#fuck the november narrative change

[homo-house]

hey uh so I haven't seen anyone talking about this here yet, but

the amazon river, like the biggest river in the fucking world, in the middle of the amazon fucking rainforest, is currently going through its worst drought since the records began 121 years ago

picture from Folha PE

there's a lot going on but I haven't seen much international buzz around this like there was when the forest was on fire (maybe because it's harder to shift the narrative to blame brazil exclusively as if the rest of the world didn't have fault in this) so I wanted to bring this to tumblr's attention

I don't know too many details as I live in the other side of the country and we are suffering from the exact opposite (at least three cyclones this year, honestly have stopped counting - it's unusual for us to get hit by even one - floods, landslides, we have a death toll, people are losing everything to the water), but like, I as a brazilian have literally never seen pictures of the river like this before. every single city in the amazonas state is in a state of emergency as of november 1st.

pictures by Adriano Liziero (ig: geopanoramas)

we are used to seeing images of rio negro and solimões, the two main amazon river affluents, in all their grandiose and beauty and seeing these pictures is really fucking chilling. some of our news outlets are saying the solimões has turned to a sand desert... can you imagine this watery sight turning into a desert in the span of a year?

while down south we are seeing amounts of rain and hailstorms the likes of which our infrastructure is simply not built to deal with, up north people who have built everything around the river are at a loss of what to do.

the houses there that are built to float are just on the ground, people who depend on fishing for a living have to walk kilometers to find any fish that are still alive at all, the biodiversity there is at risk, and on an economic level it's hard to grasp how people from the northern states are getting by at all - the main means of transport for ANYTHING in that region is via the river water. this will impact the region for months to come. it doesnt make a lot of sense to build a lot of roads bc it's just better to use the waterway system, everything is built around or floats on the river after all. and like, the water level is so incomprehensibly low the boats are just STUCK. people are having a hard time getting from one place to another - keep in mind the widest parts of the river are over 10 km apart!!

this shit is really serious and i am trying not to think about it because we have a different kind of problem to worry about down south but it's really terrifying when I stop to think about it. you already know the climate crisis is real and the effects are beyond preventable now (we're past global warming, get used to calling it "global boiling"). we'll be switching strategies to damage control from now on and like, this is what it's come to.

I don't like to be alarmist but it's hard not to be alarmed. I'm sorry that I can't end this post with very clear intructions on how people overseas can help, there really isn't much to do except hope the water level rises soon, maybe pray if you believe in something. in that regard we just have to keep pressing for change at a global level; local conditions only would not, COULD NOT be causing this - the amazon river is a CONTINENTAL body of water, it spans across multiple countries. so my advice is spread the word, let your representatives know that you're worried and you want change towards sustainability, degrowth and reduced carbon emissions, support your local NGOs, maybe join a cause, I don't know? I recommend reading on ecological and feminist economics though

however, I know you can help the affected riverine families by donating to organizations dedicated to helping the region. keep in mind a single US dollar, pound or euro is worth over 5x more in our currency so anything you donate at all will certainly help those affected.

FAS - Sustainable Amazon Fundation

Idesam - Sustainable Developent and Preservation Institute of Amazonas

Greenpeace Brasil - I know Greenpeace isn't the best but they're one of the few options I can think of that have a bridge to the international world and they are helping directly

There are a lot of other smaller/local NGOs but I'm not sure how you could donate to them from overseas, I'll leave some of them here anyway:

Projeto Gari

Caritás Brasileira

If you know any other organizations please link them, I'll be sure to reblog though my reach isn't a lot

thank you so much for reading this to the end, don't feel obligated to share but please do if you can! even if you just read up to here it means a lot to me that someone out there knows

also as an afterthought, I wanted to expand on why I think this hasn't made big news yet: because unlike the case of the 2020 forest fires, other countries have to hold themselves accountable when looking at this situation. while in 2020 it was easier to pretend the fires were all our fault and people were talking about taking the amazon away from us like they wouldn't do much worse. global superpowers have no more forests to speak of so I guess they've been eyeing what latin america still has. so like this bit of the post is just to say if you're thinking of saying anything of the sort, maybe think of what your own country has done to contribute to this instead of blaming brazil exclusively and saying the amazon should be protected by force or whatever

#solarpunk #sustainability #environmentalism #climate change #climate crisis #global warming #amazon rainforest #amazon river #geography #brazil #degrowth #punk #global boiling #ecopunk #anti capitalism #climate action #climate activism #the world does not die on my watch #i saw someone use that tag and uh i like it we should make it a thing #long post #:/ sorry i know no one likes lengthy bad news posts on their dashes but i've been thinking about this quite a bit #and i don't really know what to do to help bc i don't have money to donate and i am 10 thousand km away #i think i could be doing more to help but i am already trying my best #again dont feel obligated to share or read this but it would be nice and i would love you forever #have removed lbv from the post

[ohnoitstbskyen]

ARCANE season 2 is just one year away!

We finally have a confirmed date for Arcane season 2: November of 2024, just one year away. Riot posted this striking stylized rendering of Jinx simply walking away from camera while some music plays. It is barely more than a teaser trailer, and it would be completely absurd to try and divine meaning or predictions about the show from it. So that's what I'm gonna do! The teaser is accompanied by the musical theme of The Bridge, which Powder sings in the first scene of the show as she and Vi are crossing this very same bridge in the aftermath of a pitched battle, finding their parents among the dead. It is Jinx's foundational trauma, and the crossing of the bridge is a repeated motif in the first season of Arcane, representing the divide between the cities, between characters, between ideologies. And so in this teaser Jinx is crossing the bridge again, in the aftermath of having lost her third father, blaming Piltover not inaccurately for all her suffering. If this is the tone-setter for the show, then, it seems Season 2 of Arcane will be grounded in Jinx's war on Piltover, her attempt to do what Vander couldn't with his riot and what Silco couldn't with his political manipulation. Dear friend across the river My hands are cold and bare Dear friend across the river I'll take what you can spare

To expand a little bit beyond what I can do in a 60 second short - it is of course an obvious conclusion that Season 2 of Arcane would feature Jinx's vengeance against Piltover (there is only so much you can try and predict from a 15 second teaser), but I wonder about the structure that this will take. Will Jinx's vengeance be a feature, a concurrent storyline running alongside all the other storylines, or will it be the central axis that everything else is orbiting?

In Season 1 the show was very much structured around a handful of storylines all converging into the same, single, tragic end-point - for most of the narrative, characters like Jayce and Vi were not even consciously aware of one another, even as their actions had impact on one another. By the end of Season 1, the characters are much more closely acquainted and connected with one another, and maybe that requires a change in structure. Perhaps, rather than a handful of narratives all converging together towards one central tragedy, we get a series of stories exploding out from one central starting point?

Because I could absolutely see Jinx and her war being the anchor-point that everyone else is reacting to. Vi's primary quest is to stop her, so is Caitlyn's. The Council will want bloody revenge, Noxus is going to sense weakness and take advantage of a civil war, the Chembarons will be fighting among themselves to take Silco's place...

It's only really Viktor and Singed whose storylines I could see maintaining some degree of separation from Jinx's vengeance... but then, I do operate on the assumption that Hextech will be used to build weapons of war and that that will be the final breaking point between Jayce and Viktor - I don't think Viktor's moral compass would allow his invention to be turned on the undercity in this way, the very people he most wanted to help and protect.

In this way, I have a feeling he'll enter the war essentially on Jinx's "side," building augmentations and applying Singed's nihilistic philosophy of science to build something to defend the undercity which Jayce, in turn, will find too horrible to contemplate or forgive.

Also who the fuck knows what Vander/Warwick is going to be doing? Is the connection between Singed and Orianna going to... like is Ori going to turn up? I would like Ori to turn up.

#arcane #arcane season 2 #tbskyen #Youtube

[ef-1]

+ for posterity I hope people know how inextricably linked McLaren's passive and active malice is to the erasure of Daniel's credentials in the public domain. he was seldom defended last year. And never this year.

On November 3rd 2020, 58 days before Daniel became a McLaren driver, Ross Brawn, F1's managing director, dedicated part of his last column of the year to Daniel saying “Daniel Ricciardo is a brilliant driver, and one of the very best in Formula1 [...]I hope McLaren can give Daniel a car he deserves next season. He’s a great member of the F1 fraternity.” And reiterated that Daniel is a championship contender whose never been in a contending car

He's tied for second place with Lewis for most wins starting outside the top 3. For reference, first is Alonso and Raikkonen, he's tied with Lewis for second and 3rd is Schumacher. 4th is Jenson Button. All champions while he's never been in a championship contending car

McLaren letting the *Daniel is not a very adaptable driver* narrative run rampant when in his supposed "bad" first year at Renault in 2019, he ran out the incumbent driver and produced unimpressive feats like going from 20th to 4th on two occasions.

Broke Renault's 10 year podium drought. Twice.

People genuinely running with that bizarre conspiracy that Daniel is poor in the technical realm of F1 when Cyril, who had no reason to defend or protect Daniel after he announced his departure said that the technical breakthrough Renault had was solely Daniel's doing and the only reason they were even able to compete for 3rd in the championship + "Daniel will be competing with a stronger team next year thanks to his own efforts"

The first driver in 8 years to score multiple fast laps without being part of a top 3 team, a record previously held by Raikkonen

In 2019 Nico Rosberg revealing that during briefings Mercedes drivers would ask not to be released around Daniel after pitting because if he's in front of you he's not going to let you through and if he's behind you he's overtaking you.

Helmut Marko, known cunt and crackhead, admitting that the only time they've had 2 drivers matched in performance at Red Bull was during the Ricciardo-Verstappen line up.

People saying he was too arrogant and egotistical (¿¿¿) to gel with the team like. When was the last fucking time a driver went to another teams garage to apologise to another driver's mechanics for a racing incident he was NOT penalised for, during a wet session, where Carlos Sainz himself said Daniel couldn't have changed the outcome if he tried.

In his first year in Red Bull, during the most radical regulation change in recent f1 history, he was the only driver besides mercedes to win a race. He won 3 races.

This is Daniel's calibre, and no amount of historical romanticism from McLaren or their paid shills will ever change that.

#I'll get over many things #not this anger though :) #f1 #daniel ricciardo #mclaren #formula 1 #Japanese gp 2022

[queen-mabs-revenge]

Why Peter Parker Was Not 15 When He Was Bit: A Treatise

This was originally a twitter thread but in an effort to save the one thing I actually care about having posted there from whatever the fuck is going on, here we go!

While early on there aren't any outright 100% indisputable references to Peter's age (i.e. himself or Aunt May just saying it outright on the page), from the very beginning of publishing, there have been enough references that give a firm grounding to Peter being a senior in high school throughout the first 28 issues of Amazing Spider-Man.

ASM 8 (Jan 1964)

Right off the bat in Amazing Spider-Man 8 (a tribute to teenagers xoxo you will always be famous) we get our first definitive mention that Peter and his classmates are in their senior year of high-school at the very least from this point on in the narrative.

ASM 14 (Jul 1964); ASM Annual 1 (Oct 1964)

Peter himself states this 6 issues later trying to wheedle Aunt May into letting him go to Hollywood on assignment from JJJ to cover Spider-Man's cinematic debut in a film role offered to him by the Green Goblin (in his first comic appearance. When I say I love the Silver Age.) ASM Annual 1 confirms that the gang is in their senior year yet again.

This is already stupid long so the rest goes behind the cut!

This isn't something that's just dropped in the Silver Age and then forgotten. 26 years after those first mentions, Web of Spider-Man Annual 4 makes a call back to Amazing Spider-Man 3 and places that moment in Peter's senior year of high-school:

Left: WOS Annual 4 (Oct 1988); Right: ASM 3 (Jul 1963)

While on tour to promote the Bugle-produced book of his Spider-Man photography, WEBS, Peter states on a TV interview that a photo of his first encounter with Doc Ock was taken while he was a senior in high school.

"But Mabs," I hear you say, "so what if he's in his senior year in ASM! Even if that's true, that doesn't mean he was in his senior year in Amazing Fantasy 15, and that still doesn't establish an age! He's a super mega genius so like....he probably skipped grades, prodigy that he is! And there was a time gap btw AF15 and ASM1, right?"

Alright let's go through this. As mentioned earlier, yeah, references to Pete's age are very few and far between and are a bit wobbly but let's put them together. The first age ref we get is in ASM 16:

ASM 16 (Sep 1964)

Here our favorite public defender is "rescued" from a mugging by the webslinger. After Peter fucks off, Matt gives us the above rundown of Spidey's characteristics: about 17, 5'10" and in excellent health. So "about 17" which, granted, doesn't have to mean exactly 17 but since we've established that at this point Peter is def in senior year, based on NYS age matriculation dates, Matt's probably spot on.

New York State matriculates students based on the age they are on December 1st of a school year. A 1976 edition of school regulations lays out the process: "[a] child who attains the age of 5 by December 1 of the current school year must be admitted to the kindergarten if a district operates such a program". So this means that within the same kindergarten class, kids born from the beginning of the school year to November 30th would be turning 5, while kids born from December 1 through the end of the school year would turn 6 during the school year, and kids born over the summer would also turn 6 but wouldn't celebrate during the school year.

Following that, Sept through Nov babies would be 16-going-on-17 in the beginning of their senior year, Dec - June would be 17-going-on-18 during senior year, June - Aug would turn 18 after graduation.

Peter being 17 or 18 during the high-school run of ASM just makes sense and there's nothing in the writing up until this point to push against that! In fact, when you first start seeing the de-aging of Peter creep in, AF15 literally had to be changed to make a younger age fit!

AF 15 (Aug 1962)

ASM Annual 23 (Sep 1989)

The very first time we see 15 floated as an age when Peter becomes Spider-Man is in the Amazing Spider-Man annual 23 of 1989. The annual is trying to present itself as Peter scientifically studying his own origin story, so the direct parallels to AF15 make it really clear when it's retconning the original to make sense with the younger age.

The panel where ASMAnn23 states Peter is 15 is otherwise a near word-for-word quote of AF15. Then later, the cognate panel of Peter in science class changes AF15's "you're sure to rate a scholarship when you graduate" to "in a couple of years when you graduate, you're sure to rate a scholarship." (Gerry Conway back at it again). This is the first time there's ever a hint at his story not being centered around his senior year, and that was made explicit in this issue by changing the original dialogue in order to justify stating he was a 15 year old in this recollection of AF15!

This is also an argument against the 'skipped grades' premise. Conway could have easily just left the text of AF15 as it was which would hint that Peter was obviously very young for being a senior in high school, but instead he tried to push AF15 back in time to fit a usual high-school timeline for a 15 year old (who would be at the earliest a December baby in their freshman year and the latest a Sept-Nov baby in sophomore year, and would be 'a couple of years' away from graduating).

Plus, fr if you're gonna argue that he skipped grades, it's on you to prove that. There are literally zero references to that throughout 616 continuity so like, why tf should it be taken as given? Please.

Anyway. And so are sown the seeds for torturing the already stretched timeline to make Peter an uwu baby infant. They didn't take right away. References to age go away after this and only resurface in 1994 (as far as I could see), where we see him aged back up:

ASM 395 (Nov 1994)

'I can't believe I was only sixteen when that spider bit me' actually makes sense with all of ASM being established as fully in Peter's senior year, Matt gauging him at 'about 17' in ASM 14, the age matriculation cut off for NYS schools, and the timeframe established between AF15 and ASM Annual 1 from 1964:

ASM Annual 1 (Oct 1964)

ASM Annual 1 (which I mentioned earlier as yet another point establishing Peter as being in his senior year) also has this little timestamp. Peter is watching Aunt May mourn for Uncle Ben and mentions that Ben's death was 'months ago'. Granted, that's in no way specific but I feel like it establishes at least a rough timeframe for the intended time gap between AF15 and ASM -- and it's not years.

And to be honest, there's really only one space in the narrative that allows for a time gap at all (Stan is really attached to his 'a few minutes later!' 'later that day!' pacing let me tell you!)

AF 15 (Aug 1962) page 9, panel 1

While the narration box says 'In the days that follow' it seems like we can take that colloquially considering the stream of newspaper headlines. For all of that to take place, I feel like it's not a massive stretch to allow this panel at the very least a month or so, which gives a bit of breathing room between when Peter lets the burglar run away and when Uncle Ben is murdered. (Which if you think about it a delayed dropping of the other shoe actually makes it worse! So how about that!). But between this and ASMAnn1, I don't think you can argue for years taking place in this gap which would have to be the case for a 15-year-old bite timeframe.

So if Peter's bit his senior year, for him to be 16 when he's bit he has to be born between the beginning of the school year and November 30th (because school has to be in session when he's bit). Which fits with the official New York City 2012 declaration of his birthday being October 14:

If he's 16 when bit in his junior year (again, school has to be in sesh), you've got to decide when from December of his junior year to the end of the school year makes sense for him to be bit with the rest of the time markers and how long you're gonna give to the time skip in AF15 for it all to qualify as just 'months' up to ASMAnn1. Which definitely can be done, especially if you AF15 pages 1-8 near the end of his jr year, put the time skip over the summer between junior and senior year, and rest of pages 9-11 in his senior year. In some ways this option makes a bit more sense, to be honest!

The way I personally like to square it is to go with all of AF15 and ASM1-28 happening in Peter's senior year (which he reaches without skipping grades) interpreting the 'when you graduate' in the AF15 panel referring to the same school year. If he's 16, the bite happens sometime before his birthday which has to be before Nov. 30th and, sure, why not Oct 14 -- it fits. A month or so passes between when he gets bit and starts his show-biz stint, and when Ben gets murdered. That means the last 3 pages of AF15 (bar the first panel on pg 9) to ASM28 spans from some time in December of his senior year to the end of the school year.

(If you don't care if he was 16 or 17 when he was bit, AF15 - ASM28 can take place any time from the second half-ish of his junior year to the end of his senior year, you can decide how many 'months' the time skip is in AF15, pick his birthday out of a hat, and Matt's "about 17" could mean 18, too. Have a ball.)

But in any case whichever way you choose to spin it, this shit is dumb and wrong:

Civil War 2 (Aug 2006)

and especially deserves to be memory holed for the ridiculous de-aging of Peter Parker that has subsequently been pushed into popular memory and continues throughout current Marvel 'brand synergy'. Sad and bad!

#proportionate thoughts of a spider #spider-man #peter parker #this is so unnecessarily long lmao i probably should have just left it on twitter tbh #then i'm forcibly shut the fuck up #and like say what you want about jjj but man's not sending a 15 year old out to do crime scene photography #like i just don't think he's *that* unhinged #anyway i'm sure someone will find a logical flaw here but consider this #no you didn't #descriptions in alt text #yes all of them

[thethief1996]

In November, displaced children in Al Shifa posted a video pleading in English to be protected. It was the first of four raids that were conducted on the hospital before Israel burned it down this week. Gaza's Civil Defense Office says all departments and buildings were purposefully destroyed. According to verified reports, two vendors who sold water and food to the refugees at Al Shifa revealed themselves to be IDF soldiers as the raid began and instructed the troops to start the massacre. Anybody who didnt flee was indiscrimately executed. Euro Med Human Rights Monitor estimates that 1.500 people were injured or killed, of which at least 13 were children and 22 were shot in their hospital beds. Some of the bodies found after the carnage were zip tied. Doctors report that some of the victims were buried alive. We have graphic videos of bodies crushed and buried by bulldozers. Al Shifa is the site of a mass grave. I keep thinking how many of those children are still alive.

The official narrative by Israel is that not a single civilian was killed. It is laughable that they expect us to believe this shit. They lie to our faces, against a barrage of videos showing they are conducting a very clear and unapologetic extermination campaign in Gaza, and yet every single western media outlet hems and haws around their intent like there's plausible deniability. Biden approves unconditional military aid for Israel and Gazzans show us the remains of missiles with name and address of the American factories that produced them but he can mumble through phlegm about red lines and no newspaper calls bullshit. Hillary Clinton can come on national television and condescendingly tell voters to get over themselves like they're doing you a fucking favor by putting up a serial killer for you to vote, and nobody calls bullshit on her manipulation. Ursula Von Der Leyen can smile cynically at a protester who calls her a war criminal and nobody calls bullshit. And we know why. The New York Times said they found no anti Palestinian bias in their reporting of October 7th only for a memo to come out showing they instructed reporters to not show any ounce of sympathy for Palestinians, even avoiding the word Palestine. Why are those people up there? Why do they act like we are children, when they are the ones who damned their souls? I refuse that narrative.

Palestinians are not more resilient to atrocities. Do not let the world dehumanize them. The terror Palestinians feel is the same you would feel if babies were killed in your neighborhood. If a crazed maniac started shooting at a family as they walked down the main avenue of their city, it would be national news. War is not an extenuating circunstance for these actions. The people who are conducting these massacres are serial killers who live among you by justifying their murders as acts of war, like Nir Maman, USAmerican cop and Bernaya Cherlow, who was invited to Congress. They should not know peace.

Giving up hope is not a choice for us to make. For 75 years, Palestine has resisted and it will be free within our lifetimes.

I have said this before and I will say it again, The South African apartheid collapsed due to boycotts. We have to do everything in our power to stop Israel's hegemony. Even talking to a group of friends about Palestine changes the status quo. There's no world where we can live peacefully if Israel accomplishes their goals.

If you have Israeli citizenship and wish to denounce it, a group of Jewish anti zionists have organized a guide on how to.

Keep yourself updated and share Palestinian voices. Muna El-Kurd said every tweet is like a treasure to them, because their voices are repressed on social media and even on this very app. Make it your action item to share something about the Palestinian plight everyday. Here are some resources:

Al Jazeera, Anadolu Agency, Mondoweiss

Boycott Divest Sanction Movement

Palestinian Youth Movement is organizing protests and direct action against weapons factories across the US

Muhammad Shehada (twitter)

Hind Khoudary - reporting directly from Gaza.

You can participate in boycotts wherever you are in the world, through BDS guidelines. Don't be overwhelmed by gigantic boycott lists. BDS explicitly targets only a few brands which have bigger impact. You can stop consuming from as many brands as you want, though, and by all means feel free to give a 1 star review to McDonalds, Papa John, Pizza Hut, Burger King and Starbucks. Right now, they are focusing on boycotting the following:

Carrefour, HP, Puma, Sabra, Sodastream, Ahava cosmetics, Israeli fruits and vegetables

Push for a cultural boycott - pressure your favorite artist to speak out on Palestine and cancel any upcoming performances on occupied territory (Lorde cancelled her gig in Israel because of this. It works.)

If you can, participate in direct action or donate.

Palestine Action works to shut down Israeli weapons factories in the UK and USA, and have successfully shut down one of their firms in London.Some of the activists are going on trial and are calling for mobilizing on court.

Palestinian Youth Movement is organizing direct actions to stop the shipping of wars to Israel. Follow them.

Columbia students are organizing in coalition with Jewish Voices for Peace to divest from Israel. Support them if you are on site.

Educate yourself. Read into Palestinian history and the occupation. You can't common sense people out of decades of propaganda. If your arguments crumble when a zionist brings up the "disengagement of Gaza", you have to learn more.

Read Decolonize Palestine. They have 15 minute reads that concisely explain the occupation (and its colonial roots) and debunk popular myths, including pinkwashing.

Read on Palestine. Here's an amazing masterpost.

Verso Book Club is giving out free books on Palestine (I personally downloaded Ten Myths about Israel by Ilan Pappe. If you still believe in the two states solution, this book by an Israeli professor debunks it).

Call your representatives. The Labour Party in the UK had an emergency meeting after several councilors threatened to resign if they didn't condemn Israeli war crimes. Calling to show your complaints works, even more if you live in a country that funds genocide.

FOR PEOPLE IN THE USA: USCPR has developed this toolkit for calls, here's a document that autosends emails to your representatives and here's a toolkit by Ceasefire in Gaza NOW!

FOR PEOPLE IN EUROPE: Here's a toolkit by Voices in Europe for Peace targeting the European Parliament and one specific for almost all countries in Europe, including Germany, Ireland, Poland, Denmark, Sweden, Netherlands, Greece, Norway, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Finland, Austria, Belgium Romania and Ukraine

FOR PEOPLE IN THE UK: Friends of Al-Aqsa UK and Palestine Solidarity UK have made toolkits for calls and emails

FOR PEOPLE IN AUSTRALIA: Here's a toolkit by Stand With Palestine

FOR PEOPLE IN CANADA: Here's a toolkit by Indepent Jewish Voices for Canada

Join a protest. Here's a constantly updating list of protests:

Global calendar

Another global calendar (go to the instragram of the organizers to confirm your protest)

USA calendar

Australia calendar

Feel free to add more.

#palestine #save gaza #free gaza #gaza under attack #free palestine

[prairiedust]

one thousand days of destiel, or cas: fuckerupper of endings

Idk why I’m crawling out from under my woodpile to write this, except that it occurred to me that in three years I’ve not rewatched a single episode of Supernatural and have at least two dozen tags yet blacklisted on tumblr, and that I am still not okay about this stupid show.

I never tried to tie up the folklore/author themes I’d been geeking out about through the last seasons, neither as the show was ending nor afterwards. I’ve been simmering now for over a thousand days. I could not even write a complete sentence about spn for all this time, and so I just left that pot on the back burner and did other things. Finished my Master’s degree. Started a new job. Saw my oldest child graduate from high school and move off to college, and helped my younger child move on to sixth grade. Watched some other shows, got a new blorbo, saw some movies, started painting again, picked up a couple of new hobbies as I am wont to do.  

Today is the 5th of November, 2023. (ETA i sat on this for a bit.)

November 5th, 2020, was exactly one thousand and ninety-five days ago.

I see gifs from the show from time to time and I think to myself, wow, that scene/episode/series is completely irrelevant to my life now. I am fine and normal about everything. But if it really was, if I really was, it would not hurt so much to see the gifs and the lyric posts and the amvs when they aren’t caught in my tag filters. So maybe it’s time to get some things out of my head and onto paper.

I genuinely, nearsightedly, naively thought that since Dabb et al had been the ones writing the whole folk v author themes, and thus posing as someone we could count as being on “our side,” the folk-side of the postmodern audience, they’d honor that conceit, even to the very last shot. 

They did not.

And yet… they absolutely did.

Which hurts and is fucked up, but also it’s fine. It’s fine.

In the end, the only “folk hero” (by which I mean the only force in the spn universe capable of warping the threads of the story with any permanence) was Castiel. When Castiel left the story (of his own volition, if you can find a comfortable layer of this meta pie for that concept to rest in,) the writers reverted to God Mode. Because Castiel had been their freedom, their mouthpiece, their avenue for improvisation, and so at the end of the series…

well, we got You changed me/I love you

   •

and then we got “Cas helped.”

So much has been written about that pivot point, but genuinely I don’t give a rat’s ass about rewrites, producers, the cutting room floor, or COVID. It exhausts me, and I’m not beholden to writing about spn for grades or notes or any kind of other bullshit that would oblige me to do research.

I feel like… we got what we got.

So let’s criticize some media.

The Paradox: 

Cas imploded— went from flexing the narrative from within to being narrated by a force from without. And I couldn’t bear to wrap my head around that for a long time. It seemed that this “twist” was beyond cruel. That’s what he got. Vanished and nerfed. For saying ily. That was what happened when he was finally in focus, fully revealed. He lost. He was relegated, along with Jack, to become heaven’s Two Men and a Truck.

It was a trick, the whole “Chuck is a writer” plotline. The Author regained control of the character that had previously been acting independently. Very Pirandellesque, very frustrating, ultimately even tragic.

So, yes, thematically and critically, having Castiel give up his Agency for Characterhood– giving up his ability to create plot for a role as a character in a plot— was ‘literary’ brilliance. It cemented his status as a grand fucker-upper of the show in a way that any show writer “authoring” a requited destiel ending would not and could not have done. Even Jack, I believe, had been “manipulated” into god-hood from within the narrative. Jack was Dabb’s grand metaphor, he was a product of Author. Castiel was… well, he was a chaos engine from the moment he walked through those barn doors. 

To seal the metaphor, the writers ended up living that truth.

I really don’t know if I’m being cogent about this. I’ve been struggling to turn this idea into words for, like, ONE THOUSAND DAYS.

The folk-vs-Author themes becoming A Thing in The Supernatural Show was like a chemical reaction: once the ions had bonded, the resultant compound could not be separated back into the different materials. What on that screen was Author, what was “author,” ie show writer, and what was text-experiencer-as-author? Where did the Sam-as-magician arc go, what were we supposed to do with the semi-metatextual moments that Mary had, having been brought back into the narrative by Amara, not Chuck? Everything got so out of control. Add in a smidgen of secret-sauce-TPTB possibly superseding the author/Author, and what you get is that ridiculous mess of a final two episodes.

It’s not about the rusty trombone or the butt hole pleasures. It’s about love. And kids.

Thank you, hon. It really is. (The above line was left in this doc by my spouse. It is a quote from The 40-Year-Old Virgin. I’ll allow it.)

Anyway. It was hard to see past the sound and the fury of it all. 

*****

I was feeling nostalgic several months ago and took a swim in my old meta tags; I found a gem from season…10? Idk and idc, but it was from “The Things We Left Behind.” 

I compared Claire to Sleeping Beauty (a tale that got a lot of use in later seasons) and wrote: “I tend to think that Castiel’s entire arc is about desperate and unintentionally misguided attempts to Change The Ending of whatever story he’s shown up in” and reading that again really kind of sucker-punched me.

‘We’re making it up as we go’ was the crux of Cas’ existence. Remember that half-related story in Baby wherein Cas got himself hitched to the Djinn queen? Remember when Jack died and the Empty came to claim him in Heaven and Cas made that terrible bargain? The last-minute attempt to gank Lucifer that actually got him killed and sent to The Empty?

Time and time again, Castiel’s go-to for “changing the narrative,” for advancing his plot, is self-sacrifice. In Chuck’s house against the archangel. The Leviathan disaster. Saying ‘yes’ to Lucifer. The Bargain for Jack in Heaven. And those times it worked out. Not without great pain for both the other characters and for the viewers, but he always came back. 

And with each return, his motivation became clearer. (Picture your favorite screencap of Dean here.)

Cas’ love grew, crystalized, and then disappeared, like frost on the windowpane of a house on fire.

If they had continued the CasDean storyline, it would have ultimately been The Author IRL writing/creating/manifesting/materializing ‘destiel.’ And so by putting a torch to all of that architecture, they essentially gave everything to us. Unspoilt. Fingerprints wiped. Serial numbers scratched away. Jailbroken. Whatever floats your boat. 

The confession was both affirmation and abnegation. Symbolically, The AuthorTM had washed his hands of it, but with destiel out of the picture, The Author also got his ending.

This is why “Cas helped” felt like a ‘fuck you.’ If Cas was out of the narrative, why did he come back as one of Heaven’s real estate developers? It did not fit. 

And yet. It did. Because Chuck won. Chuck, or everything that an Author represents in television land– TPTB, showrunner legacies, multiple producers, a chaotic and treacherous and politically messy writer’s room, multiple incompatible or unresolvable MOs and visions— all that ends up being packaged and presented as a single unerring vision.

So I have to admit, although I don’t have to do it with any ion of grace, that in the end it was pretty fucking smart.

Destiel is ours. Destiel is the folk ending. The Author never got to touch it, never so much as breathed on it, was so far divorced from the concept that the absence thereof going forward hit us like a truck full of bricks.

Yes, it hurts that Dean was just left on the floor until the credits rolled, that there were no final words, no ensuing acknowledgement. 

I’ll go so far outside the Text as to address the ‘Dean can’t reciprocate’ direction from one of the scripts:

If Dean had made a single move onscreen. Uttered a word. In Despair or either of the other two episodes.

Destiel would have been claimed by The Author. 

Anyway. I’ve been collecting posts now and again under the tag ‘the endless folklore of supernatural.’ For three years, the fandom has continued to loot, to ransack, to graffiti, to create and re-create, to burn, to mix, and to distill. 

There’s all kinds of things in that tag, it’s sort of a kitchen sink of everything that I thought was even tangentially relevant to folk-Destiel and the postmodern experience of creating text as a reader/viewer etc. 

We turned a literary story based on an urban folktale back into folklore. 

And so it goes.

I doubt I will do much more analysis of this show, even if it comes back, and I unfortunately can’t touch The Winchesters. But I can’t say I never will. I just thought three years, one thousand days, was a pretty good place to leave a marker on the trail.

—

Epilogue: About The Winchesters:

I did not finish watching The Winchesters because of something wildly, randomly, but highly personally triggering that was built into one of the episodes; however I am very sorry that it was canceled or possibly ironically lost to the WGA-SAGAFTRA strike of 2023.

“What is the maddest thing a man can do? Let himself die.” That’s the clue that leads Castiel to his hidden grace in a copy of The Man of LaMancha in 10.18 ‘The Book of the Damned,’ written by one Robbie Thompson.

I noticed from the get-go that Thompson gave Carlos the last name Cervantez. He was nodding to the self-immolation of the last cadre of writers of Supernatural and stating clearly that he was holding a pen, not a match.

Want some very fun and amusing and wildly pertinent facts about the Don Quixote books?

The narrative conceit of Don Quixote IN THE FIRST PLACE LOL is that Cervantes claims to have found a manuscript by a historian named Cide Hamete Benegeli and Cervantes thought the story was pretty neat, if a little rough; Cervantes retells the story for us from what he’d read by that author, distilling the “original” into the book we experience as Don Quixote the Man of La Mancha.

The final words of Cervantes’ Part One are “perhaps another will sing with a better pick.”

Later, someone publishing under the pseudonym Alonso Fernandez de Avellaneda wrote their own part two, feeling that the original author was taking too long to get their ass in gear (or judging by their own preface they felt that Cervantes had not even done the original story justice in the first place. Which is A Mood.)

So when someone actually did have the audacity to run off with his characters and commit word crimes with them, Cervantes absolutely obliterated the dude in his own Part Two. 

Thompson left Spn after season eleven. But, lest someone think this is a commentary about fan fic, he also wrote the episode Fan Fiction. So anyway all the Cervantez-Cervantes business was certainly something.

[dontcryminecraft]

I saw people sharing thier favorite animatics related to November 16th/cwilbur, so I'd join in!

SO, in no particular order-

WOLFY WILL BE APPEARING AGAIN AND AGAIN! WOLFY NEVER MISSES WOOOO! The lyrics are wonderful and i love the blind in one eye look, it's so cool! watching cwilbur spiral in limbo as they reassess everything matches really well with song!!!!

I LOVEEEEE knp!!!'s art style and the moments they add line up PERFECTLY! Every chorus going "i miss you" at a different point in cwilbur's life as the song follows him through his story!

this circulates in my brain about three times a week MINIMUM i know i keep saying but i won't ever stop screaming about the LYRICS FITTING THIS SO WELLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!11!!!!!1 He didn't have it in himself to go with grace!! *points over and over again* And he can go anywhere he wants! ANYWHERE HE WANTS! Just Not Home! *curls up and sobs* and cphil!!!! "YOU HAD TO KILL ME BUT IT KILLED YOU JUST THE SAME ... YOU TURNED INTO YOUR WORST FEARS" MY LORD ROZU

i said Wolfy would be back and here it ISSSS!!! i ADORE explorations of cfundy's rocky relationship with cwilbur 'cause THAT'S HIS DAD *cries* and then switch to CPHIL and the CTOMMY, ommmmmgggg *holds gently* the family dynamics. yet it focuses on cfundy and i think we as a fandom neglect that part of the canon family or at least i can never get enoughhhhh

So this is ABOUT Revivedbur, and features a lot of flashbacks from the l'manberg eras as it changes alongside cwilbur. It's ctommy talking to cfoolish about cwilbur and i think about this conversation so often it's wonderful to see it in an animatic! it really highlights ctommy's philosophy and relationship with c!wilbur! ToKtopus

oh this one is so heavy but also so beautiful and i love it so much. This is where I adapted the headcanon into my brain that cwilbur had a l'manburg flag sewn on the inside of his jacket, over his heart, at all times. the silent monologue of ghostbur until the line at the end about everything around him being alive, except him.

sometimes i think wilbur and tommy listened to two bird right before starting the pogtopia arc and went "hey we should base our ENTIRE dynamic this arc on this" and then went live lol. I love this artsyle it's so cute and fits each character so well! I love the eyes in particular!

O to the Z to the Y to the MANDIUS wooo!!!! this changed MY brain chemistry and this changed the FANDOM's brain chemistry! if you are new here watch to change YOUR brain chemistry! and then go watch the rest of sad-ist they were one of the animators who popularized and showcased the lore of the dsmp arcs! Wilbur connects this poem to his character and it's so awesome seeing it read out and put to an animatic!

The mix of stream quotes with music is a SAD-ist staple and one of my favorite parts of their animations it just makes everything so hype! This just showcases the pogtopia arc up until right before the final battle so well! i love it every frame is a screenshot *chefs kiss*

And the odd-ball choice! Not cwilbur or ghostbur or l'manburg related, but instead it's that Oncelor song about the SCHLATT ADMINISTRATION! There is a eye strain warning in the title that gets cut off in the link, so I'm letting you know here! this is a really fun video and the colors are very saturated and fun! It has great humor and i laughed multiple times all while being very foreboding about what's going on in the Manberg era.

annnnndd there is a ten video limit so instead I'm going to link the last two:

knp!!!'s animatic "Not Your Fault" which is about cphil and his feelings after killing his son, going through the guilt and blame and all that good stuff. The chorus of "it was not your fault but mine, it was your heart on the line. i really fucked it up this time, didn't i, my dear?" just KILLS me every time!

The follow-up to SAD-ist's animatic above is "Dawn of 16th" and is amazing as always for balancing the music with the dialogue to create and wonderful narrative about that day!

#ahyes an original post #videos embedded #mcyt #mcyt animatic #november 16 #dsmp animatic #cwilbur #wilbur soot #dsmp #wolfythewitch #rozu gold #sad-ist #knp!!! #ToKtopus #l'manburg #the other two don't have easily taggable usernames so #sorry #Youtube

[dr3amofagame]

How about 4, 16, 29?

4. What's your favorite c!Dream scene?

Yeah I'm a filthy prison c!awesamdream lover so to literally no one's surprise I'm bringing up the post-Techno escape c!Sam and c!Dream stream in the prison. Look it's the literal only stream we ever got of the two of them in the prison with Sam as the Warden and Dream as the prisoner after they were teasing that shit for over half a year can you even blame me. It incited the worst round of c!Sam apologism known to man. I wrote a thread for six hours on twitter once going insane about it. It made cc!Sam all but expose Staged Finale in a QnA thread like the next day. Apparently they were gatekeeping secret prison warden roleplay the whole ass time and this like one 20 minute scene is all we ended up getting and it still bounces around my brain nonstop like a pinball. What more can you ask for

29. Which emotion do you think rules c!Dream the most?

Fear. By and large. He's so afraid that literally everything got twisted in on itself. Like, god.

L'manburg + the revolution starts w/ c!Dream reacting to c!Wilbur with a. Honestly. Pretty healthy level of apprehension for a guy literally threatening him and his home. This leads to the establishment of the mythos (with c!Dream-as-tyrant-monster-villain as one of its cornerstones) which leads to the slowly growing isolation from c!Dream towards his home and friends (stares directly at how c!Tommy described Exile and c!Dream saying he's scared to be alone. screams.) This is what gives us a c!Dream who has honestly had Quite A Damn Few changes of heart at the beginning of pogtopia pledging his allegiance to Wilbur after c!Schlatt quite evidently scares the shit out of him. Then Vassal happens, he's locked into Wilbur's narrative, he speedruns through ANOTHER bunch of changes of heart (and these two as a collective is what leads to his isolation by the time we get to november 16th onwards, such as when we get to dethronement and c!Quackity is commenting on how c!Dream doesn't have anyone, such as when we look at c!Wilbur confidently asserting that c!dream has nobody if not wilbur) and then the revive book deal just. Fucking shatters him.

He's scared of the supernatural that he doesn't understand and he's scared of the people that he DOES understand (and what he understands is simple: they want him six feet under) and he's grappling with the fact that the world is breaking around him and that he-is-the-villain-the-snake-pure-evil-and-he-has-always-been and every allyship he has is founded on transaction because what other leverage does he have if not what he can give and he puts himself in a fucking obsidian box because the world beyond it is too much of a threat to his life and the man he trusted to keep him safe hurts him and lets others hurt him in ways he couldn't have imagined. he's so fucking scared by the end of things that he can't leave the torture box that literally destroyed him.

c!Dream and it's not paranoia if They're Actually Out To Get You...put me down...god it's just fear all the way down All The Way Down and he was still trying to figure out how to Fix Death and Reset The World To Save It From Corruption because at the end of the day he was so damn scared of being alone. i frow up

#ask game #my asks !! #dreblr ask game #MY EEPY MY EEPY #it's allllllllll fear #push him a little bit and you get the guarded defensiveness. the reserved nature. the silence. #push him further and you get the lashing out. the snarling and making himself everything but an easy target. #push him beyond that and you get the fawning. the sirs and bowing and easy obedience. broke the will out of him. god. #HE IS SCARED !! HE HAS BEEN SO SCARED !!!!

[aboxthecolourofheartache]

Ten Books to Know Me:

@chubsthehamster put out a "participate if you want to" call, and I fucking love books, so why not! 1. Johnathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, by Susanna Clarke - Read this first in high school and it rewired my brain. Dense, intricate, a November day of a book, it is about the inequities of class, race, gender, and also about the dry stone wall down the lane and its intimacy with the ivy that's grown over it for the last century. There are magicians and academic confrontations.

2. Food in England, by Dorothy Hartley - Read this a year out of undergrad. This is the book that convinced me that I could actually do something worthwhile with my interest in history. It was also fundamental in kicking a few chunks out of my ivory tower, but that's probably a personal take-away rather than anything essential to the book. Learn a few hundred small practicalities that may or may not be applicable to modern life; you decide.

3. Sabriel, by Garth Nix - The first book that spoke to baby's latent goth tendencies. The worldbuilding still lives in the back of my head. Made me interested in WWI history. Read it in middle school, I think? It was such a breath of fresh air, and I admired the protagonist and her self-discipline and self-reliance so much. Probably the first book that made me really worry whether the characters would survive until the end, and boy howdy was that formative. Zombies, quests to save fathers, learning that the legacy you thought was a burden is actually your calling.

4. Ombria in Shadow, by Patricia A. McKillip - Read in undergrad, I think? I reread it a couple times a year. It's a go-to story for when I need something comforting and decadent. I love the gauzy quality of the worldbuilding, the understated approach to very real-world dangers. A royal bastard, a former royal mistress, and a sorceress' apprentice race to protect a child king and save the and the living soul of a city.

5. The Sandman, by Neil Gaiman, et al. - This story got me through my late teens and early twenties. Exactly the right flavor of tragedy to grab my brain and shake it like a maraca; fundamentally changed how I look at stories and narratives. Person-shaped cosmic mechanism denies personhood, falls face first into the hole he's been digging for himself for a billion years, hitting every consequence on the way down, and finds a morsel of peace at the end.

6. Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio (聊齋誌異), by Pu Songling (蒲松齡) - I read this first while doing research for a fanfic and came away hungry for every bit of "classic" Chinese literature in English translation I could find. I've always had a fondness for supernatural anecdotes (The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries, by WB Yeats, etc), but this is on the list because it was the initial experience in an ongoing foray into classic and modern East and Southeast Asian literature.

7. Underland, by Robert Macfarlane - Read this a couple years ago. Everything you ever and never wanted to know about caves and being under the earth. The texture of Macfarlane's prose is unlike anything else, and he spends 500 pages leading you in and out of the dark.

8. Night Watch, by Terry Pratchett - This is my compromise instead of just listing every Terry Pratchett book. I read this when I was 12, and I mean it in earnest when I say it shaped how I think to this day. Pratchett's work is a load-bearing beam in my brain. Another grey book, but also lilac.

9. A People's History of the United States, by Howard Zinn - Okay look, LOOK, I know what you're thinking, but I read this when I was a teenager living in an extremely conservative pocket of a very liberal state. It made me think, which I was good at avoiding because school came easy to me and I usually didn't have to engage my brain at all to have the right answers. I wish with all my heart that I could write to the teacher who assigned it, because it was the very first time anyone had ever made me read history outside a history textbook. I resented that man so much at the time, but I owe him my current career.

10. Stiff, by Mary Roach - Read this as a teen and finally got answers about death I hadn't gotten in a lifetime of religious education. I think I actually snuck it into Mass, because I have a distinct memory of cramming it between the cushion and arm of a pew. Sparked an interest in death and human remains that lead me closer to where I am today.

Please consider yourself tagged if you'd like to participate! And tag me back so I can add more books to my tbr list, please! <3

[beevean]

((this is a spoiler to CoD but I really wanna say this))

One of the things I hated the most in NFCV is how they literally reduced a Devil Forgemaster's power to only necromancy... When they're SO much more powerful than that. They can LITERALLY MAKE WEAPONS just from the RAW ELEMENTS ALONE. And the fact that Hector could fight Death and Dracula! He literally REDUCED Drac's curse in the end!! ((Also his sassy response to Drac is "I'm the Devil Forgemaster. I can make your curse into a harmless thing." Alhdkahsja I love him so much)). I HATE how they make them so... Useless??? I don't understand they're so much cooler than the show made them out to be

(CoD will turn 18 this November, don't worry about spoilers lmao)

So, I'm a bit torn on this because I actually don't mind the change in NFCV... in theory.

Do I think Devil Forging in canon is absolutely fucking cool and badass and underrated and ripe with potential? Yes. There is a reason I made the crest my icon :P I love that Hector calls it blasphemous in PtR, I love the idea that they're literally spitting in God's face by creating cursed life!

Devil Forgemaster

A blasphemer who can manipulate magic and life

^ tell me that isn't the rawest way to describe Devil Forgemasters, PtR doesn't shy away from the religious symbolism and it does so in a much more tasteful way than NFCV

I love that it's Dracula's magic itself that they're manipulating, which explains how Hector and only him could nullify the Curse! (and this is also why I believe Isaac was really spreading it, and it wasn't just Death's lie)

Human beings embued with dark magic directly from the Dark Lord himself. Tell me it isn't the coolest thing in the Vaniaverse.

And yes, they are absolute beasts that can forge their own weapons with alchemy and fight with all sorts of weapons. Normal swords? Rapiers? Zweihanders? Axes? Spears? Electric guitar? Hector has it covered. I wholeheartedly believe that both of them were the terror of Wallachia when they worked together: how do you defend yourself against multi-disciplined, super strong, super tough knights that can literally sic dragons on you?

also yes Hector vs. Dracula is so fucking raw, Hector is the ultimate gigachad and I will die on this hill. He literally asks "Have you forgotten that I'm a Devil Forgemaster?" with the smuggest tone in his voice <3

Catch me I'm swooning <3 Hector literally turning Dracula's hard work against him <3 oh ho ho I bet he regretted having a protégé <3

I also personally love Isaac's "Do not equate a Devil Forgemaster's power with that of an ordinary sorcerer!" dude's so mad that trevor dared to underestimate him and his ex. i love him too <3

However. I recognize that, without the gameplay element, they would have been a little too OP. I am perfectly fine with the nerfing of Devil Forging in the show: not only limiting them by tying their powers to a weapon would have been an interesting obstacle to overcome, but the promotional posters of S2 gave them a very low Strength stat.

Basically, the idea, I suppose, was to make them squishy wizards: they're not proficient at all in physical fights, but they don't need to be, when they can control a whole army of demons. And as for the necromancy aspect, well, it would have emphasized even more the dark, cursed nature of their power. It's a facsimile of life, nothing more.

The problem is that, of course, nothing was done with this. Isaac can simply... stibby stab people in a row, and with no effort at all they become night creatures. Yeeting him into the Sahara would have been a great opportunity to make him lose his knife, and force him to live as a vulnerable human, and maybe learn about the value of human life that way, but nooooo can't make the darling babyboy of the narrative suffer even a little! He has Deep Speeches about How Much Humans Suck to make! 🙄 And we barely see Hector actually do his job, only for Carmilla's sake, which will never stop make me wonder, why did Dracula and Carmilla want him so much to the point of resorting to manipulation? Nothing in the story shows me that he has any usefulness! He's not smart, he's not physically strong, he's easy to manipulate, we have little idea of how good of a Forgemaster he is... some General he is! Isaac could have easily run the whole castle by himself, for how badass and invincible they made him!

In retrospect, giving Isaac a lower Strength stat than Hector was a bold lie. By all means, Hector should have been the more talented of the two even in this version: he was the child prodigy who was resurrecting dogs as a child, while Isaac had to study hard to catch up. But no. Hector was relegated to torture porn. Okay.

Oh, and never forget that the plot forgot about the "dark, cursed" part of their power when Carmilla needed a priest to bless the water :^) because what's consistency when we have to favor our babyboys and girlbosses :^)

(also eh i guess being too op didn't stop sypha from literally steamrolling her way through the show, so yeah, the point's moot anyway)

#castlevania #anti netflixvania #my i always turn into a chatterbox when i have to talk about my boys

[sroloc--elbisivni]

bunnyguard reflection

in the spirit of 'fuckit it's my own blog i can be sappy if i want to' as well as 'this took a year and 78k and i get to keep talking about it for at least one more day' now and here is the time and place for personal yap that did not go in the last author's note.

preliminarily speaking, i had this concept in mind before I'd finished either the usagi yojimbo comics OR watching Rise. i spent so much of both of those series fishing out little moments and choices by leo and usagi that made me go 'oh my god i NEED these guys to meet, i need to watch them bounce off each other.' I kept collecting snips of ideas, and dialogue, and encounters that never quite all panned out or fit together because this was just so much fun for me to play in. I had a lot of wanting to turn this into a real story but no concrete frame to build it on, and then in january i saw the year of the otp prompts go by. and went 'oh haha that looks fun.' it was even the year of the rabbit. and then i went 'oh!! what if i did VIGNETTES for these!!' and then less than three days later the Battle Nexus as political element of the Hidden City, complete with connections to the very different other iteration of it that we'd seen, fell into place and suddenly this silly little whim was an actual big project staring me down with an ambitious goal in mind, and I had no idea if I could pull it off.

structuring it as a month by month thing was something i'd never done before. it forced me to wait to find out what would happen, to keep building to something that didn't exist yet, to lay down the track while I was driving the train. and at the same time, it gave me space to grow, to practice putting together a beginning, middle, and end every month. and it gave me something to look forward to, and the excitement of dropping in threads that wouldn't pay off for months, and watching as it went to see what the audience reaction would be. were people getting out of it the things i wanted to give them? was i hitting the notes i wanted? i had the sketch of the year, but i was still learning what was going to happen until the moment the last word hit the page. plot and character choices, but also big thematic stuff! i described November's fic as 'the ten of swords' to Space and then went 'wait a fucking second' and realized that I could draw a connection, in order, between each fic and a numerical card of tarot's suit of swords. (mostly one-to-one --october straddles 9-10, and December loops us back around to the Ace of swords, for new beginnings.) i couldn't have done that on purpose. if i'd had that thought in january i would have gone 'no that's too pretentious and too hard' and avoided it.

also!! this has been a year of my life!! over the course of this series, i've had four different living situations (that lasted longer than a week), two different jobs, and gone back to school. i had to change meds, which was an anxious ordeal in 'am i even going to be able to focus on anything now?' the cat that was purring on my lap while i worked on the first few months has now passed away. this fic kept me company on the flight for my move to a different continent. it kept me sane in the middle of a very stressful summer. it's helped me meet and get closer to some really cool people. i can FEEL how it's made me a stronger writer.

and on top of all that: i am deeply, genuinely, truly proud of this series. i'm glad i wrote it. i'm amazed at how it's turned out. i can see things i would change if i did it over, but i'm glad i won't be. i'm glad this is the way it exists. and i am utterly blown away that there are people who told me they were looking forward to it every month, that they've been following it since the beginning, that they like what i've done with this place. this is the longest-term project i've ever done. it's the most words i've ever put into a single narrative. i can't believe it's never going on my wip rotation again. whadda hell.

i have no idea if i'll ever do anything like this again. i hope it won't be anytime soon--there are other things i want to do in the meantime. but god, am i glad i did it.

#sroloc babbles #fic talk #bunnyguard

[eurydicees]

FRUITS BASKET IS LITERALLY MY FAVOURITE ANIME OF ALL TIME PLEASE TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK OF ITTTTT

HI HIHIHIHI OK OK OKOKOK !!!!!! spoilers to follow :p

so like this is my third(?) rewatch i believe and i'm like. fuckin. like. fuckin crazy dude. i feel like i'm losing my mind. everything about this show is DESIGNED to make me feel insane. everything about it is simply written to hit me straight in the chest every time. i think my favorite thing this time around is actually the everything about yuki and kyo. kyo is just like. clenching fists. my specialest little character who i love so so so much. he means EVERYTHING to me. i want to pick him up and shake him around like a dog with a particularly long stick. im like. going crazy. and TOHRU AND KYO. their relationship genuinely has me like. frothing at the mouth thinking about it. it's about the choice to love someone and to let someone love you and it's something about healing and trauma and helping each other without fixing each other its about been seen and about letting people see you its about the choices you make and the ones that are taken from you and how you don't need to be perfect to deserve the love someone else is choosing to give you im gonna BITE THINGS. the next episode in my watch is the first part of the true form eps and im like. i was gonna watch them but then i was going too crazy just thinking about it and i needed to stop in order to preserve my sanity and also the safety of my electronics and the wall i was going to throw them at. so im currently paused, but im gonna hopefully finish s1 today!!! im going crazy fr. like. this show rots something in my brain. i truly cannot put it into words why. but my brain is ROT. i literally started rewatching and then decided a week into november that surely i can change my nanowrimo project to smth fruits basket related. because this surely truly for real is a good idea. anyways im going so crazy. kyo and tohru make me want to twirl the phone cord around my finger and write in my diary ( <- has neither a landline nor a diary). and god ok. akito. akito. akito. akito, who scratches at my brain and makes me feel fucking crazy. its just. the personification of the cycle of abuse and then the act of breaking it.....doomed by the narrative she is writing....im losing my mind !!!!! my entire goddamn mind !!!!!!!!!!!! yeah. yeah. yeah.

anyways i would looooooove to hear ur (and anyone) tell me their thoughts about it as well !!! i NEEEEEED to be talking about fruits basket all of the time rn and would looooooove to do that here !!!!!

#ask #fruits basket

[milfmacbeth]

Hi! Your top 5 best and top 5 worst endings of anything that you liked? Could be TV shows, books, movies, podcasts. Thanks!

hi!! thank you for the ask <3

i generally prefer tragic or bittersweet endings over unambiguously happy ones; this will be long; spoilers ahead (obviously)

best endings

hannibal

the wrath of the lamb fucking rearranged my brain chemistry. how do i explain to people that one of the most romantic things i’ve ever seen was a murder-suicide?

technically hannibal was canceled and not ended but in absence of a season 4, i will consider twotl the ending. i don’t even want a season 4 because i can’t imagine any better ending than the one we’ve got. yes, season 3b was a rushed mess of hannibal, will, and dolarhyde playing fuck marry kill with each other, but they stuck the landing so well, and it’s this perfect tragic mix of “this could’ve all been avoided” and “there’s no other way this could’ve ended”.

and yeah the ending is ambiguous and it’s implied they lived but my favorite interpretation is that they died in each other’s arms.

black sails

wars have been fought over the interpretation of this ending. i personally think john silver is lying but whatever your take, jack’s “a story is true, a story is untrue” speech is brilliant and it’s a perfect ending to a great show

fleabag

“i love you” “it’ll pass” I AM NORMAL. 

i love you, female characters written by women. i love you, comedy that turns into tragedy halfway through. i love you, clever use of narrative devices.

this show is damn near perfect, and even though the first thing i did after finishing fleabag was go on ao3 in search of thousands of words of fix-it fic, i wouldn’t change a thing about the ending. 

white fang

i wouldn’t say i have a favorite book, but if i had to answer that question it would either be the iliad or white fang. this is the book that got me into reading.

this book caught me at exactly the right time in my life. i was obsessed with wolves as a kid; i was 11 or so, and my grandma handed me this beautifully illustrated book that had the most amazing old book smell (because it’s been in a wooden attic up until then).

it’s about the life of a wolfdog (more wolf than dog) that was born in the wild but gets tamed/adopted into a dog pack that hates him because they can smell he’s not really a dog and hooo boy does something is wrong with you and others can tell that you’re not like them hit when you’re a lonely child.

anywayyyyyy it ends with white fang, having been adopted by a kind man, lying in the sun, still a little confused/out of his element but content. the ending is bittersweet and thematically fitting and he’s a good dog and deserves it.

the mechanisms

the mechanisms are a band of immortal space pirates telling stories of their adventures. their last album is titled death to the mechanisms and in the eponymous song , they realize they’re not quite as immortal as they thought they were. it’s sad, it’s funny, it’s beautiful, it’s poetic, and it’s a worthy send-off.

if you’ve got six and a half minutes, it’s worth a listen (even without context), if only for gems like “witnesses will say that they have never before seen someone so viciously excited to die” or “his body will float there forever, far beyond the warmth of stars” or “pointless, ignoble deaths the lot of them. but who that lived can really boast otherwise?” (this band is so quotable it's insane)

onto the hating!

worst endings

dexter

what the absolute FUCK was that. i adore this show but the ending sucks so much it feels almost malicious

supernatural

i’m not sure i can answer “do you like supernatural?” without a lawyer present. i was obsessed with supernatural as a teenager, then i stopped watching around season 10 or 11. i decided to rewatch the entire thing after november 5th. 

supernatural would be so good if it was good. i’m a “supernatural should’ve ended after season 5” truther but i admit that some of the later seasons do have their moments.

not the ending though. the ending is so completely beyond parody i don’t even know what to say. castiel is in superhell for gay angels. dean gets nailed by vampire clowns. when i first saw the aged-up version of sam i literally burst out laughing. at least the wincesties got a forehead touch out of it i guess???? i am so glad that i’ve built up enough emotional distance to laugh instead of rage about this because i know my teenage self would’ve had a conniption.

goethe’s faust and euripides’ orestes

they’ve got nothing to do with each other but i have the exact same beef with both of them so i’m just gonna throw them together. 

faust ending: faust loses his wager with mephisto and should’ve by all rights gone to hell but god says ????? (don’t even ask i’m not sure i could explain whatever twisted logic is going on there. something about faust using his devil-bestowed powers for good) and faust goes to heaven anyway.

goethe, my guy, you named the thing faust. eine tragödie. where’s the tragedy i was promised? false advertising. fuck you.

orestes ending: standoff between menelaus and orestes; orestes is holding a knife to hermione’s (menelaus’ and helen’s daughter) throat; this will not end well. or so you thought! at the last possible second, apollo swoops down and fixes everything, tells orestes to marry hermione and ???

nothing is satisfyingly resolved but hey, at least no one’s dead. except iphigenia, and agamemnon, and clytemnestra. this fucking family…

this is what the ancients called deus ex machina and what i call an ass pull.

i just think if you’ve constructed an entire narrative that follows a very clear, specific direction, you shouldn’t then swerve to the left. SEEMS LOGICAL TO ME

and it’s not just philistine bitching on my part btw. there’s actual academic debate about what the hell these authors were thinking. that being said, i’m a hater because i’m a lover, and i wouldn’t be so mad if i didn’t love both these plays

game of thrones

i am sure everyone has heard about how much the ending fucking sucks. from building up the night king to be a badass villain only to kill him in the ass-pulliest way imaginable in one (1) night, to walking back all the character development the characters went through to jon’s heritage being meaningless to having a thus far sympathetic dany snap and burn a city down over literally nothing to jaime and cersei being killed by falling rocks to brandon fucking stark, a character so uninteresting the show forgot about him for a whole season, sitting on the iron throne.

also, euron greyjoy is my favorite character in the books and i’ll never forgive the show for butchering him (i don’t know who the fuck that guy on the screen is, it sure ain’t euron).

one thing that i find fascinating is that it’s literally just the writing that sucks. the costumes are beautiful, the soundtrack is better than the show deserves (thank you ramin djawadi ilu mwah <3), the dragons look great, the actors are doing the best they can. highest production value piece of garbage ever made.

the magnus archives

(little warning bc i’m really mad about this so vitriol ahead. also, i have not listened to the magnus protocol and i’m not sure i ever will)

i yelled about this a lot and i’m ready to yell about this some more!! THIS IS A SEASON 5 HATE BLOG. i’m so serious it’s literally a better podcast if you ignore season 5 and act like MAG 160 is the ending.  jonathan ‘the archivist’ sims should’ve had a corruption arc and i will die on this hill, everything E V E R Y T H I N G pointed towards jon becoming a monster and enjoying it. it could’ve been so good!!! instead we got some formulaic bullshit, the concept of (and i cannot stress this enough) parallel universes introduced like three episodes before the ending, and the single shittiest romance i have ever been subjected to. the way martin treats jon is sooo fucking vile and yet the podcast is constantly like aren’t they so cute :) isn’t this soo romantic :) NO IT FUCKING ISN’T. he’s dating his shitty coworker who he doesn’t even like that much why exactly am i supposed to be rooting for this relationship jesus fuck i feel like i’m being gaslit. i don’t just have a notp i genuinely feel like jonmartin ruined the entire thing.

s5 also completely ignored jonah magnus who, apart from being one of the most interesting characters, is THE GUY THE PODCAST WAS NAMED AFTER. but yeah, sure, who cares about him? let's have five more episodes of jon and martin being fundamentally incompatible. 

and then there’s the ending where jon is the only one who stands up for what’s right. the podcast tries to act like keeping the fears in their world or releasing the fears are two equally bad choices but the latter is so clearly worse. so clearly the wrong choice to make. AND THEN THEY MAKE THAT TERRIBLE CHOICE FUCK THIS SO MUCH

tma season 5 is one of those cases where you can so clearly see the potential of something that could’ve been so great and they just threw that away AND FOR WHAT 

(ok i’m done yelling about this now. just kidding i’ll never be done)

#i am long overdue for a rewatch/reread of some of these #ask

[avida-heidia-5]

I wrote my very first F1 fanfic on this day on 27th November 2021.

This was back when my writing style was more simplistic, where I was struggling a little to form a half-decent narrative structure. The other thing I struggled with back then was the language of F1. It hadn’t quite entered my brain just yet! I was using simple terms that made sense to me at the time, so excuse any potential F1 linguistic oddities that may crop up! 😅 But I’ve somewhat improved over the years now that I’ve researched and understood most of it.

For those who are curious to read it, here it is!:

Miracles Happen at the Right Place at the Right Time | Formula 1

Starring: Sebastian Vettel, Lando Norris

Relationship(s): Friendship

Chapters: N/A

Words: 2.6k

One moment, he saw a rain sodden track. The next moment, he saw only stars.

The devastating crash in Qualifying at Spa causes Sebastian Vettel, who was informed of the incident, to rush to Lando Norris' aid.

Takes place during the horrific 2021 Belgian Qualifying.

WARNING: Strong language in the first half of the story. Minor injuries are also mentioned.

View on AO3 here or continue reading below the cut.

——————————

Rain gradually became worse and worse with every day that passed, and on this day in particular, it was the worst of the lot so far. It absolutely chucked it down! The whole track practically became a swimming pool in a matter of minutes.

Lando Norris was doing well over such appalling conditions, managing to finish P1 in the first two Qualifying sessions. Though despite such an achievement, he was cautious about competing in the third and final Qualifying session that was being held today.

The British driver had been dreading day and night that something was bound to trip him up eventually. And trip him up, it did, even when he should've expected it.

He attempted to correct an oversteer, but his papaya orange and ocean blue McLaren suddenly ended up sliding along the slippery tarmac and slamming side-on into the barriers at a blistering 180mph. The collision caused his car to pirouette violently and uncontrollably until it came to a stop on the other side of the track close to the barriers. Debris flew everywhere and scattered along the tarmac.

The sudden force of the crash caused Lando's head to jerk forwards and bash hard against the steering wheel. Despite wearing a helmet, he felt an indescribable agonising sensation surge through his skull. The pain was so great in fact, he could barely move a muscle to get himself out of the cockpit.

This is what Lando feared might happen, and that dreadful fear unfortunately came true.

“Double yellows!” Lando just about heard his team cry out over the radio along with someone frantically yelling “Off! Off! Off!” in the background.

Lando could just see through his helmet's foggy visor that there was indeed a marshal in a high-vis jacket waving two yellow flags nearby.

He flopped his head back against his seat, heavy with a throbbing head and racing heart.

“Fuck...!” was all he could utter before his body relaxed and his vision blacked out.

One moment, he saw a rain sodden track. The next moment, he saw only stars.

~~~~~

Sebastian Vettel was fully aware of the conditions he'd be faced with; he knew that the moment he stepped out of his hotel room.

Spa-Francorchamps is a beautiful circuit, filled with trees, grass and wildlife everywhere you looked. Just feasting your eyes on its magnificent scenery is bound to put your mind and soul at ease.

Unfortunately, the circuit is also home to strange and torrential conditions, and Sebastian had experienced most of them himself in often unlucky circumstances. Many a mighty motorist were unfortunate to have accidents and incidents aplenty there due to horrible weather. Even his hero Michael Schumacher got caught up in a few of them in his time at Formula 1.

When he heard the news that there would be a heavy downpour as soon as he stepped foot out of the hotel door, Sebastian almost changed his mind about competing in today's Grand Prix for that reason alone. However, if he did decide to skive off altogether, he'd get a heckling from his team bosses. He attempted that trick once before when he was in his Red Bull years, and he was given a severe reprimand as punishment for his actions.

Sebastian snorted at the thought. What a naughty, egotistical little rebel he was back then!

Now that he's older, he's become much wiser at decision making.

When he was faced with a rain soaked Spa today, he became concerned not just for his own safety, but the safety of other drivers as well.

He practically begged over the radio to inform the marshals to bring out the red flags as he was concerned about track safety, but his team ignored him every time, telling him to keep his head down and push on. Whenever he'd slow down, they would tell him to pick up the pace to improve his performance.

At this point, Sebastian no longer cared about his Qualifying results, however good or bad the outcome would turn out to be. All that was on his mind was road safety and potential hazards on the track.

Sebastian silently and cautiously cruised down the circuit in Honey Ryder, his lovely turquoise Aston Martin. He was approaching Eau Rouge for probably the 30th time (He'd lost count!) when he heard the following message through his radio:

“Red flag, red flag. Slow down. Slow down. Keep your Delta positive. Norris in Eau Rouge has had a big shunt. Lots of debris.”

This shocked and angered Sebastian. He knew this would happen at some point. What's even more shocking is that it happened to little Lando Norris. Lando Norris! The potential pole-sitter!

Sebastian's tone told the Aston Martin team exactly how he was feeling in the heat of the moment. “Yeah, well, what the fuck did I say? WHAT DID I SAY?” he nearly shouted, causing his speaker to turn into static for a second. “Red flag!”

“So, just be careful. There's a lot of debris. I can't see where.”

Surprisingly, his team spoke in a monotonous way, as if trying to soothe the German's growing nerves, though it came off as uncaring rather than supportive. At least, to Sebastian's ears.

“Yeah.” sighed the German, still fuming. “Fuck me! It's unnecessary.”

Maybe he should take over marshal duties someday. Not only would it be good work experience for him, he would also know what to do at the appropriate time, something the Aston Martin crew often lacked, especially in a situation as tense as this.

Eventually, Sebastian spots a dot of orange sitting beside the barriers in the distance and slows his engine right down to investigate.

“Easy, girl.” he coos softly to Honey Ryder, patting her dashboard as if she were a pet horse, as he approaches the scene of the accident.

He parks his car roughly nose to broken nose from each other so he could begin his inspection from inside the cockpit.

The McLaren was in a terrible state: The front wing was torn off upon impact along with a busted nose, the rear wing had been chopped off completely, and the wheels were bent in all directions. The red bulb which normally flashed proudly behind the car had been smashed, and a small slither of steam emerged from under the suspension. The papaya orange paint on one side of the car was stripped off, revealing a sturdy, dark grey metallic body underneath. Debris was carelessly scattered around the car and along the track, which caused various cars to swerve around it; some with ease and some with slight difficulty.

What a mess! Sebastian tutted to himself, stunned and appalled at the sight.

He could see Lando Norris slumped back in the cockpit, motionless. It seemed like the young Brit hadn't noticed him arrive. Or maybe he had, but was probably too exhausted to give it his full attention. It was really difficult to tell underneath that yellow helmet.

“Is he okay?” Sebastian asks through the radio.

His team reported back to him in the same monotoned manner as before. “I don't know yet, mate. I don't know yet. We did report it to the race director. He heard your radio.”

Well, that certainly didn't help matters!

Sebastian sticks a thumbs up at Lando through the cockpit as a way of asking if he was all right.

No response came, not even the slightest body movement.

Sebastian waits a little longer, in case he missed something. When he still didn't receive a thumbs up or any other kind of gesture in response, he felt his heart drop a thousand feet from his chest.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, FUCK!

He hastily unbuckles his seatbelt, rips off his earplugs that were wired to his radio, jumps out of the cockpit, throws off his pink helmet and white balaclava, and dashes over to Lando's aid.

Please don't be dead. Please don't be dead. For the love of Christ, PLEASE don't be dead. he prayed frantically to himself.

Sebastian's hands reach for Lando's shoulders in an instant as his panicked eyes study the young boy's face through his helmet's visor.

“Lando, are you okay?” he asks, voice cracking with nervousness.

Silence.

Sebastian lifts the visor up to be greeted with Lando's closed eyes and tranquil expression.

“Lando?” he repeats, gently shaking his friend's arm.

Another uncomfortable silence.

Anxiety builds in Sebastian's gut at a much faster rate than before. Thinking on his feet, he takes the helmet off and places it on the tarmac. He then leans over the cockpit to wrap his arms around Lando's shoulders and gently heaves him out of the seat. The young Brit was surprisingly light as a feather, evidently with the way he flopped loosely against Sebastian's shoulder like a towel over a railing, something which startled the German.

Sebastian repositions Lando by bobbing him into a cradled position, similar to how he would carry his children when he’d put them to bed every evening. This is so it would be much easier for him to carry while also trying to avoid breaking the boy's neck.

A hum of a motor pricks Sebastian's ears, and he locks eyes with the medical car, along with a few construction vehicles, which arrive on the scene bang on time. The construction people set to work tending to the damaged McLaren whilst the medics swarm around the two drivers to see if they were all right.

Before he could place Lando inside the medical car, Sebastian checks for a pulse. But something stops him. He felt something. Something minute, but very noticeable.

Lando was shivering!

Lando was shivering uncontrollably against his shoulder.

Sebastian blinked. He wiggles his arms around to see if he was imagining things. Lando lets out a faint, pathetic, but nevertheless adorable, throaty whimper in reaction.

Sebastian heaves a huge sigh of relief, his breath briefly exposed in the chilly air.

Thank! Christ! he whispered aloud, gazing heavenward as if he were actually thanking the Gods above.

“He's okay, he's okay.” he promptly informed the medics and they nod their heads in understanding.

Two medics step into the back of the car and gesture at Sebastian to come in. The German complies, still holding Lando in his arms, and carefully places the boy in a bed that was already laid out ready and waiting for them. He then grabs the grey bedsheet and tucks the boy in, with the cover coming up to his chin.

Sebastian crouches down so he is eye-level with Lando and watches him snuggle deeper under the covers in reaction to feeling the warmth enveloping through his little body.

While the medical car makes its way towards the McLaren garage, Sebastian takes the time to fill the medics in what happened while stroking Lando's matted, curly brown hair. The curls wrap around his fingertips and bounce lovingly like tiny springs on a trampoline. He liked how fluffy they were against his skin. Fluffy and delicate like feathers on a collared dove.

Sebastian looks down at Lando, then back up at the two medics. “Long day.” he shrugs lightheartedly.

When he turns his attention back to Lando, he finds, to his amusement, that the young Brit had fallen asleep.

Sebastian lets him rest. The poor boy has been through a lot lately, he notes, stressing over all the negative possibilities instead of focusing on the positive aspects of potentially winning his first pole position of the season. No wonder he's exhausted!

Lando was still asleep by the time the medical car arrived at their destination. Sebastian didn't dare leave his side though, in case something happened. He was a witness to the scene of the accident after all, and he was prepared to give his side of the story to the flurry of reporters who squeeze into his personal space and jab microphones at his face.

It was close to dark – somewhere between 5 or 6 o'clock in the evening – when Lando finally gains enough strength to open his tired, bright blue eyes. They immediately land on Sebastian's kind, dark blue ones. When Sebastian notices this, he smiles warmly at him.

“Hey. How are you feeling?” he asks gently.

Lando half-intentionally buries his face under the covers, mostly because of the throbbing headache that now entered through his skull.

“I hurt like hell.” he muttered.

Upon hearing the boy's low and raspy voice, Sebastian instinctively reaches for a bottle of water standing on a nearby shelf and hands it to Lando. Lando sits up to accept the bottle, grimacing as he does this, and starts guzzling the cool, fresh liquid down his throat, careful not to spill any excess down his clean white shirt.

“Whereabouts does it hurt?” Sebastian pulls the covers back halfway to check.

Lando stops drinking, screws the cap on, and gives it back to Sebastian. “Everywhere! My head, my arms, my tummy, my legs...but mostly this arm.” He slowly lifts his left arm up to show Sebastian which one he means.

“Do you want me to...?”

Sebastian's hands hover over the velcro strap on Lando's collar on his ocean blue racing suit, and Lando barely nods his head to answer.

He keeps still while Sebastian takes the velcro off and zips the suit down to his torso. Sebastian carefully rolls the left sleeve up to the boy's elbow to inspect.

“Oof! You've got a huge purple bruise around your elbow.” he exclaimed with a frown, twirling a finger above the boy's arm. “Looks nasty.”

Lando's whole body tenses up at this and his eyes grow wide with fear. “Is it serious? Am I going to die?”

Sebastian laughs lightly at Lando's naivety as he rolls the sleeve back down. “No, thankfully. You just need to be careful with it. Try not to move it around too much and make sure you rest it for short periods at a time.”

Lando nods, humming a response, then mumbles, “Really hurts, though...”

Sebastian grabs Lando's leg reassuringly. “Just be lucky you're still here with us, alive and kicking. That was a rather nasty accident you had there! I should think a lot of us were pretty shocked when we saw the footage. You even had me worried for a while!”

This made Lando smile a little. “I guess miracles happen at the right place at the right time.”

After a brief checkup made by the medics to monitor Lando's health, they give him and Sebastian permission to leave. This was because they learned that the boy was physically and mentally fit and healthy, and no other major injuries were spotted in other areas of his body.

Sebastian glances at the opened back doors over his shoulder, scanning the McLaren garage for anyone roaming about inside, then locks eyes with Lando once more.

“I suppose the guys are waiting for you in there. Are you okay to walk?”

“Go on.” replies Lando excitedly, already wiggling himself out from under the bedsheets and extending a hand out at him.

Sebastian clasps a hand around Lando's and guides him onto the ground. Lando's white socks land lightly against the cold marbled floor with ease. He stands erect, his balance steady and controlled, unaffected by the prolonged sleep he had earlier. Sebastian realises this and lets go of Lando almost immediately.

After exchanging “Okay”s to each other, Lando gives his friend a sweet little smile.

“Thank you, Seb. For saving me.”

Sebastian grins widely at Lando, showing off his pearly whites, and lets another husky chuckle escape from deep within his throat.

“Anytime, my friend.”

His reply gave Lando a nice warm feeling in his heart. He'd never had a proper conversation with Sebastian, only exchanging brief hellos, how are yous and the odd comment or two. And now, knowing just how much of a genuinely nice and kindhearted person Sebastian really was at his core when not hiding behind his helmet, Lando knew he would be in safe hands the next time they cross paths with each other.

He was a very, very lucky person indeed.

#✏️ Miracles Happen at the Right Place at the Right Time #My fanfic #My ramblings: F1 #sebastian vettel #vettel #lando norris #norris #formula 1 #f1 #f1 fanfiction #f1 fanfic #formula 1 fanfiction #formula 1 fanfic

[jammie3132]

Sir Knight and Prince Charming, Ch. 6

Fandom: Glee Pairing: Blaine Anderson & Sebastian Smythe Chapter Title: Plot Change: Prince Charming Edition AO3 Chapter Summary: Still reeling from finding out Sebastian was Sir Knight and his break-up with Kurt, Blaine keeps getting hit with more and more information. When he doesn’t know how much more he can handle, he is offered a lifeline from an unexpected source. Will this (FINALLY) lead him to his Knight in Shining Armor? Chapter Note: This is the part where I say I used canon dialogue in this chapter, although I rearranged it to fit my narrative. I have also never been associated with the television show Glee or any Ryan Murphy properties…because if I was, I wouldn’t write “fix it” fics.

WARNING: IMPLIED SELF-HARM OF MINOR CHARACTER DISCUSSED. What happens doesn’t involve self-harm, but I could see how it could be interpreted that way.

WARNING NOT RELATED TO THE SELF-HARM WARNING: Death of a non-canon character is briefly discussed.

“What did you do?!”

Santana smiled as she turned to face the personification of rage she created. “Whatever do you mean?” she asked with feigned innocence.

“Where are my clothes?! And gel?!” Before she could answer, Blaine rushed past her, straight to the closet in the office where he and Sam were storing their extra clothes during the remodel. The only boxes with his name were the two shoe boxes with his bow ties. “Where are they?”

“Stop whining, I left you clothes.”

“Two pair of basketball shorts and my superhero t-shirts…”

“And a hair and makeup person Annabelle knows recommended the hair serum I left in the bathroom. He swears it’s the best on the market.”

“Annabelle?”

“You said, and I quote, Now that I’ve broken up with Kurt, it might be time to make some other changes as well. I was being helpful.”

“Where…are…my…clothes?!!”

“In the dumpster out front…under 500 pounds of rubble. That’s what you get for playing around in the studio until 6AM and then sleeping until noon.”

“I have dinner with my dad tonight! I can’t go in this!”

“Don’t get your panties in a twist. I took care of clothes for dinner tonight and tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Since there’s no work being done here, we’re going shopping. Your mom said she’d talk to your dad about taking care of how we’re paying for everything.”

It took Blaine a moment to grasp what she said. “You called my mom?!!!”

“Texted. She’s in LA with Cooper so 3 hour time difference and whatnot. Did you really think I’d do something like this without approval from my boss?”

“FUCK!”

Blaine stomped out of the office and back down to the basement. He called Sam to vent before confronting his mother. His so-called best friend wouldn’t stop laughing…jerk!! He hung up and was ready to toss his phone when he received a shock 10x’s greater than discovering his wardrobe was gone.

“Hello, Blaine. It’s good to see you.”

Wes Montgomery

The person who befriended him when he didn’t trust people.

The person who not only convinced him he could be a Warbler but lead the Warblers.

The person who (for a short time) became the brother Cooper never was.

The person who told him the motto Once a Warbler, Always a Warbler no longer included him.

“Wes? Hi…um, hello. How? How do you know where I live?”

“Annabelle”

Blaine motioned for them to move their conversation into the lounge. “Annabelle? I’ve known that woman less than a day and she’s already entrenched herself in my life.”

“Would you expect anything less considering the way Sir Knight described her?”

His former mentor’s question was more surprising than the fact he was there in the first place. “You know about…?”

“You and Sebastian reconnecting? Yes, we all do.”

“I didn’t know Sebastian was still in contact with all of you. I mean, Sebastian left Dalton and moved back to Paris…again, none of my business, but can I ask a question?”

“Yes”

“If Sebastian left Dalton a couple of days after I said No Thanks, how was he performing at Sectionals in November?”

“What do you know about Sebastian’s parents?”

“They dumped him on his Nana when he was 2 years-old. He didn’t see them again until he was 16 when they ripped him away from everyone and everything he loved and brought him here. His dad had somehow become State’s Attorney but wanted to run for higher office. They wanted Sebastian in Ohio to present the illusion they were a happy family.”

“That’s about it. And while he’d made connections here, his plan was always to return to Paris when he turned 18.”

“Which was 2 days after Sam and I took McKinley’s trophy back. Why didn’t he say anything?”

“Would it have made a difference?” Wes knew he wouldn’t get a response, so he went on. “Sebastian’s parents fought his return to France, filing a petition with the court stating even though he was 18 and legally an adult, since he had yet to graduate from school they should retain parental custody. The court denied their claim but since his father was State’s Attorney, he was able to change the outcome…at least on paper. The French authorities had no choice but to send him back to Ohio.”

“That’s why he was at Sectionals.”

“When the Warblers arrived back at Dalton that night, his Aunt June was there with a legal court order emancipating him from his parents. He flew back to Paris the next morning.”

“That’s how he…wait a minute. His Aunt June?”

“Yes, and while I know you have a connection to her, I don’t know how. Any questions you have, you’ll have to contact her.”

Blaine sunk into the couch with a sense of defeat. Maybe Kurt was right about June choosing him to reconnect him and Sebastian, not for his talent. “She’s in France. Her sister-in-law…” He sat up so fast he almost jumped off the sofa. “June’s sister-in-law broke her hip. Sir Knight went to Paris because his grandmother was injured. She’s Sebastian’s Nana. She’s the most important person in his life. He loves her more than anything.” At least now he understood why Sebastian…Sir Knight cut off contact. His entire focus would be on her, as it should be. “Thank you for coming and giving me this information, although I still don’t understand why you did. The last time we talked…”

“Annabelle contacted the Warblers a couple of weeks ago trying to get information on you so I knew she knew, or could at least find out, your address. Answering your questions on Sebastian is the price I had to pay to get it. She thought you deserved some of the basics but couldn’t risk her job.”

“But Sebastian will understand you telling me?”

“He will when he finds out why I did it. Trent wants to see you.”

Trent came to you because he thought you’d get rid of the steroids without destroying the Warblers. Arrange some kumbaya sing-a-long like after what happened with your eye. But instead, the Warblers were disbanded and the New Directions got their slot at Regionals. And despite everything you did, our baby-faced Warbler blames himself. You broke him!!

With the words Wes screamed at him the last time they met ringing in his ears, Blaine hugged his legs into himself as if the action would protect him from the memory. “Why?”

“His counselors suggested it as part of his recovery.”

“He’s still…”

“In Big Sur, yeah. He understands you’ve probably got a lot going on with school right now so, this summer?”

“What would I say? That I fucked up? That I didn’t realize how pissed I still was they left me screaming on the ground after the Slushie? That because of the way I felt I should’ve had Trent call you for help? That I should’ve gone to Dalton and talked to the Warblers before I did anything else? That I should’ve remembered Once a Warbler/Always a Warbler wasn’t only in good times? That I was pissed Sebastian let the steroids happen and the only reason I went to Dalton after the scandal broke was to confront him? That I ran away when you told me he left for Paris months before? That it took months to realize my running away from Dalton that day was no different than what they’d done in that parking garage?”

“Blaine…”

“That I trusted someone I shouldn’t have?”

“Yes, to all the above, but I’m personally interested in the last one. Let me guess…Schuester?”

“I never should’ve let Sam and Finn convince me to trust him. I’m not blaming them. This is all on me. But I told Schuester over and over again, the number one priority was the health of the Warblers. Then it was keeping shit out of the press. Colleges, especially Ivy League, could deny someone admission for just being associated with a scandal. He swore he told the Show Choir Association to keep it all hush-hush. When all hell broke loose, I wanted to believe him. Maybe I was in denial, I don’t know. Then the New Directions were awarded the Regional’s slot. I wanted to protest but the other New Directions were so happy, especially Marley who blamed herself for the disqualification since she was the one who fainted. And we were already going to have to pull people out of thin air to make 12 members…”

“I get it, but how did the Show Choir Association justify awarding the New Directions the slot?”

“A wink and a nod then *poof* a random bylaw is conveniently interpreted to say defending National Champions receive an automatic bid to Regionals. None of the previous champions were ever notified this was an option but the bylaw was (air quotes) always there.”

“Ok” Wes stood up, signaling he was done with their conversation. “This was productive. I believe we both had several lingering questions answered. You are to have Santana contact Annabelle when you’ve made your decision about Trent. I’ll see myself out.”

Blaine followed him, knowing he might never get another chance to say something. “Wes…thank the guys for keeping my secret even though I didn’t keep theirs.”

“How do you know they have?”

“Hunter would’ve blackmailed me instead of stealing the trophy. And then the steroids…“

“It wasn’t Brittany’s fault the Lima education system failed her. The only question we had was, if that psycho cheerleading coach hated the New Directions so much, why didn’t she report they were competing with an ineligible member, especially after you guys won Nationals?”

“Britt was also a cheerleader. If the New Directions had to give back their trophies, so would she.”

Wes nodded while wondering why they’d never thought of the rather obvious answer. It wasn’t like he and the guys hadn’t discussed the topic dozens of times. “Blaine, the guys considered reporting Brittany’s ineligibility after what happened with Trent. Not because of you, your exile was the proper punishment. It was because of Schuester. We knew he was involved, just not to this extent.”

“What stopped them?”

“Between Trent and your eye, we decided the bullshit had to end. Brittany didn’t deserve to become another collateral damage victim. From what we remembered she was a sweet girl, innocent like Trent. Being the reason the New Directions were stripped of any title she participated in would have broken her.”

”Like I broke Trent.”

”Yes”

Wes always did know how to get straight to the point. “Any way, thank you...and thank them."

"I will, but one last thing. The Warblers involved with Uptown Girl explained to me, at nauseum, the connection between you and Sebastian. How Seblaine will eventually find their way back to each other. Despite how we feel about you, Sebastian will always be a Warbler. Don’t make him choose between us.”

“Are you saying if Sebastian and I got together, the Warblers would cut him off?”

“No, that’s not what I said. Think about it. Goodbye, Blaine.”

Not long after Wes left, Blaine grabbed his gym bag. Why not? He was dressed for it. His only regret was he’d have to suppress his desire to hit the heavy bag since he was planning on working on music later. Playing an instrument with sensitive knuckles was never fun.

But DAMN, he wanted to hit something.

He didn’t stay long and on his arrival home he was met with the Habitat for Humanity volunteers loading items into multiple trucks and Santana sitting on the front steps with a notepad. “Keeping track of what’s leaving or plotting to make my life even more miserable?”

“You attend the most expensive arts school in NYC and your parents hired me to handle all those pesky everyday tasks so you can focus on your talent. You’re living in a ridiculously luxurious basement through a million dollar remodel of a house your parents bought for cash. There are currently volunteers hauling perfectly good, but not your mother’s style, housing materials out of the million dollar remodel to build housing for people who can’t afford it. Your life is not miserable, Little Prince First World Problems. You might be dealing with a lot of shit, but…but…choose your adjectives carefully.”

Wow, that was a lot…and true. “Hey” Blaine sat on the steps next to her and bumped their shoulders. “I’m sorry.”

“No, I shouldn’t have jumped on you like that. I was talking with the Habitat team leaders earlier and it hit me what could’ve happened if you and your parents didn’t save me.”

“San, after what happened to him, Sam would’ve never let you become homeless. And even if my parents were out of the picture, I wouldn’t have let it happen either. I’m kind of sad you don’t realize that.”

“Thanks, Kid.”

“Any time.” Blaine saw her smile return, but it was obvious the topic continued to weigh on his friend. “But I really do have a major first-world problem. A crazy bitch threw all my clothes in a dumpster!”

Santana laughed so loud, one of the volunteers almost dropped the sink he was carrying. “Check the closet in the office. I had Annabelle call the stylist you went to for the Met Gala. His people sent stuff to tide you over until our shopping spree tomorrow.”

“Stephan? Why him?”

“He had your measurements…duh! Go take a shower. I’m busy and you smell like a boy.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Blaine kissed her cheek before doing what she said. His parents’ House Manager was beginning to take her responsibilities way too seriously, but for now, he was ok with it.

A shower wound up being exactly what he needed. And the clothes Stephan sent over were not only perfectly tailored, they were a style he’d been eyeing but was afraid to try. He put on his glasses to rest his eyes then read the instructions for the hair serum. The moment he was satisfied how his curls framed his face, his phone rang. The photo that appeared was a surprise, not as big as Wes, but still a surprise. “Hey, Marley! It’s good to hear from you when we’re not discussing the lockdown. Hold on, you don’t want to talk about the lockdown, do you?”

“No, and I know I’ve kept my distance since I left McKinley, except on the anniversary…”

“Marley…”

“I need a favor. A big favor.”

An hour later Blaine was in a recliner in the theater with his laptop, tablet, phone, and Marley smiling back at him from the screen. Video chats were so much easier using the projector. “Are you sure you want to stay here with all the construction? My mom was serious when she said she’d get you a hotel room.”

“Blaine, all I asked was if you could find out why NYADA rescheduled my audition from Monday to Wednesday. This is too much…way, way too much.”

He agreed it was too much, but it helped ease his guilt. He was fairly certain he was partially responsible for her schedule change…but only like 3%. The other 97% was Kurt’s fault. All NYADA students required to attend a week of seminars on professionalism and legal issues in the entertainment industry? Like that didn’t scream Kurt and his Sebastian/NDA issues.

“I wish you would’ve said something sooner. What were you thinking scheduling both your Tisch and NYADA auditions in one day?”

“I was thinking Mom and I could afford plane tickets to and from NYC but not plane tickets and hotel room. This is all a pipe dream anyway. Even if I get into one of them, I don’t know how I’m going to pay for it. Maybe I should cancel.”

“Concentrate on your auditions. Thanks to my brilliant scheduling you’ll have most of Sunday here to relax before Tisch on Monday and the entire day Tuesday to relax before NYADA on Wednesday. I’m just upset I couldn’t get you out here tomorrow so you could protect me from Santana when we go clothes shopping.”

Marley began to laugh “No can do. I’m totally Team Santana on this one.”

“Well, I’m going to tell her to find you new audition outfits so take that!” Blaine saw Marley’s demeanor change and wondered if he’d push things too far. “Mar, you know I can’t tackle a problem without an immaculately detailed 20 slide power point presentation. You had the unfortunate timing of Sam being in Kentucky. No one ever believed he was the one to reel me in on all of Blam’s Big Ideas but now you know better.”

“I missed you…and Sam, of course. I’m sorry it took the anniversary of the shooting for us to reconnect.”

“You and me both, but that’s the past. Let’s focus on the future.”

When their chat was done, Blaine texted his mom to confirm the car she arranged to pick-up Marley at the airport. It didn’t take long for him to receive a text with a link to the information as well as a reminder of dinner with his father. The constant reminders had him believing this was more than a simple meal because his father was in town.

Something to obsess over later.

He’d awoken that morning (technically afternoon) with a song idea, but the craziness of the day hadn’t allowed him time to get it on paper. He went to the studio to jot down some notes, but for the first time in a long time, everything poured out onto both the piano and sheet music without constant editing and doubt. He was finishing the second verse when he heard…

**Cough**Cough**

“Santana, I’ve told you a million times. If the red light outside the studio is on, it means leave me the hell alone.”

“I’m not Santana.” Blaine closed and reopened his eyes. Nope, he wasn’t imagining this. “You look good. I like your new clothes, and the glasses…and your hair.”

“You’re lying. Go home Kurt.”

“I want to talk.”

“I don’t. No wait, I’ve got a question. How the hell did you get down here? I locked the door at the top of the stairs when I took a shower.” Kurt rocked nervously, telling Blaine he wasn’t going to like the answer. “Well?”

“Um, you didn’t change the code on the lock pad, so I let myself in.”

Shit!

“I said waiting until Monday would be a mistake. Everyone else said you’d never get through the front door. By the way, how did you get through the front door? I want to rub it in while doing my I told you so dance.”

“I didn’t break in, if that’s what you’re insinuating.”

“Well, I’m pretty fucking sure Santana didn’t let you in.”

“Fine! There were workmen taking out garbage, so the front door was open.”

“So, on top of getting a locksmith out here ASAP, Santana has to go Lima Heights on the foreman for his men letting a random person off the street walk into the brownstone without finding out who the fuck he was?!”

“Why are you so mad? I’m not a random person, Blaine.”

“After the shit you said to me yesterday, random person is the nicest title I have for you.”

Kurt didn’t roll his eyes, but his frustration was palpable. “I’m sorry.”

Blaine immediate reflex was to say I don’t care but changed his mind. He could count on one hand the times his former boyfriend apologized during their entire relationship. “You’re sorry for…?”

“Look, this isn’t how I wanted this to go.” Kurt took a deep breath before taking Blaine’s hand in his. “I'm here to get you back. I don't mean to blurt it out like that, but for the sake of clarity, you should know that first I'm going to get your forgiveness and then I'm gonna get your heart back.” Blaine stared at him like he’d grown another head, and for some unknown (idiotic) reason, Kurt took his silence as a sign to keep going. “I know I blew it. I blew the best thing that ever happened to me.” He let go of Blaine’s hand and pulled a wrapped gift from his messenger bag. “Please, please open this. It will prove how serious I am about winning you back.”

Damn it! Why did his curiosity keep playing along? “Airplane tickets to Las Vegas? I don’t understand.” That all changed when he looked up from the tickets to find his (obviously delusional) ex on one knee, holding out a ring box.

“Marry me. I called one of those tacky wedding chapels and we have a slot for tomorrow night. We’ll be back in time for classes on Monday. I know you. There’s no way the ridiculous rumors you dropped out and are meeting June in Paris are true.”

“You want to get married? In Vegas? Tomorrow?” Blaine heard exactly what Kurt said but the two newcomers hadn’t. Although, the bended knee/ring combo spoke for itself.

“I understand it’s not the wedding I…we dreamed of but when the brownstone is finished, we can throw one here for our family and friends. Or better yet, we could rent an event space in one of the posher downtown hotels…”

“Enough!”

Kurt turned his head to see Santana, standing quietly, recording his proposal. She wasn’t the problem. It was the man standing next to her.

Blaine moved around Kurt to stand in front of his father. “You have to let me handle this.”

“No”

“Dad, if you kick him out, Kurt will somehow turn my breaking up with him into a Shakespearean tragedy with you as the villain preventing us from being together. He’ll never let it go.”

Charles pulled Blaine into a hug without taking his eyes off Kurt. “Santana, set a timer for 10 minutes. If Mr. Hummel isn’t gone by then, send down some of the construction crew to remove the trash.”

“Dad…”

“10 minutes, Blaine. Santana…?”

“On it, Boss. Where will you be if I need you?”

“In the theater, taking advantage of the soundproofing. Start the timer the moment I shut the door.”

To be fair, Santana didn’t start the timer until she closed the door at the top of the stairs. With the elder Anderson out of the room, Kurt suddenly had plenty to say. “I’d turn our love story into a Shakespearean tragedy? How could you say something like that? I would never…”

“Are you fucking serious? You don’t remember any of the tales of woe you caterwauled during our last break up? I’ve seen the NYADA blogs. How it’s already common knowledge I dumped you leaving no way for you to spin the rumors in your favor without breaking your NDA, again. And because of your inability to take responsibility for anything, your next logical step would be to blame someone close to me since I can’t be turned into the villain this time.”

“But Blaine…”

“Oh, and if I hear or read one mention of what happened between me and my dad and building a car, I will bury you.”

“You can’t do that!”

“True, but remember my new friend Annabelle? She can. With how much she dislikes you, I wouldn’t be surprised if she already started a just in case file. Maybe I can finally get the full story on the Santa Clause who robbed the loft right before your dad and I arrived from Ohio that Christmas.”

The 15 shades of red Kurt’s face turned were amazing. “I…it’s not…what happened to you? You’ve never acted like this! This is all Smythe’s fault!”

“You’re so focused on Sebastian and Sir Knight, you’re blinded to what is now so obvious. We were bad for each other long before any of that happened…toxically bad. I've been telling myself Love shouldn’t be this hard but couldn't find a way to fix our relationship. I'm beginning to understand our problems weren't the accusations you constantly spewed at me.  The problem was I let you do it.”

“Blaine…”

“No, I will not marry you. I don’t even want to be friends with you. Hopefully, someday we’ll learn to be civil considering our shared ties to the New Directions. And since you have no sense of awareness, show up uninvited again and I’ll let Santana call the cops. I’d do it myself, but it would bring her so much joy.”

“Damn straight it would” Santana responded, holding out her phone. “One minute, Hummel.”

Kurt marched up the stairs, Santana right behind. Once they were out of sight, Blaine spread out on the floor and closed his eyes. He thought when a person expelled that much negativity from their system, they were supposed to feel lighter…free. He was just exhausted.

The next thing Blaine knew he was opening his eyes and groaning as he slowly rose from the floor. His dad’s voice was coming from the theater, so he headed toward the room to find the man in a recliner, wearing a pair of Sam’s sweats and a T-shirt, Empire Strikes Back cued on the screen. WTF???

“Santana, consider the dress a bonus for how you tore the foreman a new one. I hadn’t laughed that hard in a long time…The restaurant knows to charge the bill to my credit card…Yes, I know Old Homestead Steakhouse is the most expensive steakhouse in NYC…That’s why you’re getting the special menus without prices. And no Googling before you go. Santana, Sleeping Beauty is awake. You and Annabelle enjoy the dinner. Bye.”

“Dad?”

“Nice nap?” Charles rushed out of his seat as Blaine appeared ready to pass out. “Ok, let’s get you to the lounge to lie down. I can turn down the lights, it looks like you’re getting one of your headaches.”

“I’m fine. We’re supposed to go to dinner.”

“We were but when Santana and I found you passed out on the floor, I switched our plans. Santana and Annabelle took our dinner reservation.” Once Blaine was situated on one of the sofas, Charles covered him with a throw blanket before getting Tylenol and a bottle of water. “Here take these. When was the last time you ate?”

“Um…yesterday. Where are you going?”

“To find something for you to eat more substantial than the hot dogs, popcorn and cupcakes I planned for our movie marathon.”

“Sam lives here. We always have healthy food.”

“Another reason why I love that boy. Close your eyes. I’ll be back in a minute.”

As fuzzy as his head was, Blaine wondered if he misheard something his father said. “Did you say you gave Santana and Annabelle our reservation? You willingly gave up your favorite steak in the world for Star Wars and hot dogs?”

“No, I willingly gave up my favorite steak in the world for my son. Close your eyes. That’s an order.”

“Sorry, Santana’s now the boss of me.”

Charles chuckled knowing (but would never say out loud) this was the very reason his wife hired the girl. “Do you want me to call her?”

“No, I’ll close my eyes. And Dad…thanks.”

“Baaaaaassssss, please...more.”

“B…”

“Don’t say it. Anytime I’ve dreamed of being naked in a bed with you, we were never making love. The sex was always hard, pounding, passionate, sometimes pornographic. I want this…I need this.”

“Your wish is my command, Killer.”

Blaine opened his eyes to the instant buzz kill of his dad on another sofa with his briefcase and documents spread out on a coffee table. Hopefully, he hadn't done anything embarrassing in his sleep.

“You’re awake. How’s your headache? You were moaning for a while.”

He thought nothing could knock The Gap Attack out of the #1 position on his Most Embarrassing Moments of My Life list, but he was wrong…so, so, wrong. “My headache is better, but I am hungry. I was probably dreaming of food.”

Sounds reasonable

“Well, I talked to Sam, and he said the best thing to do is give you food in small amounts every half hour. First, were going to raise your blood sugar…OJ, almonds and black tea with honey. He said your headache might be from caffeine withdrawal. Evidently you have quite the coffee addiction.”

“If I’ve got to raise my blood sugar, why not one of the cupcakes you mentioned? I’m assuming they’re the double chocolate-chocolate chip jumbos with hazelnut frosting and a salted caramel core from the bakery by the Plaza.”

“Of, course.”

“To celebrate my breakup with Kurt?”

“Not going to deny it but I’m not nearly as bad as your mom.”

“What did she do?”

“An expensive bottle of champaign was delivered less than an hour after I told her.” Blaine couldn’t help but laugh because that was exactly something his mom would do. “I’ll be back.”

Spending time with his dad like this was nice…and then completely ruined when he remembered he never told his parents the name of the Warbler who threw the Slushie. They never asked, so he let it go.

However, Kurt didn’t. When he reminded his then boyfriend he was the one who gave away the only piece of physical evidence without asking the VICTIM first, he backed off. Now there was nothing stopping him.

When Charles returned, he put the nuts and OJ on the table next to Blaine before handing him the tea. “Drink this while it’s hot.”

“Dad…”

“Drink now, talk later.”

It was the best tea Blaine ever had, but he had a feeling it was because it felt so good going into his system. This wasn’t the first time he’d gotten so busy/distracted he skipped meals, but nothing like this had happened. He put down the mug then drank the OJ in less than a minute. Grabbing the bowl of nuts, he adjusted to get comfortable. No, he was already comfortable. This was nerves. “Dad, I need to tell you something and we need to do it now. Kurt knows and I can see him trying to get revenge by telling you first. Do you remember when you were here the last time and Sam and Santana were teasing me about someone named Sir Knight?”

“He was the wrong number June gave you who wound up being your Knight in Shining Armor by helping you get where you were supposed to be. Right?”

“Yes. We never told each other our names. There’s some super-secret mystery involving his career, so it was easier that way.”

“Super-secret mystery?”

“There are $1 million NDAs involved. Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is I didn’t try to find out his real name, but I did. I knew him. He went to Dalton after I left. His name is Sebastian.”

Charles sat stoically for a few moments then smiled bigger than Cooper at the end of his Free Credit commercial. “Sam was right? Your mother and I didn’t want to get our hopes up…”

WTF??????!!!!!!!

“Dad, I don’t think you understand.”

“Sebastian Smythe was the Warbler who threw the Slushie that caused you to have eye surgery. I know, so does your mother.”

WTF??????!!!!!!!

“You KNEW?! Who told you?”

“Seb. He came to the hospital to meet with us while you were in surgery. He didn’t tell you the night you stayed at his parents’ house after the lockdown?”

WTF??????!!!!!!!

“That was months later. And how…how did you know I was with Bas that night?”

“You call him Bas? That’s nice. And we knew you were there because he texted us when you arrived and left for home. He knew we’d worry.”

“He had your phone number??!!!”

“Seb didn’t tell you…” Charles’ eyes went wide as he leaned back into his sofa. “You two didn’t talk at all, did you?”

New #1 on his Most Embarrassing Moments of My Life list

“Uh…”

“I don’t know if I should give you a birds and the bees lecture or a high five because Seb left no tell-tale marks and you were gone for HOURS!”

“DAD!!!!”

“What? Your mom and I never understood why you went back to Kurt when someone as perfect as Seb was right there, and now it makes even less sense. He moved back to Paris…but Son, HOOUURRS!”

“Dad, stop! Or I might actually pass out this time.”

“Ok, you rest. It’s time for scrambled eggs, Greek yogurt and pushing water to prevent dehydration. Plus, I have to call your mom, or she’ll kill me for not telling her as soon as I found out.”

“Dad…don’t, don’t…just don’t tell her everything.”

“Scared Cooper might overhear?”

“Yes, but also…SHE’S MY MOM!”

It was another hour until Blaine could look his father in the face, but the time gave them a chance to self-evaluate what happened. Both knew the direction their next conversation must take, but they’d been avoiding it for so long it was hard to know where to start.

Upon returning from his third trip to the bathroom Blaine broke the ice. “I’m pretty sure we can cut back on the water.”

“You weren’t as wobbly this time but you’re still awfully pale. Maybe it’s time to go to an ER.”

“I don’t think my continued paleness is from skipping a few meals. It’s me enduring the most embarrassing conversation of my life.”

Charles closed his briefcase and settled in for Part 2. When he invited Blaine to dinner it was to tell him some news regarding both him and his brother. He was beyond relieved it had been delayed because what happened next was going to weigh heavily on his son’s opinion. “Was it embarrassing because for so long you believed I was a homophobe?”

“I knew you weren’t a homophobe, I just thought you didn’t want a gay son. For some reason it was easier to believe than…”

“I would always choose Cooper over you?”

“Well, yeah but both could’ve been true.” Almost 5 years of pent-up anger boiled to the surface and Blaine was finally ready to let it out. “We were supposed to talk, just you and me, the day after I told you. But no! Copper had another one of his never-ending emergencies and you flew out to LA instead. I was so hurt and then the car arrived.”

“It was horrible timing, I know. But when I tried to explain you yelled that because I left you went online to learn about sex from gay porn sites.” Charles’ train of thought was cut-off by an epiphany. ”Blaine, my comment about a birds and the bees lecture…I’m so sorry. Hell, everything I said was inappropriate.”

“At least now I know for sure you don’t have issues with my being gay. But then what was up with the car?”

“Again, I’m so sorry, but I didn’t realize the ramifications of my leaving until I was halfway to LA. I want you to understand I figured out what I’d done wrong before my plane landed.”

“Why?”

“Because I checked my voice mails while waiting for the rental car. It was full of angry messages from you mother telling me I’d better come up with a way to fix my mess or not bother coming home.”

Blaine grabbed his phone and sent an I LOVE YOU gif to his mother. “Is this where the car comes in?”

“I don’t know if you remember, but when you were around 3 you’d find ways to get past the gates and come into the garage when I was working on that old Camaro I rebuilt. You wanted to help so badly I’d lay out my tools on the floor for you to bring to me. Some of them were so big and you were so little…”

“I do have some flashes of those memories, but they might be from looking at the photo album full of pictures Mom took.”

“Your mom does love to take pictures.” Charles didn’t want to admit he’d forgotten about the album. Yet another way he’d failed Blaine. “In less than a month I didn’t have to point them out, you knew every tool, even the sizes of wrenches and the difference between Phillips and Flat Head screwdrivers. But I’d bought the car for Cooper’s 16th birthday and he didn’t want it so I sold it. I was so upset but didn’t consider you would be as well. Then your mom bought you your first violin and your path as a musical prodigy began. Son, I didn’t get the car because I wanted my straight son back. I got it because I wanted my little boy back.”

Blaine went to sit beside his father and dropped his head on his shoulder. When Charles wrapped his arm around his shoulders, he felt a sense of calm unlike any he could remember. In the Anderson family tradition, he decided to crack a joke instead of cry like a baby…for now. “I’ll always be your little boy. Cooper is 6 inches taller than me.” Laughter was followed by a kiss on the head, a gesture usually performed by his mother. Speaking of… “You never told me why Mom is in LA. What emergency did Cooper have this time?”

“None” Blaine lifted his head, his eyes clearly saying Bullshit. “I’m serious. Cooper turns 30 next month and will receive what remains of the trust fund his mother set up before she passed away. Let’s just say it’s significantly smaller than he anticipated.”

“Can I ask why?”

“His mother’s wishes were upon his graduation from high school, Cooper was to receive a monthly allowance from the trust. The rest could be used for college, a gap year backpacking through Europe, a wedding, a house…things like that. Beverly came from an extremely wealthy family. Did you know that?”

“Oh, yeah. Cooper mentioned it several times.”

Charles shook his head as this was something he should have guessed. “When we found out she was sicker than we thought, she told me she wanted me to find love again and have more children. She knew I would never accept her money to take care of our son, so we compromised. I’d support Cooper’s childhood and she’d take care of him as an adult.”

“That’s an…um, unusual arrangement.”

“You don’t argue with a woman with Stage 4 cancer who is leaving her baby behind.”

Blaine had no comeback for that. “But of all the things you listed, the only one Cooper did was buy his condo.”

“He had all those emergencies, as you love to call them. I took care of whatever mess he got himself into but your mom’s a bookkeeper. She kept every single receipt. We told him we were going to do this before he left for LA but he conveniently forgot.”

“That trust must’ve had a ton of money if it’s not empty.”

“It did at one time. However, the reason there's anything left is because your mother and I agreed to pay half of his expenses, except his condo, until the money was fully his. We knew his moving to LA was going to be a disaster. We didn’t want him to drain the trust before he tuned 30 and had hopefully grown-up. Don’t laugh… Also, I can admit a large part of Cooper's issues stem from me always being the one to fix his emergencies, not him. But I was such a mess when his mom died, I could barely get out of bed let alone parent a baby. Thank God your mother showed up in my life because I was beginning to consider Beverly’s sister’s offer to adopt him.”

“And that guilt never really went away?”

“Nope. I’m not giving you an excuse, I’m giving you an explanation, or at least the best one my therapist and I came up with.”

Ok, that was shocking. “You? Charles Anderson went to therapy?”

“I know I fought the idea of family therapy, add it to my list of failures. But 6 months ago, when I got a reminder from the lawyers about Cooper’s trust, I made a decision. The moment the money was his, he’s on his own. No more financial assistance, no more running to his rescue. I thought therapy would give me coping mechanisms to not give in again.”

“Great! But you still have answered why Mom is in LA and not you.”

“She’s laying the groundwork. When Cooper heard about this place and how Sam got the lead in the Magic Mike musical, the movie he starred in…”

“Channing Tatum starred in the movie.”

“Not according to your brother.”

Blaine braced himself, afraid to ask the question he already knew the answer to. “What did he do?”

“He put his condo up for sale and demanded to be included in the remodel since he needs this place when he moves to NYC to launch his Broadway career.” Charles tightened his hold on his son to keep him from freaking out. “Since I was supposed to meet with the record label people, your mother went to tell him we had other plans for the brownstone so he might want to get his condo off the market.”

Blaine let out an audible sigh before asking “Are you and mom moving to NYC?”

“Our original plan was for you and Sam, and now Santana, to live here until you graduate and then we’d sell it. Then you and your friends discovered what happened down here and named the basement Blaineland. Remember when I said Cooper’s mother wanted me to find love again and have other children?”

“Yeeeeessss?”

“Without my knowledge, she set up a second trust for any future children I might have. We’d wanted to have a large family so I’m assuming she thought I’d have many kids and not just one miracle baby. Because of this, all the money is yours. Sorry we didn’t tell you sooner, it was never the right time. Because of that we didn’t use the money for NYADA this year.”

"Take it back!”

“If you insist, we’ll talk about it later. Let me finish what I have to say first.” By this time Blaine was speechless so he nodded as a signal to continue. “Since your trust has the same stipulations as Cooper’s, it meant you could buy a house with the money before turning 30, so we put this place in your name. The brownstone is yours.”

This time his father couldn’t hold him down. “You wouldn’t use the money for NYADA, but you bought me a fucking house? Are you hell bent on watching me pass out?”

“Hadn’t you noticed despite Santana mastering your mother’s insane lists, there were always questions only you could answer? Do you prefer this or that color for the bathroom walls? What would be best…the new fridge/freezer to be stainless steel or blend in with the kitchen cabinets?”

Blaine practically fell back to where he’d been sitting. “Sorry about the curse word.”

“You’re an adult now and with what I’ve dropped on you, I’m surprised that was your first F-bomb.”

“Was this what you wanted to talk about over dinner?”

“Yes. Are you ok? The color is leaving your face again.”

“Dad, this is insane.”

“Why? Blaineland is perfect to help launch your music career. And another thing, whenever we gave Cooper money, your mother and I set the same amount aside for you. There’s more than enough to live off for the next 10 years, even paying Santana’s, or whoever’s, salary and the benefit package we put together.”

Just when he thought he’d regained his bearings, Blaine was once again overwhelmed. After his conversations with the New New Directions earlier that week, he’d begun to analyze all the decisions he’d made since the lockdown, and he wasn’t proud of most of them. Then the over the past 2 days that analysist stretched to cover the last 4 years…Kurt, leaving Dalton, Sebastian, Cooper’s fake attempt to repair their relationship, the mess with Kurt at the start of Senior year, No Thanks, Trent, getting back together with Kurt, choosing NYADA instead of Julliard or Tisch, Sir Knight, June, breaking up with Kurt…again, Wes, Kurt’s ridiculous proposal, his yearlong writer’s block when it came to love songs, this evening.

It was all too much. Hopefully, his father would understand.

“What you and mom, even Cooper’s mom, have done is amazing but a lot of things have happened in the past couple days that have my mind spinning. I know everyone talks about me having OCD but I don’t think it’s as big a joke as we think. Right now, I’m so overwhelmed I can’t process it all.”

“Do you think that has as much to do with how you’re feeling as the fact you forgot to eat?”

“More…I think it has everything to do with my health this evening. I know NYADA costs a lot of money…”

“Is this about Santana and what she said about First-World problems? She told me she’s really sorry…”Charles heard Blaine sigh in exasperation “Sorry, lips zipped.”

“Thank you this is hard enough. I, I…I don’t think I can go back.”

The elder Anderson smiled wider than he had when he found out Sir Knight was Sebastian. “When you were lying here, looking so pale, I thought of suggesting leaving NYADA and going somewhere out of NYC to rest for a while. Someplace by the water or in the mountains. But I know how you feel about running away from things, so I didn’t know how to address it.”

“I think this time I wouldn’t be running away. I’d be running toward something.”

“Sounds like you have an idea.”

“I do. I want to go to California for a couple of months until Sam’s opening night.”

“You want to go to California, where your brother is? I don’t think that’s going to help your stress and anxiety.”

“I don’t want to go to LA. I want to visit an old friend in Big Sur.”

7AM THE NEXT MORNING

Santana knew she was going to hear shit from Blaine about her so-called walk of shame and she couldn’t care less. She really liked Annabelle…like Brittany level like. But since she was leaving for Paris tomorrow night, with no firm return date, they both thought it would be a good idea to determine whether or not a long-distance relationship was worth it considering they’d only known each other 2 days.

Oh yeah, so worth it.

She went to the office to get a change of clothes before heading downstairs to shower. Hopefully, Blaine had a good night’s sleep. He looked awful the last time she saw him, but they had a busy day of shopping ahead.

When she got downstairs, she didn’t see Blaine in either the lounge or studio. The bathroom door was open, that left the theater. Why would he sleep in there? Did he and his dad fall asleep during their movie marathon?

The theater was empty as well. However, Blaine’s smiling face was on the screen and the remote had a Play Me post-it attached. If he’d talked his dad into getting him out of shopping, there’d be hell to pay.

By the time you watch this I’ll be on a plane to Kentucky. I’m surprising Stevie and Stacy for their birthday. I’m also going to fill Sam in on everything that’s happening. He’ll be back tomorrow instead of Monday and will let you know what’s going on. I’m sorry I don’t have the time and where I’m going doesn’t allow cell phones. I will write you a letter once I’m settled.

Oh, Marley is going to call around noon. Take the call.

Nothing has changed…except the fact the brownstone is mine and I’m technically your employer. I won’t say boss because we both know who the real boss is in the house. I trust your judgement picking out furniture and any remaining remodel details. I love Sam but I don’t want bean bags in front of a 72in TV in the living room. That’s why we have the theater. And just because my clothes you threw out were some interesting colors, it doesn’t mean they should be considered for my bedroom walls.

When I say my bedroom, I mean the one that shares a bathroom with Sam’s. Like I said, nothing changes. You keep the master and private bathroom. We both know I’ll sleep most nights in Blaineland when I get home.

And Tana, thank you for sharing with me the other night. Because you were so brave, I was able to do the same with my dad. It was amazing, possibly life changing. You keep saying my parents and I saved you but you, my Heroine in High Heels, will never understand how eternally grateful I am you are in my life.

There’s a gift for you on the concession stand. Bye for now.

Santana hadn’t noticed the piece of paper on the counter. The dork should have warned her not to read it alone.

I, Blaine Devon Anderson, hereby enter a 5 year rental agreement with Santana Lopez with $0 due at the first of every month. She is free to end or extend the agreement at any time

This agreement is not contingent on whether or not Miss Lopez remains in my employment

Miss Lopez acknowledges she will be living with the loud, nerdy, sometimes stinky and messy, but always loveable, Blam…and possibly another roommate in the fall (More information to come)

Miss Lopez also acknowledges Sam will be getting a dog sooner than later

11 AM SUNDAY…PARIS

Sebastian loved the smell of Paris in the Spring.

He hadn’t spent much time outdoors since his arrival…driving back and forth to Château sur la colline and pushing Nana’s wheelchair through the hospital’s gardens. But every day at this time he got around 30 minutes to come outside, sit on a bench and just breathe. It was the time his grandmother’s nurse would come in and say the 2 magic words…sponge bath.

As much as he loved his Nana, he wasn’t hanging around to see that.

*Groan* “You look like shit. What did your parents do this time?”

Standing in front of him was the last person he expected to see…ok, second to last. “Stephan, what the fuck? Don’t you have several A-listers to style for the Met Gala in 2 weeks?”

“You thought I wouldn’t come? I’m pissed I couldn’t get here sooner, and I’m stunned I’m not bailing you and/or Grandma June out of jail. I heard you finally got proof your parents were there when Aunt Juli fell. Where are they now?”

“In the wind as usual. I’m sure they’ll slither back when Nana is released.”

“She’s not going to a rehabilitation facility?”

“We can get all the equipment she needs and hire private nurses and physical therapists. Plus, now I’ve hired double the security and the DGSI is involved.”

“How did that happen?”

“You’re kidding, right? First of all, there’s a restraining order…”

“Which should be handled by the police.”

“And secondly, you don’t get elected in this country unless Nana gives you a public endorsement.”

“Ah, yes, how could I be so stupid?”

“Because you are that stupid.”

“I love you too, Cousin.”

Sebastian stood and stretched. “Come on, Nana should be done letting the nurses make her even more beautiful.”

“No, I’ll go. You sit back down.”

“No, I have to go…”

“Sit down Seb.”

“Fine, but why the fuck are you so adamant about it?”

“Here” Stephan handed him the gift bag he’d been carrying, which Sebastian assumed was for his grandmother. Inside the bag was a box and inside the box was… “A cronut?”

Stephan didn’t answer, just handed his cousin a letter and walked away.

To my Sir Knight from your Prince Charming

TBC in Chapter 6 Plot Twist: Sir Knight Edition

Notes:

There are a few storylines I completely ignore. Kitty giving Marley an eating disorder is one of them. Blaine’s overall attitude/involvement with reporting the Warblers for steroids never felt right (besides the obvious the ND were disqualified at Sectionals). Taking down Hunter was one thing, but in the “Big Neck” photo montage, there were Warblers who were at Dalton in Season 2. Yes, the Slushie is in between, but still…Also, Sebastian wasn’t in the montage and Trent doesn’t mention him when talking with Blaine, Sam and Finn. That’s my justification for he wasn’t there. Explaining how he didn’t know and still competed at Sectionals was the hard part. As for Wes' attitude toward Blaine...The two of them are often written as either big brother/little brother or mentor/mentee. I chose to write Wes where his loyalty was to the Warblers as an institution, with no sympathy for those who broke the OAW/AWA code. It was hard to do. I kept wanting to make it ok for Blaine, but not this time. Previously Unaired Christmas was Episode 5x08 but it was originally supposed to air in Season 4. If both 5x08 and 4x10 (the episode that aired in its place) are canon, then Kurt was left tied up and gagged on his bed by sexy Santa right before Burt arrived to tell his son he had cancer, bringing Blaine along so they could sing their Christmas duet.🤮 A 3 year-old carrying tools is totally unsafe but this would have been in the 90’s. A lot of things that are seen as unacceptable today were fine back then. There were a lot of events I wanted to add to Blaine’s conversation with his father, but felt if I added any more it would bog down an already over-stuffed section. Unanswered Seblaine questions will be in the letter, but if you’re curious how I would have handled something between Blaine and his father that I didn’t address, ask.

#blaine anderson #sebastian smythe #seblaine fic #glee

[p4xman]

Hey, do you think there’s one reality?

Because people think there’s one reality, But there’s loads of them all snaking off like roots. And what we do on one path effects what happens on other paths. Time is a construct. People think you can’t go back and change things but you can. That’s what flashbacks are. They’re invitations to go back and make different choices. When you make a decision you think it’s you doing it but it’s not. It’s the spirit out there that’s connected to our world that decides what we do. And we just have to go along for the ride. Mirrors let you move through time. The government monitors people. They pay people to pretend to be your relatives and they put drugs in your food and they film you. There’s messages in every game. Like Pacman. Do you know what pac stands for? PAC. Program and control. He’s program and control man. The whole thing’s a metaphor. He think’s he’s got free will but really, he’s trapped in a maze. In a system. All he can do is consume. He’s pursued by demons… that are probably just in his own head. And even if he does manage to escape by slipping out one side of the maze, what happens? He comes right back in the other side. People think it’s a happy game. It’s not a happy game it’s a fucking nightmare world and the worst thing is it’s real and we’re living in it.

hey are you bandersnatch because Black Mirror: Bandersnatch is a 2018 interactive film in the science fiction anthology series Black Mirror. It was written by series creator Charlie Brooker and directed by David Slade. The film premiered on Netflix on 28 December 2018, its release date only officially announced the day before. Netflix did not confirm the interactive nature of Bandersnatch until its release, though there was much media speculation. In Bandersnatch, viewers make decisions for the main character, the young programmer Stefan Butler (Fionn Whitehead), who is adapting a fantasy gamebook into a video game in 1984. Other characters include Mohan Thakur (Asim Chaudhry) and Colin Ritman (Will Poulter), who work at a video game company; Stefan's father, Peter (Craig Parkinson); and Stefan's therapist, Dr. Haynes (Alice Lowe). A postmodernist work with free will as a central theme, the film was named after a real video game planned for release by Imagine Software in 1984, the game in turn named after the bandersnatch, a creature of Lewis Carroll's creation. Brooker and executive producer Annabel Jones were approached by Netflix about making an interactive film in May 2017, during which time Netflix had several such projects for children underway. Difficulty in writing the highly non-linear script led to Netflix's creation of a bespoke program called Branch Manager; the unique nature of the content required adaptations in the platform's use of cache memory. Bandersnatch was originally to be part of Black Mirror's fifth series, but its lengthy production led to its release as a standalone film, delaying the fifth series to June 2019. Critical reception was mixed, with a positive response to the technical design of the film but criticism of the story's characterisation. There was mixed commentary about the narrative and the extent to which viewer choices affected the story. The film received average rankings in critics' lists of Black Mirror instalments by quality, but garnered numerous awards and nominations, winning two Primetime Emmy Awards. A lawsuit filed by Chooseco over the film's use of the term "choose-your-own-adventure" was filed in January 2019 and settled in November 2020.

#;ask