshade · 5 years

Text

Building Blocks

Summary: New team members, new problems, bad dreams and all Rip wants is one hour of peace. Sequel to Getting Back In The Swing Of Things Author’s Notes: I am looking to continue these, but they'll mostly skirt around the missions as those stories have already been told except when the changes affect the mission in a big way or it connects to the story. Enjoy. ********************************************* Rip gasped awake, trying to get his bearings as his phantoms faded into the blackness.

“Gideon?” he called, confused for a moment that she didn’t reply before realising he wasn’t on the Waverider but instead in a hotel room.

Taking a few deep breaths Rip turned to make sure he hadn’t woken his son. Jonas thankfully was still fast asleep with the teddy bear, bought two days before, held tightly in his arms. Rip knew at ten years old most kids would have grown out of needing one but, considering everything that had happened to his son, Rip didn’t see an issue with it. Jonas was trying to act like it wasn’t a big deal, saying it just reminded him of the bear he used to have, but the last few nights when they’d been staying at the hotel the boy had slept holding onto it. It was better than the knife Rip had slept with under his pillow at the same age.

Fixing the covers over his son, Rip grabbed his comm and made his way to the bathroom. He closed the door sliding down to sit against the wall.

“Gideon?” he called.

“Captain Hunter?” Gideon’s concerned voice came in his ear, “It is late where you are, is something wrong?”

Rip closed his eyes trying to even his breathing, “I need you to talk to me.”

“Is there anything in particular?” Gideon asked.

“Just talk to me,” Rip ordered before adding softly, “Please.”

There was a brief pause before Gideon came back on, “Would you like me to read to you?”

“Yes.”

“Are you in your bed, Captain?”

“Bathroom,” Rip said shortly, “I didn’t want to wake Jonas.”

“Go to bed,” Gideon told him comfortingly, “I will read to you while you sleep. It will help keep the nightmares at bay.”

Sighing Rip nodded, even though she couldn’t see him. Gideon knew about his dreams and this wasn’t the first time he’d asked her to talk to him in the middle of the night. She knew him better than anyone, and he trusted her more than he did anyone else. Slowly standing he made his way back to bed; Rip checked his son was still asleep before sliding under the covers.

“I’m here, Gideon.”

“Chapter One…”

Slowly waking up, Rip smiled as he heard Gideon was still reading to him. He lay for several minutes just listening to her soothing tones. For that moment he allowed himself to remember a kiss. A kiss that was seared into his memory and he would never forget.

“Gideon,” he said softly.

“Did you sleep well, Captain?” Gideon asked sweetly.

He nodded, “I did. Thank you.”

“Anytime, Captain,” Gideon replied.

Sighing Rip turned over and saw his son waking up, the bright blue eyes looked over at him and Rip reached out his arm. Jonas instantly bounced over and curled up beside Rip who hugged him close pulling the covers over them.

“Are we going back to the ship soon?” Jonas asked softly after hugging his father for several minutes.

“Later today,” Rip assured him, “I have a few more things to talk to Eve about then we’ll get everything we bought and head home.”

Jonas nodded, he lay silently for several minutes before asking, “Do you think everyone will like my presents?”

Rip smiled tightening his arm around the boy, “I’m sure they’ll love your gifts. It was very thoughtful of you.”

“Daddy,” Jonas whispered.

“Yes, Little Man.”

“I miss Mummy.”

Tears sprang to Rip’s eyes and he kissed the top of his son’s head, “I miss her too.” He hugged his son close for several more minutes before Rip gave him one final squeeze, “Okay, how about we get some breakfast?”

*********************************************

The portal opened to the cargo bay where Jax was standing waiting. Jonas walked through first, moving with a smile to Jax who high-fived the boy. Behind the boy a Time Bureau agent pushed through a cart with several boxes on it. Rip was just behind talking with Baxter. He gave her a quick nod before walking through the portal, his eyes staring darkly at the agent who was looking around the cargo bay.

“Get off my ship,” Rip stated sharply, a little harsher than he meant but he wanted to have a bit of peace and quiet before their next mission.

The agent jumped and scurried away back through the portal. Rip caught Eve’s amused smile and roll of the eyes at him just before the portal disappeared.

“Alright,” Rip said, resting his hand on his son’s shoulder, “Why don’t we go get some lunch then we can sort out your new bed.”

Jonas nodded and walked with Rip through the corridors with Jax at the boy’s other side who was asking Jonas about their few days away. Rip listened to them talk, relieved how good Jax was at talking to the little boy because it meant Rip could just let his mind float for a while.

That relaxation came to an abrupt end when he stepped into the galley and found an unknown woman sitting at the table with Amaya.

“Shit,” Sara cursed from behind him.

Rip turned to her, “Miss Lance, would you care to explain why there is someone I don’t know on my ship?”

Sara winced, “I was hoping to talk to you first.”

“Jonas,” Rip turned to his son, giving him a warm smile, “Why don’t you go find Mick and show him what you got for Axel? Okay?”

“Okay, Daddy,” Jonas smiled, he paused and gave Sara a quick hug hello before he hurried away, wanting to be somewhere away from the argument that was about to happen.

Rip waited until Jonas was out of hearing range before turning back to Sara, “And your excuse for this is?”

“It’s a long story,” she said.

He stared at her, “I have the time.”

Sara winced at the icy tone, “Parlour?”

“Parlour,” Rip nodded before turning on his heel and heading to the bridge. All he’d wanted was a few hours of peace to get Jonas’ bed built and the room sorted.

Why couldn’t things go smoothly for once?

“Wow,” Zari noted as Rip stalked out, “He’s a bit of a bastard? What’s his problem?”

Amaya frowned as Sara winced.

“You talk to him,” Amaya said, “I’ll explain to her.”

Sara sighed, “Gideon, is Rip in the parlour?”

“He is waiting for you, Miss Lance,” Gideon replied, “I would suggest taking some chocolate with you, it may help placate him.”

Grabbing a few bars of Rip’s favourite chocolate out of the cupboard Sara took a deep breath and left the room.

“What am I missing?” Zari asked after Sara left the room, “I thought Sara was in charge. Who is thin and grumpy?”

Amaya frowned at her, “Rip is the Captain of the ship while Sara leads the team on missions. They share responsibility,” she paused and sighed, “You saw Jonas, he’s Rip’s son. The reason Rip was a little unhappy about your presence here is because he is very protective of Jonas. There are good reasons for it.”

“A little unhappy?” Zari demanded incredulously, “The temperature’s still below zero after the look he gave me.”

Shaking her head Amaya sighed, “Rip is a good man and once Sara explains to him what happened then he’ll be much more welcoming.”

“Can’t wait,” Zari murmured, “I’m going to…” she waved her hand, “Settle into my room.”

Amaya chuckled as the newest member of the crew left, after grabbing a few doughnuts.

She waited until Zari was gone before calling, “Gideon, is Rip alright?”

“Please clarify what you mean by alright?” Gideon asked.

“He just looked a little tired,” Amaya noted, “And that was before he saw Zari.”

“Captain Hunter is fine,” Gideon assured, “I can assure you of that.”

Amaya nodded, knowing that Gideon was extremely protective of Rip, “Of course.”

Sara walked onto the bridge, pausing for a moment before she headed up to the parlour. Rip was sitting in his favourite chair, a glass of water in his hand. It hadn’t escaped her notice that since he’d found Jonas, Rip had stopped drinking completely.

“I brought chocolate,” Sara gave him a slight smile as he stared at her hard.

“Excellent,” Rip noted sarcastically, “That completely makes up for the fact you brought a stranger onto my ship, where my son is supposed to feel safe.”

Sara frowned at him, “Can I at least explain what happened? You know I would never put Jonas in harms way.”

“Fine,” he sighed, his fingers rubbing the bridge of his nose against a headache, “What happened this time?”

Ignoring the sarcasm Sara quickly related the events that led to Zari joining them.

“Did any of you check what change this prison riot led to in the timeline?” Rip asked once Sara finished speaking.

She hesitated.

“I checked, Captain,” Gideon spoke up, “It has made only a small change to the following events. And Miss Tomaz coming onboard has not created any issues either.”

Rip smiled slightly, “Thank you, Gideon.”

“Zari also has one of the Zambesi totems,” Sara continued, “Amaya is convinced they’ve some kind of connection,” she paused for a moment before adding softly, “Zari had a little brother. She won’t harm Jonas, I promise.”

Finally Rip nodded, “Fine. She can stay but if she does anything that could hurt Jonas, then she’s off. I don’t care if Amaya feels a connection.”

Sara watched as he took a drink of water then ate some of the chocolate. Rip was good at hiding when he wasn’t feeling great so the fact Sara could see his exhaustion was a bad sign.

“Are you feeling okay?” Sara asked moving to catch his eye, “You look worn out.”

He grimaced slightly, “I’m just a little tired, Sara. It’s been a long few days.”

“Well, we’ve nothing on at the moment,” Sara told him, “Why don’t you get some rest?”

Rip shook his head, “I want to get Jonas’ new bed fixed up before tonight.”

Sara nodded, knowing arguing was pointless, “Sure. I’ll talk to you later.”

He gave her a quick wave as she left the parlour. Leaving the bridge Sara stood waiting for a few seconds to ensure Rip wasn’t going to appear suddenly.

“Gideon?” she called, “Did you tell him about the run in we had with the Agent Sharpe?”

“No, Miss Lance,” Gideon replied, “He does not need to know you played ‘chicken’ with his ship. He has enough on his mind.”

At the cutting tone Sara winced before she asked, “You would let me know if Rip wasn’t well, wouldn’t you?”

“Captain Hunter’s health is my priority, Miss Lance,” Gideon reminded her.

Grimacing slightly at the answer Sara decided to go and train for a few hours, she’d keep an eye on Rip.

*********************************************

“You know if this time travelling gig ever ends,” Jax noted with a grin, “We could start a handyman business.”

Rip chuckled nodding as he studied their handiwork. They had fixed Rip’s room so that Jonas had a separate section with a bed, and desk with a partition to allow him some privacy without being separated from his father.

“Thank you for your help, Jax,” Rip told him, “This went a lot faster with the two of us.”

Jax gave a him a nod, “Not a problem. I’m going to go and start on the engine maintenance before Gideon yells at me.”

Rip chuckled, “I would if I were you.”

Giving him a grin Jax left Rip alone in the room. With a sigh Rip dropped to lie on his bed, closing his eyes for a few moments.

“Is there something I can do, Captain?” Gideon asked gently.

With a slight smile Rip replied, “I’m just a little tired.”

“Captain, I think that you speak to someone about your dreams,” Gideon said softly, “I know you do not believe it is required but if you are not sleeping properly then surely that is a sign you need some help.”

“That’s what you’re here for,” Rip stated brusquely. He could feel her disapproval and sighed, “Gideon, there is doubtfully anyone who can understand what happened to me or what I do.”

“Director Baxter may be able to suggest someone,” Gideon said, “The Time Bureau employ people to counsel their agents after traumatic events. It does not make you weak to ask for help from someone trained to do so, no matter what the Time Masters told you.”

“I’ll think about it,” Rip promised her.

“That is all I ask, Captain,” Gideon replied.

He let out a soft sigh and let his mind go blank for a few moments. His peaceful moment was interrupted as his presence on the bridge was required suddenly.

Why couldn’t he just get an hour of peace on this ship?

“Are you kidding me?” Rip demanded.

Sara shrugged, “I wish. According to Mick and Zari Ray just disappeared, and Gideon said he died back in 1988.”

“Gideon,” Rip called, “Do you have an exact date for us?”

“Mr. Palmer went missing on October 31, 1988,” Gideon told them, “They recovered the body two days later. He was found in the woods, dead, only eight years old.”

“So, we just go back in time to the day before,” Sara noted, “Ray is alive, and we save him. Gideon, set course for October 30th, 1988.”

Rip nodded but didn’t say anything as he mused. Sara frowned and clicked her fingers in front of his face.

“Sorry,” Rip murmured, “Just thinking.”

“We’re going to get Ray,” Sara stated.

Rip looked at her with a slight frown, “Of course we are but the one day before might not be the best idea.”

“Actually,” Mick spoke up, “More chance to find out what the trouble is the closer we are to it.”

Rip turned to Mick and nodded, “Of course.”

“Not everything they drummed into you was wrong,” Mick reminded him.

Nodding softly Rip took his seat at the ship’s controls, “Gideon, call the rest of the crew to the bridge.”

“Yes, Captain,” Gideon replied, “The course is laid in and we are ready to go. I am also scanning the newspapers from the time to see if there are any clues as to what happened to Dr Palmer.”

Rip nodded waiting for the rest of the crew and his son to arrive on the bridge. The moment they were all seated and the restraints in place Rip started the ship.

Sara finished assigning everyone a mission and nodded to Rip before heading off the bridge.

“Martin,” Rip called, “Can I talk to you for a moment?”

The elder man held back waiting while Rip spoke to his son quickly. Jonas nodded and bounced away leaving Rip and Martin alone on the bridge.

“I understand that you wish to be with your daughter when she gives birth,” Rip noted with a frown, “But in future please speak to me before ‘borrowing’ the jump ship to travel to your own time.”

Martin stared at him, “How…”

“Did I know because you wiped the logs?” Rip asked, amusement tingeing his voice, “Gideon won’t wipe anything that important without my agreement.”

“I just wanted to make sure Lily can contact me when she goes into labour,” Martin told him, “I don’t want to miss the birth of my first grandchild.”

“You won’t,” Rip promised him, “Gideon is monitoring and will alert us of the actual time your grandchild is born.”

“What if we’re in the middle of something?” Martin demanded.

Rip rolled his eyes, “We’re in a timeship, Martin. We could wait a week or month and still be there in plenty of time.”

Grimacing Martin asked, “Are you sure?”

Rip sighed, “Miranda and I had an agreement. When I was on a mission for a week then I didn’t see her for a week. My mission lasted a month then I was away for a month. The only exception to that, the only time I ever broke that arrangement was when Jonas was born. I would have been two days late if I kept to our agreement. I ensured I was there to support her that day when my son was born. And I will promise that you will be there the day your grandchild makes an appearance in the world.”

*********************************************

Jonas smiled as Rip tucked him into his new bed.

“Did you have fun tonight?” Rip asked, “Going trick or treating with the younger version of Ray and the team?”

Looking down at the bag of candy he’d brought back with him Jonas nodded, “It was strange seeing him as a boy.”

Rip nodded, “It was.”

“Is it always like that?” Jonas asked him, “Seeing people when they don’t know who you are?”

Smiling Rip shrugged, “It doesn’t happen very often anymore. Now I want you to go to sleep and tomorrow we’re going to take Martin to see his daughter. She’s having a baby and he wants to be there for that occasion.”

Jonas frowned in confusion, “Why don’t we go now?”

Rip stroked his son’s hair, “Because everyone needs to get some rest after the mission today. And it’s your bedtime.”

“Will you tell me a story?” Jonas asked, “A true one.”

Smiling Rip nodded and stretched out on the bed beside his son leaning against the headboard, “So, how about a story about Ray and when he helped team Flash?”

Eagerly Jonas nodded, cuddling close with his bear held in his arms listening to Rip’s story and falling asleep barely five minutes into it. Assured his son was asleep, Rip slid off the bed and left the room.

“Gideon, let me know if he needs me.”

“Of course, Captain,” she replied.

Rip nodded, “Where is our newest recruit?”

“Miss Tomaz is currently in the galley with Miss Jiwe,” Gideon told him before asking, “Shall I tell her you wish to speak to her?”

“No,” Rip replied, “I don’t want her to have too much time to think about it.”

As advised by Gideon, Rip found Zari sitting in the galley enjoying the various food option the Waverider’s fabricators afforded them.

“Miss Tomaz,” he let her know he was there, “I’d like to speak to you for a few minutes.”

Amaya looked at him questioningly, but Rip kept his face blank and waited for her to move.

“Talk to later,” Amaya told her, before she leaned into Rip, “Be nice. She proved herself today.”

Rip made himself a mug of tea before he sat across from Zari, “I don’t like having people onboard my ship I don’t know. The original team I researched thoroughly before I recruited them, while Miss Jiwe I was aware of previously. Dr Heywood proved himself and I was acquainted with his grandfather.”

“They asked me to come,” Zari noted.

“I know,” Rip replied, “You also showed me today that, despite your earlier attitude, you worked well with the team and you enjoyed yourself.”

She shrugged, “It was okay.”

“Sara wants you to stay and I trust her judgement,” Rip continued, “But I am going to tell you the same thing I told everyone else on the team. Jonas is my priority and he needs to feel safe on this ship. If you shout at or scare him in any way, no matter the circumstances, I will put you off the ship so fast your head will spin.”

Zari nodded, “If he wasn’t your priority then I wouldn’t trust you.”

Rip smiled watching Sara, Jax, Ray and Zari as they played cards with Jonas while they sat in the hospital waiting room. As promised, he’d brought them to the exact day Lily Stein was going to have her baby. Knowing his son was safe Rip snuck away for a while, he would pick up some coffees on the way back for everyone to cover his absence.

Stepping out into the fresh air, Rip closed his eyes.

“Are you alright?”

Rip turned to find Amaya standing watching him concern in her eyes.

“I’m fine.”

She gave a slight amused smile, “Does fine mean the same in the future as it does in the past? Because you don’t look fine.”

Rip shrugged, “I’m just a little tired.”

“And this must be bringing up memories for you,” she noted astutely.

He nodded, “Yes but they’re all good.”

Moving to stand at his side, Amaya smiled, “You can tell me if you want. I know you’re closer to Sara and Jax, but I am a very good listener.”

Rip hesitated for a moment before saying quietly, “I’m just having some trouble sleeping.”

“That’s understandable,” Amaya told him, “You have a lot on your mind. With the team and Jonas.”

Rip shook his head, “That’s not what invades my dreams.”

“Then what’s keeping you up at night?” Amaya asked softly.

Silence filled the space between them for several moments before Rip spoke up, “Phil.”

“Phil?” Amaya asked confusion covering her face before she realised, “The personality you had when we found you in 1967?”

He nodded in confirmation.

“What about him?”

“My dreams are when he was captured by Thawne, Darhk and Merlyn,” Rip sighed softly, “Except this time I’m also there as me but I can’t help. He is screaming for my help but there is an invisible barrier between us. Once I almost got through, but it was too late. They killed him.”

Amaya suddenly hugged him not letting go until he settled into the embrace for a few moments.

“It wasn’t your fault,” she whispered, “When you were Phil you couldn’t stop what they did, and I know how frustrating that must be now you have all your memories back but I know for certain that you did what you thought was best at the time. You did the only thing you could to save yourself while you tried to keep the Spear safe.”

He nodded.

“If you’re having trouble sleeping perhaps Gideon could give you something to help?” Amaya suggested.

Rip shook his head emphatically, “I don’t like being sedated. Unless it’s absolutely necessary then Gideon is not allowed to give me one.”

“Can I ask where your dislike comes from?” Amaya’s voice was gentle.

He hesitated for a moment, before he began to speak, “The day I was taken by the Time Masters, Druce found me because I was running. There were a lot of kids on the streets and every so often one would disappear, and we’d catch a glimpse of them with one of the wealthy men. I’m sure you can use your imagination for why they were taken.” He paused for a moment before continuing, “A man grabbed me one day and I knew…I knew it was not a good thing.”

“How old were you?”

“A little younger than Jonas,” Rip shrugged, “I struggled to get away as the man just laughed at my attempts to get out if his grip as he studied me. He wasn’t expecting me to have a knife. I stabbed at him blindly, hitting his heart. He dropped me and I ran for my life. I knew those streets but when you have the police chasing you it isn’t as easy to recall where to go. If I hadn’t ran into Druce, literally, I would have fallen to my death.”

“That is a…horrible story,” Amaya whispered, “But doesn’t explain your dislike of sedatives.”

“When I was taken to the refuge where I grew up,” Rip continued, “I had nightmares about the incident, as Druce liked to call it, so they gave me sedatives to help me sleep but instead they trapped me in my nightmares. Mother stopped giving them to me and didn’t say anything about the knife I kept under my pillow.”

“How long did you sleep with a knife?” Amaya asked.

Rip sighed, “Until I married Miranda. I knew she would keep me safe from my dreams even when we were apart.”

Amaya slid her hand into his, “Then go to her. When you’re lost in a dream remember Miranda and know she’ll still keep you safe.”

“Thank you, Miss Jiwe,” he said softly.

“Amaya,” she corrected.

Rip gave her a slight smile, “Amaya.”

“Better,” she teased, “You need to get used to using our names. We’re a team and you may be one of the leaders but you’re still one of us.”

Dropping his head slightly Rip gave a slight shrug, “I’ll try.”

“It’s a better example for Jonas too,” Amaya reminded him.

“Speaking of, I should get back and make sure he isn’t completely fleecing the others,” Rip smiled amused, “His grandmother taught him to play cards, he is a bit of a card counter and excellent at poker.”

“You were standing right there when he told Sara he’d never played,” Amaya stated in surprise.

Shrugging in amusement Rip noted, “We should pick up some coffee for everyone.”

Martin beamed with pride as he carried the little boy over to his team-mates.

“I’d like you to meet my grandson,” Martin smiled, “This is Ronnie.”

As the team crowded round to see the baby, Rip pulled Jonas to his side and hugged him.

“Was I that small?” Jonas whispered.

Rip nodded, “Yes, you were so tiny, and I was terrified to hold you in case I broke you.”

Jonas laughed.

“Your Mummy laughed at me too,” Rip smiled.

“Jonas,” Martin spoke up as he crouched down slightly so he could see the baby, “Say hello to Ronnie.”

Jonas reached out and stroked the little boy’s cheek, laughing as Sara wrapped her arm around the little boy hugging him close. Rip smiled at the scene. Feeling a hand on his hand, he glanced round at Amaya giving her a small nod before turning back to his son and team.

#fic #legends of tomorrow #rip hunter #gideon #jonas hunter #sara lance #zari tomaz #amaya jiwe #martin stein #mick rory #jefferson 'jax' jackson

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tlatollotl · 6 years

Link

There's no other way to put it: Maria de los Angeles Tun Burgos is a supermom.

She's raising five children, does housework and chores — we're talking about fresh tortillas every day made from stone-ground corn — and she helps with the family's business in their small village about 2 1/2 hours west of Cancun on the Yucatan.

Sitting on a rainbow-colored hammock inside her home, Burgos, 41, is cool as a cucumber. It's morning, after breakfast. Her youngest daughter, 4-year-old Alexa, sits on her knee, clearly trying to get her attention by hitting a teddy bear on her mom's leg. The middle daughter, 9-year-old Gelmy, is running around with neighborhood kids — climbing trees, chasing chickens — and her oldest daughter, 12-year-old Angela, has just woken up and started doing the dishes, without being asked. The older kids aren't in school because it's spring break.

Burgos is constantly on parental duty. She often tosses off little warnings about safety: "Watch out for the fire" or "Don't play around the construction area." But her tone is calm. Her body is relaxed. There's no sense of urgency or anxiety.

In return, the children offer minimal resistance to their mother's advice. There's little whining, little crying and basically no yelling or bickering.

In general, Burgos makes the whole parenting thing look — dare, I say it — easy. So I ask her: "Do you think that being a mom is stressful?"

Burgos looks at me as if I'm from Mars. "Stressful? What do you mean by stressful?" she responds through a Mayan translator.

A five-minute conversation ensues between Burgos and the translator, trying to convey the idea of "stressful." There doesn't seem to be a straight-up Mayan term, at least not pertaining to motherhood.

But finally, after much debate, the translator seems to have found a way to explain what I mean, and Burgos answers.

"There are times that I worry about my children, like when my son was 12 and only wanted to be with his friends and not study," Burgos says. "I was worried about his future." But once she guided him back on track, the worry went away.

In general, she shows no sense of chronic worry or stress.

"I know that raising kids is slow," she says. "Little by little they will learn."

Breast, formula or goat?

Burgos learned how to be a mom by watching — and helping — her own mom, her aunts and her neighbors raise many children. Throughout her childhood, she was training to be a mom.

Here in the U.S., many parents don't have this firsthand experience before having children themselves. Instead, we often learn about burping, potty training and tantrum control through parenting books, Google searches and YouTube videos. But this information comes with two big caveats, which aren't always divulged.

For starters, parenting advice can give the impression that the recommendations are based on science. But a deep look at some studies reveals that the science is more like smoke and mirrors. Sometimes the studies don't even test what the parenting expert is purporting they do.

Take for instance a study often cited as evidence that the "cry-it-out" method of sleep training is effective. The method claims that if babies are left to cry themselves to sleep, eventually they will learn to fall asleep on their own without crying, and sleep through the night.

But what the study actually tests is a gentler regime, in which babies were left to cry for only a short amount of time before being comforted. And the parents were supported by a hefty amount of personalized counseling on their babies' sleep and eating habits. The babies who made progress also did not retain the ability to put themselves to sleep and stay asleep over the long term.

As psychologist Ben Bradley argues in his book Vision of Infancy, a Critical Introduction to Psychology: "Scientific observations about babies are more like mirrors which reflect back the preoccupations and visions of those who study them than like windows opening directly on the foundations of the mind."

And sometimes the data supporting the recommendation are so flimsy that another study in a few years will come along and not only overturn the first study but completely flip the advice 180 degrees.

This is exactly what happened last year with peanuts. Back in 2000, the American Academy of Pediatrics advised parents not to give babies peanut butter because one study suggested early exposure would increase the risk of developing an allergy. But last year, the medical community made a complete about-face on the advice and now says "Let them eat peanuts!" Early peanut exposure actually prevents allergies, follow up studies have found.

So if science isn't the secret sauce to parenting books, what is? To answer that, we have to go back in time.

In the early 1980s, the British writer Christina Hardyment began reviewing more than 650 parenting books and manuals, dating all the way back to the mid-1700s when advice publications started appearing in hospitals. The result is an illuminating book, called Dream Babies, which traces the history of parenting advice from 17th-century English physician and philosopher John Locke to the modern-day medical couple Bill and Martha Sears.

The conclusions from the book are as clear as your baby's tears: Advice in parenting books is typically based not on rigorous scientific studies as is at times claimed but on the opinions and experiences of the authors and on theories from past parenting manuals — sometimes as long as the 18th century.

Then there's the matter of consistency — or lack thereof. Since the late 1700s, "experts" have flip-flopped recommendations over and over, from advising strict routines and discipline to a more permissive, laissez-faire approach and back again.

"While babies and parents remain constants, advice on the former to the latter veers with the winds of social, philosophical and psychological change," Hardyment writes. "There is no such thing as a generally applicable blueprint for perfect parenting."

Take, for instance, the idea that babies need to feed on a particular schedule. According to Hardyment's research, that advice first appears in a London hospital pamphlet in 1748. Sleep schedules for babies start coming into fashion in the early 1900s. And sleep training? That idea was proposed by a British surgeon-turned-sports writer in 1873. If babies "are left to go to sleep in their cots, and allowed to find out that they do not get their way by crying, they at once become reconciled, and after a short time will go to bed even more readily in the cot than on the lap," John Henry Walsh wrote in his Manual of Domestic Economy.

Even the heated debate about breastfeeding has been simmering, and flaring up, for at least 250 years, Hardyment shows. In the 18th century, mothers didn't have high-tech formula but had many recommendations about what was best for the baby and the family. Should a mother send the baby off to a wet nurse's home, so her husband won't be offended by the sight of a baby suckling? And if the family couldn't afford a wet nurse, there was specially treated cow's milk available or even better, the baby could be nursed by a goat, 18th-century parenting books advised. (If you're wondering how moms accomplished such a feat, Hardyment includes an 18th-century drawing of a young mom pushing a swaddled newborn underneath a goat's udder.)

Goat udders aside, perhaps the bigger issue with parenting books and advice on the Web is what they aren't telling you. And boy, is there a large hole.

These sources ignore most of the world and come almost entirely from the experience of Western culture. But when it comes to understanding what a baby needs, how kids work and what to do when your toddler is lying on the sidewalk (just asking for a friend), Western society might not be the best place to focus.

"WEIRD," stressed-out parents equal anxious kids?

In 2010, three scientists at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, rocked the psychology world.

They published a 23-page paper titled "The weirdest people in the world?" And in it, uncovered a major limitation with many psychological studies, especially those claiming to address questions of "human nature."

First, the team noted that the vast majority of studies in psychology, cognitive science and economics — about 96 percent — have been performed on people with European backgrounds. And yet, when scientists perform some of these experiments in other cultures the results often don't match up. Westerners stick out as outliers on the spectrum of behavior, while people from indigenous cultures tend to clump together, more in the middle.

Even in experiments that appear to test basic brain function, like visual perception, Westerners can act strangely. Take one of the most famous optical illusions — the Muller-Lyer illusion, from 1889.

The Müller-Lyer illusion, devised in 1889.

Americans often believe the second line is about 20 percent longer than the first, even though the two lines are exactly the same length. But when scientists gave the test to 14 indigenous cultures, none of them were tricked to the same degree as Westerners. Some cultures, such as the San foragers in southern Africa's Kalahari desert, knew the two lines were equal length.

The conclusion from these analyses was startling: People from Western society, "including young children, are among the least representative populations one could find for generalizing about humans," Joseph Heinrich and his colleagues wrote. The researchers even came up with a catchy acronym to describe the phenomenon. They called our culture WEIRD, for Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic societies.

With that paper, the ethnocentric view of psychology cracked. It wasn't so much that the emperor of psychology had no clothes. It was more that he was dancing around in Western garb pretending to represent all humanity.

A few years later, an anthropologist from Utah State University, David Lancy, performed a similar analysis on parenting. The conclusion was just as clear-cut: When you look around the world and throughout human history, the Western style of parenting is WEIRD. We are outliers.

In many instances, what we think is "necessary" or "critical" for childhood is actually not present in any other cultures around the world or throughout time.

"The list of differences is really, really long," says David Lancy, who summarizes them in the second edition of his landmark book The Anthropology of Childhood: Cherubs, Chattel, Changelings. "There may be 40 to 50 things that we do that you don't see in indigenous cultures."

Perhaps most striking is how Western society segregates children from adults. We have created two worlds: the kid world and the adult world. And we go through great pains to keep them apart. Kids have their own special foods, their own times to go to sleep, their own activities on the weekends. Kids go to school. Parents go to work. "Much of the adult culture ... is restricted [for kids]," Lancy writes. "Children are perceived as too young, uneducated, or burdensome to be readily admitted to the adult sphere."

But in many indigenous cultures, children are immersed in the adult world early on, and they acquire great skills from the experience. They learn to socialize, to do household chores, cook food and master a family's business, Lancy writes.

Western culture is also a relative newcomer to parenting. Hunter-gatherers and other indigenous cultures have had tens of thousands of years to hone their strategies, not to mention that the parent-child relationship actually evolved in these contexts.

Of course, just because a practice is ancient, "natural" or universal doesn't mean it's necessarily better, especially given that Western kids eventually have to live — and hopefully succeed — in a WEIRD society. But widening the parenting lens, even just a smidgen, has a practical purpose: It gives parents options.

"When you look at the whole world and see the diversity out there, parents can start to imagine other ways of doing things," says Suzanne Gaskins, a developmental psychologist at Northeastern Illinois University, who for 40 years has been studying how Maya moms in the Yucatan raise helpful kids.

"Some of the approaches families use in other cultures might fit an American child's needs better than the advice they are given in books or from the pediatricians," she adds.

Who's in charge?

So what kind of different philosophies are out there?

When I spent time with Maya families that Gaskins has studied, I saw a very different approach to control.

In Western culture, parenting is often about control.

"We think of obedience from a control angle. Somebody is in charge and the other one is doing what they are told because they have to," says Barbara Rogoff, a psychologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who has studied the Maya culture for 30 years.

Gelmy, one of the five kids in Maria de los Angeles Tun Burgosa's family, rakes the backyard of their home in Yucatan, Mexico.

And if you pay attention to the way parents interact with children in our society, the idea is blazingly obvious. We tend to boss them around. "Put your shoes on!" or "Eat your sandwich!"

"People think either the adult is in control or the child is in control," Rogoff says.

But what if there is another way to interact with kids that removes control from the equation, almost altogether?

That's exactly what the Mayas — and several other indigenous cultures — do. Instead of trying to control children, Rogoff says, parents aim to collaborate with them.

"It's kids and adults together accomplishing a common goal," Rogoff says. "It's not letting the kids do whatever they want. It's a matter of children — and parents — being willing to be guided."

In the Maya culture, even the littlest of children are treated with this respect. "It's collaborative from the get-go."

The idea is so strong that some Mayan languages don't even have a word for "control" when talking about children, Rogoff says.

After visiting the Maya village this spring, I've been trying this approach with my 2 1/2-year-old daughter. For instance, I often struggle to get Rosemary to put her clothes on the morning. In the past, I would nag and yell: "Put your shoes on! Get your jacket!"

But now I try a more collaborative approach. "Rosemary, mom, dad and Mango [our dog] are all going to the beach," I explain. "If you want to go to the beach, you have to put your shoes on. Do you want to go to the beach?" So far it's working.

And if Rosemary says she doesn't want to go to the beach? What would a Maya mom do? She would drop her off at an aunt's or neighbor's house and spend an afternoon without her. Because Maya families also have a different idea about who is supposed to care for the kids. One way to think of it: They don't keep mom in a box.

Get mom out of the box

In our culture there's a lingering belief that the ideal family structure for kids is a stay-at-home mom who devotes her full attention to the kids. That may sound like a relic from the past. But even just 10 years ago, 41 percent of people thought moms working outside was harmful to society, PEW research found. The result is a mom stuck in an apartment or a single-family home — which are both essentially boxes — raising children, alone.

But if you look around the world and throughout human history, this parenting approach is arguably one of the most nontraditional out there. The notion that the mom is responsible for raising the children, alone, is even strange within Western culture. Up until about 150 years ago, households were much larger and included extended family members and sometimes paid help, historian Stephanie Coontz documents in The Way We Never Were. And women were expected to earn some income for the family. "Women not only brought home half the bacon, they often raised and butchered the pig," Coontz says.

Anthropologist David Lancy compares the "mom in the box" approach to parenting to what happens with an Inuit family in the Arctic, when inclement weather isolates a mom and her child in an igloo and forces the mom to be the only playmate for the children. Most of the burden of parenting is placed on the mom. "There is every reason to believe that modern living conditions in which infants and toddlers are isolated from peers in single-parent or nuclear households produce a parallel effect," Lancy writes: a mom left to a perform a role typically performed by children — that is, siblings, cousins, neighborhood kids and whoever else is hanging around a home.

Human children didn't evolve in a nuclear family. Instead, for hundreds of thousands of years, kids have been brought up with a slew of people — grandparents, aunts, uncles, siblings, the neighbors, Lancy writes. It's not that you need a whole village, as the saying goes, but rather an extended family — which could include biological relatives but also neighbors, close friends or paid help.

Throughout human history, motherhood has been seen as a set of tasks that can be accomplished by many types of people, like relatives and neighbors, the historian John R. Gillis writes in The World Of Their Own Making. Anthropologists call them "alloparents" — "allo" simply means "other."

Across the globe, cultures consider alloparents key to raising children, Lancy writes.

The Maya moms value and embrace alloparents. Their homes are porous structures and all sorts of "allomoms" flow in and out. When a woman has a baby, other moms work together to make sure she can take a break each day to take a shower and eat meals, without having to hold the baby. (How civilized is that!)

In one household with four kids that I visited, the aunt dropped off food, the grandma stopped by to help with a neighbor's baby and, all the while, the oldest daughter looked after the toddler — while the mom fed the livestock and started to make lunch. But in Western culture, over the past few centuries, we have pushed alloparents to the periphery of the parenting landscape, Gillis writes. They aren't as valued and sometimes even denigrated as a means for working moms to outsource parenting duties.

In the past few generations, fathers have stepped up and started helping with a big chunk of parenting duties. Since 1965, American dads have more than doubled the number of hours they spend each week on child care, PEW research found. But moms still carry most of the load. They spend, on average, 14 hours each week on child care while fathers spend about 7.

The result is something unique in human history: A mom stuck in a box, often alone, doing the job typically performed by a handful of people. As Gillis writes, "Never have mothers been so burdened by motherhood."

#maya #yucatan #mexico #mother's day #mother #motherhood #children #psychology #anthropology #sociology #parenting #babies #kids #family

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powerlighton-blog · 7 years

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I Finally Watched That! The Flash Season Two

My last post pretty much summed up what a fan I am of the Flash- not just the TV show but the character himself. When season two originally aired I watched the first six episodes and then stopped for a couple of reasons. First and foremost I was a little upset that they decided to use yet another speedster as the main villain. The other problem was that I had to wait a week between episodes to find out what happened. I eventually got too far behind and gave up. Despite my initial reservations I have now finished season two and I like it even better than the first. Spoilers ahead and laced throughout.

Plot: After defeating Harrison Wells/Eobard Thawne in season one the team had to immediately deal with a singularity that would have destroyed the earth. Thanks to that dilemma a total of fifty-two breaches appeared throughout Central City. Those breaches connect Earth-1 and Earth-2. A new enemy, Zoom, brings meta humans from his earth to Barry’s in order to kill him so far as we know. Barry struggles to get faster which he has to do to beat Zoom, he gets betrayed not once but twice, and then has a life-altering experience in the Speed Force. As you can imagine the good guys win in the end which sets up season three. I won’t ruin any of the specifics for you though.

Good: There are a lot of problems I had with the first season that have been fixed for the most part, but I’ll get in to that in a minute. I want to start by mentioning the story in this season is phenomenal. It really couldn’t get much better. We saw a good number of hard times last season, but the way everything seems to crumble around our heroes made it all matter that much more. The writers kept me on the hook through all twenty-three episodes even with the sub-stories like Barry and Patty and Barry and Iris. I hope the next season is as good as this one.

The throwbacks and shout-outs remain, and they are as great now as they were in season one. Jay Garrick (Teddy Sears) appears very early on (episode two) and dons his traditional garb in the same episode- winged helmet and elongated vertical lightning bolt from waist to shoulder. It was very welcome to see the detail. In the same episode you also see a recreation of the cover for the classic comic “Flash of Two Worlds” with Barry on one side of the screen and Jay on the other both rushing to help a new character/love interest named Patty Spivot (Shantel VanSanten). I have to admit I nerded out pretty hard. Along these same lines there are also new important characters. Most notably we find Wally West (Keiynan Lonsdale), who was the original “Kid Flash” in the comics, and Jesse Wells (Violett Beane) who is referred to as Jesse Quick by her father at least once. Jesse Quick is another less well-known speedster. While neither of these characters developed their powers this season I’m hoping to see them both evolve very soon. Of course old favorites have also returned- John Wesley Shipp plays Henry Allen, Amanda Pays shows as Dr. Tina McGee, and Mark Hamill is once again the Trickster. All reprise their role in this second season. Of course, what CW superhero show about DC characters would be complete without some crossover episodes- those are here too. Both Arrow and DC Legends of Tomorrow story lines cross paths and in the same episode at that. All of these aspects combined make for some amazing nerdy moments that you can’t miss.

The CGI effects I was so adamant about last time have been greatly improved throughout most of the show. I became convinced of this when Grodd reappeared. In season one he is mostly animated in dark areas and never leaves the sewer. Here in season two we see him in broad daylight and he looks (mostly) real and definitely terrifying. There’s also a great fight scene between Flash and Reverse-Flash (yes, he’s back, no you don’t have to worry) that is visually stunning in ways that they didn’t achieve last season. It also shows how far Barry has come, but that’s a different topic. Throughout the show the special effects have gotten better, but it still falters at times. Slow motion speedster scenes still look cartoon-ey. Barry travels back in time and has a brief fight with himself and it all looks pretty awful. In the second-to-last episode Mercury Labs is attacked and Flash saves Dr. McGee, but Amanda Pays and the crumbling edifice and The Flash all look obviously animated. It puts me in the mind of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within styled graphics. It has gotten better, but they still have work to do.

Bad: There are still some oversights in the show. Jay Garrick mentions his helmet was dragged in to the same breach/singularity he did, but it came through the particle accelerator at a different time. Either that was an oversight behind-the-scenes, or none of the characters caught on to the implausibility of that. That was the biggest continuity issue/oversight I found. There are more but they are smaller and make little difference.

I’e made this complaint before and it’s gotten better, but there are still instances of bad acting. Really. Bad. Acting. In episode four Caitlin and Professor Stein are talking to Jefferson Jackson (Jax for short) and there is a decent portion of Jax’s dialogue that doesn’t work. He sounds wooden and uninterested and the scene does not recover well from it. It is a minor complaint in this season, but it’s still around. On the positive side there are also a lot of good moments to cancel out those that I consider less-than-stellar.

My big problem with season two is the way I felt like I was being treated like an idiot. I first noticed it early with Jay Garrick explaining everything regarding why he was there, how he got there, what he knew, etc. I attributed this to necessary backstory and let it go. When I made it to episode nine which features the Trickster I changed my mind. That whole episode is rife with moments where they lay everything they have out on the table and slap you with the information that could have been revealed better or later. In this episode there is a scene where Santa is in the park handing out gifts wrapped up telling the kids to not open them until the next evening. Specifically we see one little boy on Santa’s lap with the above exchange. At the end of their interaction Santa pulls down his beard and, surprise, it’s the Trickster. It was completely unnecessary for two reasons- you can almost guarantee it’s him just from his voice and Mark Mardon later tells you everything about that scene. From that point on the show decided to explain just about everything in express detail (with the exception of Time Remnants which still cause a bit of confusion for me, but it’s for a different reason) to make sure you’re all caught up and don’t have to think for yourself. As much as I dislike not getting a decent explanation what I dislike more is getting everything shoved in my face like I couldn’t possibly understand it otherwise.

Verdict: This is better. The Flash was already a great show and they stepped it up in a big way. Everyone grows in to their roles or characters or powers and in to themselves as people. If you feel like the pace is lagging near the end don’t worry. I felt like that going in to the last two episodes. I was curious how they were going to close out this season reasonably without ruining everything I had just seen. Episode twenty-two does a fantastic job of bringing everything full-circle and justifying episode twenty-three being the last for this season. I was concerned there was going to be no real purpose for reason for an ending, but I was proven wrong and thankfully so. I still recommend this series, of course, and I can’t wait for season three.

Are you continuing as well? What’s your favorite season two scene? Are you still loving the show? Let me know below.

#Flash #CW #Review #Barry Allen #Iris West #Wally West #Harrison Wells #Zoom #Reverse

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