#see is it badly thought out and shoddy writing? Sure

[vivalasthedas]

ohp, just had my favorite piece of 'well, they didn't think that one through did they?' bit of default dialog. So regardless of class or player race

asking Morigan what the temple of Mythal is. As a dalish elf.

#see is it badly thought out and shoddy writing? Sure #is it hilarious and to me makes up for the flaw with the entertainment value? yeah #added bonus if you have mythal valaslin #a lot of the dialog around morrigan might not've been super thought out if you play an elf #it does give you options to do the 'i know more than you' response but not enough to make it not stand out #im sure i remember someone jokingly calling it shemsplaining at some point which is fun #but ya know considering who her mom technically is #does it still count? #or is morrigan some kind of odd technically spiritually elf blooded human?

[witchygirl99]

finding a photo of your enemy as a toddler, inukag

Ask, and you shall receive.

1800 words under the cut. Not edited. Written at work so it was a shoddy rush job and everything is very vague and you'll just have to accept this.

I'll write a proper, better video gamer AU one day. For now though...

Won't You Say (You Love Me, Too)

The thing is—

The thing is that Inuyasha isn’t meant to be here. Sure, he’s a little drunk. And sure, Koga’s stupid face dared him, because Koga is both stupid, has a face, and that face is stupid. Inuyasha didn’t have to listen, though. Inuyasha could have done a billion other things, like walk away, or laugh the dare off, or – or – could have even gotten himself another drink.

That… That would have been the smarter plan.

Inuyasha hiccups, flinching at the noise. He is so not supposed to be here.

“Inuyasha,” stupid Koga hisses from below. It’s probably supposed to be a whisper. It’s not. It’s like…quieter yelling, but yelling nonetheless.

Haughtily, Inuyasha glares down at his teammate. The window that he’s jimmied open to break into the Priestess House is still open. It’s unseasonably warm for an autumn night, but it’s strangely comforting. At least, Inuyasha thinks so. That could just be the alcohol talking, though.

“Inuyasha,” Koga hisses again, “what do you see?”

He blinks, frowns, and then squints into the dark room. There’s not a ton of illumination from either the moon, or the streetlights. He thinks, dimly, that this is a…bedroom? A bedroom. This is not, in fact, the office that they thought they were breaking into.

[Read the rest below the cut.]

He takes in a deep breath, brain pinging at him worriedly. He knows this scent. It’s familiar. Too familiar. Inuyasha should know whose room he’s in and it’s on the tip of his tongue – his nose? No, that’s not a saying – when Koga makes another hissing sound.

Ugh.

“What?” Inuyasha snarls, so desperate to glare out the window at his stupid teammate and at said stupid teammate’s face that he nearly stumbles. Bracing himself on the little table underneath, he makes a point to roll his eyes when the wolf demon waves alarmingly at him. “What is so urgent that you need to—”

“I hear them,” Koga whisper-yells, because he’s stupid. “They’re just down the street.”

“What?” he exclaims, but this time it’s desperate rather than irritated. “I thought Miroku said the girls would be gone for at least an hour.”

“Well, his intel is shit,” Koga replies. “Now get out!”

So much for sneaking into their offices to find out if any of their playing strategies would be visible. The regional gaming tournament is only two days away, and every single member of the six-person Priestess team has been dominating the competition. Their battle strategies have taken weaker characters and turned them into something surprisingly efficient. It should be impossible. Character stats don’t lie.

And yet. And yet. The women of the Priestess House have made a mockery of nearly everyone there. And the worst of them?

Kagome Higurashi. The absolute bane of his existence. She came onto the scene about three years ago, rising up the ranks. Inuyasha hadn’t even given her a second thought until The Incident last year.

The Incident, in which she—

“Inuyasha,” Koga hisses again, like an angry cat. A cat. Not a wolf. Inuyasha should tell him this. Inuyasha is desperate to tell him this. “You need to jump out the window, you fuck.”

Right. The Priestess girls were coming back. Kagome would be with them and that would be— That would be bad. Not just because of the breaking and entering, or the trespassing. It would be bad because Inuyasha would have to be around her for likely more than a minute, which would mean that he’d have to stare into those dark eyes and that too-kind smile – like they’re friends, which they are not – and then—

“For fuck’s sake, I’m going to leave you,” Koga states, and that finally drills through Inuyasha’s pretty drunk skull. Can skulls be drunk?

No?

Maybe.

“I’m coming,” Inuyasha replies, pushing upwards, but he’s an idiot. The table underneath him isn’t that sturdy, and so his pressure on it to climb back out the window from which he entered sends a picture frame crashing to the ground.

“Inuyasha!”

“Oh my god, say my name one more time and I will murder you!” Inuyasha snaps. Koga is not helping, that fucking fuck. “Hold the fuck on, we can’t let them know—” And he bends down to grab the frame and put it back. Hopefully whoever’s room this is won’t notice.

And then he sees the picture in the frame, practically mocking him. It’s fucking Kagome Higurashi, no more than four years old and clinging to a small baby who looks distinctly unhappy by the entire experience. It’s undoubtedly her. While there’s more chub to her cheeks, those are the same sparkling eyes and that’s the same beaming smile. He would know that smile anywhere because it always makes him feel off-balance, confused. No one just smiles at people, at strangers. No one just smiles at you while they’re getting destroyed in one-on-one battle, and then shakes your hand with that same happy smile when they’ve lost. They don’t use that exact same smile when they see you again later in the year, at another tournament, and only stop smiling when they beat you so badly—

Oh god.

Oh fucking god.

This is Kagome’s bedroom. This is Kagome’s bedroom and he’s in her room and—

Kagome Higurashi at four years old smiles the exact same way, and she’s clinging to a little boy and that’s a big purple dinosaur right beside her on the couch. A dinosaur. She likes dinosaurs, oh god this is the worst—

“Godspeed, fucker,” Koga whispers-yells. “We hardly knew ye!” There’s the distinct sound of bushes rustling. His own teammate has abandoned him. Inuyasha is going to commit murder.

Firmly putting down the picture frame, Inuyasha starts the careful climb back out the window. He’s got one leg out, half of his body strained to reach the little lip in the brickwork he climbed up earlier. His hands grab at the sill, twisting him, and then he sees it.

It.

The purple dinosaur.

It’s on her bed, perfectly placed and disgustingly cute.

“Oh no,” Inuyasha groans, and then promptly shoves himself out the window. It takes him ten precious seconds to balance, and then another ten seconds to close the window and hide the fact he ever broke in in the first place. At the first sound of voices, Inuyasha freezes against the brick, propped up in a little corner and distinctly not looking down. It’s not a far drop, but the last thing Inuyasha needs is to lose his balance, topple into the garden, and then have the Priestess women come running to see what the fuck happened.

He waits, breath nearly held, until they start opening the door. There’s enough fuss and discussion that Inuyasha feels safe in making his escape, running away like the hounds of hell are chasing him. He doesn’t stop. He doesn’t look back.

When he finds Koga, lounging on the couch and drinking yet another beer at their shared gaming house, it takes a solid ten seconds of very slow counting to remind himself that murder is bad.

Besides, they have a tournament to win on Saturday.

X+X

The next day, Inuyasha finds himself looking for purple dinosaurs on Amazon.

This is, well, not ideal.

“What are you doing?” Hachi asks, eyes narrowed in confusion and then widening in concern when Inuyasha flinches to hide this embarrassing lack of restraint. “Wow, okay.”

“Fuck off,” Inuyasha replies, but he’s too mortified to even make it mean-sounding. He just comes off as pathetic.

There’s a snort in the doorway, and Miroku comes bumbling in with a clipboard. He takes his duties as team manager far too seriously. “What did Hachi do wrong now?”

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Hachi replies, eyeing Inuyasha again. “He’s the one that went all crazy when I asked him what he was doing.”

“And what was he doing?” Miroku presses. He’s grinning like a fool because he’s the worst. The worst best friend a guy could ask for. Inuyasha doesn’t know why he’s teammates with these idiots. It’s bad enough he’s got to deal with Koga.

“I wasn’t do anything,” he tries, but Hachi’s just shaking his head.

“Looking at his phone. I don’t know.”

Miroku turns to him, a shark that smells blood in the water. “Your phone? Who are you texting?”

“No one,” Inuyasha scoffs. “Fuck off.”

This gets a nod, and he has one moment of hope that Miroku won’t push the issue when his best friend hums. “You’re right. You have no friends outside of this team.”

“I’m not his friend!” Koga yells from somewhere else in the house.

Inuyasha sighs.

“So you must have been watching something.”

“No,” Hachi argues, “he was holding his phone like this. He was reading something, or maybe scrolling?”

“Inuyasha can’t read!” comes Koga’s voice again. They all ignore him.

“You’re not on Instagram,” Miroku hums, playing fucking Sherlock Holmes. “And you’re definitely not on TikTok. Discord is just another form of talking to people, so that’s out.”

Growling, he shoves his phone in the pocket of hoodie and gets up. “I am leaving.”

“Ooh, he’s leaving,” his friend continues, blue eyes alight with something dangerously close to glee. “Fuck, it has to be about Kagome then. That’s the only time you get this pissy.”

“Ha!” Hachi laughs because he, too, is the worst.

“That’s my future wife!” Koga yells from the other room, but that’s just because he’s delusional. As if someone like Koga could fucking rub two braincells together enough to impress her. Inuyasha’s face does a thing at the very thought.

“Oh my god, it is!” Miroku cackles.

“No,” Inuyasha answers, and he thinks he does a pretty good job of remaining calm. “But fuck you, anyways.”

“Are you reading her Wikitubia again?” his friend asks and that is it—

“One time!” Inuyasha yells, storming away from the main room. “That was one time!”

His teammates’ laughter follows him all the way back to his bedroom. Shippo, rubbing at his eyes after his nap – because he acts like a literal child, it’s embarrassing – just stares at him confusedly. “What did I miss?”

Inuyasha doesn’t stop walking. “Absolutely fucking nothing.” He gets into his room, shuts the door with a disturbing amount of care, and then leaps onto his bed to try and suffocate himself with a pillow. The walls of their gaming house aren’t that thick. If he tries hard enough, Inuyasha could hear the shit they’re undoubtedly still talking about him.

One time, Inuyasha pathetically whines in his head. He was only caught staring at her Wikitubia page one time. He was sizing up the enemy. Looking for weaknesses to exploit. That’s the only reason he did it. Just like that’s the only reason he watches her YouTube videos religiously, at least once a day, and always at night once everyone else has fallen asleep.

It’s not because of anything weird. It’s because she’s the enemy. She’s the competition. Inuyasha must figure out a way to destroy her.

Later that night, when he goes back to re-watching an old YouTube video of hers – one Kagome had posted within the first month of her rise to so-called fame – that he sees it.

It.

The purple dinosaur.

Sitting propped up on some pillows, like a prized treasure.

“Motherfucker,” Inuyasha snaps. He doesn’t stop the video, though. There could be secrets. Weaknesses to exploit. Yadda yadda yadda, he’s not in denial, this is only his third time watching it, blah blah—

Kagome smiles in the video and his chest does the thing.

Inuyasha sighs. Miroku can never, ever see his browsing history.

X+X

Tagging: @ideasthatbuildcities​ @wolfcry77​ @alerialblu​ @misspepperpottss​ @sailorbabydoll92​ @willowandfog​ @amethystablaze​ @fawn-eyed-girl​ @noyourenotreal​ @hnn-wnchstr​ @liz8080​ @nsr0716​ @superpixie42​ @itzatakahashi​ @mandirox89​ @inussunflower​ @cstormsinukagblog​ @nartista​ @hopidoodle​ @princessinume​ @lavendertwilight89​ @anxietyaardvark​ @omgitscharlie​ @theinuyashareader​ @ruddcatha​ @umacaking​ @kagometaishostory​ @cammysansstuff​ @sacred-arrow-writes @sacred-arrow @gicu2 @neutronstarchild @kalcia

#WYSYLMT #witchy writes #witchy answers #inukag #inukag fanfiction #inukag fanart #inuyasha fanfiction

[honestlyandrogynousnightmare]

magic reveal

So ive been thinking about the magic reveal we did get and also the different magic reveals we COULD have gotten so i thought id project all my thoughts into another massive tumblr rant:

personally, i dont think the magic reveal was bad at all. yes, i wouldve done it slightly differently, i think it was done way too late in the show and left little time to explore how that reveal affected merlin and arthurs relationship, and obviously we never actually ended up seeing if magic was legalised and all. but i dont hate the magic reveal we got. the key part i really love is that it was done on Merlins own terms, he could have just lied, but instead he finally told Arthur the truth and i think that there were many reasons for that decision being made. 

firstly, Merlin definitely felt guilty and blamed himself for Arthur being stabbed, he must have at least partly blamed himself because everything he did directly led to Mordred turning into a little shit. Part of him might have just felt as if he owes Arthur that explanation yknow. secondly, i feel like by that point he was tired of lying in general, he needed to get that secret off his chest. those two things combined with the fact that Arthur was dying may have pushed him to telling the truth,  because deep down he did know that it was probably the last chance to tell Arthur the truth. 

i liked how they presented Arthurs reaction too, the clear message there was that Athur was angry at the lying, thats the part he saw as betrayal, not the magic itself. he didnt want to believe that Merlin was a liar, when he always saw him as the one person that was entirely honest with him. hell, he still trusted him enough to send him back to Camelot and Gwen so he knew Merlin wasnt evil. If the writers actually did a good job at developing Arthurs character, i feel like itd be more obvious that Arthurs stance on magic was different from his fathers, but yknow bbc and their shoddy writing. I love that moment of acceptance as well, when he tells Merlin that he doesnt want him to change. He doesnt even now about all the things Merlin sacrificed and lost in order to protect Arthur and Camelot but he still accepts him. I think that when he first fund out it was all like “holy crap i dont even know him” but after spending a few hours with Merlin he realises that its still the exact same person he knew the week before. 

anddddd as much as i like the way they did that magic reveal, the ending of the show left me with no closure and a lot of tears. my ideal magic reveal wouldve happened earlier, either at the start of season 5 or near the end of season 4. It would give us a chance to see them talk it out, and god we know that there would be arguing, and if arthur wasnt dying he would probbaly be shouting but the key part here is that arthur wouldnt hurt merlin. i think he culd consider sending him away if his father was still king just to protect him but we all know merlin would reply with “no <3″. but since i cant see the reveal happening when uther is king, i will be ignoring that scenario. and again, theres many ways this could play out.

the one way that ive always found interesting was arthur figuring it out on his own, because he may be an idiot, but hes not stupid. *if you like this sort of thing read “so close and im halfway to it  on ao3, its a merthur fic and the magic reveal in that one makes me cry so much and the fic is so well written* I feel like at one point, he would just put the pieces together, and it would all make so much sense to him? Merlins random disappearances and scars would make sense, the luck he had when it came to fights, Merlins weird reactions when someone mentioned magic, how on earth merlin of all people managed to survive every battle and fight arthur was in when some of his best knights didnt. 

then theres the very cliche “merlin using magic mid battle to save everyone” reveal. because its mid battle, i really cant picture them talking it out there lol,  i picture a lot of ignoring but also if other people saw him using magic, we all know the first thing arthur would do is give the knights a good old “if you kill him i will kill you and then myself”, it wouldnt be until later that they would actually talk. 

and then like the canon magic reveal, theres Merlin doing it on his own terms. i personally really like thhis one because it gives him so much more control over the situation and over his words. *another fic rec here if you like this sorta thing, its called “to the world that let you by” and its really beautiful and made me cry at 1am so there you go, and as you guessed it, its another merthur*. i love this reveal because it gives merlin a chance to explain, and arthur a chance to listen and try to understand. 

now there are loads of different sub categories that could go into those, like Arthur finding merlin creating butterflies out of thin air lol, but i wont go into those. whatever reveal would happen, i feel like “the talk” after would usually end up in a similar way. Arthurs reaction would be similar to what we got in the canon reveal, because the actual magic isnt what would hurt most.  it would be the lies. Arthur has been lied to and betrayed by so many people you cant really expect him not to react badly to being lied to. the magic sure would confuse him and put him in a difficult position, because you have to keep in mind that his entire life he has been told that magic is pure evil, and to him, merlin is the polar opposite of that. i think it would just make him question everything, like does he even know this man? has he won any of his battles or has it always been merlin? why is he in camelot? why would a sorcerer be serving him? but he wouldnt hurt him. he wouldnt even consider that imo, sure, he will demand an explanation, but he wouldnt actually thin about hurting him. 

and merlin would understand why hes angry about the lying, that much is obvious. and he would be reluctant to tell arthur about the things that were happening behind his back all those years, but he would be honest. and go that conversation would be hard for both of them, i cant really imagine them having it without a lot of crying, shouting and even more wine tbh. arthur isnt good at listening which is why this would be so hard for him too, but merlin has to be honest, completely honest with arthur for the first time in his life and thatd be difficult. 

and i think merlin would handle arthurs reactions well, even if arthur decided to lose his temper lol. but i can still imagine him being a bit bitter if arthur judged his choices and stuff when it came to poisoning morgana and freeing the dragon, asking what on earth HE would do in that situation. where the only choices he sees are bad ones, and he has to pick the one thats least evil. 

arthur would probably be most pissed off at the thing about his mother tbh, because merlin outright lied there, usually its just deflecting but he made that deliberate choice to lie. but i really do think he would understand all of this, while not every choice merlin did was good, he did it with good intention. 

and then arthur would remove the ban on magic and they would kiss and get married amd live happily ever aft-

thanks bbc.

anyway if you want any more magic reveal fics (or links to the ones i mentioned, ao3 can be bloody annoying sometimes) feel free to comment or message me or anything, i have a couple more in my bookmarks. 

thanks for reading this rant, scuse the bad grammar, id love to hear your thoughts and opinions on this and magic reveals in general so feel free to comment! have a great day<3

#merlin #bbc merlin #merlin magic reveal #magic #magic reveal #arthur pendragon #emrys #once and future king #merthur #merlin x arthur #arthur x merlin #rant #bbc arthur #bbc shows #lancelot #bbc lancelot #gwaine #sir gwaine #bbc gwaine #im tired #gwen #bbc gwen #morgana #morgana deserved better #merlin deserved better #mordred #knights of the round table #sir leon #bradley james #colin morgan

[we-are-inevitable]

HmmmmmmMMMMMMM *grabby hands* GIMME THAT JATHERINE (platonic or romantic idk I’m just content starved) FOR ‘why don’t you care?’ Please ily!

it takes a village // jatherine

A/N: GOD I LOVED WRITING THIS SO MUCH

Read On AO3!

***

"So, Jack, I have… There's something we should talk about," Katherine says softly one night.

They're at the dinner table- a shoddy little thing on its last legs, but Jack finally has some time to fix it up later on this week. Replace a few boards and whatnot, just so they won't have to be as careful anymore; truth be told, the both of them have been expecting the damn table to collapse for weeks, but it's holding out.

But Jack can't focus on a shitty old table now. Not when his wife is staring at him from across it, looking gorgeous as ever but more nervous than he’s seen her in ages.

Jack nods as he takes a drink of water from his glass. He's noticed that Katherine has been a little on edge lately- walking on eggshells, feeling anxious, having strange bouts of sickness during the day- and Jack has been worried about her. He's told her such, too, but Katherine is nothing if not stubborn, and she's insisted that she's been fine.

Something tells him that's not the case anymore.

"Is everything alright?" He asks softly, frowning as he reaches across the table. Within one moment and the next, she has her hand in his own; she's not angry, not upset- thank God- but she still looks apprehensive. Nervous is not a look she wears well. It just- It doesn't fit the rest of her. She's always been incredibly confident and proud, so seeing her so shaken the last week and a half has been... unnerving.

Katherine nods, after a moment. "Of course, dear. Everything is- it's all good, okay? I just…" She takes in a deep breath, and smiles nervously at Jack. "I've been trying to find the right way to tell you, but everything I've seen on Pinterest has been ugly or gimmicky or painfully heterosexual, so I- I'm just gonna come right out and say it."

"Uh-huh."

"I'm… I'm not gonna do anything, so I'm sorry it isn't a grand gesture. I'm sure it'll be underwhelming."

"Mhm."

"Just know that I really was planning something, something sweet and funny and, like, something you'd like, and it involved this little canvas and a paint-by-numbers thingy and--"

"Kat," Jack says with an amused grin, cutting through the endless whirlwind of her thoughts. He squeezes her hand sympathetically. "Baby, what's got you all twisted up?"

Katherine pauses, rubbing her thumb against the back of Jack's hand, and says while shrugging, "I'm pregnant."

Just like that.

With two simple words, Jack feels his blood run cold.

His eyes widen, and he feels his face fall. Jack must be silent for a few moments too long, because Katherine's smile fades out, and she quickly looks down at her lap, gulping hard. "I- Listen, babe, I know we're- we're young, and we weren't really planning on having a kid so early, but--"

"How did…" Jack trails off, his throat painfully dry. "You… Your birth control…?"

Katherine shakes her head. "I've been taking it correctly, but I… I looked it up, and there's a small percentage that it might be faulty, a-and I guess it was... faulty, I don’t- I don't know," She murmurs, frowning. "Are… Jack, are you--"

"I- I'm so sorry, this is just--" Jack pulls his hand away from Katherine's and runs both of them through his hair. He feels like he can’t breathe; each breath comes in faster and faster until he feels like he's on the verge of a panic attack, and with that, he stands and walks to the kitchen, rubbing his jaw with his right hand.

"Jack?" Katherine asks, standing as well. He looks over at her, watches her hurry around the dinner table between them, and gulps when she walks up toward where he's resting against the kitchen counter. "Listen, I get it, it's stressful, but- but I need you to not look pissed off, okay?" She pleads, desperate. "It's not like I was expecting this!"

Jack shakes his head, eyes wide. "No, baby, I'm- I'm not pissed off, I just--"

"Why don't you care?" Katherine asks, staring up at Jack with tears just barely beginning to well in her eyes. His heart breaks at that; Katherine isn’t supposed to cry. She rarely ever does, and the fact that she’s tearing up over him… It shatters him. "I thought- I thought you'd be happy, b-but I guess I was--"

"Katie, hey, listen to me," Jack reaches for her hands, holding them in a tight grip. He looks into her eyes, sees all of the fear and the uncertainty there, and he quickly surges forward, pulling her into a tight hug. Katherine melts into his embrace, gripping the back of his shirt. “I love you, okay? More than anything. This is just…” He trails off, and Katherine nods against his chest.

For a moment, they stand there in heavy silence, until Katherine whispers, "If you… If you don't want a kid yet, we have- we have options…"

Jack gulps hard and pulls back, looking down at her. "You're… you're sure you're pregnant? It ain’t a- a false positive?"

"I took four tests, Jack," She says with a sad little smile, sniffling. "Four different brands. They- they're all positive."

"Holy shit," Jack whispers, and takes a deep breath. "O-Okay. I… Okay."

"...You don’t seem very stoked," Katherine whispers, bringing a hand up to cup his cheek. "What’s wrong?"

Jack pauses, and glances over to the table, to their empty dishes. He gulps hard, and squeezes her waist. "Let's clean up, and… and then talk, okay? I'm sorry, I just--"

Katherine shakes her head. "No, don't apologize, it's… it's a lot to process, I know. It's alright."

Jack presses a long, gentle kiss to the crown of her head, then walks to the table. The two of them work in tandem to clean the kitchen; Katherine puts up the food and brings Jack the dishes, which he washes in silence, his mind swimming.

Katherine is… pregnant. She's pregnant. With a baby.

Their baby.

And as much as Jack wants to be excited…

"Jack, dear, you're shaking," Katherine whispers from behind him, which startles him hard enough that he drops the skillet he's washing. The metal clang against the sink makes him cringe, and he rubs his face with damp hands, letting out a deep breath.

"I'm sorry," He whispers, turning around to face Katherine. She doesn't look angry, but then again, she's never been angry. She understands that he… He gets like this sometimes. He's gotten like this plenty of times within their three years of dating, and their additional year of marriage- it's not a common occurrence, but it happens, and she's always been there to support him. Help him get his head screwed on, help him get his thoughts collected before he says something stupid. Katherine's taken it on without him even asking; she's always been so patient, so kind… She's incredible.

She's incredible, and Jack isn't even giving her what she needs right now.

Jack takes a step forward and presses their foreheads together for a moment, before pulling back and looking into her eyes. "Bedroom?"

"Wanting to try out pregnancy sex already, huh?" Katherine says softly, in a teasing tone, and Jack lets out a soft, barely there chuckle. He's always admired her way of cutting the tension; she's brash and vulgar when she wants to be, and it's one of Jack’s favorite things about her. Her ability to joke around rivals his own, and after a few moments, Jack simply rolls his eyes and picks her up bridal style.

"As much as I'd like that, we need to talk first," He murmurs against her temple, walking to the bedroom. Jack closes the door once they're inside; there's no one else in the apartment, but having the shut door just… provides another sense of security.

Jack carefully sets Katherine down on the bed, then walks around to his side and sits down, letting out a deep sigh. Katherine moves closer, leaning into Jack's side and resting her hand on his chest. He brings his hand up to intertwine their fingers as she says, "Tell me what's going through your head, Kells."

"...I just- I wasn't expecting…" Jack starts, trailing off for a few moments. He closes his eyes and gulps, squeezing Katherine's hand. "I'm happy, I really am, I'm just… I'm scared, Kat."

"I am, too," Katherine whispers, and Jack feels her shift. A moment later, her free hand is carding through his curls. "Why are you scared?"

Jack takes a deep breath, and whispers, “What if I’m not a good dad?”

There's a long stretch of silence, but Katherine's hand doesn't stop running through his hair. He feels her shift again, until she's sitting sideways on his lap. "Jackie, look at me."

Jack slowly opens his eyes, and he sucks in a sharp breath when he sees the serious expression on her face. He offers up a sad smile, and she frowns. "Baby, you- you're going to be an amazing dad! Why do you think you wouldn’t be?"

Jack stares into her eyes, then glances away, swallowing around the lump in his throat. "I just--" He cuts himself off by rubbing his face, staring off to the side, right at the corner of his bedside table. "I don't… I don't know how to be a good dad," Jack says simply, gulping hard. He feels his heart rate spike. His hands feel clammy. This… He wants this so badly, but… "The only- the only example I've ever had is m-my dad, and I… I don’t wanna turn out like him. What if I- What if I turn out like him?"

"Oh, Jack ," Katherine whispers, cupping his cheeks with her hands. "Jack, listen to me. You will never be like him, okay? You'll know what--"

"But what if I don’t? I don’t know how to take care of a kid, and--"

"Jack," Katherine stops him, furrowing her brows. "Jack, I don’t… Do you realize how much experience you actually have?” She asks, and Jack slowly shakes his head. “You took care of your foster siblings, you took care of your friends and their siblings-- Jackie, you know what you're doing! All of those skills are transferable, I promise. And, baby, your dad wasn't someone to look up to, but… But he showed you what not to do. And I know you  know you’ll never do that.”

Jack gulps. “But, what if--”

“You aren’t going to be perfect,” She cuts him off, patting his chest. “You’re going to mess up. You’re going to be kind of a dick sometimes, okay? But that’s normal. You… You’re not going to be as bad as him. Never in a million years. You’re not going to hurt anyone- not our kid, and not me. We’re both going to make mistakes, Jack, but trust me, you’re still going to be an amazing father. No matter what.”

Jack looks up at Katherine, cheeks aflame, and he stares into her eyes, searching for any uncertainty- but she looks serious. Serious, genuine, earnest. The look in her eyes is the same one she had when she suggested marriage, the same one she had when she actually proposed to him, the same one she had during their wedding ceremony last spring.

Katherine doesn't lie, and Katherine doesn't play games. 

"You really think so," Jack realizes softly, gulping hard. "You- you think I'll be a good dad?"

"I think you'll be the best dad," Katherine corrects with a smile, leaning in closer. "The absolute best. You already have the dad jokes, and the hawaiian shirts will just be, like, dad shirts instead of ‘hey, I’m bi!’ shirts, and--"

Jack cuts her off with a high laugh, and shakes his head. "Alright, fine, fine, but you're going to be the best mom. I just know it. You’re gonna knock it out of the park, mi cielita.”

"I'll be a hot mom," Katherine grins, winking at Jack. "Milf status! Finally!"

Jack throws his head back and laughs, a genuine, happy noise, one from deep within his chest. He wraps his arms around her waist and pulls her that much closer, one hand coming up to tangle in those gorgeous copper waves. Jack presses their lips together, which makes him feel butterflies like always- no matter what, kissing Katherine makes him feel like a teenager, even though they got together when they were twenty.

He places his hands on her waist, though one soon travels to rest against her stomach, and he pulls back to look down. It's not like he can feel anything- she isn't even showing yet, so she must be just a few weeks out, but it's still… surreal.

Slowly, Jack's smile broadens. "...We're gonna have a baby," He whispers, as if he's trying to believe it himself. "We… We're gonna have a baby, Kath…"

"I know," Katherine whispers back, giggling quietly. "It's crazy, right? We're gonna be parents, hun."

"This is gonna be one hell of a dysfunctional family."

"Oh, come on, Jack. We're both from wack family backgrounds; this'll be a piece of cake."

"We're gonna be so lost."

"We have your mom, at least."

"Oh, shit- we need to tell Mama," Jack says with a grin, tilting his head. "I can see if we can have dinner with her soon."

Katherine smiles back at him. "We need to tell the Jacobs' family, too. Sarah will kill me if I don't tell her."

"Dave'll probably hit me with his car if we don't tell 'im," Jack smiles. "Esther and Mayer are gonna be real excited. Les, too."

"We'll have to let the boys know all together, or else someone is gonna be pissed they weren’t told first. Probably Racer, or Charlie," Katherine giggles while she leans forward and presses a soft kiss to Jack's cheek. "We need to plan, like, a big group dinner-- Oh, my God, can you imagine them at the baby shower?"

Jack laughs softly, nodding his head. "This is… This is gonna be so fuckin' crazy. Our kid is gonna have, like, eighteen other parents."

"It's going to be great," Katherine whispers.

Jack nods in agreement, staring into her beautiful golden brown eyes, then gently cups her cheek. As he leans in to kiss her, he lets himself smile. It's going to be difficult, and it's going to be a huge change, but Jack thinks he's ready for it.

He's ready for this next step, all while Katherine is at his side.

#jack kelly #katherine pulitzer #katherine plumber #katherine plumber pulitzer #jatherine #jac writes #newsies fic #newsies #newsies musical #newsies broadway #newsies live #livesies #ask a jac ! #jorja tag

[silver-rings-and-rabbits]

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Landry should have been the one to join the diagnostics team

Long post incoming.

Remember when @playchoices made stories that actually told a story? When there was a slow build-up over the course of several chapters, drawing us in? Remember when everything happened for a reason? Remember when stories actually had a satisfying conclusion (because I don’t actually remember the last time Choices gave a book a satisfying conclusion)?

Landry joining the team would mean the drama would relate to MC and co, centring them to the story, possibly coming full circle to book 1. MC has spent this whole book like Jiminy Cricket: the conscience in someone else’s story.

Having just finished the penultimate chapter of what is likely to be the last book in the Open Heart series...all I feel is emptiness and I think it might be largely because I didn’t care about what was going on.

At the beginning of book 3 (I thought it was a strong opening chapter, but it was all downhill from there) there were a lot of points about things not being what they seem: Bloom’s unsettling attitude, all the shiny new upgrades, Binx, illusion cakes, cutting corners in research to get to the results quicker. I thought this could lead to something dramatic happening in the hospital: a collapse due to shoddy building work, or a fault in the electrics causing a fire (think the subway crash from book 1 chapter 14; dramatic but grounded). MC gets hurt and their LI goes crazy worrying about them and takes care of them for a couple of chapters (maybe the LI gets hurt as well, but I can’t stand the idea of Rafael going through the ringer for a third time) and then this leads to a court case against Bloom, he’s declared unsuitable to run a hospital or something and has to leave but court rules he has to keep funding Edenbrook or something, and then life can finally go on as normal.

Instead, we got a lot of plotlines that ended up dropping off to nothing, and a court case that appeared out of nowhere two chapters ago. Wow, PB, considering how much you’re worrying about funding, you’ve sure wasted a lot of filler on this book. You ruined Ethan for me as an LI by forcing him down my throat in book 2, and now you’ve ruined him as my MC’s mentor with book 3. And then I had to care about this court case that happened ten years prior to the start of the book? No! I still feel like I’m waiting for the main plot to get going and the book has reached it’s end! 

I don’t have high hopes for chapter 16. I don’t think I even have hopes.

Why were you so weird about locking down our LI, given that one of the MAJOR complaints throughout 2 and 3 has been the distribution of screen time? And even when we had the chance to spend time with our LI you glossed right over it: my MC and Raf were about to get it on at the end of the last chapter and they forgot about that in favour of researching Ethan’s case. Would it have killed you to put a scene in before that? Heck, you could have ended the scene with MC looking for comfort, cue a diamond scene with the LI OF OUR CHOICE.

Why did you gloss over Bryce and Jackie’s storylines? Bryce’s family could have been handled better in book 2, and book 3 we see Keiki and his mom for one chapter and Bryce is forced to forgive and that’s that. Alternatively he gets too cocky in surgery, makes a mistake, accepts the mistake and moves on. Jackie had moments in book 2 that make me think she has self-esteem issues: “Go easy on yourself, OK?” “I’ll try” and everything about her chapter 12 diamond scene, but they were never brought up. Book 3 has her thriving as chief resident but one chapter she’s ignoring Jade’s strengths and in the next she realises she’s wrong and that’s all wrapped up. Storylines are usually a little longer than two chapters.

I’d ask why you glossed over Rafael but I already know he was supposed to be dead and a lot of his scenes were just there to keep us from complaining again. I see you @playchoices

Why did you try and set up this jealousy/insecurity plot with Harper and Ethan when that was going to go nowhere except for villainising Harper?

Why was there no PTSD from last year?!?!?!

Speaking of last year, all that drama with Esme boiling down to a scene where she either says hi or gives you the cold shoulder. Somehow I knew that would happen. Her entire character deserved better.

Caroline? I feel like her illness might have been part of the rewrites resulting in a few hastily added lines to remind us that she’s allergic to Bloom.

And the book 1 hearing didn’t have an effect on anything, not even someone being slightly suspicious of MC, and as far as we know Landry got away with all the shit he did. In hindsight, I shouldn’t be surprised that nothing else had consequences.

On the lighter side, the best parts of chapter 15 were Rafael reminding MC of how much he cares, and the chinchilla sensing when MC was upset and nuzzling their cheek. I would die for Spooky.

But I’m tired. I’m so very tired. I can’t even gather up enthusiasm for LoA or AVSP. I don’t want to spend diamonds on them, because LoA might not go anywhere, and AVSP is a one-shot. You have recently developed a pattern of badly-written, disappointing books, and now you’ve destroyed what could have been your crowning glory.

Damn, I thought I’d be angry writing this post but I don’t have the energy for that. Ah well, anything I forgot to say I can save for the finale I guess. In the meantime, I’m off to eat pizza, watch Friday Night Dinner, and write fanfiction to fill the gaping holes you have left in your story.

@playchoices I get that you can’t tell us everything. But you have GOT to do something soon or you will have no fan base left, and you’ll only have yourselves to blame.

#open heart #choices #pixelberry #rafael aveiro #jackie varma #bryce lahela #ethan ramsey #casey valentine #long post

[gayspock]

okay last tng thoughts before the final ep

- last time i did a proper dump i was abt to watch the pegasus and i literally dont remember wtf my thoughts on that were its just a big gaping hole help. all i remember was omg locke's actor locke from lost 😁hiya baldie. nowt else on the brain. i feel like i liked it though?? ehrm

-theres a few eps i jsut plain dont remember actually jesus christ. which is silly bc it was obly a few weeks ago like ew get it together bestie. i was actually shocked to realise tht ep was even in s7.... huh.

- i think ijust burnt out so badly in this season and the hit and miss episodes didnt help with the problem i already had with bingeing tng. its like- again, i can tell the show is at the end of its rope and i dont even mean tht in a bad way... i think it worked in its favour with some of the things it started trying to do in some eps (like Lower Decks, finally giving Crusher&Picard closure in Attached). but in a lot its like... kinda jsut stupid ideas (Genesis) or stuff that kinda could work out but they really fucked it (Eye of the Beholder - like that execution was sloppy babe).

- sub rosa is so much though i dont think i can elt it go i think helop im sSFV-F help tihelp jEUSS

- however Journey's End is the episode i have the most grief with for sure. now- i cant... rlly speak too much on the depictions here bc im very uninformed. what i will say is: it certainly felt hokey as hell with some of the portrayals and the resolution to the conflict was jsut... like sorry but what did picard do, exactly? and now that... absolves- okay uh... its literally- its literally just such a weird fucking set up with that whole thing.

- but also wesley. ggggfuckg. FUCKS sake. okay heres my thing! i have complex feelings with wes<3 i think ppl who loathe him are fucking weirdos with it like MOST of the time but i dont rlly like a lot of his earlier depictions, but that was in part due to the shoddy writing of s1&s2 of tng so i'm LENIENT and i actually really liked wes in his later reappearances as his character became more grounded. when he was actually facing consequences for sth at the academy? YEAH, i dug that! and i sjtu

- they were heading in a better direction. or at least one i wanted and preferred and i just hated the way they ended it with him insisting he was special and fated. it didnt help that the episode kinda elluded to his place on that planet being his destiny- i got very scared we were about to get into some messy white savior mess which woulsd make me throwup and gag so bad. lllike pwease dont pwease donnnttt. in the end thwey just let it be i guess but still like.

- the thing is i dont hate him going with the traveller and i really like the idea of him leaving starfleet and deciding to do that. thats honestly what i want! but i just- again this weird insistence that hes special and different form everyone else- it jsut... it doesnt fit right with me at all and its exacerbated by all the problems with his earlier characterisation and im like :( bc AGAIN i like wes after the rough start so its just kinda sad for this to be his send off . feels like it unravels a lot of nuance and just makes it. irritating again but im not going to unpack . all my wesley feelings bc i think it would be #controversial and i dont have the energy to deal with it im just gonna live in a world where the little guy got sth i wanted for him

- OH. and i was so so so happy to see ro lahren back and im happy she fucking went off at the end. literally so so so fucking good for her. fuck starfleet.

- im glad they are actually are easing us more into the problems with starfleet even if tng isnt strictly about that. again more of wht i like with how theyre being pulled in different directions more in s7.

- i dontthink i have much else to say rn before the finally. i did watch the cold open though and i must say. worf and deanna still fucking baffle me to no end. every time they did anything together i jsut thought i was in a fever dream bc it made no god damn sense. im sssorry. but they dont rlly have chemistry whatsoever and im not trying to be mean but its just the case. love and kisses.

- oh and im gonna miss tng all said and done. idk how soon i'll be rewatching it since i am going to go onto ds9 p quickly but yeah. i still deffo prefer tos- sorry. its just more to my tastes.

#egg.txt #star trek liveblog

[heartachebf]

Creek

send me ships!! u didnt specify which heart u wanted + i probs wouldve thought about all of them anyways so ill just do all of them ^_^ (under the cut bc its a little long)

❤: who is more affectionate in public? in private? its hard to say tbh! i think they both try not to be overly affectionate in public beyond hand holding and wrapping their arms around each other when theyre sitting next to each other! but when theyre in private, craigs deffo more affectionate <3 he'd deny it to hell and back but hes a big fan of cuddling and being all sweet on tweek when theyre alone

♡: who is the bigger romantic openly? secretly? i think tweek usually Seems like hes the bigger romantic, both openly And secretly, just bc craigs more reserved, but i think craigs super romantic in his own silly little way that other people dont really pick up on

❥: who is more likely to plan something big for valentine’s day? 100% craig. tweek deffo Tries to do big plans for valentines day occasionally, but it very quickly becomes too much pressure to plan some huge suprise!! tho i think craig only ever does big valentines day plans every once in a while - he'd much rather just exchange nice little gifts and spend the day alone with tweek!

ღ: who is more likely to initiate hand-holding in public? i think it tends to be pretty equal! sometimes craig reaches first, sometimes tweek reaches first, and other times, theyll both reach at the same time n surprise each other !!

💕: who is more likely to make huge declarations of love in front of other people? craig, he 100% gets up on a table and announces to the room how much he loves tweek but Only when tweeks insecurities are getting the better of him. otherwise, he doesnt see the point in announcing an obvious fact to everyone

💘: who developed a crush on the other first? oh god this is a toughie... part of me thinks craig, bc i read this really sweet fic a while ago where craig admitted that he developed a crush on tweek back when they got into that fight in tweek vs craig... but the other part of me thinks tweek based off how badly he wanted to get back together in tweek x craig.... i think it could go either way, tbh!!

💝: who spends more time (possibly overthinking) what presents to get the other? deffo tweek! i think craig is just a really excellent gift giver when it comes to tweek, so he never really Has to think much about it. meanwhile, tweek always gets super stressed out about if what he bought craig is Actually something he'll like or not, and then he wonders if he should Make something for craig instead of buying him something, and then he wonders if the wrapping paper he picked was the wrong choice or maybe he did a shoddy job at wrapping it, but then craig opens whatever gift it is and his whole face lightens up n tweeks like "oh thank god"

💓: who initiates most physical contact? it depends on the situation tbh! i think tweek typically does bc he tends to try and seek out that small level of comfort that comes from having physical contact with craig. but whenever tweeks freaking out over [insert Anything here], craig will initiate bc he Knows that contact calms tweek down a lot

💌: who is more likely to send cutesy texts to the other? deffo tweek! he loves spamming different heart emojis and sending cute little memes bc he knows they make craig smile :) i think craig tries to Match his levels of cutesy-ness sometimes but he gets in his head about it a lot so he only manages to send a couple of hearts sometimes and the occasional sweet little meme (tho he Is the king of sending good morning and goodnight messages that always make tweek smile super hard)

💟: who spends time reading their zodiac compatibilities? i think tweek Started doing it bc he got panicked over the concept of them potentially being incompatible, but then craig was like "babe. our birthdays dont have anything else to do with how much we love each other" n so they just started reading them Together to laugh about all the things that all those websites say about their zodiacs

💙: who is more protective? i think craig tends to Seem more protective bc he can be so imposing, but theyre both Equally protective over each other

💚: who tends to get sick more often? who is better at taking care of the other? i think tweek tends to get sick More, but i think craig gets sick Worse and for Longer periods of time. n i think they both are really good at taking care of each other! tweeks really good with things like making craig soup and consistently checking his temperature, meanwhile craigs really good with things like making sure tweek is comfortable and getting him medicine

💜: who said “i love you” first? or, if neither has said it yet, who is more likely to say it first? i think tweek would say it first, but Completely on accident. i picture tweek forgetting something at craigs house one day n panicking about it, and when craig comes over to bring back whatever it was, tweeks all mindlessly tells him that he loves him for it, n then he panics and slams the door shut in craigs face and goes n hides in his room (<- i gotta write a fic around that tbh)

💛: who believes in soulmates? tweek deffo believes in them!! craig is unsure about the whole concept, but whenever tweek talks about them being soulmates, craig tells him he agrees because, well, if Tweek thinks theyre soulmates, then maybe theres something to the whole idea!

#they rly just loooove being on my brain all the time #creek #sp creek #south park #otp: love doesn't follow a plan #craig.txt #asks #not-siri #tubs dont look

[joshua-flipping-washington]

EllieDina week: Day 1- Ache.

《 Okay! I decided very late to join in on the EllieDina week fun! I wanted so badly to write something for today's theme, because I had an idea I really wanted to use to go along with this edit.

I might still end up writing it later, and adding it to this post. But for now- Here's my post for the first day! It's totally terrible, hopefully the writing I add later will make up for it. 》

Ellie sat defeated in the water, crimson blood from her injuries surrounded her and clouded the waters surface. Her pulse roared and she could her the sound screaming in her ears, as she held her injured hand close.

She had let Abby and the boy go, maybe they would at least have some chance of surviving. It's what Joel would have wanted, right? For her to stop fighting so hard, blinded by revenge and seeing nothing but red.

She got up slowly, hissing in pain as her injuries disapproved of the jostling and twisting. " Fuck… " She muttered as she slowly made her way over to the other boat. Ellie attempted to climb in, but more so she just tumbled in.

She grabbed her backpack and started to mend what wounds that she could, her mind flashing back to the night she'd left the farm house. The night that she had left home, had left her family behind- All in the name of revenge, of not being able to let go.

< >

Ellie was crouched down in their small kitchen, shoving the last bit of supplies she'd need for her journey in her backpack. She closed her eyes slowly as she heard Dina come down the stairs, stopping at the threshold of the kitchen, staring right at her.

She speaks up slowly, her eyes lingering on the pack at Ellie's feet for a moment. Watching as Ellie slowly stands and turns towards her. " Hey. " Ellie answers her back in a tired, apprehensive tone. " Hey. "

Dina glances from Ellie, up towards the stairs and then back once more. " Man, it's been awhile since he's slept this long, huh? " She said, her mind pleading with her to do anything she can to get Ellie to come back upstairs with her.

Ellie gave a slow nod of her head as she answered. " He's had a day. " Dina could tell the gears were just churning in Ellie's head as she looked at her. " Yeah. He's fine. " She turned and gestured towards the stairs. " Come back to bed. " Dina said as she turned and started to move towards the stairs. " We can talk about it in the morning, okay? "

" I have to finish it. " Ellie spoke up and Dina froze for a moment,her heart dropping in her chest. She slowly turned around with an exhausted sigh, moving her hands to rest them on her hips. " You don't owe Tommy anything. "

Ellie let out a sigh of her own,she needed to finish this. " I don't sleep. I don't eat. I'm...I'm not like you, Dina. " She shook her head slowly, watching Dina.

Dina let her hands fall from her hips with an exasperated and shocked. " What? " Falling from her mouth before she continued to speak. " You think this is easy? " Dina slowly steps towards Ellie. " For you and for him, I deal with it. "

Ellie opened her mouth and began to speak, her gaze set on the ground. " I love you- " But is immediately cut off by Dina. Her voice is already thick with emotion. " Prove it. Stay. "

" I can't. " Ellie says as she raises her head, green eyes devoid of all the emotions she should have been feeling.

Dina throws her hands up in frustration, shaking her head slowly as she blinks. " So, what- I'm just supposed to sit here and wait for you. " She tosses her arms out to the side. " For God knows how long, just thinking your fucking dead the entire time? "

" I don't plan on dying. " Ellie sounded so sure of herself, so matter of fact. As if she was invincible. " Yeah, well neither did Jesse. Or Joel. " Dina said as the tears threatened to rise.

Ellie is silent for a moment, then she leans down and reaches for her pack. Dina rushes forward and places her hands on either side of Ellie's face. " Hey, stop- Hey. Come on. " She gently brushes her thumb over Ellie's cheek, her heart is hammering like mad in her chest. " We've got a family. She doesn't get to be more important than that."

As Dina stared at Ellie, looking at her face and into her eyes, she could tell as soon as she dropped her gaze that she wasn't getting through to her. " No… " She slowly lowered her hands and pulled away, a sob rising up from her chest as she turned away, tears streaming steadily down her face. " I'm not going to do this again. "

Ellie stood behind her in silence, knowing she should be fighting to stay. But she needed to end it, so she could eat and sleep again, so she could have a semi-normal life. " That's up to you. " She says before turning her back to Dina and walking out the door. The sound of her sobs the last thing she hears as she walks away.

< >

Ellie had finished fixing up what little she could of her wounds, sighing heavily. Her heart aching at the memory of the night she'd left Dina and JJ. " I should have fucking stayed… Dina, JJ- I'm so sorry. " She sniffed, cradling her shoddy patched up hand. She knew that she needed to head back home, there was nothing left for her here.

She made the long and exhausting trip back to Wyoming, only stopping when she needed to. Hoping that Dina would give her a second chance, would allow her to show that she did care.

It took several weeks, 330 hours of traveling to reach the small fenced in farm house. Ellie stood at the gate, pulling her backpack tighter on her shoulders. She opened the latch and stepped inside, slowly walking up to the house through the tall grass.

As she stared at it, the house no longer looked open and inviting. It looked empty and cold, there didn't seem to be any signs of life at all. Ellie sighed heavily and walked up to the tree where she'd carved all of their names, smiling fondly as she rubbed her finger over the rough carvings. Her heart ached as she thought about her family, but she knew she had to get them back. She didn't come all this way for nothing.

#The Last of Us Part II #elliedina week #Ellie Williams #Dina TLOU2 #video game photography #Naughty Dog #Sony Interactive Entertainment #ellie x dina #rich the idiot writes

[alottanothing]

Left to Ruin: Chapter Sixteen

Summary: The pharaoh Ahkmenrah takes his new queen with ample celebration. Nouke learns of the struggles laid out in her new path.  

Previous Chapters

Word Count: 9684

Warnings: 5K PLUS WORDS OF WEDDING NIGHT SMUT. You younglings stay away, (18+ only)!! Why am I so thirsty? Seriously this chapter is the longest one in the whole story because I’m a thirsty hoe.

Tag List:  @xmxisxforxmaybe​, @r-ahh-mi​, @theultraviolencefan​, @hah0106​, @rami-malek-trash​, @diasimar​, @sherlollydramoine​, @flipper-kisses​, @ivy-miranda-2390​, @txmel​, @sunkissedmikky​, @concentratedsassandcandy​, @babyalienfairy​, @edteche2​ (Let me know if I missed you, or if you would like to be added to the tag list)

A/N:  I-uh-sorta went feral with this one. I got my feet wet writing smut a few chapters ago and with this one I straight up jumped into the deep end. Hopefully you all enjoy this as much as I enjoyed writing it. As always, thank you so much for your comments and reactions! I adore you all! Once again as a disclaimer, I am not an ancient Egyptian expert and google only knows so much. So yeah, I took so historical liberties while writing this to make my life easier, but tried to keep it as “authentic” as possible

When Nouke stepped out into the hall with Setshepsut at her side, dripping from head to toe in finery, she did so with a new wave of confidence, using every perfect step as a moment to reflect. Her childhood was spent roaming the very halls in which she strode, wearing shoddy garb, ignored, and expected to serve men and women greater than herself. She’d come so far from the life of servitude she was born into. Now, Nouke walked freely, poised on a higher tier than a princess. Her rags were replaced with riches: adorned in fine linen and gold—she was someone no one could ignore.

Servants and nobles alike bowed to her as they passed, the crown on her head a sign of the status she would soon carry—its weight a reminder as well. Every piece of her history and the shimmering future laid before her was difficult to wrap her head around, but it thrilled her nonetheless.

Before another surge of hesitance could claw into the pit of her stomach, Nouke cast a studying glance to Setshepsut, watching the elegant way she carried herself. Her inherent grace was much like her brothers, especially when he turned on his pharaoh act. Every line in her body was straight but not rigid. Her posture was precise but comfortable; with her shoulders squared and her chin held just high enough to resonate a calm authority, she was regal without seeming arrogant.

Every step was weightless and fluid like a leaf on a breeze; Nouke walked as though she had rocks tethered to her feet. It took effort to stifle her frown, suddenly overcome with the desire to replicate the casual sophistication.

The chance she could master a paralleled radiance before they reached the council chamber was nil. Too straight of a posture would come across as stringent, and if she angled her chin even a fraction too high, she would surely come off as snobbish: two factors Nouke was keen to avoid.

With some luck and a large amount of diligence, Nouke knew she would be able to find that middle ground on par with the likes of Setshepsut and the rest of her family. Until then, Nouke made a vow to herself to stay calm and mimic Set’s gentle smile, hoping she did not look as foolish as she felt. 

When they reached the set of double doors, Setshepsut took the liberty of opening them herself. The council room was longer than it was wide and decorated with statues of the most important gods. Shelving ran along the wall to her right, housing scrolls of papyrus and other idols. At the rooms center was a long wooden table, which was already filled with a sea of unfamiliar faces.

A sense of panic consumed Nouke when each of the foreign faces turned to appraise her with varying expressions she had trouble reading. To a degree, she expected to be met with a cold welcome. To them, she was a filthy servant—a witch—who seduced their noble pharaoh into giving her a seat in the monarchy. Most of them probably wouldn’t believe her if she confessed to not wanting the crown; she just wanted Ahk.

In spite of the scrutiny, Nouke held her resolve, unwilling to let them upset her. Ahkmenrah chose her to be his queen. She had nothing to prove to them except, possibly, how much love she possessed for the pharaoh: that she would most willingly prove for the rest of her life.

Uninterested in catering to so many probing expressions, Nouke scanned the faces until she found Shepseheret at the furthest end, happily seated next to Maketaten. A grin broke through her protective mask of indifference as she found her mother dressed in finery befitting a noble. She looked so young and healthy the vision was almost enough to fill Nouke’s eyes with joyous tears, but she fought them, not wanting to ruin her makeup.

Beyond them, Merenkahre stood looking calm and pensive, harboring the same confident air Nouke needed to master.

Without a word, Setshepsut ambled prettily around the table to take the empty seat next to a handsome young soldier, leaving Nouke alone in the open space between the head of the table and the wall of shelves. The loss of her closeness triggered more panic to manifest, causing the rhythm of her heart to increase and a lump to build in her throat.

Instantly her mind and her eyes searched the room for a way to remedy the sudden wave of anxiety, wondering if she should join them at the table or wait for instruction. 

Just as she was starting to feel faint from holding her breath, everyone who was seated stood.

The abruptness startled Nouke with a gasp, and before she could follow their gaze to find an answer, Ahkmenrah twined his fingers with hers, throwing her a blinding, toothy smile. 

“Hello, my love,” he said proudly.

His presence easily allayed her unease and suddenly, Nouke felt weightless.

“Hi,” she replied with a dreamy exhale, her awe prompting his lips to curl into a grin until laughter lines crinkled at the corners of his eyes.

“If we now may proceed, my king?” Merenkahre cleared his throat to gain their attention.

There was the slightest hint of an adoring smile playing on the former pharaoh’s lips. No more was his face a mask of dutiful indifference; there was sincerity in his tone and eyes that was a welcomed sight. Perhaps she wouldn’t have to win his approval after all.

“Yes, father,” Ahkmenrah said with a respectful nod.

Merenkahre returned the gesture and took a single step to place himself between his wife and Maketaten.

“In following tradition, marriage contracts are usually written by the fathers of the young man and young woman. However, we must offer our condolences to our soon to be queen and her mother. Ramentukah was a loyal soldier under my reign and a good man.”

The room collectively bowed their heads in a show of respect—a moment of silence that was bittersweet.

“Thusly,” Meren began again. “I thought it more appropriate, that in this circumstance, the mothers scribe this agreement.”

Merenkahre stepped back into his previous place as Shepseheret and Maketaten stood, both smiling.

“Ahkmenrah. Anuksamun. I speak for both of us when I say it warms my heart to see the both of you reunited,” Shep began.

Maketaten brandished a roll of papyrus and laid it on the table as Ahk’s mother continued, “The terms of this marriage are simple. It states that in the unlikely want of a break to this union, any children of royal blood will remain heirs to the throne of Egypt. The homestead of Maketaten, Ramentuka, and Anuksamun will remain their property. Until such a time, the farm's upkeep will be the responsibility of the crown to ensure its longevity.”

“Are these terms agreeable to you both?” Maketaten added.

It was absurd to even speak about the notion of their union breaking; Nouke would never surrender Ahkmenrah, and she knew beyond a doubt he would never surrender her.

“Yes,” they said in unison, causing them both to crack a smile.

A pridefully pleased grin spread over Shepseheret's face as she gathered the marriage document and brought it to their end of the table.

“Then, if you please. Make your marks, your majesties."

Nouke’s heart was hammering as she watched Ahkmenrah scribe his name; the rush of excitement made her feel faint again, and she gripped Ahk’s hand a little tighter to keep from falling. He passed her the quill with another blinding smile, and her hand was shaking so badly it took all of her focus to will it steady as she wrote her name next to her husband's.

And then, it was done. He was hers, and she was his—forever.

Merenkahre spoke then, his smile wide and sparkling, a hint of his son’s expression peeking through.

“Our honored guests, and respected councilmen. It is my pleasure to present to you the pharaoh Ahkmenrah and his Queen, Anuksamun!” 

***

While Nouke found the ceremony to officially mark her union to the pharaoh to be—in a word—underwhelming, the celebration that followed made up for the boring political fuss of signing a document in the confines of the council chamber. The moment she stepped into the great halls of the palace with her husband, the commotion of the festivities echoed through the stone walls in such a way it was difficult to pinpoint their true origin.

Sounds almost alien, bounced around in a muffled and obscured clamor that instilled Nouke with curiosity. The corridors were nearly vacant as they strode; everyone, it seemed, having been coaxed with intrigue to the cause of the sounds pulsing through the palace.

Step after fluid step, the din of celebratory excitement grew louder until the halls of the palace gave way to a large courtyard oasis. Nouke’s breath caught with thrill as she took in the unbelievable sight, the crowd gathered below the stairs she and Ahk stood atop.

Shouts of praise for their king and queen burst from the guests below, in a thunderous roar that triggered a wave of shock to freeze Nouke's movements. Were it not for the proud smile on Ahkmenrah’s lips, the number of eyes suddenly cast upon her would have been even more staggering. His heartened expression was enough to combat the fluttering of butterflies in her belly, and she smiled too.

His sparkling eyes met her with a silent question—to ask if she was ready to keep going—and she nodded. Confidence thrummed from him and into her where their hands were joined, lending her the posture she thought she would need to work at to master. With Ahk at her side, the air of casual dignity came to her with ease.

She felt a true queen at that moment as a hush fell over the crowd when they began descending the stairs. Every person fell in a wave to their knees, parting like a river through sand for them as they slowly tread past.

Ahkmenrah was the paragon of regal as he moved throughout the crowd, his crown gleaming in the burning of torchlight, his golden robes catching the breeze, and sweeping elegantly behind him. Like all those before her, Nouke too was in awe of his presence: so calm and utterly beautiful. And all hers.

When they reached their destination at the center of the grand courtyard—a raised platform of identical twin thrones—Nouke was unsure if her heart was pounding from the thrill, the nerves or simply by the way Ahkmenrah glowed at her side.

There was so much to focus on from their stage and Nouke’s eyes scanned over it all feeling breathless. It wasn’t until Ahk stole a quick kiss that her nerves settled. He proudly drew her into the warmth of his orbit, and out from the tepid eyes surrounding them. The glean in his eyes moved through her entire body, snaking and rooting into her core.

Ahk’s puckish grin spread wider, recognizing her look of want all too easily, and gave her one last peck before turning to address his still kneeling guests. 

“Rise, my loyal, most cherished friends.” Ahkmenrah’s voice bellowed with a robust, prideful vigor that immediately settled between Nouke’s thighs despite the mundane nature of his words.

With a small bereft sigh, Nouke bit her lip and steered her focus to the crowd hoping to allay the heat Ahk’s deep bravado stirred.

“Tonight, I am the happiest man in all Egypt. Fore on this night, I have the supreme honor to introduce to you, my wife.” Ahkmenrah’s glittering eyes turned to drink in her sight, holding her gaze as he spoke again, “Whose beauty could have only come from the gods themselves. She is my greatest love, and your new queen…”

He sounded breathless, completely in awe, and almost in tears when he continued, “I present, Anuksamun!”

Instantaneously a chorus resonated throughout the air, “My Queen!”

Everyone bowed before her, even Ahkmenrah bowed, murmuring a gentle, “My queen,” that curled tendrils of warmth through her body.

Nouke’s mouth hung agape as her eyes flitted over each bowed head, her heart bursting and pounding all at once, overcome with a hundred different emotions, but mostly she stood with disbelief and profound gratefulness.

With a deep breath, Nouke poised herself with all the grace and confidence she could derive from those turbulent feelings inside and prayed her voice would not crack under the onslaught of pressure.

“My lords, my ladies, my new friends. I am humbled by your praise. It is my honor to share this night with each of you.” She paused to take in another slow breath, letting her sight catch Ahkmenrah to gauge how her first official address was faring.

His eyes were wide with admiration; his lips parted and quirked into a three-point smile. The look of reverence instilled a fresh wave of courage, and Nouke continued.

“Thank you all for making the journey to celebrate with us—”

“Let the festivities commence!” Ahkmenrah declared, ceremoniously flailing his arms to the heavens with a toothy smile that put the moons silvery light to shame.

All at once, the large garden erupted with life as every manner of entertainment broke out. Music and laughter sprung up on every side, filling the air with an ample joy that mirrored the sensation buzzing in Nouke’s chest.

With the spotlight no longer on her, a grin unfurled on her face, both proud and glad their guests were suddenly too caught up in the merrymaking to pay her and the pharaoh much attention.

“That was terrifying,” she half-joked with a shaky giggle.

In a fluid movement, Ahk’s arms were around her waist, guiding her against him until nothing remained to part them.

“You, my love, are a natural,” he purred with a smirk before claiming her mouth with his.

The delicate sweep of his tongue over her lip, begging for entrance, cajoled a pleased hum from Nouke’s throat. She was only too willing to open for him--starving for his intimacy after days without it.

His kiss was all greedy tongue and skillful lips, dancing desperately against one another, tasting and worshiping, until it stole the air from their lungs, leaving them panting with desire. Warmth coiled for each of them, low in their abdomen, spurring more quiet and indecent laments to pass—muffled—between them.

It took all of Nouke’s diminishing will power not to ravish her pharaoh then and there for everyone to see. His lips curled into a devious smirk, and his eyes trailed down the deep V of her neckline with a hunger no feast could fill, gnawing his bottom lip to curb his own appetite.

She shivered, thinking he was going to indulge her lewd fantasy and christen her his queen there before all of his subjects. However, the cloud of lust dissipated as quickly as it had formed when Ahkmenrah’s family swarmed them with praise and introductions.

Nouke had only met Ahk’s older sisters once or twice in her youth. Most were married off to important husbands before she and Ahkmenrah were old enough to speak, but she did remember that they were all beautiful, kind people.

While she stumbled through each introduction, confusing names of sisters, husbands, nieces, and nephews, each welcomed her with open arms. As they caught up with their younger brother, Nouke stood at Ahk’s side, her heart swelling every time she found a piece of her husband in one of their expressions. Ahk, Set, and their oldest sister had a tendency to bite their lip before they smiled. His laugh was a perfect echo of his second oldest sister and all of them had strong jaws and expressive eyes. There was an entire repertoire of matching idiosyncrasies that made Ahkmenrah and his sister’s harmonious, and Nouke was never more delighted to be among a group of strangers.

***

Nouke was unsure how far into the night the celebration had lasted when she found herself longing for it to be over. The food and drinks continued to flow endlessly; the guests continued to dance and thrive in the convivial atmosphere without constraint. She alone seemed to beg for an end.

Sleep was far from her mind, yet the thrill of the festivities concluded when Shepseheret and Setshepsut pulled her away from Ahkmenrah, tasked with the obligation of introducing her to all the important ladies of Egypt in attendance.

The burden of duty, she thought, easily recalling each time Ahk had spoken of duty and frowned. At last, she understood. And just like her dutiful husband, Nouke wore a kind face and as regal a posture as she could manage, while her mother-in-law and sister-in-law paraded her from noble to noble.

Each woman greeted her with a respectful bow, yet not all their praise felt genuine, which made for a keenly distressing jumble of introductions and conversations. From awe to abhorrence, their lofty masks split to reveal the truth of how they saw her. Some commended her for coming from nothing, while others made it clear with only their icy tone, that the notion of a commoner queen repulsed them.

“Don’t let them get to you,” Set said in a timely fashion, just as Nouke’s anxiety was beginning to root in her bones again. The negativity and false faces were too much too quickly.

“Some of them are jealous, and some of them are upset my brother chose you over their daughters.” There was a smug quirk to Setshepsut’s lips that was enough to allay a sliver of Nouke’s malaise finding it to be a twin of Ahk’s smug simper.

Still, Nouke’s brows had difficulty not knitting together with inquiry.

“Did Ahkmen not tell you?” Set asked, her brows pulling together in a similar expression.

“Tell me what?”

Setshepsut’s features softened into a genuine, wholehearted smile, and she looked to her mother.

“When the council encouraged him to seek out a second wife, my husband sent for suitors,” Ahk’s mother explained, joining the conversation as they stood amid the sea of guests.

It should not have come as a surprise the handsome, young pharaoh would have a line of women waiting to wed him, and even though she’d married him hours prior, Nouke struggled to keep jealousy from twisting a frown onto her lips.

“Ahkmen denied them all,” Setshepsut assured her, once again swift enough to combat the nagging sensation the thought of suitors conjured. “He was already so in love with you; I'm not even sure he truly looked at any of them.”

Nouke’s smile grew firmer, “When did this all—”

“A few weeks before you showed up,” Set said happily. “It is as though the gods knew you needed one another.”

Nouke beamed, and while her words struggled to compile themselves to form a response, she knew Set was wise enough to understand that the feeling was the same.

“The gods always know what we need before we do,” Shep said in a scholarly tone, full of wisdom and warmth. “Which is why the gods blessed me with three daughters before a son. His kindness comes from all his sisters, and kindness can be just as powerful as any weapon a king could hold.”

The former queen’s sentiment was not lost on Nouke; Shepseheret's knowing expression provided enough context. Her son would always rule Egypt with a level head and no cruelty, unlike his brother.

A quiet moment passed as they idly scanned the crowd around them until Shepseheret’s elegant posture relaxed.

“I do believe we’ve met everyone.” She exhaled, releasing more of her queenly persona, looking every bit as exhausted from the charade as Nouke felt.

“I know those were a lot of names and faces, but it will spare you in the future,” Shepseheret explained, offering an apologetic smile. “It should keep them from showing up unannounced to introduce themselves.”

Nouke frowned, “They do that?”

Ahk’s sister nodded, frowning herself, looking more irritated than sad.

“Mmhm, any excuse to possibly gain more favor with the pharaoh.” Set threw a narrow-eyed glance around them. “Everyone here is not-so-secretly vying for the next-best position of power.”

Nouke’s frown pressed deeper into her features as she glanced at the party-goers through a new lens of understanding. It made so much sense suddenly—the grandeur of every detail—the frock and the praise and the forced well wishes. 

Every soul in the garden was there only for the prospect of selfish gain, be it for a seat at the pharaoh’s council or merely to nurse from the royal teat. They attended only to take whatever they could: meals and drink and entertainment when no guest in attendance ever knew a day of famine.

They owned no golden crown to mark them supreme over all, but they were mayors and governors—lords and ladies—who knew only lavishment and plentiful meals. None of them put in a day’s labor under the sun out of fear of going hungry. And still, they took what was provided freely with heedless greed.

The worst thought was that the pharaoh could do nothing but play along to ensure no offended party sought to overthrow him.

Queen for less than an evening and already the weight of it all seemed crushing.

“I’m going to find Ahk,” Nouke announced, suddenly in need of his warmth after hours of only cold faces.

“Thank you,” she added with a genuine smile, grateful to have them both to ease her into her new life.

A sickly air of melancholy swept over Egypt's new queen as she wandered the party alone, her inner thoughts a tangled web that drastically contrasted the joviality enduring around her. Nouke felt her usual spirit unexpectedly laden: overwhelmed and acutely out of place among a legion of highborn faces. Their mocking expressions could not be overshadowed by the few wholesome gazes that met her as she walked making her spirit heavier.

Every non-distracted face and sober mind bid her a bow as she maneuvered passed, each act making her wonder whether they saw a queen or a servant strolling by.

The envy was easiest to catch on the young faces of potential queens; each one of them beauties Ahkmenrah passed up to tie himself eternally to her. Nouke did garner a hint of pride at that particular thought, manifesting with a well-hidden smirk.

Nevertheless, by the time her feet carried her across the spacious garden to its center where the twin thrones sat, Nouke felt thin—like the threadbare garments, riddled with holes, she wore on her farm. She lingered a moment in the open area between the masses of guests and her throne, letting her focus slip into the distance with a deep inhale, and a slow exhale. Only after several slow, calculated breaths did her spirit find its center once more, bringing a much-needed wave of calm.

The abrupt sound of children laughing quickly stole Nouke’s focus, and the sight she found was enough to devour the remaining traces of melancholy. Instantaneously her face erupted into a grin so wide it hurt to hold. All at once, the heaviness in her heart melted into a warmth that swelled to fill her entire body with adoration. 

Upon the lordly stage, where the thrones sat unoccupied, was Ahkmenrah and a slew of his tiny nieces and nephews. All of them were laughing and smiling as their uncle playfully chased them with a mischievous smirk on his lips, his fingers outstretched and threatening to tickle them. Nouke’s heart fluttered, and tears prickled her eyes as she pictured their children running and giggling as Ahkmenrah chased them; beautiful babes with ringlets, blue eyes and smiles that rivaled the sun. What a wonderful vision.

The smallest of Ahk’s nephews let out a yelp when he scooped the boy into his arms, his cry immediately followed by a barrage of shrieks and laughs as his uncle tossed him into the air. When the pharaoh caught him, Ahk kissed the boy’s cheek before releasing him. The little boy let out another mirthful cry as his tiny legs carried him into the crowd the moment his feet met the ground. Ahkmenrah’s grin was like magic, unfurling slow, with ample affection as he watched his nephew vanish into the sea of people.

Several of the other children ran after the toddler, all carrying on with convivial squeals that somehow made the pharaoh’s grin even brighter. Only one of his nieces remained, older than most of the other kids, but still small enough to warrant her yanking on her uncle's cape to get his attention. Ahk turned his radiant smile upon her, and she matched its vibrance when he scooped her up as well, neatly tumbling backward onto the wide seat of his throne.

The little girl cackled as they expertly fell, reaching with wonderment in her eyes for the golden crown on her uncle’s head. Ahk’s smile touched his eyes as he carefully removed it and placed the headpiece on her head. Immediately it slipped past her ears and nose, causing her to giggle as she pushed it back far enough on her crown to see. She stood in Ahkmenrah’s lap, throwing her arm around his neck for a quick hug before mussing his hair.

A second later, the girl hopped from his lap with an excited squeal and ran to join the other children, her uncle's crown still on her head.

Ahkmenrah chuckled a delightful sounding bellow that shook his entire body with joy as he settled back into his throne effortlessly. He took a long swig from his goblet that was precariously perched on the wide arm of his chair, relaxing.

All at once, the warmth in her chest dripped further down, becoming something much more immodest than the virtuous affection it had been only a moment ago. Never had Nouke been so compelled to sit on someone’s lap. Seeing her husband forgoing his perfect posture for a lax slouch, legs sprawled wide in front of him, with the curls on his head an unruly mess, made her tingle and ache.

He was like poetry in motion, and all hers. 

The keenly alluring sight of her husband perched so prettily on his throne, with a hint of kingly arrogance playing around his upturned lips—brought on by the drink in his hand—was like flint on steel. Sparks stoked molten heat to spill to her core; like a pot boiling over, the wave of longing begged for attention. No routine introduction or beckon of duty was going to keep her from taking advantage of such an enticing sight. The liquid desire coursing through her veins evoked a brazen want that Nouke clung to, allowing it to bleed into her movements. Her sultry gait quickly caught the pharaoh’s attention and the moment their eyes met; Ahkmenrah's playfully arrogant smirk spread into a wide, adoring, and proud smile.

“My queen,” he purred, welcoming her into his lap gladly when she lithely perched herself there, tucking her legs at either side of him.

She swept her fingers through his unruly curls, no longer able to quell the desire to do so, before her hands came to rest at the back of his neck. A gentle hum vibrated from deep in his chest at the glide of her fingers over his scalp, and his eyes fluttered shut as he savored their feel. Just the sound was enough to prickle her touch starved skin in a wave of goosebumps.

As her fingers wove and played absently with the hair at the back of his head, the queen met her king's eyes in a gaze that transcended all others; an exchange marked with wonderment, as though the meaning of life itself was transcribed in the smoldering colors of each other’s eyes.

Nouke’s heart was beating with a familiar, anticipatory fervor; every passing moment without kissing him moved painfully slow. There were hundreds of wandering eyes, but sensibility was lost when she was under the worship of Ahk's stormy gaze. He looked upon her as though she was the only living being in the universe; a mix of awe and affection that coupled sublimely with the quirk of rascally desire on his lips.

Ahkmenrah's own aura was inherently beguiling, effortlessly eating away every rational thought until Nouke found it impossible to douse the growing fire within her, wandering eyes be damned.  

Shamelessly, she took his bottom lip between hers, teasing a brush of her tongue over the sensitive skin until Ahk welcomed the kiss with a hungry sound. Nouke leaned closer, controlling the lascivious play of his lips and tongue, purring agreeably at the delicious taste of her king's mouth under her own. 

Ahkmenrah artlessly abandoned his goblet, the clank of the chalice against the stone ground barely registered when his hands came to moor at the small of her back, and the heat of his fanning fingers consumed all her senses. He drew her closer still, the slight friction against his frame utterly divine as their kiss built with a burst of fervor. It deepened and expanded, her hands holding his jaw as their joined passion became something inevitably bigger than they both could contain. Nouke’s sober mind grew drunk with lust when his heavy breath swept over her skin; Ahk’s low gasp curling around her spine. Every sensitive part of her was tingling. She wanted him. Needed him. 

When they parted to find their breath, the blue of Ahkmenrah’s eyes was narrow; a thin ring around wide pools of black, and he blinked slowly, watching her with feline intensity.

“Are you enjoying the festivities, my love?” he asked once his breathing calmed. His tone was like velvet, warm and luxurious; a bravado that actively attempted to unravel any trace of composure she had left.

Nouke’s lips quirked into a coy smirk as she considered her answer until she decided to reply with a kiss; her words tangled in the haze of her desire. Her hands surrendered their delicate press to the edge of his jaw, blunt nails raking over the skin of his neck, mapping the jeweled wesekh and down further over the lean muscles of his torso until she found the bulge under the silky fabric of his shendyt.

The pharaoh shifted and gasped a choked sound as his eyes fluttered with mild shock, lips trembling into a grin. With a purr and a mischievous simper of her own, Nouke palmed him, the sensation of his girth twitching and growing with even the slightest touch instilled Egypt's new queen with pleasurable power no crown could ever foster.

“I am now,” she whispered against his ear, and when she flicked her tongue to taste the soft lobe, Ahkmenrah groaned.

The strain to keep his kingly resolve in front of potentially gauging eyes only made Nouke want him more. His eyes fluttered shut as she pumped him slowly, watching as he gnawed his bottom lip to combat the need to express his pleasure with a wanton cry. 

Another rampant surge of power tore through her in a wave that heightened each of her senses and dripped to her own arousal. The desire to hear every sound she could coax out of her handsome pharaoh fueled every movement. She worked down his covered length, brushing her pinky over his sensitive tip, and when he moaned, Nouke muffled it with a burning kiss. An impish grin worked onto her face while she sucked and nibbled his bottom lip until her resolve folded as her mind and senses blurred with lust.

Ahkmenrah was quick to pick up the shift in her ministrations, their kiss stealing some of her confident vigor. The distraction of his lips allowed him to gather her dress just enough for his fingers to find her heated center. Without ceremony, he glided two digits through her slick folds, and he grinned.

“So wet for me,” he murmured, his thumb sweeping quick circles over her sensitive nub with enough pressure to make her gasp.

The shock of his delicious fingers was enough to make her forget the scene around them.

“Oh! Ahk!” she bit out louder than she should have. Instantly her vision flashed white and her once preoccupied hands anchored themselves to his strong shoulders.

“Shhhh,” he admonished gently, pumping his fingers slowly and just enough to send Nouke reeling.

All rational thought abandoned her, leaving her to the mercy of her own desires and her husband's gifted fingers. Suddenly, Nouke cared little about who may have taken notice of their less than proper behavior.

Wantonly, she rolled her hips into his cupped hand, its heel providing the friction she longed for. A jolt of pleasure pulsed through her, and her walls squeezed tight around Ahk’s wide fingers, causing them both to moan.

“I do so love the intimacy of large gatherings,” he mused, watching her as she skirted around the edge of unravel, so very close to coming undone already. “Everyone is entirely too caught up in everything else to notice anything. . . peculiar.”

Nouke gasped when Ahk pressed the heel of his hand against her clit with a sweeping motion that triggered a wave of euphoria so grand his name tumbled heedlessly from her mouth again. The pharaoh pressed a finger to her lips to shush her cry, throwing her a devilish grin.

“That is, of course, if you don’t make too much noise.”

Even through her half-lidded, hazy vision, Ahkmenrah’s impish smirk was easy to make out: supremely proud of his innate ability to properly sate her.

In a rapidly diminishing moment of clarity, Nouke drew his thumb into her mouth, tongue curling around the digit, sucking and hallowing her cheeks until the act won her a groan from her husband, giving her a taste of satisfaction. 

Had she been capable of more than a solitary moment of coherent thought, Nouke would have happily gone back to teasing him, but her body was greedily playing into his game; surrendering to desire with eager desperation. Nouke released his thumb when her mouth fell open with another cry of pleasure as her hips bucked against the soft heel of his hand.

The pharaoh’s free hand moved to cradle her throat, the brush of his finger so soft. His warm lips followed his touch, trailing from her jaw to her neck, as his hand fell to palm the globe of her breast. Even through the fabric of her dress, her nipples stiffened wantonly at his contact, her head falling back, body shivering. Nouke husked out a ragged sigh, a helpless cry that wanted to be more, but he shushed her again just as gently as before. Warmth curled through her body, triggered by the timbre of his soft chide, making the muscles in her abdomen so, so tight.

“Come for me,” Ahk murmured low against her ear, his teeth grazing the soft skin of her lobe.

Nouke bit out a sharp inhale when his confident fingers began working her in earnest, steering her with precision to that heavenly peak. Another moan spilled past her lips as everything inside coiled hot, and tense and hard.

“Quiet, my love,” he warned softly, and she could hear his smile.

“Come for me, my beautiful queen,” he encouraged, hooking his fingers perfectly.

That was enough.

The velvet of his voice in her ear coupled with the feel of his hand circling the aching cluster of nerves at her center swelled until it burst, surging throughout her body like lightning from the tips of her fingers to her curling toes. Every nerve was on fire with ecstasy.

The intensity secured her to his shoulders with a white-knuckled grip, afraid she would fall. Her lips parted with rolling whimpers and tiny cries she could not contain, riding out her pleasure as quietly as she could will herself to do.

“Perfect…” Ahkmenrah marveled, completely beguiled by the sight of her undoing.

When the waves of her pleasure shifted into small tremors of aftershock, Ahk withdrew his fingers, leaving Nouke suddenly bereft. She whined on account, blinking slowly until her vision came back to her.

Despite the threat of wandering eyes, Ahkmenrah pushed each slick digit into his mouth, indecently sucking and licking them clean, his expression utterly smug.

Little by little, the entirety of Nouke’s senses returned to her; the lusty haze dissipating enough for her to lay her focus on her handsome husband who was ogling her with playful arrogance.

Immediately she cursed herself for allowing Ahk to get the upper hand. He ruled every night they spent together—not that she minded; Ahkmenrah was an attentive, generous lover. However, Nouke felt it more than fair she got a chance to be smug, to send him reeling. No longer could he hold over her the guise of the powerful pharaoh who did as he pleased. She was a queen, and she was going to prove it.  

Nouke shifted in his lap, a sly gambit to test the state of his arousal. She licked her lips feeling his hard length beneath her; the peak of her tongue making Ahk’s lewd smirk grow. Nouke matched his arrogant grin, and the change in her body language sent a devious twinkle into Ahkmenrah’s lust dark eyes.

Before he could, Nouke kissed him, pushing her lips on his with prurient vigor stemming from the irresistible need to be the master of his undoing. The phantom feel of his fingers inside her encouraged her movements, her wet center grinding against his clothed cock. A low groan rumbled from deep in his chest.

“Shhh,” she admonished teasingly.

Nouke grinned when his blunt fingernails pressed into her hips in an attempt to quiet his own cries as her body continued to roll against him. She kept her hands at either side of his face to hold him where she wanted, controlling every movement of their kisses.

Ahk’s tongue was warm and velveteen like his voice, the inside of his mouth damp and hot, and when he made another low groan, it wound around her with warmth. Ravenous need began to whirl and tighten deep in her belly once more, and for a moment all traces of playfulness was scoured away leaving only breathless need.

Nouke willed herself to focus, breaking their kiss long enough for the haze to settle, carding her fingers through his dark hair as she met his eyes. They were half-lidded and sparkling—the blue-gray she loved nearly consumed by black. The more or less smug twist on his kiss swollen lips did well to lend Nouke a rational thought: a reminder not to let him win the game again so quickly.

Once more, her hips rolled against his pulsing length, coercing soft hums and groans past his lips in a beautifully soft fanfare that worked between Nouke’s thighs as she fought off a cry of her own. She tugged his bottom lip with her teeth before moving to the heavenly angle of his jaw, her tongue tasting its sharp edge from his chin to the soft skin behind his ear.

Ahk inhaled sharply, his mouth falling open as her name spilled heedlessly off his tongue in a tone too loud to be a whisper. His hips bucked in helpless abandon, arousing another strangled moan deep in his chest, and Nouke stopped.

The pharaoh’s breath hitched at the unexpected end to her ministrations, and the sudden loss of her body against his prompted a whimper. Nouke reveled at the sight of his blinking, wild eyes searching her face for an explanation while she nonchalantly took her time re-situating her gown and jewelry.

Right where I want you, she thought, stretching her legs to allow blood to flow.

Her husband was still blinking, looking profoundly bereft and confused when she threw him a coy smirk. A flash of her tongue to tease and wet her lips caused him to swallow—hard—and his mouth fell open, as though he wanted to speak.

All Ahk managed, however, was another choked whine.

Nouke held his gaze for only a moment before turning without a word, ambling into the crowd with an air of mystery she knew would see him venturing after her—once he’d calmed himself down first. 

This time, as the new queen strolled through the mass of party guests, her spirit was buzzing with a puckish charm that carried her feet across the garden in a buoyant stride leaving her oblivious to any mask of disdain thrown her way.

It wasn’t long before she found a vacant corner, free of guests and guards; a quick discovery that made Nouke smirk. Ahkmenrah was right, there was a certain level of solitude that correlated to large gatherings, and she was abundantly grateful.

The sounds of celebration faded into the distance as the fervent beat of her heart grew more prominent in her ears. Only a few minutes passed, but Nouke was impatient. Every nerve in her body was aching to finally have Ahkmenrah buried deep inside of her; ready to feel that coiling spring snap for a second time as she was lost in the feel of him.

However, neither she nor her husband would know that satisfaction until he paid for what he’d done; defiling her proudly and publicly—the perfect justification to have her way.

The moment he found her leaning against the high stone wall; Ahk's eyes devoured her. Nouke recognized the look of animalistic need on his face—she felt it in herself—and the second he stepped into her orbit, heat pulsed to her core. Hastily, she clenched her thighs in an attempt to deter her own want.

Make him yours, she reminded herself.

But Ahkmenrah’s hands and mouth were already on her. He pressed her against the wall with avid hunger and a low, sensual growl that was almost enough to steal the teasing Nouke had in mind. The pharaoh was so decadent and rich to taste—a nectar that was so sweet; it made her feel helpless each time his kiss was deep and full of passion. It took all of her will power not to drown in the luxuriousness of his tongue and mouth.

 “I do not like seeing you walk away from me like that,” he scolded, his pouty upper lip close enough to brush against hers as he spoke.

The bass note of his voice dropped sinfully low, and the lascivious fire in his eyes was difficult to look away from. His words prompted a chill to work down her spine as he pinned her harder against the wall.

Slowly, a familiar haze began to cloud her mind when his warm lips seared a line of wet kisses down her neck, sucking and nibbling until soft purple marks burnished the surface of her skin. Each one he tasted with a wide sweep of his tongue, making her hum gentle encouragement—sinking further into his ministrations.

Nouke’s nails dug into his biceps, leaving tiny red crescents, her body bucking wantonly against his—betraying her rationale. Ahk had a talent for unraveling her resolve.

With what clarity remained, Nouke pushed through the haze. Her fingers sunk deeper into the muscles of his arms, sureing her grip, and with a calculated spin she pinned him against the wall.

The sudden rush of power was like a drug in her veins, spreading wild with desire she couldn’t quell. An impish smirk drew her lips with a curl seeing the look of shock in his big, beautiful eyes, and she quickly covered him with her whole body. Her nails raked possessively down his arms as her hips rolled against his middle, relishing in his hard length pressed against her center.

When he moaned, she kissed him until the air was taken from his lungs, leaving him panting and thirsty for more. Ahk hissed and bucked under the friction of her undulating movements, and Nouke’s lips trailed down the line of his throat, suckling on his fluttering pulse.

“My queen…” he sighed raggedly with exuberant praise of encouragement.

Her mouth climbed inexorably upward, along the column of his neck to the edge of his jaw, and Ahk’s head rolled against the wall. She coaxed a groan from his lips as she suckled her own marks on his flawless skin, tasting each before mapping the rest of his enticing throat with her mouth.

While her lips explored, Nouke’s hands wandered the lean plates of his chest and torso, calloused fingertips raking over the tight muscles of his abdomen before venturing lower, untying his fanciful belt with practiced ease.

Ahkmenrah’s moan was low and loud when she gripped him through the fabric of his shendyt, the sound eliciting tendrils of warmth to pool in her center. Nouke stroked him lazily over his silky garments, her focus lost in every guttural sound she was able to cajole out of him.

Her hand stilled, prompting a whimper and she blazed a line of kisses to his ear.

“Would you like your queen to kneel before her king?” She grinned when his skin erupted in goosebumps, inspiring another wave of power to envelope her.

“Yes,” Ahk swallowed.

“Yes, what?” she murmured, sliding a single finger under the waistline of his shendyt.

“Yes, my queen,” he husked out just as her fingers dipped bellow the fabric and curled around his cock.

A string of profanities spilled from his lips and his head rolled against the wall; Nouke watched with avid thrill as he unraveled with every slow stroke she offered. She surged forward to kiss him in a hasty brush of lips before tasting her way down his body, humming pleasantly at the feel of his muscles shifting under her mouth.

Every sound and instinctual movement of his body chasing the pleasure she stimulated rushed through her own like fire. Nouke's thighs were slick with her own arousal, her core ready and begging to accommodate him.

A sort of sigh escaped Ahkmenrah’s mouth when she released his throbbing cock to kneel in front of him. She could feel his lustful gaze upon her, and she met it, tugging gently at the fabric that hid him until the garment slipped past his slim hips, all the way to his ankles.

His freed cock jutted proudly, and she licked her lips taking in the sight of his kingly grandeur—there truly wasn’t a part of him that wasn’t perfect.

When she glanced to meet his gaze, she found it half-crazed with lust, pleading for her to touch him. A mischievous smirk quirked onto her lips as she leaned to press soft kisses to each of his hip bones, causing him to whine until finally, she took mercy on him.

Gently, she curled her fingers around him, letting her thumb swirl the pearly bead of precum over his sensitive tip, feeling him shiver and hiss from the sensation. She squeezed him to reacquaint herself with his girth before stroking him once, delighted with the way he trembled against her.

He was a vision of licentious need, and Nouke was certain no queen ever felt so powerful on her knees as she did then.

Nouke kept eye contact as her tongue unfurled to taste him, licking his entire length before taking him into her mouth. A haggard string of curses tumbled off of his tongue, groaning as he pushed his hands into her hair to keep her head still against the slight thrust of his hips, fucking her mouth slowly until her tongue swirled over his tip.

Ahk’s body stilled and tensed as Nouke dipped and suckled, cheeks hallowing as her hand worked his base until with an impetus shove, he pushed her away.

“I need you,” he proclaimed urgently, pulling her to her feet and into a sloppy kiss.

“Yes,” she agreed against his mouth without protest. 

Nouke welcomed his weight when he turned to pin her to the wall, the swift gesture awakening something dark and primal in them both. Without ceremony, Ahkmenrah freed her breasts from the gown she wore, humming delightfully, his palms instantly molding to the globes like his hands were made to hold them. He kneaded and pinched until her nipples stiffened, and when he leaned to kiss the soft underside before dragging his tongue over the stiff peak, Nouke moaned loudly feeling his smile of satisfaction.

Every part of her was more sensitive to his touch than ever before, his hot breath tingled over her skin as he kissed his way up her torso to her mouth. Her fingers trembled as she gathered her dress before swinging her leg around his waist to draw his center against hers.

In a single perfect thrust, Ahk glided to fill her, completely engulfed and could go no further. They moaned in unison, the sudden pleasure almost enough to work them over the edge in one fell swoop.

His movements were slow at first, surely an attempt to draw out every moment of their pleasure, and she tightened around him at the same rhythm, watching his eyes darken and flutter until his thrusts became the paradigm of desperation. Nouke’s head rolled against the stone wall, staccato moans of absolute lechery spilling from her mouth as her husband fucked her hard.

The pharaoh buried his face in the crook of her neck, his teeth nipping the darkening spots of lavender he’d kindled previously, each bite shooting a luscious chill throughout her whole body.

Nouke gasped and keened, free to make any and every sound he coaxed out of her this time, and he did the same. Every hungry thrust teetered precariously between calculated and clumsy. One, a mindful push that aroused glorious friction, while the next was a carnal shove that yielded both pain and pleasure.

Her fingers twisted into the short hairs at the back of his head, pressing against him to better angle herself to meet every thrust. Immediately she was rewarded with a fresh wave of heat that seeped to where they were joined, arousing a moan to pass between them.

“Ahk,” she cried, so close and almost in tears from the intense waves of pleasure he sparked with every thrust like nothing she’d ever felt.

Nouke clung to him with an iron grip despite her rapidly diminishing strength. She choked out another moan when his hand hoisted her other leg around his waist, creating a new angle that found her sweet spot every time his hips hammered into her.

Sweat beaded to cool her skin, provoking more chills to work down her spine, coupling euphorically with every other sensation vibrating through each nerve ending.

“Ahk…” she husked out again in a plea, the muscles in her abdomen constricting, her walls growing tighter around his cock as her climax built.

His lust-filled eyes took several moments to find their focus as his hand moved to cradle her throat—a gesture of prideful passion—squeezing just enough to propel a fierce jolt of heat to every hollow and shadowed place inside her. Nouke’s muscles grew impossibly tighter, back bowing in reaction.

Ahkmenrah’s hand was still on her throat when he found the focus to drink in the sight of his queen. The lewd intensity in his black eyes was something that, even through her hazy vision, made Nouke powerless against him.

“This time I want you to scream,” he demanded with a growl and a crooked smirk. “Come for your king, and scream so everyone knows you are mine.”

As he spoke, his hot breath scorched across her overly stimulated skin, causing the build-up of tension to snap at once. She screamed as everything uncoiled in a white-hot rush. Nouke’s vision tunneled, forcing her eyes shut, tears ruining the kohl as they streamed down her face at the manifestation of her joyous pleasure.

The erratic pulse of her walls worked Ahkmenrah to the brink, hips trembling as he reached his peak a moment later. He cried her name into the air with a chanted refrain that echoed the movements of his thrusts until he filled her; hot cum coating her walls, mixing with her own.

Her head rolled forward onto his shoulder, its weight suddenly too much to manage as she came down from her high, sounding a haggard but satisfied sigh. Ahk mimicked the motion, resting close enough to plant soft, barely there, kisses to her neck and shoulder as he held her with all his remaining strength.

“Did I hurt you, my love?” he asked in a calming murmur that was free of his previous, dominating bravado.

After a couple more steady breaths, Nouke raised her head to meet his gaze; his eyes were blue again—the lusty blackness chased away. There was a twinge of concern on his compassionate features that made her heart swell as he searched for an answer in her expression.

A gentle smile spread over her lips as her fingers mapped the line of his jaw in feather-light touches; her eyes fixated on his, enchanted by the kindness glistening in them.

“No,” she said, her smile growing. “On the contrary.”

Ahkmenrah beamed and joined their lips in a lazy passionate kiss.

Incrementally they unwound themselves from the other, and immediately Nouke missed the feeling of him inside of her. By the look on his face, Ahkmenrah shared the bereft feeling and made a point of keeping himself pressed to her body as they stood.

“Do you think anyone heard us?” Nouke asked with a coy smirk playing around her mouth and eyes, unable to look away from her husband's swollen lips.

He teased her with a flash of his tongue, making them shine deliciously in the starlight. Ahk stole a glance around, then met her with a cheeky smirk.

“It doesn’t appear so,” he paused. “Perhaps we should try again?”

His brow hoisted high into a playful arch as his hands wove behind her, giving her ass a firm squeeze.

“If you think you’re up to it.” Nouke matched his grin and tangled her fingers in his thick hair, gently massaging his scalp.

Ahkmenrah closed his eyes and purred at the sensation of her blunt nails working the crown of his head. He stole a quick kiss before his entire face erupted into a toothy, arrogant smile.

“You doubt your king?”

“Never.”

Nouke claimed his lips again, feeling each of their impish grins mold into a soulful and demanding show of effortless passion. It took only the sweep of his tongue begging for entrance to prompt the familiar heat to begin to build once more, and when he moaned, she did too. They were blatantly aware how easy it would be to chase their pleasure to completion a second and third time, and both of them didn’t care. They were making up for lost time.

Ahkmenrah was already semi-hard; the growing length of his cock pressed against her making her ache, and she whimpered impatiently.

“Always so eager,” Ahk mused, reaching as he dipped a finger between her slick folds; the surprise almost enough to send her careening back over the edge.

Before Nouke could bite out a witty response, the sound of Setshepsut’s voice broke their serenity.

“Nouke!?”

The sudden sound rendered their roaming hands and lips immobile and Ahkmenrah cursed under his breath with a defeated smirk.

“Apparently, my sister heard us.” Although his tone was annoyed, his expression was amused.

When Set’s call came again, it was closer, causing the king and queen to scramble in a rushed attempt to make themselves look respectable; as if the purple and red marks on both their necks weren’t evidence of their rendezvous.

“Nouke?!...Oh! Ahkmen, have you seen Nou—”

Ahk was still tying his shendyt when he turned to cast her a grin. And while Nouke couldn’t see it, she knew it was undoubtedly gushing with shameless gusto and telling enough to match his hastily adorned attire and wayward curls.

“What’s the matter, Set?” Ahk asked as he casually bent to retrieve his discarded belt and refastened it.

Setshepsut’s eye watched him, blinking, mouth slightly open as though her words were suddenly lost.

“I—um—heard Nouke scream…” she decided on, abruptly looking as though she regretted investigating the sound.

The pharaoh tossed a quick look to his queen behind him, then met his sister with a prideful smirk, “I assure you; we are both quite well.”

Set nodded, casting a swaying glance to them both, “I see that.”

She paused to give her brother a mock look of disapproval, “I am aware the future of Egypt relies on you producing an heir, but some of your guests have noticed your absence. I suggest you finish this up.”

She eyed them both with a quirk tugging the corner of her lips that made it clear she was more amused than dismayed.

“Of course, Set. We were only doing our duty as king and queen,” Ahkmenrah teased further, and Setshepsut rolled her eyes.

“Mmhmm,” she hummed as she turned away to make her way back to the party.

“We probably should go back,” Nouke sighed as she smoothed out the wrinkled front of her dress.

The allure of staying tucked away with Ahkmenrah was almost too much to ignore, but the beckon of responsibility was stronger. When he glided effortlessly into her orbit, wrapping his arms around her waist, she reached to comb her fingers through his hair in an attempt to tame the messy curls she couldn’t keep from touching.

“Mmm,” Ahk purred, brushing the tip of his nose over her’s gently. “We do have the rest of our lives to spend together.”

He never looked away from her, his eyes crystal clear.

“I think we can afford to share the rest of this night with people who came to celebrate us,” he added as he pulled her into one last kiss that drifted into a slow draw that embodied the depth of his love.

“Are you with me, my love?” Ahkmenrah wove their fingers together as he spoke.

“Now and forever,” Nouke nodded. 

Next Chapter-> Chapter Seventeen: The Blessings We Deserve

#Ahkmenrah #Ahkmenrah x Original Character #Ahkmenrah Fanfiction #Night at the Museum #NATM #NATM Fanfiction #Left to Ruin #Rami Malek Character #Rami Malek Character Fanfiction #Rami Malek Fanfiction #Rami Malek #Smut #Ahkmenrah Smut

[elenathehun]

Watching the Clone Wars, part 2

Another week, another batch of episodes watched.  Some of these were (dare I say it) actually good, and some of these are rather bad.  Read on for the details of my opinion on “Clone Cadets”, “Supply Lines”, “Ambush”, the three-episode “Malevolence” arc, and “Rookies”. 

“Clone Cadets” (3x01)

This was very clearly a way to capitalize on the success of episode 1x06 “Rookies”, one of the top five episodes in the first season of TCW, providing background on the mostly-doomed Domino Squad.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t really warm up to it, even though I liked all the characters, and was excited to see 99 and Shaak Ti.  I think the core issue is that it was framed as a coming-of-age story, but coming-of-age stories imply agency.  No clone has agency in this war - or if they do, it’s something they have to carve out themselves.  Their entire existence is dependent on their martial performance, damn all their other qualities.  Success throws them into the meatgrinder of the war; failure dooms them to an ignomious existence as janitorial staff.  There is a lot a viewer can pick out regarding how physical disabilities are seen by the Kaminoans and the trainers, as well as how those values are transmitted to the clones, in 99′s story, as well as further hints of some kind of inter-clone caste system, but none of this is ever elaborated upon, at least in the episodes I recall.  

Either way, Domino’s “success” left a sour taste in my mouth.  TCW insists on portraying war as worthy and necessary, and in certain situations, that can be true.  But the Clone Wars is not one of those situations.

“Supply Lines” (3x03)

Another day, another episode where we see some cool characters die!  RIP Captain Keeli, you deserved better.  TCW did not have a military advisor, as the tactics used as abominable.  Like, I’m not asking for much, but hey, a little bit of mass fire wouldn’t go amiss, or even the use of an infantry square...  

There is sort of an interesting theme in this episode about the duty of the government to it’s people. Cham Syndulla is right to be upset that his people are being hung out to dry, but on the other hand...it happened to Naboo ten years previously.  It’s honestly surprising the Republic hasn’t fallen apart faster.  I’m rather neutral on the mission to Toydaria.  On one hand, it’s nice that Star Wars is trying their best to redeem Lucas’ very obvious and horrible stereotypes.  On the other hand...idk, Bail Organa vs Viceroy Gunray wasn’t really a great showing for what either side believes in? I’ve already forgotten most of it  

However, I feel like this is the first time I’ve ever seen Jar Jar Binks subvert his own reputation for good.  If he was always like this, he would be much better as a character.

“Ambush” (1x01)

This episode is mostly a showcase for Yoda, an 874-year-old murder machine.  This guy is basically a one-man army.  I like all the clone companions, and it was nice of him to give them a pep talk, but they were sort of superfluous to his reign of destruction, you know?  It would have been nice if we had seen the obvious end result of this natural-born killer fighting and beating Asajj Ventress.  Not really sure he actually has any mercy in him in the heat of the moment.

Boy, the writers are trying so hard to make these battle droids personable!  It’s should be funny, and it occasionally is, but it mostly leads to many questions about computer programming in the GFFA.  I like to think that Dooku has pulled a Krennic (or did Krennic pull a Dooku?) and he has a whole team of unwilling computer programmers writing the code for the droids, which is why they are so badly programmed. 

Of course, the  real answer is that Star Wars is space fantasy, and the real answer to the droids is magic!  Bad magic.  One might even say...incompetent magic.

“Rising Malevolence” (1x02)

I really intensely enjoyed this episode.  Finally, a superweapon that makes sense!  A giant ion cannon to be used against capital ships!  That’s actually brilliant.  Now, I have my quibbles with the design: since the CIS is mostly staffed by droids and drones, it doesn’t really makes sense for there to be a missive ship superstructure around the cannon.  It would make more sense for it to basically be like the old Legends Darksaber, which was basically the Death Star laser sans the battle station.  The ion cannon, repulsors and a hyperdrive, turbolaser emplacements and attached hangar bays for starfighter drones, as well as a screen of protective cruisers to defend the cannon against more maneuverable ships - that would make more sense.  But of course, it would have a much different silhouette in that case.

More truly graphic clone death.  Seeing several men get spaced is not PG, idek how this managed to get past the censors.  That is actually a real war crime, and I have no how parents explained this to Little Johnny and Sally (age six) when it aired on Cartoon Network.  And although I do love the relationship between Ahsoka and Plo, the central emotional question of the episode was left unresolved.  Who would come for a clone?  As it happens, a Jedi, but only if they’re looking for another Jedi :(

“Shadow of Malevolence” (1x03)

This was an OK-but-not-great episode?  Unfortunately, I read the X-wing novels multiple times as a pre-teen and teenager, so I have pretty high standards for starfighter combat and this didn’t really measure up to it.  I did love the space manta ray scene, though, it was very pretty.  Also a nice shout-out to the Y-wings, the perpetual butt of all the jokes in the X-wing series.

Again, I have no idea why “it’s a kid’s show!” was ever even tried as an excuse for the shoddy writing.  This is the third episode ever released, and the CIS is deliberately targeting a hospital.  Again, this is not appropriate for small children to watch!

On the bright side, a fun AU would be to play with the fact that this ion cannon apparently shorts out anything.  It would be pretty funny to see a story where the 30,000 walking wounded (I think) who were being medically evacuated, as well as Wolffe, Boost, and Sinker (plus Shadow 7, 8 and 10) are spread throughout the GAR when Order 66 comes through - and it doesn’t work for them, because the cannon shorted out their chips and no one realized.

Just a thought, that’s all.

“Destroy Malevolence” (1x04)

This episode mostly exists to show that Anakin will definitely put the greater good aside for the purpose of rescuing his main squeeze. I think it could have been cut for that reason alone.  Also to have some standard R2 and C-3PO hijinks, as well as Obi-Wan just being insufferable in general.  

Honestly, I would like this episode better if Padme was a Sith apprentice that Palpatine was trying to kill, that would at least make it more interesting.  Aside from that, it could have easily been cut.

“Rookies” (1x06)

This is definitely one of the better episodes of the first season.  Finally, Filoni gives the people what they want: an episode mostly dedicated to clones!  For a show about the clone wars, they’re in awfully short supply.  This was a nice war story, artfully executed.  I wouldn’t call it original, but honestly, originality is over-rated.  Cody and Rex are delightful as always, and unlike “The Hidden Enemy” (or “Clone Cadets” for that matter) it portrays clone relationships in a more positive, wholesome light.  

I also loved the droid commandos.  Kudos to the animators, who gave them a unique, more menacing walk and style.  However, I do dislike the continuing use of instantaneous communications through hyperspace even in star wars.  It’s a shame that the writers are either unwilling or unable to use the tension of time in their stories so far.

Next Week: “Downfall of a Droid”, “Duel of the Droids”, “Bombad Jedi”, “Cloak of Darkness”, “Lair of Grievous”, “Dooku Captured”, and “The Gungan General”.

#watching the clone wars #star wars tcw #television is hypnotoad

[adamwatchesmovies]

Troll 2 (1990)

There are good movies. There are bad movies. There are movies so bad they’re unwatchable. There are movies that are so bad they’re good again. Troll 2 isn’t the worst movie ever made (though it's a contender) but it might be one of the best bad movies you’ll ever see. You’ve probably seen Darren Ewing’s delivery of “They’re eating her... and then they’re going to eat me! OH MY GAWWWWD!” a hundred times. It still won’t prepare you for how genuinely awful, and simultaneously awesome the film is.

Unsurprisingly, this bad sequel has little to do with the first film. In fact, the two are completely unrelated. Our heroes are a typical family: Dad (George Handy), Mom (Margo Prey), teenage daughter Holly (Connie McFarland) and the youngest son Joshua (Michael Stephenson) - along with their ghostly grandfather (Robert Ormsby) whom only Joshua can see - travels to the strange town of Nilbog. There, they find themselves the prey of goblins. There are no trolls in this movie. The goblins are vegetarians so their goal is first to transform the family into plants, and THEN eat them!

The writing is awful, and I don’t only mean the dialogue. We’ve got ample scenes where characters talk like aliens who only have a vague idea of what English sounds like, transplanted in a nonsense plot. The production is lousy. You could get better costumes at any half-decent costume shop for less than 50 bucks. The special effects? pathetic. One recurring illusion, a bolt of lightning representing the magical powers of several characters, appears to be a drawing on a black background. The actors are all terrible, to the point where I don’t know if even a talented director could've gotten animated performances out of them. I can't say for sure, however, as the directing is some of the worst I’ve ever seen.

I was worried that having heard so much about the movie ahead of time would spoil Troll 2 for me. It didn't. This movie is the best kind of bad movie. It's consistently bad, but always in new ways. The special effects and the acting are shoddy from the beginning, but the ways and number of times it discovers to get even worse will surprise you. Knowing the plot cannot prepare you for just how nutty it is. So many elements come out of nowhere, are unexplained or lead to logical questions, and are then handled so badly that by the time the movie's over, you're overwhelmed. I tried to list my favorite parts. The list kept getting longer and longer. There’s so much bad in this movie that a single sitting isn't enough. The clips you’ve seen everywhere on Youtube become notorious out of luck. Nearly every scene in the film has something that could've become a meme. And if you thought the sequence would get better in context, or that it wouldn’t be as bad as it is clipped out and played on its own, you're wrong.

There’s a ton of re-watch value in Troll 2. You'll catch new things every time you see it, and it’s the kind of movie you want to share with unsuspecting victims just to see their priceless reactions. If you’re not one for watching movies ironically, this is the one that'll get you hooked on the “bad movie” genre. You can’t really be prepared for Troll 2. I mean this in the best way. (On DVD, November 21, 2014)

#troll 2 #troll 2 movie review #movies #films #reviews #movie reviews #film reviews #claudio fragasso #rossella drudi #michael stephenson #george hardy #margo prey #connie mcfarland #deborah reed #jason wright #darren ewing #jason steadman #1990 movies #1990 films #so bad it's good

[darks-ink]

Play Your Part 6

Chapter 6: I Would Give Anything To Hear

And there goes the last chapter. If my linebreaks and readmores rebel once more, well... there’s a reason why I’m not using them for Weirdward lmao. On a more strictly chapter-related note, who caught the funky writing thing I was doing to tie the writing into the overall theme?

[first] [previous] [AO3] [FFnet]

When Danny opened his eyes, it was to the sight of both of his friends bending over him. Worry was clearly visible in both Sam’s and Tucker’s eyes.

He groaned, pushing himself up into a sitting position, noting the changed circumstances. Instead of the living room, where he’d been before the flash of light, he was now in the lab. And while Jazz was still here, she, too, was frowning at him.

“So did it work?” Jazz asked, eyes unwavering. “I mean, I didn’t see what it looked like last time, but…”

“How am I supposed to know?” Danny bit back, squinting at her. “It’s not like I could see more than a flash of light!”

He twisted his head, looking around the lab, then shrugged. “But I’m pretty sure so, yeah. What on Earth was up with that universe switch anyway? Have any of you guys heard from Clockwork about it?”

Tucker snorted, having settled back on his heels when Danny sat up. “Wow, for once we’re the ones in the know. You alright, dude?”

“Yeah?” he asked, hesitantly.  “Why? Was the other guy doing so badly?” Then he grinned, playfully. “Or did you miss me so much?”

“Eh, he was alright.” Sam grabbed Danny by the forearm, and Tucker grabbed his other one. As they pulled him to his feet, she said, “It wasn’t Clockwork, anyway.”

“No?” Danny blinked, surprised. “Well, I guess that that explains it. Who was it, then?”

“Ghost artifact that he ran into in his own world.” Tucker shrugged at his incredulous look. “Yeah, really, that was it. Supposedly it switches people around if their universes are messed up or something, so they can get it fixed, and then they switch back.”

“I still don’t get it, though.” Jazz was still frowning, looking at Danny. “We fixed his ghost powers, but he didn’t switch back immediately. And why our universe, specifically? Unless…” she trailed off, her eyes widening.

“Unless what?” Tucker glanced between her and Danny.

“Unless our Danny had something to gain too,” Sam said, quietly, catching on. Her wide violet eyes settled on Danny as well. “Did you?”

He shrugged, then raised a hand to the back of his neck. “Eh, not really. I mean. I guess I promised them that I would tell my parents here about me being half-ghost?”

On either side of him, Sam and Tucker visibly stiffened. But Jazz just nodded like she had already expected that. “And that triggered the switch back? That makes sense.”

“Does it?” Sam whirled around to shoot a look at the girl, something between incredulous and glaring. “Jazz, you of all people know what his parents are like! He can’t--”

“I can,” Danny interrupted, holding up his hands. “Sam, calm down. Look, haven’t we already dealt with this before? In every alternative universe, timeline, whatever, every time they discovered, they were okay with it. And if Jazz, both versions of her, if they think it’s a good idea… Well, I trust her.”

“Thanks, Danny.” Jazz smiled, soft and warm. She wrapped an arm around his shoulders. “Glad to have you back.”

“Glad to be back,” he replied honestly. “Really, it was a mess over there. I thought it wouldn’t be that bad, since I’m used to hiding my ghost powers, but man. It sucked.”

“How’d your alternate universe parents figure out you weren’t their Danny, anyway?” Tucker asked, curiosity clear in his voice. “We figured it out pretty easily because he was a shoddy liar, but you’re used to keeping secrets.”

“Honestly?” He grinned a little sheepishly. “I may or may not have walked into the house after school and forgotten to hide my ghost sense. Two half-ghost parents in ghost mode, and a sister in human form? Definitely visible.”

“Yeah, that’ll do it.”

“But wouldn’t they have thought that you were their Danny, and that you finally got your powers?” Sam cocked her head, brow creased in thought. “Instead of thinking you came from a different universe?”

“Oh, well, yeah.” He shrugged, accidentally dislodging Jazz’ arm in the process. “But they were kind of… overwhelmingly nice? So I felt bad for lying to them.”

“Oh my god, you’re a sap.” Sam laughed, nudging him. “Danny, you really told them your secret because they were too nice?”

“Yeah, well.” He blushed, looking away sharply. “Shut up. Are our parents home, so I can get this reveal over with?”

“Nah, I lured them away so we could fix the other Danny without intervention.” Jazz twisted her arm, looking at her watch. “They should be home soon, though. It’s getting late.”

Danny nodded. “Alright, well. Can we wait for them somewhere that isn’t the lab?”

“Yeah, I--” a text tone sounded, and Tucker quickly grabbed his phone and flipped it open. “I, uh, apparently have to go. Think you can handle this without me?”

“It’ll be fine, go.” Danny made shooing motions at Tucker. “I handled it in the different universe all alone, I can deal with it here with Jazz by my side.”

“Are you sure, Danny?” Sam nudged him, gently. “Really, I don’t mind staying.”

“No, it’s okay.” He smiled at her, trying to put in as much confidence as he could. “Really, we can handle it. Go.”

“Alright, if you insist.” She nodded and turned to the stairs, Tucker right on her heels. “Text or call us later to let us know how it went, okay?”

He nodded again, watching them go. After he heard the door upstairs slam shut, he turned back to Jazz. “Well, anyway. Wait in the living room?”

“Fine with me.”

They had barely stepped into the living room when the front door swung open.

“Danny-boy!” his dad immediately boomed, like he hadn’t seen Danny in days. Which, honestly, he hadn’t, but he didn’t know that. Did he? Oh god, surely Jazz or Sam and Tucker would’ve told him if other Danny had been caught by his parents?

“Hey Dad, hey Mom.” He shot them his warmest grin, trying to inconspicuously check them for ecto-weaponry at the same time. Not visibly armed, which was probably the best he was going to get with his parents. It was hard to forget the advice of his other-universe family, them telling him that his parents had probably noticed the way he’d changed. “Can I, um, talk to you?”

His parents shared a very suspicious glance, then nodded. “Of course, sweetie. Jazz--”

“Jazz stays,” he immediately cut in. Maybe a little too immediately. Nervous, him? Never.

“Of course.” His mom sat down on the sofa, tugging Jack along. “Well, sit down, then.”

He nodded, sitting down in the armchair. Jazz looked at him, then their parents, and sat down next to their mom. Well, he supposed there was no easy way for her to sit with him. Plus maybe there was some kind of psychological reason for her to sit there. He wouldn’t know.

“Okay, so, um.” He folded his hands together, trying to resist the urge to rub the back of his neck. “So, first of all… Sorry for not telling you guys sooner. I… You might’ve noticed that I’ve been keeping secrets for… a while. And I didn’t… Sorry, for, um. Not telling sooner. Sorry, I’m kind of. Rambling.”

“Danny.” His dad leaned forward, the tips of his fingers barely reaching to touch Danny’s knees. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s-- Nothing is wrong. Well, besides the lying and the keeping secrets and--”

Jazz swatted him in the other knee and he clamped his jaw shut.

“Sorry. Uh. I don’t really… know how to say this.” He took his eyes off of his hands to look at his parents, but their worried expressions were honestly just making him feel worse. He dropped his eyes again. “Maybe it’s easier to just… show?”

At this, he shifted his eyes to Jazz. She shrugged, eloquently. “Danny, I’m not going to tell you how to do this. If you think showing them is easier, go for it.”

“Right, uh.” He pushed himself out of the seat again, taking a deep, bracing breath. “Don’t… freak out? Please?”

“Why would we--”

His mom was interrupted by the spark that burst from him, rapidly forming in a ring around his waist. The bright light swept over, the transformation fast as if driven by his own will to just get this over with.

“Oh,” she breathed out, wide eyes darting over him.

“Danny?” his dad asked, quieter than Danny was used to hearing him. “You…”

“Yeah.” He stood as still as he could, resolutely keeping his feet planted on the carpet instead of floating like he usually would in ghost form. “I’m Phantom.”

“But you’re not…” His mom blinked, her eyes suspiciously watery. “Are you? Did we… did we not realize--”

“I kept it a secret,” he said, trying to sound as reassuring as possible. “And I’m sorry, okay, but I--”

“You died.” She sniffled, the sound loud in the silence that had fallen. “Danny, you died and we didn’t even notice.”

“No,” he quickly said, shaking his head. “No, no, no. You’re… That’s not what happened. I’m not--” He groaned, his gloved fingers digging through his hair. “Jazz, please?”

She made a face, clearly having hoped that he would get through the conversation better. “Mom, Dad, he’s not dead. Danny is only half-ghost.”

“But that’s not…” His dad frowned, then slowly pushed himself onto his feet. He approached Danny, step by step, like he was a frightened animal. “It’s not… biologically possible. To be both.”

“It totally is, though,” Danny blurted out, because his nerves had apparently utterly destroyed his filter. “Here, wait, hold on. Let me shift back, and you can feel my heartbeat.”

“Honey, if your heart--” his mom paused briefly as light flashed, but picked it up admirably steady when he’d returned to human form. “If your heart stops while you’re… like that. That would mean that you’re constantly…”

“No, no.” He waved his hands around. “It’s not like that. It doesn’t stop, not really, but my core is stronger in my ghost form, so it’s harder to make out my heartbeat. You can feel it, but it’s way harder because of the hum.”

“Oh.” She looked pale, and her nod of understanding rather jerky. “I… see.”

His dad had pulled one of his gloves off, the uncovered hand hovering near Danny’s neck. “Can I…”

“Go for it.” Danny tilted his head back a little, trying to make it easier for Jack to fit his massive hand on his neck. “It, uh, might be a tad slower than normal. But I don’t think it is, right now.”

“How so?” The warm fingers met his neck, shifting to the right spot.

“Nerves,” he simply said, a hesitant smile pulling at the corners of his lips. “You know how it is.”

“Ah, yes.” His dad cleared his throat, a little uncertainly. After a few long moments he pulled his fingers away again, his brow creased. “Yes, it seems a little slow for how nervous you look, but… there was definitely a heartbeat.”

“See, totally fine.” He turned to look at his mom, hopefully. “I swear, I’m just half-ghost. It’s not… not wrong, or damaging, or anything. Please don’t… don’t hate me.”

“Sweetie, we could never hate you.” His mom sighed but also stood up, laying a hand on his shoulder. “You’re our son, Danny, no matter what. But we were… worried. We’ve been worried.”

“I know.” He ducked his head. “I know, and I’m sorry. I just thought… I thought, if I kept it a secret, that it wouldn’t hurt anybody. But I didn’t realize. I didn’t realize that keeping the secret hurt you, too, and not just me.”

“Danny, kiddo, you’re one of the most important things in my life.” His dad crouched, and when Danny looked up, their eyes met. “And this, this doesn’t change anything, okay? Ghost or human or something in-between. I love you. We love you.”

He sniffled, eyes darting between the both of them. “I… I love you too.”

A massive arm wrapped around his shoulders, pulling him against his dad’s chest. The other arm pulled in Maddie, and they crowded together. “Jazz, come here,” his dad called.

“Coming, coming.” One arm lifted, briefly, and Jazz wormed her way in.

“This is… nice.” Danny laid his head against his dad’s chest, feeling his core hum happily in his chest. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you guys sooner.”

“And we’re sorry for making you feel like you couldn’t tell us.” His mom touched his face, gently, and smiled at him. “And for everything we’ve said about Phantom. Everything we’ve implied.”

“It’s alright.” He smiled back, equally warmly. “I knew you didn’t mean it.”

They stood like that for a while, the silence soft and companionable.

Then his mom said, suddenly, “And you do realize that we can’t let you keep doing this, right?”

“What?” He jerked backwards, unintentionally phasing through his dad’s arm and all of Jazz to get away. “What do you mean?!”

“This ghost hunting is dangerous, young man!” She gestured at herself and Jack. “Not to mention the impact it has been having on your education!”

“But-- But--”

“No buts!” She wiggled her finger with all her motherly force. “We’ll figure out some sort of schedule, and you can patrol with our help. But not during school, and we will need to figure out how to help maintain your ghost form, and--”

“Mom, mom.” Jazz tugged on her arm, releasing her when Maddie quietened again. “Sam and Tucker have been keeping an eye on him ever since he got his powers, and I’ve known since just a few months after that. We already have all kinds of data.”

“Oh.” She wilted a little, then nodded resolutely. “Well, of course, I hadn’t expected any different from you.”

“My ghost form can sustain itself, anyway.” Danny huffed, feeling a little miffed about the impending limitations of his freedom. That, and he just now realized that sneaking out for fun things has just gotten a lot harder. Ah well, worth it. “I just need to eat more than usual.”

His mom hummed. “Is that a subtle hint that I should get started on dinner?”

“No,” he said, right as his stomach rumbled. “… but I wouldn’t mind if you did.”

She laughed, ruffling his hair as she walked past him towards the kitchen. “Message received, sweetie.”

Maddie had been in the kitchen for mere moments when her voice rung out again. “Say, does anyone know where all the leftovers went?”

The blush that crept up on Jazz’ face was rather undeniable.

“What?” she snapped at his incredulous look. “It’s a long story, okay?”

When Danny opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was his mom leaning over him. The first thing he thought was ‘oh man, I was right. The other Danny did have something he needed to achieve, too’.

He groaned, pushing himself up into a sitting position, noting the changed circumstances. He was lying on the couch, with his dad and Jazz nearby as well. Strangely, everyone was in human form.

Oh god. Had he shifted back to his own universe? What if the flash had simply transported him to a different one?

“Danny?” his dad asked, uncertainty clear in his voice. “You alright, kiddo?”

“You wouldn’t believe what I’ve eaten today.” He made a disgusted face, even if, honestly, the ecto-contaminated food hadn’t been that bad. Still, given the opportunity, he would gladly never eat it again.

“Mom is not that bad of a cook, Danny,” Jazz said disapprovingly. Her eyes were narrowed, set on him like she hadn’t quite decided if he was the right Danny yet. That was fair, he thought, because he hadn’t decided yet, either.

“No, and thank the Heavens. I’ve seen enough reanimated ecto-contaminated food to last a lifetime.”

“Ecto-contaminated?” all three of his family members repeated, incredulous.

“I thought the other universe was without half-ghosts?” Jazz’ eyes narrowed even further, a deeply familiar – and somewhat comforting – shade of purple sparking in her irises.

“It was, that’s the worst part.” He flopped back on the couch, dramatically throwing out his arms. “They just had ectoplasm around everywhere! Sam cooked the semi-sentient Frankenweenies with a flamethrower.”

“Well, I was always a little worried about that girl,” his mom said, hesitantly. The look in her eyes suggested that she, too, hadn’t quite decided if he was the right Danny.

He snorted. “It was Jazz’ idea. Both the eating of contaminated food and the flamethrower.”

“It was my idea to hand it to Sam, too?”

“Apparently she was the best shot out of you, her, and Tucker.” He shrugged, still lying flat on his back. “I wasn’t about to get in-between. Like I said, there was a flamethrower. I’m not messing with that.”

“Danny… Other Danny, their Danny, he said that he was the one fighting off all the ghosts.” His dad frowned, clearly worried. “Were things… alright, over there?”

“It was only a few days. Right?” Seeing all three of them nod, he let out a relieved sigh. “It wasn’t too bad. The only ghost I saw was the Box Ghost, and they said that he was fairly harmless. Plus you guys are ghost hunters in that universe, so. Sam and Tucker said you’d take care of it.”

His dad nodded, and a silence fell. It felt somewhat awkward, so after a long moment he cleared his throat.

“So, uh. How was the other Danny? From what I heard he was pretty good at keeping secrets, but apparently you guys figured it out anyway?”

“He may or may not have freaked out when we were too accepting,” Jazz said, carefully. “He, ah. Had a ghost sense, which went off when he came home. He might’ve gotten a little freaked out with how excited everyone was to see ghost powers from him. You.”

“Heh, yeah.” He grinned a little, hollowly. “I suppose he lasted longer than I did, anyway. I don’t think I went five minutes before Sam and Tucker figured me out.”

“I do wonder how this all happened, anyway.” Maddie ruffled Danny’s hair, a thoughtful expression on her face. “I’m glad to have you back, sweetie, but I just worry. It happened once, who says it won’t happen again?”

“Well, I mean, we figured out what happened.” He sat back up, his smile growing a little more genuine. “Sam and Tucker took me into the Ghost Zone to meet with one of their allied ghosts. Apparently it was caused by a ghost artifact. Remember that necklace, Mom?”

“Oh gosh, did that cause all this?” Her eyes grew wide and guilty. “I’m so sorry, honey.”

“It’s alright.” He shrugged dismissively. “Anyway, apparently it was designed to fixate on universes that were… unbalanced? Or that had gone wrong, somehow. So my… lack of powers, that was what had caused it to activate.”

The heavy arm that wrapped around his shoulder startled him, briefly, and he looked up and met his dad’s eyes. “Speaking of which, Danny-boy… We’re sorry about our… insistence.”

“Your… insistence?” He frowned, twisting to look at his dad, then his mom. “What do you mean?”

“We… were so fixated on you being half-ghost like us…” His mother heaved a sigh. “We talked with the… the other Danny. And he mentioned that he never told his own parents about being half-ghost. Because he was afraid of how they would react, of what they would think. And Jazz pointed out that that was damaging, to think of your family like they wouldn’t love you for who – or what – you are. And we realized…”

“Oh,” he said, quietly, realizing where this was going. “You realized that you were doing the same thing, sort of? By insisting that I must be half-ghost, too?”

“Well, yeah.” She smiled, but it didn’t seem very happy at all. “So… we’re sorry, Danny, for that.”

“That’s… alright.” He patted her on the hand, shooting her a warm smile. “You were right, anyway. We compared stories and used some of their tech, and we confirmed that I’ve always had a ghost core. But when I was young I had an accident, remember?”

“With the Human Trapper?” His dad’s eyes grew wide in realization. “Oh lord. Did that damage your ghost core to such an extent that you didn’t get your powers?”

Danny shrugged, grin growing a little sheepish. “That’s what we think, at least. We had no way to confirm, of course. But my core wasn’t damaged, just entirely out of energy. Supposedly the equivalent to your invention in their universe, the Ghost Catcher, purged ectoplasmic contamination. So assuming ours worked similar, it might’ve gotten rid of all my ectoplasm, thus running my core dry.”

“I wonder…” His mom made a somewhat pained expression. “I mean, we accept you as you are, of course, but… I wonder if such a thing could be fixed.”

“Well…” Danny pushed himself off of the couch entirely, all of a sudden. He stepped forward, stuck out his chest, and raised his arms in the air. Calling on his core, triggering the transformation, it was as easy as breathing. Entirely natural, like he’d been born to do it.

The rings shifted over him quickly, the light washing away his human form to reveal his ghost form. Briefly, in the short moment it took, he wondered if the other Danny had shown them Phantom.

But the wide-eyed and teary looks he received from his parents told him everything he needed to know. They hadn’t seen it. Hadn’t seen his ghost form until right now, this very moment.

He’d gotten to show them after all.

“Oh, Danny.” His mom suddenly leapt forward, bright lights flashing once more. Her cool arms wrapped around him as they both floated in the living room, her chartreuse eyes tearing up and sparkling with happiness. “Oh, my baby boy. Look at you!”

His dad joined them as well, having shifted to his own ghost form. His green eyes, darker than Danny’s own, were watering as well. Wordlessly, the man wrapped his massive arms around the two of them.

When Jazz joined them, moments later, she was dragged into the hug as well.

Man, he couldn’t wait to show the jerks at school! Finally he was… Finally he was like he was supposed to be.

Finally, things were right.

#danny phantom #dp fanfic #phanfic #dp fanfiction #phanfiction #danny fenton #jazz fenton #tucker foley #sam manson #maddie fenton #jack fenton #dark writes #play your part #whoo hoo that was that lads what a journey

[novarasalas]

Second Look Review: The Grudge

Sigh.

Work sucks. I’m not even checking how long it’s been since I started writing this. So..let’s get to it.

-

Candid Camera

I 100% love this opening conversation. It’s a weakness of mine in shows and movies: the candid conversation. Just seeing characters interacting with each other, not saying or doing anything to drive the plot forward...it’s great. I wish more media would write things like this. This way, we get a glimpse of the character’s personalities, in both the things they say and how they interact with one another.

Speaking of…

- -

A Bit Awkward

Acxa: I never has a creature companion, but one of my partners, Narti, was bonded to an immortal can't named Kova. That cat gave her the ability to experience the world. 

So far so good...

Acxa: Until Lotor killed Narti and we had to abandon the animal on our destroyed ship so we could escape without being tracked.

Oh...ok. Yikes, lol?

To be honest...I wasn’t expecting her to be quite so awkward. But then I remember that we haven’t seen much of her when she wasn’t antagonizing the team.

And thus I reiterate: I love candid conversations like this.

Later, we get an awkward reprisal.

Leifsdottir: It would appear the mood at this table has become rather awkward. Most likely due to your Galra lineage.

Oh look...there’s two of them.

Tag yourself! I’m James.

Do scenes like this get to anyone else? It’s like seeing two aspects of my social awkwardness given form. 

- - -

Let Me Love You

I love watching friendships happen. 

Acxa: I know you have little trust for me, but your constant presence is tiresome.

How cute…

I meant it when I said watching her was like seeing my own brand of awkward. I don’t know how many potential friends I’ve scared off by being like this. The only friends I have now are the ones that have the patience of saints. 

I’m grateful to them. 

As I’m sure Acxa is to Veronica, even if we never really see it.

Also, this right here?

Veronica: Honestly, I just wanted to get to know you.

Acxa: By sneaking up on me at a firing range?

Veronica: I didn’t sneak up on you.

Acxa: Only because I’m always aware of my surroundings.

Really now?

*Marcia Brady voice* Sure, Acxa.

- - - -

Sword Play

I’ve been thinking about this one for a bit.

It starts with Keith pulling his signature move

After, Lance says this:

Lance: Huh, good job, Keith. I mean, I was just about to do that, too, but that’s cool.

What was he about to do?

The cool “throw your sword, totally disarming yourself” move, of course!

Keith is annoyed, not confused. This means that he knows that Lance has a sword. We never get to see that moment in the show...which is why I had to write it myself. Check my “voltron fanfic” tag, “fic: study it out” tag,  or the first comment on this post for the fic link.

I’m also on AO3 with the same user name.

..yeah, that’s a self plug. I’m not ashamed.

- - - - - 

The Bad and The Ugly

This is probably what’s really kept me dragging my feet on this for so long. 

So, the real story of this episode is that Ezor has left Zethrid cause she’s a total rage-filled maniac, and she wants nothing to do with that life anymore.

Zethrid, being a total rage-filled maniac, fails to engage in introspection, and blames Keith for this. For some reason.

She tries to kill Keith while Acxa tries to talk her down. End the end, she’s only stopped when Veronica, Acxa’s new best friend, shoots her.

It’s fine, though. Ezor comes back to her, willing to forgive her for...things.

Roll credits.

…..does that seem right? It certainly didn’t to a lot of people.

Me included.

The idea is that Ezor was, narratively, dead. The idea continues that the backlash from having

1. Some of the gay rep being a villain pair, and 

2. One in that pair being killed off, 

scared them into retconning Ezor’s death, hastilty re-recording lines and adding shoddy animation to “fix” it. 

I’m not at this point here to point fingers and blame persons for this supposed change. I just want to talk about why I think that it was changed.

It’s mostly because of this, at first:

Zethrid: Now you will feel what I felt.

Some argued that she was saying this to Shiro, who was, ya know...there. But she’s saying it to Acxa. 

Here:

Ezor: She’s always been sweet on that one with the flippity hair.

You just know they’ve teased Acxa about this before. And that’s the thing.

Zethrid believes that Acxa is in love with Keith, and that’s why she’s going to kill him, so that she feels the same grief that she feels. 

Ya know..cause she loved Ezor, and Ezor’s dead now.

I can’t pinpoint what all has been changed, when it was changed, or how. 

But am I supposed to believe that Zethrid would take a break up this badly? Am I supposed to believe that Ezor, having left Zethrid because of her rage and anger, would watch her try to kill someone over said break up...and then take her back?

Nah. I don’t.

And it’s not that I want Ezor to be dead. I want the story to make sense.

There’s other evidence, visually.

Ezor here is unfinished. The lines are uneven and the shadows on her are almost non existent. Maybe it wouldn’t have looked so bad had she not been placed next to Acxa, who was always in this scene. But as it is, she’s very flat. 

This continues into the next episode.

Veronica: Zethrid and the Olkari have escaped their cells.

Only two indicators are shown. An argument could be made that they didn’t consider Ezor a threat.

But add to all this the fact that Ezor’s one spoken line ended up being a pitched up clip of Allura saying “no”, while Zethrid’s response of “trust me” was taken from S7...it’s all too much.

However, at the same time, I don’t want to dwell on this. It’s conspiracy and conjecture at this point. We’ll never know what really happened. There will never be a director's cut. They’ll never release extra footage. This is what we got.

In any case, the fact remains that the whole thing was jarring and seemed very out of place. The writing and story hasn't been the greatest to this point, but this marked the episode where the plot began to lose me. From this point on, I spend an inordinate amount of time watching and thinking “...um??”

It’s a bad feeling.

Also, Shiro? Baby?

Any thoughts?

...fair enough.

----------------

In Summary:

This episode started out wonderfully before it crashed and burned. The opening character interactions gave way to questionable character motivations.

If, as suspected, this plot point was changed because of outside pressure...well…

It’s an odd thing for it to happen during production like this. In my years, I’ve never really seen it happen like this before. There’s no way to fix something like this without the end result looking sloppy.

Also, as someone that creates stories, I don’t have a great feeling about this. There’s this idea now that if something isn’t perfect, you must shout it down until someone changes it, or make the thing go away completely. 

I personally would have felt better if they’d stood by the story they’d created. After the fact, we can talk about things gone wrong, the mistakes that were made, and how the story might’ve been made better, all in retrospect.

To do anything else, in my opinion, shows a lack of integrity.*

*but what is integrity when there’s corporations and money involved, really?

Next up: 

Yeah...so….this is where we’re going with this?

#second look review #voltron #voltron legendary defender #acxa #keith #voltron keith #keith kogane #lance #voltron lance #lance mcclain #zethrid #ezor #long post

[bytheangell]

This is the Coda that Never Ends... Part 9

(read on AO3) (read from the start) 

Ringing the small metal bell on the desk at the gallery where Clary’s exhibit was held the night before, Magnus waits patiently for someone to emerge from a back room after a slight clunking noise and a call of “sorry, I’ll be right there!”. He looks around, taking the time to glance at the flyers for future shows, events around the city, and art hanging up on the walls or placed strategically around the large, open space in the front reception area. There’s no shortage of talent in this world, he marvels. Even mundanes, taking the most average daily events, can create something truly breathtaking. He’s always tried not to allow his view of art - and artists - to be too heavily influenced by the legendary greats he had the fortune (and occasionally misfortune) of meeting throughout his years. After all, who is to say that the abstract cell phone re-imagining in the corner won’t be the next Van Gough? 

“Sir? Sorry for the wait, is there something I can help you with?” A slightly frazzled voice shakes him from his thoughts, drawing his attention away from the painting and back towards the desk. 

Magnus spins around to see a young lady with short black hair spiked up very similarly to his own, and they share a small smile. “Yes, I called earlier and spoke with someone over the phone about purchasing all of Clary Fairchild’s artwork from the exhibition last night.”

The young girl looks surprised. “Oh! Yes, that was me, I just--” she shakes her head a little. “Sorry, I kinda wrote you off as a prank call. Not that Clary’s work isn’t wonderful , but we almost never sell more than a piece or two from each person at those shows.” 

“It’s fine, no need to apologize Miss...” Magnus trails off, waiting expectantly. 

“Sullivan,” the girl provides. 

“Miss Sullivan. They are all for sale, correct?” 

The girl nods again. “Yep! Oh man, Clary’s going to be thrilled when I tell her later. She’s always going on about how they’re all so important to her, but she can’t explain why, and she never thought anyone else would connect with them. But it never stopped her, which I always really admired.” 

“She has a remarkable talent. And you can tell her that she’s wrong about that fear - there are plenty of people who connect with her work.” Magnus knows he shouldn’t be saying anything but he can’t help it. The idea of Clary feeling isolated in the memories fighting to come through, when there were so many people who love her and miss her and would do anything for her… 

“Would you like to leave her a message? We can leave the purchase anonymous, or she can know who you are - sometimes people want to meet up later, and discuss the work? It’s up to you.” The girl shuffles some papers around, turning to the computer as she speaks to pull up a few files, type a few things, and start to print something off while she talks to him. 

“Anonymous.” Magnus tells her, perhaps a bit too quickly because she looks up at him with a questioning glance. She doesn’t ask why, and whether that’s because she doesn’t want to or knows she isn’t allowed to, he’s thankful for it just the same. “I would like to leave a message, also anonymously, if that’s alright?” He adds. 

“Sure,” the girl agrees, grabbing the paper from the printer. “Alright, so here’s the total, I can do cash or card, but we’ve bounced enough checks that those aren’t accepted anymore.” 

Magnus reaches into the pocket of his jacket and pulls out a rectangular plastic card, handing it over without hesitation before even looking at the price on the sheet. The girl also pushes over a notepad before turning back to the computer system. “You can write your note while this processes. Will you be picking up the pieces yourself, or do you want them delivered?” 

“I can pick them up.” Magnus reaches into his pocket and pulls out a cell phone, pulling up a number he’s affectionately saved as ‘Samson’ because he knows how much it annoys Simon. 

M: Are you and your van free? I’ve just acquired us some very valuable art S: ...I don’t think we really have time for redecorating right now, Magnus. Magnus shakes his head, rolling his eyes. 

M: It’s Clary’s, Simon. I just bought everything from her exhibition. I need help getting it back to the Institute, as I can’t exactly portal it out of here.  S: Oh. Yeah, sure, I’ll be there in 20. 

Mangus pockets the phone again and turns back to the paper on the desk in front of him. He considers it at great length, putting the pen down to the pad, starting to write a word or two, and then ripping that page off and starting again. He goes through three sheets before he’s satisfied, just as the young woman returns with his card. 

“Here’s the note for Clary. Again, I would appreciate it if she didn’t know who purchased any of this.” He knows he’s only drawing more attention to it by mentioning it again, but he’d rather the woman think he’s shady than have her go off telling Clary anyway, especially since it sounds like the two of them are friends. 

The girl takes the paper, reads the note, and smiles. 

It says, in beautifully looping script, “Clary - You possess remarkable talent. Never doubt your vision.” 

---

Simon arrives 20 minutes later, as promised, with his van which is currently spraypainted entirely black. This, somehow, looks even more questionable than when it held the name and images of his latest band. 

“In-between band names again?” Magnus questions, thinking that this is exactly the sort of van the police would pull over just to make sure the back isn’t full of puppies and candy to lure small children away. That, or surveillance tech. 

“Yeah, something like that.” Simon doesn’t have the heart to admit that he tried to hire another artist to do some work on it, but the end result felt so wrong to see there in place of Clary’s usual designs that he painted over it the next day. “Izzy said she doesn’t want them at the Institute, though. Too many prying eyes there. But if you can keep them at the Loft and just make sure the wards will let us in to look at them when you’re back in Alicante, she’d owe you one.” 

Magnus sighs. Adjusting the wards wouldn’t be an issue but he was hoping to keep himself a little more removed from all of this. Certainly more removed than keeping some of the biggest evidence of Clary’s memories returning within the walls of his own home. 

“Fine,” he agrees reluctantly. There is security at the Institute, and it’d be unlikely more than a trip or two to the room they’d stash these in wouldn’t set off a dozen red flags, especially if he  and Alec remain involved. They load up the van as carefully as they can, and Magnus opens a portal from the inside of the van to the Loft to save them the hassle of stairs. 

While Simon props up the paintings and sculptures around the living room Magnus goes about adjusting the wards, reaching his magic out to allow for certain energy signatures to come and go at will. Alexander’s, of course, was already there, as was Isabelle’s. He adds Simon and Jace before closing the connection again. 

“The wards are all set,” Magnus announces. “This is the last of the art,” Simon declares a moment later, propping a painting up against a wall. “Will you still be here later?” 

Magnus wants to be, but a part of him knows that he’s already too close to this as it is. Alexander wanted them to hold as much plausible deniability as possible, and here he was purchasing Clary’s artwork and hoarding it in his apartment like stolen goods, away from prying eyes. 

“Probably not, unless you need me for something. I have some work to tend to in Alicante.” At least he isn’t lying. There’s never a shortage of things for him to do there, in the world still adjusting to the acceptance of Warlocks and Downworlders within its borders. Dispelling centuries of misconceptions and prejudices isn’t an easy task, after all. 

“We’ll call if we do,” Simon promises before heading back out to his van. 

Magnus figures he has about 30 minutes to himself before he needs to be back and before he runs the risk of Simon getting back to the others and one of them deciding they want to come have a look immediately. He takes the time to go over each piece once, taking photos to show Alec as he does. 

He recognizes almost all of them - Edom, the Seelie Realm, objects that very closely resemble Shadowhunter weapons like steles and Clary’s old dual kindjals, figures along a lake that could only be Lake Lyn... there are only a handful of paintings he can’t place - one that has a lot of white, for instance, and one that seems to have a rowboat as a primary focus - but Magnus has the sinking suspicion that even those are related to her missing memories, just the ones he isn’t privy to. 

This is so much worse than he thought when it was just seeing through a single glamour and remembering Jace by sight. That much, at least, Magnus can chalk up to a shoddy glamour applied by the Shadowhunter. But how long had Clary been painting these? Just a few weeks? A few months? The whole year? What more did she remember? 

His phone buzzes and it’s Alec, asking when he’ll be back and if he learned anything new. 

M: On my way now. I have plenty of updates, but I’m not sure you’re going to like them.  

---

Underhill is left temporarily in charge while Isabelle and Jace ran off to look at art or something. Honestly, he’s doing his best to keep his name clear of the worst of whatever sneaking around they’re doing - it’s bad enough he knows about Clary remembering Jace, and that on top of his usual surveillance he’s supposed to be tapping into cameras to keep an eye on her. Not that he isn’t willing to help, and he’ll keep his mouth shut even though not telling Lorenzo is killing him inside, but he knows how badly this could all backfire, and he has his own job and integrity to think of when it comes to covering himself if it does. The more plausible deniability he has, the better. 

Except it doesn’t look like he’ll have to switch from Institute surveillance to Clary surveillance tonight, he realizes, dread welling like a pit in his stomach. Standing outside of the Institute, just beyond the glamour, is a very familiar redhead staring up at a building Underhill prays to the Angel she can’t truly see.

#magnus bane #simon lewis #andrew underhill #shadowhunters #AND WE'RE OFF! #elle writes a few deadbeat lines

[toaarcan]

Let’s break down this Brainstorm controversy

I’m going to analyse this shit because I’m pissed off. Spoilers for Transformers (2019) under the cut.

So this wasn’t a good start.

Before I go on, I want to stress that I’m a massive fan of Brainstorm as a character, pretty much entirely because of MTMTE. He’s one of my favourite characters, if not my most favourite (A position that he routinely trades with Rodimus, Starscream, and Shockwave), and I’ve spent somewhere in the region of £190 on toys of his, while still hankering for MMC and Iron Factory to do their own takes on him because I want more Brainstorm.

As you can imagine, this gives me a rather personal stake in this bit of shite writing, so I thought I’d clear those biases up first. And since I’m also an asexual person, I have a vested interest in at least keeping to IDW1′s standards of representation and pushing them even higher. 

With personal opinions disclaimed, let’s dig into what went wrong with this twist.

I’ll start with the lighter topic, my feelings as a fan of this character, a fan of MTMTE, and a person who spends way too much time on narrative analysis, before I get into the heavy stuff.

1) Problems with this, as a fan of Brainstorm

As a fan of Brainstorm this obviously hurts a lot. Seeing one of my favourite characters killed off in the first issue, with no actual role in the story other than a “sacrificial lamb” for the war can kinda kill the enthusiasm, y’know? And what makes it worse is that IDW is basically the only source of Brainstorm we get. My other favourites are all series mainstays, so if one of them bites it in a show or a comic or a film, I can mostly get past it easily because I’ll see them in something else pretty quickly, which can’t be done with Brainstorm. 

He’s only in Marvel G1, where he dies (Albeit in a hardcore way in the final arc, but still, it has the other problems of being Marvel G1), Regeneration One, where he got brought back, brainwashed, and dies again, Sunbow G1, which was trash, and Headmasters, which is only enjoyable as a comically bad dub.

One potential source of Brainstorm and he’s dead in Issue 1.

Making it worse is that, in a comic where pretty much everyone is drawn so similar to their toy that they might as well have been traced over photos of the actual figures, Brainstorm blatantly has his MTMTE design, right down to having his shoulder-cannons pre-war. 

For reference, here is Brainstorm’s G1 art:

Here is his G1 toy:

Here is his most recent toy:

Here’s Brainstorm’s design in IDW2 Issue 1.

Look familiar?

 It’s not his most recent look from Titans Return, it’s not his classic G1 design, it’s not even his slightly off-model Thrilling 30 figure, it’s straight-up the Roche/Milne design for him from the classic comics.  As someone in the UK Toy thread on TFW2005, this feels like a ham-fisted attempt to separate the comic from what came before, a sort of “This ain’t your daddy’s IDW!” by killing off a fan-favourite and pivotal character from IDW1.

2) Problems with this, as a person who likes analysis

Now, narratively this doesn’t even make a lick of sense. Separating all the other problems I have as a fan of the character and an LGBTQIA fan in general, it doesn’t work as a story element. 

Like, I get what they’re trying to do here. They want to kickstart the downfall of Cybertronian society with the first murder, but they want that to make a huge impact on the fans without beating about the bush too much, so therefore the best way to do that is to take a character that people know and love and make them the victim.

Thing is, this only works for fans of IDW1. It doesn’t work for general fans, because of the lack of role that Brainstorm normally plays that I brought up earlier. 

A minor character from the G1 cartoon would probably have the same, if not a greater effect for those fans, without pissing off the one audience they were all but guaranteed to keep. In a franchise that has so many actual redshirts, killing off one of the series’ actual characters is a tremendous waste.

3) Problems with this, as an LGBTQIA fan

Anyone else feel like we just got Voltron’d or Dragon Prince’d, because I feel like we just got Voltron’d or Dragon Prince’d.

Brainstorm, as we knew him, is an LGBT character. Depending on your reading of the final two issues of Lost Light, he’s either bi or gay (Roberts stated that which was up to the reader at the time, much like the general theme of LL25′s happy ending, though also shared that his reading was that Brainstorm and Perceptor were a couple). Now, if that open interpretation has changed since, I dunno, I haven’t seen his twitter since the comic ended, I don’t get involved with Twitter. So, if I’m wrong, show me and I’ll re-edit this.

But regardless of all that, Brainstorm’s first love was Quark, who was another dude. It is undeniable that he has attraction to other men. 

I was heading into NewDW with the resignation that the representation was probably going to take hit. It’s what I’m used to at this point, unfortunately. At the very least, I wasn’t expecting to see the same pairings as the original comic with the possible exception of Chromedome and Rewind, because the latter of the two didn’t really get any characterisation beyond a toy bio until MTMTE anyway, so for all intents and purposes, his MTMTE persona is his original character.

But the announcement that they’d be trying to maintain the representation that defined the comic’s original run so well gave me a margin of hope.

Suffice to say, starting the comic by killing one of the original run’s confirmed LGBT characters right after that smacks of the shoddy and often offensive attempts made by those Netflix animated series mentioned above.

It’s not a good look.

4) Light at the end of the tunnel?

In that same TFW2005 thread I mentioned earlier, another user pointed out that perhaps Brainstorm would be brought back via becoming a Headmaster, an aspect of his character that went unexplored in the previous run. 

After all, his body doesn’t even appear badly damaged. I’m pretty sure he walked off worse in the pages of MTMTE/LL, and his head is intact. It could be that he gets saved by being downsized into a smaller form and situated atop a new body (Based on his TR figure, perhaps?).

But I won’t be getting my hopes up. There’s a way to bring him back for the fanfic writers, but I’m not going to hold my breath that it actually happens in canon.

#Transformers #Transformers 2019 #IDW Transformers #IDW2 #IDW2.0 #Maccadam #Brainstorm #Genitus of Operation: Solar Storm

[sartorialonce]

Emma Swan’s wedding gown: an astonishing failure by any metric

(Many, many pictures in this post.)

I hope that, as readers of this blog, you know that I have a great deal of respect for the work of Eduardo Castro on this show. It was with dismay that I began analyzing this dress last season, when friends began asking me to talk about it. I like talking about the successes—negative analysis can be fun and cathartic and all, but analyzing something that works, in order to understand why it’s really that good, is at least as valuable, if not more so. But sometimes, a thing is really that bad, and that’s where we are today. I hope everyone understands that this is a critique of this garment, not an analysis of the character.

But let me be very clear: this dress was poorly made, poorly fitted, and poorly suited to the medium.

Arguably the most famous wedding gown ever made is that of Grace Kelly, worn for the Catholic ceremony of her wedding to Prince Rainier of Monaco (the pair had been married in a civil ceremony the day before). Kelly’s gown was designed by a costume designer from MGM Studios, Helen Rose. Rose was a two-time Oscar-winning designer and ten-time nominee. She had designed costumes for Kelly several times, and she was also a well-regarded wedding gown designer.

This gown is without question her most famous work, and its influence has been far-reaching. Fifty-five years later, a dress inspired by Kelly’s was worn by Kate Middleton for her wedding to Prince William. Several European princesses of the same generation have also drawn inspiration from this gown.

Emma Swan’s wedding gown, however, does not draw inspiration from Kelly’s. It is a copy, and not even a good one.

Let’s start from the top.

The Juliet cap

It’s easy to underestimate just how ubiquitous hats were in American fashion at one time. Hats were a standard accessory both for men and women. In the 1950s, many women’s hats were far more decorative than functional, like the Juliet cap.

The Juliet cap has its roots in Renaissance Europe, when earlier traditions of women completely covering their hair had evolved into pieces that partially covered the head and accentuated hairstyling. This was true of the 50s version as well. The chignon was a popular hairstyle to pair with a Juliet cap. The Renaissance versions were often a net (beaded or plain) that held hair in place; by the 50s it was most likely to be a solid hat. Today the Juliet cap is strictly bridal, usually more like the earliest versions than the 20th-century ones.

Arguably it was the cap which doomed this costume. This piece, more than any other part, pegs this as a vintage design. The dress itself has had innumerable imitators over the last sixty years. The Juliet cap has not achieved that staying power. In Emma’s case, the cap goes awry on a few counts. First, the lace itself lacks the delicacy of the original. It’s coarser and lacks most of the tiny beads. Second, it’s way too big for her head. It touches her ear, while the original was about half an inch above. Third, the placement of the flower band makes it look like it’s sliding off the back of her head.

The final nail in the coffin is the actual outline of the piece. It’s hard to tell if they actually failed to copy the original accurately or if that original shape just doesn’t work well with JMo’s hairline. Either is possible.

If they had just given her a tiara, or braided her hair into a crown with flowers—well, I’d still be talking about how bad this dress is, but I bet a lot of other people wouldn’t have fixated on it and I’d just be stewing about it privately instead of writing a 3,000-word post about it.

Styling

I’m no hair-and-makeup expert, but to my eye this is all too severe. A softer lip color would have gone a long way toward helping this. The hairstyle may look really pretty in the back but we’ll never know because it’s covered up with a veil. I’m honestly a little surprised they stuck a veil on her at all, but we’ll get to that later. Anyway, what we can see of the hair is all repressed-librarian-chic and that is so not the intent of this look. At least I’m pretty sure. It’s also worth noting that while Kelly wore her hair up, she still had more volume to her hair than Emma does here.

Quality

There are some weird and frankly unprofessional quality problems with this costume.

The first and most noticeable problem is the seams of the lace jacket. I’ll be blunt: lace can be hard to work with. We’ve seen lace on costumes on Once before, but it’s often been handled using a technique called underlining. With underlining you layer two pieces of fabric together and treat them as though they’re one piece. For example, Snow’s white dress from 1.11 has lace on the bodice that was constructed this way. A major reason for underlining when you can is that it hides all the raw edges inside the garment.

However, when a garment is just lace, like this jacket, the preferred method is to hide the seams with the lace itself. This is done by cutting pieces larger than needed, following the motifs of the lace pattern. Then the irregular edge is appliquéd over the seam line, effectively hiding it. Kelly’s jacket is so well constructed that seams are virtually invisible.

I have to give some credit to the wardrobe folks, because they did actually use this appliqué technique on this jacket (which, when I first saw low-resolution images, I thought they did not). However, the motifs on this lace are so sparse that it doesn’t do a very good job of hiding the seams. And then, for reasons I suspect I will never understand, they decided to bind the seams. They took a white fabric and covered up the raw edges of the lace, so instead of masking the seams, they made them more obvious.

The thing is, those princess seams on the front are very unusual. Most princess seams are perpendicular to the waist and either run to the armhole or the shoulder seam, rather than creating that odd diamond shape. So the shape is odd and the seams are super-visible, and it starts calling attention to how it’s made. Those seams were in fact the first thing I noticed when I saw this dress, and I stand by what I said at the time: those seams are visible from space.

The seams on the sleeves are even more perplexing. At least the rest of the seams were all trimmed down, but the seam allowances on these are so wide. It’s like somebody forgot to trim and bind those seams or ran out of time. In some shots it appears that the side seams were treated similarly. This is just not standard practice, even if you discount the admittedly time-consuming process of hiding seams in lace. Standard practice is that whatever method you use to finish seam allowances—serging, French seams, flat-felled seams, Hong Kong finish, no finish at all—you use it for all seams in the garment. Especially when the seam allowances are visible from the right side.

Then there’s the buttoned opening of the jacket. Someone tried really hard to mirror the lace across the opening. They didn’t quite make it, which makes it more jarring than not trying to mirror the lace at all would have been.

On the back, the armhole has been cut in the strangest shape I’ve seen in a long time. Because this is lace, you can actually see where her underarm is and how far away the curve of the armhole sits. It looks like someone cut the front and back of the armhole symmetrically. The front is usually cut with a deeper curve than the back because the arm actually sits forward on the body and you need more room for forward movement than backward. This is just a weird choice and feels very much like a mistake.

Lastly, there’s the collar. Well, there’s not a separate collar here, technically, because there is no seam attaching a collar piece to the body. So this is actually a neckline. The salient point is, it’s badly off-center and there’s no good excuse for that. If I had to guess, I’d say someone failed to account for the placket while cutting the fabric. Or possibly that on one front piece, they measured from the edge and on the other front piece they measured from the center front (which in this case would be the line of buttons).

It’s just shoddy workmanship. Inexplicably shoddy workmanship.

Fit, or lack thereof

The bodice is too tight. This is a common problem in JMo’s custom-made costume pieces. There is stress and strain absolutely everywhere at even modest movement. Lace also doesn’t recover from stretching as well as some other fabrics, so the wrinkles caused by that strain tend to remain after the strain is reduced.

Even the bodice of the gown itself is too tight, as evidenced in this BTS picture. I have a very strong suspicion that this is the reason the pleats are off-center in other BTS pictures. Sometimes a garment being too tight will cause it to creep either up or around (or both).

The cummerbund is also too tight, but there are some other issues with that piece which we’ll get to shortly.

Straight lines vs. curves

Straight horizontal elements are rarely a good idea in clothing design. Most of the time, even if you appear to have a horizontal line, it’s actually a gentle curve. Waistlines, for example, are usually drafted a little higher in back and lower in front. It’s more aesthetically pleasing because straight lines on the body are pretty unnatural for most people, and a curve also tends to fit better than a straight horizontal seam.

Why use straight lines when gentle curves are more flattering? Straight lines are easier and faster. We’ll talk about that toward the end.

In this case, straight lines have been substituted in place of the original curves at the neckline of the gown (not the jacket) and the cummerbund. The original has an elegant sweetheart neckline that dips in the middle. The curve suggests the contour of the body without revealing anything. The curve of the cummerbund serves a similar purpose. It’s all about framing her figure in a flattering manner.

What went wrong with Emma’s? The neckline is kind of dipped—maybe a little—but not enough to be noticeable. The cummerbund is straight too, meaning instead of showing off her figure, it flattens everything.

Proportions

The most baffling choice to me in this garment is the changes in proportions of the bodice. The bodice of Helen Rose’s original design is all about the rule of threes. There are three sections—cummerbund, lace over gown, and lace alone—and each is roughly the same size. In particular, the high cummerbund gives visual lift to the bust. It’s all in service of the silhouette. The swan neck and the narrow, extra-long sleeves emphasize the vertical element of the design. The waist is also slightly high, which brings the eye upward to the more interesting parts of the dress.

As you can probably tell, the cummerbund of the costume has been significantly altered from the original. It’s much, much narrower, with a straight top edge instead of a curve. Kelly’s had a few well-defined pleats; this one is a mess. The edge that’s flipped up is also a sign that it’s too tight.

But more important is how the change to proportion and shape affects the whole. Instead of framing the bust, this flat neckline and narrow cummerbund make her torso look flatter. It’s the most baffling change they made in my opinion.

Less baffling is why they changed the train. You can’t really dance in a dress with six feet of fabric trailing behind you. But in that case, why have a train at all? Why have one this anemic? This looks like a mistake, and if they hadn’t done this, I wouldn’t now be complaining about how crappy that hem is. And yeah, the section on quality problems was a while ago, but the wild thing about this dress is that it’s nearly impossible to separate all its problems into single categories, and now you know why it’s taken me nearly a year to get around to writing this post despite the absurd amount of time I’ve been thinking about it.

The length of the veil was likely altered for the same reason (Kelly’s was floor-length), but could they have picked a more awkward length?

Updating period garments

In the post on Emma’s pink date dress, I talked some about recreating period garments. Helen Rose’s design would have been made to wear with a 50s-style bra, obviously, but also a girdle to shape the waist and a crinoline to shape the skirt. Not wearing appropriate undergarments for the design has a huge effect on how the garment looks. If you’re going to make this literal a copy of a garment, then you really need to go all in with the whole look. On the set of various Star Trek series, Robert Blackman famously had custom underwear made for everyone who wore a Starfleet uniform. Undergarments are that important.

If they weren’t going to have JMo in a girdle (which for the record I do not blame anyone for choosing not to do), then the crinoline needed to be larger. A critical part of the silhouette of the original dress is the waist-to-hip ratio. Emma’s version puffs out a little but not nearly as dramatically. The crinoline seems to be the one place where they attempted to modernize the dress at all. But instead of really updating it and using an A-line silhouette, they kept the bell shape and just made it less bell-shaped. Attempting to adhere to the original silhouette but not doing it at all faithfully is a large part of why this copy is so lackluster and unpolished.

Context

The original garment was designed for a royal wedding in a Catholic country, pre-Vatican II. Its modesty is in deference to those factors. This was a gown meant to look regal, even statuesque in photographs.

Emma Swan’s wedding is a musical number. She needed a dress for dancing. What she got is incredibly awkward. The skirt doesn’t swish nicely when she moves. It is, in fact, so heavy that whenever she spins around, she looks like she’s in danger of being knocked down by the skirt’s momentum. The tightness of the jacket is really exacerbated whenever she lifts her arms, which is a thing that happens pretty often while dancing. And the veil—the veil. That thing swings around so wildly that I’m amazed no one on set stepped in and had her take it off. There are shots where it looks like it’s going to whack her in the face.

It just looks like she’s being attacked and swallowed up by this monstrosity of a gown, and it’s shocking to me that anyone with any notion of how clothing behaves would look at the original gown and say “yes, this will be great for a dance number.”

I don’t want to get much into questions of “would Emma Swan wear this,” but... would she? Is she a big fan of Grace Kelly? Hugely fond of 50s style? Where did this dress even come from in the universe of the show? It wasn’t there at the beginning of the episode when she was looking at dresses. Was it custom made by some seamstress in town? Are we supposed to believe it was conjured up with magic? And if that’s the case why didn’t they show us that? It’s a show about fairy tales and they’re not going to take the opportunity to do a Cinderella-style magical dress?

This doesn’t feel like a decision made in the universe of the show. It feels like someone fixated on this dress and to hell with making any logical sense within the story.

Feasibility

Grace Kelly’s gown was made in the MGM costume workshop. Helen Rose had a team of 36 seamstresses to construct it, and it took them six weeks to complete. That’s thousands of hours of labor from some of the most skilled dressmakers in the country.

I don’t know how many people Eduardo Castro had working on this, but I doubt he had a staff of 36. I know they didn’t have six weeks—Castro has said that they only had two weeks to make it. (They also only had one fitting, which... explains a lot.) With those constraints, and a TV budget, making a good copy of this dress simply was not possible.

But Castro and his team have made beautiful gowns under the same restrictions before, so what’s the difference here? Castro’s most successful designs have been ones where the design itself is relatively simple. Most of the garments worn in the show are of relatively basic construction. The richness comes from the textiles used, like sarees or quilted fabrics. Patterns were also reused. Snow’s gown in 1.11 is the same pattern as Belle’s in 1.12. These are smart shortcuts for a workshop that doesn’t have unlimited time or budget. The latter in particular had a twofold benefit: it established a consistent style for the universe of the show, and it streamlined the work for Castro’s team.

The worst costumes produced for this show have been the ones that step outside of the design language Castro established early on, notably Elsa and Ingrid’s gowns. This one suffers from the same problem. Instead of starting from a known pattern, they had to start from scratch. Pattern drafting requires time, and as I noted in an earlier section, the jacket in particular has some unusual and challenging features that would need a lot of precision to get right. By picking a design where they couldn’t rely on the time-saving methods they had developed over the years, their ability to produce a high-quality garment was immediately hampered. This is probably part of the reason they used straight lines instead of curves to the detriment of the garment, why the seam finishes on the lace are so inconsistent and bad, and why something as simple as the pleats on the skirt look so sloppy.

And that’s not even getting into the budget. The materials alone for Kelly’s dress cost more than $70,000 in today’s money. The lace jacket was made from Brussels lace made in the 1830s. This was quite simply not something that could be replicated well on the budget of a network television series.

There is to my mind an ethical issue as well. Days of publicity went by before anyone mentioned that this dress was a copy of Helen Rose’s work. Almost immediately a narrative sprang up that Morrison had “helped design” Emma’s wedding gown, but this notion is patently false. No design went into this, only minor tweaks of another artist’s seminal work.

Helen Rose was highly acclaimed in her day, but her lasting legacy is Grace Kelly’s wedding gown. Her work deserves better homage than this poorly conceived and poorly executed disaster.

#1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #emma swan #ouat costume details #ouat costume historical reference