#which is baffling because it's the season i most associate them with

[emyn-arnens]

Last Line/Idea Tag

Thanks for tagging me @dreamingthroughthenoise! From an Aegnor/Andreth WIP I picked up and started tinkering with again:

By the time the moon grew full again, the snowdrops would be pushing their snowy heads up through the frosty ground.

Tagging @camille-lachenille @grey-gazania @curufiin if you haven't been tagged yet!

#despite all the fics i've written about them i've never done a wintry one #which is baffling because it's the season i most associate them with #i'd hoped to finish this one this winter and have it be seasonally appropriate but i think my jan-feb writer's block nixed that. oh well. #tag games

[fagraymond]

TITLE : In time, Sugar sweet (NSFW)

PLOT : He's known Penelope for years, and he had yearned for her touch, and her love, and her attention for equally as long.

WARNING(s) : a lot of emotions, if it isn't obvious, this has a load of sex things here and i dont know how but there's details about solo sessions here too because i got carried away

EXTRA : ran out of time so. there will be. edits even after i post this <3 but here you go babes, my somewhat lengthy garceid fic because i can't control my love for them, also self beta read because what can you expect from me, set in season 4 and up? after he turns 30 because that's how i calculated the times and everything would fall apart if i literally wrote him any younger than 30 ( oh and the AGES, the ages and the timeline in general drove me nuts, there's no time consistency with this show i swear, i just made garcia and reid have a three year age difference )

"Penelope please"  He all but begged.

desperately asking to be shown even just the smallest illusion of touch, allowing himself to go dumb for the possibility — like the millionth time that night.

arching his hips towards her, in the most vulnerable, least innocent sweetest way and Penelope did nothing but watch.

Watched as he ached for her so openly, it was almost hard to believe that this was the same man she had worked with for years.

Normally so in his head with his constant brainstorming, filled with patience and animated expressions that would never border on something so carefree like he was now, in front of her. And she was the cause of this, the professional facade is broken down to someone as drunk as she was for him.

He was the sweetest thing, but she wanted to see him become even sweeter. Just for her. "Relax for me, your wait will pay off I promise you my sweets" and those words made him burn. along with the words lingering in the air that he knows like a popular symphony.

Her promise; I'll give it to you, only if you were to be so kind as to lose yourself to me. and He was ready to do that, with no hesitancy. to give himself up for Penelope Garcia.

Dr. Spencer Reid has been associated with Special Agent Penelope Garcia for 8 years; 96 months, 417 weeks, 2,920 days, 70,128 hours, 4,207,680 minutes, and 252,460,800 seconds and never once has he been this close to her, physically.

There were a few close calls. fingertips touching, hips bumping, and shared hugs with the identical urge to never let each other go, but that was before there was a spark, a mutually reciprocated spark. Before long gone as the past, when the duo was still so stuck in their heads, thinking that the other side would never see a romantic opportunity ever develop between them, during their job, and at the eye of the storm, there laid an incredibly oblivious Derek Morgan.

And by proxy, the barrier. As he had so kindly named himself during his incredibly detailed shovel talk with the couple.

Which Spencer had thought, at the time, to be a little dramatic yet as he reflected beyond those silly little moments spent with banter, It was almost obvious— too obvious that Spencer's days were dulled down majorly because of the closeness they shared.

None to him, because of course, Never to him. Just famously, Derek Morgan and Penelope Garcia, lovers made for one another; soulmates to an extent that came off to Reid as baffling. No matter how bad that sounded on paper.

He had even shared advice once, to the flirtatious pair. when he was a spectator given front row seats to the two during the age of 27, but he had not told Penelope yet, He was a coward to risk their friendship for something as taboo in the workplace as it was; the chance of being her partner for as long as she'll have him. 

5 years, 60 months, 1,826 days, 43,830 hours, 2,629,800 minutes, and 157,788,000 seconds with a portion of those wasted by him pondering when he should've seen it. 

Barely subtle hints with the words 'I love you too, Spencer Reid' were plastered on the walls wherever and whenever she was there with him. In neon pens, with stickers and glitters and a lot of lipstick surrounding them, and blinking hearts.

Another one of their many days shared, was spent in a mansion.

9 years; 108 months, 469 weeks, 3287 days, 78,894 hours, 4,733,640 minutes, and 284,018,400 seconds and never once has he been this close to her, emotionally.

another celebration with Italian food, smiles showing teeth, drunk stumbles and amused hello's from sober people towards their loved ones who couldn't recognize them through the haze that is Alcohol. Nothing surprising in the Rossi mansion, at least to the BAU, who were the stars of the night.

They always were, they knew their ins and outs, even when Hotch tried his best to deny that the porch wasn't the comfiest thing in the world to a sleep-drunk Prentiss and a William LaMontagne who had no idea what was going on but he was way too wasted to not join in on being screamed at by the unit chief.

All of it was viewable from their spot in the kitchen. Alone and not wanting to join in on the fun they had spectated through the glass doors that should've drowned all sounds out if the bunch weren't screaming. Much to Rossi's neighbor's relief, and theirs. wanting nothing but to confront something between them, in privacy. the topic that had left tear stains on so many zebra prints and dyed sweaters to be passed off as unfortunate spills, just from the thoughts of having it.

So they moved to a different room, to another floor from how ridiculously many there were, according to Reid. Few suggestive comments were left here and there as they wondered around the halls, only to settle on a guess bedroom, at least they hoped it was.

"Let's hope that there are extra sheets because after tonight? It'll be almost impossible to tell that they were sheets in the first place" Garcia had said, jokingly making cat claw motions with her hands at the Doctor as he locked the room's door.

They needed privacy, that was his excuse. And if she had seen the flush in his face when she was merciful enough to not mention it.

It had taken them a good few minutes to even start the conversation, trading awkward hi's and hello's over and over that Penelope had to hold back the floods of flirtatious comments to attempt to lighten up the situation, but she knew that Reid wouldn't appreciate that, obvious from his pacing and well-hidden jittering.

And something at the back of her mind burned because she dreaded the topic too. The topic of them, as something. Disconnected from Reid and Garcia but someone to each other as Spencer and Penelope. No professionality, in their most vulnerable states.

Not as if it was a bad thing, of course. It was everything they could ever want, something they could only dream of, no matter how dirty those dreams could get in some nights. Something that they would trade the world for, just to have a taste; of being each other's someone. they wouldn't care about the time they could spend as lovers, they wouldn't hesitate to take the titles up as boyfriend and girlfriend even if they knew they would have the same fate as Rossi and his wives had. No, they wouldn't hesitate.

But despite that, It had taken so much courage for Reid to lean against her, with as much passion as they did whenever they hugged except there was something else under those simple actions they've memorized. Words traded with heavy double meanings left behind floating in the room like ships with too many winds in their sails, they didn't wait long to finally join the BAU, in their endeavors.

And at that moment.

How Reid glowed under the fairy lights, how perfectly framed Penelope's face was beneath the flickering rainbow flurries that had begun to blur as they sunk into their little world. For as long as she had him, Spencer Reid swam and never sunk, kept afloat with her pressure against his comforting weight when they had begun to slow dance to heavy terrible club remixes that blasted in their ears.

The spark; the one Reid had for years, ignited at that moment. no matter how humorous the settings may have been. Interpreted as the time Penelope realized how much she finally loved the young genius back, except of course she was a young genius of her own, mind you, with her little dirty secrets of her own.

No, not the nights spent thinking of the man; bending him over, kissing him lavishly, spoiling him with arrays of hickeys on his untouched beautifully scarred skin. No, none of that. Her secret was that; she felt affection for him, before that situation.

As obvious as the signs were that she made herself, it wasn't when he was 27. Beyond that, as cliche as it sounded; the fire in her heart started sturring so sweetly, was when she was 26, 3 years older than the other.

The first meeting wasn't even formal, a simple hello and a little lift of his eyebrows only to move on to looking somewhere else shouldn't have made her heart beat in her ears that loud, but her heart did. And it scared her when she came home, when she came back to find that she had already started breaking an FBI insituated rule. On her first day.

Had the moment she saw him, sitting cross-legged and unashamed with his hair slicked back and still so young to be at the scene like her, behind a so-named Derek Morgan, equally unashamed. It ticked to her that maybe, just maybe by chance. 

The thrill of using her knowledge to create a better environment for both the new and old generations plus being removed from the FBI's watchlist for her supposed justified crimes wouldn't be the only fuelling thoughts that would keep her going to work every. single. day.

Only to put it out with overpreparing and thoughts overthought. to meet the man again, the following day, and the next and the next until she can see his face so vividly in her mind, that she can only hope that maybe some day she can work with him, engage in conversations, without feeling like an aray of fireworks, craving the attention of crowds. Specifically, the crowd that contained him.

Only for that day to never come.

She wished it was joke, but she thinks very frequently about the doctor. very frequently, that her tendency has bled into her dreams.

A man with knowledge decades beyond his person, the only one on par with her 16-bit rhythm game, how could he ever see her in the same light? it would take a lot of time, for that possibility to breach the surface of her fantasy world.

And only 8 years beyond, would her thoughts be ever so true, once again under the gaze of the night with their shoes; worn-in converse and her glass slippers on the greener grass, blonde and cherub curls blending as the night went on past them.

Sharing body heat as if they would forever be cold until they were in the same vicinity of each other. There but barely touching the way they wanted to, so close yet so far and It had been like that for what felt like centuries, convincing themselves that they can wait.

Allowing their world to remain untainted with lust, to allow the light of emotions and struggles to be swept away by shivering winds so all that is left is the air that comes out of Spencer's winded mouth, as he let Penelope do whatever she pleases with his body.

Emotions are shown through the cracks that he had so nicely allowed go unmaintained, so she can see who he is for her. Someone vulnerable, someone ashamed and scared. Like anybody else, his knowledge didn't make him inhuman, but people treated him like it did, and it made him ache. And he had let Garcia see that.

All from his honeydew eyes, and she swears it was the trick of the light but wants, wants that she had familiarized herself with by her discretion— sprouted like a beanstalk in his eyes, something she had so foolishly thought the doctor was incapable of. Had he been so innocent looking in her eyes; oblivious to the nights with his wandering hands imagined as hers, caressing himself in the most perfect of spots. Nights spent with his fingers stretching himself out, the angelically sinful scene blocked by green-colored blankets.

It had been a topic spent under dimming lights and smooth tired whispers in the late mornings, grumpy from being waken up so early. Craving something that they knew would regret; would they be foolish enough like they were and to let themselves indulge in their pleasures, to risk being only that replaying in their brains? the only thing their body craves and craves until their blackout weeks are spent with twitching muscles?

Yes, they were.

Shared kisses, promises that became true. The moonlights, the gifts on their 6th Christmas spent with joys and jollies all around it made their cheeks ache. I love you's, not-so-subtle hand-holding under the conference table, smiles sent their way from their friends.

All of those were great, but how would it feel like to go another year, 365 days, 52 weeks, 8,766 hours, 525,960 minutes, and 31,557,600 seconds, no different from the next but instead with a barrier broken between them that consisted of their sexual fantasies coming through? what new intimacies would sprout, how careless, shameless would they become for one another?

Which circles them back to where they were now:

He had thought about it too much, Spencer. 

from the early times of 7 o'clock until the shades of beautiful crimson faded in a mix of pinks and became replaced by black, with no stars lighting up the dimness in the city, nothing in the night sky, except for the moon; that knew. that it had decided to make him look so beautiful twisted in Garcia's bed, his hair falling in his face— hand trying to find a place to cling onto as surges of stimulation raked up his body.

The bed in New England, USA, the bed that Derek Morgan had told them to not have too much fun in. The same bed Derek Morgan had hand-picked for the couple because it was his home renovation project, and they were having sex in it. Betraying their promise to him, almost easily with no hesitation.

Moans and wants to fall unashamed, something he never would've dared do if only a few years ago. But all of that was forgotten in a snap, with only him and her in the world, refusing to believe anybody existed outside of them, and his voice started to drown out from even his ears except hers, her ears that were picking up every shift— every shuffle of the duvet whenever he arched, whenever he moaned, whenever he begged for her; for more.

The sight was ethereal.

It was everything she had ever wanted, presented to her on a silver platter, and she was eating it up, or in better words, eating him up.

Penelope murmured tenderly against Reid's stomach, trying to urge the shaking male to take a breather; tenseness does not make the sexy process smooth, according to her expertise and Reid would believe anything she would say in a heartbeat. 

Especially when she made him feel so good; under her, practically hovering over him with his legs draped over her shoulders, and he knew that the position they always manage to find themselves in, never failed to give her the greatest access to his sensitive areas.

All the blood rushing. "Just keep still, my little love bug" Because of her, and It made him shiver. As she pinched his sides, giving him the slightest leeway of clarity before fading again to the haze that is his arousal. Unashamedly, he was thinking with his dick.

Which she never even attempted to touch, to touch him there until the end of their sessions. Because it was the main attraction, and she promises it in soft drags with her nails that were painted glow in the dark; that she'll get on to it, and with her kisses that trailed from the inner of his thighs to his cheeks that it'll feel so good. 

But only if he was a good boy about it.

And rest assured, he was being such a good, brave boy about it.

#this reached over 2K words btw #penelope garcia smut #spencer reid smut #garceid #garceid smut #penelope garcia x spencer reid #garcia x reid #penelope garcia x spencer reid smut #garcia x reid smut #hi i just love emotions #criminal minds smut #spencer reid fanfiction #penelope garcia fanfiction

[kim-ruzek]

this is just my opinion but i think the upstead crazies might seem more in number and more of an issue bc the fandom in general is bigger to begin with. and truthfully your posts seem very victim complex to me about burzek fans, and lumping most of us together is insulting bc even though most of us hated this season, we don’t really bother with your fandom bc we don’t like Adam and kim

I don't really get what you mean about me seeming very victim complex but okay? Probably because I don't use as harsh language maybe? But that's just because that'll be bitchy, and I'm only bitchy back to those who are bitchy first. And because Burzek fans follow me and as much as ridiculous fans in all fandoms including burzek makes me roll my eyes I don't want to potentially isolate my fellow fans who might think they fall into that category. But I still don't pull my punches when criticising and hold them to the same standard I do other fans.

And I'm not lumping most of you together. I've literally repeatedly made a distinction because I want it to be known that I most definitely do not colour everyone with one brush. Because I'm not about that. (And trust me, it can be hard sometimes because sometimes my mind's instinct is to associate upstead fans to the few nasty fans who sent me racist shit because I remember it frequently whenever stuff like this is brought up but I know that was just a few rotten apples and that all of you, even most of the people I think is a tad delusional would chuck them out way before they spoil the barrel and so is unfair to hold their crimes against the majority).

You don't bother my fandom? Okay then you're not the stans I'm critiquing. It's simple as and if you read what I wrote you'd get that. Instead I can only assume, that if you do normally have comprehensive reading skills, that you just skimmed my posts, made this conclusion that I was lumping everyone together and sent this. Which in the future if you're going to send an ask like this, please use critical thinking and actually read everything that is said so that you have a comprehensive idea of what I said. And if you don't want to put that work in on a post written by someone who thinks there's a huge amount of hypocrites in your boring white piece of bread ship fandom then simply don't engage.

But if you do engage, please make sure you're informed.

And if this is on my criticism of upstead fans not liking this season let me make this clear once and for all: it is perfectly fine to not like a season, for whatever reason. I am not disputing that. My criticism was purely about the hypocritical nature of upstead stans -- again I'm using this to mean the crazies that have just exponentially grown since Jesse left-- but never did I assert that they had no right not to like the season.

I'm a big believer in critiquing things. I love doing so, even when during s8 and 9 I was told to get over it by your fellow fans and I truly believe looking at your show under a critical eye is a good and healthy thing (although I don't fault anyone who doesn't). But saying that, I also believe that if you are going to critisize something you can't just go half in, you have to go in all the way. Especially when making broad statements the fans I'm critising are.

And that you need to address your biases. Upstead is your ship and it doesn't matter if I find it baffling, they're your precious babies but if you're going to take a critical eye, you need to address how that may colour your opinion. I do this. I have had a jerk response to something, reexamined it and realised I was looking through the lens of my burzek coloured glasses. I've also reexamined things to make sure my dislike of fans or honest utter bafflement at how upstead fans see their ship as (like it is truly utterly baffling to me. I get it logically obviously but it's just so baffling to hear people describe it as the greatest love story) to make sure that wasn't colouring my views.

That's how your criticise things. And if you don't want to do that, then you can't criticise. And it is more baffling to me that people don't get that, or that people don't realise they don't want to become part of this modern fandom toxicity that unfortunately is getting more and more common.

#ree's asks #chicago pd #ree has thoughts #I'm begging y'all to develop comprehensive reading skills #and critical thinking skills

[theminecraftbee]

Re: your winged!Grian origin post

I joined the HC fandom circa early s7, and I just want to say that I think we as a fandom are sort of retroactively putting importance onto the whole bird symbolism. Yes, it's important and does make some sense, but back then it definitely felt like probably 80% of winged Grians were Watcher Grian (inspired by ATUS) and parrot or chicken or any other wing was the outlier. I understand not wanting to place too much importance on any one particular fic, but it's hard to overstate just how much ATUS was THE watcher fic. No one except the most niche fans had watched Evo, but suddenly this was The One Thing About Grian (the most popular hermit) so everyone in the fandom had to read that to understand any fanworks, basically. And a huge amount of Watcher knowledge that became fanon, especially back then, was extrapolated from ATUS, full stop.

TLDR. yes it's good not to raise one fic on a pedestal but I also think we shouldn't be trying to erase ATUS influence after the fact. Feels like a weird attempt to change history

(Also I swear this isn't ATUS propaganda I only read it the once. I just legitimately think it's an important part of hermit history and am trying to help, so sorry if this comes off mean or anything!)

so, disclaimer, i wasn't there in the fandom at the time, but my own like, editorialized thoughts on this, as opposed to informative (which means my own opinions are in here and you may not agree with them, this isn't meant to be a factual accounting of fandom history anymore):

i don't think you're entirely wrong, which is why i went out of my way to include it; at least on tumblr, i think that fic probably had an outsized influence on how people write watchers and the winged grian stuff. as someone who wasn't around, the main way i know that is "people still discourse about it", "specific design elements that weren't super present in canon (or present at all in hermitcraft canon) are really present in fanworks", and "i know full well that, while people claim cleo said she read atus, she only said that she read a fic where grian had wings and something about how he was sad a lot if i remember right, and the fact that people extrapolated that to mean atus says some pretty strong things to me". like, all of these things together is why i think atus clearly had a lot of influence here.

that being said, i do have people in my comments like "oh yeah i realized he liked flying so i drew him with an elytra a lot, and then i saw people adding feathers so i started doing that". that seems especially common with people who were, say, on the reddit at the time - they didn't have the fandom context that was causing it on tumblr, so they either A) originated giving him wings on their own or B) picked it up from other artists and made assumptions about where it came from.

the thing is that while atus clearly had a huge influence on the older fandom... i bet, show of hands, most of the newer fandom members who joined late season 7 and beyond? have not actually read atus. or, if they have, that isn't their main influence for the winged grian art - other winged grian art is. that's how stuff like this ends up spreading in the fandom. hell, that's what we're seeing with things like xb's fish properties - one or two people who were big in the fandom liked it, and other artists picked it up from them, and it wouldn't surprise me if it really does become a ubiquitous character trait of his that people are baffled by at this rate. the hermitcraft fandom does that a lot.

that newer grian artists don't have that fandom context so they are drawing him with wings because they know he is meant to have them, and are making up the reason they think he should have them. atus has, at this point, been mostly removed from the wings equation. the watcher thing hasn't - he's never losing that association - but specifically atus's influence isn't really a major factor so much anymore. besides, as i said: i see him with parrot wings far more often than i see him with purple ones these days, and it's a little silly to say that that's not because of season 7, when it absolutely is.

all of this is to say that when it comes to the wing stuff atus is absolutely important which is why i included it but i sort of get the sense grian would have ended up with wings even without atus, if only because of the parrot stuff in season 7 when combined with the fandom's specific love of non-humaning people.

as for the watcher stuff... so here's the thing. i think fanon watcher stuff is absolutely heavily influenced by atus and it wouldn't be an inescapable part of grian's character without it, if only because evo just is not that popular compared to hermitcraft and people wouldn't be dragging all the evo stuff up in the specific way hermitcraft fans do if atus hadn't happened. so many of the watcher tropes people use originate clearly from that fic.

and like. okay. i agree with people when they say a lot of those tropes would have cropped up around watchers anyway. i know the "the watchers are evil" thing is a massively debated plot point but it's such low-hanging fruit people would have grabbed it. i have seen the watcher statues, people would have grabbed the angel imagery. people would have grabbed the purple. it's more the specific confluence of ideas that seems to have originated with atus, and more specifically, the popularity of doing watcher stuff in the first place.

once again, to be clear: the watcher stuff has undergone a LOT of fandom mutation. i think most new fans hear about it and don't know about atus, and even maybe watch evo themselves, which is neat. but evo... is not as big as hermitcraft! evo is an old series! and like. yhs or even vault hunters don't get as integrated into the characters as evo does, and that's almost certainly because it blew up at one point. and while i think most current watcher people do their own thing, i think it would be disingenuous to say that atus didn't have an influence on the fact that the fandom does not let go of the watcher thing for grian, just like trying to claim that the superhero fic trend in dsmp didn't come from tommy's unbeatable method. like, yes, the people doing it now aren't necessarily doing it because of that fic, or using the tropes because of that fic; they've picked them up themselves. at the same time, it's hard to say the popularity didn't start there.

i also know it sucks to say that, since a lot of people have some shitty memories related to atus, which i won't comment on because i was really not there for that discourse and i don't want to put words in people's mouths. it also sucks because people hear that and think people are saying they aren't being original/they're making things up, or that it's bad that they do the watcher things, and they want to defend it. i get that. like i said, a lot of the tropes that we attribute to atus probably would have been associated with watcher stuff anyway. its just that watcher!grian would have been a lot more niche without it, i think.

(with the possible exception of if martyn had still done his thing at the end of last life; we have no way to know how much he was influenced by fanon or not on that, given that he and grian were the actual writers for evo lore and all that. that's a different can of worms though we're talking about hermitcraft here.)

this also comes from me as an outsider, someone who really only entered the hermitcraft fandom early season 8, and only started watching mid season 7 (after the turf war, even). this is my observation of the trends as i've seen them. it probably feels different when you're an insider, as well, and were there at the time this stuff came about. and i admit some of this comes from being someone who joined the fandom late and has had trouble picking up the why for the watcher stuff. i get it with the "grian has wings", that's constantly reaffirmed as a headcanon, but a lot of the weird specifics of watcher tropes continue to baffle me as someone who isn't really interested in watching evo and mostly just wants to do hermitcraft stuff. (i use the watcher stuff sometimes as it suits me, as i do with basically all the fanon. i'm mostly neutral to it i actually have stronger opinions about hels stuff than i do watcher stuff when it comes to 'things that are largely fanon', lol.)

anyway atus is also fascinating to me because it's like. reading it now it's like, okay? it isn't bad, i'm not saying that, but it's also not a masterpiece, and it very heavily reads to me as "this fic got lucky to be in the right place at the right time to have the influence it had, by being the first to do a trope other people would latch onto later", and i think that kind of way fics work is interesting as someone who writes fics myself. (for the record, that's kind of how i consider black box too - it's fine, it does what i wanted it to do, but also it is as popular as it is because it happened to be in the right place at the right time and was the first decently-written thing to do a trope other people would latch onto later.) i can see why people would be annoyed to have the stuff they do that they consider unrelated to it constantly attributed to it, especially given the amount that it's just become established fanon by now that people don't have to know any of the original context to be able to use.

uhhh that was long the tl;dr is that the wing stuff almost certainly would have happened eventually anyway from what i can tell and a lot of the tropes we use for watchers probably would have also shown up anyway, but it's also silly to pretend that atus isn't a huge part of why it's as popular of a set of tropes as it is, because it is a part of that. that doesn't make any of the tropes bad or unoriginal though and i think people should keep doing them they're cool

#answered #discourse #(not really but i'm putting that tag there to be safe) #and to be clear I WAS NOT HERE I CANNOT ARBITRATE THIS #this is just what i've like. picked up and my assumptions #also i am like. i want to express that i am aggressively neutral on how much i like a lot of these tropes it depends on who's writing them #this is not meant to be a judgement in any way please don't read it as that please don't take any of this out of context #i just think this fandom history stuff is interesting and want to explore it #winged grian history

[caffeinatedseri]

Dead Apple Light Novel

Recently, I decided to buy LN 5, Dead Apple, purely because I’m a sucker for all of BSD’s light novels, so this post will revolve around what I took away from this novel. 

Dead Apple is Canon

Since the story jumps around in the timeline a lot, I had originally thought that Dead Apple took place outside of canon (especially with Atsushi’s flashback). 

However, a particular part of Asagiri’s afterword stuck out to me:

Now, allow me a moment to discuss some of the particulars of Dead Apple. Chronologically, the story takes place after the second season of the anime — in other words, after the war with the Guild, which puts Dead Apple somewhere between the ninth and tenth volumes of the manga. 

The novel also ended up affecting the main story in numerous ways, and I’m sure this new experience will continue to influence my future work as well.

It’s not unusual for a light novel to insert itself into the main timeline (see 55 Minutes which takes place in the 10th volume), but it’s nice to have confirmation that the same applies to Dead Apple. 

Of course, just because a work isn’t canon compliant (see BEAST), doesn’t mean that it has no potential for further analysis or it doesn’t bring any added complexity to the main plot. Regardless, this post serves as somewhat of a precursor to my other posts concerning Dead Apple since I have a tendency to talk about it a lot, and I’d like to establish a basis for a lot of my posts. 

Differences between the Movie and Light Novel

In the afterword of the light novel, Hiro Iwahata (the author of this LN) said:

“Furthermore, I worked on this book under Asagiri’s supervision, meaning there are several lines in certain scenes that differ from the movie. It might even be fun comparing the two!  Nothing would make me happier than the fans enjoying this novel alongside the movie.”

As per Iwahata’s request, I went into the light novel, looking for differences between it and the movie. However, the novel is surprisingly, almost identical to the movie (maybe not surprising considering it is a “movie novelization”).

Because the differences are so miniscule, I believe they hold an even greater significance, since Asagiri must have wanted to change these specific details for a certain reason. 

Some of the differences I talk about might be unimportant, but I did my best to catch everything that was changed from the movie.

1. The movie doesn’t mention SKK as a part of the Dragon’s Head Conflict, but the novel says, “Some fought under the alias Twin Dark.” 

This probably means that SKK became a pair either before the Dragon’s Head Conflict or during (although I’m pretty sure that the “organization” they destroyed over night was Shibusawa’s organization).

2. When Dazai says that he would’ve continued killing people in the mafia if it weren’t for Oda, Atsushi has little to no reaction in the movie; I would describe it as maybe a hesitant or concerned feeling.

In the novel, Atsushi has a more outward reaction.

““Huh...?!” Atsushi was baffled. He had no idea whether that was true. What did Dazai mean by that? (...) The melancholy Atsushi felt from Dazai had disappeared, and Dazai continued to speak in his usual lighthearted manner.”

Not only does he react verbally, but the novel also adds an inner monologue (mainly for Atsushi) that can’t be portrayed as well in movie format. 

To me, this change highlights how Atsushi sees Dazai purely as a good person; he reacts in such a startled manner because he believes that Dazai is too good of a person to be in the mafia killing people (which we know Atsushi hates). This trend reoccurs throughout the story, of Atsushi turning a blind eye to Dazai’s “bad side.”

3. This one isn’t at all the movie’s fault, but the novel gives a lot more clues as to what the “dead apple” and the dagger in the apple motif represents.

The first time it appears is when Kunikida and Tanizaki meet the Special Division’s agent, but they find out that he’s already dead.

“It [the apple] was, without a doubt, a simple fruit... save for the fact that there was a knife sticking out of it as if to condemn the taste of sin. A blade had been driven into the symbol of original sin. A dreary, ominous aura, oozed from the ripe fruit like venom. 

Throughout the novel, it seems to associate the “dead apple” motif with Fyodor pretty strongly, especially since this paragraph ties in Fyodor’s ideals nicely with the symbolism of the apple and dagger.

The apple represents sin, the very first sin — which you could interpret as sin at its purest — while the dagger represents the condemning of such sin. However, the apple can also potentially symbolize life, while the dagger stabbing into life can mean death. 

Fyodor’s ideals revolve around “removing the sin” of ability users (represented by an apple in this case) but he does so through manipulation. The dagger is associated with stealth and deception, which is fitting with what Fyodor does to “remove the sin” of ability users.

However, he’s also taking the lives of ability users in this process, hence stabbing the apple, coincidentally committing another sin in his attempt to relinquish all sin.

4. In the “Snow White” Oda and Dazai flashback, everything is identical to the movie (word for word), but there is some additional narration.

“It was an alarming sight — Dazai sounded like he was in a trance. It was as if he was ignoring all this world had to offer while in pursuit of something else.”

I’ve talked about this particular scene before here, but the gist is that Dazai was discreetly talking about himself while referring to Snow White. 

Dazai joined the mafia because he believed that the violence (or true human nature) would give him a reason to live, but we already know that this kind of thinking was flawed.  Thus, this line most likely means that Dazai was ignoring all of the “good” qualities of the world while pursuing a reason to live, which inevitably wouldn’t work. 

5. Right after the flashback, when Dazai takes the pill, the novel really sells the act of “Dazai walking towards his death and going to the evil side.” 

Personally, this scene in the movie felt more open to interpretation after you’ve seen the ending. You could say that Dazai took the antidote and said “Being on the side that saves people is more beautiful,” because his plan is to continue living to save more people. 

However, the novel throws away any possible double meaning with this paragraph:

“Dazai then reached for the pill with his bandaged hand, neatly picked it up, and slowly brought it to his lips — just like Snow White and the sweet, poisoned apple. The venomous red-and-pure-white-pill disappeared inside his mouth.”

After Dazai’s tangent on how Snow White could’ve committed suicide out of despair, the narration compares him directly to Snow White. With the added venomous pill stated outright, it only further cements the idea that Dazai’s actually committing suicide here.

I don’t particularly like this change, because it feels like this moment was set up entirely just to divert the audience’s expectations, rather than it be a standalone scene that makes sense when considering the rest of the story. (It might not necessarily be a change, possibly just a rough translation from movie to novel). 

6. When Atsushi wakes up from his nightmare, there’s some additional inner monologue:

Everything’s okay. I’m not the same person I was when I lived at the orphanage. I have friends. I have a place where I belong — the Armed Detective Agency. Things are different now.

The anime (and in turn the movie) tends to downplay the effects of Atsushi’s trauma — probably due to the limitations of anime — but regardless the novel portrays it much better with how Atsushi’s trauma affects practically every aspect of his life. 

7. I thought Fukuzawa’s ability only gave his subordinates control over their abilities, but the novel says:

“Yukichi Fukuzawa and his skill, All Men are Equal, a peculiar ability that allowed him to suppress and control his subordinates’ skills.”

Does this mean that Fukuzawa could control and suppress all of the agency’s abilities? It could be a weird translation, but it seems oddly specific.

8. This detail isn’t actually a novel exclusive, but it is an extremely small detail that I missed while watching the movie, so I figured I would add it here too.

“the phantom’s notebook had the word Compromise written on the cover. A copy of himself that didn’t follow ideals but made compromises was an abomination to Kunikida.”

Considering how abilities act as the shadow to every character in this story, this is a nice detail that shows how Kunikida’s inner desire is to compromise, because carrying such heavy ideals is undoubtedly a burden. However, because he holds onto his ideals so strongly, it becomes his biggest weakness AND his biggest strength.

9. There’s a super small detail added to this scene with Dazai, Fyodor, and Shibusawa. When Dazai suggests that Shibusawa could be saved by an angel or a demon, the following exchange occurs:

“Hmm... Maybe an angel?” Dazai picked up the skull on the table. “Or maybe a demon?” “It’s obvious what both of your true intentions are, if you ask me.” The third man mirthfully cackled and took the skull from Dazai’s hand.

In the movie, Dazai doesn’t pick up anything, so as a result Fyodor doesn’t take anything from Dazai either. 

Because Fyodor walked into the scene after Dazai suggested that an angel or demon would save Shibusawa, I strongly suspect that this was foreshadowing future events in which Fyodor does “save” Shibusawa by giving him his memories back.

The novel adds more to this foreshadowing by having Dazai pick up the skull before it’s taken by Fyodor — essentially having Fyodor take the cards out of Dazai’s hands and put them in his favor. 

It’s also worth pointing out that the skull is also the object that Fyodor uses to revive Shibusawa into a supernatural ghost of some sorts at the end of the story.

10. This may be just a difference in translations but in the movie, Shibusawa refers to Fyodor as “Demon Fyodor-kun”, whereas in the novel Fyodor is called “Fyodor the Conjurer.” (Ango uses the Conjurer title as well).

In western esotericism, a conjurer is a person who summons supernatural beings, like spirits, demons, or God.

This slightly changes the connotation of Fyodor’s title from a inhuman being of pure malicious intent to just a human who summons these otherworldly beings. This idea also aligns with Shibusawa’s revival, since he’s some sort of supernatural ghost that was “summoned” by Fyodor. 

11. Skipping past the parts where Kyouka and Akutagawa regain their abilities, and Chuuya talks to Ango in the government facility, (since they have little to no changes between the movie and the novel) there is a somewhat significant detail changed in Draconia once again with Dazai and Fyodor.

In the novel, this glowing ball of energy from the movie is actually described as an apple: 

The two lights melted into one and spun until they formed a juicy sphere. They had produced a single apple — a juicy, poisoned apple red as blood.

It birthed a skill — and an extremely powerful one at that — the ability to absorb. Every last crystal adorning Draconia’s walls was sucked into the apple with intense force. Ten — a hundred — a thousand — two thousand — every last one was greedily devoured by the apple...

The apple swelled as it absorbed the numerous crystals until the red light became hotter than the surface of hell.

Since the “dead apple” motif aligns with Fyodor’s character, we can assume that the apple is representative of sin, and sin is associated with abilities, as Fyodor believes.

This strange poisoned apple is made of abilities and has an ability (the ability to absorb), and it commits a sin (greed) in its devouring of other abilities; it’s also hotter than “hell”, which is a very specific connection that leads me to this idea:

My theory is that a normal apple represents life, while a poisoned apple (or dead apple), indicative of a stained, impure life, represents sin. Fyodor believes abilities are akin to sin (what a clever rhyme), therefore all of their lives are sinful.

12. This is arguably the most insignificant change of this entire post, but I feel obligated to put it here regardless since it was different from the movie. When the Special Division detects the singularity of Shibusawa’s dragon form in the novel, it says:

“Abnormal values for singularity are increasing! They’re twice — no, 2.5 times higher than they were six years ago.”

In the movie, the number is five times higher instead.

Why did this number change? Is it significant? I honestly have no idea (I’m surprised I even caught this), but it’s there and I had to document it anyways. 

13. The novel adds this narration for Shibusawa when he gets his memories back and he’s in the orphanage’s room with Atsushi:

“Shibusawa clearly recalled the events from six years ago. Fyodor had enticed him to go to the orphanage where he tortured a young Atsushi... until Atsushi fought back and killed him.”

There’s two things to take away from this: Fyodor had known Shibusawa for at least six years, and Fyodor had been planning the events of Dead Apple since at least six years ago. 

I find it hard to believe that Fyodor’s plan was thwarted by Dazai, because of how Fyodor demonstrated his ability to plan ahead in the main series, but I’m not sure what the long term effects of this plan could be. If Shibusawa succeeded, then it could’ve aligned with the DOA’s goals, but once again I don’t think Fyodor’s plan was actually foiled.

14. Super minor once again, but right after Shibusawa gets revived, the last sentence of chapter 5 is,

“Nobody would ever see the smile on Fyodor’s face.” 

Honestly, I think this was just added to create an ominous tone, but it’s a nice detail regardless.

15. As the red fog spreads across Yokohama, there’s a good part of exposition that connects the “dead apple” motif to Fyodor once again:

“After the red fog devoured the earth, the planet would undoubtedly look like a floating red apple from space. There would be no humans left on its surface, nor any signs they ever existed. It would be a true paradise, and with that, the Dead Apple would finally be complete. A dead planet covered in red fog — that was what Fyodor had planned and sought out.

Nothing other than death could wash away the original sin of man, so it was only fitting for the sin, which started with a fruit, to end with one as well. 

It’s pretty long, but I like the way this passage is written, more specifically the last part since it fits well with the sinful poisoned apple idea.

It also aligns with Fyodor’s ideals of creating a true paradise, free of ability users. However, if Fyodor had planned to have the Earth covered in fog, that could mean that his plan was actually stopped by Dazai and Atsushi in the end.

16. Shibusawa has a few additional lines of dialogue when he talks to Atsushi in their final fight.

“The dragon and tiger... I see now why they are called rivals.”

The dragon and tiger have their roots in Chinese Buddhism, but to go further into that topic would make this already lengthy post even longer.

“Don’t get the wrong idea, though. I’m not blaming you for what happened.”

This line is a brief moment of weakness for Shibusawa, which is interesting in contrast to his strong will to kill Atsushi. Just as Atsushi learned to accept the past and the tiger’s ferocity, Shibusawa shares the same attitude by separating the blame from himself to just simply accepting the past for what happened.

17. In the aftermath of the last fight against Shibusawa, Atsushi and Kyouka meet up with Dazai.

Kyouka asks, “Are you sure this is what you wanted?” which prompts two different responses in the movie and novel respectively.

In the movie, Atsushi says, “Just as Shibusawa was able to forget that he’d been killed before, I think Dazai can put his past behind him again. But this is fine.”

In the novel, Atsushi says:

“... I could probably seal away this memory just like how I’d forgotten I’d killed him before. But... I’m okay with this.”

I interpreted Kyouka’s question in the movie to be questioning Dazai’s loyalties, as he did betray everyone, and Atsushi responded in Dazai’s defense because he trusts him.

However, the novel does change Atsushi’s response to focus on himself rather than Dazai, which in turn changes the implications of Kyouka’s question. 

Kyouka seems to be asking Atsushi whether he was okay with killing Shibusawa, and Atsushi responds by acknowledging that he did kill Shibusawa, and that’s okay. (a very clear development from the beginning of the story when he believed it was unnecessary to kill anyone, and he didn’t want to kill anyone)

18. In the epilogue, Ango talks about the underlying motivations behind the “Dead Apple” case. This change could be attributed to translation differences (like many others in this post), but the connotation does slightly differ from movie to novel. 

In the movie, Ango says, “How is a man like Shibusawa, so intelligent that others look like alien creatures to him, to act, to be destroyed, or to be saved?”

In the novel, Ango says:

“Perhaps the two of them [Dazai and Fyodor] just wanted to get a glimpse of someone like them... Perhaps they wanted to see what he would do and how he would meet his demise... or perhaps how he would be saved.”

The movie simply poses a broad question of what would happen to Shibusawa, a person alienated from the rest of society. 

The novel changes this to focus on Dazai and Fyodor’s perspective — two irredeemable aliens from society just like Shibusawa — executing this grand scheme out of curiosity to see what would happen to someone of the likes of them, and if there’s a possibility for redemption.

19. This is the final difference on this list, and it’s quite a large change. In Fyodor’s monologue at the very end of the story, he has a completely different tone from the movie to novel.

In the movie, Fyodor says, “But in order to end this world, rife with crime and punishment, I do need that book.”

The novel says: 

Glittering high-rises and stately brick buildings stood side by side in this port city with its countless citizens who struggled against crime and punishment. “I think I’ve taken a liking to this city myself..”  Fyodor took a bite of the apple in his hand, and the juicy nectar ran down his delicate fingers. “You’d all better be on your best behavior until next time.”

The reference to the book may have been removed for consistency with the main series, as the book is a part of the DOA’s plan (or more specifically Fukuchi). 

It also seems like Fyodor has grown fond of the city, and no longer wants Yokohama to be destroyed, so it’s still possible that his plan deterred from what he had originally intended.

Beyond that, I’m not entirely sure why crime and punishment was mentioned, or why there’s such an ominous tone to his ending statement, but that’s up to personal interpretation. 

That concludes the long list of extremely specific and minor differences between the Dead Apple movie and light novel! 

Overall, I would say it’s worth checking out the light novel if you don’t have a strong grasp of the Dead Apple story, because it definitely presents the small intricacies of the plot in a more comprehensible way. 

On a side note, the manga adaptation has a lot of noticeable differences from the movie and light novel, mostly with the addition of entirely new scenes (which you can read @buraihatranslations​ — what a shameless self plug). I would highly recommend reading it as those extra scenes are very amusing, to say the least without giving any spoilers.

Honestly, this post was a lot longer than I intended, but I hope you enjoyed it regardless. Thank you for reading!

#bsd #bsd dead apple #bsd meta #bungou stray dogs

[smash-chu]

Updated the iceberg with some suggestions + more stuff i came across during research~ Might be doing a video to go along with it, cause it'd be fun (i have been capturing footage, so it'll likely end up happening :3 )

Explanations for each thing can be found below:

-Level 1-

The TV show - Some people’s first exposure to the franchise was the TV show, made to go alongside the games as a sort of advertisement. It was made by 4Kids and had a total of 2 seasons, starring the 4 main characters: Hudson Horstachio, Franklin Fizzlybear, Paulie Pretztail and Fergy Fudgehog.

Rare games easter eggs - There are plenty of easter eggs to other Rare games throughout Viva Piñata, the easiest ones to note are the broken arcade cabinets found in the first game as well as the various nods to Banjo Kazooie - such as the Bird and Bear statue, Mumbo statue, Breegull backpack and Bottle’s Glasses.

Stardos is Dastardos - The game never tells you this directly, but it’s an easy and obvious conclusion to make.

Twingersnaps and Fourheads - Without using a guide or looking it up you may actually be baffled on how to acquire these piñatas in game. There is no obvious hint in game to tell you to hit the Syrupent egg before it hatches on the third bounce, which means you either have to figure it out through experimentation or by looking it up.

Leafos False Rumors - Leafos is meant to give you good advice to help you out while you play the game if you talk to her, however not all information she gives is true. Some rumors include putting a Badgesicle in water will turn it into a Sweetooth, feeding a Doenut to a Pretztail turns it into a Mallowolf and so on. None of these actually work.

Piñatas aren’t permanently broken - When a piñata is broken it is magically repaired, at least when on Piñata island, reforming at the edge of a garden when broken at one. It is stated that piñatas are repaired after having been sent to parties, which would potentially mean that piñatas only magically repair themselves when on the island.

-Level 2-

The PC Port - Not very well advertised, there was a PC port released for the first Viva Piñata game. There are a couple of differences between the port and the original Xbox 360 release, which are touched upon later.

Piñatas are genderless - Technically no piñata is given a gender in game, all piñatas function the same. While in the show gendered piñatas are present it could potentially be that piñatas are naturally genderless and then if they are sapient can choose genders which fit their identity.

Burger king toys - A bundle of burger king exclusive plastic toys of piñatas were made and sold alongside the children's meals, some of the piñatas were Elephanilla, Sparrowmint, Goobaa and so forth. These toys are nowadays rare and sought after by people who collect the very small amount of official Viva Piñata merch that exists.

Wildcards - Wildcard piñatas are unique piñatas that have a feature which makes it stand out next to others of its species. There are a total of 3 variants of wildcards per piñata, some being exclusively gained through trading piñatas online. In the original game wildcards were extremely rare and there was only one variant, while they were made easier to acquire in TiP.

Both the games and show are canon - Just what it says, according to the creators both the games and show are canon to Viva Piñata lore. This makes for some strange implications, but that's for later.

TiP Fence Glitch / Exploit - A sort of well known glitch often used while playing Viva Piñata Trouble in Paradise. Fences normally do not stop Ruffians and Professor Pester from entering your garden, as they simply destroy them when they’re in the way. However, if arranged in a specific pattern in the area next to the volcano they enter from, the fence will make them permanently stuck. They will be stopped at the very edge of the garden at the fence, unable to properly enter or do anything. This can occur unintentionally as well in both the original game and TiP, as sometimes Ruffians and Professor Pester get stuck on seemingly random things and become unable to do anything.

Domesticated piñatas becoming un-domesticated - A strange difference between the original game and TiP is the fact that you can no longer buy domesticated piñatas from the Paper Pet’s store. Instead of being purchased they simply appear in the wild like any other wild piñata, whether this implies that these piñatas are no longer considered domesticated or is just a game design choice is unclear.

Jardinero and his family - In game a big part of the npc cast are Jardinero and his children, Leafos, Seedos, Storkos and Dastardos. They all play important roles in terms of the game mechanics, but also have their own stories which can be read about in the journal. The journal also mentions the character Mother, which is Jardineros wife and mother of their children. She is a seafaring adventurer that occasionally came to visit Piñata Island to see her husband and kids.

-Level 3-

Dastardos ghost theory - Because of Dastardos more ghostly abilities, such as floating around, being able to go through objects and not being recognized by his family, it is theorized he may either be undead or a ghost. The entry for the Dastardos shovelhead also implies this, calling him “untouchable” and only thanks to lining up to his frequency can the shovel hit him. This theory kind of makes the fact that Professor Pester being responsible for this even more messed up.

Extended / full version of Horstachio commercial - One of the more famous pieces of commercials to advertise the first game was the one featuring Hudson Horstachio, about to be broken by a couple of kids, that he offers a bunch of outlandish things to to convince them to let him down. There are apparently some different versions of the commercial which feature different things being offered, with a full uncut version that has all the offers in it.

Piñata cards - In Viva Piñata Trouble in Paradise there is a function which is called Piñata Vision, which utilizes the Xbox Live Vision camera. By scanning the card you can get the piñata or item displayed on the card, some of these cards feature the developers in the form of a piñata and characters from other games.

Language Dubs - The PC port of the original game has a lot of language dubs, translated into languages such as Dutch, Swedish, Spanish, Chinese and more. Some of these do not extend to the UI oddly enough, while for the majority of translations all of the game’s features are translated accordingly, with the exception of piñata names. The language chosen is determined by the language set for the computer, so if you want the game in a specific language you’d need to change the language of the computer before installing it.

PC port graphical downgrades - Oddly enough the PC port has some graphical differences compared to the original Xbox 360 release. Mostly the graphics being downgraded, even on the highest settings, such as the lighting and texture resolution on objects and the environment.

Miss Petula’s neglectful parents - The npc that runs the Paper Pet’s store is Miss Petula, who often lets the player know she’s not very enthusiastic about her job. Mostly because her parents have left the store in her care, and don’t seem to communicate with their daughter much aside from grounding her, as she mentions it in her dialogue. In one of her dialogue lines when the player leaves the shop she ponders running away from home.

Accessories graphical glitches - Some accessories have graphical glitches associated with them, such as missing pieces or being misaligned on the model during certain animations. Examples of this is the ribbon being missing when a Ponocky wears a tail ribbon (in the PC version), or goggles on Chippopotamus not moving properly when their mouth is opened.

Some piñatas are sapient, others not - Because of the fact that both the show and games are canon makes some things kind of weird. Though even if the show wasn’t canon this would still be a thing - as thanks to the existence of Langston and some of the show characters appearing in the DS game. Most piñatas in the games act like animals and cannot speak, however in the show and with Langston they are very much as sapient as a human. What causes a piñata of the same species to be sapient or not? Why does no character in the game acknowledge this strange difference? We don’t know.

Magic is real - In the Viva Piñata universe, at least on Piñata Island, magic exists. Seen in the form of Leafos and Jardinero summoning items, Bart transforming items into other things, Seedos and other characters teleporting and both Dastardos and Storkos being able to fly. There are other examples of magic, nobody really explains why magic exists or to what extent it is used or capable of being, but simply something that is commonplace on Piñata Island. If magic exists in other places is unknown.

The DS game - Known as Viva Piñata Pocket Paradise, the DS game came out after both the original game and TiP. It features a mix of piñatas from both the other games, however not all of them, because of the limitations of being on the DS. It is pretty much just another Viva Piñata game where you tend to a garden, now using the touchscreen to use your tools and so on.

How the fuck does the family not recognize Dastardos as Stardos - A strange phenomenon considering at least Jardinero considers Dastardos familiar and so does Leafos to an extent (he is in the "family members" part of the journal after all), but apparently none of the other family members have been able to figure out that Dastardos is in fact Stardos. Whether this is them just being very oblivious or not it’s still sad that they can’t even recognize their own family member after being corrupted. This is also even more strange considering Dastardos lives literally across the garden from his family, how have they not been able to tell by now? Though, if the ghost theory is considered, maybe it’s understandable why they have such a hard time recognizing him.

-Level 4-

Langston taking over the position of authority in piñata central from Jeffe - Apparently Jeffe used to be in charge of the piñata central and was later kicked off his position and replaced by Langston, this is to reflect how Jeffe was originally planned as the head of the piñata central before being replaced by Langston as influenced by the show. Why he was kicked off his position is uncertain, but theorized to be because of the fact that he turned into a piñata or half piñata from ingesting too much candy - though why this would influence him being kicked off i’m not sure. Maybe he abused the central for his own gain?

“They all wear masks, some are just more elaborate than others” - A statement from a developer when asked about the masks worn by the humanoid characters in the games, whether they’re their actual heads or some kinda mask. This was meant to clarify that all the human characters are fully human, however it still leaves some things unanswered - such as if they are masks then why can we not see Fannie Franker’s face inside the mailbox on her head? Or what does that entail for the Ruffians whose bodies are pretty much completely covered in their masks.

Squazzils name debate - A reference to how in game Leafos mentions that the name for the Squazzil was debated before you, the player, arrived at the island. Being apparently called Nonsquirrel as they were trying to figure out a name for the species. Whether this is true or not is uncertain, as Leafos does state untrue rumors sometimes.

The side characters in P-Factor - P-Factor is a minigame in TiP that is you showing off your piñata in a contest against other players or npcs. This minigame features both already existing npcs, such Leafos for example, as well as some made exclusively for the minigames. Some of these npcs include Maxime, Babochka, Nana Urf and more. They also make an appearance in the Great Piñata Paperchase minigame, however they are much more prominently presented in the P-Factor minigame.

Unknown blue flower - There is a blue flower which appears outside of the garden space as a decoration in the original game. This blue flower is not a flower which appears anywhere else, and cannot be planted in the garden either. Most of the flowers and trees found outside the garden space are plants that are available for the player, but this one flower is unique in that it isn’t part of those plants.

Leafos might be a lesbian - As it is very much implied that Leafos is the one who writes the entries for the items, objects, characters and piñatas in the journal one can glean interesting information and thoughts about Leafos. In the entry for the Pink Flutterscotch there is the sentence “A girl (that I may or may not have liked) once told me that the Pink Flutterscotch reminded her of a kiss.” Some people take this as an implication that Leafos may be a lesbian and or bi, which i personally think would be neat.

Viva Piñata Party Animals - A party game that stars the main cast of the tv show, it features a lot of different minigames and a mario kart-like racing minigame, kinda being a mix between mario party and mario kart except piñata themed. It’s very different from the other games in the series and has a lot of locations and items not featured in the other games as well.

Unused piñata concepts - There are plenty of piñatas that never made it into any of the games, as one would expect. Examples of piñatas that never appear in the game but had concepts made for them are a Giraffe, a Platypus that would’ve been acquired by breeding a Quackberry and Sweetooth together, a Hammerhead shark with a sour form and a Kangaroo. A goldfish piñata was also part of concepts, however this piñata does appear in the game - as the fish in the bowl on Miss Petulas head.

Ivor in the wishing well - In TiP Ivor Bargain is strangely missing, with the items he used to sell now being purchasable at Cost’o’lots. Ivor can however be found residing at the bottom of the wishing well object, which you can purchase after playing through the credits sequence. By donating chocolate coins you can get him to speak and throw items from the well depending on what amount you throw in. It is hinted that Lottie was the one who pushed Ivor into the well, likely because she doesn’t want competition selling items to the local gardeners.

-Level 5-

Banjo Kazooie Mountains - One of the rarer (hah) easter eggs to spot in the original game, in the distance across the swamp where Seedos lives one can see a mountain which has Banjo and Kazooie carved into the mountain. This is much easier to see in the Xbox 360 version compared to the PC port, because of the higher resolution textures.

Silent piñatas - Every piñata is voice acted, or are they? One might notice that there are two, well technically eleven, piñatas that are completely silent. The Flutterscotches and Mothdrops are fully silent, not making any noise. Why this is is uncertain, as other bug piñatas do have noises, such as the Taffly and Sweetle. It may be because normally no noise is associated with butterflies or moths in real life, or it may be because these piñatas are meant to be more akin to decorational than a “proper” piñata.

Dragonache flying away glitch - A glitch which is easily done in game, by making the dragonache engage in a fight with another piñata and using the menu to send it off from the garden. By opening the fighting view, which can be accessed to monitor the fight separate from the normal camera view, it will focus in on the two piñatas. The camera will become strange as the Dragonache flies away from the garden, letting you see out of bounds and see details otherwise obscured by things in the background around the garden. I recommend doing this after having done at least one mandatory fight beforehand, as you are forced to watch the first fight that occurs and will unable to do anything till it is finished. Thus if you do this glitch while forced to watch it you will be unable to access the rest of your garden for quite some time.

Giant Zumbug glitch - Not certain if a glitch or hack, there have been reports of a giant Zumbug in TiP which is acquired through unknown means. This giant Zumbug can be sent through the Xbox Live service, but more than that is not known.

Professor Pester is legit evil and fucked up - Even though he’s presented in the show as a bumbling idiot of a villain, he has done a lot of fucked up shit. Not only does he employ Ruffians to mess up other people’s gardens, including Jardinero’s garden, he is also the reason why sour piñatas exist. Making a sour goop which is used for creating sour candy, it is a candy which makes anyone who eats it sick and possibly corrupts them - this is evident in how he corrupted Stardos by giving him sour candy. He may have rather bland goals as a villain, simply wanting complete control of the piñata island and its piñatas, but he’s done some pretty messed up stuff to try and accomplish this goal.

Extra color variants - All piñatas, except for the Flutterscotches, have three color variants that can be acquired by feeding the piñata specific things. However, there are piñatas that have more variants than others, through being caught in the Pinartic or Dessert Desert, and then feeding those the same things. This will cause them to gain a different tint of color compared to their normal counterparts, as thanks to having a different default color because of being from a different region.

Money and Piñata duplication glitch - It is possible to duplicate money and piñatas by abusing the post office, by editing the contents of the boxes being mailed while they are shipped off. This can be used to quickly acquire master romance rewards and cut down on time spent making chocolate coins the normal way. This glitch appears to be the easiest to do in TiP, compared to the first game.

Giant and tiny seeds - You can gain a plethora of things from the mine, which includes seeds. Sometimes when the mine uncovers seeds there is a chance for the seed to either be bigger or smaller than normal, these seeds work exactly like their normal sized versions, but sell for different prices. The size difference can vary wildly, with really big seeds and incredibly tiny seeds that are hard to see.

Ivor has two mouths - Something that may be easily missed, but Ivor Bargain does as a matter of fact have two mouths. One for each “face” he has, for when he’s a beggar and a merchant, he can flip between the two by spinning his head, flipping his head up or down. This is a little freaky, and completely glanced over in game, left unexplained why he has two mouths or can flip his head upside down with no consequences.

Leafos is vegan - A very recent thing which has been observed through the rare cookbook that has been released, which features an array of rare game inspired recipes. Recipes which are vegan or vegan friendly are marked with “Leafos vegan approved”, which implies that Leafos is vegan.

Fudgehog cutscene - On certain days of the month a different cutscene will play during the opening of the first game on Xbox 360 and PC, replacing the normal Horstachio cutscene. Instead it is a Fudgehog being broken to reveal the rare logo, though there is a bug in the PC port that makes the Fudgehog cutscene not play.

Pudgeon romance dance - An oddity among the rest of the romance dances is the Pudgeon romance dance, which is the only piñata to actually wear the required accessories needed for romancing in the romance dance cutscene.

-Level 6-

Mousemallow sounds - The Mousemallow makes interesting noises, which may seem strange for a mouse, as they aren’t squeaks. They go “chu” because the developer voicing them is from Japan, where mice are vocalized as going “chu” instead of squeak.

Cut baby piñatas - Originally piñata babies were meant to look different from their adult counterparts, instead of just being smaller. However because of time constraints this was cut.

Humans can become piñatas rumor - In game this is presented in TiP with Jeffe, which is a human piñata or a half human half piñata, he states “If you eat enough candy and pull a face in the wind you'll become a piñata, I never want to see another piece of candy let alone a piñata full of it.” as part of dialogue during P-Factor. We cannot confirm whether this is actually true or not, but if Jeffe’s statement is true then it would imply that humans can turn into piñatas. This in turn creates a lot of questions, such as why does this happen? Has this happened to people outside of Piñata Island? Is this something exclusive to just the island or candy from the living piñatas? Can this happen with animals as well?

Tamed sour piñatas reverting via mail - A gameplay mechanic which is not commonly seen is the fact that tamed sour piñatas can revert back to a sour state. This occurs when you send a tamed sour piñata to a player which hasn’t unlocked the tamed version of that piñata, when the piñata is taken out of its mailed box it will be the sour version. This happens in all the main games, including Pocket Paradise as well.

Pitch black piñata variants - A once exclusive variant available through Piñata Vision cards, it turns a piñata completely black, even sour piñatas. This can be acquired without the use of cards through things like hacking or modifying the game’s files.

Piñata meat - Something mentioned in the journal and seen in the form of some piñatas attacking projectiles, eating piñatas in the form of eating their “meat” is apparently a normal thing on Piñata Island. Examples of this are the journal entries for Cluckles and Arocknids, which mention eating Cluckle legs, as well as the projectiles of Cluckles and Goobaa being chicken legs and mutton chops. It is also mentioned in in-game dialogue that Storkos eats piñata eggs if unable to deliver them, and other piñatas do consume piñata eggs. Are thus piñatas edible beyond just their candy? Or are the residents on Piñata Island cooking and eating paper mache animal parts and acting like that’s not weird?

Family mode - A mode found in the original game and TiP, which allows two people to play at the same time using two controllers. Simply done by connecting a second controller while playing the game, it’s originally meant for parents to be able to help their kids while they play without having to disturb the gameplay. This mode can be used to give yourself an edge in the early stages of the game in TiP, as the second controller will have the best tools available right away and is capable of things the first controller cannot, like filling a piñatas candiosity by performing tasks.

Dastardos and Seedos special interaction - When you’ve beaten up Seedos and gotten him on his bad side he’ll start to chuck weed seeds into your garden, and has a special interaction with Dastardos if both of them are in the garden while he is in his upset state. When Seedos has thrown a weed seed, the two of them will turn to face each other and do their laughing animation, presumably because both of them enjoy the chaos. Or maybe they have that slight family connection still? It’s rather sad though that Seedos only acknowledges his brother at all when he’s angry and upset.

-Level 7-

Viva Piñata Candy Stash - There are a few piñata games which aren’t widely known, for example this Adobe Flash tower defense game developed and published by 4Kids TV, known as Viva Piñata Candy Stash. This game features Professor Pester trying to steal the player’s candy using Ruffian robots, and to stop him the player builds towers invented by piñata characters from the tv show.

Petting piñatas - Exclusive to Pocket Paradise, you can pet your piñatas which makes them happy. Different piñatas like to be pet differently, and if petted the wrong way it won’t increase their happiness.

No 100% reward in first game - Both Viva Piñata Trouble in Paradise and Viva Piñata Pocket Paradise have a reward / reward screen for completing the game fully, by getting all the available rewards for the piñatas and plants. However, there is no proper completion reward in the original first game, there are rewards for various milestones but none for completing everything.

Piñata mascot suits - As part of promotions and promotional material there exists mascot suits of some piñatas, such as the Horstachio, Pretztail and Fudgehog. Whether these suits are kept in storage somewhere or have been thrown away we do not know.

Ruffians helping Helpers - Unless you mess with your helpers just for fun, you’re unlikely to ever see this happen. When a helper of any kind is stuck because of a fence or being surrounded by objects, they will constantly keep telling you they’re stuck. If you let them stay stuck for long enough a Ruffian will spawn in, no matter if you have a Captain’s Cutlass or not in your garden, that you cannot interact with. They will wander over to the helper and free them by destroying the object that’s in the way. Leafos will then berate you with a notification, saying “Shame on you!” for being such a jerk to your helper, and that the Ruffian and helper are running off; the helper leaving permanently.

Ruffians speaking - Ruffians normally do not speak, only making various grunts, but do have dialogue seen in Pocket Paradise.

-Honorable Mentions-

Miss Petula’s cat eyes - Miss Petula has a strange animation in game where her eyes go from having rounded pupils to having slitted, cat-like pupils. This is likely because of her cat theme, but is still strange considering she’s supposed to be a human.

Rare variant of logo cutscene - There is a version of the rare logo reveal cutscene played when opening the game, that features the rare logo itself exploding with candy. This is played in certain versions of the game, likely because of the fact that both the Fudgehog and Horstachio cutscenes feature a sort of dismemberment via them being smashed into bits which can be seen as inappropriate in certain regions.

All the shops have slot machines - A strange detail is that all the shopping menus are made out of slot machines, which might seem odd since slot machines usually have nothing to do with shops or making purchases, more so being related to gambling.

Unidentified voice actors - A lot of the voices provided for the games go unnamed in the credits, however we do know most of the piñata voices are members of the staff and developers. The missing voice actors for the npcs are listed as “Voices provided by 4Kids” with no names attached.

#viva piñata #viva pinata #vp #iceberg meme #meme #text #yeah i am planning on making a video #i normally don't make videos but considering i've watched a fair share of iceberg explanation videos n have enjoyed them i was like #why not do that too? i'm sure some people would enjoy it #also gives me an excuse to sit down n play the game some :b #unfortunately i won't be able to capture footage for TiP since i don't have a capture card #though maybe one day i'll get one so i can record n stream the game :3 #also if you see anything which is inaccurate on here lemme know! i wanna get things right #also thanks to all the peeps that gave suggestions it helped a lot n got me inspired

[landonkirbyappreciation]

The way people really try to say that Landon hasn't had any development since season 1 baffles me. Like the only season we didn't see any of Landons development was season 3 and I don't even want to get started on that bc I would just make myself mad. Season 1 with Landon with see this struggling kid trying to find his place in the world. To trying to figure who and what he is. All while trying to do what's best for his brother. And probably a few other things I might be missing. Season 2 we see him start to step up a bit more when it comes to monsters. At one point he was even willing to get possessed by the oui and then killed just to stop it. To being willing to live his life alone being chased by monsters. And wanting to learn how to fight to help Hope with everything. And then THREE times he was willing to give up his life to save everyone. Once in 3x01 so the Necromancer couldn't get what he wanted. In 4x01 when he asked Alaric to kill him if it meant stopping malivore. And I think this one would have been the worst bc he would've been alone in the darkness forever never getting to see anyone he loved ever again. And then in 4x04 he did give up his life(not that any of the ungrateful asses at the school care). And I love Landon more than anything but even I don't think season 1 Landon would have done any of that.

But to me it feels like people are associating development with powers. Which I find really annoying don't get me wrong I want his powers back too but again different story. So needless to say I just really dislike whenever I see someone say Landon hasn't had any development since season 1 bc that's just not the case. But maybe that's just me, Idk if anyone else sees the way I do. Lol but all I can do is hope that there's other people who see it that way too.

I completely agree. And “see” being the key word when it comes to not seeing Landon’s development in s3 because, from what we know, he had the most development in s3. We know that he learned to fight monsters and defend himself all on his own, he survived all of that, that’s a ton of development, but we didn’t get to see it. It’s the writers’ fault for choosing not to show any of it and for continuing to ignore it now as if it never happened, and for what? Who knows, but I won’t get into that either because I already talk about it all the time and will be forever livid about it... But even if you don’t count that, when you look at where Landon started to where he is now, he started out as a foster kid who had no idea who he really was or anything about the supernatural world, to then finding out about the supernatural world and being thrown into it, finding out where he comes from, that he’s a phoenix and his father is the villain, then helping protect the school from monsters multiple times, saving others, activating some of his powers, and ultimately saving everyone by sacrificing himself and doing it willingly. And now he’s been helping how many people find peace. So how does all that happen with no development? And all the other ways he’s developed each season too. Like you said, in s1, he was trying to find a place to belong and then he found Hope and a place he could stay with his brother. Even though it ultimately ended up being the wrong place for them, he felt as if he found a home for a time and got to find some happiness while there with Hope. And him being with Hope, he used to not be as honest as a way to protect himself, and knowing Hope, he came to value honesty the way he does now. And he’s become an even better person and pushed himself more because of her and the way he’s wanted to take some of the weight off her shoulders. He wanted to help with the monsters and protect the school, which he did by using his smarts. Then of course there was him finding out that he’s a phoenix and about Malivore and everything that came with that. And then all you said about s2 as well, he got even more involved when it came to getting rid of monsters, and was willing to hurt/sacrifice himself multiple times in order to help. He was able to handle himself more. And also trying to learn how to fight at one point, like you said. And he activated more powers, he came to feel more capable. He saved Lizzie (twice), Hope, and Dorian in s2. And then yeah, he was willing to give up his life those three times for everyone else! And I agree that 4x01 and what he was willing to do would have been the biggest sacrifice because he was willing to doom himself to a fate far worse than death imo by being trapped forever in darkness. Yet that was what he wanted for Hope’s sake. And he still ended up giving up everything for people who don’t even give a crap, and then says he didn’t regret it either.

And idk, I feel like in s1, if it was for Raf or Hope, Landon would’ve definitely made those kind of sacrifices. But I think that otherwise, he would’ve been more hesitant to sacrifice himself like that. I think that throughout the show he’s become much more self sacrificing, which is not a good thing in many ways. I think being at the school has been very damaging to him and his mental health and how he thinks of himself and his worth because of how he’s been treated. In the beginning, he stood up for himself more and I don’t think he would have been quite as willing and ready to give up his life. I think if he knew other people would be hurt if he didn’t, he would, but I think it would be harder for him to do that. But him being at the school, he’s become almost too willing to hurt himself and sacrifice himself to the point that it’s not healthy imo, but I won’t get any more into that because it’s a whole other subject. But on the plus side and when it comes to his development, I think that throughout the show he’s become stronger and more brave and selfless and ready to do the right thing. I mean, I think that he’s always been all of those things, but I think he’s become even more so over the seasons. And he’s gained an even greater desire to do good and save others. So yeah, there’s definitely been development and if people can’t see it, they’re not really paying attention to the show, or Landon as a character, anyway.

And I think you’re right, I think people do associate development with powers, which bugs me too. And I think they also place too much value on powers in the show as well. Because for sure, I really want Landon’s powers back too, but I don’t think that’s the most important thing when it comes to his character and his growth. Like this is why I’m more concerned about them exploring his development from last season, that happened without his powers. Because even though I obviously want his powers back, I know he’ll surely get them at some point. It’s sort of inevitable and I can wait longer for that if it meant them actually showing his growth from last season that they’re ignoring. Because I’m worried they’re just gonna keep ignoring it and give him back his powers, and all the focus will be on that while the rest is forgotten. When imo, I think the development from last season would be more important because that growth is gonna be there with or without his powers. And I’m just laughing because I seriously thought that was gonna be one of the main reasons why they took his powers away in the first place. To give him more growth without them, and to show just how strong and capable he is without any supernatural abilities and that that’s not the most important thing, just like Hope said. With the way Landon has been called weak and less capable and that he can’t be a hero because of his lack of powers, I thought s3 was gonna be the biggest way of them showing how untrue that is and that Landon is the opposite of weak and incapable (since people have apparently not grasped it yet), but nope! 🙄 So what exactly was the point of them taking his powers away if they’re not gonna show his development without them and if it’s not gonna serve Landon’s individual storyline? I guess we’ll never know.

Anyway, sorry for rambling and making this response super long. But yeah, I feel the same way as you. It’s real irritating to see people saying Landon has had no development when it’s so obviously not true. So you’re definitely not alone in feeling that way!

#answered #landon kirby

[carbootsoul]

omg please talk about saionji and utena and i want to know ur thoughts

ack anon i am. kissing u on the mouth rn thank u so much for asking !!! a fair warning before i write anything else: i have a stupid and inexplicable amount of affection for saionji kyouichi and this response will probably be kinda biased toward being understanding of him. don't get me wrong he is still very much a bad person throughout a lot of the series BUT he's also 17. anyway this got long bc i have many thoughts so its under the cut

my big thought about the two of them is that they're foils for each other! both to illustrate utena's good qualities and to point out what went wrong with saionji.

the main place we see similarities between them is their feelings toward both anthy and touga. saionji and utena are the only duelists to duel FOR anthy as a person rather than the power she wields. they're also the only two people that touga ever expresses unguarded affection toward, the only people with him in the church scene, the only people who reject him (other than nanami, whose rejection is more complex imo), and the two targets of his manipulation in season one. wakaba refers to them both as her prince and they both express at least the potential to be friends with her, they're both dragged into some kind of relation with akio through someone they're close with (saionji only for a few short scenes but the camera one does make me a little queasy), they're the only duelists to lose a duel and then rechallenge the winner. they're also the only characters to be "expelled" (not quite textually in utena's case, but the girls at the end of the last episode speculate that she was expelled for "getting in trouble with the chairman"). finally there are some vague thoughts i have about saionji's rose being a very pale green, which is a complimentary color to pink (while his hair is a deeper green, mirroring touga's red hair).

in terms of their personalities being similar it's mostly just the fact that they're both jocks and they both do the baffled face a lot which i think is fun from them both :) same 'interacting with nanami ever' expression. the two BIG things they have in common personality wise is their tendency to insist that their view of the world (especially!! their view of what is good for anthy) is correct, and obliviousness (especially to their privilege and the way it acts on other people, especially anthy). utena grows out of both those things, though, and they're two of her main points of character development throughout the series.

obviously, the differences between them are quite a bit more obvious. saionji is mostly used (especially at the beginning of the series) to contrast utena and to provoke her into protecting anthy. he's abusive, controlling, and cocky where she is... just cocky, and only sometimes. saionji is less aware of 'adult things' than utena (in some ways he's more childish than nanami- the scene that comes to mind is the one with the exchange diary, where utena worries that saionji is making sexual advances and saionji obviously has no idea what she's thinking. tbh i hold that saionji didn't really know what sex was before his car scene which is both funny and v upsetting to me). saionji is unwilling or unable to change the parts of himself that harm other people (or unaware of the effects of his actions) whereas utena, throughout the series, constantly does her best to be a better person and i love her so. so much. not-prince of my heart. also he has green hair and she has pink hair :) also he sucks so bad

anyway now that i've established their similarities and differences, here's the heart of my argument!! at their core, utena and saionji are very similar people (the church flashback rly illustrates this imo but maybe thats just bc children r all similar) but, because saionji grew up with power that utena didn't, he's. uh. who he is. (his eyes are purple, a color associated with akio's control. akio.. uh. patriarchy man.)

saionji's role in the show isn't just as the personification of rape culture, but as a statement on what the patriarchy DOES to teenage boys who don't notice their privilege. he is quite obviously less aware of his power than touga or akio are (they both use sex as a power tool, and both take advantage of the fact that they, as men, have power in most situations. saionji also takes advantage of this but it seems much less conscious on his part- again the scene with the exchange diary comes to mind. he is looming over utena-as-anthy but not in an attempt to scare her, but just bc he's found that when he is big and tall, people do what he want). this is shown especially in what we see of saionji when he's staying with wakaba! he's a much better person when he doesn't have this institutional power as close to his fingertips, even when he's unaware of this lacking. he goes back to being a douche the second he leaves, to, which is where his personal problems come into play.

saying that saionji is how he is just because he was born into privilege is way more forgiving of him than the narrative is or i would be, because the other bit that contrasts him with utena is his unwillingness to see or acknowledge his privilege. the fact that he's unaware of the bits and pieces of society that come together to give him that power over anthy doesn't absolve him, because he still takes advantage of the fact that he can do whatever he wants to her and he never tries to understand why. he sees that if he's engaged to anthy she will love him unconditionally (what he's looking for throughout the series) but he never tries to connect the dots between the power he has over her and the fact that she says she loves him. a scene that i think is rly interesting is the one in touga's last few episodes where touga and utena are talking and saionji comes and lies down in anthy's lap- it's such a small thing but i think it does a really interesting job summarizing his character! he actively seeks out affection/the love he wants from anthy and, because of the power he wields, she gives it to him. he's content with this, because he refuses to see the power dynamics that make her let him nap with his head in her lap. he allows himself to keep the safe blanket of his privilege, even when it hurts everyone else. utena sees that she has power as the rose bride's fiance and she (eventually) works against the powers that be to change that.

anywayyy that was a lot lol and im not sure it makes a ton of sense??? but those r what i've been thinking about! really it boils down to like. saionji would be a much better person if he took a feminist theory class with a completely open mind. and then he and utena could be friends :) the other thing it boils down to is that both utena and saionji's best and worst characteristics are being stupid as fuck BUT utena tries to learn and saionji refuses to. thanks again for sending this ask!! i hope my response made some sense haha

#leo.ask #i was thinking saionji for like half my shift today bc i was bored so u asked at the perfect time lol :) #rgu

[mittensmorgul]

As Above, So Below

I’m still trying to pinpoint exactly why the focus on “heaven is fixed and actually a paradise now!” is just so deeply unsatisfying to me. And I think I need to preface this with a bit of backstory about me, because I think that gives the rest of this essay some relevant context.

I know this isn’t relevant to my main point here, but this is a metatextual and thematically identical example of the exact thing I’m gonna lay out, because context is always helpful. So please forgive this seemingly irrelevant detour, because I promise it will be relevant by the end.

(plus, would it really be an Essay By Mittens™ without at least one baffling tangent? no, it would not!)

Tangent time!

I think everyone that follows me knows how skeptical I was... or should I say how WARY I was of the way Eileen was returned to the narrative this season. We were warned in the PREVIOUS EPISODE how much Chuck was attempting to interfere in their lives. I was accused of some very nasty things, of hating the ship, or hating the character of Eileen, or of hating Sam and not wanting them to be happy. No amount of pointing at obvious warning signs in the text, no amount of yelling about Sam’s God Wound or the absolute klaxon warning that the wound had become “quiet” and his Chuck-O-Vision Nightmares had apparently stopped seemed to matter. I was declared “wrong” and told to shut up.

And then 15.09 happened, and basically everything I’d been wary of was shown to be what actually happened, but there were still unresolved issues. Eileen doubted her own feelings and walked away. She doubted what was actually real. And at the time, I said many times that I would be thrilled to see those issues resolved by the end of the season, and for her to truly know that what she’d felt growing between her and Sam was real. And by the end of the season, despite my personal horror at her previous situation (and having that personal horror compounded by the fandom literally gaslighting me and attempting to bully me into ignoring this basic actual plot detail of this specific growth process which... in the context of what my personal objection was to accepting her return at face value in the first place having been personal trauma associated with gaslighting and manipulation...) by the time 15.18 aired, I was 100% convinced that Sam and Eileen had fully chosen each other, and felt the traumatic pain Sam suffered during that text conversation with her during the snap. She NEEDED to come back, because she had been set up to be part of Sam’s Win. They were clearly each other’s future.

The show literally put in all the work to make even *me* feel this to be True and Right and Good. And then after that point we never even hear Eileen’s name again. We never were told that she was even returned at the end of 15.19. Sam, who had been so entirely devastated by her disappearance in the previous episode that he couldn’t even process it was apparently hit with an amnesia hammer and just... never even thought about her again through a long greyscale life with a blurry baby Dean factory vaguely in the background of a single scene of his life. I can’t credit or justify how after an entire year invested in making us all truly care about Sam and Eileen and the happiness they found in each other if only the cosmos would allow them to choose each other in the end would just... erase all of that in the series finale.

Which brings me to the second tangent, which is specifically about *me,* and how I feel about the cosmic order in the television show Supernatural. Because I feel a lot about it. Probably more than most people ever did. And this is also important to understanding the main underlying point I need to make here.

Something I’ve been most looking forward to, for YEARS, about Supernatural eventually ending someday was writing a book, or a thesis, or even just organizing and compiling all my observations into a cohesive narrative specifically about the cosmology of the Supernatural universe. I’ve been cobbling together my observations and realizations about the nature of heaven, hell, purgatory, the empty, the alternate universes we’ve seen, and yes, even the cosmic function of the mundane level of the story as told by events that transpired on Earth. So of everyone watching this dumb show for the last 15 years, I don’t actually know anyone who cared more that I did about finding a satisfactory resolution and transformation of every plane of existence-- the mortal world AND the “afterlife realms” we’ve experienced on this show. And in the wake of the finale, I feel cheated out of that. Because in the end, it wasn’t about the triumph of free will and a flip of the script, it was just more of the same.

And now that I have those two preliminaries out of the way, I’ll finally get to the point. :’D

(hooray, it didn’t even take 1k words to get there for once!)

The “main stage” of Supernatural has always been Earth. It’s always been “Humanity.” At the very start, we meet two men whose lives had always been dictated to them by higher powers. At first, that “higher power” was their father who raised them in his vengeance mission, who trained them to hunt the supernatural. It was the inciting incident of the entire series, after all, their realization that forces outside of their control had irrevocably altered the course of their lives. It had forever torn down what they’d trusted in family, in personal safety, and would become something they couldn’t outrun or fight back against for long before another wave of cosmic discord would settle over them once more.

We watched this story play out in ever increasing spheres of cosmic significance, until Gabriel laid it out on the table for them in the simplest possible terms (in 5.08).

GABRIEL: You do not know my family. What you guys call the apocalypse, I used to call Sunday dinner. That's why there's no stopping this, because this isn't about a war. It's about two brothers that loved each other and betrayed each other. You'd think you'd be able to relate. SAM: What are you talking about? GABRIEL: You sorry sons of bitches. Why do you think you two are the vessels? Think about it. Michael, the big brother, loyal to an absent father, and Lucifer, the little brother, rebellious of Daddy's plan. You were born to this, boys. It's your destiny! It was always you! As it is in heaven, so it must be on earth. One brother has to kill the other. DEAN: What the hell are you saying? GABRIEL: Why do you think I've always taken such an interest in you? Because from the moment Dad flipped on the lights around here, we knew it was all gonna end with you. Always. A long pause. SAM and DEAN look down, then at each other. DEAN: No. That's not gonna happen. GABRIEL: I'm sorry. But it is. GABRIEL sighs. GABRIEL: Guys. I wish this were a TV show. Easy answers, endings wrapped up in a bow...but this is real, and it's gonna end bloody for all of us. That's just how it's gotta be. ***

And isn’t that all even 1000x more painfully ironic that it all still happened even 10 years later? It was always going to end with them. And lol, “I wish this were a TV show” because if it was then it wouldn’t have to end bloody.

But this… was a Major Acknowledgement that the meta level of this story was consistent, and was telling us something important. It demonstrated that the Cosmic Structure Itself was the cause for Sam and Dean’s “destiny” in this story. But that’s not what the point of this story has ever been.

Nobody (including me, who is literally obsessed with this aspect of the story) has ever invested themselves in the narrative of Supernatural because they cared about the fate of the cosmic order over and above the fate of the characters who had committed to overthrowing it all, to “tearing up the pages” and writing their own destinies. I mean, we became invested because Sam, Dean, and Cas as characters took us by the hand and invited us to come along with them as they battled against fate for the good of EARTH and HUMANITY.

And certainly, Heaven being a horrific sort of eternal replay of the “highlights” of individual souls greatest hits, where free will didn’t apply as everyone was just boxed away into their individual holodecks to serve as some sort of giant Heaven Battery powering the furtherance of this narrative, this “cosmic order” that had become so powerful it dictated the events and manipulated the lives of people who still existed in the ostensible realm of free will and human life on Earth… that couldn’t stand in the end. But what the narrative (and people I’ve seen attempting to justify the finale as narratively sensible) seems to have forgotten was that all of that was Chuck’s construct to begin with. That without Chuck holding his kingdom in Heaven together, the walls of all those soul cubicles ceased to even be relevant.

After spending their entire lives to this point constantly fighting their way to the absolute pinnacle of the As Above, So Below narrative and pulling the plug on the original creator himself, Humanity should’ve triumphed. And I’d argue that it DID, through Jack restoring the missing essential “humanity” to the divine condition. And, silly me, I thought they’d achieved the promise of “paradise” heralded by Jack’s birth at last, and truly “flipped the entire script of the narrative.”

Ever since they thwarted the original apocalypse, I had hope that they would continue to achieve the same result right up the ladder. Metatron trying to fill the role of Chuck Junior hit his own narrative wall in TFW, while Dean’s battle with the Mark of Cain, and Cain telling him he was “living my life in reverse” and would succumb to destiny by killing his loved ones in the “reverse order” to Cain’s own path to downfall cemented this for me. Dean not only failed to kill any of his loved ones (you didn’t kill your own brother. why?), he SAVED them. He didn’t fulfil the prophecy in reverse, he subverted it. He UNMADE it.

Perhaps I was thinking on too grand a scale, that the ultimate inversion wouldn’t be “God is overthrown and replaced by more of the same,” but “God is overthrown and the entire order of the universe is restructured from the bottom up rather than the top down.

I’d hoped against hope that the conclusion of the narrative would be “As below, so above,” with the fundamental power of human love becoming the new foundation of the cosmic order. It never even occurred to me that “taking back the narrative to rewrite it for ourselves” was not the ultimate goal of Team Free Will, or the ultimate expression of their biggest win.

This whole “well heaven really needed to be rebuilt, there was still work to be done!” seems… irrelevant to me if they’d truly won free of the cosmic narrative. The entire structure of the universe-- including Heaven and Hell-- should’ve defaulted to the paradise state that Jack was literally born to bring to fruition. Wasn’t that the point of his entire role in the story, ultimately?

And if that wasn’t the case in the end, why did we never learn the fate of Hell? Was it just… irrelevant and unchanged after this? Or just… abandoned as a concept entirely? It’s just strange to me to put such a focus on heaven being the sole sphere of import in the end that it undercuts the essential humanity of the narrative for me.

The story itself had kept Heaven on a back burner for years, only occasionally mentioning that the structure of the place was falling further and further into disrepair with a dwindling force of angels struggling to keep the walls in place at all, that it seems like it could’ve been an afterthought at the end of the series rather than a focus so large it required the death of both main characters to make sure we all understood that Heaven Had Changed Now. Because TFW had never been fighting to make Heaven right. They’d been fighting to save the world itself, for humanity to all have a chance to live their lives as their own.

And we didn’t need to see that in the final hope they might get their own lives on Earth to explore. In the end, the fundamental narrative that Life On Earth was dictated by the cosmic structure of creation was never fully subverted. And for me, that’s the main reason I just… can’t accept the finale. It wasn’t a victory of free will and humanity, in the end it was just more of the same.

I appreciate the attempts to take the essential bones of the story we did get and apply a different polish to the surface of the skeleton, but to me it still feels like we’re looking at completely different beasts in the end. Like… to me this was as jarring a revelation as those drawing of modern animals reimagined as dinosaurs entirely based on their skeletons. Like, all along the narrative told me I was looking at a swan. They told me this skeleton they’re building out from is definitely a swan, without a doubt.  I know what a swan looks like-- a graceful feather-covered bird with magnificent wings. I trusted that in the end it would be at least remotely swan-looking. And then the finale ended up looking like this

and I just don’t even know where everything went so wrong. Or maybe all along I just assumed they actually knew what a swan looked like, but weren’t sure they could actually pull it off and settled for whatever the heck this is instead. Either way, I’m actually kinda grateful to the finale for being so entirely disappointing on every level, because otherwise I probably would’ve tried to adopt the monstrosity of it anyway. And I’m really, really glad I don’t have to.

#spn 15.20 #spn cosmology #heaven hell purgatory and the empty #and this is why no amount of narrative defense of the finale is capable of making me feel any better about it #i admit i thought too big... but it was all right there in the narrative to see #oh well at least all i have to do to hold on to my grandest notion of the universe is throw out the finale :'D

[slightly-nerdy-rambles]

Robstar Week Day 1: Flower Power (Prompt: Floral Arrangements)

Welcome, everyone, to this year's rendition of Robstar Week! This year was a bit of an odd one for me, because a recent move, an associated new job (actually an internship, but it's still a 40 hour workweek), and some seriously bad luck with my computer right around the time the prompts came out meant I got a bit of a late start. We're here now, though, and while I may not have had much of a chance to make any really long fics, I think these still came out well!

Writing this first oneshot reminded me of my late grandfather, who would regularly get little bouquets of flowers for my grandmother just because. It was a really simple and sweet kind of gesture, but that doesn't mean that certain socially-awkward superheroes who are still new to this whole dating thing can't be awkward about such gestures, ahaha.

Flower Power

It was official: Robin was the biggest cheeseball in the Titans Network.

Okay, so that was probably an exaggeration. Maybe. There weren't a lot of couples in the Network at the moment, he was pretty sure, but it was also an organization that included Kid Flash.

Besides, he told himself as he pushed open the door to the florist's shop, the bouquet of flowers thing had technically been Star's idea. It was an odd sort of sticking point for him that way back when they'd been stuck on that blasted planet, when he had convinced himself that the only reason she was mad at him for denying his feelings for her was because she had taken the word "girlfriend" too literally, she had corrected his error in part by mentioning "bountiful floral arrangements."

Well, if she wanted bountiful floral arrangements, who was he to say no? It was too late for Valentine's Day, and they wouldn't have an anniversary for a while considering they had just gotten together a little over a week ago, but that didn't mean he couldn't treat his new girlfriend to something nice. Right?

(No, really; was this normal? He was pretty new to this dating thing and still felt like he had no idea what he was doing.)

All these thoughts swirling through his head screeched to a halt when he realized everyone in the shop had gone silent and turned to stare at him. Most of them just looked vaguely baffled to see one of the Titans here, but one or two of them were grinning.

Great. Robin blamed Tokyo for this.

Unsure how else to handle the sudden attention, he approached the nearest display as casually as he could and started looking over the arrangements. There were several, of course, all artfully and colorfully put together in ways that he was sure he didn't have the experience to properly appreciate.

They were also pretty expensive, now that he looked at them.

"How can I help you?"

Robin considered it a small victory that he suppressed any instinct to jump at the sudden question. He turned to see a florist eyeing him calmly with an expectant but professional smile.

"Umm…" He rubbed the back of his neck and glanced back at the display case. "Yeah, I'm just looking for a little something nice to get for… someone special." He was definitely blushing at this point, he could tell.

The florist nodded. "All right. What you're looking at now are usually for special centerpieces; if you want a more personal bouquet, I think it would be best to start with the flowers you want and we can put something together from there. What does, ah, your special someone like?"

Robin had to hand it to the guy, he really was a professional. He was already starting to relax a little.

That… was an excellent question though. What flowers did Starfire like? Did she even have any favorites?

It might have helped if he knew anything about Tamaranean flowers. Unfortunately, his knowledge of plant life on that planet was pretty much limited to the fact that at least some of it bit back. Would she appreciate a Venus flytrap? Could he even get one of those here?

"Uhh… I don't know, exactly," he eventually admitted. "I know she likes the color purple."

Just then, a thought occurred to him. "Oh! Do you have cherry blossoms? Or, I dunno, anything like those?" That seemed like something that would be meaningful for both of them no matter what she thought of the flowers themselves, and while he had no idea if they'd be here or still in season, even something similar would be a nice gesture.

The florist smiled again and waved him further into the shop. "Let's see what we have."

Robin followed the man with renewed confidence. Yeah, he could do this. He could get a nice little bouquet of flowers for his girlfriend and it didn't have to be weird at all!

He didn't pay attention to the little tinkling of the doorway bell behind him until the excited murmurs started. Great. More gossipy fans.

"Oh! Um, is this a bad time?"

Robin froze at the sound of that exceptionally familiar voice. He spun around to see Starfire standing just through the doorway, clutching some sort of list written in her loopy handwriting and at the top of which he was pretty sure he spotted his own name. She was staring right back at him now, and had a furious blush on her face that he was certain he was starting to match.

…Yeah. The two of them were definitely the biggest cheeseballs in the Titans Network.

#Teen Titans #Robin #Starfire #robstar #robstarweek #writing #prompt #fanfiction #Don't worry Robin I don't know any more about buying flowers than you do #Also Starfire would 100% like venus flytraps and buying flowers for her bf #(as long as Robin liked getting flowers of course) #(which he would)

[thewillowbends]

I completely agree with you regarding S&B. Alina’s character was wasted and I still have no idea why she was a main character when she ended up doing nothing important or really changing things in any meaningful way. I don’t know if you’ve already read it but I highly recommend reading Demon in the Woods. It’s the only story where we really see from Aleksander’s POV(until the trash duology)and it’s really heartbreaking what he does through as a child. If I’m not wrong the show planned to also adapt it but they didn’t for budget reasons but imagine if they had shown his traumatic childhood+creation of the Fold...

My whole thing is that I'm fine with Aleksander being a villain because how one wields is definitely important, regardless of what kind of trauma they've got going on in their history, but I am just absolutely baffled by the thematic intent of this series. It's entirely fair for Alina to be furious and upset about her enslavement, but for her to have absolutely no empathy for what drove him to where he is now or what's happened to the other Grisha and to stay that way over the course of her entire journey is just...well, it begs the question why is she the heroine? There's nothing really heroic or moral about her journey if she's going to wind up right back where she started, running away from power and responsibility. That can be a protagonist's journey, sure, but it's not a heroic one.

Saying "power makes monsters" is fine as a theme if the characters in question are people who have always wielded power in a society. It becomes a lot more complicated when you're dealing with an oppressed minority, and especially when you show repeatedly that they're still suffering state violence at both the hands of enemy countries and their own people. Having a fancy palace with nice clothes and food and military training is not a privilege that replaces your ability to move about a society safely or wield real political power, which they explicitly do not.

If she wanted to write a story warning women about falling for men with tragic backstories who have no intention of doing the work of improving what their trauma did to them, that's fine, but then you actually have to make her empathetic. The point of connection has to be her feelings of sympathy for what he's been through. Alina isn't empathetic. Her attraction to Aleksander in the book is based on power and mystery, and in the show it's based on emerging confidence and a boldness that he inspires in her. It's not wholly based on the tragedy of his heritage or a sympathetic connection nor do we see him actively playing on that much beyond the first scene where he claims to be the descendant. Moreover, after he's revealed to be the Black Heretic, he doesn't weaponize the pain and grief associated with that history, either, even though that would mirror a common abuse tactic and be an underhanded way to undermine her confidence and make her second-guess her own ethical intent. It doesn't work here because the writing is so focused on making her tough and independent, it doesn't let her be weak or make mistakes in a meaningful way that resonates with the reader.

(Want to see a villain who does this well to a woman? See Billy Russo in Season 1 of The Punisher. Also played by Ben Barnes, ironically enough!)

If she wanted to do a story about radicalization of victims of state violence, then she needed to go more ethically complicated in the narrative. Her protagonists needed to have real conversations with themselves and others about what the resolution of this problem with the Grisha is and how the current situation created a monster in the first place. There needed to be a real dialogue back and forth examining both sides of it, whether violence against the state is ever acceptable if the state persistently insists on actively attacking a minority or outright neglecting them. In this case, it's unsurprising an Israeli-American author doesn't want to ask the serious question, "Does every participant in a society hold responsibility for the atrocities of the powerful if they aren't actively fighting it?" Disappointing, but I'm not surprised, since that's a more direct moral interrogation than most people prefer for themselves.

Which leads into the other part that a story like that also requires a serious moral evolution on the part of the protagonist. They have to be changed by the villain, empathize with them, grow to have a sense of responsibility to changing what created the conditions that bred this evil in the first place. She can still have Alina struggle with the power high she gets from the amplifiers, but make it more complicated than hurr hurr lady bad for wanting power. Ask us to empathize with how Alina has felt in her past as a helpless victim of prejudice. Show us how power gave her the ability to change things she couldn't before.

In other words, it can't leave things at status quo. It acknowledges that status quo is what created the problem in the first place. The problem is that Alina's fate in the books doesn't do that. It actually reflects a moral cowardice to some extent if you want to be brutally honest about it.

(Want to see where this is done well? See Kilmonger in Black Panther. The Star Wars prequels, while less elegantly accomplished, are a good example of how to create a story where the moral decay of a society creates evil.)

Lastly...she could have done a story about the nature of heroism, about whether it's fair to ask one person to carry the burden of saving the world. That could have also been a thoughtful back and forth on the nature of power and whether it breeds responsibility along with it in terms of how its wielded. Does Alina have a right to walk away? Does she have the right to say, "I don't want this destiny?"

(Want to see this done well? See Peter Parker in the Spiderman films featuring Toby Maguire. Yes, even the last one, which is trash, but is still thematically and morally consistent with the other two films.)

Etc, etc. These are all three different moral journeys her protagonists could have on, but it feels like she tried to do variations on all three and just kind of hit a wall because they're all inconsistent with each other. "Power = bad" isn't really a meaningful theme, not when your story hinges on people needing power to create change and when your villain is somebody who had to claw his way to the top to get it after years of suffering genocide and prejudice.

#shadow and bone #shadow and bone spoilers #grisha trilogy #grisha trilogy spoilers #critical analysis #long post

[theawkwardterrier]

When in the Depth of Winter

Summary: Peggy notices how the cold troubles Steve and tries to fix it. 

The first part of my Steggy Secret Santa outtakes posting. This one was rejected because it refused to stay as light as I wanted, so take that as you will.

Read on AO3

Something happens to Steve as the temperature begins to drop below freezing. Peggy doesn’t think that anyone else has noticed - when asked if he seems different to her, Angie declares, “Nah, swell - and gorgeous! - as always,” and Bucky points out that just because the current war is a cold one, doesn’t mean that Steve feels he’s through with his responsibilities - but it’s terribly obvious to her. Or perhaps it’s only that no one else is around to see him walk through the house in his warmest socks or take an extra quilt from the linen closet to add to their bed. No one else thinks to notice how odd it is for him to bundle in gloves and a scarf and a hat, even though his core temperature stays consistently high regardless. She seems to be the only one who sees him turn from cheery window displays and tuck himself even quieter and farther inside at the parties they’re invited to.

She asks him about it, of course she does. They’ve been married for a year and had been seeing each other nearly daily for months before then, ever since he’d been recovered from the Valkyrie. There’s no one she trusts as much as she does Steve and she doesn’t think it flattery but mere fact that she holds similar esteem to him. Still, he only frowns and shrugs in response to her questions, says he’s feeling the same as usual, kissing her gently on the temple or crown or mouth and thanking her for worrying about him. And she doesn’t think he’s intentionally lying; sometimes, however, your feelings are buried so deeply that you don’t even recognize them. That doesn’t mean that they aren’t there. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t anything to be done.

Somehow, as if knowing that Peggy has other things to think about and can’t stay in the office until all hours or pop in for emergency sessions on weekends (or perhaps because she isn’t the only one whose family has her focus just now), her agents are closing cases at a top clip and the criminal underworld seems to have settled into some sort of hibernation.

And so Peggy is able to stop at the delicatessen on a Friday and still be home by suppertime.

“It’s the absolute perfect evening,” she says as soon as she comes through the door. “Come for a walk with me.” There’s an excitement to the declaration rather than any martial strictness; after an assessing look at her - this isn’t precisely normal for the two of them - he stands and dons his coat to join her outside.

They live away from the main street and most of their neighbors are already tucked away inside their homes. When they do encounter someone, they exchange nods, but for the most part there is only the soft sound of their boots atop the leftover snow, their exhalations of breath which fog in the air.

Through the larger front windows they can see families eating and couples reading side by side, silhouettes of Christmas trees, and once, a couple sharing a kiss in a dim sitting room. One or the other of them will point out some particularly pretty decorations. It is not late but the winter darkness is so complete that when they step through a streetlight the reality of the brightness is nearly a surprise, a brief dawning which reminds them of how lovely the velvet night can be too.

Pressed close as they are, she feels him shiver as a breeze blows past them. Leaning up, she touches her chilled cheek to his warmer one, both their eyes closed. And without speaking, they turn around and start for home.

Their fireplace has never been used before now, but they light it tonight, sit in front of its bathing warmth to eat the chicken soup that she had brought home, reheated piping hot. They don’t speak much but it is enough, unhurried and peaceful. She can feel him watching her, trying to figure through her intentions, but in the end he seems simply to accept it, leaning back and allowing himself to be thawed.

“What do you think of ice skating?” she asks him as they finish washing the breakfast dishes one Saturday morning.

He gives her an odd glance. “Walking but on ice and with knives strapped to your feet?” he tries.

“Well, I’m sure there’s nothing we have to do today which can’t keep until tomorrow, and I’ve bought you a pair of skates which should fit.”

Steve is her husband, and before that he was her friend, and he is above all her partner. She doesn’t often use with him the tone of voice she does for stubborn politicians or agency heads who disagree with her, the one which is simultaneously so firm as not to brook complaint and a bit blithe, as though whatever is being discussed has already been decided in Peggy’s favor and aren’t they silly for having forgotten. By the way his eyebrows furrow even deeper, she knows he recognizes it and he even opens his mouth to say so, but in the end he instead goes to get his coat.

Their house is a ten minute walk from the skating pond - not even that if you’re Steve - but they’re usually too busy to even contemplate availing themselves of it. It’s already midmorning by the time they arrive and the day is perfect, sunny but frigid, so no one has to worry about softening ice. They are far enough into the season, however, that the novelty has worn off and only a few other groups are taking advantage.

Steve has, through mutual effort, become a passable dancer beyond back and forth swaying and turning in circles (not that the style doesn’t have its own charms). That skill doesn’t seem to translate to the ice, however, and he spends their first turns around the pond clutching her hands with the trembling ankles of a newborn deer taking its first steps. But he picks it up more quickly than she had expected, his serum-induced athleticism activating as he continues to practice, and soon his hand in hers has nothing to do with balance or security anymore.

They get competitive, they can’t help it, laughing as they race, taking care to swerve around the others with whom they are sharing the ice. Steve tries a couple of jumps - daring and occasionally reckless as he might be, he’s smart enough not to attempt flips just yet - and even when he falls, he just laughs and shakes himself off as he stands again.

It doesn’t escape Peggy’s eyes as they switch back over into their street shoes that Steve has stuffed his gloves into his pocket, that he drapes his coat over his arm deference to the sweat they’ve worked up. But she doesn’t mention anything, merely takes his hand once again for the walk home.

They go to watch Angie playing Martha Cratchit in A Christmas Carol the next week, and treat her to supper and hot apple cider afterward. (Steve crinkles his nose but keeps taking baffled sips from his mug, as if a preference for it might sneak up on him if he only keeps trying.) The week after that, it snows again and they spend Sunday in Prospect Park with Bucky so Peggy can experience the site of their youthful sledding exploits.

“Well, we didn’t exactly have a sled then,” Steve points out as they climb Lookout Hill. “But there’s plenty you can do with a garbage can lid or the old instrument trays that the hospital was getting rid of.” It’s the sort of statement which would have Peggy’s mother making faces like she had just sniffed sour milk, but Peggy herself actually smiles at the picture of her husband small enough to curl himself up for a trip down the hill and brash enough to try it.

“Can’t believe you’re forgetting my masterpiece,” Bucky jokes. “Weeks of collecting scrap wood and old nails, borrowing my dad’s hammer to put it all together, and you don’t even mention it.”

Steve shakes his head. “My mother was certain I’d get tetanus just from being near that thing when she saw what you’d made.”

“I think my ears are still ringing from her shouting - and don’t think I’ve forgotten that it was mostly at me.”

“You were the one stupid enough to build it!”

“You’re the one who was stupid enough to ride it.” With a grin, Bucky adds, “I didn’t think anyone could shout louder than my ma, so I guess I learned a lesson in more than woodworking that day.”

“Now I’m even more disappointed that I was never given a chance to meet her,” Peggy says as they reach the top before Bucky can play any further with the word woodworking. He had been discovered in Russia by a SHIELD spy and extracted a year before they found Steve; he is quiet about the professional help he has been getting to manage the pain of the things that happened to him during the war and after, but it’s clearly making a difference: his terrible sense of humor is returning in fuller force even than she knew it could. Steve’s hip nudges against hers, and she knows that it is not by accident. She looks up at him and catches his smile.

After a morning of racing down the hill until the crowds arrive, after they’d handed over their sleds to a group of kids without their own and, picking up food on the way, gone back to Bucky’s apartment to eat and talk and laugh together, Peggy and Steve take the train back home. His cheeks are still somewhat rosy when she looks at him, and the remnants of laughter still dance about his mouth. Halfway there, a pair of seats opens up and they sit side by side, leaning into each other a bit, watching absently through the steamed window as the city passes them by.

“I can tell what you’re doing, you know,” Steve says as they climb the porch stairs, returning from helping out at the Red Cross rummage sale. Steve has plenty of volunteer projects he’s associated with around the neighborhood - the soup kitchen, the community center - but she had been the one to suggest this; she remembers how welcome that bright symbol had been on the battlefield, in the same way as Steve’s shield.

“Unlocking the door?” she asks as she plucks her keys from her bag.

He is so near to her that she can feel his heat and practically his narrowed eyes as well as he says, “Not—Well, sure, but what I meant was that I know that you don’t just suddenly find winter outings appealing.”

She lets them through the door, unbuttoning her coat with her other hand. “Perhaps I’m only just becoming comfortable enough with you to share my love for them.” Until he comes out with what he is thinking, she isn’t going to simply believe the jig to be up.

“Peggy,” he says, and to anyone else listening it would just be her name, but she hears the real sharpness to the word. She turns to him, coat still draped around her shoulders. He’s shut the door with his foot and they haven’t had a chance to switch on the lights; his face is shadowed, difficult to make out in the muted light of the late afternoon.

“When you asked,” he says, and then makes himself take in more air. “When you asked if something was wrong, I didn’t know that there was. But it’s just that—” He ducks his head, then lifts it again, making himself look toward her. “I keep thinking of all those winters of never being quite warm enough, never having a good coat or shoes to keep out the damp, the way I knew that I was getting sick by the way my breath would catch when I laughed or when there was a certain taste in the back of my throat. I can’t forget the smell of trench foot from guys who’d been walking in wet boots for days, or the times I had to be the one to keep digging the graves because the ground was so frozen no one else could get through it. There are nights I close my eyes and see Buck falling, that jacket of his all dark against the snow, even though he survived, he’s back now and safe. And sometimes, when the wind is really bad, I feel like I remember—” He cuts himself off, shaking his head, though his shoulders shake as well, broad as they are.

They have talked about their time apart, as they call it, but he has always wanted to keep the focus on her end, on the things she had done and the way she had felt and all that had happened to her, pushing off talk of his end of things with reminders that there wasn’t anything to tell about what was essentially a prolonged sleep. They both know that he shouldn’t be able to recall any of it - he swears he was knocked out by the impact of the crash and he only woke up again long after he had been removed from the shell of the Valkyrie and completely warmed - but even the thought that he might remember a moment of his time frozen beneath the ice stabs at her.

“I could see that this time of year was difficult for you,” she says, and she doesn’t look away from him even as she folds herself inward. Typically her bulling forward has worked in her favor; the idea that it might have backfired and hurt the person she least wants to is intolerable. “I thought we might try to cloud some of the associations for you, to give you some new memories for the season. But perhaps it was a bit too much to overcome.”

He ducks his head and steps toward her; he is very near in the darkened front hall. “You weren’t wrong to try. The thing is that you did give me good new memories: helping people get through the worst of the cold, spending time with our friends, all those new moments with you. Those memories have to fit inside my head along with the old ones; you just made sure that sometimes when it’s cold what I’ll remember instead is kissing you with snowflakes on your eyelashes. I’m just never sure which is going to be the one my brain’ll bring up.”

“I know as well as you do that it’s impossible to erase the other memories,” she says. “But it’s terribly important to me to make sure that you have an entire lifetime’s worth of happy ones too.”

“You’ve given me a million wonderful ones, even when you weren’t trying,” he says staunchly. Captain America isn’t just a persona or a symbol, it’s who he is, the bolsterer, strong and entirely reliable, she’s always known that. But it is so clearly Steve Rogers who, after a pausing moment, asks, low and a bit worried, “But what about—I don’t want you to feel guilty if sometimes the good memories aren’t always enough. It’s only that the bad ones are still in there too.”

She closes her eyes; how particularly privileged she feels for him to allow himself to say such a thing when he spends so much time considering himself last, trying to make sure no one thinks of having to extend a hand on his behalf.

“Well,” she says, stepping forward and tucking herself beneath his coat with him, wrapping arms around his back to hold him tightly to herself. “In those moments, we just stand together and wait for spring.”

#Steggy fic #Steggy #Steve Rogers #Peggy Carter #alternate universe - Steve was found in the ice #bad psychology

[themonkeycabal]

WandaVision Ep 4 SPOILERS

Yes, spoilers, 

Wherein I watch and say stuff that might or might not be worth reading.

After a little bit of a lackluster start, there was good story progress last week. An escalation of weird, which I appreciated. I'll probably have to relive it, because Disney doesn't want to let me skip the previously. Ever. Why are you the way you are, Disney?

Geraldine/Monica is made of whispery voices and swirling dust and such. Weird. She's sitting in a chair, sleeping, and apparently being reconstituted. She wakes to a hospital room but outside is chaos. Lots of yelling and people running about. There's like swirling dust or human confetti everywhere, and other people are being reconstituted left and right. Seems unusual. Not the sort of thing that normally happens in hospitals. Oh, are they being un-snapped? The great un-snappening. The un-snapapalooza. The fall of the snappocalypse. I'll stop. I guess we're in a flashback of sorts.

Dudes, Monica just like full on hip checked some dude into the boards. She didn't mean it, but, damn, that guy went flying. Nobody knows what's going on, it's madness. A doctor recognizes her and asks where she went and Monica's all "uh, what? I took a nap?" Napping and then snapping and then popping back into existence. Ain't that just the way? Oh, sad, her mom died while she was missing for five years. :(

Sentient Weapon Observation Response Division — please nobody expect me to remember that. They have a Cape Canaveral looking compound with multiple launch pads and a very large hanger smack in the middle. Gee how neat for them that they get to operate out in the open, Phil Coulson says (in my head) with a whole lot of sarcasm.

Oh, right, they called it the Blip. The Great Un-Blippening. That doesn't sound as good. What on earth with the massive monitors in the main lobby. Nobody likes watching the news that much. Monica is trying to brazenly walk through the front doors with a badge that doesn't work and wow, security guy is kind of a dick. Oh, she belongs there. Captain Monica Rambeau. Captain, good for her.

And now security dick is revealed to be even more dickish, since this is just after the Blip and she's trying to go back to work. Like, SWORD couldn't put out a memo "Be on the lookout for recently unblipped personnel. Don't be massive dicks to them when their security badges don't work, because of how they got blipped and all"? Also maybe a reorientation packet, or like a desk out front "Back from the Blip? Talk to Lt. Mandy Smith in HR about your reactivation options today!" I'm just spitballing here. I get it was chaotic, but that's no reason to let the unblipped get a rude welcome. It wasn't their fault Thanos was critically dumb.

Blip no longer sounds like a word.

Anyway, the acting director is fortunately there to meet her before she could drop her gloves and punch the security dick in the dick. Aww, Maria Rambeau is on the Wall of Valor, or whatever they call it at SWORD.

Things aren't going well at SWORD. The Blip put the hurt on the division. Their remaining astronaut trainees have chickened out. Oh, what if there was like crew up in orbit that got blipped and then when they unblipped five years later … yikes. Well, I'll allow the 'lost their nerve' may have a solid basis in horribleness that probably occurred around the Blip. I retract the 'chickened out' comment.

This is a very long walk-and-talk. Maria Rambeau built SWORD "from the ground up". Bless.

The Director has grounded Monica. Well, actually, her mom grounded her, making protocols in case vanished personnel one day returned. Lol. Though, I mean, I'd guess she'd know, what with Carol and all.  "I know it's a raw deal, but there is one positive takeaway. She believed you'd come back." Awww

So, she's off to deal with some sort of missing persons case in New Jersey overseeing the loan of one of their drones for the FBI. I guess Wanda will be the missing person. Yep, she's off to Westview. Which has seen better days.

Hey! It's Agent Woo! I like you Agent Woo! Did I know he was in this? I don't remember. Randall Park's great. A happy surprise.

Hmm, he has a missing witness. So, not Wanda, then. Hmm again. Agent Woo contacted known associates, family, friends — none of them have ever heard of the witness. A mystery!

Oh and there's another wrinkle.

"Pardon me Sheriff, would you mind repeating your claim about Westview to my colleague here?"

"No such place," he says, standing next to the 'Welcome to Westview" sign.

Hmmm, puzzling. Jimmy Woo can't reach anybody listed as living in town. So, wait, the town doesn't exist, except it does, but, nobody thinks it does, so where did he get the phone records for residents? The phone company was just like "here's your records for the imaginary city of Westview, all 3,000+ residents that never existed, and yet we have the numbers and we're just not going to question that". Weird.

"So you can't reach anyone inside and everyone on the outside has some sort of selective amnesia?" That does seem to be the case, Monica. Super odd. Agent Woo is very sanguine about the whole thing. He dealt with Scott Lang, I guess after that everything else is like, 'meh'.

"Why haven't' you gone inside to investigate?" A fine question, Captain.

"Because it doesn't want me to." That's just creepy, Agent Woo. "You can feel it, too, can't you? Nobody's supposed to go in." I guess this is where the drone will come in handy. Oh, it's the little helicopter that Wanda found in the bushes in the second episode. I'm going to pretend that super advanced SWORD drones would totally look like cheap RC toy helicopters. I guess that's a disguise?

Monica wants to know why she and Agent Woo are aware that Westview exists and nobody else is. Does that mean the Sheriff was standing next to the Welcome to Westview sign and just did not see it at all? He was just hanging out in the middle of nowhere with a weirdly laconic FBI agent who kept asking about the town that very clearly wasn't just right behind them? That's a little more than amnesia.  

Also, Agent Woo's hero was Elliot Ness. Of course it was.

Oh no, the drone vanished as it crossed the town line! There's an energy field around the town that looks like what happens when you push your fingers against an old monitor and get the weird pixelly rainbow. Agent Woo's all "please no touch" and Monica's all "yes, I think I'll stick my whole hand in there." And she got sucked in. Agent Woo's gotta be like "WHY DOESN'T ANYBODY EVER LISTEN TO ME?"

24 hours later. Darcy! Some sort of transport van. A trio of other suits in the back, plus Darcy. She tries to talk to one of the dudes and he's all "we're not supposed to talk to each other!" "Boy Scout leader, got it." Relax, uptight guy. Pfft, what sort of team is that? The rest give up their specialty. Aww, bless, she went into astrophysics. "We've got the full clown car." heh.

Boy Scout leader finally caving to peer pressure: "I'm a chemical engineer." Darcy: "No one cares." lol. Missed you, girlfriend!

And in 24 hours SWORD/FBI whoever have set up a little military camp. Oh a "response base". How banally euphemistic. There's like a whole bunch of agencies there, as well as Army and Air Force.

Dr. Lewis. Oh, I'm so proud. I bet Jane was over the moon. Saved from poli-sci!

Elsewhere another drone vanishes. Darcy darcys a lot at an uptight uniform who is breathing down her neck "make your assessment" and it's delightful. Darcy notices some high levels of cosmic background radiation and also something weird layered over the top of that. Hmm, she needs a tv. "An old one, like not flat." One with vacuum tubes, perhaps?

In another part of the camp, they send in a guy in a hazmat suit, down into the sewers, looking for Monica. I guess he'll be the beekeper Wanda tosses in ep 2. Jimmy Woo is not optimistic about that plan. He tells the SWORD Director all about it.

"Someone must really miss you back at Quantico." "No, sir, softball season is over." Lol.

All their high tech scanning is turning up nothing.

Uhoh, screaming. Oh, nevermind, it's the laughtrack. While everybody else was dicking around with the LIDAR, Darcy has tracked down the last tube tv in New Jersey and has tuned into the Wanda Dimension. Episode one is playing.  

Darcy is understandably particularly baffled by Vision. "Look, I know it's been a crazy few years on this planet, but he's dead right? Not blipped. Dead." Poor Vision. Alas.

Director wants to know if the broadcast is realtime or a recording. Or what? Darcy's like "how tf should I know?"

Jimmy asks the good question "So you're saying the universe created a sitcom staring two Avengers?" "It's a working theory."

Now SWORD fans out! And collects every ye olde TV on the eastern seaboard. Who doesn't love a good sitcom, amiright? (Me. Me do not love sitcoms). The Director storms off to wherever for whatever reason. I don't know, don't care. Jimmy and Darcy are on the case.

Darcy is IDing the other "characters" in the sitcom, who appear to be real people with NJ driver's liscenses, while Jimmy is wondering why the force field is hexagonal. You've got me there. And now we're montaging.

Jimmy ponders the big board of 'characters' and Darcy drops her cup o' noodles when she spots Monica in the second episode. He and Darcy discuss and he's like "is it an alternate reality, time travel, some cockamamie social experiment?" Darcy's all "it's a sitcom." A pure mystery.

Darcy comes up with the idea to reach out to Wanda via the radio in her kitchen. "Next time she's washing dishes — which by my count happens about once an episode, barf." heh. She tech babbles some and I'm very proud.

A minion agent runs up with the latest intel from the most recent episode, it's a picture of the SWORD drone that looks more retro (frankly it looks better than the 'real world' one.) Hmmm, such a puzzler. Why did it change, they wonder.  

Darcy Lewis and Jimmy Woo are a partnership I can totally get behind. Jimmy was the voice trying to reach Wanda. Darcy's watching the show while Jimmy's trying the radio thing. It's the second episode where Wanda's talking to Emma Caulfield and things go weird. Good. I'm glad they jumped us to the outside world by ep four. While I thought the first two eps were slow, I think maybe they'll work better once we can watch the whole thing at a go.

Dude is still crawling through the sewers. I completely forgot he was down there. And the field extends below ground and he just crawled through it and became a beekeeper, and his safety rope snapped and … became a jumprope?

And then Wanda wishes him to the cornfield. (I guess? We don't see what happens to him.)

SWORD is watching episode three.

"1950s, 1960s, and now 70s. Why does it keep switching time periods. It can't be purely for my enjoyment can it?" Guys, it's so good to see Darcy.   "I can't believe Wanda and Vision are having a baby." No really, Jimmy and Darcy, BFFS 4EVAH! They're eating chips and watching the episode. Delightful. Just delightful.

"Twins. What a twist." Jimmy gives Darcy a look. "I'm invested!"

Monica mentions Ultron and Jimmy and Darcy are like "Whoa!".

They notice the screen sort of glitches and then Monica is gone and it's the end credits. Like when Bee guy vanished. Darcy and Jimmy are confused. "Someone is censoring the broadcast." Yeah, Wanda. She's gone to the scary place, friends.

Alarms go off and they run off. But, we go into Wanda World the aspect ratio changes from 4:3 to 16:9 and it's a new angle on when Wanda went all scary at Monica, demanding to know who she is. And then, of course, she gets kicked out of Wanda World.

"Wanda, I'm just your neighbor." "Then how could you know about Ultron?"

Wanda brings up the glowy hands of scary. "You are a stranger and an outsider and right now you are trespassing here. And I want you to leave." And then she zooms Monica out through the walls and fences and fields and that looked like it probably hurt.

Oh gross. Wanda turns around and sees Dead Vision. The big hole in his head and his face all, you know, dead looking. She looks away and then he's normal when she looks back. Well, now this has turned all sad, you guys. "We can go wherever we want." "No, we can't." Sad. Poor Wanda. The aspect ratio goes back to 4:3. I’m sure Editorial was like “oh god, again?” 

"Don't worry darling, I have everything under control."

I don't think so, Wanda.

Good ep! My only real takeaway is that none of this is going to end particularly happily. 

So … Darcy and Jimmy, BFFS 4EVAH!

#wandavision #wandavision spoilers #darcy lewis #jimmy woo #wandavision liveblog

[beforetheflowers]

Poinsettia

SPNAdventCalendar2020 prompt: day 13, poinsettia

Read complete on AO3!

Ok, I’m a little late with this, but here we go. Read the first half below the cut!

Hunters might not get paid for doing their jobs, but it was not uncommon to receive gifts of appreciation. These gifts ranged from invitations to sit down for a home-cooked meal, boxes of snacks and drinks, a good bottle of scotch, gift cards to restaurants… actually, the gifts took the form of food quite often. 

It was curious, this human impulse to show their love by feeding each other. Taking care of each other’s most basic need, giving the blessing of not needing to worry about where the next meal was coming from. 

Though angels did not, as a rule, feel hunger, Castiel understood it intimately. He’d been human quite a few times in the last decade, and he knew the dull ache that could only be filled by sinking his teeth into something delicious.   

Of course, Castiel made a point of breaking heaven’s rules. He never told Dean this, but occasionally he would fly out into a field or forest and let his grace drain into the Earth, depleting his own power so that he could become something close to human. It wasn’t easy to do in winter; someone would probably get suspicious if a grove of trees suddenly sprouted greenery under their blankets of snow, but he made it work. 

Let’s just say that a particular river in Kansas was full of incredibly vigorous fish, and leave it at that.

Draining his power in that way allowed Castiel to experience mortality with Dean. His vessel aged, so subtly that Dean hadn’t even noticed yet, but Cas was determined to grow old with him. They had their eternal youth to look forward to in the afterlife. 

It also allowed him to feel human drives; hunger, thirst, desire, pain. All the risks and rewards of freedom.  

Castiel also felt that taking care of the Earth was a proper angelic duty. He wasn’t interested in being an agent of fate, or a tool in Chuck’s arsenal. But blessing the Earth with life gave him great joy and contentment in his role as an angel. His grace was a gift he could give to wild things. 

So, although Castiel understood humanity’s gift-giving impulse on a personal level, he found it quaint and charming nevertheless. In times of hardship, humans reached out for each other instead of turning away, they gave more generously instead of less. Despite the flaws of their species, Castiel believed they were good at their core. He wasn’t sure he could say the same about angels.

The winter holidays seemed to motivate humans to give more than any other season. Perhaps it was simply the darkness and lack of plant growth in winter that pushed them to share resources, but… they took care of each other.

Cas was, however, sometimes baffled at their choice of gifts. 

One day in late November, he had gone grocery shopping while Dean was at work and had seen rows and rows of tiny replicas of popular fictional characters, stuffed animals in unnatural colors, pink models of kitchens, and even boxes of toys that weren’t assembled yet. How any of these objects helped humans survive winter, Cas didn’t know. 

Musing about the nature of humanity along the ends of the toy aisles, he had walked past a little red creature that started singing at him. He finished his shopping quickly after that. 

Also in November, Cas had received another bewildering gift from a family he had saved from a poltergeist. Dean had been at work again when Cas heard a strange report on the police scanner; officers had responded to a call about a strange man smashing up the neighbor’s house while everyone was out. 

When they had arrived, they found all the doors and windows closed and locked. Inside was indeed smashed up; the dining table was broken down the middle, stuffing was ripped from the couches, glass littered the floor from shattered picture frames and ceramic decorations. There was nobody in the house.

The mom left work right away after the cops notified her, and - Cas perused the subsequent report - she had mentioned instances of paintings falling off the walls, doors slamming, furniture being moved, but nothing close to the destruction of that day. The police had chalked it up to a very clever home invader and told the family to invest in a better security system. 

A security system wouldn’t work against a poltergeist, if indeed that was what the family was dealing with. 

Cas packed a duffle bag with ghost-hunting paraphernalia and teleported to the end of the family’s driveway. The family had been unwilling to trust him at first - apparently, they didn’t appreciate blunt honesty - but when the sun went down and the poltergeist started hurling knives around the kitchen, they welcomed Cas back inside, where he made quick work of the poltergeist. 

As it turned out, they had recently purchased a painting of a sunset from a charity auction. All seemed normal until Cas tore off the paper backing, revealing the signature of the painter; it was not created by some local artist as the family had assumed, but by someone who went down in history as a serial killer. The alizarin crimson was fortified with actual human blood, and the victim had become a restless spirit, tethered to the painting and unable to rest. 

Cas burned the painting and the spirit finally moved on. In their gratitude, the family had insisted he take home the apple pie that had been cooling on the counter and shoved a plant into his hands. Arms full of ghost-hunting equipment and the family’s generous gifts, Cas left, waiting until he reached the cover of shadows before teleporting home. 

The pie was a good gift because it made sense. Food. And a dessert at that, a delectable treat. Dean especially would like it. But the plant?

It had broad red leaves with tiny yellow blooms in the center. The lower leaves were dark green. A poinsettia. 

The Aztecs had cultivated this plant for its usefulness as medication and dye, but surely the family didn’t expect him to use it for those purposes. Of course, Cas knew about its association with Christ. Legend held that an angel encouraged a girl in Mexico to give a gift, no matter how plain, for Christ’s birthday. She gathered a bouquet of roadside weeds, but when she placed them on the altar, they became the blazing red, star-shaped leaves of the poinsettia. 

Cas had no idea which angel had performed that particular miracle, but it sounded on-brand for the heavenly host. Most angels only helped humanity when it served the glory of the Lord. Or maybe Cas was just a cynic. 

Either way, it didn’t explain why the family had given him one. They didn’t know he was an angel, right? The plant symbolized sacrifice, success, happiness, or purity; was it perhaps a wish that he would experience one of these? He’d take success or happiness, but he’d sacrificed far too much already, and he was so far beyond purity that it was almost a joke. 

Dean was already home when Cas, bypassing the struggle of opening the door with his hands full, teleported into the kitchen. 

“Hello, Dean.”

Flinching mightily, Dean nearly flipped the contents of the pan straight onto the floor. He chuckled weakly when he saw who it was. “Jesus Christ, man. Could you try knocking first, or something?”

“My hands were full,” Cas explained, finally setting everything down. He put the pie and the plant on the table and returned the duffle bag back to its place in the basement before returning to Dean. 

The smell that pervaded the house was wonderful; garlic and rosemary under the scent of sizzling steak. Cas’s stomach growled, and he realized he hadn’t eaten since yesterday. It was easy for an angel to lose track of such things, but Dean always took care of him. 

“Have a glass of wine,” Dean said, handing him a cab sauv. He leaned his back against the counter, watching Cas and his cooking at the same time. “Tell me about your day, baby.” 

Cas told him about the poltergeist and the gratitude of the family. “I don’t understand why they gave me this plant,” he ended the story, brushing one soft, red leaf between his fingertips.  

“What do you mean? It’s a poinsettia.” 

“Yes. It’s a holy symbol that often represents the crucifixion in the Western, Christian tradition. Why would they want to remind me of that? It was a horrible event, really. A man died.”    

Dean gave him that look, half exasperation, half amusement, that usually meant Cas had failed to understand some social norm. “People always give each other poinsettias around Christmas. It doesn’t really have any deep symbolic meaning these days, it’s just pretty to look at.”

Well, that was certainly true. It was a vibrant little thing, with plush crimson leaves and yellow center, like it was both reaching out for the sun and reflecting it deep within. Cas could feel the life buzzing inside it, drawing water and nutrients from the soil and exhaling oxygen through its broad leaves. 

It was a good gift, he decided with a little smile. 

But that wasn’t the end of it... 

#SPNAdventCalendar2020 #destiel #@bend-me-shape-me #dean winchester #castiel #supernatural #supernatural fanfic #fanfic #writing prompt #holiday prompts

[allyvampirelass29]

Welcome to Christmasland, Victoria

A NOS4A2 Review By: Allyssa J. Watkins

Welcome to Christmasland, Victoria Welcome to The End And it's going to be glorious Dare I said, you belonged here with me And it's still true....... When I see your rended head Hanging from The Great Tree How fondly I'll think of you All the magical times we spent How we fought, how you bled Blood droplets like breadcrumbs Scarlet against the snow How I trapped you in my ice maze That look on your face Pleading for me to let her go I ALREADY HAVE YOU Stupid Girl How frivolous your sacrifice I'll strike her down Without thinking twice How many Wretched McQueens do I have to kill? For you to CARE what Wayne wants, how he feels? It's selfish to hold on To the child you love, only when he's gone. You'll die here, and so will the McQueen name Good riddance I say But fear not, My Dear I'll take good care of Wayne I'll give him a shiny new one Far more suited to this wondrous place Who do you want to be, Wayne? Say it with me Four letters, and it's done Why don't you spell it out for your Mom? Can you guess what comes next? Come boy, don't be shy........ I'll help you decide This isn't homework, this is fun! Something special between us That she can't wreck Welcome Home, My Son Wayne M-A-N-X

OH HOLY NIGHT!!!!! My ENTIRE body is humming, the dead heat of summer ALIVE with the magic of Christmas!!! Is there such a thing as a Christmasland Afterglow!? Because I have it, I feel....... RADIANT!!!! I've pranced around in a daze, in a December DREAM of bright coloured glisten, and a festive world, I ache to call my own, singing for anyone that will listen!!!! I never thought I'd say this, but shockingly, impossibly....... My beloved Sleigh House has been dethroned, and WELCOME TO CHRISTMASLAND has just been crowned my FAVOURITE episode of NOS4A2 of all time, beyond anything my own Creative desire could conjure!!! It's an unforgettable EXPERIENCE. It's a transcendent EVENT, bright shining, this night divine, the PERFECT date with Charlie Manx!!! Thrills become chills, dream becomes disaster, in this sleighcoaster ride of gripping emotion, dastardly duels, and devastating betrayal!!! The highest peaks, taking us up and up, ascending through the stars to the winking moon, the sharpest curves, the breathless rush of an exhilarating joyride through a surreal dream come true. in both eerily dazzling visual, and electrifying plot. Hold on, Creatives......... It's the ride of your life.

Christmasland. Like the shiniest, most beautifully wrapped gift beneath the tree, left unopened, has always presented the most intriguing mystery. Spoken about in hushed tones, in both reverence, and wonder, hatred, and horror to baffling extremes, it's NOS4A2's best kept secret. The missing piece, the final destination. For two seasons we've heard the tale about dashing Father Christmas, riding high in his ebony sleigh, all to save the children of the world, and give them Christmas every day...... But thus far, this winter wonderland has been kept firmly in the mystery box. A flash of colored shine here, a scrap of ribbon there, a quick jaunt in and out of the towering twin candy cane gates, special cargo in tow, and then we're off again. At times, it's been maddening, and I just ached to see it, SO badly!!! Now I can finally say, after two seasons of festive teases, it was everything Charlie promised, and so much more than I could have ever imagined, INFINITELY worth the wait, the hype, and the conflict!!! I am thankful too, that our esteemed writers were sly enough to hold back all this time, and then, having driven us mad with the waiting, swung wide the gates for the BIG reveal, letting the glowing enchantment and happy wonder of Christmasland overwhelm the senses all at once. You feel welcomed, you feel accepted, and once you've seen it, you'll never want leave........

Welcome to Christmasland, Creatives!!! You're very much in the moment, swept up in the full Christmasland experience, as the cheerful holiday music heralds your arrival!!! You even feel like you're there, in the backseat of the Wraith alongside Wayne, the shot in his perspective, as you go through the gates with Charlie at the wheel!!! I love it when NOS4A2 does this kind of immersive cinematography, putting us in the story, for being a Creative is all about making the fantasy a reality!!! For a boy that's never had a Christmas, who associates the holidays with his mother's depression, drinking herself to death, destroying any and all decoration, Christmasland is a FEAST for Wayne's eyes, a forbidden joy, and it shines on his face, mouth falling open, tongue sticking out, the cascade of coloured lights reflected off the Wraith's window. "Welcome to Christmasland, Wayne," Charlie chortles, as the wonderstruck lad, stars in his eyes, hops out of the car, greeted by a throng of eager vampire children. Charlie waves at them, his grin resplendent, and lovingly he calls to them as they surround him. "My Little Ones, how I've missed you all!!!"

It's a beaming joy for me to see Charlie like this, so in his element, so ALIVE, happy and playful, ready to share his world with the special little boy he has come to love like a son. As his other children clamber around Wayne, fighting over him, each urging him to play a different game, he smiles, hand raised to calm them, not wanting to overwhelm the dear little lad, and is the picture of fatherhood, as he says with gentle authority, "Now, now there will be plenty of time for all of it, after Millie gives him the grand tour. " Oddly enough, Christmasland's First Child neglects to welcome the boy her father has chased so tirelessly, braving all manner of wretched McQueens to procure, and while he veils it well, you can sense his disappointment. "Well then, it's your lucky day, Wayne. It's not every child that gets a private tour from Father Christmas, himself," He crows, deciding to shrug off Millie's slight...... for now. The vampire children oooh and ahhh, which I found just too adorable. He's magic to them, you can tell!!! "Let's go find you a more exciting costume!" Charlie coos with a sweet eyebrow raise, and I am DEAD as he lovingly tousles Wayne's hair!!!!

Can I just say, I love, love, LOVED this opener with all of my giddy, affectionate, Manx-loving heart!?!? I always thought the interactive Charlie Dream in, "Bruce Wayne McQueen," would forever be my favourite opener, but there is so much frolicking joy, and all kinds of warm fuzzies in this one, as Charlie dotes upon Wayne, charming as ever, helping him pick out his extra special Christmasland costume!!! I LOVED IT, my eyes welling up, as what I suspected all along to be true, couldn't be more adorably obvious. While it began as a revenge plot, taking Wayne, he has become so precious to Charlie, and the adoration that he has for this dear little boy is that of the proudest father, loving him, heart and soul, as his own son. In that moment I knew...... Charlie Manx would never let him go....... Oh my gosh, you guys, it's just all so CUTE, Charlie being patient and coaxing with Wayne, even though he's reluctant to give up his space pajamas, shyly informing Charlie that his mom got them for him for his birthday. Charlie sympathizes at first, and then explains that these are for bedtime, and there are no bedtimes in Christmasland, just staying up all night, playing games and riding rides. (Seriously, Baby, SIGN ME UP!!!!)

He knows Wayne so well, despite the short time they have spent together, he knows his greatest dreams, the things he loves the most, and he wants so badly to bring them to life for him, ever the attentive father. "At the peak of the sleighcoaster, you can almost reach out and touch the stars. The very moon, itself. You could be a real life astronaut......" He says dreamily with an encouraging elbow jab, making Wayne smile, and I swear I could feel my heart melting like snow. I especially loved all the little details in this scene!!! The way MANX on the astronaut costume is spelled out in NASA lettering, how the other patch even says, "Manx Moon Mission," because Charlie's likeness is beautifully illuminated in the Christmasland Moon. And the way Charlie even has an astronaut's helmet ready, presenting it to Wayne, with a flourish and a flip!!!. I found myself so in awe at the care, the devotion, he's put into these costumes, and I couldn't help but muse at all the possibilities, and which I would have chosen as an eight year old!!! I was, however, extremely nervous when he gave him the scissors, wrapped up nice in a bow, which I now see as some rather excellent, utterly chilling foreshadowing...... But luckily, this is eclipsed by something even more heart racing, in my favourite part of my favourite opener, in my favourite episode!!! (Seriously Charlie, did you write this whole episode just to dazzle me!?)

To be officially inducted into Christmasland, every child must write their name in the registry book. Wayne writes his first name in bright red ink, and then hesitates, pen paused mid-air, struggling with what to write next. "McQueen just...... doesn't feel right anymore, does it?" Charlie coos with sneaking revel. "This isn't homework, this is fun!" He persuades, enthused. "It's okay, I'll help you......" My heart quickens, chills skittering across my skin, already knowing what my sneaky boy is up to!!! "M-A-N-X," Charlie says coolly, eyebrow raised something sinister, and I can't breathe, the way he spells it out, with that exhilarated rasp, irresistibly lingering on the, "X!" Charlie takes such pleasure in naming this boy in particular, the son of his scathing arch rival, as his own. Wayne eagerly writes it out just as Charlie instructs him, the now miniature Manx, beaming at him with a toothy, vampire grin. "Manx, Wayne Manx!!!!"

All of the smug satisfaction he took in striking the name McQueen from the record, falls away at this happy declaration, and I really did cry, so touched, as Charlie gazes back at him, dark eyes glistening with vulnerable emotion, a tremble in his voice, as he says it. "Welcome home, My Son....." A slow pan back to the book reveals that all of them, every child in Christmasland, has taken their father's name, and the eerie music wants me to be chilled to the bone, but instead, I'm so ridiculously giddy. All the naysayers back in season one, who said Charlie doesn't care what happens to the children he takes, after he drains them of their youth, can be damned. Charlie LOVES his babies, and it's never been more evident than now, in this beautiful gesture, bestowing them with his last name. (Can I please have it too, Love?)

The happy, romping joy of Christmasland tears away as we are thrown back into the solemn silence of Chris' death scene. Okay...... I consider this episode iridescently perfect, my wildest dreams made real, but I do have one very furious complaint. I HATE the way the aftermath, or should I say, lack thereof, of Chris' death was handled!!!! Yes, I understand that time is of the essence here, that we've got to get to Christmasland post haste to save Wayne, that it's the number one priority right now. But GOD, Vic, your father just DIED, he was MURDERED right in front of you, SAY SOMETHING!!!!! Ughhhh it's just all so apathetic. And confusing. I cried for days, almost the entire week after Chris died, and here Vic is so..... okay? Apparently her father's death affected me, more than her!? What!? Even Lou, God love him, drapes his coat over Chris' body, without shedding a tear. Are you KIDDING me!? Lou, our sweet, sentimental, Teddy Bear Man, lovable, fluffy, deep-feeling Lou doesn't cry here!? I get that he'd only just met Chris, but then again, this is the father of the woman he loves. Maybe he's trying to be strong for her, but it just seemed oddly out of character for the both of them. I wanted a moment, however fleeting, where they said something nice about Chris, where Lou held her as she knelt by her father's body, spoke to him, and wept, and most importantly forgave him. She does mention something about not wanting to leave him out there alone, but it's so nonchalant, such an afterthought.

I did, however, absolutely ADORE the romance in this scene between Vic and Lou.

"Lou Carmody, you are the best man I have ever known, and I'm thankful every day that Wayne has your heart."

Lou and Vic's love has always been so warm, so comfortable, joking, laughing, like a warm sweater that hugs you, and I love that! But this, right here, was the first time that I felt that exquisite ache between them, that desperate longing, that spark that great loves are made of.

"Kiss me, just kiss me," Vic laughs breathlessly, and this kiss hits something powerful, between the danger that awaits and the love that's just been professed. Vic is not a super sentimental person, so it was really wonderful to see her, giddy like this, a woman in love as she looks over her shoulder on her bike, her smile indestructible.

I love Maggie here too, she's not taking no for an answer, and OMG was I the only one that FORGOT Mags was hunting the Wraith even before she met Vic!? Confounding to think there was a time when Vic and Charlie weren't a thing, battling across worlds!!!! That it was once just a fabulously eccentric librarian, asking her scrabble bag questions about a strange, black car.

"Forget the Wraith!!! We're going to blow up Christmasland!!!" Maggie cries triumphant, and there's something about seeing it, this impenetrable place, this frosty fortress, "CHRISTMASLAND," scrawled in that iconic green spray paint on the Shorter Way wall. She's really doing it. Vic's storming Christmasland, and hell's coming with her. Charlie Manx BEWARE.

There's so much to gush about in this episode, it really did feel like Christmas Morning, breathlessly tearing open surprise after surprise!!! Charlie not knowing about the ghost resurrection of Sleigh House was a SHOCK, a staggering TWIST of the most inspired BRILLIANCE!!! Where Christmasland is his dream, Sleigh House is his long repressed nightmare, lurking in the shadow of it, his own personal shop of horrors. I was STUNNED. I thought Charlie had recreated it himself, from memory, resurrecting his dead wife, but whether to have a piece of her, of it, some semblance of the wonderful life he'd lost, or to torture her, keeping her locked away inside, I couldn't decide!!! Charlie's face falls as he sees it, aghast, stumbling through the darkest remnants of his memories, and my heart panged for him, needing to console him, having never seen him so frightened, so tremulous, so...... vulnerable. He's terrified out of his mind. Shrinking back against the wall, his chest shuddering as his worst childhood trauma, Mr. Tim, calls out to him, haunting, and for a moment, he's that helpless little boy again, retreating back inside himself, begging the voice to stop. But even Mr. Tim cannot compare to the vengeful apparition waiting upstairs........

Cassie Manx, a ghastly vision, beautiful and terrible, in a white gown, with her mangled face, and fierce, glassy eyes, appears, and Charlie's heart stops, his lips trembling on her name as he falls back, horrified, against the closet.

"Come now, Charles. You know I've always been here...... nagging at you from the back of your mind, like a song you can't get out of your head......"

Cassie puts the needle down on the Victrola, and forcibly takes a dismayed Charles into her arms. "I'll lead this time," She hisses sardonically, and I can't help but notice the paralyzing parallels between this, and his dance with Jolene. He was so commanding, so haughty, seductive, dangerous, somehow both gentle and aggressive, as he forced her to dance with him. Here, it is Mrs. Manx that is the aggressor, not just in the way she yanks him about the room, erratic, threatening, but in the merciless accusations, that she wields like a knife. "You always were such a terrible dancer, Charles, my father paid for classes, but it didn't help. That's all you've ever done, spin us around in circles." I'm so torn, because Cassie is a blinding FORCE, a fearsome apparition, finding in death, the words, the voice, she didn't have in life, punishing and mesmerizing, making Charlie suffer, degrading him, each facing their demons in each other, in this dance with death. But again, my heart BLEEDS for my beautiful boy in his admonishment, called a failure of a man, a selfish husband, and careless father. (Also, I'm sorry, Cassie, but DAMN your ex husband CAN dance, I've seen it!!!!)

"You say that Christmasland is a safe haven for children, but really it's a place for you to escape yourself, a place where you are not a failure, where you are not a coward who devoured his own family, to FEED his insatiable ego."

Charlie's voice cracks, as he raises his protest, falling back against the wall, Cassie caressing his face with sinister intent, as he closes his stricken eyes. "That is why it will all turn to STATIC." I shiver with the frigid tension between them, and Charlie shivers too, beneath her fingernails, as she gets under his skin, both of us destroyed by these words, and all I want to do is run, pull him into my arms, soothe his trembling fear!!! And yet..... part of me is marveling at this terrifying creature, who could make even Charlie Manx afraid, leave him wrought with guilt, and in this moment, oddly enough, Cassie Manx has never been more ALIVE.

My favourite part of this scene, was how each of them were fighting to protect Millie from the other. An avenging ghost, and a Supernatural Strong Creative Vampire, and yet in this scene especially, we see them as what they are at the heart. Parents. In the midst of all the paranormal activity, there's something so human, so domestic about it, arguing what's best, who's best for their daughter. "How's that gonna happen, Cassie?" Charles snarls, the cast spell wearing off. "I'M IMMORTAL!!!" I loved that, his nostrils flaring, protectively pulling Millie to his side. This is beautiful writing and such a powerful scene, I was entranced.

There was one thing, however, that I thought was incredibly foolish of Cassie...... "Vic McQueen did...... She's already here." I wanted to scream. WHY Cassie!? WHY would you TELL Charlie that Vic had breeched the walls of Christmasland!? What MADNESS!!! I get that she wants to see his face when she reveals Vic, the woman he hates most, second only to his mother, has done the impossible, but the ONE thing Vic has going for her in the Christmasland strike, is the element of surprise. Now, even that's gone....... Instead, I would have had Cassie help Vic by distracting Charlie, delaying him in the house, and then have Charlie figure it out the longer it goes on, realize why she's been so desperate to keep his company!!! Now, THAT would have been AMAZING!!! I did love that last line however, as Charlie tears out of Sleigh House.

"Go, before Vic McQueen releases the white static that takes us all!!!!" Holy epic foreshadowing, Cass........ WOW!!!!

The scenes with Vic and Maggie storming Christmasland are incredible, and I LOVED how Maggie shouting, "Red Light!!!" a very human trick, worked perfectly on the vampire girl!!! Well DONE, NOS4A2!!!! I also loved how Vic KNEW Wayne was going to pick the astronaut costume, even though this little space man wasn't him!!! Thus far, between the lofty sleighcoaster, the thousands of glittering lights, and the gingerbread houses, covered in powder snow, Christmasland has been a luminous dream, a paradise for the lost. But all too quickly, as the girls near a looming pine, ominous in size and appearance, we are introduced to the first of the nightmare elements. My stomach churned, sickened, as I saw them, human heads hanging from The Great Tree like ornaments, shriveled with ghoulish expressions. What the HELL!? Maggie shares my horror, and as her hand flies to cover her mouth, gagging, I just know...... Joe. I felt the tears fall, horrified and angry that Charlie had done this to Joe, my heart sinking, staring into his empty, sad eyes. The rile in Charlie's cry, sounds the beginning of the end. "VICTORIA MCQUEEN, Welcome........ to Christmasland!!!!! The showdown is about to begin.

Charlie Manx, having shaken off the horrors of Sleigh House, now grins smugly, the coloured lights flickering behind him, catching his glossy hair in their glow, his black coal eyes, flashing mischief and danger, as he stands with them, his children, the New Family Manx. With the daughter that he's always loved on one side, and the son he's never had on the other, Charlie Manx has everything he's ever wanted, and now, as Vic McQueen stands defiant, his opposite, her promising death is just the topper on the Christmas Tree.

"Let's go, Wayne, c'mon," Vic calls out to her son, but the waver in her voice, proves that she already knows it's not going to be that easy.

"But he LIKES it here, at home with me, and all his new friends....... Charlie's voice begins light, and jovial, in a spectacularly good mood, and then hardens, accusingly. "Why would you SPOIL that!?"

"Don't listen to a word he says, Wayne, do you hear me?" Vic's anger and frustration starts to bleed through her voice, and the McQueen turned Manx, doesn't answer.

"Wayne McQueen!!!"

"That's NOT my name!!!" He shoots back with his mother's defiance. And here, I fall even more in LOVE with Charlie Manx, besotted, because he has the CUTEST freaking laugh, I have EVER heard in my life!!! It's pure music, that darling, boyish giggle, eyes widening, half surprised, half mad with adoration for his devoted son. Laughing in her face, eyes dancing, seeming to say, "Told you so," Charlie dismisses her charges of hurting him, being a monster, with an adorable, indignantly yelled RUBBISH!!! However, just as he's gained a son, he seems to be losing a daughter.......

"My bridge didn't get me here on its own, Charlie. Wayne, ask her. If she's so happy here, why does she want a ride out from me?"

Ooooh PLOT TWIST, Charlie!!! Charlie's laughing features, somber, intense with this revelation. Millie asking him to go with her to the real world, was one thing...... but asking VIC MCQUEEN for her aid, helping secret her inside, defying her own father, was the rebellious princess' act of treason against the Christmasland King.

Vic continues to appeal to Millie, pleading for her help, encouraging her to take back what her father's taken away from her, and while you can see the words' effect on Millie, her eyes sad, and emotional, she cannot speak against him, not yet. Charlie knows not to let Vic see him sweat, and he doesn't even bat an eye as he muses coolly.

"Why don't we let Wayne choose? Do you want to go with...... HER," he snarks disdainfully, trying not to roll his eyes, as Vic smiles hopeful at her son. "Or do you want to stay with me, in Christmasland.......?

All eyes on Wayne, and Charlie's smirking, because he already knows what his darling boy is going to say, although I, myself, was rather stunned at the way he said it........

"Why would we EVER leave? We JUST got here," He frowns, his tiny voice cruel, and condescending. Whoah, Wayne. That's cold.......

I LOVED this scene, the palpable tension, the scathing betrayals, in both the McQueen and Manx camps, as Charlie and Vic's kids switch sides, turning on their parents, moving across the board like chess pieces. I also noticed how Charlie stood closer to Wayne than Millie, as the scene went on, and I couldn't help but wonder...... as much as she aches to be her human self again, and grow up to go on adventures, perhaps it was also jealousy that fueled this drastic turn around. Something about what she said to him, earlier in the Ice Maze...... "I have ENOUGH friends," and how she went out of her way not to be there when Wayne arrived, and how Charlie said, "Why don't we let WAYNE, choose," dismissing her own professed desire to Vic, without a second address. Millie has been her father's sugar plum for centuries...... what will happen now that his son has become the apple of his eye?

"Scissors for the DRIFTER, everyone!!!!" Charlie yells to his little army, that delectable rile in his voice, as his fanged children descend on Vic and Maggie!!! Charlie's done playing, toying, teasing, he's kept one McQueen in, and it's time to go for the kill, win the game, and take the other McQueen OUT!!! Vic and Maggie dashing through the snow, dodging little vampires, setting bombs all the way, and the chase is ON!!! I was so THRILLED that horrid, appalling tree was the first thing to go, exploding into flames, victoriously felled!!!! Yes!!! THANK YOU, MAGGIE!!! This one's for JOE!!! I had NO idea though, that setting fire to Christmasland would hurt Charlie the same way damage done to the Wraith does, and somehow it seemed even WORSE!!! Charlie's nose bleeds and he coughs into his hand, staggering into the toy shop, and I don't know who I'm more afraid for........

Scissors for the Drifter rages on, Maggie and Vic sneaking their way through the vast, dazzling array of carnival games, and racing amusement rides, blanketed in fresh snow. The Red Light Girl from earlier, sidles up to Maggie, and all of us elicit a collective gasp, as she slips the scrabble bag from Maggie's coat pocket. "Give it back..... Red Light, Red Light," Maggie warns, trying not to panic, but you can see it in her eyes....... That bag is everything to her, and she doesn't know who she is without it.......... "New game!" The other girl exclaims with claws and a growl, and her and Mike play keep away with the bag, much to Maggie's frantic dismay. I was so relieved, and tremendously appreciated NOS4A2's approach to the Found Children of Christmasland, how fun and games were their first instinct, and maiming and murder were more of a side quest.

Meanwhile, Vic, having escaped the receding vampire throng with her life, unscathed, save one bite, isn't giving up. There's no WAY in HELL she's going anywhere without Wayne You'll-Never-Be-A-Manx McQueen. In the midst of the death defying chase, however, I was so hoping Vic would look up once, and see Charlie's face in the moon!!! Making a face of her own, mouth open in disgust, I can just hear her!!!! What the HELL-!? I would literally have given anything for her reaction to that!!! She spies Wayne, determined, coaxing him, and he looks at her maniacally, with his new father's malicious smirk, as he hurries away, making her chase him, fleeing into a vast, seemingly endless maze, made entirely of ice.

As we rise to the scintillating climax, we find the children's betrayal against their feuding parents has taken a defining, final turn. Charlie and Millie's scene in the toyshop was SENSATIONAL!!! Mattea Conforti plays Charlie's daughter with such conviction, and I am SO impressed by the emotional range, the rare talent and prowess of expression, she has at this young of an age!!! Charlie coaxes Millie in his sweet, fatherly way at first, trying to govern his anger, as he tells her about the demise of that horror show Christmas tree.

"The Great Tree........ We dreamt it up together, branch, by branch, and now it's gone."

Millie seems altogether unmoved, and if there was ever a moment that she is so over Christmasland, it's now. Charlie tries to reason with her, tries to accuse Vic for his daughter's crimes against him.

"You are not the first to be twisted into knots by Vic McQueen...... Don't you see? She's POISONED you and your mother against me, made you doubt your own FATHER!!!"

Millie begs him to let Wayne go, let Vic leave with her son, and asks him to stay with her, no more new kids in Christmasland. Charlie hesitates. "I have work to do. And that wouldn't be very fair to Wayne......" Charlie's not giving up his son, not even if it means losing his daughter, and Millie knows it......

"I'm not enough...... I never was. I begged you to leave with me, and you said no. Now, I ask you to stay, and you won't do that either?"

I teared up like crazy, she's so heartbroken, so emotionally wrought in this moment, and I saw a little girl, who would give up all of Christmasland's ornamental wonders, her birthday, and all of her friends, all of her dreams, just to have her father's sole attention.

Charlie's rage starts to take over, veiling his pain, trying to inspire Millie to action, win her back, promising her all will be forgiven, if she takes her sword, and hangs Vic's head from a new tree.

"You want to hang Vic's head on a tree? Go DO it yourself......... I'm LEAVING."

Charlie snaps, seizing her arm, nostrils flaring, the pain feeding his fury. "I am your FATHER!!! You will DO exactly as I SAY!!" A lot of people cried out against this action, of him forcibly taking her arm, but I saw it less as a show of patriarchal aggression, and much more as him desperately clinging to her, out of fear. She's his joy, his everything, and he doesn't want her to go, not now, not ever.

"You can't stop me...... unless........ you'd never raise a hand to a child, would you, Father?"

He lets her go at once, unnerved by her clever challenge, and watches heartbroken, as she takes her leave of him. Fuming, he snatches up the shiny, silver autopsy hammer off the table, his favourite toy in the shop, and leaves the store, just as the candy shop blows up in a splinter of wood and a burst of orange fire. He coughs, bent over, his hair pulling loose from his coif, his nose bleeding. Charlie and his dream world are unraveling fast.

"I want to play a game with you........"

Back in the ice maze, Wayne approaches his mother, and I have a BAD feeling, his voice eerie, and unkind........ Danger, Vic, Danger....... I whisper, the frosty air ripe with foreboding.

Vic smiles, fighting the tears, saying she'll play any game he wants, even his NBA basketball game, and she'll let him whoop her butt. Wayne resists, and I think his resentment starts to show, having never had a Christmas, having to always watch her leave him, no matter how good he's been.

"You know what Christmas every day means, don't you? No 4th of July, no friends, no sunshine, no summer, no swimming, no hotdogs, no fireworks. That was our favourite day in the whole wide world, remember? We would go to the lake with your dad, and watch the bright colours explode in the stars in the sky........ You always loved it."

I cried. Vic is so not a sentimental person, but here she is, so sweetly pouring her heart out to her son, and it is beautiful, and so moving, as she lets herself love him, be vulnerable in that love, and let that vulnerability make her strong. "Even though it's impossible, I'm here, fighting Charlie Manx because I made a promise to you, and I'm done breaking promises to you, Baby," Wayne's eyes soften, looking again like his human self, her words striking every chord, finally breaking Charlie's thrall, reaching him, and Vic cries, overwhelmed with the love she's let herself feel, pulling him in for hug, cradling the back of his head so tenderly. I don't think we could have ever prepared ourselves.......... for what came next. The music swells to its emotional height, and then deadens, a swift stab of metal scissors, and I feel their sharp pierce, leaving a sucking hole in my own chest, my breath strangled, as Wayne STABS his mother with the scissors, running off, laughing, with the cheerful exclaim of, "I win Scissors for the Drifter!!! Et tu, Bats!?!? It's a SHOCKING, tragic scene, that leaves you with a hollow fear. Is there any of Wayne left to save?

Ahhhhh but the BEST is yet to come, Kids!!! That scintillating climax, I promised you, the most chilling of all of Christmasland's thrills? It's here....... It's fire and ice, and all the sinister deliciousness you've been craving, and it's my FAVOURITE scene in an episode full of sparkling snow white perfection. Maggie, after chasing Red Light Girl into the Ice Maze, and taking her bag back, is saved by a staggering Vic, and our two dauntless heroines, navigate their way through Charlie's mind-bending, frozen labyrinth.

"You're bleeding......" Vic manages, out of breath, still clutching the stab wound on her side.

"YOU'RE bleeding......" Maggie counters cleverly, and it's a really sweet moment amidst all the screaming chaos, as the girls laugh together, Maggie supporting Vic, as they stumble and search for the exit. The feeling is mutual. It's time to get the HELL out of Christmasland.

Drops of blood, crimson stark against the blinding white, tall black leather boots, a supple leather glove reaching down to touch the blood, brushing the snow. Charlie.

The girls hurry as fast as their injuries will allow, crying for joy when they see the exit, both bitten and bruised, one brutally stabbed, chancing a glance over their shoulders when they hear a noise. But when they look back, the inviting exit is gone, and in its place, a looming wall of solid ice.

"I just saw it, it was there!!!" Maggie cries bewildered, holding Vic upright, desperately confused.

Charlie, nose bleeding, a devastatingly handsome dark figure, creeps up behind them, hammer in hand, so happy to explain.

"That's the beauty of an inscape. Everything here is a product of my........ imagination." He simpers sinisterly, and in a move that is straight up SYLAR, playfully brings the hammer to tap his forehead. "Not fluid, like water, but semi-solid...... like, say...... ICE," Charlie pounds the hammer into the ice once, teasing and deadly, the music shivering, as he advances on them, trapping them in a dead end.

"Ironic, isn't it, Vic...... When you had Wayne in your life, you were always looking for an exit, and now you're here, looking for him. Longing for forgiveness, which you'll never find, just the way your father never found it. It's a McQueen family tradition........ dying in dead ends!!!"

Another searing truth exposed in the midst of a good seethe, and Vic, rather than spitting curses, reining down on him full force, pleads with him instead, tears in her eyes, her voice tremulous. "Let her go, Manx!!! You can have me-"

Charlie Manx snarls, his eyes murderous with dark fury, thrusting the hammer at Vic, breathing hard, rasping.

"I ALREADY HAVE YOU!!!!!"

I can honestly say, that was the SEXIEST damn thing I've EVER seen in my entire life, my whole body went numb, quivering as I touched my heart, barely able to whisper, "Yes!!!! YES you do!!!!" How the HELL that ice maze didn't melt in the face of that kind of LETHAL heat, will forever be a Christmasland Mystery. There aren't even words, clumsy, coherent, or otherwise, for how HOT I was for Charlie Manx in this moment, melting in his thrall.

Without another word, he pulls back the hammer, and strikes Maggie with a deafening CRACK, and she goes down HARD, moaning in anguish. Charlie's spell shivers around me, as the fire just ignited, is introduced to the coldest fear. Not again...... No, no, no, Charlie, PLEASE GOD don't kill, Maggie!!!! I can't do it, not again, NOT HER, no, please, I'm still grieving Chris, Baby, STOP!!!" My heart on pause, and Charlie hesitates, before the bomb beneath the sleigh coater EXPLODES, setting off a chain reaction, bomb, after bomb, billowing smoke, hungry, licking flames, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little sad, the shining dream becoming an inferno nightmare, as Christmasland burns into a firestorm.

Charlie SCREAMS in excruciating agony, aging rapidly, hammer fumbling from his grasp, into the blanket of snow, crouching in anguish, and Vic doesn't hesitate to pluck up the hammer, and crack him HARD across the skull, knocking him out cold. With a grunt of frustration, seething hatred boiling up from her whole body, she smashes the hammer against Charlie's bloodied skull again, and again....... and again.

"Vic, you have to STOP! It won't do any good, you KNOW that!!! He's just an old bitch, that's all he ever was....."

Okay, seriously Mags, I love you, but can people just STOP calling Charlie a BITCH!? First Bing and now Maggie!? Ughhh, I HATEEE it so much! Second...... for the LOVE of GOD, Victoria McQueen, thank you for stopping that brutal smashing of my boy's skull, but, whatever you do...... DON'T DROP THAT FREAKING HAMMER!!!!! She does. She drops it. WHY does she drop it, why not take it with her!? Why leave Charlie's favourite toy behind for him to murder her with!?!?

While we're at it, I have another question!!! As Charlie searches frantically through the crowd of running scared vampire children, the park engulfed in flames, asking each one that passes, if they've seen Millie, WHY do they not answer him!? He's Charlie Freaking Manx, their famed Father Christmas!!! He's like a rock star, a saviour to them, whyyyyy won't they help him!? So Maddening. I was also surprised that Millie's ornament was her mother's golden cat brooch. After seeing the silver moon one, in "Gunbarrel," last year's season finale, that looked like Charlie, hanging on one of the trees outside the ruins of Sleigh House, I thought for SURE that it was hers!!! Who else's could it be!?

I CHERISHED the absolute MOM Moment Vic has at the end of this episode, where she's just so DONE!!!! She doesn't care that the world's on fire, doesn't care that her son is a soulless vampire that just stabbed her, she's freaking HAD it!!!

"BRUCE WAYNE MCQUEEN!!!!" She yells in unhinged reprimand, finding her Mom voice, as she charges him, wrests the scissors out of his hands, hurling them away, and hauls him up off the ground, even while he's kicking and screaming!!! He's surly in his protest, yelling out how much he'll hate her, and never forgive her, if she takes him away, calling out for Charlie to come save him!!! That was so freaking fantastic, again, such a raw, real human moment in the midst of the supernatural cacophony. The coloured lights flicker before they go dead, plunging Christmasland into complete darkness.

"Christmas is over, isn't it?"

"Yeah Bats..... It's over."

Or is it.......? I have it on good authority, from Father Christmas himself, no less that Christmasland is FOREVER......... Let's hope Charlie Manx and the Wraith are too, as our seductive villain's dreams go up in flames. Here's to the SERIES BEST EPISODE, and to our beloved supernatural fantasy, NOS4A2 getting renewed for SEASON 3!!!! Christmasland in flaming ruin, his son and daughter strewn, both forsaken, Charlie find the Wraith, and save your soul, else your winter reverie will be naught, but a smoking hole. You have to fight, you have to make it!!! Turn the key, Charlie, it's time........ to get CREATIVE!!!!

#nos4a2 review #nos4a2 #charlie manx #vic mcqueen #wayne mcqueen #millie manx #cassie manx #maggie leigh #welcome to christmasland

[newstfionline]

Sunday, June 20, 2021

Businesses, U.S. legislators fume as Canada extends travel ban (Reuters) Canada is extending a ban on non-essential travel with the United States and the rest of the world until July 21, officials said on Friday, prompting frustration from businesses and U.S. legislators. Canada is under pressure from companies and the tourism industry to ease the ban, which was imposed in March 2020 to help contain spread of the coronavirus and has been renewed on a monthly basis ever since. But Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stood firm, saying the border would stay largely shut until 75% of Canadians had received the first of a two-dose coronavirus vaccine and 20% had been given both shots. The Canadian Chamber of Commerce—a national group that advocates for businesses—lamented what it said was Ottawa’s excessive caution.

Many Americans resuming pre-virus activities (AP) Many Americans are relaxing precautions taken during the COVID-19 pandemic and resuming everyday activities, even as some worry that coronavirus-related restrictions were hastily lifted, a new poll shows. The poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that majorities of Americans who were regularly doing so before the pandemic say they are returning to bars or restaurants, traveling and attending events such as movies or sports. Andrea Moran, a 36-year-old freelance writer and mother of two boys, said she feels both relief and joy at the chance to resume “doing the little things,” such as having drinks on a restaurant patio with her husband. “Honestly, I almost cried,” Moran said. “It’s such a feeling of having been through the wringer, and we’re finally starting to come out of it.” Still, 34% of Americans think restrictions in their area have been lifted too quickly, while somewhat fewer—27%—say they were not lifted quickly enough. About 4 in 10 rate the pace of reopening about right.

Voting debate roils Washington but leaves many voters cold (AP) Brenda Martinez, a 19-year-old community college student, thinks the government should help immigrant students more. Donald Huffman is worried about turning 50 next week with no work available because the federal government is delaying the pipelines he usually helps build. Binod Neupane, who just moved to Texas to research alternative fuels, wants action on climate change. The three Texas voters have little in common politically other than one thing—none considers voting and election reform, the issue that has dominated partisan debate this year, a top priority. As politicians from Austin to Washington battle over the practical aspects of how to run elections—clashing over details such as polling booth hours and the number of ballot drop boxes per county—many voters are disconnected from the fight. A passionate base of voters and activists on both sides may be intensely dialed in on the issue, but a disengaged middle is baffled at the attention.

Trust in government (The Spectator) Since 1958, the Gallup polling organization has periodically asked Americans how much they trust the federal government to do what is right. In 1958, 73 percent said ‘always’ or ‘most of the time’. Trust hit its high point in 1964, when that figure stood at 77 percent. Then it began to fall. By 1980, only 27 percent trusted the government to do what is right. That percentage rebounded to the low forties during the Reagan years, then fell to a new low, 19 percent, in 1994. It rebounded again, hitting a short-lived high of 54 percent just after 9/11. Then it plunged again, hitting another new low, 15 percent, in 2011. It has been in the 15- to 20 percent range ever since. A government that is distrusted by more than 80 percent of the citizens has a bipartisan legitimacy problem.

‘There’s no water,’ says California farm manager (Reuters) Salvador Parra, the manager of Burford Ranch in California’s Central Valley agricultural breadbasket, is worried about the lack of water. California’s worst drought since 1977 has forced Parra to leave fallow 2,000 of his 6,000 acres and dig deep for water to save the crops already planted. “There’s not very much being grown out there, just because there’s no water. There’s literally no water,” said Parra. In a good year, the ranch grows everything from garlic, onions, tomatoes and alfalfa to cotton. This year, Parra needs emergency water sources just to bring a reduced crop to harvest.

Mexico City shuts down classes again, enters higher COVID-19 risk tier (Reuters) Mexico City schools that had just gone back to in-person classes will be closed again starting Monday as the sprawling capital climbs into a higher tier of coronavirus risk, education authorities said on Saturday. Mexico City officials had loosened restrictions on gatherings in schools, hotels, stores and restaurants just two weeks ago as the dense urban zone moved into the lowest risk tier of the government's four-level "traffic light" model. But the federal Health Ministry on Friday evening put Mexico City, home to more than 9 million people, a step higher on the scale for June 21 to July 4.

Peru ex-military stir election tensions with appeal to Armed Forces to “remedy” poll (Reuters) A group of retired officers has suggested Peru’s military should refuse to recognize socialist candidate Pedro Castillo if he is declared winner of the country’s presidential election if fraud allegations are not investigated, according to a letter circulated widely on social media on Friday. Interim president Francisco Sagasti confirmed the letter, which was posted on Twitter and Facebook, arrived at the general headquarters of the armed forces, bearing the names of at least 80 retired military personnel. Friday’s letter appealed to military chiefs to “act rigorously” and “remedy” the “demonstrated irregularities” that took place during the vote or risk having an “illegal and illegitimate” commander in chief at the helm of the country. The tight election has deeply divided citizens of the world’s second-largest copper producer. Protest marches by supporters of both candidates take place almost daily in downtown Lima, calling for a swift resolution and respect for the popular will.

Drought in Brazil (Financial Times) The worst drought in almost a century has left millions of Brazilians facing water shortages and the risk of power blackouts, complicating the country’s efforts to recover from the devastating impact of the coronavirus pandemic. The agricultural centers in São Paulo state and Mato Grosso do Sul have been worse affected, after the November-March rainy season produced the lowest level of rainfall in 20 years. Water levels in the Cantareira system of reservoirs, which serves about 7.5m people in São Paulo city, dropped to below one-tenth of its capacity this year. Brazil’s mines and energy ministry has called it country’s worst drought in 91 years.

Paris’ tough suburbs (AP) Violent rivalries have long been part of the policing geography in the rotting high-rises of tough Paris-region neighborhoods where inequalities and hardship are often more common than good jobs and opportunities. But police say that fighting over turf or differences of race, religion and cultures wasn’t always as savage as it increasingly is now. “It’s more and more violent,” the police major said as he worked to reconstruct this week’s chain of events, from a clash in a pipe-smoking bar to a full-blown brawl between opposing groups from Pakistani and North African communities. “In a fight that perhaps 20 years ago would have been sorted out with fists or kicks, we now see people being run over with cars,” he said. “The population is increasingly violent. It’s no longer simply fighting. They absolutely have to win, even if that means leaving someone in agony on the floor.” Police are also increasingly the targets of violence. Most recently, the murders of two police officials in April and May—one in a stabbing, the other in a shooting during a drug bust—reinforced officers’ concerns that enforcing the law in France is an increasingly perilous profession.

Chips, Taiwan, and China (WSJ/The Wire China) Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. makes almost all of the world’s most sophisticated chips, and many of the simpler ones, too. They’re in billions of products with built-in electronics, including iPhones, personal computers and cars—all without any obvious sign they came from TSMC, which does the manufacturing for better-known companies that design them, like Apple and Qualcomm. TSMC has emerged over the past several years as the world’s most important semiconductor company, with enormous influence over the global economy. With a market cap of around $550 billion, it ranks as the world’s 11th most valuable company. Its dominance leaves the world in a vulnerable position, however. As more technologies require chips of mind-boggling complexity, more are coming from this one company, on an island that’s a focal point of tensions between the U.S. and China, which claims Taiwan as its own.

Hard-line judiciary head wins Iran presidency as turnout low (AP) Iran’s hard-line judiciary chief won the country’s presidential election in a landslide victory Saturday, propelling the supreme leader’s protégé into Tehran’s highest civilian position in a vote that appeared to see the lowest turnout in the Islamic Republic’s history. Initial results showed Ebrahim Raisi won 17.8 million votes in the contest, dwarfing those of the race’s sole moderate candidate. However, Raisi dominated the election only after a panel under the watch of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei disqualified his strongest competition. His candidacy, and the sense the election served more as a coronation for him, sparked widespread apathy among eligible voters in the Islamic Republic, which has held up turnout as a sign of support for the theocracy since its 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Uganda tightening measures due to virus surge (AP) Uganda is tightening its lockdown measures to try and stem a surge in coronavirus infections in the East African country that is seeing an array of variants. The measures announced late Friday by President Yoweri Museveni include a ban on private and public transportation within and across districts, including in the capital Kampala. Only vehicles carrying cargo and those transporting the sick or essential workers are permitted to operate on the roads. The normally crowded shops in downtown Kampala have also been ordered shut. An ongoing nighttime curfew will stay in place. The new measures will last 42 days.

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