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#next one will be back in time sorta storytelling deal
michaeljoncarter · 4 months
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and i do think Brothers in Blood is one of the most important comic book stories ever written btw. think about how many people have gotten into comics specifically for jason after the utrh movie or seeing the fandom zeitgeist or whatever. if they're unfamiliar with comics and have utrh as their first experience, they still might not exactly understand what they're in for. they might think this is, like, a normal form of storytelling that makes sense and maintains literally anything even slightly resembling cohesion or a consistent tone or like. sanity
and then the very next story they click on is him having made his own hand-sewn dick cosplay specifically to murder people in & make the public believe nightwing's gone insane for literally no reason. and then instead of that being the main conflict in the story, it pivots to being about these random dudes who turn into flesh monsters. one of them eats jason and then throws him back up in a big egg & keeps him as decor in their apartment for a while where he hallucinates about dick calling him a little bitch until he manages to get free except he's been turned into a shapeshifting cannibalistic tentacle monster and swallows a guy whole (twice) but the guy can split atoms and causes a nuclear explosion in his stomach that levels an entire city block, but you know jason survived because he somehow manages to get a message through to dick's random girlfriend via 19th century telegraph
a concentrated shot of comic book fuckery straight to the heart. that shit was like some sorta boot camp to get you ready to deal all the different types of comic-specific crazy. it had every weirdass trope specific to the medium happening at the exact same time, and they did that for US. to make us stronger. as a people
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bard-llama · 25 days
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ATLA WiP List
Yeah, it's not Wednesday. Sue me - Wednesdays have actually become a really bad day for me to write/share works in progress. So idk I'm just gonna do it whenever, I guess?
Anyway, every once in a while, I like to make lists of all my too-many WiPs, so that's what this is. Under a cut, because the list is gonna be super long.
So for context, I have 3 categories my WiP docs (fic series, long fic, and fic collection) and within those, have a mix of shippy and gen fics. So I'll break this list out by type and then gen vs Zukaang vs other.
Also, apparently tumblr won't let you do nested bullets anymore??????? wtf tumblr. Everyday, you get less and less usable.
Fic Series
All have at least one story in the series published on AO3.
Gen (2)
Balance (current fic: Earth and Air)
Accidental Shaman Zuko (current fic(s): An Equal and Opposite Reaction, Two Avatars on a Road Trip)
Zukaang (4)
Two Lovers, Forbidden from One Another (current fic: As the Breeze Shapes the Dunes)
Seduction of the Innocent (current fic(s): Book 1: Seduction of the Innocent, Book 2: Fables and Reflections, Book 3: untitled fic where worlds collide)
Ba Sing Se Boyfriends (current fic(s): Facing the Dragon (of the West), Chillin' in Ba Sing Se, untitled fic where they investigate the Dai Li)
Justice, Served Cold with a Side of Vengenace (current fic: The Unlearning of Fear (And the Acceptance of Love))
Long Fics
These fics got long enough to graduate to their own document, but are (probably) not a series.
Gen (4)
Zuko's Odyssey (pre-canon, mostly planning, few words - intended to be a mishmash of atla with The Odyssey)
Helping Hands (chronic pain fic where Zuko gets his hands stomped on by Zhao at Pohuai and has to work with Aang to escape)
A Second Chance at Family (time travel fic where Azula's lightning 'kills' Zuko and sends him back to mid-s1)
Thrice Cursed, Once Broken (post-canon au sorta - Zuko becomes Fire Lord after being imprisoned on the Day of Black Sun)
Zukaang (6)
Once Upon a Dream (soulmate dreamsharing au where Zuko has always dreamed of the cold and dark of Aang's iceberg)
Damned by a Look (s1 soulmate au where the Fire Lord authorizes the arrest of the Avatar's soulmate. Zuko ends up in Zhao's brig during the Northern Invasion when the Ocean possesses Aang and forces him to kill the invading soldiers)
(Going) Down and Out in Ba Sing Se (s2 au where Zuko chooses Aang in the finale and then has to deal with the aftermath)
The Fire Lord and the Avatar (s2 au where Zuko joins Aang early, unpublished)
Dragon Mama Zuko (s3 au where Zuko gets pregnant via dragon, so much written but not fucking ch 2 ugh)
Action, Inaction, and Consequences (post-canon fic where war criminals are put on trial)
Other (4)
The First Reaction to Truth is Hated (pre-canon, Aang & Kuzon & Bumi, Aang & Gyatso left the Southern Air Temple the day before Sozin's Comet. They survived, but now have to deal with the aftermath)
Hope for the Future (late s3 au, Zutaraang, Aang dreams of a future with Zuko and Katara. When Zuko shows up the next day, he's inclined to trust)
A Seat at the Table (post-canon, Zutaraang eventually, fic about recognizing sovereign powers outside the 4 nations)
A Royal Heir (post-canon fic, Zutaraang, Zuko needs a legitimate heir)
Fic Collections
AKA I have waaaaaay too many WiPs for them all to get their own document.
Gen (55)
Agni's Little Flame (unpublished, spirits aren't supposed to play favorites, but they kinda do)
Unyielding (unpublished, never give up without a fight)
Zuko Collects Strays (unpublished, post-canon)
Zuko adapts other bending techniques (unpublished, Zuko accidentally uses an airbending move while firebending, then realizes there's potential in it)
Fire Control (unpublished, it takes a lot of control not to let fire burn wildly)
Those Who Tell Stories Rule the World (storyteller Zuko)
The Consequences of Breaking the Rules (late s3 au, Zuko is scared of messing up and getting punished by the Gaang)
Nightmares (unpublished, Katara is uncomfortable with Zuko's vocal nightmares. It's hard to hate someone when they're suffering.)
Being a Master Means Understanding That You Know Nothing (actually, this might be ready to publish????)
Healing Fire (unpublished, Zuko is in denial about his 'heat technique' actually healing people)
Sibling Rulers (unpublished, Azula and Zuko as Co-Rulers)
Azula and Her Brother (unpublished, Azula character study)
Breathing Fire (unpublished, tho ch 1 might be ready for publishing, Zuko's crew's reaction to this brat breathing fire all over the place)
Katara hating on Zuko (unpublished, set in the Western Air Temple, it's easy to hate Zuko until she learns more about him)
Zhao's Retribution (Zhao heavily injures Zuko, who is rescued by survivors of the 41st, who happen to follow Jeong Jeong. Aang, Katara, and Sokka still walk into Jeong Jeong's camp without noticing)
Viva la Resistance (unpublished, Zhao ends up regretting stealing Zuko's crew)
Aang in the Iceberg: Dreams (unpublished, while frozen, Aang exists in a dream world. Eventually, Zuko joins him)
Aang in the Iceberg: Angst Coma Time Travel (unpublished, when Zuko has his angst coma freakout in s2, he wakes up in the iceberg with Aang)
Punishment (unpublished, the Gaang is horrified when Zuko approaches them at the Western Air Temple, prepared for his punishment)
Muzzled (unpublished, Zhao welds a muzzle onto Zuko's face. The Gaang is horrified when they find him)
The Long Road to Recovery (unpublished, rejected by the Gaang in late s3, Zuko ends up imprisoned and tortured by the EK and the FN. After the war is over, he's found)
Trusted with a weapon (unpublished, Zuko realizes the Gaang trusts him when they aren't bothered at him sparring with Suki with his swords)
Gaang Established Routines (unpublished, the Gaang's domestic dynamic)
The Tournament of Kingship (post-canon, Bumi dies and Omashu's King has to be chosen thru a tournament. Naturally, Toph has to claim the title of Greatest Earthbender in the World)
Actions Speak Louder Than Words (unpublished, s3 Zuko apologizes to the Gaang thru acts of service/thoughtful gifts)
Spontaneous Combustion (unpublished, s2 au where Zuko stumbles upon a mystery in Ba Sing Se when people seemingly catch on fire out of nowhere)
Early s3 AU (unpublished, goes AU in the Sparky Sparky Boom Man episode and Zuko asks the Gaang to stop his Father, who just revealed his plans for the comet)
Choosing Nonviolence: Aang sees Zuko’s Scars (unpublished, Aang's vows of pacifism are challenged with every scar Zuko unveils. Zuko does not understand why he holds strong anyway.)
Choosing Nonviolence: What is Forgiveness? (unpublished, Zuko does not understand how Aang can refuse to kill Ozai)
Ozai is annoyed when his useless son befriends a blind EK noble (unpublished, pre-canon)
Truth Serum (unpublished, during The Chase, a pollen infects them and makes them tell the truth)
De-Aged Zuko (unpublished, s1 au where a spirit curses Zuko and the Gaang does not know what to think)
Flower language (unpublished, Zuko fucks up when he unknowingly burns Aang's friendship offering (a flower crown))
Working Together/Mission Fic (unpublished, s1 au where Zuko and Aang are captured by slavers and have to escape, along with the other kids who have been snatched)
Zuko becomes Fire Lord at 13 AU (unpublished, Zuko fights back in the Agni Kai. This changes everything.)
Toph joins S1 (unpublished, s1 au with bonus Toph, who utterly destroys the pirates Zuko is working with)
A Scarred Foundation (Zuko's badly scarred enough that he hides the worst of it with makeup)
Gifts (unpublished, late s3 fic, each culture views birthdays differently. Air Nomads don't track them, but they're very important on Kyoshi Island)
Katara POV Zuko tortured by Fire Lord (unpublished, in a world where everything went wrong, Katara is forced to admit that Zuko probably is, in fact, on their side - for all the good it does him now)
Ozai finds out Zuko joined the Avatar (unpublished, Ozai is so fucking annoyed with this damned brat getting in his way)
Kanna (unpublished, character study)
Gyatso runs away with Aang (unpublished, series au in which Gyatso gets frozen with Aang and wakes up 100 years later to Sokka and Katara)
Dad Convo (unpublished, Zuko has a few questions for Hakoda)
Shaking it up down south (unpublished, the South Pole has an issue with sexism. This turns out to be a problem in a post-war world where the women kept the tribe running while the men were away)
Something to Live For (unpublished, sometimes when you're in so much pain that it's hard to survive, you just need something to live for)
Earthbender Zuko (unpublished, don't have much, but wanna try to write the trope)
Avatar Zuko (unpublished, likewise, don't have much)
Getting Zuko to Sleep (unpublished, involves forced cuddles)
Keeping the Avatar Alive (unpublished, Zuko is maybe slightly obsessive about protecting Aang. He can't let his fuckup be the reason Aang dies. (Again.))
Self-Harming Zuko (unpublished, why does getting hurt as the Blue Spirit feel right?)
Haunted Toy (unpublished, after Lu Ten's death, Zuko discovers that a toy Lu Ten gave him appears to be haunted by Lu Ten)
Animal Transformation (unpublished, Zuko gets to be a finch hawk that the gaang takes care of in s1)
Time Travel Zuko 2: Electric Boogaloo (unpublished, future!Zuko comes back to s1 to tell Zuko all the shit no one ever said about how Ozai was fucking wrong)
Toph and Zuko’s Life-Changing Field Trip (unpublished, Toph is invited home by her parents and brings the Fire Lord. Turns out, her parents are trying to marry her off and now all the other suitors think they're competing with the Fire Lord. Zuko dgaf.)
Crossdressing Gaang (unpublished, post-canon, a convo about fancy clothes leads to the Gaang playing around with wearing the dresses Zuko's staff stock the wardrobes in their unused private rooms with. (They all pile onto Zuko's bed on the regular))
Oops, we've hit the character limit for this section oops.
Gen Part 2 (30)
Nerd Lords (unpublished, Zuko and Kuei meet when Zuko breaks into the royal library and accidentally end up becoming friends)
Fight Club (unpublished, Zuko has a talent for finding the underground fighting rings as they travel across the EK)
Instinctive Bending (unpublished, Zuko struggles to move the way his teachers tell him he should to bend. But when he doesn't think about it and just moves, his katas aren't right, but they work.)
Southern Water Tribe – why are there so many more men than women? (unpublished, AKA Llama messed up the math and decided to make plot out of it)
Drugged Zuko Rescue (unpublished, s2, Zuko gets caught by the Dai Li and drugged to high hell. He's pretty sure he's hallucinating the Avatar and the Water Tribe boy rescuing him)
Reputation (unpublished, pre-s1, Zuko's reputation is actually pretty positive amongst Earth Kingdomers. He pays a fair price for his supplies, he does odd jobs/investigates weird goings-on, he occasionally tracks down bounties, etc. Unless you happen to be impeding his search for the Avatar, the Prince is usually not bad to have come around town. Then the Avatar reappears.)
Silence (unpublished, Aang gets to enjoy my discomfort with silence)
Hidden Communities (unpublished, what if all the endangered peoples/creatures were hiding out together? AKA the Sun Warriors' Island has some surprises)
Jeong Jeong (unpublished, character study)
Gyatso adopting Aang (unpublished, Gyatso's POV of hearing baby!Aang laugh and immediately knowing this child is meant to be his.)
Crooked World (unpublished, Zuko has always known his world was different than the ones he read about)
Fire, Water, and Government (Know Nothing of Mercy) (Pirate Zuko AU)
Time Loop/Loop Zoop (unpublished, Zuko gets stuck in a time loop during s1 that always ends with his ship blowing up/him dying)
Southern Water Tribe Mixed Children (unpublished, Ten years after the end of the war, the Southern Water Tribe is rocked with controversy as tribesmen who left the fleet during the war petition to return with their mixed blood families.)
Brother (unpublished, Azula has a different understanding of what family means than the Gaang does)
The Truth About the Air Army (unpublished, Zuko reads through the libraries at the Air Temples and discovers the truth of who the Air Nomads were. After becoming Fire Lord, he decides that everyone needs to learn that truth)
Blue Spirit Reveal (unpublished, after the Ember Island Players, Sokka asks about the Blue Spirit that saved Aang in the play)
Post-canon Iroh and Zuko (unpublished, Zuko feels guilty for feeling abandoned when Iroh leaves for Ba Sing Se just after Zuko gets crowned)
Jet Redemption (unpublished, post-canon au where post-war negotiations end up taking place in Gaipan, which is about halfway between Ba Sing Se and Caldera City. Meanwhile, a certain someone has gone through a journey of his own. Earning trust back will take some serious work)
Aang being worthy of power (unpublished, Zuko's research taught him clearly how powerful the Avatar is. Like, frighteningly powerful. And yet, Aang uses that power with caution and delicacy. Zuko reflects on how much control it must take to actively avoid doing harm)
Ursa finds Zuko in his banishment (unpublished, okay this actually has nothing written, but I'm counting it bc it'll be fun)
The Power Behind the Throne (post-canon, Zuko has to deal with people thinking Iroh is controlling things behind the scenes)
Balance (unpublished, set during the Western Air Temple, when The Duke asks what balance actually means, they discover that Zuko's a giant nerd whose research has given him Opinions on this.)
“Come with me.” (unpublished, s1 au where Aang brings an injured Blue Spirit back to camp with him. Zuko is too concussed to protest overly much)
Attacking a surrendered opponent (unpublished, the Gaang discovers that Zuko believes that surrender just leaves one open for the next attack. Then they realize that for him, it always has. Not just with Ozai - but with Katara at the Western Air Temple, too)
Joo Dee (unpublished, Zuko attends Ba Sing Se University, which means he has a Joo Dee tail from the moment he enters the Middle Ring. People avoid him because of it, and Zuko just wants someone to talk over his lessons with. So one day, he decides to actually try chatting with her)
Mid-s3 Dreamsharing (unpublished, Zuko is plagued with nightmares while back at the palace. The spirits decide that he needs the help of those whose destiny is tied to his to figure out where he stands. Only the Gaang doesn't actually know that it's Zuko they're helping as they move through a dreamscape adventure)
Dark Water Spirit Curse (unpublished, AKA Llama nerded out over the deep sea interpretation of dark water and tried to do something with that. Therefore, Zuko is bioluminscent now lmao)
How Zuko Became a Radical Socialist (unpublished, AKA Llama vents about for-profit healthcare via Zuko in Ba Sing Se)
Blue Spirit puts out fires (unpublished, pre-canon au where Zuko tries not to use firebending when out as the Blue Spirit. When he is forced to, he never creates his own flames, he just extinguishes others. This leads to rumors about the Blue Spirit's ability to put out a bender's fire. The sensible firebenders are frightened by this prospect)
Zukaang (44)
Rope Burns (unpublished, Aang reflecting on rope burns and when they hurt and when they don't)
Blue Spirit Tagalong (Zuko ends up haunted by the Blue Spirit)
Relationship Reveal (unpublished, post-canon with Zukaang in a secret relationship - until they get careless and get caught by Zuko's advisors)
I'm Your Fire, Your Desire (s3 au where Zukaang get together at the Western Air Temple, now with a bonus PWP set in the future)
Shirtless Sparring (unpublished, wrestling pwp)
Return to Pohuai (unpublished, pwp Blue Spirit roleplay)
Our Love Become a Funeral Pyre (unpublished, Zuko is Kuzon reincarnated and dreams of Kuzon's life with Aang before the comet)
Gay Bar (unpublished, s2 au where they each unknowingly patronize the same gay bar in Ba Sing Se)
Airbender Blow Jobs (unpublished, pwp)
Fluffy Zukaang (unpublished, s3 fluff)
“My heart feels like it’s dancing when I look at you.” (unpublished, post-canon, Zuko is very dense about his emotions)
Aang Approaching Zuko Morning After (unpublished, s2 au where Aang stops by the teashop)
Rose Petals and Candlelight (unpublished, Aang spoils Zuko with t-rated intimacy)
Treasure (unpublished, on the 3rd anniversary of Zuko's crowning, Aang gifts him a black pearl that he found the first time Zuko took them diving)
"I'm in love with your voice" (unpublished, set during the s1 finale when they're snowed in in a cave and end up having to talk)
First Kiss/First Time (unpublished, when Zuko kisses him, Aang freaks out - and runs to the South Pole. Fire Lady Mai is the one to come beat some sense into him)
Pao’s Teashop Office Sex (unpublished, s2 pwp)
Body Swap (unpublished, s2 au in which Aang and Zuko switch bodies. Aang is not prepared for Zuko's pain - or his retail experience. Might be gen, might not)
Can't Take My Eyes Off of You (Aang likes the way Zuko watches him intently)
Sexytimes - Voyeurism (unpublished pwp, Aang ties Zuko up and makes him watch him touch himself)
Gossip (unpublished, Aang is excited about getting together with Zuko and has to tell someone. Toph is safest.)
Temporarily Genderbent Aang picks up Zuko (unpublished post-canon pwp)
Blue Spirit x Avatar Aang (unpublished, the Fire Nation is a little too invested in the potential relationship between the Blue Spirit and the Avatar, and where the Fire Lord fits in)
“We need to stop dancing around it. All it does is hurt us both!” (unpublished, Aang thinks he's dreaming and kisses Zuko at the North Pole - only it turns out to be real and neither know how to deal with that in the aftermath)
Identity Porn (unpublished, Aang does not know who the Blue Spirit is, but that doesn't stop him from flirting extensively)
“I can’t stop thinking about you. When I wake up, when I’m about to fall asleep…” (unpublished, Aang doesn't know what to think when Zuko confesses without even realizing what he's confessing)
Soulmate Potential (unpublished, people don't have a predestined soulmate. Some people click more easily than others, but the potential is there with anyone. Including one's enemy.)
Ba Sing Se AU (unpublished, this was SUPPOSED to be a setup to write Zuko's POV of Same Side Sex, because mostly it's been Aang's POV when I've done it so far, but uh... setup takes a lot of work and it grows a life of its own. So now we have Aang and Zuko dating pre-s2 finale and the ripple effects of that. Also, might end up Zutaraang)
Dream Sex (unpublished, pre-canon, aged up Zuko dreams about the Avatar having their way with him.)
Author Zuko: Blue Spirit/Avatar Aang (unpublished, Aang is not excited to hear that a new play is coming out about the Avatar and the Blue Spirit. He is unaware that Zuko secretly wrote the play)
Author Zuko: Zuko writes about the Fire Lord and Avatar’s Bond Thru Time (unpublished, Zuko's a fucking nerd who uses primary sources to back up his pet thesis that his destiny is tied to Aang's)
Cheering Up on a Bad Day (unpublished, Aang pines and tries to lighten Zuko's mood after a rough day as Fire Lord)
Masked Affection (s2 au where the Blue Spirit and Aang end up in a secret relationship. When Aang finds a badly injured Blue Spirit, the lines between Zuko and the mask begin to blur)
Post-Canon Hanahaki AU (unpublished, Zuko starts coughing up strange flowers and is in denial about what it could mean)
Gaang in Ba Sing Se with Aang trying to befriend Zuko without telling them who ‘Li’ is (unpublished, Aang explores the Lower Ring by taking Zuko on 'dates'. He tells the Gaang about it, but neglects to mention who 'Li' really is)
Freudian Nightmares (porn with plot, Aang dreams about Zuko, then gets the chance to experience him in reality)
Depression and Executive Dysfunction (unpublished, set in s3 but goes au in s2, Zuko and Aang had a secret relationship in Ba Sing Se - and Zuko chose Azula anyway. He regrets it, but even once he joins the Gaang, he knows he'll never be able to make up for that. The despair of knowing he can never recover what they once had makes it hard to try some days. Aang just wants to help)
Marking: Scandalized Sokka/Fuck “Aang must be protected” bullshit (unpublished, Aang enjoys getting marked up by his lover. The rest of the Gaang is a bit scandalized and it breaks their brains a little when Aang bluntly says he likes the marks)
Facefucking (unpublished, post-canon pwp, Zuko needs a break from being Fire Lord and wants to not think for a while. Surrendering to Aang's control is a good way to make that happen)
Dreamsharing, but it’s all sex (unpublished, au where Zuko has wet dreams about the Avatar even before he actually finds them. Somehow this is supposed to involve them sharing dreams. I don't really know how)
Destined to Love You/You’re the One I’ve Been Searching For (unpublished, Zuko has been overly obsessed with the Avatar for a long time. It's totally normal for him to care a little too much about Aang's opinion. It doesn't mean anything)
Sauna (unpublished, post-canon pwp where Aang convinces Zuko to take a break from ruling to soak in the sauna)
How tf is Li dating the Avatar? A teashop customer perspective (unpublished, an aspiring fangirl/writer in Ba Sing Se speculates on how exactly the surly teashop server managed to become the Avatar's boyfriend)
Artist!Zuko (unpublished, Zuko likes to doodle. His obsession with the Avatar means that they are often his muse - and once he finds Aang, he fixates hard)
Other (23)
What's Yours is Mine (unpublished, the Gaang cause waves when they wear pieces of Zuko's wardrobe. The gossip is hilarious.)
Come to the Good Side, We Have Cookies (sorta gen???? the Gaang kidnaps Zuko to try to befriend him. Zuko is not amused.)
Oviposition PWP (unpublished, Zuko gets railed by dragons)
Reading Lips (Gaang/Zuko, the Gaang all take an opportunity to kiss Zuko, but fail to ever actually talk to him about it)
To Weave a Tangled Web (Aang suggests that Zuko marry Kuei as a step towards their vision for the future. He forgets monogamy is a thing and fails to actually talk about what that means)
Zuko blows Aang while Katara watches (unpublished, Zutaraang(ish) pwp)
Commitment to Balance (Aang/Zuko/Katara/Toph, "Let's get married. For balance.")
Zuko navigating 10 (billion) relationships (unpublished, Zuko as the fandom bicycle lmao)
Zutaraang PWP (unpublished, sparring porn)
Zutaraang Lap Sex (unpublished pwp)
Aang loves his friends (unpublished, idk might be gen, might be full Gaang. Aang just loves his family.)
Katara and Aang decide to pursue Zuko (unpublished, post-canon, Aang approaches Katara to talk about polyamory)
Everyone is in love with Zuko: He catches a clue (unpublished, full Gaang/Zuko as fandom bicycle, Zuko realizes he's in love with his friends and is worried about what his wife will think. His wife thinks "fucking finally!")
I Still Dream About You (Are You Lonely For Me Too?) (Gaang/Zuko, unpublished, the Gaang shared one drunken, half-remembered night ages ago. It still haunts them.)
Sparring for who gets to take Aang (unpublished, Zutaraang pwp)
An Arrangement for World Peace (unpublished, Toph/Zuko, Marriage alliances are as old as time. Why not take advantage of that?)
Fuck Buddies (unpublished, Toph/Zuko, s3 aged up au)
Mai/Zuko/Toph – Post-Canon Fire Nation Trio (unpublished pwp that might grow plot)
The Southern Waterbending Line (unpublished, Kataang/Zutaraang, Aang and Katara both want to revive their people's bending disciplines, but there's no guarantee their children will be benders. Questioning how bending is passed down leads to learning more about Gran Gran Kanna's past)
Zuko is not in touch with his emotions (unpublished, Gaang/Zuko, Mai sits Zuko down for a therapy session with Ty Lee to help him realize that his friends are in love with him)
Aang as a sexual being/Fuck “Aang is so innocent and pure” (unpublished, AKA Llama gets annoyed at fandom's infantilization of Aang. Aang may be young, but he still grew up in a culture that believed in open and unashamed access to information, including info about sexuality)
Masturbation is normal and healthy (unpublished, Gaang/Aang, au where Aang is the one who teaches the Gaang about masturbation)
Attempt at omegaverse (unpublished, Gaang/Zuko probably, hopefully a pwp but it might grow plot)
Total WiPs: 172 🤯🤯🤯
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thatoneguy031 · 8 months
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Can I talk about something? Out of character, I mean.
It's a long post, but you don't have to read it if you're not interested. It's more of a vent post than anything else.
I've been having a hard time with this blog. Not in the popularity sense, this is what I expected from this kind of thing. I mean like... I don't know what to do with it. I've experimented with a few things(You can go way back in my post history if you want to see what I mean), but those ideas sorta fell flat, no?
This was originally meant to be a storytelling blog. I wanted to share my little synopses of my characters and plot points or whatever, because I was genuinely proud of what I've done so far.
Then I resorted to trying to be a comedian. I would try to post something funny under most reblogs, leaving them be if I couldn't come up with a remark of any kind.
It wasn't until recently that I decided to turn this into a Pokemon IRL blog, and I'm not even doing that well with this. That, and I'm afraid that I come off as self-centered, so I cut any posts that give that kind of vibe. Heck, I even tried doing a playthrough series, but I keep forgetting about it, and when I do remember that it exists, I just postpone the next update to oblivion.
I really want to keep this blog going, and trust me when I say I'm going to, but it's not going anywhere, and I feel like nothing is happening. At first, I thought it was just Tumblr having boring days, but I realized that I'm just not doing anything entertaining. My blog just turned into a pool of reblogs with the occasional Pokemon-related post or rant. And I mostly wait for either @the-one-from-dres or @drizzileiscool to bring up the occasional topic that I might have enough insight to talk about. Sorry for @'ing you guys, by the way, I just need folks to know who I'm talking about. Y'all the goats.
Once I got my drawing tablet, I thought that I could do a bunch of art stuff, but then it devolved into the same potential self-obsession problem, where I would just draw that one character(which is literally just a Samurott with anxiety and a Goku complex, let's be honest with ourselves here) over and over again. I have other characters I can draw, and I'm even taking free art requests. Granted, I haven't gotten any requests yet, but the option was still there.
And that's how we got here. I have to retake my Regents in literally under 24 hours, and I'm bitching and moaning about how I'm not getting anywhere in my ha-ha internet blog, which everyone already takes as a joke anyway.
If anything, I think my problem comes from a lack of communication. There was this like, 4 day period that I didn't hear a word from Dres, and I thought he hated me for something I did, until he involved me in 3 back-to-back reblog games literally the next day.
I still feel awful about it now, it was so petty of me to even think that way. For context, Dres might as well be my day one, and he's inadvertently taught me the ins and outs of Tumblr, like how to use tags and things like that. Hell, we even played DnD together once. No exaggeration, he's the closest thing I've had to a real friend in years, and I'm convinced that's only the case because he hasn't seen me in person.
I love him deeply, and only wish the best for him. To think that he'd leave me after I did basically nothing, I've really hit a new level of desperate. He likely had his own things to do, while I'm still stressing about things that probably don't even matter in hindsight.
Back to my original point, I want to do a lot more on this blog, and I also wanted to make it a chill place.
That's one of the reasons why I don't talk about politics myself. I don't want to get involved in things like that at all, because I want people to live without worry. The furthest I go with that kind of thing is "Stop being dicks to each other. We're people, deal with it." I know it's more complicated than that, but at this point, I'm almost scared to get involved in that kind of thing. I don't even know what a terf is. I didn't know Rowling was a bad person until recently when Drizzile was talking about her.
And it's like, I don't even know why it's so hard to talk to people for me. But at the same time, I think I really have something wrong with me, but I'm too scared to get it checked out. And, while I'm not getting into personal details, I don't have the right circumstances to even have that happen in the first place. That's the out of character reason why I say I might have ADHD, instead of outright saying I have it. I literally can't get it diagnosed myself if I wanted to, and I don't do the self-diagnosis stuff because I always get paranoid and think my problem is worse than it is. For example, I've convinced myself three times within the past year and a half that I had appendicitis, because I would get this really specific pain in my stomach. Guess who I told about it?
No one. I was terrified of wasting someone's time just for it to be me freaking out over nothing, and if I'm being honest, I still am. At this point, I have a plethora of things wrong with me, I know that now, but I don't ever get them checked out. I'm doing well so far with them, why worry about it now.
I just don't want to offend anyone. All I wanted to do was make a place where I and other people could have fun.
This is still going to primarily be a Pokemon IRL blog, but I'm doing something different. Please, if there's anything you all want to see on here, let me know. Stuff for Guy, art stuff, whatever floats your boat besides the obvious. And I'll do my best to keep up with my stories and fanfics or whatever. Once I get my stuff settled again, obviously, but I don't want to make it seem like I'm doing this for myself.
I don't want to turn this into a pity party. I really don't. At this point, I'm sick of having people worry about me. Whenever they do, I feel like I'm being an attention hog, and it sucks. If you did read this, thanks for listening. I just needed to get this much off my chest.
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skzflix · 3 years
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passstt can you do your best to explain the ‘universe’ in depth or at least so it’s understandable bc my ass is clueless 🙃
so, this is my dumb brain linking stuff so please please take this all as what it is — my stupid brain's stupid thinking. this is also the first time i've linked it all out in order. so bear with me. this is loooong. in this universe, we have like three parts: mixtape: on track — b me — mixtape: oh. and it deals with tangled romance and the consequences it has on friendships.
MIXTAPE: ON TRACK
so in mixtape: on track, the universe sets off with the boys in high school, final year, i think. minho and hyunjin are the leads in our whole universe. jeongin is like hyunjin's best friend in this au. they are film and art majors (?) and have this project i presume to make a short film (?). chan deals with the sound, jisung with the lights, changbin with the props, hyunjin with the videography, felix is directing and seungmin is the writer. minho is the main lead in this film and jeongin is a side character in this film.
insert female lead. female lead is close friends with both hyunjin and minho. it's pretty evident that minho and hyunjin likes her and hyunjin constantly does feel bad over minho and her getting closer, because well, he likes her. this feeling turns into a distaste soon enough (as seen in how hyunjin feels pathetic after the girl takes both the drinks from them + how minho shoots the goal while playing soccer and like hyunjin and minho have this weird cold gaze exchange. in both these situations, jeongin is around to help hyunjin. i'll get to this soon.) so like our boy minho and her clearly have sparks and hyunjin dislikes it. high school jealousy, if anything.
that's when hyunjin decides to take action and while shooting, when minho has to grab the female lead's hand, he butts in and holds her hand. all because he likes her and he's done being the second lead in this story. the mv ends here.
now, about jeongin, he did mention in one of his vlive that he was like a guardian angel and i do think he's like a friend that really really cares for hyunjin and doesn't ever want him to get hurt. so the whole mv wraps up in this plot of how hyunjin takes action right when minho and the female lead are slowly getting things going for them.
UNVEIL: B ME
and then we get the unveil track of b me, (how i wish they dropped the mv for this rather!). i'll make a list of stuff that happens in b me first and then tell you how my brain linked it up.
felix with the video camera + tape
jeongin distressed with bruised face
the members reminiscing what they once had before chaos struck.
a script that has even a fool knows (alternative title to on track) written (this was my cue to link them both?)
seungmin, chan and technically the whole cast looking distressed
jisung burning the film competition form (?)
changbin in the court sad and playing alone
biker!minho + biker!hyunjin (THIS ISN'T A POINT BUT THEY ARE SO HOT IN THIS AU SHUT UP RUE!!!)
minho meets with an accident + jisung rushes to his side
angry giving up skz moments
ot8 basketball happy memories
i'm going to sit here and draft this out so again, bear with me, soooo,
i presume the hyunjin grabbing the girl's hand, ofc, did not sit right with minho because technically, minho and her were a thing almost. and that ruined the friendship. this also caused the whole film shooting to turn chaotic, i presume because hyunjin's gaze in the on track mv seemed determined so i think he wasn't ready to back off either. the filming team clearly breaks apart because of this. the tension between minho and hyunjin is still very high. the team is frustrated. jisung burns the film competition form because what's the use of joining when there's no team? changbin is sad and angry and has emotions he is frustrated over (just like the other members!!) because they aren't together as a friend circle distinctly because of the feud between hyunjin and minho. they used to play basketball together (the whole of the ending part!) but not anymore.
now, we see how minho meets with an accident. i'm a bit confused with this part (this is why we need the mv for b me, jyp!!!!) but i'll state out everything i think.
a) jisung is to minho as to what jeongin is to hyunjin.
b) the accident could be solely accidental? maybe minho ran off in a fit after an argument with jeongin and hence why jeongin has the bruises and maybe in that heat, minho could have had the accident.
c) i presume jisung rushes to help him because human guardian angel of sorts of a friendship.
anyhow, i think the small clip of video tape that felix pulls out in the beginning is what they watch together. i do not think this has any correlation to the intense story besides adding the fact that they were reaaaaaaally close because they all look super happy in that shot, omg!!
MIXTAPE: OH
and now here we are, mixtape: oh. (watching and pausing the mv to go as detailed as i can with my storytelling.) this, since it was a mv, we get a story as solid as the first one (thank you, jyp. i hate you generally but thank you for this.)
so we have all the members in the drama club room. the same room we saw in the first mv i think. everyone's gathered back there, picking up their stuff because they have graduated, except for changbin and hyunjin who haven't come. jeongin searches and hopes expectantly for hyunjin to come. the blue certificate kinda thingy (I have no idea what it is. i don't read korean either and my google translate couldn't pick that up :((() is something of hyunjin's and i think minho did want hyunjin to come to this sort of reunion because he gets angry and picks up the blue thingy. he's either mad at that, or he is still mad at what happened in the past. i'm not sure. either ways, jisung is worried too as to what minho is going to do and over what he is feeling. oh, also, minho is in a cast, which means it does go exactly in the order i mentioned !!!
we then see hyunjin (shit, i cried again!) and he's painting an eye (is this a relation with some other skz song i will never know) and i think he took up art after dropping from film club so like he could distance himself from the rest of them, because well, he was 1/2 of the reason why this all happened.
we have the members reminiscing again, thinking about the good times and bad ones too. jeongin is in a tunnel (the boy is always in a tunnel. is this again a link to other mvs i do not know) and changbin goes to the drama club room all alone after everyone leaves and like i think he removed the sign of the drama club room and in my head, it's a symbolism for how everything has finally ended. all the memories they have had had finally ended with their graduation, of sorts, in that moment for him. jeongin, who is in the tunnel calls for hyunjin, like a last thread of hope he clings on to, expecting for him to finally meet them and come back to them. hyunjin doesn't pick up the call.
minho is still packing things up and as he looks through stuff he sees a calender with their anniversary date marked and he remembers of the team together once again. everyone really badly misses the old days. we see jeongin who goes to buy that drink again that he stole from hyunjin in the on track mv and he remembers felix in that moment.
felix who is in the library is with a cake. so i presume it is his birthday because he lights the candle on the cake up eventually. i think he did want to celebrate it with the team as a whole but because of the fall he can't. he opens a book and see the quote, "dreams come true to those who really want them," (we see this on the jisung bus stand shot too btw!!) and he goes on to make a wish on his cake and ie think he wished for them all to be together once again, living the happy memories again. hence the beautiful shots in the end I AM IN LOVE.
so i had this sorta ex lmao who told me this beautiful metaphor once when we broke up about how i left him on the bus of our memories and it was only i who got down and that our timings didn't match. and i think my brain instantly correlated those two, oops. so like the bus is a train of thoughts, a passageway for them to remember the happy memories. changbin remembers the happy memories he had as he looks through hsi phone with the basketball in his hand. jisung also enters the bus and remembers the moments they shared. oh, also changbin leaves when jisung enters. the timings don't match.
TIMESKIP. because this is based off kdramas for sure and what are kdramas without timeskips lmao.
minho's arm is healed. (he's also wearing such a pretty fit i want to steal!) minho goes and tried to meet hyunjin at his art studio because he wants to give it a try, this whole friendship again, i think, but hyunjin isn't there. so he leaves him a note and the certificate (??) blue thingy (?? what is it someone help me!) hyunjin comes back to see them both. this is what happens in the mv, in correlation with the other mvs.
they could clearly make another part of them actually getting together. but personally, i think they do and like felix's wish comes true because the directing is such that they end it with felix opening his eyes. (i also don't want to think of a sad alternative where felix opens his eyes only to remember reality is still the same and the feud still exists. i refuse. in my head, the next part has them coming together just like that in the snow!)
but yes, if you've reached till here, thank you for reading my incoherent mess of thoughts. ily and i hope you have a good day! 💕
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murasaki-murasame · 3 years
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Thoughts on Higurashi Sotsu Ep11
Studio Passione: “We paid good money to animate Rika’s festival dance, and by god you’re gonna ENJOY IT!”
Anyway, thoughts under the cut, plus Umineko spoilers.
I know I talked about my theories for how this episode would be paced out last week, but I’m genuinely amazed that they managed to stretch the rest of this loop out into the entire episode, lol. It’s almost impressive how they managed to pad out half an episode or less worth of content into a full episode.
It kinda doesn’t even give me that much to talk about, yet again, which is kinda awkward, but either way this basically proves that I was totally right about my interpretation of the whole Keiichi scene, so I feel kinda pleased about that.
Long story short, the scene we saw in Gou was just an illusion depicting the story that Satoko told Ooishi about what happened, after she set the crime scene up to make it fit her version of events. I guess there’s still a non-zero chance that there’s some extra layer of mystery going on there, but at this point I really doubt it. I think that’s basically all that was going on.
I think this is going to be one of the more polarizing parts of Sotsu for people, depending on how they feel about the way that this is tying itself in to Umineko. This is the sort of storytelling device that’s basically never been used before in Higurashi, but is integral to how Umineko is set up, so it’s one of those times where it becomes undeniable that this is meant to bridge the two series, and is drawing inspiration and ideas from both of them, instead of this just staying within the boundaries of Higurashi alone.
With how this arc feels like a point of no return in the transition between the two stories, I really like how the first thing Satoko does when she accepts that she’s a witch is to start bringing Umineko-style narrative trickery into Higurashi for the first time. I think it’s a neat way to show how she’s starting to ascend beyond the game-board itself and is operating with a different set of rules. Obviously people aren’t gonna like that if they don’t like the idea of this being tied to Umineko, but I think that ship has long since sailed at this point, lol.
And honestly, even without relying on knowledge from Umineko, I think they did a fine job of having that scene in Gou seem weird and suspicious right from the get-go. For one thing, we were also told in Gou that Keiichi had no memory of what happened, and everyone else in that scene was dead, so it’s not that hard to start guessing that we were shown a false version of events.
I think I said this last week, but the confirmation that this is literally just Umineko Logic 101 really makes me wonder if Ryukishi is doing it this way in part to ‘prepare’ people for what to expect from Umineko. There’s still the possibility that we’ll get a full on remake after this, but even if it’s as simple as this basically ending on the note of ‘go back and read the Umineko VN’, he might still be trying to give people an idea of what to expect from it so they don’t get turned off by ep2.
This is getting more into theory territory, but if we keep going down this rabbit hole of transitioning into Umineko logic and narrative structure, I wonder if the entirety of Gou/Sotsu is going to end up being contextualized as a set of forgeries, in the same way as it worked in Umineko. Something along the lines of Satoko ‘seeing Rika’s loops’ being a metaphor for her being given manuscripts to read by Featherine based on Rika’s account of events, and then the Gou/Sotsu loops being forgeries made in collaboration between Featherine and Satoko, and presented to Rika as a new mystery to read and solve. At the very least, this could arguably justify stuff like how everything seems to go in the way Satoko wants, regardless of how reckless she gets.
I’m not 100% confident in that, but it’d definitely continue the trend of this being a blend of Higurashi and Umineko’s writing styles. I think it’d also provide a more comprehensive non-magical interpretation for what’s going on than just ‘Satoko fell asleep in the shrine and just dreamed all of this’, or whatever.
I also don’t really think that’d contradict the whole idea of Satoko being Lambda, though. Looking at it through this whole lens, it’d be sorta like how Ange goes through her own whole character arc in the process of reading Featherine’s forgeries, and basically ends up becoming a witch by the end of it. So the whole narrative arc of Satoko venting out her anger at Rika by trapping her in a new set of loops and slowly becoming a witch would still be intact, and still for all intents and purposes lead to her becoming Lambda.
There’s also various ways this could be tied into the whole deal with Lambda being Takano’s benefactor in Higurashi. Considering how Lambda never actually plays a part in Higurashi itself and is never mentioned by Takano, it could be as simple as ‘Satoko reads Featherine’s manuscript version of Higurashi and ends up relating a lot to Takano and wants her to succeed’, which gets morphed into her granting Takano her blessing of certainty. Either way I think that the whole timeline of events is weird and nebulous and isn’t really intended to make logical sense.
Anyway, probably the most surprising part of the episode was the reveal at the very end that the next arc won’t be called something like Nekoakashi, but instead it’ll be Kagurashi. I’m not really sure how much to read into that, though. It could just be as simple as them speeding through the Nekodamashi stuff, and most of Kagurashi will be the aftermath of that, so they gave it a unique name. Or it could be a completely new arc that does something totally different. Lots of people have suggested the idea of it being an arc all about Eua and Hanyuu and their backstory, which would be one way of doing something entirely different to a Nekodamashi answer arc, but who knows. I don’t think the final scene of this episode necessarily proves that the next arc will be about those two, though.
But on the topic of those two, at this point I think it’s probably safe to say that Hanyuu is effectively meant to be Eua’s piece in this game, and that they probably have a similar relationship to Bern and Erika, going by how much Eua seems to look down on Hanyuu. Although it’s not exactly clear if this Hanyuu is the same person as the Hanyuu from the VN, or if she’s like a clone of her that Eua created after Hanyuu disappeared or whatever after Matsuribayashi. 
Either way, I’m not entirely sure how they’d even approach an arc focused on those two. It’s not like Umineko really explained Featherine’s backstory, unless Sotsu is going to straight up introduce Ikuko/Tohya, which I guess could tie into my above theory about this being a forgery. On the other hand, I guess they could maybe do something like the Hanyuu backstory arc from the Higurashi console ports, but that wouldn’t really feel relevant to Sotsu’s story at this point.
Really the big question is just if the entire story will wrap up in four more episodes, or if there’ll be some sort of third season or whatever to wrap things up. Considering that this entire episode was just about wrapping up this loop, and we haven’t even gotten into anything from Nekodamashi, it at least feels like we’re running out of ways they could pull off an ending with just the next arc. But it’s not impossible. The simplest way to handle it would be to spend one episode at most on skimming through the next set of loops so we can get back to the cliffhanger from Gou, and then continuing from there, but if my theory about the overarching structure of the story is correct, then there might not even be that much to show after the cliffhanger, and the continuation of it might just happen in the meta world [or the ‘real world’], not the world of that loop itself. It’s also possible that, if this does lead into some kind of Umineko remake, the ending won’t even be particularly conclusive, and will just be continued in that series instead.
Even with how the pacing has gone thus far, I’m not really sure how confident I am in the idea that we might get another entire season out of this. Maybe we might get another nine episodes to fill Sotsu out to 24 episodes total, but I don’t know if we really need another full cour or two after the next arc. At the very least it’d feel kinda agonizing to have to wait even longer for ANOTHER full season to see how things actually end, lol.
There’s still the whole question mark of how the OP and the key visual for Sotsu depict Rika and Satoko as teenagers, and the other club members in different outfits to the ones from Satokowashi, but who even knows how that all might play into the story at this point. I still think we might get a Saikoroshi-style arc where Satoko loses her game and is banished to a world where Rika doesn’t exist and her relationship with the club members is totally different, but I’m not even sure what the whole point of that kinda development might be, or how long it’d take to get through.
At this point I think the best thing to do would be to just go all in with the Umineko stuff and have this end with the birth of Bern and Lambda and their whole love-hate relationship of mutual torture, even if it means leaving things kind of inconclusive, and without Satoko getting much punishment for her crimes. I think it’d be much worse if they just drag this out for even longer only to end it on the note of this whole conflict being neatly resolved and everything looping back to square one like nothing ever happened.
I guess we’ll just have to see how the next few episodes go, lol.
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popculturebuffet · 3 years
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House of Mouse Review: Not So Goofy or The Ungoofy Is Upon Us!
GG
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Welcome back to the RIDE OF THE THREE CABLLEROS. And i’m hitting the ground running to continue the trek after some lessened activity over the holiday weekend. Especially with Christmas season already there.. and.. things to take care of. 
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Your time will come, you blighted hell of an episode. But no today we’re talking about something actually good! It’s Not So Goofy! It’s back on in to the house of mouse as this was only one year after the previous episode. We’re on to season 2 though frankly i’d have to re-watch more of the show to spot a difference. The show really didn’t change all that much between seasons. The only difference i’ve heard of is Pete is ENTIRELY absent this season, so my long spiel on him being on the show continues to be worthless and I continue to not regret it. But since I covered most of the stuff I knew about the series and how much I liked it last time we can dive straight into the episode> And this one was a treat for me as Goofy was my faviorite watching this show back in the day and is tied with donald now as my faviorite of the classic characters.. not that it’s hard competition but still I love both. Goofy is kind, clumsy, and a loving father, he’s who we are and who we want to be all in one. As with last time, which you can find on the disney tab on my blog, i’ll be reviewing the host segment seperate from the short’s for coherency’s sake. So with that in mind...
NOT SO GOOFY: Hot Goofy on Beast Action We open with Mickey intorducing the show and everyone chanting house of mouse, house of mouse, which makes me want a version of the show that’s a disney fight club, with over the top smash bros or scott pilgrim style battles. God that’s a project I never completed.. reviewing that series... maybe some day i’ll just start from scratch and do that.. HINT. Point is instead  of Disney Fight Club, we get goofy breaking a bunch of shit, because this episode he’s extra clumsy. Though thanks tot his I am reminded the HOM’s jaintoral staff is the brooms from fantasia, which is a nice touch and we get a nice bit of Minnie sending all of them after Goofy keeps breaking stuff. So despite Mickey being the one interrupted constantly, everyone else is hte one to point it out, Minnie politley everyone else just sorta barging in. I was going to give out about them giving out when none of them were effected but.. really bad wait service really dose impact them all: Donald is co owner so if goofy injures someone he has to help pay the setlement, Minnie runs the staff and has had to have her brooms work double to clean up, Hoarace has to clean up structural damage, Daisy is guest services so she has to hear about it, Clarabelle only heard a rumor and Gus is chef so he has to remake the food. So i’m sympathetic to all of them.. except Gus. Gus your only gimmicks are your lazy, you eat things, and in animations case you only communicate by honking obnoxiously. You don’t get to insult a comedic genuis for doing his bit. 
But Goofy overhears this and is upset, saying they want him to be the oppsitie of goofy, ungoofy. I mean technically your right, but an ungoofy would be something more like this. 
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“I WAIT INSIDE YOUR HOUSE UNTIL THE CRESENT DAWN THEN ONE BY ONE YOU’LL ALL BE GONE. “
See nothing like goofy. But no ungoofy in this episode’s case is just goofy acting refined and posh. And to help with that after the first cartoon, aka half the episode as i’m now realizing is standard, is...
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I will never get tired of doing that. Rob Paulsen is back as Jose, and does a MUCH BETTER job this time. Though really that’s also because he has more to actually work with this time, so he can actually play the character. Him being a white guy playing a Brazilian is still unfortunate, still not his fault, and was covered more last time. We’ll get into how Jose helps goofy after the cut. 
So Jose helps goofy try to ungoofy himself.. which as established isn’t how that works but hey. So we get a funny montage of Goofy learning the ropes of being significant, getting a turkey on his head, and backslapping jose so hard he flies into the next room and goofy wonders where he is. I don’t have much to add, it’s just funny. It’s why reviewing comedy is hard. Besides being subjective sometimes that’s the most you can say. 
So it works, and Goofy helps everyone in a dignified manner.. and this is where the plot starts to slip up slightly, as for starters Goofy’s apperance is the same, he’s just closing his eyes a lot. He’s also not really doing anything wrong... the closest he gets is massaging bugs out of the beasts hair when he has an itch. 
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And that’s because he didn’t ask if they have an open marraige.. I mean they probably do, Belle’s open minded and beast has needs, but still, he should’ve asked. Otherwise it’s going great.  As for where it goes wrong.. it’s because he dosen’t really DO anything bad. He isn’t an uptight jerkass about it or anything, he isn’t mean or tyranical to the customers or dosen’t transition to that he’s just.. not himself. Which isn’t good, btu the most he does in that regard is just not give the goofy laugh. Mickey and Minnie just suddenly kind of decided “Whelp this is bad let’s fix that”. And Disney would do this better, one of the Mickey Mouse shorts had Minnie, swooning over a sophisicated gentelman type on tv, give Mickey finishing lessons which turned him into a snobbish monster who broke up with her for daring to serve Bologna and not having a waiter. That WORKED.. and not just because we got Donald and Goofy kidnapping Mickey. But because we were shown there was nothing wrong with him in the first place, and there was something bad with the change. 
Here Goofy’s just.. compitent at his job. he’s not cruel to say max or clarabelle, he’s just refined. He should be himself, i’m entirely on board with that, but he’s not shown being worse off. I’m not saying he should stay posh, just give him a clear reason why his life is worse off this way is all. It’s basic storytelling.  But since Jose can’t just.. undo his training because he dosen’t know how they bring in Panchito! And we get another delightful song as Panchito tries to give a good lesson on being yourself with the help of his fellow cabs by explaning his long ass middle name... with Rob Paulsen’s voice. Yeah while Rob dosen’t play Panchito outside of song, he does end up voicing him for the number, likely because of his signature rapid fire delivery in music, but still does a GREAT job at that too. Serously I wasn’t just trying to placate people calling him a legend last time, he REALLY is fantastic, he was just given nothing to work with and here the diffrence shows as the song is really catchy, really beautifully animated and really fun and really plays to Rob’s strengths. Again casting a white man as a Latino is .. pretty sketchy, but it’s not Rob’s fault and i’m sure if Carlos was even offered the song, or even if he wansn’t, Rob apologized for it and made sure it was okay> Wether it actually was I don’t know but I can’t genuinely see Rob Paulson as the kind of guy to be racisit or steal rolls or any of that stuff. It’s likely they just knew he could sing fast and wanted to do that and dind’t think through implications. 
The song dosen’t quite work so they play a short, and when that fails Mickey closes the show sincerly thanking everyone and apologizing to Goofy. Goofy is restored.. horay? What do you think ungoofy?
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“SOON THE APOTHEOSIS WILL BE APON THEE AND ALL WILL BE GOOF. ALL WILL BE GOOF. “ Oh you always say that Final Thoughts on Not So Goofy Wraparound: Not terrible, but it’s really thin plot wise. but joke and song wise it’s REALLY good, so overall i’d say i’ts just okay> Not a great or memorable plot, or an original one really, btu the use of the cabs is FAR better this time around, the song is really damn good, and there are some good jokes, so overall it works. Like the last one the wraparound is nothing specail, but it’s still deeply entertaining. Speaking of entertaining, let’s talk shorts. 
Roller Coaster Painters:  It’s one of those old “Mickey, Donald and Goofy” have a buisness deals, where all are hired to paint a rollercoaster with the person who does the most getting a free pass for life and Donald naturally being the only one who cares. A paint war insues between Donald and Mickey... mostly because Donald wants the prize real bad and Mickey wants to “give him a run for his money” instead of just helping him because he’s a dick I guess? I dunno, but it escalates to them paiting each other and, in my favorite part, Donald stealing shit from the park to create a paint arsenal for himself, forging the prize to get his revenge. Fun paint base fighting ensues, and Goofy inevitably wins and rips the thing. SImple, but really charming with really fluid and wonderful animation helping accenutate the hyjinks. Really good slaptstick stuff and a VAST improvment over the last episode’s longer short. 
Goofy’s Extreme Sports Wakeboarding:  Just a fun, silly skit of Goofy wakeboarding, my faviorite bit being him doing the tantrum, which his him doing a child’s tantrum in mid-air. What was your faviorite bit UnGoofy?
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“BEHOLD MY SEED, THE SEED OF YOUR DOOM, THE SEED OF ALL WORLDS AND THE SEED OF ALL BLOOMS!” 
Awwwwww.... he has a kid now. 
How to Wash Dishes: Another How to Bit. Not as strong as the last one but still fun and throughly relatable as Goofy’s a dishwasher, which having been one twice now, I can relate to his surly disposition at the narrator guy talking it up. The Narrator then.. has goofy run up credit card debt because he’s a terrible person, hijinks ensue, and Goofy ends up.. washing dishes. Overall a fun short, and again relatable as Washing Dishes is not great. Not quite as good as the other two, but still enjoyable because well. it’s goofy after all. 
OveralL Thoughts: This was more like it. While the plot of the main segment was kind of thin and nonsensical in places... it worked because this is more of a comedy show and the wraparounds are more focused on jokes and crossover gags than a real plot, and worked SLIGHTLY better. The shorts were also really great, making this a hell of a lot more fun to watch. Highly recommend it to any cabs or house of mouse fan or if your intrested in house of mouse, this is a good one to try out.  If you liked this review, reblog it, like it, comment etc etc, and if you have an episode of house of mouse, another disney show, or just another show in general you’d like me to cover you can comission episodes by sending me a direct message on here or an ask to get my discord to hash things out there. Right now comissions are ONLY 3 bucks through monday, so get em now while their hot! And until next time there’s always another rainbow.  NEXT TIME: It’s Don Rosa again! Horary!. 
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aion-rsa · 3 years
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Marvel’s WandaVision and What’s Next for the MCU
https://ift.tt/3c4phnQ
This article contains WandaVision spoilers.
WandaVision has concluded with a terrific final episode, and with it, Marvel’s first foray into episodic television came to an end with startling success – taking a quiet story about a woman’s grief and loneliness, one of the most emotionally evocative pieces of MCU storytelling to date, and using it as a thread in the greater MCU tapestry. And that tapestry is unequivocally bigger now that the show is ended. Here are some of the pieces of groundwork WandaVision laid for the future of the MCU.
The Scarlet Witch and Doctor Strange 2
Lots of people found it odd that the show used Wanda’s real name in its title when the rest of the MCU uses superhero code names. We know why now: the Scarlet Witch is itself a title, one that Wanda embraces by the end of the show. And now it looks like she’s going to be a huge deal for the future of the MCU.
Wanda ends the show by defeating Agatha Harkness and basically putting her back “in character” while the rest of the Westview illusion dissipates, then letting go of her own grief, dissipating the hex around Westview, and taking the Darkhold, (Agatha’s comprehensive guide to evil magical knowledge that named the Scarlet Witch as the magic user who would eventually destroy the world) to the woods to study for a bit.
Read more
TV
Does the WandaVision Finale Set Up Doctor Strange 2?
By Kirsten Howard
TV
WandaVision Episode 9: Post-Credits Scenes Explained
By Gavin Jasper
Wanda is now, to put it mildly, a BIG DEAL. The Darkhold, Agatha tells us, predicts that the Scarlet Witch would inevitably be more powerful than the Sorcerer Supreme, which makes a ton of sense knowing that Wanda is heading to Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness next. 
Young Avengers
Or maybe not? Because the last thing we hear in the show are Billy and Tommy’s voices calling to their mother that something is wrong. 
Billy and Tommy, like colorful Vision, disintegrated when the hex dissipated. They were entirely constructs, which meant their powers were loaned from Wanda, their personalities derived from her, their existence a nice fiction. Just like in the comics, where Billy and Tommy were absorbed into Master Pandemonium’s hands and never heard from again. 
Except the time they joined the Young Avengers. 
Here’s how the comics did it, and I bet how the MCU will too: Billy and Tommy were shards of Mephisto’s soul, captured by Wanda and put into hex magic constructs to be hers and synthezoid-so-not-capable-of-reproducing Vision’s kids. When they were reabsorbed by Mephisto, they ceased to exist, seemingly for good. Later, Tommy Shepherd and Billy Kaplan, two seemingly unrelated teenage boys, are united by virtue of their powers (Tommy is a speedster and Billy uses something that seems like hex magic) on a team of teenage Avengers stand ins. After several adventures, Billy and Tommy discover the truth about their powers: they are the reincarnated shards of souls that previously inhabited the made up Billy and Tommy Maximoff. So they’re kinda sorta actually Wanda and Vision’s kids. At least in their hearts. 
A running mystery about Westview was “what happened to all the kids?” And that question was only partially answered during the show – some kids showed up after Wanda was confronted about it, while Dotty (actually a woman named Sarah) begged Wanda to let her daughter out from where she was locked up. We know prolonged exposure to the Hex gave Monica Rambeau her powers. It doesn’t feel like much of a leap for two random kids trapped inside the Hex to have also absorbed Billy and Tommy’s memories and powers when it came down.
Considering how much Young Avengers stuff is being laid on the table elsewhere – from Kate Bishop in the Hawkeye show, to Cassie Lang and Kang showing up in Ant-Man 3, to The Falcon and the Winter Soldier exploring the history of the super soldier program, this feels like a rock solid lock to come back.
Monica Rambeau and Captain Marvel 2
Monica Rambeau, the newly powered Photon, is pretty clearly headed for space. 
In the mid-credits scene, Monica was taken aside by what appeared to be a SWORD agent, who revealed herself as a Skrull and indicated that somebody in space was looking for her. That somebody is pretty clearly Nick Fury, who was last seen in Spider-Man: Far from Home working with Skrulls, based on a space station, and dealing with interplanetary and interdimensional threats to Earth. 
Through the entirety of WandaVision, SWORD was about monitoring “sentient weapons,” a pretty significant departure from its comics counterpart. Its comics counterpart is much closer to SHIELD but for aliens, something we all expected to happen when we saw Fury hanging out on that space station. It looks like that’s coming true, and the next logical place for that to happen would also be somewhere where we can explore the simmering discontent Monica has with Carol that she expressed at one point during the show. Also Monica’s powers are really cool and should be featured just about everywhere they can be.
Read more
TV
WandaVision: How Monica Rambeau Fits in the MCU
By Delia Harrington
Comics
Captain Marvel 2: What We Want to See
By Delia Harrington
It’s a safe bet that we’ll see Monica reappear on the Ms. Marvel TV show, and she’s long been confirmed for an appearance in Captain Marvel 2.
The Fantastic Four
This is just rampant speculation, but our belief that the seeds of the Fantastic Four in the MCU were sown in WandaVision remains strong. The SWORD uniforms are too close to F4 outfits, and the seemingly new mission of SWORD is too close to the Fantastic Four’s origin for there to be another easy, obvious way in. It’s very easy to imagine four SWORD agents, two of them siblings, getting caught by some cosmic rays on a mission in space and catching superpowers. 
This also has the added convenience of giving them proximity to the Skrulls, historically as large a part of Fantastic Four lore as that of the Avengers. It’s just too easy to miss, even if neither Reed Richards nor Victor von Doom didn’t end up being the teased aerospace engineer. 
X-Men and Mutants in the MCU?
Certain Denizens are adamant that we also saw the dawn of the mutants and thus the first seeds of the X-Men on screen in WandaVision. The theory goes that Wanda had latent powers that she used to defuse the bomb when she and Pietro were little, and the fact that the two of them were the only ones to survive exposure to the Mind Stone indicated latent mutant abilities activated by the stone.
cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });
This theory feels like the biggest reach, but we will admit that there is something to Pietro having latent powers that allowed him to survive. That is probably the strongest circumstantial evidence for this theory, that WandaVision is also the dawn of the X-Men joining the MCU. But it’s still a little bit of a stretch, and if it was the launch of Marvel’s merry movie mutants, we’re sure to get more teases in upcoming shows and flicks.
  The post Marvel’s WandaVision and What’s Next for the MCU appeared first on Den of Geek.
from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3ej7P1L
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ascottywrites · 4 years
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Overwatch -- The Felicity Smoak List
In light of Emily Bett Rickards’ departure from Arrow here we are with a few of my favorite things. Happy Reading!! 
The Phoenix by SuperSillyAndDorky06 (Complete: 27/27| 126,939) --Bratva Oliver 
Felicity Smoak fell in love with the broody, intense Oliver Queen, Captain of the Russian Bratva, ages ago but he broke her heart. So, when the sudden marriage between them is arranged, she does not understand it and she does not want it. Except Oliver Queen is not only a harder man to live with than she realized, he also has no intention of letting her go. Mature content. Mild swearing. A lot of sexual tension. And you will want to punch Oliver at times. Kiss him at times ;)
A Code of Silence by OliversMuse (Complete: 34/34| 55,265) --Bratva Oliver  Oliver Queen is a boss of the Star City mafia when he meets and and falls in love with Star City socialite Felicity Smoak. While on their honeymoon their yacht goes down and they are presumed dead. Five years later they unexpectantly show back up alive and Oliver is now also a Captain in the Russian Bratva. As he fights to keep his territory he faces a resistance that will force him to show everyone just how far he will go to protect those he loves and Felicity to show what she will do to protect her family.
I Will Protect Her by beggsyboo (Complete: 22/22| 33,678) --Bratva Oliver  She required protection.
He needed a wife.
                                                  *** 
   So I’ve just got three Olicity stories and they’re all Bratva!Oliver meh. It’s probably because in fanfiction I ship Felicity with literally anyone other than Oliver (sorry Olicity die-hards). It could be because after a hint of it was introduced, the Arrow-verse canon made it a central piece of the storytelling. Or it could be a multitude of other reasons...let’s not look too deep into it. INSTEAD here are some alternate pair Felicity fics. Enjoy! 
+Batlicity 
Wait. What happened in Vegas?  by Ellabee15 (Complete: 30/30| 47,651)  Bruce and Felicity accidentally get married in Vegas.
A Bat Reaches for the Light by tdgal1 (wip: 13/?| 35,053) 
Oliver sleeps with Isabel and tells Felicity that nonsense. Felicity meets Bruce Wayne, Felicity decides that if Oliver wants no relationship that is what he will get. The first chapter is a summary but things will improve. This is for my good friend Vanessa.
Between a Bat and a Sharp Place by Ellabee15 (Complete: 28/28| 19,849) 
Beginning sometime after Oliver makes Felicity his EA this takes a different view of how season 2 might have gone. What if Felicity's family secrets were revealed? How will Oliver react to her being the daughter of a business rival. More importantly how does Tony Stark feel about the way the Arrow treats his daughter. Also Felicity has a history with...Batman?
Batlicity oneshots by  Ellabee15 (Complete: 20/20| 20,250) 
Felicity/Bruce Wayne one shots.
How Did We End Up Like This? by Wally_Birb (Complete: 15/15| 46,404) 
For half of a decade, Felicity's best friend was a billionaire vigilante with a dark past. No, not that one. What started out as what Felicity insists was a mistake resulted in one of the longest friendship Felicity had ever had. Long distance, of course, because Bruce Wayne wasn't exactly keen on Star City and Felicity wasn't a fan of smog.
When Felicity and Oliver break up, Felicity doesn't want to give up on making a difference. So, she turns to her best friend, looking for comfort (which he fails at giving spectacularly) and understanding (which he wouldn't be able to stop even if he wanted to). She quickly finds herself fitting in with the Batman and his little army of children.
+Clark Kent 
The Measure of a Hero by Ellabee15 (Complete: 22/22| 36,873) 
After the Glades fall strange things begin happening in Starling.
Man of Smoak, Man of Steel by Ellabee15 (Complete: 24/24| 24,604) 
After Felicity graduated from MIT she went to work for a while in Metropolis to set up the Daily Planet's new computer system...and got a little more than she bargained for. AU (Obviously) will feature Arrow story line later.
+Clint Barton 
Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Fortune by Ellabee15 (Complete: 29/29| 44,465) 
Clint Barton gets tired of being compared to the Arrow and decides to set the record straight once and for all. The last thing he wanted was to get involved in the Arrow's mess. Felicity's struggling with Oliver's willingness to overlook Malcolm's past in order to defeat the League of Assassins. The last thing she needs is another stubborn archer in her life.
**This is followed by  Where We Stand 
Not Her Only Archer by Nartie327 (wip: 11/?| 11,844) 
What If Oliver wasn't the only archer Felicity knows? What if she had a whole secret life before she joined Team Arrow that no one knew about?
(Timeline: Arrow season 2 & The Avengers: Age of Ultron)
Maybe Next Time I can Buy You That Drink? by lailah (one-shot| 2,868)
“When the shirt was gone her eyes widened in surprise. His body was -- well amazing, it was all rock hard muscle and skin, so much glistening skin. Felicity couldn’t help but reach out and press her hands against him, feel what she was seeing to make sure it was real.”
**This is followed by  The Softer Side
Marry Me (buy me dinner first) by Wally_Birb (one-shot| 7,718) 
The one where Clint and Felicity sorta dive headfirst into this whole 'partners' thing and Clint realizes what the initials of Strike Team Delta spell out.
+Thorlicity 
When Lightning Strikes by Ellabee15 (Complete: 20/20| 48,473) 
After being banished from Asgard, Thor crash lands outside of Starling.
Smoak or Stark? by laxit21 (wip: 58/?| 76,002) 
Howard Stark was a known adulterer. Roughly a week after he and his wife are killed in a car accident, their son Tony becomes aware of his younger sister, Felicity Smoak. How will events for both the Arrow and the Avengers change as a result of their sibling relationship?
(Canon divergence for both Arrow and the MCU)
Always Be My Thunder by Ellabee15 (Complete: 27/27| 62,582) 
Felicity is recruited by SHIELD to help with an impending disaster. A life altering accident forces her to make an extremely important decision which will forever change the dynamics of Team Arrow and those of the Asgardian court.
Lightning in her blood by Millie 1985 (Complete: 3/3| 3,848) 
Felicity is not what she seems, sure she is a sweet, quirky, genius who can always be relied upon to help save the day but she is also more than that. She has lightning in her blood and more than one mighty protector in her corner. Takes place after both Heir to the Demon and the second avenger film. Now a collection of one shots.
 +Steve Rogers 
I'll be your Soldier by Ellabee15 (Complete: 31/31| 54,121) 
 Felicity Smoak is kidnapped by the league of Assassins. Over the next 2 years a new Winter Soldier comes to the attention of Captain America. (This story begins at the beginning of season 3 in the Arrow timeline and after Captain America: The winter soldier in the Marvel universe.)
Rising Above The Ashes by Wally_Birb (wip: 9/?| 20,494) 
When Felicity Smoak was 19, SHIELD forced her to join their ranks to work off the crimes that the people closest to her committed with her super virus. Also when she was 19, a kill order went out that forced three of SHIELD's top agents to defect so that she could escape with her life. No one knows why exactly the order went out, but years later the answer comes while Felicity is hacking investigating SHIELD.
Of course, knowing why it happened? Well that just puts more of a bounty on her head.
Some Good In This World (Worth Fighting For) by Wally_Birb (one-shot| 10,960) 
Felicity blames Cisco, honestly. It's always Cisco's fault, so she figured that when she woke up in the 1940's after interrupting one of his experiments, it was a safe bet to think that it was all Cisco's fault.
His Best Girl by iluvaqt (Complete: 22/22| 100,696) 
Felicity moves to New York after the Glades collapse. A chance run-in at the Buy More with Steve Rogers, changes her world and sets her on a path of discovery that has been kept secret since before she was born.
Because I'm Worth It by lateVMlover (Complete: 10/10| 34,455) 
This is a crossover story that is set after season 2's Arrow finale. Felicity is Pepper's cousin and decides to go to New York to get away from her heartbreak from Oliver. This is NOT an Olicity story. It focuses on her meeting and falling for Captain America.
**This is followed by a few more installations  Black Meets Green  Protecting the Family  The Wedding ...Ya know, just in case you’re in need of a deeper look. 
+Johnny Storm 
Where there's Smoak there's Fire by Ellabee15 (Complete: 11/11| 14,043)
In the wake of Oliver's death Felicity is sent by Palmer Tech to oversee a deal with the Fantastic Four.
+Aquaman 
Above | Beneath by Vixx2pointOh (Complete: 6/6|23,990)
He was from the lost world beneath.
She was from the dry land above.
Or at least that's what they thought...
Expectations by NellyHarrison (one-shot| 6,562) 
The first time Felicity Smoak meets Arthur Curry does not go well, but as they continue to work together, and she continues to believe in his potential, their relationship evolves into something neither of them had expected.
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satannedtrash · 5 years
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a new year’s resolution | qian kun
summary: where you go out with friends to welcome in the new year, but you never expected to welcome something - or rather, someone - else.
pairing: qian kun x reader
word count: 3.3k/3365 words
genre: fluff. just fluff. pure fluff
format: dot points (still not experienced enough yet :|)
warnings: none unless mild to moderate swearing and total drunks aren’t your thing (also not edited oh dear) (and ooc kun cuz i suck at this ok)
author’s note: tHIS WAS MEANT TO BE FINISHED LAST WEEK BUT STUFF CAME UP SO IT’S HELLA LATE AAA but anyway at first i wasn’t entirely sure what member to write about, but then i remembered how sm didn’t even release a happy birthday post to kun (jan 1). so i thought that i can dedicate this to kun. happy (extremely belated) birthday to the butter-for-our-ears vocalist, angel and mum, kun! (also y/f/n means your friend’s name)
EDIT: just realised there was a whole section missing (i realised after a month because i didn’t want to read back on this - thing - until now) and without it the oneshot didn’t flow, so i added it in. hope it all clears things up!
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11:19 pm
before this story starts imma explain sum stuff
first of all: bless kun
second of all: appreciate kun
third of all: say happy birthday to kun
oh and this is an au where the nct members aren’t idols so don’t expect to see saesangs or fans with their cameras out taking a photo of every move they make being mentioned in here
aaand i’m rambling so with that out of the way lez go
laughing at a friend’s joke, you lifted your right hand which held your phone, causing the screen to turn on
“gEEz okay then”
the bright, white light emitted from it shocked your eyes, making you blink furiously
when you could finally see without being partially blinded, you quickly checked the time and placed your phone face-down next to you
“what’s the time?” y/f/n asked, chin on your shoulder
not bothered to check again, you just say “11:19” and then leaned your head on theirs
“can you believe that 2018 is ending?”
“yep. this year sucked for me so i’m down for it to end”
“always looking forward, huh?”
you shifted your gaze from the city skyline to your friend. “have to. can’t afford to stick to the past”
pouting, y/f/n was about to respond when you lifted your head and stopped leaning back on your arms to sit upright
“besides, we gotta enjoy tonight, instead of moping around.” here, you noticed your friend eyeing the beers nearby you and sighed heavily. guess i need to be chaperone for the night
well considering that the rest of your friends and their friends were wasted might as well make sure they don’t mess the docks up
as you handed the bottle to your friend, their expression brightened as they snatched it from you
well damn aren’t they excited to get drunk
wait it’s not even 11:30 yet and we’re still going to a bar nearby after the fireworks wat
“er, shouldn’t you wait till after midnight to drink?”
“nah m8 tis the best time to have some”
(i have just realised that the vibe of this went from serious storytelling to a memey laidback sorta thing damn it)
(oh well i’ll roll with it)
not knowing what to do now that there wasn’t much to talk about, you brought out your earphones and decided to listen to some music to pass the time
calming music, such as a song with nine glorious men singing and some bed squeaking in the background
(i’ll let you guess what song i’m talking about)
you let your head bop to the song as you looked out to the sea port twenty metres in front of you, watching the dark waters ripple
11:48 pm
the next time you turned on your phone to see how many minutes left you had become a third wheeler
quite the strong third wheeler might i add
a few moments after the first song you were listening to finished, your good friend yuta had joined you and y/f/n because his other friends were “too rowdy”
but as soon as he saw the bottles he said “gimme”
so you were sitting there (barbecue sauce on my-) with two just barely sober adults acting like complete children
you had to wrestle out of y/f/n’s koala hug around your waist and escape yuta’s chin noogie to grab your phone
“oh for fuck’s sake” father why have you foresaken me
when you finished preparing yourself for another possible 27 minutes of torture, you turned around to see yuta and y/f/n throwing themselves at each other, singing like magpies
“wE wIsh yOU A mErrY chrIstmAsssss aNd a hAppY nEw yeeeEeAArr!!1!” they then took the opportunity to laugh, squeal and kiss the hecc out of each other’s cheeks
you knew that your friend was absolute shit at singing, but yuta was a whole different story good lord
you thought he was good???
maybe just when he hasn’t had a few drinks
you stared at the two dolphins then promptly stood up and sat down behind them because you had to make sure they didn’t do anything more than whatever the hell this was
not like it could get any worse
you could feel the gazes of pity the others were sending you, but frankly you didn’t care
before, you couldn’t wait for the new year to come, but now you were more eager than ever
someone please save my poor soul
11:59 pm
“yEEEE BOI a minute left!”
eleven minutes have passed and the final 60 seconds of the year were being counted down
you were less excited for the new year and more excited for the end of your chaperoning being closer
all you had to do was get through the firework display, watch the adorable couple in front of you until the bar and let them do what they want (there were sure to be other friends who were willing to let them join in)
it seemed like a simple, solid plan! :D
before you knew it, yuta and y/f/n had already started counting down from 15, so might as well start now
“13, 12, 11, 10...”
you took a glance at y/f/n, who grinned back at you and threw their arm around your shoulder
“7, 6, 5, 4, 3...” here we go
“1 - happy new year!!”
it was at this moment you realised that your eardrums were incapable of tolerating the two dolphins beside you
sINCE WHEN WAS YUTA ABLE TO SCREAM THAT LOUD AND HIGH THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE
yay to starting the new year with loud friends screaming like there’s no tomorrow amiright
you had trouble focusing on the fireworks to the point you could only hear most of the big ones
that’s how hard it was to be next to them but oh well
marvelling at the city skyline, the fireworks seeming like entirely new stars, you began having very deep thoughts
the typical ones, such as “ what will 2019 bring?”, “what will i be like by the end of the year?” and “will i be happy with someone?”
you had asked the exact same things when 2017 shifted to 2018 and found that you actually had an answer for all of them
2018 brought some crappy stuff but also some good stuff to balance that out
you were still sort of the same, because every time something major came up you only changed a bit then went back to normal
and you weren’t with anyone yet, which you had expected
but a little birdy on your shoulder said, “then get with someone in 2019! make it a new year’s resolution!”
your eyebrows furrowed at the thought, but you decided to focus on the sky for now
because since when did you ever make or follow new year’s resolutions?
12:16 am
“12:16 okay then”
turns out you didn’t consider the walk to the bar part of your chaperoning
by the time the display ended, yuta and y/f/n could walk, but not without wobbling and intense laughter
so guess who had to make sure they could at least make the trip to the bar?
“um, are you sure you don’t want to go home yet?” 
“nah, i caan’t, my sister was meaant to be at home-!”- y/f/n stumbled a bit but you caught them before they fell - “-but she’s not, and i can’t beeee home by myselfff”
no wonder
here, you were struggling to keep the both of them propped up as you walked along the road, so there was bound to be a slip up
“you should’ve seen their face! haHA-!” yuta laughed a little too hard and nearly fell over his own feet, prompting you to panic and scramble to keep him from falling to the ground
“oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit-!”
but you didn’t need to because someone else already beat you to it!
sighing in relief, you looked up to see none other than the great qian kun putting yuta’s arm around his shoulder
he looked over to you gaping at him and smiled that warm smile that looked like it was sculpted by the gods
wow he looks great in this lighting
you were always attracted to kun, ever since you two began talking after stopping a full blown war between doyoung and ten
he appeared so soft and kind to you and you two seemed to have a lot in common
so naturally you hit it off
because who doesn’t love kun? :D
“you’re welcome?” oh shit i didn’t just stare at him for that long did i
“oh - sorry - thanks for that” nice going there y/n you idiot
kun just chuckled and hefted his drunk friend as he started walking, you doing the same
it became comfortably silent as your group made their way down the street and turned left into a reasonably sized bar, which as surprisingly not that busy
you set y/f/n down on a chair that thankfully had a tall enough back to keep them up and sat down next to them, exhaling
kun patted yuta’s back and went to sit down next to you
laying your head on the counter, you thought of striking up a conversation with kun
so, instead of saying things like “happy new year”, “thanks for helping me” or even “they’re hard to deal with anyway”, you just said “woah.”
yEAH AGAIN NICE GOING THERE Y/N
“‘woah’? what’s ‘woah’?” he responded, taking on a teasing, motherly tone
you could hear the grin in his voice
you panicked and stammered some illegible words before you could actually speak
“i meant like, woah, that was exhausting, they made things real hard and all that…”
then you thought of something brilliant
you took out your phone and googled “woah”, only to find that it wasn’t spelled w-o-a-h but instead meant to be w-h-o-a
you frowned but typed “whoa meaning” instead and showed the definition to kun
all the while still laying on the mahogany-coloured counter
to your surprise, he rolled his eyes, laughed and ruffled your hair
“that was a really bad joke but you’re lucky i have the same sense of humor” his laugh was infectious so you had to smile
then he asked, “are you okay? not too tired?”
sitting up, you put your phone back in your pocket
“nah, my arms just ache, but it’s fine.” your polite smile suddenly grew into a wide smirk. “thanks for worrying, mum”
“i’m not a mum!” his expression made you have the sudden urge to burst into endless chuckles
in the corner of your eye, you could see ten, doyoung and johnny elbowing each other, pointing at you and kun and singing “kiss the girl”
you then had the sudden urge to throw some hands
kun (obviously) overheard them and sighed
“why are they like this”
“i wish i knew”
you and kun talked some more, random topics like how uni was going for you, how his singing was, how your book was going, all that jazz
with some playful banter and the occasional jokes that made you laugh so hard your back hurt
“kun loving puns and dad jokes? a coincidence?”
“i only laugh at them to make you feel better!”
“gasp! how dare you!”
“only joking, y/n!”
while you two giggled, y/f/n suddenly turned to you and said, “i think yuta and i will be fine here…”
you stopped and looked back at them, concerned
“you sure?”
“we’ll just go sit with the boys over there-!” a hiccup. “-it’ll be fine!” then, it hit you
is this bitch trying to play matchmaker 
you grumbled “i’m not sure…” but then kun spoke up
“yeah, sure, that’s fine,” when you gave him a quizzical look, he added on, “as much as i don’t trust johnny, doyoung and ten, at least it’s not just the two of them?”
he phrased it as a question instead of a statement, his voice getting higher by each word spoken
you pondered over this
well, he’s not wrong
you exhaled in defeat, saying “fine, go ahead”
y/f/n grinned at you and gave a knowing wink before dragging yuta over to the three boys
two of whom were busy flirting to each other and the other one third wheeling
you raised your eyebrows up and down at them before turning back to kun, who was looking outside
“so,” you started, causing him to look at you, “are you sure you want yuta and y/f/n wreaking havoc with those three?” you nodded in the group’s direction
kun stayed silent for a bit, then said “yeah, i’m sure. it kinda looked like you needed a break from them.”
“true. there’s only so much you can take.” kun chuckled at that and looked outside again
it went silent, but in stark contrast to the vibe of the walk leading to the bar, it was very awkward
too awkward to handle
so you took the opportunity to debate with yourself whether or not you should study kun
damn what if he looks at me though i’m not really risking that
but how can you not look at him? and what’s there to talk about?
it’s not worth the embarrassment
look-
no
at-
no
him 
you were about to take a quick glance, but then kun spoke
“besides, i want to show you something”
once again, another puzzled look
“if you don’t mind, of course”
without another thought, you said “sure.”
“really? you’re okay with it?” you smiled at kun’s eagerness
“yeah, might as well, now that we don’t have anyone to watch over.” kun grinned and stood up, making sure to push in his chair (we love a polite king)
you two were about to walk out the door when you looked at a certain group three tables away from you
johnny and ten were still flirting and yuta and y/f/n were still laughing
but this time, doyoung wasn’t a third wheeler anymore, because a man who looked younger than him was having a somewhat civilised conversation with doyoung
you elbowed kun and made him look at them and made sure doyoung, johnny and ten saw you before both mouthing, “sha la la la la la my, oh, my~”
you took a mental screenshot of their faces before you and kun cackled your way out of the bar
12:47 am
“what are you planning on showing me?”
the two of you had been walking and talking for a while now, but kun still didn’t say what he was going to show you
you were waiting patiently, expecting him to eventually tell you, but you gave in
“it’s a surprise~” he said in a sing-song voice, which slightly irritated you
“i know that it’s at the docks, because that’s where we’re heading,” you gave him a light nudge with your arm. “so might as well tell me now!”
he stubbornly shook his head. “i refuse to tell you until you see it.”
pouting, you crossed your arms and muttered under your breath, “you’re lucky you’re adorable.”
to your relief, he didn’t hear you, because he laughed at your pout and pressed on
you lightly scoffed and picked up your pace so that you could walk alongside him
“can i at least have one clue?” you begged
“uh uh.”
“pleeeaaassee?” he looked at your hopeful smile and rolled his eyes
“fine,” you yelled “yes!” a little too loud, making people stare at you. “your clue is…
“...it’s big and sparkly.” you gave him a look showing that you weren’t impressed
“wow, kun, what a descriptive and totally-not-vague clue! i am sure to get it now!”
kun grumbled, “you sound like doyoung,” before remembering something
“don’t tell me the answer until we get there!” he quickly said, receiving yet another puzzled look. “so that i can give you the benefit of the doubt to make it all the more exciting! it’ll be fun!”
you in turn muttered, “well, you sound like y/f/n, and fine. i don’t wanna ruin the surprise. you look real enthusiastic about it too” he smiled gratefully before leaving you to do your thinking
thinking about that smile :)))))
damn his smile always gets me grrrrr
you pulled your mind away from kun’s personality and tried to think of a place with the clue “big and sparkly”
two came to your mind, the big ferris wheel and the big floating silver christmas tree out on the water
they’re both big and sparkly, but you couldn’t predict which one he was going to take you to
you were hoping the ferris wheel, but you just had to wait and see
“think of any places yet?” you jolted so hard, you threw your phone up accidentally
don’t worry, you caught it
kun looked at you, his eyebrows showing worry but his eyes glinting. “you okay?”
very nice going there y/n, how many more times will you mess up??
and my face feels like it’s on fire oh good lord 
“i’m fine, just got scared,” you had to take a breather before you put your phone in your pocket - where it should’ve been in the first place, but your dumb ass decided to hold it - and gave kun a thumbs up
he gave a thumbs up back and said, “surprised you didn’t scream.”
biting back a retort, you replied. “rude.” you sunk your hands deeper into your pockets. “and as for your question, yes, i did think of a place or two”
“good, because we’re getting close now”
you turned a corner and saw both the floating tree and the ferris wheel come into view
the ferris wheel carriages were lighting up one after the other, making it look like a loading symbol (great comparison there) from afar
a pretty and romantic loading symbol
while the christmas tree was dazzling, the rainbow lights getting brighter and dimmer like a pulsing star
while you two waited for the pedestrian light to turn green, kun said to you, “when we make it to the other side, make sure to close your eyes and keep them closed until i say so”
“let me guess, to ‘make it all the more exciting’?” he grinned and nodded
“yup”
you did as what he had told, closing your eyes and relying on kun to guide you the right way
“i swear to god if you push me off the pier i will drag you down with me”
“now you sound like ten, but don’t worry, i won’t,” he gently pushed you away from an upcoming obstacle. “thanks for thinking so highly of me.”
“no problem, mum” you grinned victoriously when you heard a heavy sigh
you knew you were close to the water when you smelled less alcohol and more salty sea water
“are we there yet?” you asked impatiently. you couldn’t be bothered to be patient anymore
kun said, “waaait,” and guided you a bit to the left. “there! now you can open your eyes.”
“finally, i was wondering when- holy shit.”
it wasn’t the ferris wheel that you were hoping that he’d show you, but it was something you decided was way more worth it
the floating silver christmas tree towered over you both, and it looked like it was the brightest and most colourful thing for kilometres (or miles, you choose)
coloured lines streamed down from the top to the bottom, like a very pink, purple and blue waterfall, while stage lights at the bottom smoothly changed from red to orange to yellow and more
it also reminded you of the windows screen when you used it for the first time (if that even makes sense?)
white light shone from beneath the many large stars decorating the tree, making them pop, and the wind revealed that the tree wasn’t made of smooth silver metal, but silver sequins that showed the water ripples and waves from below
the star at the top was the most intensely bright of them all, with a rainbow outline and a gold center
needless to say, it was pretty darn beautiful for a sight that would otherwise hurt your eyes
you stood there with your mouth wide open, looking like a pathetic fish, and almost missed what kun was saying
“i wasn’t sure if you would like the ferris wheel or the tree, but then i found out that the ferris wheel would be closed today, so i just chose this,” you felt his gaze shift onto you, and you tried not to get flustered. “do you like it?”
you took a moment before you spoke. “yes, i really like it a lot,” the view was that breathtaking it took away your ability to talk like a proper adult. you turned to him and gave a smile, trying to make it look as genuine as you could. “thanks for bringing me here, kun.”
he gave you an equally big grin and said, “you’re welcome. glad you like it too.” he turned back to look at the tree, and you did the same
but not without sneaking a glance at him in all his ethereal beauty
kun never failed to surprise you, whether it be showing you a very rainbow tree, being so kind and trusting or just being himself
your mind floated back to the three questions you had asked yourself earlier, “what will 2019 bring?”, “what will i be like at the end of the year?” and “will i be happy with someone?” and the new year’s resolution you made
you took another look at kun then whispered under your breath, “huh.
“guess i am on the way to completing one.”
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striving-artist · 5 years
Text
Unpopular opinion, but not every arc that ends tragically ends badly. 
Spoiler time. 
Seriously. Spoilers. Stop reading if you haven’t seen it. 
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Tony dying was the right call for the story arc. It’s tragic, it’s brutal, it’s callous, but his arc was about saving the world. His arc was about becoming more than the billionaire asshole. And yeah, we, his stans already knew that about him. We already knew that he was kind and generous and self sacrificing and YES, the rest of the world should have knackered on in A1 after the nuke, but that’s not how its gone. People keep hating on it went for him because they don’t get what his goal was. Not his short term, I want a cheeseburger goal, but the thing that drives him out of bed in the morning. People seem to think the character’s primary goal was a happily ever after with Pep and Morgan. It wasn’t. If you asked him, he’d probably say it was, but his actions tell a different story. 
His primary goal was to make the world safe. 
We start his story with him uncaring about anything. With him as the merchant of death. We start with him as the cause of pain in the world through his indifference. Then, the cave, and he’s forced to face what he’s been responsible for. There’s your inciting incident for his goal.  That’s the start of his arc and his ultimate goal. Iron Man is born. From this point forward, he wants to make the world safe. 
In IM2 we hear him talk about Privatizing World Peace, a solid next step in saving everything and everyone. He’s trying, and doing pretty well at achieving his goal. Naturally, he has to contend with challenges against that. He still thinks that the threats begin and end on the planet though, and he’s sorta gotten that cleaned up and tidy. It’s not that everything is solved, but he’s on the path to success. 
That’s why A1 starts the next part of his journey. Without A1 and Loki in here, Tony would have wrapped up his goal within a couple years. Earth would have been fully peaceful. But storytelling cannot allow that. So, an escalating event has to happen. He learns that the problems they face are far larger than he knew. He learns that safe from earth based threats isn’t enough. He gets a glimpse of what the universe has to hit them with, and it shifts the scope, but not his goal. 
He still wants to make the world safe. 
Like all hero arcs, we now have a low point. IM3 is him reconciling his PTSD and his terror at the alien threat with his own capabilities. He has to grapple with the question of ‘can I do this?’ He has to deal with his internal struggles before he can turn to the stars. He tries to walk away from his path, which is a hero arc trope, thinking that his fears (aliens) were just in his head and thinking that he is allowed to rest now. However, this happy moment for him, this relief, is taken away in the next step of his story, when his inner peace is shattered by the reminder of the larger threat. 
AoU shows him trying to wrap a shield around the world. Even at peace at the end of IM3, it doesn’t take long before he’s pulled back into the fight for safety. If his goal had been a happily ever after, the end of IM3 would be the end of his arc, he’d never have made another suit. He’d have gotten married and had kids and faded into the background. That’s why I know it isn’t his goal. Inner demons to one side, he still knows he needs to fight the larger struggle. He knows his efforts aren’t enough yet, and he doubles down on protecting the world. It goes wrong through circumstances beyond his control (another trope) and he is attacked and reviled by his companions for his complicity in it. The defeat of Ultron reminds him that the work isn’t done yet.��
The world isn’t safe. 
Civil War shows the hero looking to unify the team and keep things on track so they can exist to fight the larger threat. Allowing the avengers to paradrop into any country they want and damn the collateral damage isn’t safety. So he’s fighting for two things here, the small scale, earth based safety for humanity, and the continued existence of the team, which he considers the best defense against the non-earth based threats. When the team falls apart, he finds himself standing alone. Again, this could have been an opportunity for him to retire. The team is gone, he could be done. He chooses not to, and steps up to a larger role. Not because it gets him closer to the lakehouse, but because it helps him pursue his goal of world safety. 
That’s classic hero story arc. That’s a dang trope. After working and surviving his own trials he’s left alone by his companions and has to stand against the threat with no one at his side. The hero standing alone and still choosing to walk the path is classic.
Now then. In Infinity War he finally faces the threat he’s known is coming. And what’s he do when the ship leaves? Goes. After. It. He wants to take the war to Thanos, of course he does. He wants the Earth safe. Fights on Earth cause collateral damage, which we know he’s against thanks to CW. He doesn’t want to Avenge, he wants to prevent, he wants to protect. The apology to Pep is heartfelt, but he isn’t regretting going, he isn’t giving up on his goal, he’s pursuing it. This is not a man happy about what his goal requires, but by god is he dedicated to achieving it. 
So now, Endgame. He lost. He knows he did. So he reverts to his secondary goal and takes comfort in his wife and daughter. And I’m thrilled for that. However, the team shows up with their crazy plan and despite saying he wants nothing to do with it..... yeah, he immediately starts working it through. 
If his goal is HEA, he wouldn’t do that. Pepper calls him on it, saying that he couldn’t rest knowing this. That’s incredibly important. When Tony thought there was no choice and defeat was absolute, he was willing to move away from his path. There was a roadblock, so he stopped on his path and allowed himself to go after another for a time. But. As soon as he saw a way forwards, he dove back into his primary goal. 
They do the thing and yes, of course, his family is important to him,  and he’s not willing to risk them. But the safest choice for their future was to bury the time travel solution and go read Morgan a book. He didn’t make that choice, because Safety is his Ultimate Goal, not Family. 
All of the time travel shenanigans are towards his goal. The fight is towards his goal. Hell, even the fact that he built Pep a suit is towards his goal. He wanted her to be safe, and able to provide safety to others. 
So. Bruce gets the gauntlet on, and he undoes the Snap. That’s fine. But there’s a reason that it would have been odd to have Tony do that one. Tony wasn’t looking for vengeance. He’s always been the one that wants to avoid the problem, not avenge it. He’d rather cut the wire, remember? For all that he has that line to Loki in A1, that’s not him; he’s preventative, he’s the futurist, he’s not after Revenge. 
But Tony sees Strange gesture and knows what has to be done. He could have picked that thing up, spun us back to before they time travelled and sorted out the issue. He could have bopped backwards and onto the battlefield in IW and slaughtered Thanos. But that’s not him. He doesn’t reverse or avenge. He ends the threat. As far as I could tell his thought in that Snap was ‘dust anyone that means us harm’ He wiped out an army because they put the planet in danger. I wouldn’t be surprised if he wiped out threats that he didn’t even know existed yet, because he snapped for his final, ultimate goal. 
He makes the planet safe. 
After all these years and all this work, he does the thing that was his goal from the minute he left the cave. 
His goal wasn’t the family and the lakehouse. That was a want. He wanted it, and we wanted it for him. But that’s different from the thing that drove his entire character arc and heroic storyline. 
His goal was to save the world and keep it safe. That’s what he did. Pepper says it. You can rest now. If he’d snapped and survived, he wouldn’t have rested, and don’t lie to yourself about that. Tony isn’t capable of rest when there is a threat. He will always always always step up to face it. Even at the lake he was building suits-- he wasn’t resting. If he had lived, he would have burned himself out trying to fix everything. This was the only version where he could stop, knowing that he had done all he could. Knowing that he had done the thing he had set out to do. 
So, yes, I cried too, but it’s a sad ending to a story, not a poorly written one. They’ve been building to this for eleven years, it was the final piece. It had to be him. 
...
...
...
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go back to living in a reality where this event did not occur. 
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Text
A Mid-Volume RevieWBY
Let’s be honest. Most of us were holding our breath for the entire hiatus: we’ve been burned before by this show.
RWBY has always been a show with potential, but has been unable to get as big as it wants to be just due to the nature of how it’s made. Rooster Teeth is still an independent production studio, they can only put out so many episodes a year, and for the past two volumes it was just two guys writing basically everything.
It’s also worth pointing out that RWBY wasn’t originally a masterpiece on its own. What made it stand out was a) the fact that the mostly comedy-driven Rooster Teeth was making an original IP and b) the fights. People jumped onto this show because even if the animation quality was subpar, the vocal performances were all over the place, and the writing was slow as hell, there was charm to it, and part of that charm was watching the show gradually improve.
Which is why everything started to feel stagnant when the show stopped improving. Sure, they upgraded to a more professional-looking animation engine, they started hiring more professional voice actors and the original cast’s performances improved with experience, but with the loss of the series’ creator, visionary, and key animator, the ability to have epic fights was lost, as was a major guiding force for where the show could go. Couple that with key missteps in major storytelling in Volume 4 and 5 (including storylines that were just completely dropped or failed to receive any focus) and wildly inconsistent fight quality from chapter to chapter, the show was getting so many things wrong. Yeah, some of the criticism was just unnecessarily toxic, and I recognize the CRWBY’s discomfort at the level of hate they were getting (no one’s forcing you to watch the show, people), but seriously, it got to the point that even some of the show’s more positive fans were calling RWBY out for its problems. These issues were finally acknowledged by the team in a Reddit AMA following the Volume 5 finale, and they promised they would try to fix them. Miles himself posted this:
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A couple of us went into this Volume with cautious optimism. While Volume 5 had been a disappointment, some of the new guiding philosophies they were claiming to use to fix RWBY for the next Volume had been used surprisingly successfully for Nomad of Nowhere. Everyone thought that show was going to be another cancelled-after-one-season failure for RT Animations, but surprisingly it turned out to be one of their best shows. If they could create another entirely new world and actually do some really good storytelling, maybe there was hope for RWBY.
If you saw the Volume 6 premiere in theaters like me, you may have watched with baited breath. They felt the need to screen the last hour of Volume 5 first, which just served as a reminder of how disappointing the overall product had been. Then they showed a behind the scenes video where the CRWBY discussed changes to the pipeline: a new co-director for the series, an actual writing team to assist Miles and Kerry, the animators being given more control on certain scenes, etc. etc. Overall, suggesting “We heard you and we’re going to try to improve.”
And then the first episode was shown. And honestly? It was pretty good. Good balance of humor and action while starting up some of the major storylines of the season. The fight scenes were well-choreographed, they’d clearly spent a lot of time working on the episode, they even had time to add little details and quirks to the character. It’s probably one of the best premieres of the entire show: it felt like it was doing a better job of marking a new era for the show than the Volume 4 premiere had been trying to do.
So, let’s assess how things have gone, at least so far.
Focus
This has been the biggest improvement for the show. The big problem in Volume 4 and 5 was having the team split up and attempting to give each their individual focus, while also giving secondary characters basically the same amount of focus, which was waaaay beyond what this kind of show could do. There were simply too many story threads and events going on that made following the show fun to watch––whole storylines would be dropped for several episodes at a time. I mean, the whole reason the Apathy didn’t appear in Volume 4 despite what they’d planned was because there just wasn’t any time to include them. As of now, there are only two major story threads we’ve been concerned with: Team QRWBYOM and Team Melted Ice Cream. A third could be Salem’s faction, but they’ve only had one scene so far: I suspect they’re going to play a more major role in the second half of this volume, though, considering they were waiting for the heroes to reach Argus. A fourth is Adam, but he also has only had one actual scene so far, I wouldn’t be surprised if they pushed him aside for the first half so they could focus on the main characters and he’ll have a bigger role later on.
This renewed focus has allowed us to finally get some proper interaction within the main team, plus actual character development. So, good on that.
Pacing
So much better. Volumes 4 and 5 relied way too much on cliffhangers to get people to come back each episode, instead of relying on a story playing out in single chapters. When I say cliffhangers, I mean cutting off a key story moment in the name of shock or not allowing the episodes to stand on their own. We’ve gotten a lot of episodes with an individual focus where they could potentially stand as an independent episode of the show, even the more arc-like episodes like what happened with Brunswick Farms: "The Coming Storm,” the second episode of that arc, had the Cinder vs. Neo fight that everyone adored and some amazing interactions with Blake and Yang and Weiss and Ruby.
I had a concern that having major revelations/moments in only the first few chapters was going to kill the pacing for the entire volume, and I still kind of have that concern. That said, I am surprised that they’ve kept up the momentum this far into the volume, so I’m cautiously optimistic. With maybe the exception of Chapter 4, each episode had a major story beat that packed a punch the volume needed to keep going.
Tone
This has been another problem for the past two volumes: the show kind of established itself with the anime vibe of visual comedy mixed with legitimate drama, but hasn’t really kept up that momentum volume-to-volume. In the cases of Volumes 4 and 5, they both began with some anime-like humor but failed to use it consistently. These seven chapters, meanwhile, have been pretty consistent in delivering those humorous moments: even Brunswick Farms, the most horror-based arc in the series thus far, has some laugh out loud scenes.
And on that note: the horror elements of the Brunswick Farm arc were really well done. Sure, there was no way anyone was going to die, but that doesn’t really matter (repeat: THAT DOES NOT MATTER, CERTAIN PEOPLE) because a combination of writing, animation, and even sound design made for a couple of episodes that were legitimately terrifying.
Animation
I don’t want to make too many calls on this because I’m not that great at assessing this kind of thing (writing’s more my forte), and @hypeathon writes some really great analyses on the topic, much better than I ever could. But overall I think it’s safe to say the animation quality has really improved. You can really tell with certain episodes that more time was spent to make them look their best, especially Chapter 1, which had these little touches that I wouldn’t have expected at all from the show five years ago. Minus a couple of animation errors here and there, things are looking good. No random teleportation, all the fight scenes we’ve gotten have been sufficiently epic, they’ve been placed at points in the show that satisfy our epic fight cravings, overall, good work. Kind of the payoff to the mention from the premiere documentary that they’re leaving a lot of creative decisions in the hands of the animators, which has overall made a much prettier-looking show.
Character Development
One of the problems of juggling multiple storylines in Volumes 4 and 5 was that we weren’t given a whole lot to work with in terms of character development: a lot of it seemed to just happen offscreen, we weren’t really shown what changed a character from the start of a volume to the end of one. The biggest victims of this problem were the core four, who were often pushed aside in favor of development for side characters. Ruby has been the biggest victim of this problem, with a planned arc about her survivor’s guilt in Volume 4 getting pushed aside to focus on Ren’s story, and only really getting one legit moment of development in Volume 5 in her brief talk with Oscar. Yang’s arc about recovering from the Battle of Beacon was almost non-existent in Volume 4, with only a few drops of it popping up at moments in Volume 5 that didn’t form a cohesive development arc. Blake and Weiss actually had a decent arc, but Weiss wasn’t given a whole lot to do in Volume 5 and then kinda sorta got fridged for an episode or two.
With the characters reunited and a renewed focus on the core team, we’re finally seeing some actual on-screen development. Chapter 5 “The Coming Storm” is the clearest example of that, with the team dealing with the fallout from Jinn’s story in (what appeared to be) a lower-stakes setting. Key moments included Blake and Yang’s interaction, which brought the much-desired angst everyone was waiting for, knowing how betrayed Yang felt when Blake abandoned her at the end of Volume 3. Ruby and Weiss, who were set up from the beginning of the whole show as partners, weren’t really interacting a lot, even when they reunited midway through Volume 5. We get a nice moment of their dynamic while they’re looking for food.
Jaune
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Well. That might explain why he’s gone for most of the first half.
(listen rwde, they’re never gonna get rid of him completely. He’s an established character, they can only push him aside for most of the volume, stop chasing your tail and get over it already. If they abruptly killed him I’m sure you’d be celebrating but all of us would be thinking “What...what purpose does that serve to the overall plot?”)
Storytelling
This is probably the best Volume in terms of storytelling. After years of World of Remnants and exposition dumps delivered by characters standing around talking, the philosophy of “Show, don’t tell” finally actually happened on this show. Flashbacks, which didn’t happen much (if at all) before, were finally used, and we ended up with some great material: again, the Grimm Reaper flashback in Chapter 7 continues the volume riding high on good quality fight animation, but also gives us a sense of the world the characters inhabit. More than before, a lot of minor things in this world are implied rather than fed to us, like the danger Silver-Eyed Warriors have to live with, the efforts people will go to to live out normal lives in Grimm-infested territory, etc.
I brought this up earlier, but Chapter 3 “The Lost Fable” was basically to RWBY what “El Rey” was to Nomad of Nowhere: a massive lore-dump that provided some much-needed context to what the heroes were doing, completely changing the stakes of the show up to that point and potentially changing the course of everything for the rest of the season. And we desperately needed that kind of episode, where we were shown instead of told the background of Ozpin and Salem, instead of just blindly thinking “Here’s the good guy and here’s the bad guy.”
And yet if I’m being honest, I can’t say I really liked it. I’m not sure why, maybe I’ve gotten cynical like the rest of the angry commenters on YouTube, it feels a bit like this is happening way too late, like it should not have taken this many years for something like this to be revealed, or there should have been a much better buildup to that reveal. At the same time, I understand that some major events in RWBY’s production (the least of which was the way too large scope of Volume 4 and the biggest of which was the shocking loss of its creator right when the show was about to enter a shift in tone) meant any proper buildup had to be killed in favor of telling cohesive stories volume-to-volume. So yeah, I can’t say I liked that episode individually, but I know the greater purpose it serves to the show so it doesn’t really bother me that much.
Conclusions
I try to be positive with my reviews of RWBY, especially considering how vitriolic reviews of this show can get. That said, this volume’s not perfect. The big criticism I have right now is that this is a show that wants to tell an epic story on a grand scale but can only tell it in fourteen 10-20 minute episodes per season. It doesn’t help that the last two volumes were the attempted execution of that plan, while this one seems to be scaling that back so the show doesn’t lose focus. But that’s just my issue with how the show has tried to established itself in the post-V3 era and how we’re no longer getting that. I think the biggest improvement this show could have would be longer episodes, and I could sacrifice having a volume per year if it meant they could spend more time on the episodes and tell the big story they want to tell. But I know Rooster Teeth can’t function as a production studio while only putting out one volume of RWBY, its flagship show (sorry RvB), every few years. Actually, I suspect that might be the model gen:LOCK is gonna follow, considering the first season alone has taken a year and a half to produce.
At the conclusion of Volume 5 I remarked that even though it was a disappointment, it was an obvious step in the creative direction the show needed to go in. Even if the fight animation was very often subpar and it felt like they were trying to clean things up after Volume 4 got too big to handle, there was a better blend of storytelling and action.
This volume so far has been the payoff. I haven’t felt the urge to seethe through my teeth with disappointment after a single episode this volume: each one was satisfying in its own way, I no longer feel like I have to keep track of 200 different characters and what they’re up to, and I walk away from the fight scenes feeling like something epic actually occurred rather than “Okay, so they punched things defied gravity and that somehow defeated their enemies.”
Yes, there are problems, but the show is showing clear signs of improvement. I think it’s safe to say after seven fairly good episodes that Volume 6 could very well become the best volume of RWBY. Any clear issues with the story and scope for this volume should’ve come up by now, and nothing really comes to mind. As far as I’m concerned, as a serialized TV show RWBY is succeeding. Whether that will all payoff for the final overall volume? Well, we’ll have to wait til the finale airs in February.
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No Comicstorian, Marvel DOESN’T need a reboot Part 2: Miles Morales isn’t the whole Marvel Universe
I continue to debunk the BS of this video about Spider-Man/Marvel needing a reboot as proven by Spidey PS4.
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 This time out we handle the bulk of his points and learn that really this is all about how he feels about Miles Morales.
What is Comicstorian’s next point.
 “In Marvel’s rolling timeline they move the events of the pas forward in time and update stuff to it like how Flash Thompson was a bully like in the 1960s stories but it was now because of his Dad”
 That isn’t an update and that has nothing to do with a rolling timeline. That’s a flashback, a character reveal, a retcon, character development, whatever you want to call it.
 Claiming this is an example of how Marvel’s ‘timeline’ works is like saying that about Harry Osborn being revealed as having Daddy issues like the year after he was introduced.
 “Flash’s Daddy issues got turned into him becoming Agent Venom”
 No, Flash becoming Agent Venom was due to his history as a solider and his adoration of Spider-Man. his Daddy issues played into it kinda sorta yeah but that’s not an issue related to a rolling timeline, that’s just making use of a character’s established history.
  “Adding stuff into the Marvel timeline without removing stuff or rebooting makes it more convoluted because now everything happened even though it doesn’t make sense in the modern day’
 That isn’t how Marvel’s timeline works.
 Marvel’s timeline works off the premise everything happened and you just ignore anachronisms and/or generalize them.
 Flash Thompson being drafted into Vietnam where he met Vietnamese woman Sha Shan became Flash Thompson went into the military during college and over seas met Sha Shan.
 We don’t confirm he went to Vietnam but we do not contradict it either.
 And this has worked for *checks watch* over 55 years. Comiscstorian claims that it’s confusing and convoluted to have such a big history but...clearly it isn’t because they still make money and make a lot more money  than DC does with it’s frequent reboots.*
 Meanwhile DC has removed stuff in their history and replaced it with other stuff or rebooted it wholesale and whatever to modernize things and wound up with an even more convoluted fucked up mess than Marvel ever had because there are literally 9 different versions of Superman.
 And even specific versions of him ran into the exact same ‘problem’ Marvel had because the superman of 2002 who’d been around since 1986 would’ve still had anachronisms in his history from those 1980s stories.
 “DC have never done a true reboot outside of the Nu52”
 Yes they have. You can debate the meaning of ‘true reboot’ to an extent but if you are going to codify the Nu52 as an example of one then 1985’s Crisis on Infinite Earths would DEFINITELY be a true reboot.
 “Batman has never truly been rebooted”
 This is not true at all.
 Whilst it is accurate to say of all DC characters and franchises, Batman has changed the least from reboot to reboot, to say he’s not changed at all is ignorant.
 When originally conceived Bruce Wayne had no Butler or father figure. Alfred was introduced as a gag character who got in his way but morphed into a loyal butler.
 Then when Batman was rebooted in the 1980s Alfred and his history drastically altered. Now Bruce had a perennial father figure in Alfred who’d been there his whole life and helped him on his quest to becoming Batman from the outset.
 Whether Batman carried fire arms or not in his early career is also something that has altered from version to version.
 The circumstances under which he met Jason Todd have changed.
 How and when he revealed his identity to Catwoman has changed.
 Selinia’s entire backstory has been all over the place.
 Two-Face’s origin and Batman’s role within it has changed.
 The role of Jim Gordon and Batman’s relationship to him has radically changed, as he was originally not a father figure to the Dark Knight.
 There is so much more but I’ll stop here. Batman’s history is not AS fraught with contradictions as Superman’s or Wonder Woman’s but those major alterations still exist.
  “With rebooted characters (like in DC’s case) in terms of needing to understand what is currently happening in modern comics, like the Flash you only need to go back to 2011”
 Marvel still outsells DC most of the time in spite of their long continuity.
 Marvel for the longest time wrote their comics with the belief that every comic is someone’s first and should be accessible, meaning you never needed to go back at all if you didn’t want to, any issue was a jumping on point.
 I am a personal testament to this. My first Spider-Man comic was part 4 of a 4 part story wrapping up 28 months worth of incredibly convoluted plot lines. But because it was a good story in that issue and written accessibly I still loved it and became hooked.
 This mentality also gives no shits towards story integrity.
 If eventually any story is just going to be rebooted why bother emotionally investing at all?
 Why does any story matter if they can all just be changed or thrown out the window whenever for the sake of a new version.
  “Marvel tried to fix their continuity problem in 2000 when they did the Ultimate universe which allowed for fresh takes on the characters and a chance to remove the problematic elements and make them work better in this current timeline.”
 Yeah and then that universe lasted just 15 years and then died on it’s ass after hobbling along since 2008, with Ultimate Spider-Man itself becoming creatively impoverished before Miles Morales showed up.
 Also ‘removing the problematic elements’? You mean like Venom and Carnage having personalities? Because...having personalities was an idea that was dated in the 2000s?
  “The Ultimate universe needed to be shut down because things had gotten too convoluted like the main universe”
 If the Ult Universe was too convoluted to be allowed to continue why was the even more convoluted 616 universe continued and in fact selling more than it?
 It’s almost like the Ultimate Universe fell into decline not because of too much convoluted history but because the stories sucked shit and no one gave a damn because they weren’t the original characters anyway.
  “In modern continuity Steve Rogers is back to normal but he’s still HYDRA Steve Rogers, still Old man Rogers, still  so convoluted”
 That isn’t convoluted.
 That’s just a lot of stuff happening. It’d be convoluted if he was all those things at the same time, but in reality he was just one thing after the other.
 And whilst that does kinda suck because a lot of those things were trash, the idea of events occurring like that isn’t being convoluted. It’s just storytelling.
 All those things occurred within the last 10 years of Captain America meaning that had Cap been rebooted 10 years ago by Comicstorian’s logic he’d need a reboot by now.
 By his logic the Flash should be rebooted again soon because too much shit has happened.
 I’d love for this guy to like check out long running manga like One Piece or Sailor Moon which has even wackier stuff in even shorter spaces of time and all within the same continuity.
 “It’s all just a mess!!!!!!”
 Translation: Comicstorian, the guy who you would think would know and appreciate comic book history and is able to roll with it, is pissed off that things are too hard to follow.
 Like Jesus fucking Christ this loser is a weaksauce fan. MOST comic book fans know and can roll with the weird histories, even learning to love them.
 This guy’s name is literally riding against his fucking attitudes.
 “Spider-Man history is convoluted because he was married but then he sold it to the devil so now he isn’t”
 This is the most damning example of Comicstorian knowing jack shit.
 Because of all things in Marvel One More Day is the closest thing to a continuity reboot akin to DC’s.
 He is literally pointing at a continuity reboot and saying it makes things a confusing effed up mess and then tries to use that to justify us...doing more of the same???????????????????
 “its so convoluted because he keeps going back to collage”
 You mean like....real life people do?
  “Spider-Man history is so convoluted because there is a whole series of venom lethal protector”
Okay so first of all Lethal protector was a mini-series not a whole series.
 Second of all that is VENOM HISTORY not SPIDER-MAN history.
 What? EVERY SPIN OFF counts towards making a character more convoluted?
 “Miles morales in the 616 universe only works if you don’t question his origin”
 I mean that is true but whilst not strictly speaking a reboot Miles’ migration from one universe to the next is storywise more similar to the types of convoluted messes that occur when continuity reboots happen.
 Case in point Power Girl being taken from Earth 2 and incorporated into the newly rebooted post-crisis DC universe or the deal with all the Milestone comics characters.
 Miles however is UNIQUE in these problems among Marvel characters whereas it’s more similar to the deal with DC characters.
 And Comicstorian is so blind he can’t even see that.
 *Comicstorian explains Miles is already a part of PS4 Spider-Man’s universe thus avoiding the problems of him being convoluted and by extention proving Marvel needs to reboot stuff*
 Basically this whole mess of a video exists off the back of how this one video game fixed the story problems of this one character in the Marvel universe who’s situation is actually unique among Marvel characters and more comparable to DC ones.
 THAT is why Comicstorian thinks ALL OF MARVEL should be rebooted.
 “we need a linear timeline for these sueprheroes now!”
 Most of the marvel heroes alreadyhave a linear timeline and always did in the pre-internet age when marvel fans just picked up the latest issue and winged it.
  “I have a nephew and it’s so hard to just give him a comic book”
 Then maybe Comicstorian’s nephew just won’t find comic books to his taste because that’s literally how every comic book fan got indoctrinated.
 Just fucking give him ASM vol 5 #1 by Spencer and if the story is good enough for him he’s in. It’s incredibly accessible for the most part.
 “It’s so hard explaining Miles morales to my nephew”
 Yeah because Miles is UNIQUE in having that convoluted a backstory.
 “Marvel history is too convoluted for younger audience members”
 Again I jumped onboard literally at the end of the most convulted Spider-Man era of all time, I dealt with divergences from the cartoon Spider-Man I knew, I purchased info books detailing his long crazy history.
 I was fine.
 In fact those info books are still sold on the mass market so they clearly have an audience for that convoluted history.
 “We don’t want kids to be intimidated by the confusing history like we adults are”
 Kids don’t view that stuff the way adults to, they’re more accepting of shit and roll with it.
 “It’s a lot to try and get into Spider-Man”
 If only there were jumping on points peppered throughout Spider-Man’s history which are ways for you to get invested without going through everything before hand?
  “The PS4 game is the best version of Spider-Man ever!”
 Better in some respects not as great in others.
 “It’s the best version because it’s one straight path”
 Pretty sure it’s more to do with the characetrization and stuff.
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space-age-bachelor · 6 years
Text
Instead of Flying Off, He’ll Stay
Rafael Barba/Dominick “Sonny” Carisi Jr.
Sonny's life was not a Hallmark movie. He just had to get Barba to fall in love with him before Christmas Eve.
Thanks to @me-ladie for beta reading 
For @richardgoranski for being an incredible friend and being there for me
[AO3]
Rafael Barba loved Christmas. It had always been a family holiday to him, not the commercialized monstrosity that it had become. He’d never really gotten the concept of Santa Claus, so he never sent a list or went to Macy’s. But every year on Christmas Eve, after his mother read him Twas the Night Before Christmas , he would stare out the window at the direction he believed to be North and make a wish.
It had been years since he had done that and it was a little less than a month away from Christmas and carols had been playing in all of the stores he passed on the walk home from his mother’s Thanksgiving dinner. He’d stopped believing in Santa when he was eleven and his knees cracked when he lowered himself to the floor, still he faced North and hoped for a Christmas miracle.
He couldn’t spend Christmas alone for another year. He didn’t want to go to bed eight thirty watching old claymation movies while his coworkers thought he was off on some extravagant get away. He wanted someone to whisper “Merry Christmas” to over mugs of hot chocolate and kiss under the mistletoe, he’d always wanted to do that.
Once he thought his symbolic wish out thoroughly, he stood and chuckled to himself. The whole exercise had been ridiculous, but part of him deep down still believed in magic. It allowed him to sleep a little easier and wake up a little lighter.
The day after Thanksgiving was always spent decorating for Christmas. Bella would pull out the boxes she had in storage (this year, in her attic since she and Tommy decided to bite the bullet and get a real house), and Sonny would always end up doing most of the actual decorating. It was his burden to bear, being the only one who could string lights with a swish of his wrist.
“Bella,” he glared at her as he pulled out the seventh new pack of lights from her shopping bag, “I can’t do this. Not alone without drawing any attention to myself.” He let them all fall into his lap, “Do you have to be seen from space? Afraid Dad won’t be able to find your new roof?”
She rolled her eyes and pulled up a pinterest board on her iPad, scrolling through pages upon pages of our door light design and “the perfect Christmas lawn.” They all looked like something out of that dumb live action Grinch movie.
“I wanna beat that bitch Cynthia. She thinks she’s so much better because her precious Annabell was born in wedlock,” She flipped her hair and added a snooty voice before breaking into a groan. “She doesn’t even realize her perfect Carl is cheating on her with Todd from the school board.”
“That’s the Christmas spirit.” He sighed, not actually caring. That bitch had insulted his niece and made his sister feel inadequate, they were going to crush her. “Alright but, I can’t do all of this my way without being seen. It’s not like I can kill your street lights and with this many lights someone is bound to see me. Even at 3 am.”
They had a small staring contest. Bella matching his gaze with everything she had.
He blinked first.
A blinding grin spread across her face. “So when are we gonna start Nicky?” She winked at the nickname, the one that made him sound like some younger version of their father. “I’ve got the decorations, you’ve got that Christmas magic. Let’s kick a soccer mom’s zumba tight ass.”
“I’ll do it, but only the second floor. Everything else outside is done by hand.” He dropped all of the lights back into the plastic bag. “And you have to listen to me bitch about Dad for as long as I want.”
She clapped excitedly. She was a gossip by nature and Sonny had just offered her exactly what she wanted. He didn’t mind as long as she wasn’t going to try and convince him to do her whole yard. “Great! You can finally tell me what the Big Man said last night. I haven't seen you that upset since Queens SVU.”
Sonny’s mood darkened, he hadn’t planned on bringing that up. He was just going to go on about how their father saw his work and even his law degree as a waist and a distraction. It should have been obvious that Bella would want to know why he ducked out of Thanksgiving before the dessert had even touched the table.
“While we do the interior. It’s Gabby’s first Christmas in the new house and I wanna make it special.” Bella opened the first bin and Sonny got to work.
Decorating was an art that Sonny considered himself particularly gifted at, it came with the territory of who he was. When stringing lights was as easy as tracing the square of Bella’s kitchen window, it was hard not to be an expert.
He could lose himself in the feeling of it. A flick of his wrist and a garland covered the arch between the dining room and living room. It sent his heart racing, as if there was electricity flowing through him and extending out to the decorations. They were just an extension of himself.
Bella kept warning him to take it easy not go so fast. She only knew how drained he used to get after half an hour of this, but after last night he could do the whole house without breaking a sweat. It made the rush he got feel cheapened somehow. He just hoped he’d be able to enjoy the place, gleaming like the city skyline, after he got everything off his chest.
“Looks great, Sonny.” She squeezed his arm and pressed a cup of freshly made hot chocolate into his hands. “Don’t worry about the rest right now. Come on and sit down.”
She gently guided him over to the couch and practically pushed him down onto it. “I don’t want you passing out before we get some proper storytelling going.”
“I don’t pass out-”
“Please,” She scoffed setting herself down next to him, “You always act like you just gave blood. ‘Oh,’” She moaned doing a terrible impression of him even though they had the same accent. “‘Just let me sit here and eat my cookie and drink my apple juice. I’m so weak.’”
It got a chuckle out of him, “Well, no more of that, I’m getting stronger-” He froze. Two days ago, it had just been a nice thing that he couldn’t explain. He winced at his own slip.
“Sonny, what’s wrong?” She grabbed his shoulder, suddenly concerned.
“It’s not your fault. It’s just…” He sighed, he really did want to talk about this. He was having a hard time dealing with it on his own and needed the support. It was just difficult to say. “Dad wants to retire after this year.”
Her eyes widened. It would’ve been comical under different circumstances. “Holy shit, you… he needs you to…” She took a deep swig of her hot chocolate, “Shit.”
He nodded and took his own sip, not having anything to really say to it.
“Alright, alright...alright, tell me exactly what he said.”
“He didn’t say much, just asked me to take over next Christmas.” He shrugged, “I tried to tell him I didn’t want to, but he gave me that whole ‘first son’ thing-- which is bullshit by the way, if Jenny McCarthy could do it--”
She raised a hand to stop it. “T, Gigi, and I all don’t want anything to do with it. So that wouldn’t matter. Dad would cave if we would.”
“I know.” Another sip of cocoa. “I wish you did because he tore my life apart. I have one friend, I’m not content with my job, I haven’t dated anyone in almost five years. I just stood there as he laid out why nobody would really miss me if I picked up and left.”
“I’d miss you.”
He smiled softly, “Thanks, Bells, but you could still visit. The only person who sorta counts is Amanda and Dad would rather I tell her than force him to work another year.”
She flopped backwards so she was staring up at the ceiling, “Mr. Tradition probably thinks you two are going to get together.”
Sonny was silent for a long time, running through all the ways to phrase his next sentence. He wouldn’t look her in the eyes when he finally decided on what to say. “That was actually my only way out of it. Dad says he’ll back off if I can have a stable relationship by Christmas. Then leaving wouldn’t just be my decision.”
“You can’t just get a girl pregnant.”
A laugh was startled out of him, “Nope, still gay and still single.”
Her “scheme smirk” was firmly in place when she sprung back up, “Well, you’re already in love with someone. So you just have until Christmas to get Mr. Barba to fall in love with you.”
“I’m not in love with Barba.” The redness of his cheeks didn’t help the lie. “Besides, we’re not that kind of close and I’m not convinced that he doesn’t hate me. You don’t go from that to love in a month.”
She swatted his arm. “He doesn’t hate you. It’s impossible to hate you. Plus, you can just use your Christmas powers to charm him.” She wiggled her fingers in his face, barely containing her laughter.
“You know, it doesn't work like that.” He insisted, retaliating as if they still were children and pinning her back on the couch. “You really think Barba’s my best bet?”
She shrugged as well as she could, “You’re gay and your only friend is a girl. I mean, unless you wanna download Grindr and try your luck.”
“Hey, Barba,” Sonny kept rubbing his hands on his pants or the bottom of his jacket. He was nervous sweating and on the off chance he had to actually touch the other man, he wanted them to be at least somewhat dry. “Are you free tomorrow night?”
The prosecutor stopped, but looked more confused than anything else, “Depends upon what you’re suggesting.”
“I have a new recipe I wanna test out.” He was lying. That was a flat out lie, but he wasn’t brave enough to just ask him out. “So dinner tomorrow night?”
“So, I your new Guinea Pig?” The corner of his mouth quirked up, “Alright, I could be ready by eight.”
Sonny didn’t react for a moment before a smile split his face. He hadn’t expected this to work. “Perfect! I’ll have time to make dessert as well.”
He nodded, “I’ll see you then, Carisi.” With that, he turned and left.
Sonny half stumbled back to his desk, causing Amanda to raise an eyebrow, “What happened?”
“I’ll tell you tonight.” He said, trying not to turn back and watch the door Barba just left through. Now he just had to figure out which recipe Barba would like the best.
“So you need me to watch Holly for just no reason?” Amanda loved watching Holly. Sure, she was huge and drooled all over the furniture, but she was sweet and was glad to just be a pillow or space heater, “Are you sure there isn’t a reason?”
He sighed, if his plan worked out he’d have to tell her at some point. “I have a date and I don’t want Holly getting over excited and scare him away.” She was the sweetest, but she got over enthusiastic when new people came over. “A lot went into this.”
She arched an eyebrow, “Really? Anyone I know? Because the only person I’ve seen you fawn over is-” Her mouth fell open in realization. “No….You finally asked Barba out? And you’re skipping straight to bringing him home?”
“Oh my god,” He groaned, the noise drawing his dog over to rest her head on his lap. “I’m making him dinner, and I’m not even sure he realized that I was asking him on a date. He might be straight.”
“He’s just as smitten as you are and just as bad at hiding it.” She said moving closer so they both had access to Holly.
They sat there for some time, ABC Family playing through a rotation of Christmas movies that seemed to be compose of Elf and Christmas Vacation, exclusively. Right before Clark Griswold officially lost it, Amanda passed out using Holly’s stomach as a pillow. Sonny had done it enough times to admit that it was one of the reasons he had gotten a Newfoundland. Of course, once Amanda was finally asleep at a reasonable time, Jesse started crying.
She raised her head slightly before dropping it back down, “She wants her Uncle Sonny.”
He laughed and went to go take care of his goddaughter. “Hey, Baby.” He cooed bending down to lift her.
His heart always melted when he held her, her little hands clutching at the collar of his shirt. He wanted to have that with his own kids at some point with a child of his own. Barba probably wouldn’t want kids, he didn’t seem like the type. But they’d cross that bridge if they ever actually made it there.
Jesse’s crying wouldn’t subside, so he pulled out a little trick he would do for Gabby when ever she got fussy.
He felt the familiar spark in his fingertips and the energy that flooded his chest making him feel whole and energized. He pulled a stuffed puppy out from behind his back.
They toy whined at Jesse and licked the tear tracks that stained her cheeks until the wailing turned into giggling and squeals of glee. The magic to create the little puppy might have given him a rush of joy, but he sound of Jesse’s laughter overwhelmed him with happiness.
“Sonny, how do you always-”
He dropped the toy when he heard Amanda’s voice. It immediately tried to get back up, scratching at his leg with blue cotton paws and yipping at him to demand attention. Without even thinking he snapped his fingers and it fell limp as if it were always just a normal plushie.
Her eyes were bugging out of her skull as she stared down at the offending object. Most people, well adults, didn’t react well when confronted with magic. They lacked the imagination to really comprehend what was happening and lashed out at him because of it. He just hoped Amanda would at least hear him out-
“I fucking knew it!” She cheered and his mind went blank. “You’re too good with kids, and you’re ridiculously lucky, and you know things about people that you couldn’t possibly know, and your cookies.”
He nodded, slowly coming back to himself, “Uh, yeah, my cookies are magic.” It came with the territory of being who he was. He put Jesse back into her crib, leaning down to pick up her new toy. Once she was tucked in, he snapped again and the puppy yawned, padding over and curling up against her side. It would help sooth her if she woke up again.
He turned back to Amanda, “Come on, I’ll explain everything.”
Amanda took it well, after she laughed at the fact that Sonny’s future hinged on whether or not he could get Barba to fall in love with him by Christmas, and admit it. He could worry about the actual admission later, his first goal was to get Barba to agree to a second date.
He wished his particular brand of magic applied to any kind of food. Sure his desserts were always perfect no matter what they were, so he had that going for him, but for an average everyday dinner, he had to rely on his own talent and experience. His own skill wasn’t something to be scoffed at though, so he thought it would be okay.
Barba had never had his cooking anyway, so if he was having an off day he could impress him even more next time. The dessert was all he really needed to get to phase two of Bella’s plan.
“So what are we having?” Barba had come straight from work but he immediately took off his jacket. It made him look softer, and comfortable in Sonny’s home. “I haven’t eaten in hours so it had better be good.”
He laughed leading him through to the kitchen, “It’s nothing special, just a new kind of pizza dough I’d been meaning to try and sugar cookies with a new flavor of icing.” It was nice finishing up dinner and being able to look over to the island to see Barba sitting there.
“I didn’t realize dessert was going to be cookies. I would’ve made this my cheat day.”
Sonny rolled his eyes, “Eating healthy keeps you fit, eating well keeps you sane.” He pulled out the wine, “Have some cookies and don’t worry about a diet, which you don’t need by the way.”
“Dinner and compliments? If I didn’t know any better, I’d think this was a date.”
His heart dropped to his feet. He knew this was a possibility, but that didn’t stop his disappointment from showing, or Barba’s surprise at seeing it. This had always been the hard part when he imagined this scenario in his head, having to explain what had been lost in translation.
“Oh, I thought this was just a friendly dinner.” Barba was flushed and started messing with his tie. He only did that when he was nervous. “I know you do things like this with Liv and Amanda. So I assumed…”
“No, it’s fine.” He forced a smile and continued setting the table. The cheerful Christmas plates didn’t do much for his mood though. “We’re friends, right? This could just be a fun friend dinner. That is,” he took a deep breath and a leap of faith, “if you want it to be.”
A slow smile spread across the prosecutors face as he reached for his glass, “No, I think this would be the perfect first date. I mean, as long as those cookies are as good as Liv says they are.”
“Oh, trust me, they’re better.”
“Sonny, this is great!” Bella cheered, the shrill voice loud enough that Holly was reacting to it from across the room. “I need you to tell me everything about that date. You made him cookies, right? Exploit your gifts.”
“He liked the cookies.” he rolled his eyes resisting the urge to laugh. “We’re actually going out again tonight, taking Holly for a W-A-L-K in that park around the corner. Seemed like a romantic thing to do.” Of course, that left him sifting through winter coats and scarfs trying to figure out what pair would look the best while keeping him warm.
She sighed dreamily, “That’s straight out of a movie. It’s gonna snow right?”
“Check the weather app.”
He knew that she was glaring at her wall. She always hated when he said things like that. “You know what I mean. A light flurry while walking through the park, it’s a Hallmark movie.”
“This whole thing is a Hallmark movie.” He ran a hand down his face and finally decided on a not too heavy black pea coat, shorter than the one that he wore for work most days, with a red wool scarf that Gina had knit him a few years ago. “That means it has a happy ending, right?”
“Of course! I was talking with Amanda earlier,” He didn’t exactly regret introducing the two of them, but it was worrying that his sister and his best friend gossiped about him. “She said you two are adorable together at work, and I know you fall fast. If he’s like you, this will be fine.”
He waited until only a minute before Barba-no, Rafael- to get there before grabbing Holly’s leash and the collar. “A week and a half is fast. Especially since this is only our second actual date. We’re always so busy that working lunches are all we’re able to do.”
“Alright, then make it count. I’m not losing you because of this.”
“It’ll be fine, Bells. Besides, it would take a lot more than moving to get rid of me.” He laughed to try and calm her down. It wasn’t time to give up hope. “No I’ve got to go, Rafael’s here.”
After a quick goodbye, he grabbed Holly and opened the door. “Hey.”
Rafael smiled at him for a moment, before his attention shifted to the beast at Sonny’s side. “Wow, when you said you had a big dog, I was expecting a golden retriever or border collie.” He still bent down allowing Holly to sniff and lick his hand before he buried it in her long fur.
“No, they’re more medium. Besides, Holly’s sweeter than any of them.” Sonny was beaming as well, glad that his girl wasn’t going to be a problem. “Just wait until you see her in the snow. It’s her favorite thing.”
“I bet.” He stood back up and held out his hand to Sonny, “Ready to go.”
They made it to the park in only a few minutes and Sonny could hear Rafael’s breath catch when he saw the start of the path. It was an idyllic scene with old fashioned street lamps and trees wrapped in Christmas lights. The only thing missing was the snow.
“This is beautiful.” He whispered, his hand tightening around Sonny’s. “How long is the path?”
“As long as you want it to be,” He said with a slight smirk, “but I do have a destination in mind.”
Rafael raised an eyebrow, but didn’t comment. In fact the conversation started up again with discussing how many strands of lights there had to be in the park and whether or not that was a good use of power and taxpayer money. Sonny was convinced that he was only playing devil’s advocate when he claimed that Christmas lights were not worth the money they cost.
The conversation never stalled or slowed, showing Sonny just how easy it was to be around Rafael. It was a feeling he’d never experienced before. So he led them in circles for almost half an hour before finally ending up at his favorite spot in the park.
The lights thinned as they drew nearer, but Rafael was too focused on him to notice. It was flattering, even though the actual spot was more than enough to pull his attention away from him.
One tree stood in the middle of a plaza with a single bench at the base of it. It was a nice space all year round, but during december it was gorgeous. It was done up like a proper christmas tree with tinsel and ornaments of gold spheres and tiny wooden toys. The arms of the bench were even wrapped in silver and gold garlands.
“Do you wanna sit?” He turned to Rafael, admiring how the light danced off of his eyes as he stared at the spectacle.
“Yeah, will Holly be fine with taking a break?” It took him a second to drag his eyes away which was both adorable and incredibly validating.
He looked down at his feet where Holly had already laid down, “I think she’ll be okay.”
The bench was cold, but it was offset by the heat radiating from where Rafael’s leg pressed against his. He wanted to wrap an arm around his shoulders, but he’d wait until he shivered or gave some other indication that he was cold.
“You really like Christmas, don’t you?” He chuckled, gesturing to the candy cane pin that Sonny had honestly forgotten about. It was probably still there from last year.
“My whole family really gets into it and have for my whole life. It’s just a part of the year.” He shrugged, “Just a heads up, If you don’t like Christmas, my family isn’t gonna like you.”
Their shoulders bumped gently, “Then we’re fine. I’ll admit that I’m not as festive as you are. Maybe I could get one of those Christmas Tree ties.” He chuckled at his own joke, barely hiding the lift in the corners of his mouth. It was incredibly endearing.
“That would be adorable.” Sonny admitted, finally giving in and pulling Rafael closer.
He looked increible under the lights of the tree. Multicolored flecks dotted his cheeks and made the green of his eyes practically glow. Looking into those eyes, happiness filled his heart and he knew exactly how to let it out.
It happened in the blink of an eye. All of the joy he felt well up in his chest and the moment he released it, the first snowflake fell, a light flurry that completed the whole scene and made an already incredible night perfect.
Rafael looked up at the sky, pure wonderment and awe gracing his features. He was beautiful and incredible and, God, Sonny loved him.
His eyes widened as he came to the realization. Sure, he wanted to fall in love with him, but to actually feel the emotion flooding through his whole body, to know for certain from the tips of his toes to the top of his head, it changed the way he saw everything. It sent a thought directly to the forefront of his mind. He couldn’t say “I love you” first. He couldn’t pressure Rafael into saying it back or leave it hanging over him if he didn’t feel the same way.
“What are you thinking?”
Sonny smiled brighter than he had in years, “You’re beautiful.” He whispered and kissed him, something he had wanted to do since they met.
The next day, Sonny dragged Amanda into an empty interrogation room the first chance that he got. He was freaking out. He’d already called Bella who suggested he invite Rafael to spend Christmas Eve at her place. That way, their father could see that Sonny loved the ADA, even if they hadn’t said it yet. However Sonny didn’t know what would happen if he brought Rafael into that mess of a party.
“But you said the date went well. Also, you made it snow?” she whistled. “That’s straight out of one of those movies you like so much.”
“I’m a walking cliche, sue me.” He rolled his eyes before getting back to business, “But that’s the sort of thing I’m talking about. Our family dinners are times when I don’t have to hide anything about myself and it’s nice. I can cook the way I want and when I make a strange comment or know something no one told me, no one questions it. I just don’t want to do something like I did with the toy and Rafael to freak out.
“It would just be so difficult to share things like that with him….It’s freaky and abnormal.” He collapsed into one of the chairs, “Sometimes I wonder if any of this is even worth it. It’s not gonna end well.”
She recoiled in shock but quickly recovered and laid a hand on his shoulder to try and comfort him. “Hey, you told me that you love him, right? You’re just too afraid to say it.”
“I wouldn’t put it that-”
“Yes or no, Dominick.”
He nodded, “Yeah, I love him.” That he was sure of, it was why he couldn’t lose him.
She held out her hands like that was enough of an answer. She then sighed as if he was an idiot. “If you don’t bring him and trust him with this, then you’re putting a wall between you guys and not even giving him the chance to love the real you. You’re self-sabotaging without even meaning to.”
He knew she was right, even though he didn’t want to admit it. “I’ll invite him,” was all he could say, but she knew that she’d won.
He caught up with Rafael after court later that day. It was a solid win, which went a long way to easing Sonny’s nerves over the whole thing. At least he was in a good mood. “Hey, Rafael, I was wondering if you wanted to spend Christmas Eve with my family and I. It’s my sisters and my parents, so nothing too big.” He smiled brightly, “But I’d love to have you there.”
The bright spirit collapsed, darkening his expression into almost a glare, but he why would he have been glaring. “I didn’t think you’d want me there.” His jaw was clenched tightly, “I figured it wasn’t worth it to continue this.”
Sonny fought a losing battle to not let his hurt show. He recognized those words. They were his own and Rafael was throwing them back in his face. “So, you heard?” There really was nothing left to say, if he really felt that way.
“Of course I heard, you left the door open.” He pulled his eyes away from him and stared at the ground, “And you’re right. It’s abnormal….We should just call it off now since it’s obviously not going to go anywhere.”
Sonny nodded even though his heart was breaking. There wasn’t much of a fight when what’s wrong is who you are. “For what it’s worth, you’re incredible.”
Rafael just turned and walked away, leaving Sonny standing alone in the hallway and effectively sealing his fate.
Amanda was a mom to a child who probably wouldn’t remember what she was doing most of the time. Jesse was only two, and that meant, she was going to take that shift on Christmas Eve and then go home to eggnog with her sister. It was almost a vindictive pleasure that she got from breaking the mommy-rules like that.
But all of that joy came crashing down when she crashed into Barba. Sonny been particularly closed liped to her for the past few days, but she hadn’t anticipated this being the reason behind the silence. “You should be at Bella’s,” was all she could say because if he wasn’t at Bella’s then Sonny wouldn’t be staying in New York.
“No, Sonny made his views on our relationship quite clear and we decided to end it.”
Her jaw dropped, “Really, what did he say?” She didn’t think a declaration of love would end with breaking up, and there hadn’t been enough time for him to regress back into self-doubt.
“Nothing you hadn’t already heard.”
Oh, shit. She hadn’t closed the door all the way.
“Barba,” she leveled a glare with him, “I don’t know how much you heard from us the other day, but what Sonny told me was that he was afraid you’d think he was too strange for you to stay with him and that he should just break it off before you could decide to leave him.” Her words hit him hard, it was written all over his face.
“If you love him or even care about him, you have to go to Bella’s now and fix this.” Or he’d never get the chance to.
He gave her a sharp nod and started towards the door. He only made it a few steps before breaking into a run.
“I sometimes forget what he’s really like.” Gina broke the silence that had fallen over the room and drawing everyone’s eyes away from the fireplace, “I have to say, he really has mastered the cheerful backhand. The movies never get that right.”
Teresa laughed, “I think Tim Allen did it the best, but his sarcasm was too blatant.”
“Tim Allen also didn’t destroy my life.” Sonny mumbled, standing up and leaving the room. Gabby was still having fun. She loved seeing her grandfather and Sonny wasn’t going to let his mood bring hers down.
He stood in the kitchen and poured himself a spiked eggnog. It didn’t take long for Bella to find him. “So, it didn’t work with Rafael? I’m sorry, Sonny. He made you happy.” She said that like it was the most important part of their relationship, not that if Rafael had been there he’d have been able to keep his job and life. She was right.
“He overheard the truth and didn’t take it well.” He said with a shrugged, “That was sort of a deal breaker.”
“Well, his loss.” She reached from behind her back and pulled out a Santa hat. With a sad smile she stood on her toes and placed it on his head. “You’re a fucking catch and you made it snow for him. He doesn’t deserve you.”
He wrapped her into a brotherly bear hug. “Can you tell him that? I just...I was getting ready to actually tell him. I didn’t want him out of the loop around you guys.”
She squeezed him tightly before letting go. “He doesn’t deserve to know everything. I know you loved him, but if he was worth your time, he would be here.”
Almost like clockwork, there was a loud banging on the front door.
“You don’t think.”
Sonny shook his head and wet to the front door, “I swear to god, my life is not a Hallmark movie.”
Of course, he was still surprised to see and out of breath Rafael standing on the other side. He held up a hand when Sonny opened his mouth and launched into a probably planned speech. “The other day was all a misunderstanding. I didn’t hear the important part of what you said, and even if I had, I should have given you a chance to explain.
“I don’t care what your secret is, I promise you I can take it. I just thought that you thought we were too difficult and strange, but you are,” He took a deep breath, “You are incredible and so wonderful and you don’t have to let me inside, but I just couldn’t go another minute without telling you that I love you.”
“I can stay.” He said. Sonny’s mind went blank the moment he hear those words. Rafael was in front of him saying that he loved him and Sonny loved him back. Without even thinking about it, he pulled him in for a kiss, pausing briefly after a moment to stare at the gorgeous man in front of him
“Wait a second,” Rafael pushed him back a bit, just enough that Sonny couldn’t lean in for another kiss. “You were going to leave?”
He took a deep breath and Rafael’s hands, “My father’s Santa Claus and if I hadn’t found someone that I loved to tie me here, I was going to have to take over for him.”
His eyes widened to the size of dinner plates, “You love me?”
“Yeah, I love you.”
“Your father is Santa Claus?”
“Yes, he is.”
He nodded “That conversation with Rollins makes a lot more sense now.” His gaze was soft when he came back from the shock, “It still doesn’t matter. Just that does explain how everything was always perfect.”
Sonny raised an eyebrow. He hadn’t told him about the magic yet, “How?”
“I asked your dad for someone to spend Christmas with me.” He pulled Sonny against his chest, “I guess he got my wish.”
“Well then, Merry Christmas, Rafael.”
“Merry Christmas, Sonny.”
18 notes · View notes
singingwordwright · 7 years
Text
Shadowhunters recap - s2ep19 “Hail and Farewell”
SHADOWHUNTERS Recaps Intro and Masterlist
These recaps may contain spoilers from the books (that may or may not happen in the show.) Proceed at your own risk.
Recap and meta under the cut.
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I thought this was a really great way to lead into the episode. Throughout the season, we’ve seen this steady progression of Sebastian unraveling (yes, I know he’s actually Jonathan, but in the books he adopts the Sebastian identity For Reasons and others have a hard time thinking of him as anything else For Reasons, so we’re going with that.) His plans have been thwarted at every turn, with the possible exception of getting Valentine away from Clave custody, and that didn’t turn out the way he intended either.
In fact, it’s only gotten worse since he decided not to banish Valentine to Edom after all, because now Valentine is getting in his head all the time, chipping away at whatever is left of his sanity, preying on his need for approbation, manipulating him into playing by Valentine’s rules.
It makes you wonder what his plans were for AFTER he banished Valentine to Edom. What was his next step if he’d followed through there? Did he intend to just settle into an “ordinary” Shadowhunter life as Sebastian Verlac and hope he was never found out?
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Clary claiming she knew something was off about Sebastian—since when? Since she pretty much started confiding in him the instant he showed up at the Institute? Other than being put off by his romantic attentions, what indication did she ever give that she didn’t think he was A-OK?
Still LOVE seeing badass Izzy back in the field.
The dialogue about the “possessing” demon (like, is that the name of the subspecies? Because it’s spoken as if it’s the name and yet it’s more of a description) like the one that killed Jocelyn was a little clunky (like, when were we ever given an indication that the one that killed Jocelyn could take control of dead bodies?) But it did serve its purpose in establishing that Valentine can still control demons with the Mortal Cup. Which we the viewers already knew, but apparently the characters needed it confirmed somehow?
I did hate seeing that final indignity visited upon poor Sebastian Verlac, though. He didn’t deserve that.
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I thought this shot of Izzy and Clary responding with “hail and farewell” was interesting because of the difference in their faces. Clary recites the words, but Izzy closes hers, and her face is much more intent.
It reminded me a lot of the times that I, as a person who isn’t Catholic, have attended mass with Catholic friends.
It says a lot about the disparity in their upbringing. They’re both Shadowhunters, yes, but for Clary, being raised as a mundane, this is a foreign custom that she participates in out of politeness. She’s trying to adopt it but she doesn’t really feel it. Izzy, however, is legitimately devout. This is part of her cultural identity, and these words, this rite, is sacred to her.
Which makes the utter scorn with which she uses them at the end of the episode all that much more powerful.
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I literally spent this entire scene moaning “nooo, don’t tell anyone about the Mirror!” but of course they do. Which I kinda-sorta get because of course they need to get guards on the lake, but surely they should know by now that the Clave has more leaks than a sieve? Not to pat myself on the back, but I think the suggestion Maryse made in the short fic I posted last week, of notifying the werewolf packs in Idris and convincing them to patrol the lake, was far more sensible.
Admittedly, that could be because I’ve read the synopsis for s2ep20 and know there’s a traitor somewhere.
This scene is meant to give us the impression that Imogen might be that traitor, I suspect, but I’m 99% certain that’s a red herring. First of all, there’s simply no way she’s going to work with Valentine. She truly and sincerely despises him. Second, one of Jace’s family members turns out to be a traitor? Haven’t we already gone to this well a few too many times?
I actually suspect Imogen might die next week, though, because Inquistor Herondale in the books was long dead by this point (she dies immediately after realizing Jace is her grandson) and during the sequence of events in the books that the show is presently modeling itself after, Inquisitor Aldertree (who had taken her place) is killed by Valentine. Let’s hope Imogen’s death isn’t a gruesome as that one was.
So, Imogen here says “I’ll speak to Consul Malachi.” Let’s get into that, shall we?
The anti-Downworld/Nephilim-supremacist rant voiceover in the promo for next week’s episode is, in fact, Malachi Dieudonné. I didn’t originally recognize him as a character from the books because Izzy refers to him in s2ep15 ‘Councillor Dieudonné’ (closed captioning says ‘Consul Dieudonné’ but it sounded like ‘Councillor’ when I watched it) and in the books he’s called Consul Malachi. So Imogen referring to him as Consul Malachi here is the first time I put it together.
In the books, yes, Malachi is a traitor, and clearly he is going to be on the show as well. But on the show, we have literally ZERO investment in this character. Until now, he’s had two lines and, like, three seconds of screen time. So I don’t see what payoff there is, on a storytelling level, to making him the traitor—or at least the only one. Also, they’ve already given Malachi away in both the promo for the next episode and the promo stills they released. So I suspect this is a diversion to keep us from suspecting another traitor, one who will be more of a surprise.
My money is still on Robert.
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I really love Luke sort of calling Magnus out here and Magnus replying. I wish Luke hadn’t backed down.
I especially love the look Raphael shot Luke when Luke invoked Alec’s name. Like, “Wow, really? You’re going there?”
I feel for Magnus, and yet I’m really glad to see the Downworlders prioritizing the Downworld over the Shadowhunters right now. Despite their misgivings and personal stakes in all this, even Luke and Raphael have their priorities in the right place here.
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Can someone please give me one single rational reason why Clary and Jace are in this meeting?
Izzy I can see. She’s sort of functioned as Alec’s co-host/goodwill ambassador for previous Downworld cabinet meetings. But Jace and Clary serve absolutely no function in this meeting, and Clary specifically has been in the shadow world less than two months so what the hell is she doing attending high-level political meetings, sassing off to foreign dignitaries for no other reason than she’s still sulky over what happened the last time she saw the Seelie Queen?
A lot of people see Magnus’s expressions in this scene as being derision aimed at Alec, but I don’t agree. I think they’re irritation over the fact that he can’t respond when he wants to, as he’s clearly been ordered not to speak. “Such is the nature of our agreement.” He has to let the Seelie Queen do all the talking. Raphael and Luke are clearly under the same condition.
His behavior in this scene isn’t him being salty at Alec. It’s him being uncomfortable and frustrated with the position he’s been forced into. It’s meant to show us that he’s not sanguine about this new state of affairs in the slightest.
ETA: I take this back. Given the sneak peek of s2ep20, clearly he really is still salty at Alec. Which is sort of giving me whiplash because he wasn’t angry any longer at the end of s2ep18, just sad. So why is he back to that angry place now? I don’t get it.
Don’t get me started on the fact that, after watching Alec go through this, Clary and Jace look at each other, rather than Alec who must be suffering under what is happening.
Don’t get me started on the fact that we haven’t seen Jace express a single word of concern about anything having to do with Alec since season 2B began. Apparently their renewed connection from season 2A is gone and we’re back to Jace being about himself and his drama all the time and taking Alec for granted.
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I really did like this moment between Clary and Luke. Because it demonstrated two things. 1) that they still love each other and 2) that Luke is no longer letting his love for Clary drive him to neglect his pack. And Clary…actually understands that. Respects it. Who is this new Clary who recognizes the bigger picture (at least some of the time?)
What’s interesting, though, is that despite the Seelie Queen giving the Shadowhunters a definitive “no” on their request to help hunt for Valentine, Luke and Raphael leave the meeting clearly intending to do exactly that. And the Seelie Queen orders the warlocks to put up wards around the City. So…what exactly did her refusal in the council meeting accomplish?
“We’re going to do exactly what you’re asking us to do, but we’re not going to help you do it or work with you in doing it.” I’m not sure I understand what the point of that is, except to establish a new power dynamic and antagonize the Clave.
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Can we take a moment to admire the staging of this shot with Izzy and Raphael? Her standing in the sunlight, him carefully in the shadows. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again; I’m firmly pro-Rizzy, as long as the toxic mutual-addiction thing isn’t an element. I like this ship. I know it’s not endgame, but as long as they’re both dealt with respectfully at the end of it, I can get behind it.
But if this shot isn’t a metaphor for the issues they face if they go there, I don’t know what is.
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Simon and Maia are so adorable. I just wish I knew how the producers plan on wrapping up their romance plotline without (just like Izzy and Raphael) treating one of them disrespectfully. Because I just don’t want to see that.
Maia eating off the plate going out to the customers just kills me. If only Ollie knew… But again, who are these people who operate and work at the Jade Wolf, that apparently all these werewolves going in and out of their kitchen getting into shit isn’t a big deal?
“I know that asking you for a favor right now might be a little awkward…” OMG what is this? Is Clary actually demonstrating…self-awareness? Really?
*sniffle* I promised myself I wouldn’t cry.
I adore Simon so much. There is just not a petty bone in his body, even when no one would blame him if there were.
What I would like to know is if Clary ran this plan to send Simon as an emissary to the Seelie Queen past Alec and got his okay with it. Because, like, maybe she should stay OUT of issues of shadow world diplomacy until someone tags her in on it?
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I can’t. I just can’t. This hurts too damn much. I need it to be Monday already and I need my boys to be all right. Sweartagod if they leave us this way over the hiatus I will…well, I don’t know what I’ll do, but I know that my enthusiasm for this episode was severely dampened by the Malec break-up and if they remain broken up over the hiatus, I will probably have a very hard time mustering enough enthusiasm to tune in for Season 3.
Look, I’m old. I’ve been battered and bruised and I’ve learned through many painful experiences that if the pain of rooting for your favorite characters and ships starts outweighing the enjoyment, it’s time to bail.
Madzie! Catarina! I love them both and I’m definitely looking forward to seeing them more in Season 3. I was really hoping that Catarina would try to talk Magnus out of gambling on the Seelie Queen, but nope, she’s just that ride or die. No questions asked, she’s in.
“Thank you for coming.” Magnus thanks her! He doesn’t take for granted that she’ll just jump to. *heart eyes*
It’s interesting to me how Magnus tends to pull his face more, make more over-the-top facial expressions, when he’s not with Alec. This is much more the Magnus was saw in Season 1. Even here with Catarina, right now when everything is so raw, his walls are up and that’s one of the signs of it.
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I’m trying to decide whether or not I’m in favor of them making Sebastian so fixated on Valentine’s approval. It’s a bit woobie-fying, isn’t it? Like, are they saying that Sebastian could have been saved, if not for Valentine’s poisonous influence? Jocelyn didn’t seem to think so; she believed he was evil from birth. Are they trying to set up a redemption arc for him? Or merely foreshadowing what turns out to be his fatal weakness (letting Jace goad him about being the “favorite son” ultimately leads to his downfall.)
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Apropos of nothing, is it just me or does it look like that Circle member on the right might be pregnant? No real point to that, just sort of thinking of what it must be like to be a pregnant Shadowhunter, particularly in time of war. We know Maryse was in the Circle when she was pregnant with Alec (she’s lucky Valentine didn’t try any experiments on her) and was conducting raids with the Circle still when Alec was just a baby.
And Valentine wouldn’t scruple to use pregnant women as canon fodder, either, would he?
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They’ve done better with the Seelie ears this season than they did first season. I can still see a seam where the prosthetic is glued on, but it’s not nearly as messy as Meliorn’s were in season 1.
I do love that Simon gives so few fucks that he just sasses back to the Seelie Queen. Which I know is maybe a little hypocritical of me, since I was irritated that Clary was doing that earlier, but the difference is, Clary was in a diplomatic meeting and shouldn’t have been taking pot shots.
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This was a gorgeously filmed scene. I admit it, for someone who has been spectacularly unmoved by Clace overall, I was feeling it a bit here. Part of it may just be how beautifully it was shot, part of it may be because Clary hasn’t been irritating me nearly as much the past couple episodes, but I think what really got me was the embrace. Not a kiss, not passion, just…intimacy. Closeness. The protective way Jace was holding her and sense of safety and contentment Clary radiated in his arms. A respite in the middle of chaos. A moment when the world melts away. The need to wrap yourself around someone and just be pressed against them and just be in that moment.
That’s a very visceral thing and actually speaks to me a lot more than a kiss would have done.
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I almost asked who made the portal but then I remembered Clary’s rune.
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen Valentine make canon fodder out of innocents, but at least when he made Forsaken in season 1 he took volunteers (admittedly they were people who were sick and dying and didn’t have much choice.)
I and many others have already remarked on the way Jace assumes Alec would want to probe about his drama with Clary when he apparently hasn’t taken even a second to notice what Alec is going through. I don’t like these sorts of inconsistencies. Either they have this bond, and it goes both ways, or they don’t. Alec seems to be very consistently attentive to whatever Jace is going through, but Jace is hit-and-miss with Alec, and I really don’t want the writing to take them back to a place where Jace is taking Alec for granted the way they did in season 1.
I don’t have much to say about the ensuing fight sequences. Lots of Fighty McFight and Princess Stabbity stuff. They were amazing, ALL the characters got to have badass moments. And one lesson Valentine apparently taught Jace that he’s been playing close to the vest is the ability to talk his way inside someone’s head and manipulate them into playing by his rules.
I loved that Izzy got to confront Sebastian, though I do wish they’d kept the touch from the books where she amputated his hand with her whip. That would have been awesome, and sort of a parallel to Jace doing the same thing to Hodge after Hodge betrayed them at the end of Season 1 (though, maybe that’s why they didn’t go there again.)
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I will say, though, apparently Jace actually missed the spot where he could sever Sebastian’s spine, because otherwise Sebastian wouldn’t be able to stand upright here and grab him by the neck for their final tussle. His legs should have buckled the instant that sword went through him, if his spine was severed.
And, again, see the beginning of this write-up for why the disdain with which Izzy delivers the words “Hail and farewell” here is so amazing.
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I can’t even imagine what the Seelie Queen thinks she’s going to accomplish by kidnapping Maia. Clearly it has something to do with wanting Simon to capitulate, but how exactly?
And what could Valentine possibly be offering her here at the end?
22 notes · View notes
simkjrs · 7 years
Text
chapter 6 asks that are people in distress about shinsou
SPOILERS FOR THE FIC, so it’s all under the readmore 
** before i start, i just want to say, the sheer number of people who have guessed that it’s himiko impersonating shinsou is frankly alarming and equally hilarious. thanks yall 
Anonymous said: OH MY GOD SHINSOU MY SON, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO HIM??? HE DOESNT DESERVE THIS????? (for real, tho, that chapter was?? So good??? I'm so happy to have read this)
you’re absolutely right he doesn’t deserve this and im doing it to him anyways, which objectively proves that as an author i am not and never have been trustworthy. im sorry if i ever tricked you into thinking otherwise. im crying as well
Anonymous said: holy crap that chapter. where do i even start. i knew the kidnapping was coming up but that scene still managed to punch me in the gut. shinsou doesn't deserve this he just wanted to be a hero you guys. also the scene where izuku brought mitoki flowers was really great and i'm so happy that conversation happened. and the paintball fight? best thing i've ever laid my eyes upon. sorry this wasn't very coherent, i'm gonna go fling myself into the sun. thank you for this amazing chapter.
thank YOU for the feedback, i’m really glad you enjoyed the mitoki conversation & the paintball fight because those two scenes were the ones i was most nervous about. as for shinsou, you are very right. he doesn’t deserve this and im sorry 
Anonymous said: WHAT THE FUCK!!!!! that was so intense!!!!!!!!!!!! that chapter was amazing you lied sorry ://// (izuku has a crush on shinsou and i couldnt be happier. sweethearts, the both of them.) SO MUCH HAPPENED AT ONCE IM FU KCIFNSICIAJX!!!! WHAT HAPPENED WITH SHINSOU??? MY BOY WHO THREATENED HIM. WHO HURT HIM??!?!?!!?!??!!??!?! i got so emotional all throughout this chapter i almost cried like 26 times that was wild af!!! NOW HOW DO I RECOVER FROM THIS!!!! (im so worried about shinsou. about everyone.)
hfjldksf thanks!! glad you enjoyed it!! im sorry for making you emotional. its the unintended side effects of tryin to convey izuku’s state of mind 
i know this won’t ease your suffering much but for a while i intended for chapter 7 to be from shinsou’s point of view, and it was quite literally just titled “what happened to shinsou.” this may still happen. im not sure yet. stay tuned next for,
Anonymous said: *twitch twitch twitchy twich* omg suddenly i understand those comments from your betas. like. i'm legit speechless???? why. why would you do this, you evil writer from awesome land. like i just. im in like. the all caps state of shock. that FREAKING LAST LINE AKDJKLADSLKAJDSKLJLKJ. like. *squeezes air* i dont even know where to begin???? I MEAN CLEARLY I STARTED AT THE END BUT LIKE. so much. to talk about. like. the smile bits of gaming and cats and pics then THAT KAST KUUSJDFHSKJDHFSKJDHSJDF
i bait in readers with cute fun shenanigans and then i go in for the kill 
(thank you for writing in, i’m glad you enjoyed the chapter <3 )
Anonymous said: no, but like, ur saying that chapter 6 is the worst one YET (which is a HORRIBLE LIE. this chapter was great. even if it let us all devastated afterwards. but whats a good fanfiction if it doesnt affect the reader tho heh(and your certainly is a great fanfiction. one of the greatest)) is it because of the giant clusterfuck that 7 and/or 8 is gonna be? (kamino ward, all might reveal, kidnappings+ SHINSOU) im legit worried haha ( btw "(accidental) dad might: Stealth Style" is my favorite tag now)
i cultivate my tags with pride. im glad you enjoyed that one in particular :3c and also... thank you... i was super insecure abt ch6 so it’s really nice hearing ppl liked it! i really appreciate it <3 
the next chapter(s?) are going to be a clusterfuck so you are probably wise to be legit worried. preemptive apologies. i don’t know why im doing this and im sorry also 
Anonymous said: I don't actually believe that Shinsou did it, naturally. Maybe the villains pin the blame on him cause it's easier to do it to someone that everyone is already wary about? I honestly have no idea, you're too unpredictable with some of these things
u have a good nose anon... but also when have i EVER been unpredictable about anything. my taste and storytelling is incredibly predictable in that it is always The Worst and Incredibly Self Indulgent. all you have to do to pick out the path im taking is think “what path allows simk to pander to their own interests the most?” and thats the path i’ll take. this is exactly what is happening with the entirety of this fic and especially with this next arc 
Anonymous said: is shinsou being blackmailed?? controlled by someone else?? someone stole his face?? was he used as a hostage bc he interacted with class I-A more? or is someone threatening izuku again or.. ahhh idk what it is but I really feel he is not a traitor so: my current theories about shinsou. am I close?? 
yes to all of the above 
Anonymous said: Pretty sure you didn't get many theories yet cause we are still in shock. Send help pls. (Loved the chapter btw that chapter was legit a roller-coaster of feels.)
theres no help to be found. i did this irrevocably and now theres nothing we can do about it 
(thank you! i’m really glad to hear that, and hope that you have recovered from your shock :p )
Anonymous said: thoughts on shinsou's reasons: bakugou is a abusive shit who is undeserving of being a hero and made him lose all faith in heroes, blackmail, threats, brainwashing, some other type of convincing, he has been the traitor the whole time and you just want to kill us with angst, the LoV is threatening deku and if he doesn't help them they kill him, rage against society has reached its peak (same tho), or he wants to get back at bakugou, or the Cat Cafe is being threatened. please stop killing me.
this is a really impressive laundry list of unconventional reasons for shinsou to join the villain alliance. i love it. i too would become a villain in order to save my favorite cat cafe and spite a person i don’t like 
@armcontrolnerve said: it was himiko in the study with the candlestick 
d...does this make shinsou the murder victim 
Anonymous said: I JUST READ THE NEW CHAPTER AND JUST WANTED TO DROP BY AND SAY YOU'VE UTTERLY WRECKED ME. I have tears in my eyes, I am currently flailing about like a fish while my brain goes into overdrive trying to dodge the reality of that ending. Shinsou was helping Izuku not two scenes ago, he was probably kidnapped and forced to do it against his will via torture or something. I refuse to believe that Shinsou is a villain and you cannot tell me oTHERWISE
good instincts. hold onto that feeling 
Anonymous said: My guess: shinsou was kidnapped by Villain Alliance. Himiko Toga is using her quirk to impersonate him. But...why
bad pr image for yuuei 
Anonymous said: all im thinking is that girl with the quirk that lets her shapeshift into people if she gets their blood and im just. oh no. shinsou. how could u do this to the poor sweet gay boy. meet me in the pit for a fight, and also a round of compliments for ur fucking writing skills. u made me cry. i love this fic so much but unfortunately i still have to challenge u to a duel, for the sake of these poor children, and their mental health,,, (ps i love ur writing and ur fantastic!! byeee)
if you kill me youll never get these children back alive
(thank u though... this made me laugh. rest assured that i will promptly apply all my writing skills to elucidating the mystery of what happened to shinsou) 
Anonymous said: Shinsou probably got his quirk stolen by Sensei or someone is impersonating him I guess. Or his classmates are jerks and framing him or something. Smh
his classmates threw him under the bus
@sunslammerdown​ said: hi i am a person who reads your very extremely good fanfiction... thanks very much and also Wow Rude How Dare You. you said you were surprised at not getting more shinsou theories so heres my two: 1) It Was Toga, shinsou is kidnapped its not good 2) It Was All For One who can take quirks and use them on people and shinsou has a mind control quirk, its very not good still
what if its... 3) both, for maximum suffering, and the ultimate very not good happenstance 
@viperofsand​ said: I am sure I had something in mind when giving my review while I was reading chap 6, but after the final part my mind was all 'WHAT THE HELLLLLL', so, there is that. Also, I am inaugurating #ShinsouIsNotAVillain2017 for this fic starting now.
this is a good hashtag. i’m behind it. i have no right to be but i am 
Anonymous said: ok i'm trying not to panic bc of the cliffhanger but just tell me, will we know /why/ shinso is doing what he's doing ?? i'm trying not to spoil for ppl 
no worries! we will find out exactly what happened to shinsou...
@auspiciouswhiskers​ said: How much do I have to pay for a Shinsou redemption and/or Shindeku endgame because pleeease you have responsibilities
you don’t even have to ask. its already under way...
(more specifically: you just don’t even need to ask. there just isnt a need. hold that thought for a shindeku endgame though bc who KNOWS where im headed with that) 
Anonymous said: Izuku's gonna lure Shinsou with cats and everything will be just fine. Izuku holding up fuku, taka and isao: you know u can't harm them Shinsou: defeated
this is the ultimate villain shinsou ask. nothing is ever going to top this. you dont even need to fight shinsou you just have to appeal to him with cats and he’ll crumble instantly 
Anonymous said: Eh, I don't know if I'm angry, but I am a tad disappointed if it actually is "what it looks like" with Shinsou. I mean his whole deal is that while his power seems like one that a villain would have, he doesn't actually want to use it that way. If he really is a villain in your story, that sorta defeats the purpose of his character, you know? But I guess I'll just wait and see what you plan to do with it.
that aspect of his character is probably what makes what im doing 100% more awful so i guess what im trying to say is: don’t worry it’s not what it seems, but also, i should not be allowed to touch a computer 
Anonymous said: ok ok i have an idea about why shinsou provided inside help(i hope im at least a little right or im going to cry): he was threatened by the league? they saw him hanging out with deku and probably knew that he didnt know he was Hella Strong or smth and were like "look, if u dont want ur friend to die ur gonna have to Cooperate" and shinsou being an amazing friend was like "U LEAVE HIM ALONE U COCKROACH" and he did That. it probably happened in That One Stupid Horrible Month (please. PLEASE)
shinsou became a villain for deku confirmed. be gay, turn to the dark side 
Anonymous said: honestly while i'm still Actually Dead over the latest chapter Izuku having his Gay Awakening over someone who stabs him in the back is Relatable lol
h...hold that thought... 
also. i’m really sorry to hear that, and i hope you’re in a better place now. may your future gay relationships be blessed
Anonymous said: It's Mamoru. The ending to your new chapter is definitely a twist that I didn't expect at all. But oddly I'm not angry. Is Shinsou really going to be a villain? Because it kinda goes against he is fighting for. Or is he threatened?
spoiler alert...
@chocowl said: holy fuck simk
A theory: was Shinsou kidnapped by the VA and Himiko used her Quirk to look like him? That would explain the silence towards Izuku and would heal our tormented souls Q-Q
the truth is, the entire villain alliance is conspiring to fuck over shinsou, specifically
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lynchgirl90 · 7 years
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#TWINPEAKS: Did Kyle MacLachlan Just Spoil Dougie Jones’ Ultimate Fate?
Caution: potential spoilers for THE RETURN ahead. Definite spoilers for THE HIDDEN ('87), though.
By JACOB KNIGHT 
At this point, it’s hard not to obsess over every little detail about Twin Peaks: The Return. David Lynch and Mark Frost kept us all in the dark during production, curating a near unprecedented level of access denial; a truly admirable feat in an era defined by the corporate construction of artificial anticipation. Where most modern works of television and film come with teasers, trailers, teasers for teasers and trailers, set visits, multiple character posters, mid- and post-credit stingers for the future installments, The Return doesn’t even give us “previously on” or “coming next week” bumpers. Hell, the Part descriptions come close to straight up trolling, tossing out decontextualized snippets of dialogue like hyper-vague title cards in The Wire. Part Eight of Lynch and Frost’s eighteen-hour opus may be the best example of this, as the surrealist work of experimental cinema was simply defined with two words that became a horrifying death rattle during the psychedelic riff through atomic time and space: “gotta light?”
So, when Kyle MacLachlan talks to the Hollywood Reporter and kinda, sorta lets slip the ultimate fate of his mentally comatose Dale Cooper surrogate, Dougie Jones, it feels like a big deal. MacLachlan (in trademark handsomely affable fashion) spoke lovingly about longtime collaborator David Lynch (whom he hadn’t worked with since their minor falling out during the original Twin Peaks run and Fire Walk With Me), stating “everything will make sense”:
“I think we all knew it was going to be a challenging journey for the audience, simply because it is 18 parts of one giant piece, and it's sequential, so people really have to stay with it. And also that David's storytelling is filled with imagery and different perspectives and characters and things that may initially be confusing to people, but ultimately everything will come back together and make sense. It will be clear.”
But when it came time to discuss Dougie, MacLachlan went into detail, confirming certain thematic theories some fans hold regarding Cooper’s post-Black Lodge body, and how the man in the oversized green sport jacket may be purposefully unmemorable, until the Special Agent became trapped in this bizarre take on The Talking Heads’ “Once in a Lifetime”:
“The idea that he went from that one character who we saw briefly, to someone who resembles Cooper a little bit more ... I knew it was going to be tricky. But I knew it wasn't up to me. It's going to be up to the people around me to make that work. The character of Jade [Nafessa Williams], the character of Janey-E and the people at work — they were all going to have to look at him and go, ‘Why has he changed? What's happening here?’ As an audience, we have to go with that. I knew it was going to be a bit of a challenge. But it's also a reflection on Dougie from before. He probably wasn't that memorable, either. People probably didn't look at him too closely: ‘Oh, it's you. You look a little different. Did you change your hair or something?’”
Wait a minute. That first sentence is a subtle bombshell. The idea that he went from that one character who we saw briefly, to someone who resembles Cooper a little bit more. So, what you’re possibly saying Kyle, is that we will eventually get to hang out with the old Coop as he hunts down his deadly doppelganger? While this has been assumed by many, MacLachlan’s words are the first concrete confirmation that a change is certainly coming. His hints become even less cryptic when taken in time with another bit from the chat:
"I knew that the audience was excited, just based on social media, for the return of the Cooper that they remembered. I couldn't say anything about that — that there was a process that had to happen before the ship could right itself, let's say...
“The other character of Dougie is not too dissimilar to a character I played in The Hidden years ago. It's just a further degree of someone who is new to the world and is discovering it as he goes along. There's a veil that he's not able to get through. I watched Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, Jeff Bridges in Starman, Peter Sellers in Being There; that was a big influence. Those were influences in terms of how to tackle this character.”
This writer thinks that conclusion is only logical, leaving Dougie’s strong, sassy wife (Naomi Watts) with a bundle of casino money, and Dougie with an icepick-wielding dwarf maniac looking to wipe him off this plane of existence permanently. If I’m being honest – the scenario that makes the most sense is Cooper exiting the poor slob just in time for Dougie to get stabbed multiple times by the marauding death machine, and bleed out in front of his estranged love and little Sonny Jim (Pierce Gagnon). However, MacLachlan’s consistent prideful labeling of the show as challenging reminds us that nothing is going the way we necessarily think it should. Beyond not knowing anything before The Return premiered, the beauty of this new Twin Peaks beast is that we never know exactly what to expect. This is another rhythmic dreamland, visually conjured by David Lynch. And in dreams, nothing ever lines up precisely to our outlooks, because reveries shape and mold us as we experience them each and every night. One of the deftest insights MacLachlan shares about The Return is a simple truth: this is a gift. On top of being a defining work from one of our master filmic forces, we’re being transported back to a time and place where obsession was bred through mystery instead of overstimulation. It feels wonderful to be constantly in the dark, grabbing at enigmatic straws.  
link (TP)
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