#//Tossed him out there; instead of making elaborate plot

[dutybcrne]

Mm something something Kazuha being a vampire that was turned against his will, but was picked up and essentially saved by Tomo, then when he was murdered, he wound up wandering the world bc not only were the hunters still in the area, but also his agitation made him a danger to even humans he’s managed to befriend and had protected alongside Tomo up until the hunters came along, and he would surprisingly journey with a pack up until they get wind of a group wanting to rise up against the hunters and take back their territory, and-

[selkiewife]

I'm sorry. I promised you all a long post- and I was actually writing this whole elaborate meta thing about why I still think Nettles is coming even if Rhaena claims Sheepstealer but then... I just realized I was hurting myself lol. That's not to say I am completely giving up hope. I did see the end of the leaked finale and (the rest is under the cut):

Rhaena does NOT actually claim the wild dragon in the finale. She only finds him. He is eating sheep and he roars at her. I don't know if the dragon will be called Sheepstealer in the episode- or in the Inside the Episode. We will have to see if Condal names the dragon or addresses cutting Nettles in either the Inside the Episode or in the House that Dragons Built episode. Maybe he will keep it open? Whatever happens, the fact that Rhaena doesn't actually claim the dragon presents the writers with an opportunity to FIX THIS SHIT lol. There are four options I think:

The dragon is Sheepstealer and Rhaena tries to claim him in the first episode of Season 3 and fails- this whole story arc has been a plot device that both gives Rhaena something to do in Season 2 that KEEPS HER IN THE VALE- just as she was in the books- instead of going to Pentos like Rhaenyra wanted her too. After this attempt she becomes intense on hatching her egg (which will make the hatching of Morning all the more meaningful if we actually see her failing to claim a dragon.)

Rhaena discovers Sheepstealer has already been tamed by Nettles.

The dragon is actually Grey Ghost instead of Sheepstealer- the design looked both grey and brown to me- it could be a toss up lol. Rhaena claims Grey Ghost. Sheepstealer is still on Dragonstone and will be claimed by Nettles in Season 3.

Rhaena claims Sheepstealer (I mean it's probably Sheepstealer- I know that all dragons eat sheep, but with all the Vale and sheep talk for two seasons it would be weird if it wasn't Sheepstealer- also Sheepstealer ends up in the Vale at the end of the dance so...) BUT! Nettles claims either Grey Ghost or Cannibal.

Out of all the options, I like the first one the best.

Part of me wonders if they left it on a cliffhanger to test the fandom. Sort of like they are testing the waters, “can we cut Nettles? Will the fandom care?"

So let’s MAKE SOME NOISE NETTLES NATION!

[divinemiracles]

I wish I can I say that I prefer Hunter and Willow's friendship over to them being forced together but I can't since it's barely developed. They have the whole being "half-a-witch" but that isn't even accurate to them. Plus, they have Hunter act completely normal around other people, but have him lose his composure when around Willow and it's gotten really tiring.

Exactly. I try so hard to imagine them as friends but I can barely see it. All I can see is them being a part of the friend group yet not being much of friends themselves (Like Amity and Gus). They should have developed a bond from Willow’s kindness towards Hunter instead of the “half-a-witch” title.

The title was given to them for two completely different reasons: not having magical abilities so feeling worthless in every way possible, & not being able to excel at magic and getting bullied. Why would you compare literal child labor, neglect, and ab*se to bullying? I get Willow being bullied was extremely harsh but it shouldn’t be compared to Hunter’s trauma. His trauma is far more serious.

Then, the show “fixed” them in the end. Hunter obtained Flapjack’s abilities (which he didn’t even use) and Willow became one of the Boiling Isles’ most powerful plant witches. How do they bond after that? The crew probably also “fixed” their trauma and made them no longer self-doubtful. Their entire relationship was built on specifically trauma, which is hard to watch, seeing how much it’s romanticized.

Hunter’s face when Willow mentioned she was being called half-a-witch was just pure shock, honestly. He likely felt bad for her later but during that scene, he was just in genuine surprise. The first time he blushed was when Willow mentioned his schedule. That just felt so odd, she should have said something else. But overall, the entirety of Any Sport In A Storm was inconsistent behavior for every character.

I hate Hunter’s behavior around Willow. He just met her and she was snappy and forceful (which why would they introduce Willow to Hunter like that? She’s the sweetest person ever, she’s not rude!), so he starts blushing. That makes it seem like he was looking for an authority figure that can tell him what to do, which is so frustrating. Couldn’t the crew at least write Willow to have a conversation with Hunter about how he’s allowed to make his own choices? That is one of the many things that should have been elaborated on to enhance their relationship.

I get that Willow is Hunter’s first crush but why would he like her out of all people? Is it because she’s strong and nice? That’s Luz, he could have had a crush on Luz. Hell, I remember someone saying that it would make more sense for him to have a crush on Amity. That’s messed up since she’s lesbian but she has way more similarities to him than Willlow does. He even said it himself.

Just seeing the two interact gives me the vibe that the crew tossed a relationship in because they looked cute together and they thought that they could do it well with the shortening. Which, no. Hunter and Willow’s romantic plot line should have been dropped as a whole.

[wuxiaphoenix]

On Writing: Follow the Twitching Ears

One of the more useful NaNo bits of advice is, if your plot gets stuck, throw in the plot ninjas.

Basically just toss in a random ninja attack. Or pirate attack. Or maybe both. Where did the ninjas come from? Who knows. Who cares? The point is to get things moving enough that your brain gets past being stuck. You can make sense of it later.

There is, however, another approach to getting unstuck. And that’s to follow the plotbunny’s impulses... down the rabbit hole, so to speak.

When last seen, your character wanted to do X, whether X was “kiss the girl”, “rob the bank” or “blow up the Death Star”. But what would doing X actually entail?

Say, for example, that you’re a bunch of pirates trying to lay a trap for a vampire. A smart vampire. Meaning it has to be a subtle trap he walks into without noticing....

Okay, okay, stop rolling on the floor. Pirates are rightfully rumored to be cunning, but most of them are not subtle. Otherwise they’d be creating elaborate Leverage-style cons to seize faux-legal control of a cargo once it hit port, instead of risking scurvy and death on the high seas. So. Subtle is out.

Which means you have to make the trap something he’ll walk into anyway, even if things look a little hinky. Such as, say, terrain that all works to his advantage. (Or seems to.) And something inside the trap he simply can’t resist. What that is will depend on the vampire; or at least, what the pirates know about vampires in general and this one in specific.

This, of course, is where we get into fantasy-world espionage, or at least info-gathering of the listening in taverns variety. Which... actually isn’t as easy as it sounds. There are, in fact, multiple problems with this plan.

First and foremost, the pirates are almost all foreigners. They don’t speak the language. Which makes eavesdropping difficult. The few pirates who might be renegades from this kingdom’s fishing fleets and navy... would mostly come from a particular group of islands, which speak their own language, related to but not the same as that on the mainland. Oops.

Let’s assume they figure out how to handle the language barrier. Or at least think they can. Now they have to find a tavern.

See the above problem of foreigners.

Granted, humans being humans with profit motives, there’s probably somebody willing to take a few chunks of silver to let them grab a drink or ten. But the quality of info in that kind of dive may be hit or miss. The info may be better, and the bartenders friendlier, in ports in neighboring kingdoms. Maybe. They could pick up plenty of rumors that way. Useful rumors? Well... maybe. If a vampire’s been the scourge of pirates, monsters, and other such annoyances for a couple centuries, there’s bound to be stories, and some of them will even be true! Ish.

So the pirates think they know what they’re dealing with, and they think they know his weaknesses - supernatural and otherwise. Now how do they lure him in so they can kill him, and freely wreak havoc on the coast?

Here they at last have a stroke of luck, because this kingdom has a reputation for getting their people back. So, raid a few villages....

(Hostage situations. Messy.)

And all this plottiness came from pinning the original bunny down and asking, “Okay, so then what?”

Be kind to your plotbunnies. They know a lot.

...They just need to be properly interrogated first....

[moplayspoke]

My spoilery review of Lightlark… 2.5/5

Man… where do I even start?

First of all, this felt like 3 different books with one for the beginning, another for the middle and a completely different one for the end.

The beginning, or the first “book” was a complete mess. There were run on sentences, grammatical errors, and enough oddities that it kept pulling me out of the story.

As readers, you are essentially just tossed in the story with very little knowledge of the world (aka little to no world building) and suddenly our FMC is getting ready to go to the centennial. Like where is the build up for this? It just felt like being tossed in cold water with no warning. It needed editing and revision from a good editor.

The middle, or 2nd book, had the slowest pacing of all and is spent mostly with our characters running around trying to find various items that could help break the curses of their various realms. But it was BORING. Much of it should have been cut or rewritten in a way that didn’t feel as dragged out as it did.

The end was clearly the golden child and got the most editing love and passion put into it. It felt like it was its own book. The twists were good. The writing was good. Everything was just mashing together quite nicely that it seemingly made up for much of the rest of the book in some ways.

A few things that also bothered me:

I hate it when authors forgo worldbuilding and instead retroactively add worldbuilding details later on. E.g. the part where FMC is explaining why she has to dye her hair as a disguise while visiting various realms? “Oh yeah by the way this is a thing various realms do, they have the same color hair as their power”. It happened a number of times with other details such as FMC’s various trainings which could have easily been put at the vapid beginning and would have given the readers some much needed and RELEVANT background information.

Her feelings for Oro? What the heck?? I’m not convinced she even has feelings for him and it’s just not some elaborate plot twist. I can see him liking her but… we were given ~nothing~ as far as her liking him. Grim, yes, but even then all her memories etc were of a sexual nature.

I did enjoy Grim as a character and his expressions, but his betrayal didn’t make much sense to me and I would have liked more of him. I think the author did well on some of the key characters and their characterizations but I feel the other rulers very much lacked any character at all. They were just there.

Honestly, her guardians betrayal didn’t make sense either. Why would they hold so much knowledge over their own ruler? That never happens unless they were the true rulers.

Overall… this was okay. More editing work would have made this so much better. But it was entertaining and the ending made me want to read the 2nd one just to see more Grim.

[sankyeom]

batter up! | e.s

pairings: eric sohn x female reader genre: baseball player!eric, college au, strangers to lovers,  summary: in which you are assigned to interview the unapproachable baseball team ace eric sohn, and things end up going sideways word count: 6.1k (did i get carried way with the concept? yes i did) requested: nope i literally have other requests from months ago that i should get to but i’ve been having writers block and i couldn’t write any of them without it sounding awful sooooo here we are!!! enjoy lol note: all of the boyz are the same age for the sake of the story. also, the start of the plot is based on rowoon’s episode of sf9’s drama click your heart. 𝚖𝚊𝚜𝚝𝚎𝚛𝚕𝚒𝚜𝚝

“So, you want to join newspaper,” the newspaper editor, Choi Chanhee, said as he crossed his arms and surveyed you. It was the start of the second semester, and you soon realised that you had very few clubs and activities under your belt. “What makes you think I’ll let you join in the middle of the year?” Chanhee inquired, raising an eyebrow in question. His full cheeks and baby pink hair usually made him seem approachable and soft, but his hard expression cancelled out any comfort his other features might have brought you.

You blinked at him. “We’ve been best friends since freshman year?” you deadpanned, irritated that Chanhee was making such a big deal out of it. From the corner of the room, you noticed Changmin suppress a giggle by clearing his throat and pretending to cough into the bend of his elbow. “Come on, Chanhee. You’re a reporter short since Bomin quit, right?” you recalled what he had been moaning about for nearly three months. “I can fill in for him! I’ll be great.”

Despite being your best friend and normally having quite a warm personality, Chanhee was skeptical. “Alright,” he decided, drawing the word out and unfolding his arms. Chanhee sauntered over to where Changmin was standing and – after giving him a sharp elbow to the ribs – grabbed his clipboard, pretending to look for something to assign you. You could tell by the ways his eyes didn’t even skim the words that he already had something in mind for you. “If you’re so desperate to join the paper, then you can do the interview on Eric Sohn,” he stated, giving you a challenging look.

So much for him “going easy on you”, as he had said moments before the two of you entered the media room together.

Dramatically, a few gasps sounded through the media room and you sighed. “Who’s Eric Sohn?” you almost regretted asking, since everyone seemed mortified that you didn’t know him.

“He’s the baseball team’s ace,” Juyeon explained while trying to balance his water bottle on his head. It was half full and he had been at it for the entire time you tried to convince Chanhee to let you join newspaper. “Unapproachable as hell, though. We’ve tried to interview him before and believe me, it was terrible,” he added with a quiet laugh, eyes crinkling at the outer corners. “He’s a friend of ours but he doesn’t really say much.”

“Everyone wants to know more about him,” Chanhee elaborated, causing your eyes to flicker back to your best friend. “And if I want to be the best editor in history of the paper, I’m getting that story,” he smiled sweetly, as if he hadn’t given you – what seemed like – an impossible job. “Like you said, you’ll be great!” Chanhee pumped a fist in the air half-heartedly to encourage you.

Sunwoo snorted, lying across three chairs he had lined up for him to curl up on. “Or not,” he sang, tossing a hacky sack between his hands with ease. “Eric’s my best friend and the last time I tried to interview him, he yelled at me for interrupting his practice and had the coach kick me out,” Sunwoo seemed amused by the turn of events, but it didn’t motivate you to carry out your interview. “I’m banned from the baseball field now.”

It wasn’t long before other members of the paper brought up their own horror stories, describing attempts at interviewing the baseball team’s ace. The negativity in the room surprised you; it was supposedly only an interview assignment. Was Eric Sohn really that difficult to be around? And if so, why was your best friend making your first assignment so hard on you? 

“So far, this assignment has been proven impossible to complete,” Chanhee explained. “Do we all agree that if Y/n can do this, she gets to join newspaper? No questions asked?” he glanced around at his team of writers, photographers and editors. Immediately, the members all nodded. Chanhee smiled at you. 

Well, that answered your questions. 

Feeling burdened, you asked Chanhee, “How long do I have for this?”

Chanhee flicked through the stack of papers attached to his clipboard until he found the paper’s schedule. “I can give you about a month, but no more than that,” he insists. “I may be your best friend, but I do have a weekly paper to put out,” he adds, making you nod.

“A month is more than enough,” you promised. “On what days does the baseball team meet?”

The indoor baseball stadium your university had was cold in the mornings. Chanhee had managed to get Eric’s practice schedule from Sunwoo, and the next morning at 5:30am sharp, you arrived at the stadium to try and interview Eric. As you opened the main door, you could hear a loud and clear voice  telling everyone to do their warmups so they could start practicing. Since you didn’t know much about baseball, you decided to make your way towards the bleachers and watch the team practice for a while.

Chanhee had shown you a picture of Eric so you would know who you were looking for, and you were slightly miffed that it hadn’t done him any justice. He stood out much more in person; his features sharper and body leaner and stronger from the years of practice. You were almost intimidated by his overall aura and piercing gaze.

Checking your notes, you recalled basic information that Chanhee had given you so that you weren’t completely clueless going into your interview. Eric Sohn was the ace player because he was their best batter and fastest runner. This combination along with his precision allowed him to almost always hit home runs and also be an excellent fielder. A summary of his past scores had also been provided, but that might as well have been a completely different language because you couldn’t understand it.

With a sigh, you tightened your jacket around you in order to warm up more in the cool stadium. Watching Eric practice, you noticed that he wasn’t batting very well on that day. There was a crease between his brows and he kept hitting the ground with his bat in frustration, occasionally throwing it down staring at the floor in contemplation.

You really felt for him.

It was clear that the team relied on him a lot and his reputation of being unapproachable and cold surely couldn’t have been entirely fair, either. His coach was chastising him, pointing his finger and raising his voice as Eric stood still and nodded, face void of any expression. You assumed his coach had told him to take a break, because he started removing his batting gloves and making his way to the bench.

You knew it probably wasn’t the best time to approach him for a favour, but you had been sitting for nearly an hour and your legs and thighs were starting to feel numb. The walk down the steps was welcome, even when your heart raced with nerves as you approached Eric. When you were a few steps away from him, the boy glanced up and raised an eyebrow at you. “This is a closed practice,” he told you.

Of course he had to have the most incredible voice to go along with his looks. Great.

“Um,” You stammered dumbly for a moment, tucking your hair behind your ear to give your hands something to do. “I know. I just- I was hoping you had a moment?” you asked, voice far less confident than you had wished. “I’m on the university’s newspaper and I was assigned an interview on you.”

“On me,” Eric repeated, tilting his head to the side. “Chanhee really doesn’t give up, does he,” something resembling a chuckle left his lips. “I’m at practice right now,” his tone was firm, as if he was trying to tell you to leave without expressing those exact words.

You felt yourself nodding. “I get it… if you’re having a hard time with your practice,” you added, thinking back to how his coach yelled at him. “I understand that and I can leave you alone.”

Eric observed you; you weren’t sure exactly what he was looking for, but he suddenly motioned towards you. “What’s the first question?” he asked. You were pleased that he had decided to do the interview and, in fear of him changing his mind again, immediately opened your notebook to search for the questions Chanhee had wanted answered.

“Right,” you said, finding the right page. “Um, what made you-“

“Heads up!” a shout distracted you from your thoughts. Your head whipped to the side to see who was shouting, only to see a baseball being hurtled at you at a blistering speed.

“Watch out!” Eric exclaimed, jumping in front of you to grab the baseball before it could smack you directly in the face. You flinched at the sound of his hand coming in contact with the baseball, stunned that he had expertly caught the tiny sphere at the speed it was going at.

Just as you were about to thank Eric for saving you, the boy fell to the ground, moaning in pain at the impact. The ball fell from his grasp and he held onto the hand that caught it with his other; tears building in his eyes. You kneeled down next to him, panicked. “Are you okay?” you questioned, concerned at his reaction.

“Sohn!” his coach yelled, running over to where you and Eric were crouched. “What the hell were you thinking, catching a fastball with your bare hands?” the man chastised, kneeling with the boy and calling the team medic over to inspect Eric’s hand.

“Is that bad?” you asked innocently, confused as to why Eric was in so much pain.

The coach gave you a glare. “Get out of my stadium,” he ordered instead of answering you.

You glanced between him and Eric, feeling embarrassed at the situation. “I’m really sorry,” you told Eric sincerely, picking up your abandoned bag and running out of the stadium.

Chanhee was going to kill you.

“I thought you wanted to be on the paper,” Chanhee said with a frown. “Not that you wanted the paper to write an article about you injuring the baseball team’s star player,” he emphasised, making you flinch.

“That isn’t fair!” you exclaimed. “I didn’t do anything wrong! If anything, we should be asking ourselves why a teammate of Eric’s blatantly hurled a baseball in his direction,” you tried to defend yourself. “And I was in the midst of getting that interview, thank you very much.”

“And now I’ll never get it,” Chanhee sighed. Younghoon rolled his eyes at your friend’s theatrics.

“Shouldn’t we be more concerned that our friend is injured than the fact that you didn’t get your story?” he reminded your pink-haired friend. Chanhee waved his hand at him, as if physically swatting Younghoon’s words away, before going back to picking at his lunch.

“Yeah Chanhee,” a voice behind you agreed, and you knew in your gut that it was Eric. Nervously, you turned around to face the blond and saw him already looking at you. Your eyes met and you were startled by how much warmer his deep brown eyes appeared. “You’re being a terrible friend.”

“Well you’re a terrible friend, too,” Chanhee argued. “How many reporters have I sent to interview you, only to have them be humiliated and turned down?” he asked.

“I’m injured,” Eric said as he took the empty seat between you and Kevin. “Can’t you lay off on the newspaper stuff for a while?” Chanhee rolled his eyes but said nothing; you knew this meant that he agreed with Eric but was too proud to voice it.

Eric’s mention of an injury made you glance down at his right hand, seeing it tightly wrapped in a bandage. “Are you okay?” you asked him, observing his hand.

“It’s a sprain,” Eric explained, lifting his hand up for your friends to see. “Nothing major, but I have to sit out of practice for at least a month, according to the doctor,” he added. “It’s a good thing the season doesn’t start until two months from now.”

Your heart sank at his admission. “I’m really sorry,” you told him. “Truly. I never meant for that to happen,” you promised. “Is there anything I can do?” you offered, wanting to help him out since you had caused enough problems for him.

“Sure,” Eric allowed. “First off, you can tell me your name.”

You smiled at this. “I’m Y/n,” you introduced yourself. “What else?”

You were surprised when the corners of Eric’s mouth lifted up into a small grin. “You could walk me to class?”

He had a stunning smile. Something about it made you want to make him smile more.

Helping Eric with his books and bag had become a regular thing. At first, you did it because you felt guilty about partially being at fault for his injury (and because you were curious about him). Soon, you found that Eric was actually quite a bright and excitable person who was a lot of fun to be around.

As Eric was always so busy juggling school and baseball, he never sat with you and your mutual friends during mealtimes. Now that he no longer had to attend baseball practise at the recommendation of his doctor, Eric was able to sit with your friends every lunch and dinner. Even your friends were surprised when Eric started openly joining discussions and laughing at Sangyeon and Juyeon’s terrible jokes. Sunwoo especially was quite startled by this change; as his roommate and best friend, it was a change that he welcomed despite the initial shock.

After a particularly tiring day of midterms, you felt compelled to do something fun instead of spending the whole night cramming for a midterm you were already confident in doing well on. At approximately 3am, you found yourself rounding up ingredients for chocolate chip cookies from your baking stash and tip-toeing your way into the communal kitchen to bake.

Your roommate had been asleep for a few hours at that point, and you knew that most of your friends would be resting after their rigorous study schedules. Thus, as you rolled up your sleeves and pre-heated the oven, you hadn’t expected anybody to be awake to join your late night – or early morning? – cookie escapades.

Which was why you nearly lost your soul when a hand tapped you on the shoulder. You had your earphones in and were humming along to your favourite playlist as you started mixing the dry ingredients for your cookies, and leapt in the air at the contact. Whirling around, you sighed in relief when you saw Eric, stood with pink pyjamas and ruffled hair, instead of your RA. “You scared me,” you told him, even though you knew he could tell from your reaction. “What are you doing awake?”

Eric shrugged. “I heard someone walking down the hall,” he explained. “I guess a small part of me was hoping it was you,” he grinned widely after his cheesy comment, urging you to roll your eyes.

“Very funny,” you mumbled, trying to ignore the way your heart sped up and palms started sweating at his sweet words.

“What are you making?” Eric asked, hopping up to sit on the counter and slipping his glasses on so he could see better. “Cookies?”

You hummed. “Chocolate chip,” you added with a big grin, holding up the bag of sugary delights to emphasise your point.

“My favourite,” Eric noted happily. “Can I help?”

You nodded, listing off the wet ingredients that he could prepare for you in a seperate bowl. You knew he could pour it all with one hand and you would do the mixing yourself afterwards. After handing Eric one of your earphones, the two of you fell into a comfortable silence as you made your cookie batter, the silence only breaking once in a while by your giggles as you bumped into one another. The first time was a mistake on your part, but after that the two of you were trying your hardest to make the other person giggle and squirm.

Once the cookies were shaped and in the oven, you and Eric sat on the floor near them to relish in the heat the oven was radiating. “What were those questions you wanted to ask me?” Eric inquired, referring to the interview questions Chanhee had prepared for you.

Your eyes widened in surprise. The two of you hadn’t discussed the interview since he was injured, and you had nearly forgotten about your assignment. “Oh. They were mostly just about your baseball life and how you keep your grades up and stuff,” you admitted. “It’s not the interview I would have wanted to give, but it’s what Chanhee wanted.”

“What would you have asked me, then?” Eric asked. “What is your ideal Eric Sohn interview,” he added in an MC voice, making you fight off a grin at how silly he was being.

“Well,” you trailed off, trying to find the right wording. “That day I was at practice it looked like you were having a pretty hard time. What was going through your mind?”

Eric went silent. He hadn’t been expecting that. “I was just thinking that it’s hard to be perfect all the time. My team relies on me a lot, and while it’s an honour to be such an important member of the team, it can be really hard when people expect you to be the ace and you don’t perform.”

There was a distant look on his face, as if his thoughts were going a hundred miles a minute. “What made you want to join the university baseball team?” you asked, moving slightly so that you were facing Eric more comfortably.

A smile reached his lips. “I just really love baseball,” he chuckled. “I’ve been playing since I was a kid. Obviously I knew that university baseball was going to be on a different level, but I just knew that I wasn’t done playing yet. The challenge was exciting and it motivated me to be a better player.”

“I guess it worked,” you mused.

“I guess so,” he reluctantly agreed.

“So when did you start playing?” you asked, peering into the oven to check on your cookies. They had at least another five minutes left until they would be the golden-brown colour you wanted.

“I’ve played with my dad for fun ever since I can remember,” Eric admitted. “Of course when you grow up in LA, you watch baseball on TV with your family,” he added, reminiscing in his childhood.

“Dodgers?” you guessed his favourite team, since he said he was from LA.

“Yankees,” he corrected with a shrug. “My family used to go down to Yankee stadium to watch them play during baseball season when we visited New York. Our seats were always all the way in the back in the highest row, but I didn’t care. As long as I got to watch it all,” you laughed at his excitement. “I guess you could say my baseball career started in little league,” Eric recalled, stretching his legs out in front of him. “Sometimes I wish I could go back,” the smile slowly fell from his face. “Everything was so much easier then.”

“I get that,” you agreed with him. “I never played in little league, but I remember going to my friends’ games,” you said, almost picturing the old baseball field with all your friends running around and playing. “I didn’t even know what was going on in the game. All I knew was that I could cheer on my friends. I’d yell for them as loudly as possible and get popcorn to keep myself entertained during the parts where my friends were benched,” you smiled at the memory. “It was just... fun. I didn’t have to think about any grown-up problems.”

“That’s exactly how I felt,” Eric agreed, excitement filling his voice. “I finally got to make friends that loved baseball as much as me, and playing was fun. It was exciting and nerve-wracking, and it made me happy to practice and play another game,” he sighed. “These days, I play because the university relies on me, and because my parents want me to,” Eric confessed. “I miss loving baseball, I-“ he paused, clearing his throat. “I want to love baseball. But with all the pressure and expectations…” he trailed off, alluding to the fact that he no longer loved the sport that used to fill his childhood with happiness.

You bit your lip. “I’m sorry,” you told him, more as a form of empathy than anything else. “What made you fall in love with baseball in the first place?”

Eric pondered. “Well, at first I just enjoyed playing the sport. But the longer I played, I guess I liked being part of a team. I liked feeling supported by the other guys and feeling like I was needed and trusted by them.”

“What’s missing from your team now that makes you feel like you don’t have that?” you wondered.

“I guess my team relies on me more than I feel like I can give them,” Eric confesses, voice cracking slightly. He cleared his throat, and you hesitantly reached your hand out for him to hold. He grasped it tightly in his, thankful for the small sign of support.

“Maybe you can find support elsewhere,” you suggested, slightly holding up your hands and smiling.

“Yeah, maybe,” Eric agreed with a smile, tears slightly welling in the corners of his eyes. You didn’t have anything else to say and were grateful for the alarm quietly going off on your phone, signalling that your cookies were ready. “Perfect timing,” he added with a laugh as the two of you stood up. You pretended not to see Eric wipe away a tear with the sleeve of his sweatshirt.

They hadn’t looked like sad tears.

Chanhee flipped through the pages you had printed out for him to read. He already spent ten minutes reading and re-reading the article you had written. At this point, it was just getting ridiculous. “Chanhee,” you whined, making the pink-haired boy place the papers down.

“This is…” he paused, trying to find the words. “How did you get him to open up like that?” Chanhee wondered, unable to grasp the idea that Eric had given you so many childhood anecdotes and personal stories to fill the pages of your interview.

You smiled. “I just talked to him like a friend instead of someone to interview,” you shrugged. “He’s actually surprisingly easy to talk to. And really talkative once he gets started,” you added as an afterthought.

“I noticed that about him recently,” Sunwoo agreed. This time, instead of lying across three chairs, he was sat upside down on the only sofa in the media room, head dangling dangerously close to the ground. “These days he seems happy to tell me about his day and doesn’t leave a single detail out. It’s kind of crazy to see the change,” Sunwoo told you.

Chanhee help up the pages. “Did he really approve everything in this?” he asked.

You nodded. “Yeah, of course. I wrote it with his permission and let him read it all before I brought it to you. He’s happy with it,” you promised your best friend. “Wouldn’t want to upset my best friend and potential editor…” you trailed off, hopeful.

“Well obviously you’re in!” Chanhee exclaimed, hugging you tightly as you laughed. “You just got me the most personal article of a university athlete I’ve ever published. You deserve it,” he assured you. “Plus, you put a permanent smile on one of my friend’s faces. I didn’t think that would be possible,” Chanhee gave you a meaningful look when you separated, causing you to smile bashfully and angle your gaze at the floor to avoid his gaze.

“He’s way more open than you guys gave him credit for,” you retorted. You truly believed it; the first time you tried to interview him, he had surprised you with how willing he was to help you out.

“And emotional,” Changmin chimed in. “He cried during The Notebook, then he cried again when we put a horror film on afterwards. You can’t win.”

His comment made you laugh, picturing Eric curled up on the couch in the communal dorm movie room while sobbing into Changmin’s shoulder was too good to pass up on. “Make sure you invite me to the next movie night,” you requested. Changmin saluted you in response, Sunwoo throwing a thumbs up in agreement to allow you to join. “Anyway, I need to get going. I’m actually heading to surprise said cry-baby at his first day back at practice,” you informed them, picking up your bag to get going.

“His hand healed so quickly?” Juyeon asked, surprised.

“Not at all,” you denied with a sad smile. “He says it’s still hurting these days. But his coach wants him to come observe practice so when his hand heals he’ll be up to date on everything... Or something,” you shrugged, unsure of how people prepared for baseball games.

As you waved your goodbyes, Chanhee called out to you: “Don’t forget we meet every Monday, Wednesday and Thursday for newspaper!” You were pleased that Chanhee had enjoyed your article and wanted you on the newspaper, especially since so many of your friends were usually occupied by this extracurricular activity anyway.

Once you arrived at the baseball stadium, you took a seat on the first bleacher to wait for Eric to arrive. The weather had warmed significantly since the first time you came a month ago. You supposed the fact that it was an afternoon practice instead of an early morning practice also added to the lack of cold you were experiencing.

“Hey,” a member of Eric’s team approached you with a smile.

Unsure, you smiled back and greeted him. “Hello,” you said.

“You look a little out of place,” he said to you, standing in front of you. “I’ve never seen you here before,” he added.

“Oh yeah, I don’t usually come here,” you confirmed for him. “I’m just waiting for a friend,” you added politely.

“You’re far too pretty to be waiting alone,” he said, which made you freeze up. You hadn’t been approached by guys like him often, but it had happened enough for you to know that they really couldn’t take a hint.

“And yet here I am,” you replied, trying to sound curt.

“I could keep you company,” the guy suggested. You opened your mouth to protest, but he had already taken a seat next to you, far too close for your personal comfort. As you subtly scooted away from him, he seemed to take this as a suggestion for him to sit even closer to you. “I like your hair,” he said, lifting his hand as if he was about to touch it.

A hand grabbed his before he could. “It doesn’t sound like you asked,” Eric told his teammate, right hand tightening on the boy’s, voice clipped and laced with anger. “So I don’t think that’s a very good idea.” Eric yanked him up to his feet, and you finally felt like you could breathe again with the distance between the two of you. With a harsh shove, he stumbled back and glared at Eric, cursing under his breath and stalking off.

“Eric your hand,” you realised, standing up and trying to inspect his injured hand.

“Are you okay?” he asked instead, searching your body for any sign that you were uncomfortable or hurt. “That creep didn’t say or do anything?”

You shook your head. “No, no, I’m fine! But your hand-“ you soon realised that Eric wasn’t even wearing the brace anymore. After the original bandage that was put on it, his doctor had given him a small wrap brace so he could do everyday activities with more ease and support. Instead, his hand was bare and looked completely fine. “Is healed?” you stammered, confused. You glanced up at Eric, who seemed to be avoiding eye contact. “Just yesterday you told me that it was hurting.”

“I lied,” Eric confessed. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” you forgave him easily. It wasn’t a big deal and you were just happy that he wasn’t in pain anymore, especially since you felt partially responsible for the injury in the first place. “Why didn’t you tell me?” you wondered.

Eric scratched the back of his neck and sighed. “I like having you around, okay?” he admitted. “I figured that after you got whatever you needed for your interview, you would leave me alone and go back to how things were before I was injured.”

His disclosure had stunned you into silence. You opened your mouth to say something twice, but ended up closing it again for lack of knowing what to say. “You thought I was just talking to you for my interview?” you clarified. Eric nodded. “I completely forgot about it until you brought it up a few weeks ago,” you admitted to him. “I was spending time with you because I wanted to, not because I wanted to get interview answers out of you,” you promised.

“Not even because you felt guilty about being involved in my injury?” Eric inquired.

“At first I wanted to help you because I felt guilty,” you agreed. “But after the first time we hung out together I stopped caring about that.”

“Oh,” Eric said, staring at you as if he had no clue what to say. “I really thought you were going to leave…”

You were amused that Eric was so sure of himself. “Did you ever consider asking me to stay?” you pointed out, crossing your arms and raising an eyebrow to tease him.

Eric paused. “Will you?” he wondered.

“Will you?” you retorted.

Eric frowned. “I’m lost,” he stated. “Will I what?”

You grinned, finding his furrowed brows and slightly cocked head quite adorable. “Kiss me,” you told him what you meant. His eye’s widened, lips parting slightly before Eric nodded. Once, twice, three times. You took this as your cue and stepped closer to him, your lips easily finding his as you closed your eyes.

“Sohn!” the sound of his coach’s voice caused you to jump apart. “This is baseball practice. You can practice that in your own time,” he said, although you could tell by his tone that he was poking fun at his ace player.

Eric blushed, clearing his throat. “Yes coach,” he called, smiling shyly at you before rushing off to put on his batting gloves.

Decked out in your university’s colours, you stood in the bleachers with your friends, anxiously biting your lip as you watched the game unfold before you. Eric and his team had made it to the championships this season, and you were more than thrilled to go and support him with the rest of your friends. Eric had been teaching you about baseball for months now, and the more you went to watch him play, the more motivated you were to remember everything he told you.

Your article had been published in the newspaper a week after you handed it in to Chanhee, and the personal interview had made it the most popular issue Chanhee had ever published as the editor of the weekly paper. Needless to say, readers wanted you to write a follow-up interview on Eric and his life on the baseball team, especially after word got out that the two of you had started dating. For a while, you were the talk of the town. You were unnerved by the sudden attention, but things mellowed down soon after people realised that you weren’t interested in satiating their endless questions.

“How much longer is this going to be?” Haknyeon whined, sighing as he leaned against Kevin for support. He had mostly been attracted by the idea of all the great snacks that being at a baseball game entailed, and hadn’t realised that a game without timing such as baseball could go on for hours.

“This is the ninth inning, so most games usually end with this round,” you spouted the information Eric had drilled into you with ease after going to his games all season long.

Next to you, Jacob giggled. “You’re turning into a natural at this,” he complimented, grinning. “Eric would be proud,” he added happily.

“Eric is their last batter,” you said in response, more focused on the game than on Jacob’s comments. “He looks nervous,” you mused, foot tapping nervously on the floor, causing your whole leg to move rapidly.

“Don’t you be nervous, he’s got this,” Kevin assured you, trying to stop Haknyeon from falling asleep on his shoulder. “Despite his injury a few months before the season started, this is the best he’s ever played.”

Hyunjae chuckled. “Yeah, I wonder why,” he teased, pointing over at you behind his hand as if you wouldn’t have known what he was doing.

You shushed your friends. “He’s up,” you said, voice shaking slightly from your nerves.

Eric stepped up to the place, looking like he was at ease and confident. This calmed you only slightly, because you knew that Eric was good at putting on a performance during his games. He knew that if he looked even slightly anxious, it would affect the other players and the audience too. Eric adjusted his grip on the bat and got in position. The pitcher threw the ball and Eric swung, missing the ball by a hair.

You groaned. “Strike one!” the umpire called, holding up a finger.

“Come on, Eric…” you mumbled, folding your hands together and squeezing tightly.

The second time the pitcher threw the ball, Eric swung the bat and hit the ball clean, sending it soaring over the outfield fence, only hitting the ground after flying between the foul poles. You gasped, jumping in the air and cheering. “What’s happening?” Chanhee asked, standing up next where you and Jacob were shouting for joy.

“Home run!” you and Jacob chorused as Eric ran his way to each base at lightning speed, reaching home base and making the winning run for your university’s team. “We won!” Jacob added and your friends all cheered with you, jumping up and down in excitement.

You could see the team celebrating together by screaming and jumping as well, and you clapped along with the rest of the audience. Eric joined their excitement after pulling off his helmet and gloves, making you smile in relief. After opening up to you and your friends, Eric had decided to speak with his team and coach about the pressure he was feeling. The team had reacted better than Eric expected, and soon Eric felt reassured and supported by his teammates.

Once Eric had given his coach a hug, he charged towards the fence separating the field from the bleachers. Instantly, your friends started cooing at you, but you only rolled your eyes. You had gotten used to the teasing after dating Eric for half a year at that point and it no longer affected you anymore. You handed Jacob your bag and raced down the bleacher steps towards your boyfriend.

“Congratulations!” you exclaimed, wrapping your arms around him when he met you on your side of the fence. You easily fit into his arms and heard Eric’s adrenaline-filled laughter next to your ear.

“Couldn’t have done it without you,” he stated, pulling away just enough to kiss you. The cheers coming from your friends were almost defeating at this point but you ignored them, pulling Eric closer to you and deepening the kiss. When you pulled away, he gave you one last peck before beaming. “You helped me fall in love with baseball again, and that’s something I can never repay you for,” Eric told you, causing your heart to swell with pride.

You had noticed the changes in Eric’s attitude towards baseball before the season started. He seemed more excited about his practices and was getting closer to the people on his team. “It’s not little league, but it’s pretty good, right?” you asked rhetorically.

Eric laughed. “Really good,” he corrected. “Not only did I fall in love with baseball again, but it helped me fall in love with you for the first time,” Eric confessed. The two of you had never said that you loved each other, even though you showed it every day with your actions.

You beamed. “I love you too, Eric.”

And with that, you were pulled into another kiss. This one felt more fulfilling and warm than all the previous ones combined.

note: i’m a sucker for cheesy endings so i had to end it like this!!

[blackteaaddict]

Hi I just wanted to tell you how much joy it brought me to open tumblr one day to a dash full of Eddie thanks to someone I followed way back bc of Yi City! Jcjejfdj idk I guess I'm just glad you're also in this rabbithole💜 was also kinda wondering whether you've heard of the Kas theory cuz you know... you mentioned that Eddie's fine post s4, just a zombie playing his guitar in the Upside Down, and yeah, you're not way off from this theory actually since it implies him being a vampire XD (and also Vecna's puppet. Just imagine all the angst potential!!) Anyway, don't wanna give you any false hope but I'm still in denial about his death so the Kas theory is my only consolation (doesn't help that the more I think about it the more sense it makes) so may as well share. Okay, sorry for rambling into your askbox, I'm just too full of blorbo feels nowadays, hopefully you have a good day!💜

omg hi fellow yi city and eddie lover!!! it’s always fun when you find ppl from the other fandoms in your new fandom xD (though I have to say I'm still much more casually in the stranger things fandom than in cql fandom, idk if it will turn into a full blown obsession? rn I'm just mostly reblogging gifs with eddie, not engaging that much in meta nor reading any fanfic)

anyway I’m happy to hear you were delighted by my eddie spam on your dash xD (and I just have to mention here that I always headcanon that modern au xue yang is into heavy metal music, especially into trash metal, I think it fits him so well! sometimes I headcanon he can play guitar as well, despite his fucked up left hand)

ok now back to that eddie returns topic... that post about zombie eddie was written in the great feelings right after watching the final episode and yeah later on I realized that he indeed should be more of a vampire because of the bats (I guess I went with zombie because iron maiden's eddie seems kinda more like a zombie so my brain went there idk hfgksjdfjs). mostly I was angry he died because hmmm I didn't feel like his death was really that necessary? like, he could survive that, severely bitten but still alive (just like steve survived! yeah I know not so many bats attacked him but steve was fucking shirtless!!!). mostly I didn't feel like his death really changed it all that much for the whole plot? what purpose did it serve? it felt like he died just because the script writers and duffers wanted him to die. like, steve, nancy and robin could have also died, strangled by those demonic vines but of course they were needed for the plot (and I'm glad they didn't die xD), but I don't understand why eddie couldn't make it out alive too then. I feel like nothing really would be taken away from his heroic "didn't run away" moment if he survived it and just passed out in dustin's arms instead of dying?

I saw some ppl talking about “the kas theory” but I always forgot to google it ooops xD but ok now I googled it and hmm idk how I feel... I have mixed feelings honestly? because on one hand I want eddie to come back in season 5 but I'm not sure if I want it like this? kinda feels like a bit of a repeat of billy and mind flayer from s3. (and I have to say I didn't like it that much and the direction they took with billy in s3... mostly because I was counting on more interaction between billy and max and their whole household because from the tiny glimpses we got it seemed like a huge mess but then the duffers never really elaborated on it? like I'm glad we at least got the little flashback into billy's childhood but it's just a crumb. I wanted to know the current dynamics of that fucked up family, what's happening now, how the relationship between him and max developed. it was implied that it got better but it all happened off-screen but then in s4 max said that actually it was still bad so????? the duffers had such an interesting plot here and they just skipped that? tossed it away? got billy mind controlled and then killed him off instead of really putting the work into writing him a real full fleshed redemption arc? and like I'm all for my poor little meow meows getting tortured but ugh I guess I just wanted more billy being billy and we lost that once he got mind flayed. I was just very frustrated with the fact that I felt that there was so many questions and interesting things to explore in billy’s (and max’s) story but once billy got under mind control there was no space for that anymore and I felt robbed.)

but ugh since we got a lot of eddie screentime in s4 that won’t be the problem here... and maybe it could give some meaning to his death? generally I’m not sure if I want him as yet another meatsuit borrowed by vecna... but I’m not saying it couldn’t work either...

but when I said I wanted eddie back it was him as a part of the gang, he had suffered enough! xD also I like him as a quartet with steve and nancy and robin. and will is back in hawkings, he should get a chance to play dnd with eddie goddamnit! (it was so unfair to banish will to california while his friends joined an awesome dnd club and will was the most into dnd of thme all. come on. it's a hate crime. also that hair-do they gave him in s4 was a hate crime too.)

but the more I think about eddie resurrection the more it makes sense he could only come back under some kind of mind control of vecna, if he was changed by the powers of upside down into a vampire or some other undead being, then it would only be logical he would be part of this world now. so I guess it all depends on how that kas theory would be executed? because it might be interesting, but also I can easily see it being disappointing and boring and eddie would probably die at the end anyway... so idk??? basically it mostly seems to me like theory that would be way more fun to explore in fannish spaces that to see it brought on screen as a part of the series? I always have limited trust for the show creators jhgfkjsdhgjkh

in general I’m trying to have no expectations for s5 because I’m kinda afraid for it? after the disappointment that was mcu and infinity war/endgame I’m kinda reluctant with my trust for the writers, especially if it’s some big finale of a few seasons long/few movies long franchise. like, I hope s5 will be good... but also won’t be surprise if everything will implode from it’s own weigh.

anyway, thank you for rambling into my ask! I was very happy to receive your little message! and I hope you’ll have a good day too!

[ghosthunthq]

BFU: “The Mysterious Death of Dr. Eugene Davis”

Buzzfeed Unsolved True Crime

“The Mysterious Death of Dr. Eugene Davis”

Aeternus.Flamma

000

  Prompt: ghost hunt but make it buzzfeed unsolved!AU (it can be with or without Gene being alive) i think that would be entertaining    Submitted by Anonymous

000

  [Intro music plays]

  RYAN: [Narration] Today on Buzzfeed Unsolved, we discuss the mysterious death of Dr. Eugene Davis. 

  SHANE: Eugene? 

  RYAN: Yeah, Eugene. 

  SHANE: I only know, like, one other Eugene. When was this? 

  RYAN: Like, recent. If you’d let me get through the intro… 

SHANE: Fine, fine. Go on. 

  RYAN: As I was saying, today we discuss the mysterious death of Dr. Eugene Davis, one of the most renowned mediums of our time. 

  SHANE: Medium. Right. 

  RYAN: Yes, medium. Dr. Davis, known as Gene to his family, has been called the perfect medium–no other person has thus far been able to so accurately communicate with other spirits. Not only could he channel on near demand, but he also showed, on numerous occasions, speaking fluently in languages he did not know. 

SHANE: Oh, sure. Like that can’t be faked. This bullshit has been literally faked for hundreds of years. Picking up a few lines in French isn’t exactly convincing. I’ve said it before. All psychics are bullshit.

  RYAN: Yeah, fine, maybe not. But how about entire conversations with loved ones in Russian? Or Arabic? Can–can you do that? 

  SHANE: Just cause–okay, well, you can learn languages. There are people out there who have learned dozens of languages over their life–

  RYAN: Did I mention he was sixteen?

  SHANE: …

  RYAN: Yeah, think about that a bit more. He’s seventeen and apparently he fluently speaks, uh, Japanese, Mandarin, Korean…  English, French, Spanish, Italian, Portugese, Russian, Arabic… Like, people have tried to disprove this kid and–

  SHANE: Wait you, said Dr. Eugene Davis. 

  RYAN: Yeah–

  SHANE: Doctor? 

  RYAN: We’ll get to that. 

  SHANE: Yeah. Okay. I call bullshit now. This is already ridiculous. 

  RYAN: It gets weirder. 

  SHANE: Of course it does. 

RYAN: [Narration] Dr. Davis’s sad story starts when he was a child, found in an American orphanage by famous parapsychologists, Martin and Luella Davis. The Davises adopted Gene and his brother, despite them showing know signs of speaking English. 

  SHANE: Martin and Luella didn’t speak English??

  RYAN: No, Gene and his brother. They only spoke Japanese to one another. 

  SHANE: … They only spoke Japanese?

  RYAN: Well, yeah, they’re Japanese, or, their parents were. 

  SHANE: You–uh–so he’s a psychic, Japanese child found in an American orphanage?

  RYAN: Yeah. And he’s adopted by a British couple. 

  SHANE: Oh, they’re British?

  RYAN: Yeah, they’re, like, the British version of the Warren’s–don’t roll your eyes. 

  SHANE: I thought this wasn’t the ghost season. 

  RYAN: It’s not–well, yeah, it’s not. 

  SHANE: There are ghosts involved, aren’t there?

  RYAN: …

  SHANE: This is great. 

  RYAN: [Narration] Gene and his brother Oliver, and no, those weren’t their birth names, but I couldn’t find those, were adopted by the parapsychologists and moved to the UK. From a young age, the brothers showed signs of having unique abilities. 

  SHANE: Both of them? The brother too?

  RYAN: Uh, yeah. Oliver Davis, also a doctor by the way, has given demonstrations using psychokinesis, or PK. Telekinesis basically. Move shit with his mind. 

  SHANE: Interesting… And how old is he?

  RYAN: They’re twins. 

  SHANE: Tw–twins! You’re kidding me!

  RYAN: No, no that’s for real. 

  SHANE: So, you have two creepy children, freaking twins, in an orphanage, and they’re apparently psychic? This isn’t real life. This is a plot to a B movie. 

  RYAN: I don’t know what to tell you. I can show you the videos. 

  SHANE: Shopped. 

  RYAN: There’s–there’s a death certificate–

  SHANE: I’m not saying this kid didn’t die, I’m saying that this is a hot, steaming pile of–

  RYAN: Alright, alright, I get it. Let me get to his death. 

  SHANE: Fine. 

  RYAN: After jointly publishing a dissertation and receiving their honorary doctorates, Gene and his brother were accepted to Cambridge University. Before starting his study, Gene decided to travel to Japan, though accounts as to why he did so vary. What may have been a pilgrimage to visit distant relatives unfortunately turned disastrous as Gene disappeared. 

  SHANE: Was he traveling alone?

  RYAN: Yes. 

  SHANE: Who lets a sixteen year old travel alone, especially overseas?

  RYAN: Okay, well, one, if you’re going to do it, Japan’s the one place to do it, it’s pretty safe. Two, he had contacts he was visiting. It wasn’t like he was just wandering around completely alone, he just didn’t have the same person traveling with him the whole time. They have records of him, you know, like visiting schools, meeting with colleagues and stuff. He was apparently very personable and made friends easily. 

  SHANE: Yeah, well, that’s how people get killed. And based on how this is going–well there you go. 

  RYAN: [Narration] Gene Davis was last seen leaving the home of a friend one night. He left on foot, intending to walk back to the ryokan that he was staying at in the area. However, he never made it to his destination. Despite police being called very quickly, it would take months before his body was recovered. 

  SHANE: Okay, I guess I take it back. He at least had friends who called the cops, when, what, he didn’t text them back?

  RYAN: Actually…

  SHANE: Oh they didn’t? Okay, nevermind. Suspicious. 

  RYAN: So, his brother was the one who called the cops. 

  SHANE: His brother? But he didn’t go to Japan.

RYAN: No, he didn’t. 

  SHANE: ….

  RYAN: [Narration] Though he couldn’t say how he knew to call the cops, Gene’s brother, Oliver, called anyhow and insisted that they do a check on his brother at the ryokan. When they arrived, the proprietors confirmed that they hadn’t seen the teen. It took a few days before Gene’s friends came forward, having no idea he was missing in the first place. 

  SHANE: More psychic shit?

RYAN: Uh, yeah, psychic… stuff. It was never publicly declared, but like, yeah, apparently Oliver had like, I dunno, psychic visions and knew something happened to his brother.

  SHANE: Well–okay. 

  RYAN: You don’t actually sound that angry at that. 

  SHANE: No, I guess… Twins right? I mean, I may not believe in the oogie boogie crap, but there has been, you know, weird things between children. Weren’t there, like, those sisters? And they only talked to each other, but then decided one had to die…?

  RYAN: Yeah, the Gibbons. The Silent Twins. 

  SHANE: There you go. Another weird twin story. 

  RYAN: Actually–okay, well, we’ll get into that. After nearly six months of searching, Oliver Davis ultimately recovered the body of his brother, who was found at the bottom of a lake in the countryside. He traveled to Japan and worked under a pseudonym, using family money to pay divers to search bodies of water. 

  SHANE: A lake? How did he–why did he–you know what, nevermind. Psychic. Right. 

  RYAN: Right. He, uh, saw his brother, I guess, drown. 

  SHANE: But psychic-ly. 

  RYAN: Yeah. 

  SHANE: Okay. 

  RYAN: Autopsy notes say that Gene was likely hit, uh, twice, by a car, and then tossed into the water while he was still alive. 

  SHANE: Jesus. Twice? What, did someone back up and hit him again?

  RYAN: Actually, it seemed like he was hit and then someone reversed and backed over him. Based on breaks or something, I don’t know. I’m not an expert. But yeah, seems like at least the second one was intentional. He still wasn’t dead, though, and maybe could have survived. 

  SHANE: Until he was thrown into the water? That’s horrible. That seems intentional, or like, the worst person in the world getting into an accident. What kind of person could do that? It’s like stupid teenagers at the start of a horror movie–actually I’m pretty sure that is the start to a horror movie. 

  RYAN: Yeah, it’s terrible. 

  SHANE: And sixteen. Awful. Psychic shit or not, awful.

  RYAN: It’s time to dive into theories on what happened to the young Dr. Eugene Davis. 

  RYAN: [Narration] Our first theory, and the most believable, is simply that Gene was hit on a dark road while walking back to his ryokan. The driver, finding themselves in a predicament, either backed up to see what they hit or intentionally did so in a state of panic. Regardless, it’s quite possible they believed that the teen was dead, and instead of calling the police, dumped the body in one of the numerous lakes in the area. The idea that it was simply an accident seems to have gained the most traction as there are no other serious suspects at this time. 

  SHANE: It’s unfortunate, but I guess I can see how it could have happened. It’s crazy that someone with such an insane background could meet such a munade end. Like, I thought for sure you would say it was ghosts or aliens. 

  RYAN: We still have two more theories. 

  SHANE: Of course we do.

  RYAN: [Narration] The second theory has started circulating since the recovery of Gene’s body. Many people found the fact that Gene’s brother simply knew about the death to be suspicious. Some speculations, especially from skeptics of the psychics, believe that Oliver orchestrated the death of his brother. Both brothers proved to be highly intelligent, to the point where they’ve been called prodigies, and it wouldn’t be impossible for someone so cunning to plan such an elaborate ruse. 

  SHANE: Hm… Okay. I guess that’s possible… Do we–do we know anything about this Oliver? Why would he murder his brother? Like, is there any substance to this theory?

  RYAN: Yeah, so, first, apparently, despite being twins, their personalities were night and day. Whereas Gene was pretty popular and, like, charismatic, his brother was–is, he’s still alive–not. So, it could have been jealousy. But, also, you’ve also mentioned the Silent Sisters–who agreed that one of them needed to die for the other to live. 

  SHANE: So, what, they were in on it together? If so, kinda seems like they picked the wrong brother. 

  RYAN: Yeah, kinda. Another popular theory for the whole, Oliver killed his brother concept, is that, much like the Fox sisters–who, if you don’t know, are some of the most famous ‘spiritualists’ in history–Gene wanted to confess that their psychic powers were fake. When one of the Fox sisters did that in the 1800’s, it ruined them. Maybe Oliver wasn’t willing to give up the clout that they had built off of their supposed abilities. 

  SHANE: That’s it. That’s the one. 

  RYAN: You like that one?

  SHANE: Yeah. That makes a hell of a lotta sense. Sure, hit and run, maybe. But yeah, this Oliver seems suspicious. I’m on team: their powers were fake, Gene had a conscience, and as he was growing out of his teenage years, he wanted to leave it behind. Seems about right. 

  RYAN: Yeah–yeah, okay. Seeing the history of other psychic siblings… yeah, I can see how this makes sense. 

  SHANE: What happened to Oliver?

  RYAN: Uh, well he’s still teaching at–

  SHANE: He’s teaching?

  RYAN: Yeah, like I said, prodigy. He’s been back to Japan a few times–recently he made the paper because he was involved in a fire on the island of Poveglia in Italy. 

  SHANE: So he’s an arsonist now?

  RYAN: No, no, apparently there was a ghost hunt that went wrong and–

  SHANE: He’s a ghost hunter?

  RYAN: Okay, this is–this is a story for another time–the Ciao Poveglia mystery is–you know what, I’m just going to stop now. It’s a whole thing. Look into it. 

  SHANE: Okay. Fine. Last theory?

  RYAN: [Narration] Our final theory is that Gene’s dealings with the afterlife came back to haunt him. Though no one can be certain exactly what Gene was doing, some true crime enthusiasts have put together a trail of his last known whereabouts in Japan. Supposedly, the trail can be traced back to a well known politician. Some believe that the spirits of individuals wronged by the politician spoke to Gene and he was working on gathering evidence to provide to the authorities. 

  SHANE: The spirits spoke to him. Right. Of course. Are there any scandals behind this politician? 

  RYAN: Uh–no. None. Well, there are rumors, but the, like, Redditors can’t even really settle on who the person is. So, it’s probably a bust. 

  SHANE: Could you imagine if that was true? Or like, you know, he thought it was true? And this kid just walked into the police station and said, I–I know that the, uh, prime minister killed and, uh, ate someone. How do I know? The ghosts told me! Dude would have been locked up so fast… 

  RYAN: Yeah, probably. It… doesn’t have a lot of credit behind it. 

  RYAN: [Narration] In the end, what actually happened to Dr. Eugene Davis, one of the most accomplished spiritualists of our time, will remain unsolved.

  SHANE: Look, whatever happened, and whatever… skills… he might have had… it’s still unfortunate that someone died so young. It’s a shame. 

RYAN: I’m guessing that I could show you all of his public research, and you would still never believe me. 

  SHANE: Uh… yeah that–that’s probably accurate. 

  RYAN: Wouldn’t it be pretty cool if we like, ran into Oliver on one of our investigations? Like, we just ended up at the same location?

SHANE: I mean, you did just offer up a theory that he’s a killer and I did agree with you. So. You know, no? Not because of any psychic stuff, but because we just trashed him online on a channel with a few million subscribers. 

  RYAN: Good point. Well. I’m sure that will never happen. [Outro Music Plays.]

000

  Notes: please don’t ask me how far I have driven to see one of the few, live BFU shows. I’m a Watcher patreon and own MOST of their BFU/Watcher merch. It’s like this prompt was made for me. I’m working on a BFU Supernatural/GH fic now. Ciao Poveglia is referenced. Please check out the cleaned up, slightly updated version on AO3. 

  Ever your servant, 

  Aeternus.Flamma

[croissantconnoisseurdinosaur]

Orphaned idea for fluffy, sfw Kiri-centered time-alter fic

FEEL FREE TO TAKE THIS IDEA! SEND ME A LINK IF ANYBODY DECIDES TO ELABORATE, SINCE I DON’T FEEL LIKE IT!

Summary:  In the world of quirks, there is still some magic left in the world — though magical beings tend to stick to the edges of society, clinging to deep woods to avoid being discovered or hunted.  

While on a holiday hike that Kirishima practically drags Bakugou to, the two come across magical Dragon Kiri, though it sees them long before they see him.  The young red dragon is curious, and gets too close before he’s eventually spotted by Bakugou.  Out of fear, the adolescent dragon accidentally casts a spell (the magical version of a quirk — as in he only has this one power and is still trying to perfect it), before flying deep into the woods towards the mountain caves.  Disoriented, the teens watch as the fabric of time and space rips open, and two swirling black holes spit out past and future versions of Kirishima.  

Bakugou and The Kiri’s trek deep into the mountains in order to find the dragon’s lair, and send past and future Kiri back where they belong.  

Little Kiri - 13

Teen Kiri - 17

Big Kiri - 31

The scenes that created the plot idea:  

Baku is intimidated by the confidence of big Kiri, and thrown off by the visibly obvious insecurity of little Kiri.  It’s confusing and sad, and not at all like the version of Kirishima he has grown to know, which makes Bakugou panicked and annoyed.  He accidentally responds with contempt, and little Kiri feels bullied.

“Is that really you?!” Bakugou spits unceremoniously, eyeing little Kiri with disgust. 

“Kat, you little shit,” big Kiri purrs, before roughly grabbing his chin to force him to look him in the eyes, in order to threaten him properly, “I love you, but if you hurt his feelings, I will kick your fucking ass.”  Something strange comes over Bakugou’s face and he swallows hard. 

Teen and little Kiri are staring slack-mouthed at big Kiri (little Kiri with tears in his eyes), until big Kiri smiles, ruffles Bakugou’s hair like a degrading older sibling, and turns to lead the way to find shelter for the night. 

 . . . 

Bakugou and Kirishima decided to sleep in the same shifts.  So now they are both awake and watching the entrance of the cave from behind a lit fire.  Big kiri and little kiri are slumped together asleep in the corner. 

“This is weird.” Bakugou blurts out. 

“Can’t argue with you there,” Kirishima sighed, running a hand through his hair, before a brief silence settled between them.  

Kirishima had brought Bakugou out here in the first place as a welcome distraction, and to cheer Baku up about *something; hero-training-related-trauma; something.* He doubts this added stress is helping.  So he checks in to see. 

Deep convo.

Heavy emotions. 

Sad Baku.  Baku needs a hug.

Teen Kiri tentatively reaches a hand up to just barely brush against the side of Katsuki’s cheek to catch a stray tear.  Bakugou swallows hard, not breaking eye contact as the chills run down his spine.  As if searching his eyes for permission, teen Kiri then gently cups Bakugou’s chin in a very tender version of the way big Kiri did before.  Bakugou’s face blanches, before flooding with color.  The blond leaned toward Kirishima ever so slightly, like they were magnetized together, but its so subtle in the dark that kiri chalks it up to a trick of the firelight, and drops his hand to clap aggressively against Bakugou’s shoulder once instead, forced sad platonic grin on his face. 

Both of their attention is jolted to the side as little Kiri begins whimpering, hyperventilating, and shaking violently in his sleep.  

Baku and Kiri shoot up to their feet.  

“What’s happening?” Bakugou demands, varying levels of annoyance laced within the panic of his voice. 

“Nightmares.”  Big and teen Kiri answer at the same time. 

Bakugou takes a few steps back, and big Kiri gently lays little Kiri flat on the ground as teen Kiri rushes to his side. 

Big Kiri looks at teen Kiri, “do you know how to help him?  I gotta be honest, it’s been about a decade since I’ve last had a night terror, and I barely remember what they were about most of the time…” 

“Yeah, we… we still get these sometimes…”

“So who helps you?” Bakugou blurts out, almost angrily, a much softer look in his eyes. 

Teen Kiri ignores him and next to little Kiri on the ground, placing one hand on his chest to ground him, and using the other hand to brush gently through his black hair.  He whispers various iterations of “it’s okay,” “you’re safe,” “everybody else is safe,” and “you’re just dreaming.”

Finally, little Kiri wakes up.  “Hey!” Teen Kiri smiles, “welcome back!” Little kiri appears shell shocked, and lost for a moment, before becoming flustered. 

“C-can you let go of me?  It’s weird…” little Kiri complains, completely red in the face, as he sits up, unable to look at teen Kiri in the face. 

“Kinda weird to gay-panic over an older version of yourself bro, but okay.” 

“HEY!” Teen Kiri yells in a scolding panic, eyes flicking to Bakugou before drilling back into big Kiri’s smirking eyes. 

“Don’t worry, you can trust Katsuki to keep your secret…” there’s something akin to mischief in his eyes as he stares at Bakugou. 

Bakugou is glaring at big Kiri with wide eyes, and an inquisitive expression behind them. 

“Oh… Good… Well, thanks Bakubro!” Kiri turns to him and beams like the sun.  Bakugou’s eyes drift over to him and catch, staring at him for just a few seconds too long, beginning to blush as he shifts on his feet. 

“Whatever, idiots… I’m getting some sleep.” 

. . .

Hours later, everybody is asleep (except for big Kiri, who’s turn it is to keep watch) until dawn.  Little kiri has slumped back down against big Kiri’s side, and teen Kiri has fallen asleep next to Bakugou.  

At some point, teen Kiri starts to toss and turn with nightmares.  This wakes Bakugou up, and he starts to panic.  He tries shaking Kiri awake, which just makes him more distressed, so he has to change up his course of action.

Bakugou tentatively begins to brush through his hair and whisper the same comforting things that teen Kiri had whispered to little Kiri when he was having his nightmare. 

The noise wakes little Kiri up, and he watches them in awe.  A chuckle from big Kiri draws his attention to where big Kiri is grinning broadly. 

“My Katsuki back home is not gonna believe this…” 

Little Kiri looks from big Kiri to teen Kiri, now sleeping peacefully with a small grin on his lips.  Bakugou lays his head back down to sleep, but leaves his hand resting on Kirishima.  

[ooc-but-stylish]

freezedive:

I think I said it in one of your other beautiful posts, but I thought I’d mention it again. All of the ridiculous cutscenes did give us a golden nugget of information on Luna that most of us who are brutally critical of her (like you and me), suspected all along: Luna openly admits to Gentiana that she doesn’t think she has anything to offer Noctis outside of being an oracle. And Gentiana makes it worse by speaking in fancy words by saying some bullshit about her being the oracle is her being human or something and that she is fulfilling her true calling and that is what Noctis needs? Idk but it reeked of emotional manipulation. 

I hold little to no regard for Ravus because there’s evidence Luna was being brutally beaten right under his own nose while he was busy being the Emperor’s lapdog thinking it could maybe give him the power to save his sister? The man should have opened his eyes and defended her against the men that kept them jailed

I happened on this reply to roxainn’s post while trying to recapitulate all my other FFXV critical posts and reblogs on the way to making new ones. 

Crawling back to find anything about this point, I find that it was posted 3 years ago. But at least I reblogged the reply to it.... and missed that it was literally @ ME. Goddamn did I slack.

But here’s my reply, 3 years late, which should elaborate on where I stand on this.

Yes, the flashback that gets triggered by a random creepy little girl in Tenebrae is about Luna and Gentiana. Somehow the little girl knew about that conversation even though she wasn’t there to witness it first-hand? Or maybe Noctis was imagining what the conversation would be like between Gentiana and Luna off of the vague suggestion from the girl, and it’s just him telling on himself that his imagination of Luna says all that? Otherwise the not-altogether-tinfoil-hat theory says it’s Gentiana in the form of a little girl, telling Noctis something that IMO should piss him off but just makes him sad and guilty because Luna loved him so much, don’t you see. She loved him so much that after wrapping her entire life around him, she’d just want to keep that going for the rest of their lives!

Gentiana opens the conversation with, “At first, the father had mourned the fate of his chosen son. Yet in Tenebrae, the two found solace. It was not the Oracle who assuaged their fears. But the girl…she holds…the true power.”

Then Luna replies, “I have little to offer a king, other than the voice afforded the Oracle. Nevertheless…” She turns to look at the wedding dress. “And—I’m afraid he might find this foolish… But…to be together with Noctis again, even if only for a short while… It…would mean the world to me. I do not seek to guide him, merely to stand beside him.”

The exchange is all types of fucky.

First off, she was twelve. What comfort could she have offered Regis and Noctis? What comfort was she capable of when Sylva was right there, an adult with experience of an Oracle and a personality thanks to a presumable full life not hampered by grooming of the gods? 

Second, every other scene of Luna as a child is of her telling Noctis his duty, and that it was her duty to see it through. Did that assuage his fears-- the fears he didn’t have at the time since he never knew the entire meaning of his fate and was being told a saccharine, embellished version of it by Luna right there? Did that comfort Regis, knowing a little girl would also die to protect his son if the gods wanted it, but that she wouldn’t have the will to avert their fates whatsoever? 

Third, even she thinks Noctis would think her desire to be with him is foolish. So... was she expecting that Noctis himself didn’t have feelings for her or want to spend time with her of his own volition for reasons outside of her job? She was looking forward to a marriage with no emotional security, where her desires are one-sided and unreciprocated, and the man she cares for think she’s worthless outside of her powers? She would’ve been willing to put herself through that, given a choice?

We know what we know and think what we think, but the fact that this was placed right in the vanilla game and no one thought that was wrong, and instead they doubled down on it in patches, is pathetic on their part.

Moreover, what does The Girl have, that was separate from The Princess and The Oracle? Every facet of her being wrapped around Noctis since age 4. She was nothing but her duty by the time Noctis met her; they had no scenes where they acted as children would. Even supplemental/promotional art for other XV media and related locales cement that. Little Luna serves Little Noctis pastries, she’s not seen eating with him. Luna teaches Noctis how to play piano, she’s not playing with him. Dawn of the Future came out with its own art, and Noctis is afforded the liberty to sit in a chair, and his son(?) sits on his lap, while Luna and her spitting image child(?) are both on their knees, looking up at the dudes. 

In most of their art together, Luna and Noctis are either not meeting each other's gazes, she's bending or kneeling to him, or he's supposed to be holding her close but he hover-hands her, or there’s that one time where they took a selfie and the picture was of their Pocket Edition versions. They’re still not looking at each other in that one. And it’s not canon.

Anyway yeah, any conversation Gentiana has with Luna about Noctis is emotional manipulation on Gentiana’s part, but the writers manage just enough to make everyone involved seem creepy and reprehensible in their own way. 

In DOTF, Luna has a death soliloquy that confirms she sunk into the water at the end of the game’s Chapter 9, but the soliloquy is about how she was prepared to die even at the age of 12, and she put on a smile and resolved to be strong for Noctis’s sake, so that he wouldn’t remember her having a look of despair. There’s a line there about how she would cry herself to sleep but Gentiana would wipe her tears. Gentiana does nothing else except allow her to cry and wipe her tears afterward, and makes no effort to save her from her fate or at least take her out of terrible situations so that she would cry fewer tears. But there is cut dialogue from the game, and used in the novel, where Gentiana revealed herself as Shiva when Luna was <16 (probably still 12 at the time), when she thought she was being held back from forming the covenants, so there’s that. And Luna still somehow ignored that this meant Shiva allowed Sylva to die, and thanked this useless goddess for her nonexistent generosity. 

For whatever reason they had to add a passage where Luna superimposes the image of an eight-year-old Noctis onto the adult version-- quote, "the image of him as a child, burned into my eyelids, overlaps with his now-grown face"-- even though Noctis has canonically sent her photos of him as a teenager (15-16, around the time he met Prompto in high school, see: Brotherhood). Granted, that's a translation from Luna's voice actress reading an excerpt as if it were first person POV. The English version says she sees the child image first, then the adult version is superimposed. Then not much after that there's a passage where Noctis smiles as his child self and it was "that smile she loved that had been in her heart all these years, giving her strength, always and forever".

So she was groomed and turned into a shell since age 4, believes she has no value outside of her job and turned her grooming on a similarly vulnerable child, and her strongest image of him, the one she fell in love with and kept in her heart, is of the helpless boy that promised her the world without knowing the cost. The smile of the carefree boy that didn't know his journey would end with his soul annihilated. It couldn’t have been that hard to have her see an image of him as the 30 year old True King of Light that he would become. At least she'd sound a little less like a weirdo who continually places herself (and is placed by the narrative) as below him, unworthy of him, etc. but also has strong feelings and memories toward a goddamn child.

Re: Ravus: you already got a reply to that, but for real? Ravus was also shafted by the plot and beaten down by terrible, amateur writing. The narrative shits on him as if it’s written by a high schooler or otherwise emotionally arrested adult trying to push a Mary Sue Protagonist. The modus operandi for those stories is that everyone who disagrees with the protagonist in any way has to suffer tremendous humiliation including but not limited to death, because the Protagonist Is Just So Good And Perfect And Always Right. 

Nothing Ravus does justifies his treatment in-game or in-fandom like he’s a one-note out-and-out villain who wanted nothing but to kill Noctis and disrespect his sister, to the point where his corpse is defiled multiple times in Chapter 13 and he’s twisted into a perversion of himself that begs to die.

Chapter 13 has Noctis land next to Ravus’s corpse and all his letters to Luna, and Noctis has piss all to say about it, either out loud or to anyone. He looks at the Sword of the Father, glances at Ravus, and without a word takes the Royal Arm and lets the Magitek arm-- still dripping, still gross-- fall onto Ravus’s body and doesn’t even move it.  

He had no way of knowing beforehand that Ignis and Gladio knew of Ravus being killed. WE didn't even know they saw security footage until Ch13V2 was added in. Noctis happening on his late fiancée's dead bro sounds, I don’t fucking know, like something you’d want to tell everyone else about later. Along with the letters he wrote evidencing that he intended to return the Sword of the Father to Noctis!

An aside: The Letters from Ravus are just weird to behold; it isn't 100% clear whether Luna ever received all of those letters. She had to have received the first one, at least. But the idea that Ardyn intercepted even one other letter so that Luna never heard from her brother between Tenebrae and Altissia is farfetched. He shouldn’t be able to intercept those messages as if they were delivered conventionally. Luna has a pair of magic space-bending Shiba Inu that send letters instantly across continents. If she’s sparing their use to send Noctis one-liners and stickers but can’t afford that for Ravus to send her discrete updates on Noctis’s status, she’s a piece of shit. 

They do meet in Tenebrae as Ravus wanted her to, and they have the conversation where he gets on her case about her “throwing [her] life away” for Noctis. So chances are higher that Ardyn only got a hold of all three letters after Luna received them and no sooner, but then he shouldn’t be tossing letters from Ravus at the dude’s body when it makes more sense for him to toss down letters to Ravus, since the writers wanted to make a point of Ardyn having a vicious streak. It makes way more sense for Ardyn to deprive Ravus of Luna’s writing, then insult him with them post-mortem, unless Ravus’s notes were really all he could acquire, meaning Luna never once wrote back to her brother. 

The Doylist explanation is that the writing team sucks and couldn't be assed to think of anything for Luna to say because they didn't think of her at all. The Watsonian explanation is that Luna’s a piece of shit and that tracks with her in Kingsglaive watching her brother burn alive in response to the Ring, but ignoring him and running to Regis’s aid instead, but then the rest of the plot presents her as morally pure through her white clothing and “unconditional, self-abnegating love” for Noctis.

Back to the topic: I don’t know, maybe I’m being old fashioned, but Noctis should’ve given more of a shit that his dropping the Magitek Arm on Ravus’s body was probably what turned him into a mutated abomination begging to die, and he thought so little of Ravus that the dude isn’t even in the glimpse of "people who helped me get this far" in the Beyond. Ravus doesn’t even get a spot to wish Noctis and Luna well on their afterlife wedding, not that it makes any sense for any of them to have words to say since Noctis is already dead, no one was there with them, and none of the bros expressed any sign that they knew that Noctis was bound to get married after his sacrifice (he sure doesn’t mention it in the final campfire scene and that’d be a better place than any). But anyway, Regis is in the Beyond at Noctis’s side even though he never told Noctis a damn thing and still never spoke to him from within the Ring, but Ravus? Nah, he’s the real asshole somehow and doesn’t deserve any recognition whatsoever.

The only other characters I know of that have a remotely similar dynamic to Noctis, Luna, and Ravus (lovers, but the girl has a straight-edge protective brother working for the bad guys) is Nero, Kyrie, and Credo (see: Devil May Cry), but as much as I think the writing in that series is hokey as fuck, at least the writer(s) for DMCs 4 and 5 had enough sense to make the love story simple and based it from a line from Amagasaki City-- “I love you, so I love the city that you love.”-- and opted against portraying Credo as an outright villain because if Nero killed him, Kyrie would resent him for it even though she knew Credo was working for the same Order that threatened her life. 

Shouldn’t Noctis care about the shit Luna cares about even if he has no personal investment in it or it’s inconvenient to him? Shouldn’t he care about Tenebrae and its prosperity? or about Ravus? Nah, it’s okay, Noctis doesn’t have to respect Luna’s love for her brother or her kingdom because for all intents and purposes, she doesn’t care for Ravus or for Tenebrae as much as she loves Noctis. Her love for Noctis and her looking forward to the wedding is what matters here.

The yaaaas queen vicious clapback from Kingsglaive!Luna about how Ravus is the Empire’s dog is especially rich coming from her when she’s fellating the gods all through the game even though Eos’s equivalent of The Holy Bible says the Hexatheon’s Revelations destroy cities and that undoubtedly means people are killed by the gods, and their summoner is complicit, because there’s no such thing as a perfect evacuation. See: "Revelations left great devastation in their wake, with entire cities being laid to ruin," noted in the Cosmogony long before the True King even exists. 

Luna herself didn’t see a problem with this and helped in the effort, with no regard to the collateral damage she would cause with the summoning: bonus points for the part where Leviathan is hostile to humanity and threatens to eat every living being if Noctis fails! She had even less regard to the damage Niflheim would cause in their attempt to kill the gods even though she was first-hand witness to them sacking Insomnia. Waking and defeating Titan deprived Lestallum of the meteor they derived power from. Waking Leviathan destroyed Altissia. Luna’s refusal to leave Insomnia when told to by Regis led to her being used as bait and taking the whole of the Kingsglaive out of Insomnia in time for their Face Heel Turn and Insomnia being destroyed. Everything else leads to the eventual World of Ruin where people also die. 

All because she killed herself prematurely from the covenants and didn’t hold back the longer nights as she promised to the public’s face and on her honor as Oracle she would do. Her dying words in Chapter 9 were her being completely satisfied with her fate because “[her] prayers were answered, [her] calling fulfilled”, even though the calling requires that she dies and she should’ve known better than anyone that her death, even if it was for Noctis’s ascension, would endanger the rest of the world for 10 years and helped the Starscourge spread. But instead of fighting for her own life to stem the plague for as long as possible, she let herself die under the belief that "Noct can handle this" to give him the chance to be the revered King of Light. She also didn’t make a single appearance on the world of the living in her spirit form during those ten years until Noctis needed help with a piddly imitation of the Magic Wall, only then does she come down in her ghost form with seemingly all of her power intact, and summons five of The Six as if Noctis can’t easily do it himself.

But Ravus is the lapdog? Luna’s the one with her “ends justify the means” behavior and what looks like general neglect for actual human beings.

Anyway, Ravus stabs Caligo in the back and kills him, and that move only makes sense in light of the idea that Caligo was manhandling Luna as seen in the Dawn trailer. Ravus was 16 when Tenebrae was overrun, and there’s no reason to believe he was magically immune to institutional abuse, so there’s a high chance that he was abused by the Empire too, held resentment of that, and waited for the time he’d be able to retaliate with no repercussions. Gentiana as a goddess is 1000000% more on the hook about letting Luna be beaten than Ravus is, since he saw his mother die in front of him while Regis ran away. Regis had the power of the Ring and could have used elemancy to put out that fire, or void magic to banish Glauca and his MT army, didn’t do that, but he totally spares enough magic during the treaty signing to toss around Thunder spells straight from his hand, cast barriers, and summon some Royal Arms straight at Iedolas, and that’s bad enough. Gentiana who’s been the Fleuret family attendant since Luna was born and also is Shiva who can freeze people with her fingertip had even less excuse to let that fire rage, to let Sylva die protecting her son, and to stand by and allow her ward(s) to get thrown around by some random Imperial soldier.

[janekfan]

Too Much

https://archiveofourown.org/works/26972698

When Jon stalked back into the archives the fierce conviction in his face belied his ragged appearance. Tim wasn’t stupid. He’d known there was something shady happening in this place probably before Jon did, considering. It didn’t stop him from purposefully hardening his heart against his pallid skin and bloody throat, his poorly bandaged hand, his filthy, mud-covered clothes.

“Jon?” Martin’s voice was soft and it set off a trembling in him that Tim could see from across the room. “Hey--” Without warning, Jon bent double over the nearest wastebasket, going down hard on his knees as he emptied his stomach painfully, shaking so hard the bin rattled. “Oh, oh, Jon.” Hands fluttering over his back, Martin hovered close, unsure of what to do, before settling next to him on the floor to hold his hair back, plaiting it loosely to keep it out of the way.

“Nngh...s’sorry.” Jon collapsed the rest of the way, resting his weight over the bin, his forehead on the arm slung across the top. “I, I...clean. Clean it up.” Shuddering, voice thick and wavering on a heavy breath. “God, I. I’m so, so sorry.” Another bout of dry heaving cleaved through him, Martin’s hushed reassurances making the ire in Tim rise to vitriolic levels and if he stayed any longer in this room he knew he’d do something to upset Martin. Physical violence had never been the way he preferred to resolve disputes but the confirmation of being trapped here. Trapped by Jon made him desperately want to lash out. Scream. Kick. Throw a tantrum and that wouldn’t do, even if the anger and dissolution flooding into every empty space left behind by the deaths of Danny and Sasha and his freedom begged him to take it out on the one thing left that represented it all.

“Tim, where are you going?” Martin’s attention was still focused primarily on the man panting under his palms, but he spared him a glance.

“Can’t be here for a while.” He flashed a bitter smile. “Guess I’ll be back, won’t I?” He was suffocating and if he stayed here one second longer he’d explode and Martin didn’t deserve that.

Martin had his hands full of a sick and shivering Jon so had no choice but to let Tim go. It was probably best at the moment. He’d been sniping at Jon even before he’d disappeared and the fury flashing behind his eyes wouldn’t help anyone right now. And besides, Jon was going to pass out any minute by the look of it.

“Jon?” His head jerked up and he swayed where he kneeled.

“Sorry, s’sorry…” the slurred apologies certainly weren’t a good sign. “‘L’get this cleaned up.” When he moved clumsily to do so, Martin stopped him with a hand on his cheek, ignoring his temperature for now in favor of attempting to catch his unfocused gaze.

“Let me worry about that later.” And Jon looked stricken, but when Martin pulled him to his unsteady feet he was more concerned with staying upright, embarrassment shoved unceremoniously to the back of his mind. “Can you stand?” Whole, long seconds passed and Martin almost asked again, but Jon took a wobbly step only to topple into the taller man who caught him up and held him close.

“S’sorry.” Martin hitched him a little higher. “Dizzy. Jus’...ah.”

“It’s alright, Jon.” Who knew having a cot in the archives would prove to be so useful and Martin was grateful for it now, lowering him as gently as he could. “Nothing to be sorry for.” The hiss of pain sucked through his clenched teeth didn’t bode well. “I’ll be back.” With the first aid kit, warm water, maybe a change of clothes--he was pretty sure he had a few things. They’d be big on him but certainly cleaner than what he was in now. When he returned with his supplies, Jon had tipped onto his side, apparently asleep, and Martin was careful to wake him slow, worried when he didn’t seem to remember where he was or what was happening. With him so sluggish and lethargic, Martin wasn’t sure where to start (maybe a 999 call), deciding top to bottom was as good a plan as anything. Forcing cheer into his tone, he talked about what had been happening while he'd been away, dipping a cloth, wringing it out, and wiping the muck off his skin, noting the pallor in his face underneath all of the dirt. He had the start of a pretty intense fever and looking at him it wasn’t hard to puzzle out why but the only thing for it right now was water and rest.

Jon pushed him away when he began on his neck and it took Martin several minutes to talk him back down, convince him that he was safe before he was allowed to hold a warm compress over the gash across his throat to loosen the blood. It was deeper than it looked and longer than he’d have liked; another brutal scar to add to his growing collection and how was any of it fair? Butterfly stitches applied and covered over with clean bandages, Martin gave Jon a break and kept urging him to drink. He was so silent, focused on pulling in short and shallow breaths, and Martin kept his questions to himself, trying to ease the ruined jumper over his shoulders when it became clear that he was too sore to do it on his own. Each centimeter bared developing bruises just beginning to black and Jon’s breath hitched the higher he was forced to raise his arms, exposing more over his stomach, his ribs and Martin couldn’t help himself.

“What happened?”

“Mm?”

“These bruises?” He ran a delicate thumb over the edge of one, watched him shiver in response.

“Oh…” Martin got the impression Jon was answering from somewhere far away and didn’t blame him. “Asked questions.” He didn’t elaborate and Martin moved on to his hands, draping the blanket over him while he unwrapped old dressings and examined the burn spanning his entire palm and fingers. He didn’t want to think about the shape of it, like he’d shaken hands with the wrong sort, and instead examined the broken blisters lining the long, ruined fingers of both hands, cleaning them gently and applying salves and more bandages before slipping a worn jumper over his head and joggers onto narrow hips, tying the cords to keep them secure. Jon was too pliant, too submissive, more than spent after whatever he’d been through and he sighed in heavy relief when he was finally allowed to lay down.

“Better?” Martin brushed some stray curls out of his face after tucking him in and he nodded.

“Tired.”

“You can sleep, it’s alright.” Jon forced heavy lashes apart, closed them again when Martin swept light fingertips over them. “I’ll keep watch. You’re safe.”

Late into the next day, Martin saw Jon back to Georgie’s flat where he immediately curled up in bed with the Admiral, clutching his borrowed clothes, so baggy they dwarfed his small frame and made the vulnerability in him that much more. He shared a cup of tea, spoke with Georgie in a hushed voice and urged her to keep an eye on him if he’d let her. She nodded resolutely and wished him luck when he left to return to the institute.

“Well?” Basira accosted him immediately as soon as he stepped through the door.

“Christ, Basira!” Hand over his heart, Martin calmed his racing heart, suddenly surrounded by the lot of them.

“Well?”

“He’s exhausted.”

“Aren’t we all?” Martin ignored Tim’s comment. It wasn’t a competition, just a bad situation all around, and after treating and cataloging all of Jon’s myriad injuries, he didn’t feel like continuing along that track. It wouldn’t help anybody. It wouldn’t convince them that Jon was as much a victim in all this as they were. That he didn’t want this. Instead.

“He’ll be back in a few days. Or probably tomorrow, knowing him.”

“Wonderful.”

“Tim!” Martin pinched the bridge of his nose, already exasperated. “Tim, just. Go easy, alright?”

“Oh, I’ll go easy.” Full of grief and anger and heartbreak with nowhere for all of it to go, it had sharpened into a blade Tim wielded with deadly precision. Jon had been at the other end of it for a long time and despite his own frustrations with him, Martin wanted to shield him from the worst of it even if he knew he wouldn’t be able to. If Tim wanted to hurt Jon, he would, and it made him want to weep.

Sure enough and right on time, Jon dragged himself into the archives, mumbling a breathy ‘thank you’ to Martin as he passed by him to his office on new fawn’s legs. It didn’t escape his notice that he was still wearing the jumper, bundled up in it with his bandaged fingers tangled in the sleeves.

And work began again as though they’d never stopped.

Jon could have spent the next eternity wrapped up in bed, bundled in the comfort of Martin’s clothes and hiding from his very new and very real responsibilities. He ached, deeply, profoundly, in a million different ways, crushed by the weight of it all and barely able to breathe. Georgie was disappointed by his decision to go back to the institute but he had to do whatever he could to protect the rest of them, even if that meant playing into Elias’ hands until they came up with a solution together.

If they would have him back.

Reading the statements was going slow, too slow, the pounding in his head increasing whenever he tried to focus. Jon kept the lights low, avoiding the hallways with their cold fluorescent bulbs beaming down at him from above, bowing his back, trying to push him into the floor, keep him there like an insect pressed between pages and he would gladly succumb if it meant he could rest.

“Oi!” He jumped at the sharp voice, groaning when the stabbing hurt all over his body intensified.

“T’Tim?”

“‘Y’yeah.’” He mocked, tossing a stack of folders onto the already overflowing surface of the desk.

“What, what’re these?” Though his hands were shaking and sore, Jon picked up the pile, paging through distractedly.

“How the hell should I know. Martin said you asked for them.” He had?

“I don’t. I’m sorry, I don’t remember.”

“Tch. Of course. Busy work to keep us preoccupied so we don’t have time to plot?”

“Wha--no, no!” It seemed his paranoia continued to have lasting consequences and he supposed it was only fair. “No, I wouldn’t. I. I’m sure I asked for them.” Reasonably sure, though for the life of him he couldn’t remember when. He couldn’t remember asking Martin but there was no reason for Tim to lie. Fingers snapping in front of his face jerked him back to the present.

“What’s wrong with you?” His eyes were narrowed and he was standing so close, too close, and suddenly Jon was on his feet, swaying into the wall and pushing past Tim in a desperate bid for the loo, head pounding enough to make him ill and only just making it in time to rid himself of the tea he didn’t remember drinking. Shaky, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, leaning back against the wall and willing the spinning to stop or slow or do anything that might make it less overwhelming. He washed his hands, his face, letting the cool water drip from his chin and closed his eyes against his reflection in the mirror. When he returned Tim was gone and Jon was thankful, tears prickling, threatening, as he sat back in his chair and rested his forehead on his folded arms for only a moment.

It was better in the stacks, dark and still, silent save for the rustling of statements and that didn’t make any sense at all even though something in the back of his mind insisted it did, encouraged him to pick one up and devour it. But the letters swam on the pages and his legs refused to hold him up any longer and he slid to the floor, hugging the folder to his chest and breathing in the stale scent of old, yellowing paper and ink. He felt so poorly, so tired, and he didn’t remember curling up on the floor but he must have, because he was, the statement still crushed in his arms like a safety blanket. How long had he been asleep? Getting up seemed too monumental a task and he let his eyes slip shut with a sigh, breathing through all the pain of his injuries.

Too much. This was all too much.

But it was quiet here among the boxes and envelopes, tucked with his back against the shelf grounding him, taking away some of that awful wooziness, the feeling of vertigo he hadn’t quite gotten rid of after his encounter with Mike Crew. He was safe here underground; underground was the opposite of up, the opposite of falling endlessly and he breathed in, out, slow, measured. Until his physical self seemed to drop away with everything else.

Plucked like a weed, Jon was lifted into the air, hauled up by his collar and set clumsily on his feet, pressed forcefully into the shelving. If it wasn’t for the hand at his throat (his throat, she was going to slice him open, bleed him like a game animal) he would have fallen and he was so scared of falling, no air in his lungs, just the deafening rush of it in his ears, so he scrabbled desperately, the statement fluttering away somewhere in favor of holding onto wrists attached to arms attached to shoulders attached to Tim. The world tilted on its axis, rolling like a ship at sea and he was desperately afraid of being released into that endless void.

“--Hiding down here?” How long had he been speaking? His face, features so twisted in revulsion of him he almost didn’t look like Tim, was close enough that he could feel his breath on his face. “Martin’s been worried sick looking for you!” Why was he yelling at him? He’d, he’d been here, not hiding, not doing anything. Just trying to, to, stay on the ground. Everything blacked out when Tim shook him roughly, shouting something else, and Jon didn’t know what he wanted, what would make him leave him alone, stop being so angry with him. He was going to be ill, too dizzy even when mercifully held still again and he was torn between letting go and taking his chances with Crew and sticking to Tim like a burr. But Tim made the decision for him, shaking him off, dropping him to his feet and shoving him forward and Jon knew he shrieked, shameful, loud, but he was falling, falling, falling and he hurt where he’d been pushed, like his bones were trying to make room by doing their level best to yank themselves free.

But he was plunging down, straight down, unmoored, unanchored, too much space, infinite space and nothing to grab to slow himself and he was going to fall forever and ever and ever and--

“Jon!”

No. He’d. How.

“Martin…” Whimpering, voice choked with tears, more of them streaming, pouring down his face, and he clung to Martin, solid, strong, holding him.

“Tim, what did you do?”

“M’falling...m’falling, Martin.” Clutching, clawing, he was going to hurt him if he wasn’t careful but he was too frightened, he had to be hurting him. Sobbing, selfish, stupid, and he couldn’t stop.

“You’re not, I’ve got you, Jon, I won’t let you fall.” Murmuring gently, embracing him tightly and it hurt, but he’d rather hurt than fall forever. “You’ve got to take a breath, Jon.” But all the air was rushing past him, too quickly to drink up even a sip, let alone breathe any into his seizing chest. “I’ve got you, try for me.” And he did, he would swear it, he’d try anything for Martin but he’d always failed in the most important tasks. He’d always failed the most important people.

At least he wasn’t falling anymore.

“Tim, what did you do?” Martin shifted Jon, passed out over his shoulder with bandaged fingers still tangled in his jumper and he was surprised he hadn’t torn it in his panic. Gently he pulled him into his lap, boiling with heat beneath his hands and heaving hard-won, gasping breaths.

“I--” He swallowed, shock naked in his expression. “I found him here, on the floor. Uh, pulled him up?” Tim raked his hair back. “I was rough, but. I didn’t mean.” Martin could only hope he looked as angry as he felt and Tim stopped speaking, following him to document storage like a lost puppy.

“Mm…” he held Jon tight, secure, relieved that he’d come around as quickly as he did even if he was groggy, setting him firmly on the cot, exerting pressure on his shoulders, an unspoken ‘I’m here, you’re here, no one is falling.’ He ducked his head, hiding from the light and groaning low.

“Jon, look at me.” He hadn’t noticed before, the black of his dilated pupils swallowed up by deep brown irises, but with the light, and his sensitivity to it, Martin suspected a head injury. “Jon?” Gently he tilted his face up with the tips of his fingers under his chin, trying to catch his dazed stare as it slipped over him like water over a stone.

“Hey! Stop ignoring him!” Jon flinched, hands clapping over his ears and curling even farther into himself while Martin glared. “Sorry.” Tim mumbled, arms crossed, leaning against the wall to give them some space.

“S’okay, Jon.” He inched closer. “Did you hit your head? Does your head hurt? Can I check?”

“Check?” Before Tim could do much more than scoff, Martin shushed him. If he wasn’t going to help, then it would be better for him to leave.

“Yep.” He didn’t wait for much more confirmation, just carefully reached forward under Jon’s wary gaze and buried his fingers in thick, unkempt curls, smiling softly when he leaned into the touch. Bolder, he cupped his face with his other hand, stroking along his cheek and watching his eyes drift closed with a hum. “Ah, oh, Jon.” Right at the back of his skull there was a large swelling, painful to the touch if Jon’s reaction was anything to go on. “Were you hit?”

“Hit?” Jon’s wrapped, burned fingers brushed against his own when he went to check for himself. “Daisy hit me.” Just a stated fact that chilled Martin to the bone and he watched his other hand come up to touch the column of his bandaged neck. “Daisy cut me.” He glanced back at Tim, trying to gauge his reaction, relieved to see horror blossoming in his expression and when he turned to Jon again, it was as if he was seeing Martin for the first time. “Martin?” He let his weight fall into his palm, and when his dark, damp eyes slipped shut, tears ran down his face. “Don’, don’think m’well.”

“Okay, it’s okay. I’ve--” his eyes flicked towards Tim. “We’ve got you.” Jon swallowed and Martin could feel it against his palm, literally holding his cut throat in his hands. "Can you tell us what's wrong?"

“Hur’s. Spin...falling, m’falling.” He paled, clutched at the linens, his breath shallow and fast and even Tim came forward in concern.

“I’ve got you, won’t let you go anywhere, Jon.” To Tim, “Don’t think he can tell which way is up. Vertigo? Concussion? We’ve got ice packs in the freezer yeah?”

“Anything else?”

“Ginger tea? If we have it.”

“M’tin…” He brushed stray curls back away from his forehead. “Stay? Please?”

“Of course I will.” Gentle and soft and Tim returned with tea and cold compresses quickly, passing off the mug to Martin, going so far as to sit beside Jon. “I’ve got to let go of you now.” And the look of panic and sorrow and resignation told him more about his state of mind than anything else.

Martin promised he would stay.

Martin was letting him go.

Jon was not surprised.

Just sad, so, so sad.

Prepared to be tossed aside.

“‘Course...s’sorry.” Another swallow, another and another, swallowing it down, how frightened he was, how lonely. Tears slipped over Jon’s skin, over Martin’s. “M’sorry, sorry.”

Too many.

Too much.

He watched Jon pull away, swaying, woozy, grip tightening on the sheets such that his knuckles were bone white. Alone again. Alone always. How dare he think or hope or dream otherwise.

“Got’chu, boss.” Martin waited until Tim had him ‘round the shoulders, pressing him into his sturdy side, before removing his hand and holding the mug to his lips.

“Drink this down and then some sleep, I think.” Together, they tipped him carefully sideways, grabbing his hands when they flew out to the side in an attempt to break a nonexistent fall, and Tim pressed a cold pack to the back of his neck, a shadow of a smile crossing his face when Jon relaxed into the pillow.

“You’re alright, boss. Won’t let you fall.”

[mst3kproject]

Countess Dracula

In Countess Dracula we have the tale of a lonely old woman who discovers that she can make herself young again, just so long as she doesn’t mind having to murder somebody to do it (she doesn’t).  Our antiheroine uses this newfound youth to seduce the least interesting man in the movie, until at last her misdeeds catch up with her when her latest victim turns out to have been the wrong demographic to make the magic work.

Does that sound familiar?  Yeah, this is a very Leech-Woman-y movie.  It stars Nigel Green, the news announcer from Gorgo, and comes to us from Hammer Studios, home of Moon Zero-Two.  The director, Peter Sasdy, never made anything that wound up on MST3K but he did work on the legendary Pia Zadora bomb, The Lonely Lady.  Countess Dracula is not a wild ride, as its pace is fairly sedate, but it is certainly a ride nonetheless.

The count of somewhere or other has just died, leaving his realm to his nineteen-year-old daughter Ilona – and technically also leaving his spiteful widow, Elizabeth, free to marry her longtime lover Captain Dobi.  Most people would consider this a perfectly acceptable retirement, but Elizabeth is impossible to satisfy.  She doesn’t want to grow old while Ilona (currently on her way home from finishing school in Vienna) rules the county and gets all the attention.  When Elizabeth discovers that bathing in the blood of virgins restores her youth, she embraces murder as a hobby and has Ilona locked up so she can stay in charge while posing as her own daughter!  In that guise she sets out to pursue handsome young Imre, the son of her husband’s most trusted general, while jealous Dobi can only sit and seethe.

I bet you think you can guess how this movie ends.  I bet you think Dobi tells Imre the countess’ secret, and the two of them defeat her.  Or else the real Ilona escapes and meets him, they expose Elizabeth as a fraud, and then get married and rule the land with justice and mercy or something.  That’s what would happen in a normal movie… but you guys know I don’t watch normal movies.  Maybe instead you’re guessing that nobody does shit and Elizabeth just carries on her merry way until she’d destroyed by her own hubris?  That’s more like it.

Not all of Hammer’s films were good, but they were generally pretty well-made and Countess Dracula is not an exception.  The elaborate costumes and sets are very nice, although areas like the town square are obviously artificial and the old lady makeup on Ingrid Pitt as Elizabeth is pretty bad.  There’s also a young woman made up in very ugly brownface as a ‘gypsy girl’, except they totally forgot to do any makeup on her for the scene where her naked corpse is discovered in the woods.

There are even a couple really well-done moments of storytelling and worldbuilding.  A scene in a pub, when everybody falls silent as Dobi and Imre enter, shows eloquently how terrified the peasants are of the aristocracy. Elizabeth gets some chilling bits when we see the true depth of her depravity.  She sees no difference between controlling people through love and controlling them through fear – either way, she gets what she wants, and their feelings don’t matter.  My favourite detail is the subtle cultural conflict going on in the background, as the characters speak disparagingly of ‘Turks’ and yet have clearly picked up some bits and pieces of Ottoman culture.

Although its plot outline is very similar to The Leech Woman, the philosophy of Countess Dracula is completely different.  The Leech Woman didn’t really give June a viable alternative to her poisoned fountain of youth.  Old women in its world can only sit around and drink and know that nobody loves them. Elizabeth, however, has a possible future – Dobi repeatedly notes that he’s been waiting twenty years for the opportunity to legitimatize his relationship with her.  He would have happily devoted himself to her for the rest of his life, and the two of them could have lived in retirement while Imre and Ilona gave them grandchildren to spoil.  Dobi even says there is dignity in age, directly contradicting The Leech Woman by applying it equally to both sexes.  June was more or less forced to become a monster, while Elizabeth chooses it explicitly.

So there’s honestly some pretty good stuff in this film.  Where it unfortunately falls on its face is with the characters, none of whom can really be said to have an arc, and the ending, which is rushed and unsatisfying.

The movie’s main focus is always on Elizabeth, but she refuses to grow or learn anything at any point.  She starts off as a nasty, selfish bitch and just stays a nasty, selfish bitch.  She has no actual master plan, but seems convinced that she can keep up this charade indefinitely, even though Dobi points out the impracticality of that.  Dobi believes she’s going mad, but the truth seems to be she’s just horrible.  She is evidently terrified of growing old, but that is never explored.  We see her react to aging, rather violently at times, but we never find out what the root of this fear is.

All this means that Elizabeth, despite being the focal character, is never sympathetic.  June in The Leech Woman at least started off as somebody we could pity, before she descended into depravity.  Elizabeth is a terrible person from the get-go, as illustrated in the very opening when she has her coachman run over a peasant who wants her to fulfill a promise her late husband made her.

Imre and Ilona are pretty much complete ciphers. Imre spends the entire movie in Elizabeth’s thrall one way or another.  He is madly in love with her in her guise as Ilona, and after finding out the truth he’s too scared of her to openly defy her.  The only personality trait he manifests is gullible foolishness, and any sympathy we might have had for him evaporates when he cheerfully kisses a barmaid’s tit on the same day when he’s proposed marriage to the woman he believes is his true love.  Ilona spends most of the movie locked up in some mute peasant’s hut doing not much. When she finally enters the story properly, she comes across as stunningly stupid.

The character who does the most to try to thwart Elizabeth is her lover Dobi, but he’s less interested in stopping her from killing virgins than he is in having her to himself.  He gets Imre drunk and tosses him in bed with the barmaid in the hope that Elizabeth will reject him, and later takes Imre to see Elizabeth bathing in blood to youthen herself.  These things don’t work, partly because Imre is an idiot and partly because Elizabeth is always more evil than he thought she was, but at least he tries.

At the end of the movie, Elizabeth’s latest bloodbath wears off in the middle of her wedding to Imre, and she runs off to murder Ilona in order to make herself young again.  Imre tries to stop her and gets stabbed for his trouble, which does at least expose Elizabeth’s evildoing to one and all, and she and Dobi are hanged. What happens to Ilona I’m not sure, but I know they didn’t have therapists in the seventeenth century.  Nobody wins here.  It’s a downer for everybody, including the superstitious peasants, who will continue to be terrified of their rulers now that their worst fears have been confirmed.

Several things might be made of the fact that it’s young women Elizabeth is killing.  It’s interesting to note that the idea of male virginity is never even brought up.  We could contrast two depictions of motherhood, in the form of Elizabeth’s jealousy of Ilona versus Juli the nurse’s unconditional love for her.  There’s Imre’s description of ‘Ilona’ as embodying all aspects of womanhood, to which Dobi replies that no woman can be maiden, mother, and whore all at once… yet that is just what Elizabeth is trying to be.  What I find interesting in this, however, is how the movie depicts Elizabeth’s own internalized misogyny, in the fucked-up attitudes she displays towards youth, beauty, and gender.

Elizabeth feels that age and experience have made her undesirable.  Dobi assures her that he finds her as attractive as he ever did, but she evidently does not believe him, and her mistreatment of her female servants has a definite note of jealousy in it.  She kills young virgins not only to gain their desirability, but because she hates them for what they have and she does not.

What’s unusual is that she applies this same attitude towards the men in her life.  Elizabeth is no longer attracted to Dobi, because he is old and experienced. Their affair has gone on for years, and in Dobi’s mind this has only deepened his love for her – but Elizabeth is tired of it and wants something new.  Imre is young, handsome, and innocent.  He has no wealth of his own and has not yet really accomplished much in life, but Elizabeth doesn’t care.  If all she has to be is young and pretty, then how could she ask anything more of him?

Here, Dobi and Elizabeth represent two different versions of gender equality as it applies to sexual attractiveness, with him raising Elizabeth to his level, and her lowering Dobi and Imre to hers!  Elizabeth treating the men in her life as she has been treated illustrates the inequality quite sharply, but what ultimately destroys her is applying the same standards to herself.  She believes so totally that nothing else matters as long as she is beautiful that she doesn’t care what she has to do to accomplish it, or who sees her do it.  In the end, she is undone by her own self-loathing.

[songsformonkeys]

Burning Alive (dave york x reader)

summary: Dave York smut, inspired by the lyrics to the song Fire Meet Gasoline by Sia

word count: 2600

rating: explicit

warnings: there’s no plot here, just filth

notes:  Thanks to my lovely friend @yespolkadotkitty​ for beta and enabling this weird and sudden obsession with Dave York <3

Link to AO3

Burning Alive

It's a beautiful house, small but picturesque. It has a big wrap around porch and it is painted in a light shade of blue, which you suspect makes it blend into the sky on cloudless days. It's too dark to tell now. There isn't really a garden but rather a big expanse of grass with the occasional appletrees strewn about and, standing just outside the front door, you would have the most beautiful view of a mirror-flat lake during daytime. The place would look like the perfect postcard. If it weren't for the four dead bodies inside and the, close to, overwhelming smell of gasoline.

”Come on now. Strike the match,” your partner says, a little impatiently, as he emerges from the depths of the house with the now empty canister of gasoline. You have half a mind to tell him to chill and ask him if he'd preferred that you set fire to the house while he was still in it, but you're a little too afraid of what the answer would be. Besides, you know that whatever argument you start with a man like Dave York, you're going to regret later.

Dave snaps his gloved fingers. The sound of the snap is dulled but it gets the point across. You pull the box of matches from the pocket of your jacket and strike one. For a moment, as the small flame flares up, it feels like time is slowing down and you look up at Dave's face. He's watching the tiny flame too and the harsh shadows the glow casts across his face makes him look just as dangerous as you know he is. You want him to kiss you senseless, take you right then and there against the car. Your grip on the match tightens and you toss it into the house before you accidentally snap it in half.

The flames immediately take hold and start spreading. Dave spares it only a moment's glance to make sure the match survived the trip through the air before turning back to the car. You stay for a few moments longer, to watch, feeling a sense of wonder at the beauty and power of the flames as they engulf the house.

When you eventually tear your eyes away and turn to join Dave, you catch him leaning against the side of the car watching, not the house but you. It's too dark to make out the expression on his face but you know and as you walk over to him you put a little extra sway into your hips.

¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨

The car ride back to the motel is silent, apart from the purr of the engine. The purr might as well be coming from you. The thrum of excitement and anticipation has your body feeling taut like a bowstring. Every time Dave moves, you almost jump out of your skin. You never know when the first touch will come and his face is impossible to read, even after years of watching him. Sometimes you don't even make it off the scene of the crime before he's on you, and sometimes he suggests you stop for dinner on the way home and by the time his hands finally touch you, you're close to tears. You can't tell which scenario you prefer.

You and Dave have been working together for five years. On the job, you know just how he works and what he's capable of, but outside of the jobs you do, you know next to nothing about him. You don't know what he does other than killing, if he has a different job or a family even.

Dave knows more about you than you know of him. You don't know exactly how much. He knows where you live at least. He proved that a couple of years ago.

It had been a particularly nasty job. Things had gone to shit, the wrong mark had been killed and you had decided that was the final straw. You wanted out. So the next time the phone rang with an offer of a job, you ignored it. It rang again half an hour later. You ignored that too. After the third time, it stopped ringing. As the day passed, you felt lighter, like the air was a little easier to breathe. You went to the movies by yourself and watched a movie you had little interest in, but you felt normal. On the way home afterward, you even bought a bouquet of yellow tulips. You felt free.

Right up until you'd entered your apartment and found Dave in the kitchen. He'd been furious, demanding to know where you'd been. He'd paused for a second when he spotted the flowers in your arms. It had been as if he couldn't quite fit the puzzle pieces of you with flowers, instead of a gun or a knife, together. The confusion lasted for a brief moment before he'd stalked over to you. You'd dropped the flowers, ready to defend yourself, but Dave hadn't fought you, at least not in the traditional sense. Instead, he'd crashed your mouths together with a force that you thought might crack a tooth. That was your first time. After a kiss that felt like a punishment, you had proceeded to rip each other’s clothes off, the tulips trampled to bits on the floor, before Dave had bent you over the kitchen counter. And as he'd sunk deep into you, he'd leaned over your back to hiss in your ear:

”You don't get to quit. We burn together, you and I”.

Sometimes you still entertain the thought that he will show up at your home again, but deep down you know that if he does, it'll be to kill you.

¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨

You get to the motel and Dave kills the engine. He doesn't say anything and there's a frown on his face. It doesn't matter. You know the drill. In a smooth motion, you slide out of the car and walk towards the front desk. As you walk, you can feel the slick between your legs that has begun to seep through your panties. You rent a room for the night and the person behind the desk hands you the keys without barely even looking at you. You wonder if that's something they've trained themselves to do. The people who come to a place like this don't want to be seen.

As you walk out, you wave the keys in the air for Dave to see before heading straight for the room. You hear the car door open and slam shut behind you. The numbers on the keyring are a bit worn and it takes you a minute to figure out whether the last number is an 8 or a 9. In the end, you're 90% certain that it's a 9 and you decide to try it.

You have barely gotten the key in the lock when two hands suddenly grip your hips roughly and pull you back against a hard chest. You jump, hadn't heard Dave come up behind you, and as the surprised noise escapes your throat you hear him chuckle.

Dave bats your hand away from the key and unlocks the door himself. He yanks the key out and tosses it on the table, where it skids to a stop just before it slides over the edge and onto the floor. And damn if that isn't symbolic of what you're pretty sure is about to happen.

Dave propels the two of you forward, kicks the door shut behind you and before you have time to register what he's doing, he has you pressed up against a wall. His forearm is like a vice across your chest and he uses one of his knees to nudge your legs apart. He's staring you straight in the eyes. There's a wildfire there and you know, without a doubt, that you're gonna let him burn you.

”Dave,” you breathe and when he reaches a hand up towards your face, you think for a second that he's going to caress you. Then he presses the tip of his index finger lightly against your lips and murmurs ”Open.”

You immediately obey and suck the digit into your mouth. Dave makes a strangled sound in the back of his throat and presses closer. You can feel the hard line of his cock firmly against your hip.

The pad of his finger feels rough against your tongue when you suck it deeper into your mouth, still holding his gaze with yours. His hand smells faintly of gasoline.

When Dave pulls his finger out, it's with a soft 'pop' from your lips. His other hand has cleverly worked open the button of your pants and the slow 'tic tic tic' as he pulls the zipper down, sends shivers down your spine.

You've done this so many times before. There's never a question of if this is going to happen, only of when and how. There's an unpredictability about Dave which makes every time feel as exciting as the first.

He holds you trapped against the wall as he works his fingers into your pants and into you. You gasp at the first stretch of his fingers and he wastes no time before hooking his fingers to rub at that spot inside you, that's he's well aware drives you absolutely wild. Your eyes fall shut. You toss your head back and it connects with the wall behind you with a thud.

”Careful,” Dave says, in one of his rare moments of showing consideration.

”The wall isn't what's gonna kill me,” you whimper as his fingers pick up pace.

”I know,” Dave says and your eyes fly open as he roughly thrusts his fingers deeper inside you, forcing you up on your tippy-toes. You don't ask him to elaborate on his comment.

Dave knows just how to keep you balancing on that fine line between pain and pleasure. He's rough but it's what you need, to know for certain that you're still alive. Years of working these jobs have turned you numb to so many things in life. These moments with Dave are the only times when you truly feel something. It's not love. That's too sentimental an emotion. But desire, pure and raw, and all-consuming. You want Dave, and there's no scenario where that ends well.

Your first orgasm has your knees buckling and it's only Dave's arm, still across your chest, that keeps you standing.

In yet another act of kindness, he lets you catch your breath slightly, before he pulls his fingers out and holds them up to your mouth. You lick them clean and he watches you like a starving man.

His fingers are soon replaced by his lips and he gives you a bruising kiss. Dave's left hand rests gently around your throat, his thumb and index finger only just grazing your jawline for support. He doesn't press down, not yet anyway. But with Dave, you can never quite know how far he will take it. Sometimes you suspect that he doesn't quite know either. More than once, after the heat and flames have died out, you've caught him touching a bruise on your skin with an almost surprised look on his face. Like he can't quite remember marking you that way.

It's all part of the Dave York experience, and you want more. Reaching between you, your fingers find the zipper to his green camo jacket. You yank it down and push the jacket off his shoulders before reaching for his pants. Dave doesn't help you. Instead, he just watches you, with his own face inches away from yours and with an infuriating smirk on his lips, as your desperation increases over not getting his clothes off fast enough. It's only when your fingers attempt to sneak under the edge of his underwear that he steps back and lets you go. You stumble as the pressure of his body against yours suddenly disappears, but manage to regain your balance just in time to catch Dave kicking his pants off. He stands before you and for a few seconds, you allow yourself to just drink in the visage of this man before you, wearing nothing but a worn t-shirt and a pair of underwear.

Beautiful isn't the right word, but your body yearns for him.

So you quickly shimmy out of your own pants and soaked underwear, and pull your shirt and sports bra over your head.

Dave holds his hand out for you, like he's asking you to dance. In a way, that's just what this is. When you take the hand, he yanks you close and bites down on your neck as he lets his hands rediscover the newly exposed skin. You can practically feel the bruises forming as he grips your hips tight and grinds you against him for some friction.

”Bed,” he orders and by God if that doesn't send a surge of heat through you. You grip the hem of his t-shirt and begin walking backwards towards the bed. Dave follows but lifts his arms to allow you to pull the shirt off. As soon as he's free of the fabric, he manhandles you onto the bed.

It's half wrestling, a half-hearted attempt for dominance, but Dave always wins and soon he's got you on all fours in front of him, keening as he runs his thumb along your slick folds. You can't think straight. You hear the tear of a condom-wrapper and when the head of his cock pushes into you, you feel like crying from desperation.

Luckily, Dave is well past the teasing portion of the evening and so he immediately sets a brutal pace that would have had you banging your head against the headboard repeatedly, if you hadn't anticipated this and given yourself some extra space.

You moan and say his name, the sounds forced out of you which each violent thrust. His breathing is labored but he doesn't say anything. You're used to this. Dave isn't really a talker, unless it's to give orders.

Your second orgasm is rapidly approaching and you can feel Dave's thrusts getting more and more erratic, which is a sign that he's drawing close as well. Balancing your weight on one arm, you reach down to touch yourself with the other. You're impossibly wet already and your finger slides easily over your clit, which is good because the pleasure is making you rapidly lose all fine motor skills.

Dave comes first, with a low groan and a few more punishing thrusts before he folds his upper body over you to suck a mark into the skin of your shoulder and to reach around and help push you the last short distance over the edge. The second orgasm is just as powerful as the first and this time you actually do collapse onto the bed, with Dave still on top of and inside you.

¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨

Afterward, Dave is still silent. But it's a different silence from the one before, less charged. This is where you take the reins. This is where he shrinks and you grow. He's next to you on the bed, with his head resting on your chest. He looks smaller somehow. Softer. This is where you get to push his buttons.

You grip his chin gently and tilt his head up. Then you kiss him like he's something precious and with each kiss, you feel him break a little against your lips.

”You and I, we burn together,” you whisper. This is all you have and there's no telling for how long. There's no happy ending for people like you. Just a box of matches and the promise of a spark.

[adultswim2021]

Squidbillies #1: “This Show Is Called Squidbillies” | October 17, 2005 – 12:00AM | S01E01 

Hey! a new show! And it’s even uglier than usual! Will this one be a “whole lotta fun” or a “nasty piece of work!” let’s find out together, shall we? Here:

Squidbillies had a few false starts. It was meant to premiere in late 2004 but an entirely different show called Perfect Hair Forever debuted instead, causing everyone to think that Squidbillies (teased in bumpers with production drawings and whatnot) may have just been an elaborate hoax. Then came the clowns, those patron saints of the April Fools holiday, and they brought us a stealth showing of a half-finished Squidbillies pilot. I covered it a bit in Ephemera corner and I’ll be honest, I’ve never actually watched this episode in that state. Not interested!

With April flowers come MAY showers, except this May MAY be more of an October, because that’s when the series proper finally saw the light of MAY, I mean DAY. Damn, I’m hella good at wordplay. Isn’t this fun? Anyway, Squidbillies finally premiered tonight, telling the origin of Early Cuyler, and his semi-legitimate son Rusty. Early is a jailbird about to fly the coop and reconnect with his little boy. The story isn’t really that important here, it’s more about the little asides into flights of fancy. This episode makes a point to introduce us to the Sheriff (voiced by Charles Napier in the first season, replaced by somebody who SOUNDS EXACTLY LIKE HIM later on so much so that I had no idea it wasn’t him), Dan Halen (voiced by Todd Hanson), and give them little sketch-like moments that don’t actually have much to do with the plot. There’s also an extended interlude of Rusty being raised by wolves, which turns out to be a dream.

The show is a mixed-bag, humor-wise, and this episode kinda doesn’t really let you know what the show truly is going to be. It’s almost like a prelude to a series, rather than the first episode of one. It offers little tastes of each character. Dave Willis deadpans narration throughout and the entire thing feels like a cold open before the opening sequence is meant to start, but never does. I remember when Tim & Eric discussed the first episode of Tom Goes to the Mayor, they originally wrote an insanely long, plodding episode about Tom Peters moving to Jefferton, meeting the mayor for the first time, etc, and Bob Odenkirk urged them to toss all that out and just pick one of their regular episode ideas and do that instead. This kinda feels kinda like that tossed-out Tom pilot, a little.

I should say now that I’ve seen about a dozen episodes of Squidbillies and I mostly don’t like this show, but I do like a fair amount of it. I think there’s a handful of good episodes of the several I’ve seen. This one is above average. I like scenes that show you how braindead and insane each character is. The scene where Early robs a convenience store and then takes his mask off so he can use that same money to purchase things at the same convenience store is a good example of how the humor can work well on this show. Is that the first time that joke has ever been done before? Eh, probably not, but it’s still fairly solid.

I have a story to tell, later. Maybe. I don’t know. Okay, I’ll tell it now. I once spoke to a guy who worked on an Adult Swim show I will not name. It was not a show created in-house, unlike Squidbillies. and the initial idea behind the series was to have the main character to do stuff roughly as stupid as the above joke. Adult Swim HATED THIS, and constantly discouraged them from making the main character that dumb. I wonder if they felt possessive of that kind of humor or if they just felt like it didn’t land on Squidbillies or what, and I’m not sure what my point is bringing this up. I’m just noticing things.

I’m on a roll here with INSIDER STORIES, so I’ll share another one: I was working on a TV Show I will not name (because it never actually became a TV show, so it’s pointless). It was set in a store with security cameras, and one running gag was going be about a guy who was always in one section of the store hanging out, and the main characters are always just checking in on him and he’s doing something weird each time. The go-to example the creator of this show always said was “he’ll be like, eating a CORPSE on the floor!” I always HATED this, it struck me as enormously uncreative.

I bring that up for a reason: another element to this show is gruesome violence. I have a pet peeve with adult comedy shows, which I illustrated above in my story, and that’s when the punchline to a joke is just showing some kind of gory spectacle. There are two moments in this episode that are like this (the sequence where Rusty is raised by wolves is also violent, but I would say is technically gory, and also I think that sequence is funny and good). There’s a scene where a towns person wanders into the road and is immediately obliterated by a semi-truck, exploding into a red mist. The next is when Sheriff gets a hair treatment mistakenly infused with crystal meth, causing him to tear his own face off.

I don’t know, I just think gags like that only serve one purpose and it’s to shock. But on a show like this? Stuff like that happens pretty frequently so it’s not even shocking. There just needs to be another layer to it to come off as funny to me. I find myself only laughing at gore when it’s in a movie that mostly isn’t a comedy. Tarantino can place a squirmy gore scene in a movie and it’ll make me laugh uncontrollably. When it happens in Squidbillies I’m just like “oh, come on”. Just seems uninspired. I know jokes like that can get a strong reaction in most people, but I just find them simply too nasty.

But, I’m actually excited to watch all of Squidbillies. I know I’ll mostly not like it, but it’ll be nice to pick out the small number of good to great episodes. Honestly it’s sorta rare to have a show that you neither fully hate or fully love. That’s what this show is for me. It’s almost like modern Simpsons; a good one pops up every ten or so episodes. Hey, did you know I have a Simpsons blog?

--MY SIMPSONS BLOG!!!!

EPHEMERA CORNER:

The Friday Night Fix (September 16, 2005)

Somebody reminded me this existed so I’m doing this now! Okay! Please enjoy the above video which is very real, and very era appropriate.

Adult Swim didn’t broadcast on Fridays at this time, so it was highly significant to premiere the Friday Night fix as an online exclusive for those who couldn’t stomach not watching Adult Swim on Fridays. I was personally a snob about deigning to watch VIDEO on the INTERNET, so I avoided the Friday Night Fix like the plague. Was never a devotee at all. I don’t think there was an elegant way to watch this stuff on a television screen like there is now (you had to go to radio shack and buy a special cord that ran from your computer to your TV, basically; I actually did do this at one point before I ever owned a SmartTV. I remember using a DVD Recorder to record internet videos. Different time, man.

Honestly, I can’t really write about the fix with any kind of meaningful insight, because I turned my nose up at it. I guess they sometimes premiered stuff on there. My blog will only focus on TV premieres. Sorry NET-HEADS! So, I guess I’ll pathetically invite you to google it. I’m... so sorry.

MAIL BAG:

EPHEMERA CORNER - The Mouse & The Mask by Danger Doom (October 11,2005) - This classic album features an intro from Brak and Zorak, angry voicemails from Master Shake throughout because Danger Doom ignore his pleas to collaborate, and ends with a Meatwad cover of a DOOM song. Space Ho’s features Space Ghost pissed after Danger Doom hijack his show, and the beat will later be recycled for a Perfect Hair opening. And track Perfect Hair is dedicated completely to Perfect Hair Forever. RIP Doom :(

Hey, thank you! That’s two EPHEMERA CORNERS in one post! WOW! Hey, wait, I just streamed this and I noticed that--

Well, Zorak WAS on the intro of the Danger Doom album originally. For some reason, the version that’s streaming cut him out and only left Brak.

Damn! That sucks dude. I guess I’ll kill myself! Goodbye!

[captainseaweedbrains]

The Dance of the Color Guard, Op. 64 Ch. 4

Katniss and Peeta used to be best friends when they were kids, but now in high school, they're barely on speaking terms. It isn't until they are forced together as the titular star-crossed lovers for their marching band's field show that they will have to face their past mistakes and try to get along if they ever hope of defeating the notorious Capitol Height's Imperial Marching Crusaders in competition.

It's all about winning and if that means pretending to be in love with Peeta Mellark, so be it.

A/N: Thank you to @rosegardeninwinter​ for editing and helping push me to finish! You are the best and any mistakes found are mine. :) 

Start at the beginning on Ao3: X

Ch. 4 Ao3: X

June

“Peeta really isn’t that bad,” Madge said for what felt like the millionth time. Katniss rolled her eyes and flipped the page of her magazine. Ever since learning that Peeta was going to be the Romeo to Katniss’ Juliet, Madge had been defending him every chance she got. “He’s really not. And he’s so smart, Katniss. Picks up on things real quickly. So all this moping around you’ve been doing all week is stupid.”

Katniss frowned and shoved her sunglasses further up her nose, preferring the screams of the children running around them on the pool deck to Madge defending Peeta Mellark to her once again. Was she being overly dramatic about this? Maybe. Was Madge right that Peeta wasn’t as bad as she made him out to be? Perhaps. But it still sucked and she couldn’t stop complaining about it.

“I know you’re Team Peeta,” she sighed, “but would it kill you to see things from my perspective just this once? Isn’t that what girl friends are supposed to do? Side with their other girl friends?”

“Maybe if you were right about him being a bad person, I would,” Madge sniffed, picking up her own gossip magazine to flip through. “But as of right now, you’ve provided me no evidence in support of your claim.” It was times like these Katniss wished her friend wasn’t the daughter of a prestigious lawyer.

“Gale sides with me,” she argued, pointing at her tall friend standing in line between two twelve-year-old kids for their slushies. “Doesn’t that count for anything on my behalf?”

“Gale’s an idiot.”

“An idiot you’re dating.” Madge stuck her tongue out at that, unable to refute her long-standing relationship with Gale and Katniss smiled. Of all the relationships she’d seen throughout the years—and band romances had provided plenty of weird, random romances, the weirdest being Johanna Mason and Melinda “Cashmere” Hewitt—Madge and Gale’s was the only one she saw that made no sense on paper yet made complete sense in person. The spoiled rich girl with a heart of gold and the rough-around-the-edges boy from the bad part of town? She never used to buy it in the movies, thinking the concept too ridiculous, but Madge and Gale proved her wrong time and time again.

Even when they had broken up sophomore year, claiming they were just too different, Katniss was still proven wrong because they couldn’t shut up about each other—griping about how she just didn’t understand and he always has to be right and I can’t believe I lost my virginity to that, a fact Katniss could have gone her whole life not knowing. When they got back together, it was hard to say who was more thrilled about it: the happy couple or Katniss.

“Come on, Madge,” she sighed, flopping back in her lounge seat. “Why must you always be the diplomatic one?”

“Someone has to be between your impulsiveness and Gale’s anarchy attitude.

“Did someone say anarchy?” the anarchist himself joked, handing Madge her lime-flavored slushie with a kiss on the lips for a tip. He handed Katniss her watermelon one and jokingly asked where his tip was. Katniss threw her three dollars at him with a “Keep the change” rebuttal. Gale laughed and pocketed the cash, lifting Madge’s legs up and over onto his lap so he could sit.

“So what did I miss?”

Madge snorted and offered her boyfriend a sip of her slushie. “Here’s a hint: it’s Katniss’ favorite subject.”

Gale rolled his eyes and accepted the drink. “Mellark again?” He took a large sip and winced at the sudden brain freeze, handing the large cup back. “God, I’m so sick of hearing about that guy. Katniss, get over it and move on already.” Even Gale was getting sick of her talking about it? Somehow, that hit lower on the pathetic scale. Gale was her complaining companion. Her bitch buddy. The person she reserved all her annoyances for because she knew he’d have his own trivial things to complain about. Hell, their friendship was founded upon complaining, starting in 8th Grade Science when their teacher kept giving them busy work to cope with the very public scandal of his wife sleeping with their school principal. They complained about everything with each other.

And now even Gale had said enough.

Well this sucked.

“Fine,” she said, not really feeling fine about it. “I won’t talk about it anymore.” Her friends looked doubtful. “I mean it! No more talk of Peeta Mellark and how my whole summer is practically ruined because I have to have extra practices to teach him how to dance on the field. And I’m not going to talk about how that cuts into my shifts at Aunt LuLu’s store, which means my spending money is going to be next to nothing by the time school starts. So if you two ever want to do anything more fun than hanging around the school parking lot, I guess you’re shit out of luck.”

Gale smiled sweetly at Madge. “I’m so glad she’s not talking about it anymore.” Katniss scowled and gave them the middle finger, causing them both to laugh.

“I think you both are very biased over this whole thing,” Katniss said after a while. Gale and Madge didn’t say anything, too focused on tanning and summer reading homework. That didn’t seem to stop Katniss from continuing. “You’re both too friendly with him because of classes and band. He’s gotten to you.”

“One of us is biased,” Gale said, “and it’s not us. It’s you. You’ve hated him for as long as I’ve known you.”

“With good reason!” she huffed, crossing her arms. They didn’t ask her to elaborate on that, already making it clear they were done talking about Peeta Mellark and all the annoyances he brought to her life, and she hated the fact that she did want to keep talking about him. About marching band. About the whole stupid situation. But she kept her promise and kept her mouth shut. 

No one said anything further until Madge declared herself starving and Gale suggested they stuff their faces with greasy burgers and fries at Sae’s.

**********

Sae’s Diner was packed with its usual lunch crowd—men and women from the factories nearby on lunch, sitting at the worn pastel-colored counter; a couple of kids they recognized from school goofing off in the corner booth, shooting straw wrappers off the straws; and a book club filled with women in their fifties discussing some brick of a book over coffee and Sae’s famous blueberry and cream pie sitting in the center of the small diner. The old woman herself smiled warmly at them when they’d walked in, asking if they were wanting the usual. 

“You’re the best, Sae,” Gale thanked as they waved and headed to their booth next to the front door. 

As they waited for their cheeseburgers and chocolate milkshakes, Gale chatted about some war movie he and his brothers saw that sounded god awful boring, no matter how much he tried re-explaining the plot to them. Madge and Katniss rolled their eyes and told him if he wanted to see the movie again so badly, to go see it by himself. “I’m not going to the movies by myself like some weirdo,” he scoffed, taking his hands off the table as the waitress deposited their plates of food and drinks. 

“Why not?” Katniss asked, picking up a french fry to dip into her milkshake. “I do it all the time.” 

“Because you hate people.” 

“So do you.” He shrugged, not having much to argue there, and picked up his burger. 

“So what time is Trinket summoning you tomorrow?” Gale asked, changing the subject completely, and tearing into his burger. Grease dripped down his hands and Madge tossed a pile of napkins at him. He accepted with a smile and slid his side of pickles over to her, something he purposely ordered more of because he knew how much she liked them. Madge happily bit into one, her eyes gazing at him with such adoration, Katniss rolled her eyes. Their coupling was too much for her sometimes. 

“I thought you didn’t want me talking about marching band,” she said innocently enough, taking a bite into her own burger.

“I didn’t want you talking about Mellark,” he said pointedly, wagging a fry at her. “Marching band is different. Less annoying and less boy drama. So what time does Miss Cream Puff have you coming in?”

It irritated her that Gale simplified her great dislike for Peeta Mellark as mere boy drama because it was far more complicated than that, but there was no point trying to explain it to Gale. He understood a lot about her, but when it came to Peeta… Well, it was best to let him believe whatever he wanted. “Eight a.m. sharp,” she said sourly, dipping another french fry into her milkshake.

Gale winced. “That sucks. Why so early?” 

“Peeta couldn’t get out of working his afternoon shifts and it was either that or not have a single weekend off until November.” She was still bitter about the change in schedule. Originally Miss Trinket wanted them twice a week outside of color guard’s normal rehearsal times, but with Peeta’s work schedule not being as flexible as Katniss’, she’d decided to make it morning rehearsals and make those shorter, which forced them to add another day of rehearsal to make up for the cut time. Now instead of having rehearsal four times a week, Katniss had five with her weekends full of shifts at Aunt LuLu’s shop for the extra cash she desperately needed. This summer was going to blow.

“I still think you should’ve been picked for Juliet,” Katniss told Madge teasingly. “You and Gale, maybe?” she cooed. “The true star-crossed lovers of Athens Ridge.” 

Gale scowled. “I’d rather drop dead than have to deal with Trinket when she’s in choreographer mode. She’s a total tyrant.” 

“She’s not so bad once you get used to her.” 

“Tell me what you think after dealing with her for a whole season, oh captain, my captain.” 

Point taken.

Much like at the pool, they talked for a bit about things going on in their lives—Madge taking some online French class because her grades last semester weren’t great; Gale’s successful find for parts with Thom in the junkyard. Katniss didn’t say much as she munched on her burger and fries, afraid Madge would lecture her again on Peeta Mellark and her inability to let things go with him. That and she promised she was done talking about him. But outside of marching band and him, not much was going on in her life. She felt a bit pathetic about that. 

Conversation picked up when Sae came over, asking how things were doing. The three smiled at the old woman, happy to fill her in on all the small details of their lives. Sae was the unofficial grandmother of the Seam. Always there to show her support for her kiddos. Her small diner was covered with pictures of sports teams she’s sponsored over the years, pictures of her and kids dressed in dance gear, holding certificates. 

“Did you hear the news about Katniss, Sae?” Madge asked when the topic of marching band came up. Sae was always interested in that, loving watching her talented kids play as they wove around the field. “She’s going to be our Juliet this year! Isn’t that exciting?” 

Sae’s grey eyes warmed, turning to Katniss. “Is that so? Captain and the lead part?” She shook her head in astonishment, her salt and peppered colored hair coming loose from her hair tie. “You were always so talented with those flags. I’m not surprised. Who’s your Romeo?” 

“Peeta Mellark.” The name felt lodged in her throat, but thankfully, it squeezed out without too much of a squeak in her voice. 

Sae didn’t know all the kids on the west side, but she definitely knew Peeta. He would often tag along with her and her dad on their trips to the woods, stopping at the diner after for hot chocolate and pie. In fact, his picture was one of the first ones you saw coming in—Sae and six-year-old Peeta smiling at the camera, her arm around him as he proudly held up his lost baby tooth. Her dad had taken the picture, she remembered, and if the camera’s lens had shifted a little more to the right, it would have also captured five-year-old Katniss pouting on the side, upset that he kept losing his baby teeth when she’d lost none. It was a picture her gaze avoided whenever they visited Sae’s, unable to stomach the sight of an old friend turned asshole, the memory of her dad’s laughter as he took the photo. 

“Oh, Peeta,” Sae chuckled, the familiar twinkle she always got in her eyes when he was around. The old woman doted on him when they were kids and he ate up her attention like there was no tomorrow. “How is that boy? Staying out of mischief, I hope?” 

Gale and Madge looked to her with knowing smiles, wondering what she would say. Katniss cleared her throat and looked down at her half-eaten plate for a moment. “Fine, I guess. We don’t hang out anymore. You know that, Sae.” 

She did know that, but it never stopped her from asking whenever he came up. “Aye, girl, I do. I suppose you aren’t happy with Effie Trinket’s choice, then?” 

Gale snorted. “Happy? More like obsessively pissed. She hasn’t shut up about it since May.” She glared at her friend and he shrugged, popping a fry in his mouth. “What? You haven’t.” 

Sae gave one of her warm, crooked teeth smiles. “Maybe this is the push you kiddos need to kiss and make up.” Katniss’ cheeks warmed at the mention of kisses, remembering Leevy’s comment how they were so going to have sex by the end of the year. She still hadn’t fully forgiven her friend for that suggestion.

“I’m afraid that’s impossible, Sae,” she said, her voice still a little strained. “We’re just too different.”  

“Ah, well. I suppose we grow in different directions sometimes,” the woman sighed with a shake of her head. A woman from the book club table called for her and Sae gave them a parting wave and smile. “Tell Peeta ol’ Sae misses her boy and that he needs to come in more. I haven’t seen him in ages.”

Katniss pointedly avoided Gale and Madge’s amused smirks, focusing on the burger in front of her. “I’ll be sure to pass the message along,” she muttered, taking a big bite of her food to avoid continuing this conversation. She loved Sae. Thought of her like a grandmother. But there was no way in hell was she telling Peeta that. No way. Then he’d think she was gushing about him to anyone who would listen, thrilled to be his Juliet, a role many girls at school would kill for (Probably. Maybe. She thinks.), and then his stupid ego would just get bigger and he’d be even more obnoxious to deal with. No, best not to mention anything and lie next time she saw Sae. 

A small part felt guilty at that, though, because Sae was like a grandma who wanted the best for her, and Peeta too, she guessed, but again, Sae didn’t know what happened between them. And Katniss wasn’t going to fill her in on their broken history six years too late. 

Her phone next to her plate vibrated, signifying a text message just came in. Wiping her greasy hands, Katniss frowned, picking up her phone. Who was texting her? Everyone who’d text her was either sitting right across from her or were busy at work or camp. The little text message lit up at her touch, showing it was from an unknown number, and her frown turned into a scowl as she read it. 

Hey!!!!!!!!!1!1111!!!!!!! the message read with a thousand typo-filled exclamation marks. God, who text like that? Trinket gave me ur ######## Hope thats cool. Thought Id give mine!!!!!!!111111 🤗 Ill see u  Mon dearest Juliet ❤️❤️❤️❤️!!!!!!!!!!!!111!😘😘😘😘!!!111!!!!!! 

For the briefest of seconds, Katniss swore her vision blacked out. One moment she was staring at her phone. The next, darkness. Like her brain couldn’t process the simple text on her phone and chose to shut down instead. When her vision cleared, the message was still there, glaring brightly at her with those thousand exclamation/number marks. 

Peeta Mellark texted her. He had her number.

         Her stomach churned and now she feared that what her mother always warned about Sae’s greasy food would come true now and she’d throw it all up. 

Peeta Mellark texted her. It was truly official. He had her number and she had his and they were partners now. If she had any doubts about this whole thing before—as if she had dreamt the last four weeks of her life—they were wiped clean now. Replaced with this typo-filled text message from the very boy who hurt her. 

“You okay?” Madge asked.

Katniss nodded and clicked out of the message, tossing the phone into her bag. She’d deal with it later.

[princess-of-the-corner]

I never watched Winx as a kid, so I really hope I don't sound like an idiot for asking this. What exactly does the Netflix Winx series do wrong besides giving it the "dark and gritty" makeover?

So like. There are a lot of problems here and I’ll try to tackle them. I haven’t finished the reboot because I have difficulty getting through things I like, much less things I hate watch. But anyway, this gets long and is separated into parts. 

Let’s start with it’s issues on it’s own and not as an adaptation: 

It’s still pretty garbage. Not ‘the worst thing ever’. Interesting enough. But it does have problems. Some racist and homophobic and fatphobic writing. The characters range from ‘kind of a jerk’ to ‘straight up assholes who will cause physical harm for petty reasons’. The nicest one so far is Terra, but even she kinda snaps and strangles a guy with her plant powers. 

Now on to things it fails on as an adaptation!

First, the whitewashing!

Of the six main characters, 3/6 were poc-coded in the original cartoon(I say ‘coded’ because they’re not Humans from Earth but still). Aisha is black, Flora is Latina, and Musa is Chinese. 

Aisha is the only one who remains black. I’ve heard varying testimonies on Musa’s actor, but the ‘best’ I’ve heard is that she’s 1/4 Singaporean and white passing. I don’t have the authority to say if that’s in the clear or not so I’m leaving that to other fans. 

Flora gets the worst though. They cast a white woman to play her. Then backtracked and said ‘oh, this isn’t Flora. We replaced her with her white cousin Terra’. Yeah you can see the problem there. 

Characters they got rid of entirely! I’ll only discuss characters that showed up in the first two seasons of the original show since Fate only has one season. (I’d say just the first, but they included Aisha who is from Season 2). 

Let’s see. They got rid of Tecna, one of the main six girls. It’s likely because they’re going for a more ‘bootleg Hogwarts’ vibe, and Tecna’s magic being heavily technology based ruins that. So she’s just tossed altogether. 

The boys! Oh my god my boys! Sky and Riven are the only ones who were kept in, while Brandon, Timmy and Helia got scrapped and replaced as well. The other boys like Dane and Sam? Totally could’ve just given them those names and been done with it. 

Then there’s Icy, Darcy and Stormy! I’m counting them together because that’s exactly what Fate did! The three Witches are villains in the series, and instead of keeping a trio, they combined her into a single character. Beatrix. 

I think Silva was also an amalgamation of the remaining Headmaster/Headmistresses and a few other staff members but considering they condensed it to just one school it kind of makes sense. 

Sometimes there’s just a name change like the Headmistress of Alfea was changed to Farah Dowling instead of Faragonda which is so pointless. 

Overall there’s other minor characters that don’t show up, like the rest of the school staff, Mirta and Lucy, so on and so forth. But I’m less upset about that. Still upset though because I love them. 

Personality changes! And romance drama!

Oh boy. Oh boy oh boy oh boy. 

I already mentioned how they made everyone an asshole in this reboot. In the original show, the only protagonist that was consistently a jerk was Riven, but he was more of the ‘grumpy but still a good guy’ type of asshole. 

Let’s compare just one character and her relationships to others!

Stella in the Original Cartoon: Preppy and sometimes a little vain, could be blunt to the point of insulting, but never malicious. Very sweet and loves her friends. She and Bloom are best friends, Stella having been the one to bring Bloom into the world of Magix and will do everything she can to make sure she’s safe. Stella’s love interest is Brandon, who is bffs with Bloom’s love interest Sky. Stella and Brandon are very cheesy and cute together. They aren’t usually jealous, and can even make a competition out of ‘how many phone numbers can I get?’. 

Stella in Fate: Total bitch to all her roommates. She’s getting the common ‘my mom’s a bitch who puts pressure on me so I’m going to be a bitch’ thing that’s become popular now. Since Brandon was deleted, they put her in a love triangle with Bloom and Sky, Sky being Stella’s ex bf. And despite breaking up with him, Stella sees him just talking to Bloom and decides ‘Hm. Let’s prey on her insecurities that she doesn’t belong here, and manipulate her into leaving!’ Which includes walking through a forest where there was recently a man attacked and viscously killed by some kind of monster, so I’m putting it up to attempted murder. 

Yeah. Everyone’s kind of like that. It’s awful. 

Bloom’s backstory and parents!

Okay, this can kind of fall under both ‘personality changes’ and ‘plot changes’ but it deserves it’s own section. 

In the Original Cartoon, Bloom’s home kingdom was attacked and destroyed by villains searching for something called the Dragon Flame. Bloom was a baby with said power, so her older sister sent her to Earth, a world without Magic, where she would be safe and hidden. Mike and Vanessa find her and adopt her, loving her and raising her very well. They are good parents. Bloom learns she has powers when she meets Stella, and instinctively uses Magic to protect her. 

In Fate, the only thing really the same is that Bloom was sent to Earth. I’m a little unclear on why, but instead of giving her loving adoptive parents, they made her a Changeling with emotionally abusive parents! Let me elaborate a little: Instead of adopting Bloom of their own free will, Mike and Vanessa’s real child died in the hospital and was secretly replaced with Bloom. Her parents are also, as mentioned, emotionally abusive. So much so that Fate!Bloom’s powers first manifested by setting them on fire in the middle of the night.

Fun. Ain’t it? 

Now onto plot points!

Again, pretty much the only thing the same is ‘Bloom discovers she has Magic, goes to another Dimension to learn at a school called Alfea. Gets into adventures with her Roomates while trying to figure out where she’s really from’. 

The whole ‘Burned ones’ were.... not a thing at all. There wasn’t any kind of ‘barrier’ to keep out ‘dangerous creatures’ or anything. 

I’m not going to go over every single subplot but that was just. No. They were easily allowed to go outside the school. 

The whole vibe

This is a big thing to talk about. While the reboot went for ‘dark and gritty’ over the bright colors and sparkles, it also went for ‘bootleg Hogwarts’ instead of anything interesting. 

In the reboot, the merging of Magic and Technloogy is mostly like. ‘Yeah we go to school in this old ass castle and we don’t use guns in weaponry class, but we have smartphones and social media and Harry Potter!”. 

In the Original??? The whole world was very Magitech. It was a combination of Magic and Scifi! Kinda Steven Universe style actually. 

The transformations!!!

Look. LOOK. Winx Club is a Magical Girl show! They have those beautiful transformation sequences that last a solid minute or so of screen time. And they also have like. At least one new Transformation a Season, which comes with an ungodly amount of different cool outfits. 

The reboot? One transformation sequence. And while the effects are nice, Bloom doesn’t even get a new outfit. Just a few flames coming off her that look vaguely like wings. 

SPEAKING OF! They are Faeries!!!! But they don’t have wings????? What????

Look idgaf about your effects budget you could’ve made the cheesiest shit like the live action Sailor Moon stuff and fans would’ve loved it!

Bonus: The fact that they didn’t have to change anything to make it ‘Dark’!

So like. Netflix decided to take all the color out of it, and make it ‘dark’ by having the characters smoke and drink and have sex and say swears. 

But they.... really didn’t have to! The original cartoon was plenty dark, despite it’s colorful aesthetic! If you wanted to do a more serious reboot, you could have easily done it by focusing more on those aspects. 

Hell, there are many fans who have done it. I’m one. I know a couple others as well. 

anyway it’s 2:30 am and this is long af so I’ll leave it at that.