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cjsinkythoughts · 4 years ago

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FATWS One Shot #6 - No One Said Anything About a Metal Arm

Word Count: 2011

Warnings: Explosions, Gunshots, The Winter Soldier, Implied Death, Stevie Almost Crying

Setting/Characters: Towards the End of Captain America: The Winter Soldier; Reader, Steve Rogers, Sam Wilson, Natasha Romanoff, Maria Hill, Nick Fury, Bucky Barnes; Mentions of Alexander Pierce, Arnim Zola

A/N: This one took me a while to write and I’ll tell you why. Rewatching this movie made me want to do a complete rewrite of it. I had so many ideas of where the reader could be and why and what she was doing then and all that. But…I told myself this is a One Shot of her unofficially meeting Bucky for the first time. Which is why it seems incomplete - because it kinda is - it’s just that scene picked from the movie. Am I happy with it? Eh. Am I holding back from writing more parts and just saying “forget this piece, it never happened”? Maybe. But, I can’t. I wish I could. But if I were to rewrite this movie, I’d rewrite the next one. And the next one. And it would take me months to finish these. So…this is what you’re getting.

Also, NO ONE MENTION WHAT’S ABOUT TO HAPPEN IN A COUPLE HOURS! I’M THIS CLOSE TO FREAKING OUT!

Thanks! As always, it’s not beta’d, so please excuse mistakes! Enjoy reading, be kind to yourselves and others, and stay tuned!

FATWS Masterlist

cjsinkythoughts Masterlist

********

Sitting on the edge of the old dam was calming. Peaceful, even. The constant sound of the flowing water, the trees swaying in the slight breeze. It was nice to take a breath after everything that had gone down the past week.

To say you were worried was an understatement. The last time you saw Steve was the evening after you met Sam. He dropped you off at your place, refusing your invitation to stay saying that he should probably check on his apartment since he hadn’t been there in a while.

A lot had changed since then.

Steve was wanted by SHIELD, along with Natasha. Fury was considered dead, but was actually still kicking in the structure beneath your feet with the help of you and Hill. You had tried to go after Steve, but it was too risky. Pierce - who you were almost 100% certain was behind this whole thing - had been keeping a close eye on you since Steve ran away, knowing you’d be behind him. You tried to catch the blonde at the hospital, but you were seconds too late, meeting up with Natasha who told you STRIKE already took him away for questioning.

You had been called by Hill and she told you what had happened. Fury had asked for your help specifically, considering the amount of times you’d had to fake your own death while being undercover. And you’d been dealing with that ever since.

You had wanted to go get the three of them - you learned Sam joined Steve and Natasha, which somehow didn’t surprise you - but Hill refused, saying you needed to stay there just in case.

But Fury was fine, no one was coming, which is how you found yourself swinging your legs above a hundred feet of rushing water.

It didn’t last long. A car pulling up to the side entrance caught your eye and you immediately swung your legs around to rush towards the stairs. It’s not like you haven’t gone longer without seeing Steve before. You’d gone months without seeing him. It was your job. But this was different. Whether it was because for the first time he was the one who left or because he was on the run from the organization you worked for, you didn’t know and didn’t care. All you knew was you needed to see him. Make sure he was okay.

It took you a while to get there, all the stairs and corners and twist and turns. You got there just as Fury ended his explanation, hearing him tell the trio, “can’t kill you if you’re already dead. Besides…I wasn’t sure who to trust.”

Your footsteps were echoing and you were sure Steve heard you but when you entered the room, his eyebrows shot up, his eyes widening. “Honey?”

“Oh thank fucking God.” You breathed out, jogging over to squeeze him tightly.

“Y/N…” He murmured in your hair, hugging you tightly back. “What happened? Why are you here?”

Pulling back, you jerked your thumb over your shoulder to the director. “I’m saving his ass.” Your finger then jabbed into his firm chest, your lips falling into a frown. “And worrying about yours. Are you okay?”

“I am. Natasha got shot, but she’ll live.”

You looked over at Natasha, who nodded in confirmation, before looking back into those azure eyes of Steve’s. “What happened? Pierce is keeping a tight lid on everything. I was gonna come find you, but I couldn’t because he was watching me. It’s a miracle I got away from them to help Nicky boy. I haven’t gone out since. But, honest, I was gonna-”

“Honey, honey. You’re rambling again.” Steve chuckled, hand resting on the back of your head, fingers tangling in your hair. “It’s okay. I’m glad you’ve been safe here. Pierce is behind this whole thing-”

“Yeah, I figured that-”

“-It’s HYDRA, Y/N.”

You froze. “What? HYDRA? Whaddya mean?”

Steve nodded. “HYDRA’s what’s been infiltrating SHIELD. It’s a long story, but Zola continued it when he was hired for-”

“Operation Paperclip. Yeah, I remember learning about that.” You ran a hand over your face. “Okay…” You hummed, looking at the three of them. “Let’s…talk about it more in a little bit. I know we gotta act soon, but Natasha and Fury need to heal a little bit longer and you should get some rest. You look tired.”

Everyone seemed to agree with your statement, starting to disperse from the room. You started walking out, too, when Steve grabbed your bicep and pulled you aside, down the hall a ways away. You opened your mouth, only for him to pull you into his chest.

“I’m really glad you’re okay.”

You nodded, lightly scratching his back, your arms around his slim waist. “I’m glad you are too.” You could feel how tense he was, which was understandable considering what he’d gone through the past couple days. But there was something else. Something in the grip he had on your shirt. The way his heart was hammering against your chest. His erratic breathing and his ducked head. You pulled away to catch his jaw between your fingers, eyes scanning the anguish in his own. “Bubba? What’s wrong?”

It took a moment for him to answer, his eyes growing sadder with every second that passed. “It was Bucky.”

“What?” You felt like the air was knocked out of you. “What do you mean?”

“The Winter Soldier. The assassin who shot Fury. The one who tried killing us on the bridge. It was Bucky. It is Bucky. I saw him, Y/N. I saw his face. It’s him. He survived. When they experimented on him, it must’ve…God, I’m so…I didn’t even notice…I didn’t even check…I left him…” he shook his head, which fell to your shoulder. “Stupid. I’m so stupid.”

“No, no.” You shook your head quickly, fingers playing with the hair at the nape of his neck as you twisted to kiss the hinge of his tense jaw. “It wasn’t your fault, Steve.” You mumbled softly, lips brushing over the shell of his ear. “It wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t have known. He fell thousands of feet, Stevie. You wouldn’t have found him even if you did.”

HIs grip on your hips tightened. “But I didn’t even try.” His voice broke on that last word. “And how could I not notice something going on with him? There were two years between being experimented on and falling. How-?” Voice catching in his throat, he stopped talking to stop himself from crying. You knew he hated crying.

“You can’t do anything about past Bucky.” You reminded him gently. “But you can help him now.”

“He didn’t even remember me.”

“Then make him.”

********************

To say you were pissed was an understatement. “I’ve been doing undercover stuff for years! This is a piece of cake!”

Steve shook his head. “You’ll be more helpful with Hill. You know more about Project Insight than me, Sam, and Natasha.”

“Bullshit, Steven! You just don’t want-”

“Honey, please.”

You clenched your jaw, glaring at him as he gave you those fucking puppy eyes, his dumb pink lips stuck in a pout. Letting out a rather aggressive puff of air, you looked away. “Fine. But I hate you.”

He beamed and nodded. “I can live with that.”

“Okay.” You glanced at the others. “You all ready?”

“Let’s get these sons of bitches.” Sam stated, making the final adjustments to the wings.

Natasha gave a smirk. “As long as you are.”

Turning back to Steve, you raised an eyebrow, waiting for the captain’s orders. He nodded. “Let’s head out.”

****************

“There’s a problem on the flight deck.” Hill informed you, looking at the alert.

“Alright. I’ll-”

“Stay with Hill!”

You rolled your eyes at Steve’s voice through the comms. “Sorry, Cap. You’re breaking up.”

“I know I’m not, Y/N! I’m serious! Stay there!”

But you were already moving towards the flight deck. “I’m not gonna sit on my ass here, Rogers! Hill’s got it covered! I’m just gonna go check it out!”

“Honey-!”

“Bubba!”

The line went quiet and for a moment you thought you lost connection. “Please stay safe.”

You let out a sigh at his quiet pleads, nodding even though he couldn’t see you. “That goes for you, too, Steve.”

By the time you got out there, most of the jets were in flames, pilots and crew members scattered around the deck. You scanned the wreckage, trying to find the source-

A gunshot made your head whip to the side. Found it. Or, more accurately, him.

He was standing on top of one of the jets, gun pointed down at the pilot that was sitting in it. Before he could slip in the cockpit, though, you took out your gun and fired at him. Even though you knew who he was, when he looked at you it made your blood run cold. It was confirmation - not that you didn’t trust Steve - but still. Seeing is believing. yet seeing the same eyes you’d seen sparkling up at you from pictures now staring you down, void of any emotion? It was hard to believe it was the same person.

“Oh shit. Bubs?”

“What?! What’s wrong?! Are you okay?!”

You took a couple steps back as the Winter Soldier, no. Bucky - Steve’s Bucky - strode towards you. “Uh…nothing, nothing. I just I, uh, found your Bucky.”

“Y/N, get outta there now! I told you to stay with Hill!”

“Fuck!” You dove out of the way as the assassin started shooting at you. “Now’s not the time for reprimanding, Steven!”

You tuned out his cursings so as to not get distracted when you became engaged in a hand-to-hand fight with the fucking Winter Soldier.

“Hi.” You grunted, ducking under his arm and throwing a kick at him, faking it at the last second. Except, he’d already grabbed your ankle. But you did kick him with your other foot. But…he didn’t really move and it made you fall back, so…fail. You let out a grimace when the wind was knocked out of you, but you couldn’t lay there for long as he moved to slam his foot down. You rolled out of the way, swinging your legs up to hit him in the back of the knee. “Nice to finally meet you.”

He growled as Sam exclaimed, “are you seriously chatting with him?”

“It’s mostly one sided - dammit!” The both of you had gotten on your feet again, and you tried hooking your left knee around his left shoulder to tug him down, but he had slammed you against a jet, your leg stretched in a very uncomfortable position as your free foot stood on your toes. He had his metal arm - which no one had informed you about and you were kinda salty about it - against your throat, his other hand coming up in a fist.

Bouncing on your toes a bit, you finally lifted your free leg up to knee him in the side of his face, making you wince slightly at the stretch and the burn in your left thigh, which was the only thing besides his metallic limb holding you up against the jet.

He stumbled to the side, throwing you by the leg on his shoulder. You went sprawling against the pavement, a hiss leaving your lips at the serious roadburn you no doubt just got. Sitting up quickly, not wanting him to get the upper hand, you let out a breath seeing him swiftly moving into the cockpit of the jet he just had you pinned against.

“Guys…he’s…heading your way…just a…heads up. Also…thank you. It was nice…to fucking know…about the metal arm…beforehand. I’m just gonna…rest here for a minute…”

“You’re not hurt too bad, are you?”

“No, Cap. No, just…gonna be aching for a while. Ugh…” Begrudgingly, you got up to your feet. “I think I’m gonna…go back and chill with Maria.”

“Told you so.”

“Shut up, finish your job, and don’t die, Rogers! And next time, please, for the love of God, mention the metal arm!”

****************

All Works Taglist (Open):

@happygoreading @bibliophilewednesday @breadqueen95 @marvelettesassemble @w-wolfhxrd

#cjswriting #fatws series oneshots #fatws series oneshot 6 #fatws series #falcon and the winter soldier series oneshots #no one said anything about a metal arm oneshot #steve rogers x reader #kinda #💛🧭#❤🐦💙🦾⏪

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canary3d-obsessed · 4 years ago

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Restless Rewatch: The Untamed Episode 13, second part

(Masterpost) (Other Canary Distractions)

Warning: Spoilers for All 50 Episodes!

This Fucking Turtle

The rock that Wei Wuxian and Wen Chao are standing on starts to move, because of course it does. It’s a tortoise shell, sort of. There are some problems with this ostensible tortoise.

First, Murder Turtle a tortoise is technically a turtle don't @ me doesn't look anything like a turtle. I try really hard not to project my western mythologies onto Chinese works, but god dang this thing looks like the Loch Ness monster.

Second, its shell wobbles a bit, but there's no indication that the creature can move around the cave until much later. During an extended fight with several tasty cultivators, it stays put and just moves its head around.

The immobility problem aside, it's not a terrible monster. After the hell dog, I'm relieved to have a normal CGI beastie where some things are done really pretty well. Its eyes and skin are particularly good.

What's not good are the teeth. When Murder Turtle closes its mouth, its long pointy upper teeth have nowhere to go, so they pierce its lower jaw and just sink in there. No wonder it's pissed off.

Its relationship with its shell is...well, let's save that for the next episode.

Irons in the Fire

Meanwhile, Wang Lingjiao (Wen Chao's girlfriend) decides she's in the mood for barbequed MianMian, so she grabs a hot iron to burn her face.

Wei Wuxian to the rescue! He shoots three arrows at once and hits all three of his targets, in a move that he'll repeat with even more arrows at a later date.

Wang Lingjiao decides to throw the iron at MianMian, who decides not to duck, while Wei Wuxian leaps into the path of the iron and gets deeply burned on the chest through his clothing. This is absolutely definitely how time, things flying through the air, and branding irons work.

(more after the cut)

Jiang Cheng and Wen Zhuliu start fighting again. These two can't quit each other, almost like they have a date with destiny in their future. Jiang Cheng shows off his purple bloomers while he and Wen Zhuliu try to outspin each other.

Camera operator: Why you gotta take it out on me?

Wen It’s Time To Say Goodbye

The Wens decide to dip, heading up the rock face and cutting the ropes behind them, which would be super inconvenient if several of the cultivators didn't know how to literally fly.

But they also put a bunch of rocks in the hole, while Wen Qing begs them not to do it.

Down at the bottom of the cave, everyone sits and chats, while Murder Turtle wishes it had legs so it could chase them. Oh wait, it does have legs, it just isn't ready to get out of the bath yet

Call the Waaambulance

MianMian is crying over all the nonsense the writers have put her through in this episode, and Wei Wuxian tries to cheer her up by talking to her like she's a toddler. On the plus side, he'll be a great dad for a toddler one day.

Jin Zixuan: I'm used to women crying around me, is that not typical?

Lan Wangji has got no time for cheering up crying girls, and starts heading back to the turtle bath, because he has figured out how they can escape.

He and Wei Wuxian show off their mind reading abilities, where Lan Wangji explains absolutely nothing and Wei Wuxian perfectly understands him. See also: “Fortunately.”

Rather than try to swim for it, the other cultivators want to hang around and wait to be rescued, or just generally feel like staying put and whining.

Wei Wuxian takes charge through sheer force of personality, and makes Jiang Cheng go find the way out while he himself distracts Murder Turtle with fire.

Wei Wuxian can make talismans without 1. ink 2. a brush or 3. paper. He just needs his flesh and his unusually sharp incisors. He's so far ahead of everyone around him; how is a dude this talented ever going to be anyone's right hand man? He’s already on track to creating a new talisman-based school of cultivation, even if he never gets around to the whole necromancy thing.

Swimming in the Pool, Swimming is Cool

The main group of cultivators go swimming while Wei Wuxian lights fires to keep the tortoise's attention. For some reason he just stands there when it's about to eat him...maybe he's mesmerized? Lan Wangji flings him out of harm’s way and gets his already-busted leg chomped on.

Wei Wuxian pulls Lan Wangji to safety and tells the other cultivators to get going. Jiang Cheng doesn't want to, but Jin Zixuan convinces him.

For fans of homoerotic screen caps, this episode is a gold mine.

Murder turtle suddenly remembers he has legs, but Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji instantly find a room he can’t fit into, so they’re okay for the night.

Owie Owie Owie

Now we have an extended hurt/comfort session with our wounded heroes. Lan Wangji is bleeding, so Wei Wuxian...puts a splint made of sticks directly onto his unbandaged lacerations, and ties it with his pristine headband, which will remain pristine. Then he puts medicine on the lacerations.

This seems like a situation where the script said "broken leg" and the makeup department said "MOAR BLOOD" and nobody changed the direction to the actors. In any case, the sticks seem to help and bandages are not mentioned.

What is mentioned, of course, is the dreaded stale blood, which plagues many a c-drama hero, and has to be driven out through strong emotion. This is totally how the human circulatory system works. To be fair, there is probably a perfectly reasonable underlying concept in Chinese medicine that has been exaggerated for dramatic effect, so that every possible ailment or injury results in vomiting blood, sometimes sexily.

Wei Wuxian clears up the blood problem super quickly by offering to show Lan Wangji his dick, not to put too fine a point on it. Alas, he retracts the offer once the crisis has passed.

Once they settle down, Lan Wangji takes the opportunity to put some medicine on Wei Wuxian's burned tit, and to chide him for letting himself get injured. It's like he doesn't even know him.

Wei Wuxian: I had no choice, because I am psychologically driven to sacrifice myself for other people at every opportunity. Get used to it, cupcake.

Wei Wuxian points out that MianMian is pretty and that it would be bad for her to have a mark on her face. Lan Wangji points out, not quite in so many words, that Wei Wuxian is pretty and now HE has a permanent mark. Before Lan Wangji ever got to see his bare chest, too.

Wei Wuxian says it's cool for men to have marks on their bodies. Preferably hickeys and rope burns, but scars are okay too.

Lan Wangji: you're going to love my future body mods, then.

Then Wei Wuxian waxes poetic about having a pretty girl remember your heroism, and Lan Wangji gets jealous and cranky. Wei Wuxian misinterprets this, but not unreasonably, considering that Lan Wangji was putting his own body between MianMian and harm not all that long ago.

After some extended eye fucking followed by laughing and saying "no homo" for the censors, the conversation moves to a more serious place.

Wei Wuxian engages in a little WangXian meta analysis, noting that Lan Wangji can tease him now, and is talking to him slightly more. Falling for a high-spirited, popular extrovert has been hard on Lan Wangji, but Wei Wuxian is also struggling with falling for a nearly-silent, crushingly-shy introvert. Wei Wuxian really does find Lan Wangji boring on one level, at the same time as finding him utterly compelling on other levels.

Wei Wuxian starts to say something about the Lans and stops himself with this charming gesture. I've seen it here and there in c-dramas and I assume it's a thing in China. It's a perfect way for a hyperactive talker to say "I'm shutting up now" without using even more words to say it.

Lan Wangji finally, FINALLY tells Wei Wuxian - briefly - what happened to his home. Wei Wuxian, in one of those moments of empathy that they have more and more often as time goes on, asks about his loved ones, and forgoes any other questions.

Lan Wangji tells him that Lan Qiren is seriously injured and Lan Xichen is missing. Wei Wuxian is extremely concerned about one of these people.

When Lan Wangji falls asleep at 9pm on the button, Wei Wuxian tenderly covers him in his own robe, offering physical comfort in place of the emotional comfort Lan Wangji won’t let anybody give him.

Then Wei Wuxian gazes at him like a lovestruck dope, before settling down beside him for the night.

Soundtrack: Peter Gabriel, I Go Swimming

#fytheuntamed #the untamed #wangxian #wei wuxian #lan wangji #the untamed gifs #the untamed meta #restless rewatch the untamed #canary3d-original #my gifs #the untamed spoilers

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radishaur · 4 years ago

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Two Worlds (Zuko x Modern Reader)

Warnings: None

Genre: Fluff, Angst, Modern Reader AU

Part: 1/?

Summary: Waking up and finding yourself on Prince Zuko’s ship is certainly the most shocking thing that’s ever happened to you in your life. How will you navigate your new life in the Avatar universe when you know everything that happens already?

Authors Note: Haha... so I know I literally have like two series already and about 40 requests in my inbox, but inspiration struck and who am I to say no to my 3 AM brain? Anyway, I hope you guys like this idea even if it is overdone.

•••

Your head felt heavy as you began to return to consciousness. You began to shiver as your body began to register how cold you were. You were slightly confused; it was the middle of summer in the blazing heat. How could you be cold?

You also realized that you were no longer laying in bed, instead on something stiff. You cracked your eyes open and saw a metal floor. You wrinkled your eyebrows in confusion as you propped yourself up on your elbows.

You gasped in shock upon seeing where you were and immediately shot up into a standing position. You rubbed your eyes furiously before taking in your surroundings again. You were standing in the middle of a ship deck in the middle of nowhere. There was ice caps surrounding you everywhere you looked and you saw nothing else.

“Where the hell am I?” you thought to yourself.

You walked over to the railing and looked over the edge. The water rolled against the ship slowly as the ship continued forward. A small breeze made you shiver and wrap your arms around yourself. All you had on was a pair of jeans, a short sleeve t-shirt, and socks.

“You!” someone yelled, catching your attention.

You whirled around and your eyes widened in shock upon seeing the owner of the voice. Standing in full armor marching towards you was Prince Zuko. As in, the Prince Zuko from the TV series you loved.

“Oh, this can’t be happening,” you whispered under your breath.

“Who the hell are you?” he demanded, stopping only a few inches from you.

Looking up at his face, you couldn’t help but take in the details. He looked just like he had in the show with his amber eyes and deep red scar. Even the ugly half shaved ponytail.

“This can’t be real. Are you real?” you asked, still in disbelief.

He scowled at you, fists clenching by his sides. I could see his eye twitching in anger as he responded.

“Of course I am! What kind of question is that?” he snapped, looking at you like you were stupid.

You laughed slightly, chalking this up to a really weird dream. Your laugh caused him to loose his patience as he snapped at you once more.

“What is so funny? Do you know who I am?” he yelled, his face beginning to go red from anger.

“Do I know who you are?” you asked through chuckles, “Of course I do. You were like my whole childhood.”

This made his recoil. His eyes widened slightly before his eyebrows knitted together and he looked at you apprehensively. You couldn’t help but giggle at the reaction.

“What?” he asked in shock.

“You’re Prince Zuko from Avatar the Last Airbender. I watched the show when I was a kid,” you explained nonchalantly, taking in my surroundings once more as you continued, “And I’m assuming that we’re in the South Pole.”

Zuko seemed to have composed himself again because he grabbed your wrist and caused you to look back up at him. You looked down at his hand in awe. It felt so real.

“This is the most realistic dream I’ve ever had,” you mumbled to yourself.

Zuko ignored your comment.

“Enough of this. Who are you and how did you get on my ship?” he demanded, his voice low and threatening.

“My name is Y/N,” you introduced before adding, “I kind of just...woke up here.”

“Liar. What are you some kind of spy?” he interrogated me, his grip never wavering.

“Spy? For who? Who could I possibly be a spy for?” you asked, not holding back your laughter at his question.

His anger was beginning to rise and I could feel his wrist beginning to heat up. You furrowed your brows, wondering why the heat felt so real.

“You’re here to sabotage my search for the Avatar, aren’t you?” he seethed, his hold on your wrist becoming hotter by the second.

“Ouch!” you cried out, trying to yank your wrist out of his hold, “Cool it hothead! You’re burning me!”

“Don’t speak to me like that,” he ordered.

You managed to free your wrist as he let go of your arm. You held it in your other arm and examined it. There was a slight mark where his hand had been on your arm. You began to feel your stomach drop at the realization that this might not be a dream. You shook the thought away immediately. That was impossible.

You looked back up at him with fearful eyes as he stared down at you. Another breeze blew through the air and caused you to shiver.

Zuko looked you up and down in confusion and curiosity before asking, “What are you wearing?”

“Uh...jeans and a t-shirt,” you answered feebly, still trying to warm yourself up.

He eyed you suspiciously as he stood in front of you. He seemed to be considering what the hell to do. I mean, what were you supposed to do when some random girl shows up on a ship in the middle of a fictional universe. There wasn’t really a handbook with step by step instructions, after all.

“What are you doing here?” he prodded, his glare less intense now.

“I have no idea,” you answered honestly, sending him a weak smile as you shivered once more.

The sound of a door creaking open brought both your and Zuko’s attention to the noise. You both looked at the door to the rest of the ship to see who it was. Your eyes brightened as you recognized the person.

“Uncle Iroh! Uh, I-I mean... General...Iroh,” you fumbled, both of them looking at you with confused expressions.

“Prince Zuko, who are they? What’s going on?” the man asked, his eyes never leaving me.

“They just showed up here out of nowhere! I came out to start training and found them here,” he explained, eyeing me warily again.

“H-Hello,” I greeted, my voice wavering from the cold slightly.

Uncle Iroh came up next to his nephew and his confused look was immediately replaced by one of concern.

“They look freezing cold. Why don’t we bring them inside,” he suggested.

“What?” Zuko asked incredulously, his anger returning quickly, “They’re not a guest! For all we know they could be a spy!”

“Ok, first of all,” you began, catching both men’s attention, “You can stop talking about me like I’m not here. Secondly, I already told you that I’m not a spy!”

Uncle Iroh laughed heartily while Zuko began to fume. You had forgotten how bad his temper was in the beginning of the series.

“I like them,” Uncle Iroh said with a pleasant smile on his features.

You gave him a smile in return as he stepped aside and motioned for you to follow him. You could hear Zuko growling angrily as you passed, but you decided you needed to get out of the cold. Hopefully, you would wake up soon and realize that this was all a dream.

“So, what is a person such as yourself doing here?” Uncle Iroh asked as he led you up a winding staircase.

“As I told your nephew, I actually have no idea. I really did just... wake up here suddenly,” I explained, looking over my shoulder to catch Zuko’s glare.

You finally stopped in front of a room that the old man swung open for you. You walked inside and looked around. It looked exactly how you had seen in the show, with red Fire Nation flags hung on the wall and a small cot for a bed.

“This can be your room while you stay with us. It’s right next to mine and Prince Zuko’s room,” he explained.

“Uncle! They’re not our guest!” Zuko argued once again, his fists going white from how hard he was clenching them.

You couldn’t stifle your laugh. They were both just so exactly the same as they were in the show. Everything from their mannerisms to their dynamic was exactly as it was portrayed in the show.

“What are you laughing at?” Zuko snapped, stomping into the room.

“I’m sorry. You guys are just exactly like how you are in the show,” you answered.

“You’re talking nonsense! Did you hit your head or something?” the prince demanded to know, his tone harsh.

You laughed again. This was certainly the weirdest dream you had ever had. Not to mention the most realistic. It was impossible for it to be anything more than that, so why not have fun while it lasted?

“Prince Zuko, that’s not very nice,” his Uncle warned him.

You snickered as Zuko’s face contorted in anger. You made a mental note to rewatch the show once you woke up.

“It’s alright,” you assured him.

“Why don’t I grab you some new clothes and some hot tea. Then we can talk?” Uncle Iroh suggested.

You nodded in agreement and watched in amusement as Prince Zuko was sent to collect some clothes for you. You were beyond excited to try some of Uncle Iroh’s famous tea. You had always wondered what it would taste like.

As you waited for them to return, you began examining the room. You touched everything in sight and opened every cabinet and door in sight. You even pinched yourself a few times just to see. Everything felt real. You ignored the feeling in your chest that began to grow and summed it up to a very persistant and realistic dream.

You heard a knock on the door and opened it. Prince Zuko walked inside and shoved a pile of clothes into your hands.

“These should be your size,” he huffed, crossing his arms in annoyance.

You held them out in front of you and examined all the little details. To be honest, the fashion of the Fire Nation had always been your favorite. You smiled as you looked them over.

“Well, are you gonna get changed?” he snapped.

You looked over to him and rolled your eyes before beginning to lift up your shirt. You heard Zuko let out a surprised shout which made you stop and look at him.

“What?” you asked, tilting your head in confusion.

“You’re just going to get undressed?” he asked in shock, a furious blush crossing his cheeks.

“Just don’t look,” you said like it was the simplest thing in the world.

He opened his mouth to respond, but you weren’t paying any more attention to him. You heard him grumble under his breath, but he did turn his head to the side. You smirked as you noticed the blush still present on his face.

Once you were dressed, you couldn’t help but look at yourself. You twisted around to look at yourself since you didn’t have a mirror. The clothes fit relatively well and you couldn’t stop the smile that broke out on your face.

Uncle Iroh came back shortly with the tea and the three of you got situated in the room. You sat on the cot, sipping the tea pleasantly. It was just as good at you had imagined, maybe even better. Uncle Iroh sat on the floor across from you and Zuko was leaned against the wall by the door.

“Alright. Where to start?” you mumbled to yourself as the two men waited patiently for your explanation.

“I don’t have all day,” Zuko said harshly, his patience already wearing thin.

You rolled your eyes as Uncle Iroh scolded him once more. They began to bicker which made you smile. The pair were even more hilarious in person.

They finally stopped arguing and looked back at you expectantly. You swallowed nervously before deciding to just come out and explain from the very beginning.

“This is going to sound...well, it’s going to sound insane. But I promise I can prove it! Just let me explain first,” you began, your confidence building as you spoke.

You launched into your explanation of how you were from a different universe and that, in said universe, there was a show called Avatar the Last Airbenber. You told them that that’s how you knew who they were and explained the basic premise of the show.

They looked incredibly shocked and confused. Uncle Iroh looked more intrigued and contemplative, while Zuko was skeptical and dismissive.

“That’s impossible. I think this is just a cruel joke. Did my sister send you?” he questioned you angrily.

“This isn’t a joke. I can prove it,” you insisted smugly.

“Oh yea?” he scoffed before stalking forward and getting in your face before saying, “Prove it.”

“How far into the timeline are you? Have you found the Avatar yet?” you asked seriously.

“No,” you heard him growl in response.

“I see. Damn. Ok, well then I guess I’ll have to use something from your childhood,” you said to yourself as you thought about what to say.

Zuko stood and crossed his arms indignantly, his face still cold and expressionless as he waited for you to talk. Uncle Iroh was just watching the exchange go down silently.

“Oh I know!” you exclaimed happily.

You got to your feet so that you weren’t sitting by Prince Zuko’s feet. You met his eyes with a mischievous smirk.

“When you were little you jumped into a fountain on top of Mai to save her from a burning apple,” you said, your eyes glinting as you spoke.

Zuko let his arms drop as his expression dropped. He stood still as he registered what you said. His Uncle seemed surprised as well.

“You could have heard that story from gossip,” he argued weakly, causing you to roll your eyes again.

“If you don’t believe me I could tell you something else,” you suggested flatly.

He nodded slightly and you began thinking of another thing to say. You didn’t want to pick anything too intrusive, even if this was just a dream. You finally settled on something and smiled pleasantly.

“You have a knife that your Uncle gave you as a present before he returned home. It has an inscription on it that says ‘Never give up without a fight’ on one side,” you told him.

At this, Uncle Iroh’s eyes widened and he stood. Zuko hesitantly pulled the knife out of his armor and flipped it to the side with the inscription. He looked back at you with his mouth agape as his Uncle simply smiled at you.

“You really weren’t lying,” he said quietly.

The three of you stood silently, none of you sure where to go from here. All three of you had many burning unanswered questions, but for now all any of you could do was stand still. Where to go from here?

#zuko #prince zuko #prince zuko fanfic #prince zuko fanfiction #prince zuko fic #zuko imagine #zuko x reader

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mandareeboo · 5 years ago

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Unfinished Work #33: Molly meets Beefton

I was rewatching some Epithet Erased when I remembered this bad boy!!!! It’s actually mostly complete- it was gonna end on a note where Beefton took over the toy shop for the night, Sylvie is awkward and groggy in the morning, and he and Molly bond.

———————————————————————————————————–

Sylvie never quite gets around to calling the toy shop. He wants to, but everything hurts, and maybe he's just awkward by nature? It doesn't matter. The nice police lady calls Molly herself to make sure she's not too traumatized, and 'lets slip' the room he's in.

He wakes to enough toys to fill every child's dreams forever. Wooden trains and paints to color them, thread and various booklets on how to weave them into things, hot wheels out the ass, and enough yo-yos to corner the market. It's downright impressive. There's a card with a teddy bear on the front, and it says exactly what Molly had said to him before: thanks for helping, you're a good friend, here's toys to buy your silence about the Banzai Blasters, please don't tell Ms. Police Lady, love you, have a good day.

Okay, maybe Sylvie read into it a bit. Or a lot. He can recognize psychological flaws while still having them, alright.

(She never calls him, either.)

———————————————————————————————————

The toy store closes at eleven now, if you count what Molly has sharpie-scribbled onto the door sign. But those who've faced retail know that closing times are more challenging suggestion to those types of customers so she's often open until midnight or later. Her dad hasn't really said much about the whole 'captured and held hostage' thing, and Molly hasn't felt the need to explore it with him, but it's brought in heaps and heaps of customers. She's pretty sure they haven't made this much money since before mom died.

Which is great! Except. Someone dumb may have... filled dad in on in-app purchases. And maybe they're a bit more in debt than when they started. And maybe Molly's on her fifth redbull. And maybe that's okay? Because eventually she's either going to transcend or have a heart attack and both scenarios promise sleep, so she'll take it.

When there's a loud bang at the front of the store, Molly half-hopes the Banzai Blasters have come to kidnap her for-realsies. At least the Banzai Blasters have semi-decent uniforms. But the thing that comes lumbering up registers as a brown blur, far too tall for any of Giovanni's squad, so she'll just have to suck it up.

"LASSIE," the blur bellows. "YE'VE GOT FRIENDSHIP ISSUES TO WORK OUT."

"Oh dear god," Molly replies, feeling her shoulders begin to tense. "You're loud."

"I SPEAK IN ALL CAPS FOR EMPHASIS!" A beefy hand grabs her wrist. It's soft, she could pull away in a second, but honestly Molly's too dumbfounded to think of it. "ME OTHER HALF'S BEEN WHINING AND SULKING FER DAYS NOW, LASSIE! YE GOTTA FIX IT!"

"You're literally killing me with your voice."

"SEND 'IM A POSTCARD OR SOMETHING, I'M BEGGIN' YA!"

Molly salutes, cracks her sixth redbull, and says, "I go to the ancient ones now. Building blocks are aisle three."

The blur takes it from her with a derisive snort. "LASSIE, YE CANNE BE DRINKING THESE DEATH DRINKS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT. S'BAD FER YA!"

"I fear nothing but old ladies with carts."

"WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU SLEPT?"

Molly squints and tilts her head just right. "Oh. Beefton. I knew you were... something? Familiar. Yeah, that's the word. I can word."

Beefton considers her, then the red bull, then her again. He sets it aside. "I DIAGNOSE YOU WITH INSOMNIA," he bellows, but also is somehow a bit softer? It's a weird voice glitch, Molly thinks. "SELF-IMPOSED, I 'SPECT. LET'S GET YE TO BED."

"I've got to finish closing up the store," she mumbled, already slumping against the Epithet's waist.

"DOCTOR'S ORDERS, CHILD. I CAN HANDLE ANY THREATS THAT'LL COME IN THE NIGHT."

(When you're tired, a promise can basically do anything.)

#Unfinished Work #Epithet Erased #Molly Blyndeff #Sylvie Ashling #Dr. Beefton

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exosmuttytalk · 4 years ago

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Exo’s DO MV hairstyle rating: a comprehensive list

What is Love, 2012.

Probably the longuest DO’s hair ever been. Surprisingly, I don’t mind it. For some reason, the demarcation between the super long and super short hairs isn’t that stark. I like that. It looks super dated, tho.

Final rating: 5/10 KS

History, 2012.

A different version of the previous hairstyle but leaving the waves aside. I like it because it seems more achievable in his (probably) pin straight hair. Looks soft and fluffy :D

Final rating: 6/10 KS

Mama, 2012

Eh, no. He looks like a fluffy rhyno. What are those spikes on the sideburns? I bet all that fringe hair without gel to hold it flings straight into his eyes.

Final rating: 2/10 KS

Wolf, 2013

Let’s agree that everybody looked horrendous in Wolf. Like ma boy here who could be strutting the best catwalks in Syberia but the moment he stopped walking he’d freeze to death because he’s not wearing a coat. He looks like a fluffy mushroom and I wouldn’t eat one of those.

Final rating: 0/10 KS (Shame)

Growl, 2013

This must have been the “wildest” color KS’s ever wore, right? I don’t really know about this one. I can appreciate the attempt to change the color, as it’s very obvious he’s not one to experiment much with that sort of stuff. So A for effort. Now, that fringe is all messed up. When his hair falls down naturally without being gelled up he probably has strands sticking out in different directions and all different lengths.

Also, the more I stare at this picture, the more I can sense Uncanny Valley creeping from my toes up and I don’t like that.

Final rating: 3/10 KS

Miracles in December, 2013

Here KS has what in my language is called a bowl cut. I don’t even know if that’s the term in English and I don’t really feel like looking it up.

Either way, from what I’ve seen in the Korean media I’ve had access to is that this hairstyle seems to be super common among teens and young adults. That surprised me because where I am it’s a hairstyle reserved to little kids.

I understand the appeal, tho. He looks soft and cuddly despite having been ghosted. He’s not menacing (because you can’t see his brows). Makes you want to give him hot cocoa and bundle him up inside a big, soft, fluffy white blanket.

Final Rating: 8/10 KS

Overdose, 2014

So baaaad... I mean so gooooooooood.

I really like this one. It’s longer, but it’s longer in an unniform manner. Also, this looks like he’s woken up in the morning with each strand of hair in a different possition. He’s then washed his face and making sure he’s wetting his hair as well. He’s us’ed a comb to make a very precise parting but then hasn’t combed through the rest of the hair, so now that’s getting dry, all the strands are starting to stick up again.

That’s very relatable.

Final rating: 8/10 KS

Call me Baby, 2015

This is one of KS’s best looks and I will die on this hill.

It’s rather short. Blunt. Structured. Has a little flair but the flair is not too long that it sticks into his eyes. The color is natural and dark but has subtle golden and redish highlights. Looks very effortless. NOICE.

Also, filled in, strong eyebrows.

Final rating: 9.5/10 KS (Because there’s always room for improvement)

Love me Right, 2015

Ohh, yes. This is the second main contender to the first position, Again, to me this looks effortless, which is exactly the type of lifestyle I can see KS having. Chill, easy, no fuss, manageable. I woke up like this and I think I last brushed my hair two days ago. A natural man.

I love the styling too.

Bonus Chanyeol happily vibing in the brackground.

Final rating: 9,5/10 KS

Sing for you, 2015

KS is barely visible in this MV. You know he’s there; you can feel him looming ominously around the borders of every scene. You can hear his voice. But you can’t really see him. The natural darkness of a B&W video shot in a supposed snowstorm grants a shadow for him to disguise himself into.

That’s the reason why I’ve had to take those screenshots directly on the mv and why we can barely see his hair. But we can imagine. Looks shot and functional. Not so short and functional as it’s military counterpart. Seems like it would be nice to stroke it. It’s not flashy or attention grabbing. Discreet, but with a little room to play, represented as the spikiness of the fringe area.

Imma give this one a lower rating because I feel there’s another hairstyle that unites all those characteristics and that both KS and I like better.

Final rating: 8/10 KS

Lucky one, 2016

This is just a shorter version of the Sing for you supposed hairstyle. It’s alright. Although it’s a little bit lazy, I feel it fits the aesthetic of the video quite well. Clean and neat. I like how his perplexed expression during the beginning of this mirrors my own façade so well every time I rewatch this MV.

Final rating: 7/10 KS

Monster, 2016

The styling of the hair may be the exact same as in Lucky One, but I don’t really care. My eyes dart directly to the bruise on his cheeks and the scar on his eyebrow. The holes and burns on his clothes. There’s something really special in a rugged man for me.

Final rating: 8.5/10 KS

Lotto, 2016

This is a problem, because there’s two main stylings of which I hate the first one and really like the second one. In the first one, they obviously wanted him to look like he actually jumps into the cages with the roosters and physically trains them on fight. The second one looks pretty standard, soft and floofy. It’s shiny too and it looks healthy. Also I like the pirate like clothes styling here.

I’m conflicted.

Final rating: 4/10 KS

Dancing King, 2016

He doesn’t have a lot of screen time in this MV. Most of the time, he’s either on rehearsals or performing. He wears a lot of caps. I never really understand the purpose of a cap if you’re not out in the sun (or scaping fans and papparazzi). Seems easy to knock off accidentally, a gust of wind could suddenly come by and snatch it off your head. You are going to make it all sweaty because all that dancing and then you’re gonna have to stick it into the washing machine. Can you put a cap on the washing machine? Does it lose its shape or smth?

I digress. The cap is, despite all the previous reticence, one of the few accessories he seems to wear irl. So Imma going to give him a good rating for realism and for giving us a little more BTS content.

Final rating: 7/10 KS

Coming over, 2016

It was impossible to find still of the video but he wore the same styling as in this card, We have to set things straight. 2016 was a hell of a year. They released six different MVs, one of them a collaboration and one of them in japanese. There’s just not enough time for drastic hair changes. Hair doesn’t grow that fast. And it’s easier to leave the more lowkey members in a simple style so you have more time for the not that lowkey members. I get it. Imma a bit bored but I get it.

Final rating: 6.5/10 KS

Kokobop, 2017

Yeeeeees, the change we’d all been waiting for. Aaaaand I hate it. I dislike that his hair matches his jacket. I dislike the fact that even his eyebrows look color coordinated. If it wasn’t for the blue shirt, he’d look as if he had been passed through a sepia filter. Not into it.

Final rating: 3.5/10 KS.

Power, 2017

I love this whole look. Almost everybody’s looks, in fact. It seems like it was a very fun video shooting. We hadn’t seen a KS smile since love me right. He looks so young and playful, so boyish.

There’s not much to say about the hair. It’s all carelessly hidden under a crownless cap? and some other accessories, but we can appreciate he’s gone back to his natural color. Praise the stylist noonas.

Final rating: 7.5/10

Universe, 2017

Ahhh, my white whale in the shape of a head. You were short and fleeting, but at least there’s a MV and a whole film to remember you.

I love bald KS. I definitely don’t appreciate Eggsoo, but what’s not to love about a shaved head? Especially, his bald head. He’s extremelly symmetric and looks so uniform all around. It probably feels like a stroking a very dense but soft brush. He’s said himself he like this hairstyle. It’s strong. Durable. Reliable. Pragmatic. Still, soft, aesthetically pleasing. All KS really is.

I also love the lighting and the clothe styling in this MV, it’s like a honey and caramel wet dream.

Final rating: 9,5/10 KS

Electric Kiss, 2018

There’s not much to say about this either because it’s not easily visible. Looke like he has his sides shaven. The top is definitely longer but not a lot. Unceremoniously passes.

Final rating: 6/10 KS

Tempo, 2018

I think he looks specially good in tempo. Boyish but not too much. Longer hair, which is a change. The worst part is that he doesn’t have a lot of parts and even less screen time. I love how his lipstick matches the background.

Final rating: 7.5/10 KS

Love Shot, 2018

I love this. Men driving are a kink for me. Black hair, yes. Aviator jacket, yes. Strands of hair loosely framing your face, yes. You usual stoic expression, yes.

Final rating: 7.5/10

His final MV pre-enlistment was a success. Let’s hope for more good looks when he returns.

#exo #DO #do kyungsoo #exo hair #do hair #exo hairstyle

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siriusist · 5 years ago

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tagged by @anathenma WOO GIRL <3

rules: tag 10 followers you want to get to know better

name: Lauren

gender: Female

star sign: Virgo Sun || Leo Moon || Leo Ascendent, which basically means I have the usually quiet reserved personality of an analytical, organised virgo on the fact of things, am usually the goofy, chill friend amongst my friends, and don’t like to take anyone’s shit, but if I am disrespected, I’m a sensitive six foot flower and withdraw from the world until I can get over it. xD I don’t like conflict.

height: 183cm/6 feet

age: 27 (YIKES XD)

wallpaper on my phone: (I had to check XD) A calendar of May 2020 stylistically arranged around ribbons

house: Slytherin

ever crush on a teacher: Both my parents and my uncle are teachers and consequently I knew every teacher in my school as actual human people and not ‘crushes’ growing up. So no. XD

coolest halloween costume: I went as the Starbucks logo one year when I was eight, a gigantic Lady Luck die one year with a top hat covered in poker chips and cards. I had some good ones I made: I was creative as fuck when I was 9-11 especially, and I had to be, because I was already around 5′7 and people assumed I was just some weirdo dressing up to get candy (Hearing ‘AREN’T YOU A LITTLE OLD TO BE TRICK OR TREATING’ at eleven CRUSHED me XD)

Favorite 90s tv show:

Okay. So there’s one’s I watched actually as a child of the 90s, and ones that were just always ON in the 90s that I ended up watching. It’s debatable whether these are actually good NOW. XD

That being said, the background ones were Saved By the Bell (ZACH MORRIS IS TRAAAAassssh~~), Boy Meets World, Seinfeld, Everybody Loves Raymond.

As a kid, I loved the Aladdin Animated Series, The Hercules Animated Series, CHIP AND DALE RESCUE RANGERS (Which didn’t really hold up sadly but still has the best theme song of all time, fight me), and Timon and Pumbaa.

One I rarely caught but really liked was All That, The Wonder Years, Sabrina the Teenage Witch- occasionally Fresh Prince.

Out of all of these, I still have a super fond spot for Saved By the Bell, especially with the ‘Zach Morris is Trash’ series on Youtube (Seriously, go watch it. It’s fucking hilarious and basically breaks down how much of a serial killer in the making Zach Morris is XD). The clothing is ridiculous and no one really dressed like that in the early 90s outside of commercials and TV (unfortunately). Maybe one shoddy item out of the bunch. Meanwhile Saved by the Bell is like LETS PUT IT ALL ON. XD It was terrible once they got to college, but it was stupid and fun and made me feel ‘cool’ watching it because I was like three and being like, “YEAH, IT’S BRIGHT AND THESE PEOPLE ARE COOL AND I CAN FOLLOW THE PLOT. I’M MATURE.” XD It’s literally still the only one of these I actively watch now in the form of Zach Morris is Trash, so I’ll go with it. xD

Last kiss: Never had a consensual kiss. Make of that what you will. xD

Have you ever been stood up: Nope.

Favourite pair of shoes:

I have terrible plantar fasciitis from sports, so I’m a shoe snob, and have to have properly fitting/constructed shoes. It depends on what I’m doing in them, really. I got a pair of trail running shoes for trail running during COVID, but they’re not the most aesthetically pleasing. I’d say the best mixture between comfort and style are either a good ol’pair of black ankle boots with a slight heel (so I can be 6′2 and intimidate people with my height muhahahaha), or more practically on a day to day basis, I have a pair of Reeboks that are 90s-styled with pastel pink and blue triangles on the side. They’re pretty dope. xD

have you ever been to vegas: No, but my parents have. Basically, they said you tire of shopping after two days, and then you’re just stuck inside hotels and shopping malls there. If you’re not a gambler, drinker, or have a ton of money to splash out on stage shows, I don’t think it’s particularly worth going.

favorite fruit: Mango or raspberry, but they’re super-expensive in the land of Maple Syrup so I usually don’t get them any other way other than frozen in smoothies.

Favourite book:

I could never choose a favourite book. It’s literally like choosing between children. It’s my microcosmic version of Sophie’s Choice. xD Tasteless joke aside, it’d honestly depend on the occasion. There’s a huge difference between entertainment reading, literary exploits, and educating yourself through books as a whole.

My ‘plane’ book (which I’m terrible at flying, so that was a joke), as in, an easy, fun, instantly rereadable read to read on the plane when I used to have super long fifteen hour flights to Australia, was always Mario Puzo’s ‘The Godfather,’ because I also had a huge crush on Michael Corleone.

But it’s also not the ‘best’ book and literally spends an inordinate and honestly disturbing amount of time on the fact that this poor woman in the story (which thankfully in the film, it gets cut down), but the bridesmaid Sonny Corleone has sex with, and how you see his wife indicating his ‘size’?

THAT’S LITERALLY AN ENTIRE SUBPLOT OF THIS BROAD’S STORY I SHIT YOU NOT BECAUSE NOTHING IS ‘BIG’ ENOUGH FOR HER AFTER HIM AND THEN YOU FIND OUT SHE HAS A MEDICAL CONDITION AND GOOD FOR HER SHE’S ABLE TO FIND LOVE AGAIN BUT WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK MARIO PUZO XD IT WAS A LOT OKAY.

(Footnote: I also suffered through his horrific sequels because I love Michael Corleone and will take him in any form he comes in, even horrifically written Sicilian backhill exploits that were never told to us in the original book and were clearly just written because Puzo needed another pay check but I digress.)

Horrific subplots aside, I really enjoy The Godfather for its sheer pulpiness. The book is essentially what Andrew Lloyd Weber is to musicals. xD (Yes, I come with musical theatre burns. Fight me.)

In terms of a piece of literature that I think is amazingly well done? Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, or Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.

Stupidest thing you ever done:

Um, maybe when I was at Cambridge I tried to dye my roots to match the rest of my ‘blonde’ hair at the time, and it turned out bright orange? And because it’s Cambridge, they had this super-strict attendance policy, so I was literally trying not to hyperventilate because it was running close to class (which was across campus) and I was trying to find some way to remedy my hair without it falling out/ someone asking about it. So, I grabbed a toque-cap-thing despite it being literally one of the hottest summer on record in the UK (It was like 35 degrees, it was MENTAL), and had to sprint to class all the way on the other side of campus from my college dodging dodgy tourist groups blocking the sidewalk while I went. Then when I sat down inside, I had to be weirdly rude and wear my hat inside the lecture hall even though the professor was looking at me (it was a specialised program in German Literature) like, “Are you going to take that shit off?” xD THEN I tried to dye it back to brown, and it literally looked like mud mixed with a runny egg had exploded on the top of my head; it was AWFUL. XD So FINALLY I did my research and found a salon, but by THAT point I had done 250 pounds worth of damage to my hair (WHICH IS LIKE 400 DOLLARS CANADIAN AT THE TIME), and I almost had a heart attack and thanked my lucky stars that I had money put away so I could give my parents the ‘parent price’ when they asked why they hadn’t seen me on FaceTime or Skype for like, three weeks, and I replaced my face with a photo of John Cleese from Fawlty Towers, which they tease me about to this day. xD

The other dumbest thing I ever said was when I was so desperate for friends in grade six when I moved to a new school (and because being American was ‘cool’ at the time, apparently), I told everyone I was a dual citizen because my mother LITERALLY GAVE BIRTH TO ME ON THE BORDER CROSSING WHAT. XD And bless this poor bespectacled girl named Mara (who was actually a little class friend of mine), who just said timidly in the back, “That’s not how citizenship works.” xD It basically came out of attempting to be cool and failing, but I’m still SO embarrassed about THAT one that I’d never admit it to ANYONE besides shouting it out into the Tumblr black hole. xD I’m still embarrassed to THIS DAY.

All time favorite shows:

I’ll go for the original run of The Twilight Zone, which has some schmaltzy episodes (I’m really not a fan of any of the episodes entirely dedicated to the Space Race or the weird cowboy fanaticism of the fifties/ sixties, or anything that’s overtly like “ALIENS DID IT SO THERE”), but I LOVE their psychological horror episodes or Dystopian episodes. It’s when Rod Serling’s writing and narrative voice is the strongest and most prophetic, and the twists are usually the best. Other shows have tries to imitate it, or reboot it, but I really think the original, due to Rod Serling’s unmatchable voice, in every sense of the word. There’s lists of some of the greatest episodes, but I remember LOVING the episode ‘A Stop at Willoughby.’ The twist literally made me clap my hands in horror and delight, it was amazing. xD

Other than that? Off the top of my head, Mad Men and Band of Brothers, even though I haven’t rewatched either in ages.

last movie you saw in theaters:

Oh God, before all THIS hit? Probably Rise of Skywalker. I get agoraphobic and itchy if a movie theatre is too busy, and we only have really pokey sort of ones nearby that you’re guaranteed to see someone you went to high school with (terrible), so now that I can properly drive I go out to the big redneck theatre out in the boonies. I miss living in Montreal though, because when you live in a big city like that downtown (and can actually afford to live there), you could see blockbuster movies at like ten in the morning. xD Which would be AMAZING because I’d go to see any of the early Avengers/Marvel movies when they opened, the day of opening, and it was literally me, one old man who fell asleep halfway through and sat near the back, and maybe an elderly couple on a morning date to the movies. xD I get really annoyed with obnoxious movie-goers, and I’m really picky about just being completely absorbed in the movie, so I tend not to go unless I’m guaranteed that space.

tagging: Anyone who wishes to tag me back so I can learn about them <3

#meme #well god this was embarrassing #still hope you found something of interest in there though xD #personal #I indented the longer answers so this was somewhat cohesive

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sagebaileyspeaks · 5 years ago

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SPOILERS FOR FAR FROM HOME *** SPOILERS FOR FAR FROM HOME *** Well. They finally did it. Just when I thought I'd never learn to love again they brought along this precious baby.

I have forever been a Tobey fan and I will die on the "Tobey was the best Spiderman" hill HOWEVER watching this poor kid get kicked and punched and run over by a f*cking train brought out motherly instincts usually reserved for my child. And for context: I did not see Homecoming. The first time I saw this version of Spiderman was Civil War (the 1st MCU movie I'd seen since Iron Man) and the next time I saw him he was dying and the last time I saw him was a few months ago swinging back from the dead. This has been a hell of a ride. And I have to bring up Tobey's Spiderman because it is the lens through which I view Tom's. Now I rewatch the original Spiderman trilogy at least once a month and while I believed Peter could be killed as a kid, Tobey's portrayal is SpiderMAN, Tom's is SpiderBOY. I'm not going to say I care more when new Spidey gets hit, but there are moments in Far From Home where my anxiety about this fictional character went through the roof.

A huge reason for this is obviously Endgame. Because he just died you know they're not gonna kill him, but it seemed like they were gratuitously brutal to this young child. At one point, Mysterio actually says, "Well know I have to kill a kid," and proceeds to psychologically torture Peter through a series of illusions and push him back until he's hit by a TRAIN. Multiple times after getting hit/punched/knocked down you see him grabbing his ribs and coughing and I'm just in my seat going,"LEAVE THE BABY ALONE." Like seriously. When the train hit him I knew he wasn't dead but it damn sure fucked him up.

The train scene, in particular, reminded me of the first Spiderman when they're in that abandoned building and Goblin is beating the shit out of Peter and tries to MURDER HIM with blades. Except...look as a kid, I believed Tobey Maguire was a teenager but as an adult who has a small child, I see Tobey as an adult who can take punches. I see Tom as a kid who is being mercilessly beaten. And the fact that Nick Fury is in the background encouraging him to put his life on the line....like...he just did. Did you miss it?

Spiderman just saved the UNIVERSE after being dead for five years. I get it, he's a superhero but strangely enough the entire movie I just wanted to see Spiderman BE a teenager. Obviously, his entire character is "with great power comes great responsibility," but...he just...died. He just came back from the dead. Why are they putting the small child through this?

Brutality aside, this was a cool movie. It's nowhere near the highs of Spiderman 2 or Into the Spiderverse but out of the original trilogy and the Miles Morales film (haven't seen Homecoming, REFUSE to see The Amazing Spiderman) I rank it fourth.

1. Into the Spiderverse/Spiderman 2

2. Spiderman 2/Into the Spiderverse (I'm cheating I know)

3. Spiderman

4. Spiderman: Far From Home

5. Spiderman 3

But more ramblings: I've never been the biggest fan of Tony Stark and this movie is a prime example of why. Don't get me wrong, I respect his actions in Endgame but it seemed very odd to me that there were no murals of the rest of the Avengers. Of course, we also see that normal people don't actually know what the Avengers do. They call the snap the "blip," there's no mention of Thanos and they only comment on events secondhand. Which means no one - outside of the Avengers - knows about that giant battle at the former Avengers headquarters, but not one set up for Cap? Not one?

The opening scene of the tribute video made by high schoolers set to Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You"? Hilarious. Peter asking about Captain Marvel and Fury saying, "Don't invoke her name"? Great. That awkward quick kiss between Peter and MJ followed by two more kisses? Perfect. Peter's apparent love for Black women? Love it. J.K. Simmons as J. Jonah Jameson? I jumped out of my seat.

Like I said this was a really cool movie and a nice breather after Endgame. 9/10 Completely recommend....just see Toy Story 4 first.

#spiderman #spiderman far from home #spiderman far from home spoilers #far from home #far from home spoilers #tobey maguire #tom holland #marvel #movie review

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ghostbustermelanieking · 6 years ago

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praescitum chapter nine

chapter one, chapter two, chapter three, chapter four, chapter five, chapter six, chapter seven, chapter eight

casefile, season 10, season 11. part of my series that i write as i rewatch the x files.

Summary: As Mulder and Scully adjust to their reassignment to the X-Files and working together in the wake of their separation, they find themselves investigating a small town and a ghost that apparently warns people of bad things to come.

note: happy halloween! i actually started posting this story when i did to post this chapter on halloween, since it’s probably the most festive. but since i didn’t get as far in the story as i wanted to by this point, i’m going to kind of slow down my posting a little bit by waiting until i finish a later chapter to post the next one. i’m hoping to still be able to post at least one chapter a week, but idk if i’ll be able to keep up with that lol. those are the hopes!

warning for discussion of death in a (false!) historical context. i included fake historical people/historical battles in a real historical war.

---

nine.

october, 2016

If there's anything that Mulder and Scully are not used to, it's having a third presence on their stake outs. Back in the day, if they were staking out with someone else, said someone probably wasn't very happy about being stuck on a stakeout with them. (They've both heard plenty of “third wheel” gossip over the years, right along with the gossip about them being together long before they actually were.) Luckily, Scully notes, this time, they have what seems like a perfectly nice woman as their company. As much as she relishes the chance to have time alone with Mulder and inexplicably get paid for that time, it's better to share the time with someone who doesn't hate them. And Joy Seers seems like halfway decent company.

She gets takeout for everyone, fighting streets abuzz with Halloween traffic, cars and costumed pedestrians alike. She stops at a gas station and grabs a couple bags of M&M's as an added bonus for Mulder—in honor of the holiday, and because she's guessing they'll be here a while without much paranormal activity to entertain them. (She's still convinced that Ryan Caruthers, and maybe a few friends, are behind the whole thing. It makes much more sense than a diabolical ghost tormenting the entire town.)

Scully picks her way back to the school through streets crowded with pint-sized monsters, ghouls, and pop culture characters. Houses festooned in cobwebs and streamers and plastic skeletons. Kids in costumes holding onto their parent’s hands. At a stoplight near the school, she notices a kid on a bus bench. A familiar-looking kid with an Orioles cap pulled over his face.

She finds Mulder and Joy Seers in the classroom: Mulder setting desks and chairs upright, Joy propping a video camera up on the righted bookshelf. The room has been swept, most of the debris cleared; it looks like an empty skeleton of a room, bare walls and bare floors. “I brought food,” Scully says, sitting the plastic bags of containers on a desk.

“Thanks, Scully.” Mulder grins at her briefly overtop of a graffitied desk. She can tell he's enjoying this. He's probably been waiting for a case like this to fall on Halloween for a while. (“How do we always end up staking out haunted places on holidays, Scully?” he joked earlier, and she rolled her eyes, pointed out that this particular place is not haunted, absolutely not. Not the inn, not the school, not the town. She knows he's remembering their conversation last night, and she's hoping he won't bring it up. She feels silly just thinking about it.)

“Were the roads too bad?” Joy asks politely, squinting as she adjusts the angle of the camera. “I know they can be a little crazy on Halloween, especially in the fancier neighborhoods.”

“Not too bad,” says Scully, sitting at the desk. “Anything happen while I was gone?”

“Nothing yet,” Mulder says, sitting down at the desk beside Scully and smirking a little at her. She smirks right back.

“I was relying on our security system to prove whether or not there's any paranormal involvement, but it shorted out today,” says Joy with a touch of irony in her voice, climbing down from the chair and smoothing messy curls absently. “Convenient, huh? Principal thinks someone messed with it to cover up the crime, but we couldn't prove it; it just seems like a system malfunction. And he couldn't get anyone in here to fix it. So I'm setting up a camera in here since this has been the primary location of the activity. I'm hoping to catch some proof as to what this is, if anything happens.”

“That seems smart,” Scully offers. “Although it's strange that the security cameras would mess directly after a break-in.”

“It is,” Joy says, crossing her arms, “but the fact is that it was still working last night. Since my window lock was fixed, anyone who broke in would've had to use the halls. And the cameras showed nothing.”

“Someone could've been planning another break-in for tonight,” Scully comments.

“That's true.” Joy shrugs. “But everyone I talk to says it's just an issue with the computer system. We have the shittiest system, I swear. Anyways, we have this camera to catch anything strange that happens, paranormal or B&E's alike.”

Scully looks at Mulder, who shrugs. It does seem convenient to her—too convenient, especially considering Ryan's technical reputation—but she decides to let it go. She says, “Do we have any sort of plan past the camera?”

Mulder shrugs again. “Not really. I think we're just planning to… sit here.” He smirks at her a little, teasing her as he unwrapping the plastic silverware. “You are familiar with the method of a stakeout, aren't you, Scully?”

“Very much so,” she says dryly, resisting the urge to stick out her tongue.

Joy joins them in the clusters of desks, taking her food gratefully and thanking Scully. “I'm hoping that we'll be able to get something out of tonight,” she says, screwing the cap off of a water bottle. “I really am. Ryan's a good kid, and I hate that everyone's been putting the blame on him.”

“You really don't think there’s any possibility Ryan is behind this?” Scully asks, picking at her salad.

Joy shakes her head. “I never have. Aside from the fact that it seems improbable that a kid—albeit a pretty smart kid, but still—could pull this off, Ryan's always seemed like a good kid to me. I'm not close to Annie Caruthers, but she's always spoken highly of him whenever we see each other… And besides that, he's a model student. Aside from a bad attitude, I haven't seen any signs of delinquency from him. I almost can't believe he really set that fire.”

Scully bites her lower lip in consideration. “I think I saw Ryan outside on my way in,” she says carefully. “The intersection a block over.”

“Really?” Mulder asks, his eyebrows shooting up.

Scully nods. “I think,” she says, somewhat uncertainly. “He wears the Orioles cap, right?”

Joy taps her fingers on the desktop absently. “Probably just a coincidence,” she offers.

“It's a small town,” says Mulder helpfully. Scully pokes at a leaf of lettuce silently.

Mulder clears his throat awkwardly. “Have you ever considered that this… activity might be the result of possession of some sort? Some mixture of Ryan Caruthers and the ghost?”

Scully swallows back the urge to scoff.

“You think Ryan's possessed?” Joy asks, almost incredulously. “By the Specter?”

He shrugs. “Possession can sometimes give humans a power they wouldn't normally have. I've seen it before. That would explain how Ryan was able to get in and out of the school without being detected, how he would be able to move those heavy desks.”

Joy Seers looks uncertain, skeptical. “I suppose that could be the case, but I doubt it,” she says. “I've never heard of any possessions in the history of the legend. And I still just don't think Ryan's involved. Besides his prior history with the ghost, of course.”

Scully hmms in response quietly, sticking the fork in her mouth. She hasn't known what to make of this case since they got it a year ago, and she certainly doesn't know what to make of it now. Mulder shrugs, surprisingly nonplussed, as if he doesn't know what to make of this either.

“I guess we just wait now,” Joy says, and it's almost a question, a clarification. “Wait to see what happens next.”

They nod, nearly in unison.

Their forks scrape at the Styrofoam containers in the new quiet. The setting doesn't seem to align with the stunning silence all around them, the echoey hallways and dim classroom. As a child, Scully used to get scared in big empty buildings, especially in the huge church they used to attend in San Diego, all the looming, empty halls and the almost eerie paintings of Christ. She's gotten past that now, of course, but the oddness of being in an empty school has nearly brought it back. Right now, in all this empty and quiet space, with the small sounds in the hall as the sun sinks below the horizon, she can almost understand why people might think this school—even this town—is haunted.

---

It's getting dark now, the familiar October chill in the air. Ryan clenches his chattering teeth, beginning to regret not wearing the skeleton costume from last year. It's dorky as hell, but it's warm, he sweated buckets at last year's party. And it helps with appearances. He's just wearing a hoodie and jeans right now, no costume of any kind.

He got some candy earlier, even with the disapproving looks (either because he's too old to trick-or-treat, or because he set a fire), and so he unwraps a mini Snickers bar now and takes a bite. He's thinking about turning around and going to the party he told Annie he was going to. He should probably go to the damn party. He still has friends somehow, despite everything, and this is not the right way to spend Halloween. It might be spooky, but honestly, Ryan got tired of the horror movie bullshit at about six or seven. (He hates scary movies, scary stories, any of that stuff that makes him think about the empty eyes of the parents he'll never know and ghostly light on his bedroom walls.) He's nearly convinced, gets his bag up off of the bench and is about to walk away when his fingers brush over an envelope sticking out of the top. The letter from his Uncle Jared.

He swallows, sits down so hard his legs hurt. Shakes his head hard until he's good and resigned. He has to do this. He doesn't have a choice.

He rummages in his bag until he finds the stick-on tattoos and the bottle of water. Follows the directions as he applies them to the back of his hands.

---

Scully will admit, once again, that she's really, really not used to sharing stakeouts with other people; some of her favorite memories of working with Mulder are when they were alone on a stakeout. But they've been sitting in the school for several hours, and she has to say, it's a lot better than she expected. Aside from their opinions on ghosts, it turns out that she and Joy Seers have a lot in common. They discuss their college degrees—biology and pre-med are vastly different, but they took similar grueling science classes and can exchange stories about hellish professors��and Joy asks about the cross around Scully's neck, the one similar to her own. “Oh,” says Scully in surprise, reaching down to touch the cross, and the ring that hangs beside it. (Thank God she didn't ask about that; that'd be a fairly awkward conversation for all of them. Mulder doesn't wear his ring that she knows of, which she has no idea how to take, but at least it fields the Oh, are you two married? questions. A little.) “Oh, my mother gave my sister and myself these necklaces the Christmas I was fifteen. I've worn it ever since.”

She leaves out the occasions where she'd given it to her daughter and it was the only part of her They left behind, and when Mulder had worn it through both of their abductions. (She put the ring on the chain beside her cross when she stopped wearing it because it felt stunningly appropriate, that it lie beside something that had meant so much to both of them over the years. Sometimes she felt like she could feel Mulder in her cross as much as she could in the ring.)

Joy smiles a genuine smile. “Oh, that's wonderful,” she says. “Mine was a family heirloom. It was my grandmother's.”

Scully smiles back, a little easier than she might've a few months ago. It's getting easier to remember her mother, and concentrating on the happier memories does help. “It's beautiful,” she offers.

“Thank you—so is yours.”

Mulder stays politely quiet through most of these interactions, but he speaks up sometime in the fourth hour of their vigil. “Ms. Seers—” he starts.

“Call me Joy, please,” Joy says immediately.

“Joy,” Mulder says. “I remember when we met yesterday, you said something about there being more than one way to interpret the Willoughby Specter story.”

“Oh, right.” Joy throws out an absent grin. “That famous touchy spot. Especially around here.”

“I sense that people don't agree with you?” Scully asks, thinking of Robbie O'Connell's and the sheriff's claims that the ghost is angelic. Ryan Caruthers's claims that the ghost is anything but. The disdain she's seen in response to that skepticism. Personally, she can't really tell why the demeanor of the ghost matters, one way or another.

“I don't know if they do or don't. I haven't made any particular claims about the skepticism.” The other woman shrugs. “My husband is a historian, though,” she adds. “He's done some research into the subject, and we've discussed it before. The origins of this ghost aren't quite as black and white as everyone would like to believe.”

Mulder's interest is piqued—more than piqued, Scully can tell. “Would you mind sharing?” he asks.

Joy shakes her head. “The fame of the ghost just so happens to be intertwined with the origin of this town,” she says. “The name Willoughby comes from a Revolutionary War leader, General Samuel Willoughby. He's hailed as a hero, especially around here, considering he led his soldiers to victory in a battle right around this area. The legend got started when Willoughby published a book of his journals and letters during the war. In the journal entry dated the night before the battle, he speaks of seeing a 'specter’ who brought about feelings of foreboding and dread. This convinced him that he was doomed to die on the battlefield the next day, and his soldiers doomed to lose. So he changed his plans.”

“He survived the battle,” Scully says knowingly—she knows how these legends always go. “And he led his men to victory, and people attributed that victory to the Specter. Which is where the legend originates."

Joy nods. “But what most people don't acknowledge is how costly that victory was,” she says. “Over half of Willoughby's soldiers lost their lives, including his brother. As well as several civilians who unfortunately lived in the area and got caught up in the battle. And that's not to mention the British casualties. Personally, that's not my definition of angelic, especially considering the death of his brother.”

Mulder chuckles briefly, rubbing thoughtfully at his mouth. “It's not exactly mine, either.”

“People see what they want to see,” says Joy. “Someone comes to warn them of something bad coming, people want to think they have good intentions. That there's some way to be prepared.”

Scully hardens her face until it is stony, trying not to show her cards. Spreads her fingers out flat on the table and tries to think of anything but that night before her mother died. Mulder is nodding in agreement, and she's glad that he's distracted by this story, that he won't notice and start asking questions again. “So you don't think the ghost has… good intentions?” he asks Joy.

“Does a ghost have intentions?” Joy laughs. (Along the same line Scully has thought on in this case.) “But no, I don't. Personally, my husband and I have discussed it before, and we think that the ghost is demonic.”

“Demonic?” asks Mulder.

“Yeah. My husband has studied a lot of local history, and he found a court record corresponding to a diary entry from the judge in the early settlement that more or less became Willoughby. It speaks of a man who was convicted of the murder of his wife. He was scheduled to hang, but he disappeared from his prison cell the night before, despite two guards being posted outside. The man had been fairly wealthy and prosperous, and he had a fair amount of money stored away in his house, where they'd also found many signs of what they considered witchcraft and devil worship. All the more reason to execute him, they'd said. But after he disappeared, so did the money.” Joy takes a sip of her water bottle. “They found him two months later, dead in the mountains with no clear cause. All of his money on him. A lantern burning beside his body despite the snowstorm raging around him.”

Scully raises her eyebrows in a halfway interested response—it’s an interesting story, even if it sounds false. Mulder says, “And you think that's the Specter?”

“A ghost has to come from somewhere, right? It makes sense to me, especially that lantern detail. The details about his escape and discovery, as well as the trial records, lead me to believe this man had made a deal with the devil, for lack of a better term. And this is more or less his due he has to pay: bringing bad luck to the inhabitants of Willoughby.”

Mulder hmms under his breath. “That's a great theory,” he says. “And it makes a lot of sense, at least in my mind. It would be consistent with Ryan Caruthers's claims.”

“There’s discussion of 'the local devil worshipper’ in local folklore, but it's not as widespread. And since it took place a full century before, no one in the town ever connected the story with the Specter. But I've always thought it made a lot of sense,” says Joy. “And with everything that's happened here at this school, I've got to say, it makes even more sense to me now.”

“What do you think, Scully?” Mulder asks, and his hand is suddenly on her arm. He's noticed how silent she's been.

Scully grits her teeth and shakes off the thoughts of her mother and her cross and that fucking hallucination or dream or whatever she had before her mother passed away. Forces a smile. “I suppose it could be plausible…” she says, “... if ghosts were real.”

Mulder scoffs jokingly. “I can understand your skepticism, Agent Scully,” Joy says kindly. “Even i—”

They're cut off by the sound of distant crashes, somewhere in the building.

Scully's eyes dart to Mulder. “Did you…”

“Yeah,” he says, already standing. “Joy, do you have any idea…”

“I'm really not sure,” she says. “Maybe the cafeteria?”

More crashes, louder this time. “Split up, clear the halls?” Mulder asks, and Scully nods.

“Joy, you stay here, okay?” she says, standing and reaching for her gun, just in case. “Keep an eye out, call us if you need help.”

Thankfully, Joy doesn't argue; she just nods. “Do you really think you need that?” she asks, gesturing to the gun with her chin.

“Hopefully, no,” Scully says. “But it's a good precaution. In case whoever—or whatever—is destroying your classroom is dangerous.”

---

Mulder and Scully split up outside of Joy Seers's classroom; she goes through the west wing, and he goes through the east. The school is stunningly dark, the halls admittedly eerie, and Mulder is inadvertently reminded of the case years ago that he can barely remember the details of outside of the fact that a satanist PTA tried to kill him and Scully in a high school gym shower. He shudders involuntarily; that doesn't seem like a good line of thought after discussing a ghostly devil worshipper.

He's most of the way down the hall when he hears it: the creaking of a door hinge behind him. He whirls around to see the door of an English classroom hanging open in the circle of his flashlight.

Immediately, he sweeps his flashlight up and down the hallway, but it's completely empty.

Mulder swallows roughly, ignoring the chill spreading over him. He starts to turn back around when the door slams closed hard. He jumps, his hand flying to his holster automatically. Still nothing there; no signs of life, or things notably not alive.

“Hello?” he calls out, sweeping his flashlight up and down the hallway, feeling equal parts silly and determined. He's about to make some plea for the ghost to show itself when he hears another slamming sound, almost smaller than the last one. And then another, and another. The lockers lining the hallways are opening and closing, their slams cacophonous and engulfing. Mulder scans the hallway in frantic confusion, looking for any signs of the Specter, not sure if he really wants to see it or not, considering its legacy. But he still finds nothing, invisible hands moving the lockers as they slam, the cabinets shaking and rattling in place as if affected by an earthquake. Fascinated, Mulder stares, not wanting to look away, wanting to call Scully to get in here and see this. But before he can do anything, his flashlight flickers once, twice, and dies in his palm.

The lockers’ motion fades out as Mulder's breathing grows more erratic, maybe even fearful. The hallway seems darker without the flashlight, pitch black. He smacks the flashlight against his palm in an effort to get it working again, to no avail. “Shit,” he mutters, dropping the flashlight to his side and rubbing at his temples with his free hand.

And then from behind, he hears the scritching sound of a lit match. Golden firelight, small but unquestionably the brightest thing in the room, comes to life behind him, reflected on the metal lockers.

His heart in his stomach, Mulder whirls. He sees it almost immediately, it's unmistakable. He can't make out a face, but he doesn’t have to. It matches every description he's ever heard.

The Specter stands at the end of the hall, lantern held up like some kind of lamplighter.

Mulder's breathing is shallow, erratic; where the hell is Scully when stuff like this happens? He's dying to take a picture, but he knows that will likely only cause problems.

Instead, he draws closer, flashlight dead and useless in his hand, heart thudding against his ribs. The Specter doesn't move. He seems to be surveying Mulder, sizing him up, but somehow, Mulder can't allow himself to worry about that. He goes closer and closer, carefully, as if trying to calm a stray dog. “I know what you are,” he calls. “I know what it is you do.”

The Specter seems unaffected by this. He stands still, his face shadowed, his lantern flickering.

“Do you speak?” Mulder asks, thinking of the ghosts in that haunted house that one Christmas Eve. (If that was real; he and Scully have disagreed about it forever.) “What do you want?”

The ghost remains silent. Mulder's shoes creak on the tile floor as he steps closer, his palms sweaty around the flashlight. The Specter seems to be regarding him, considering.

When Mulder is about three feet away, the ghost's mouth contorts, dipping into a frown. Disapproval. A sudden fear plunges through Mulder's chest, nervousness—what does disapproval mean?—as he remembers Joy Seers's theory that the ghost is demonic. He is about to ask, again, what the Specter wants, when the lantern flickers out.

In a completely impulsive move, Mulder stumbles forward, absurdly swiping at the space where the Specter is. He feels nothing, and he doesn't know if it has disappeared or is still there. Breathing hard, he stands awkwardly in place, his hand curled around the useless flashlight.

And then he hears a pained yelp, down the hall the way he came from.

---

Scully is in the ninth grade wing when she hears it again: the crashing sounds down the hall to the right of her. She follows the sound, flashlight held out in front of her and gun held down by her side. There's a sound almost like banging, a clattery sound like something being dragged over the floor. Scully comes face to face with the double cafeteria doors, where the sound is louder, and pushes it open with a loud clang.

There's a startled shout, and then the smack of a body hitting the floor. Rounding the table blocking the body from view, Scully shouts, “Freeze, FBI!” completely on instinct.

“Shit!” The kid—Ryan Caruthers, Scully notes with an emotion somewhere between satisfaction and disappointed—scrambles to his feet, his ankle caught in a cafeteria chair. His face turns up towards Scully, full of regret and panic as he curses quietly under his breath: “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

Scully puts away her gun with a sigh—somehow, she doubts she needs it. “Ryan?” she says, somewhat sternly. “Ryan Caruthers?”

“I had no idea you'd be here,” Ryan says miserably, untangling himself from the chair.

“So you wouldn't have come if you'd known?” Scully asks. He doesn't answer, just rubs at his face with the heel of his hand. “No one's ever been here when you've done this before, right?” she prods.

“I haven't done this before,” Ryan snaps, glaring at her. “I know what you think of me—believe me, I know what everyone thinks of me—but I swear to shit, this is the first time.”

“How did you get in?” Scully asks, still firm. “The window in Mrs. Seers's room is fixed.” She remembers in a split second, as Ryan answers, that the window was fixed before the destruction of the classroom the night before, and mentally curses.

“I jimmied open another window,” Ryan says, sounding disgusted. “The windows in here are shit, the locks are awful… And I'm telling you, I've never done this before.”

“Then why did you come here tonight, Ryan?” Scully fixes the kid with the sternest look she can muster up. “Knowing that people believed you had broken in before?”

Ryan's face turns red, and he ducks his head. His hand shoots through the air as he reaches down to untangle himself from the chair, and Scully sees the same cross tattoo on the back that she remembers from last year. “I… was worried about what was going to happen,” he nearly mumbles. “Because of the ghost. I thought something bad might happen to someone, and I wanted to come here and try to stop it.”

Scully's stern demeanor falls, just a little. She doesn't know why, but it does. She asks gently (not too gently, of course—only a bit more gently), “How did you think you could stop it, Ryan? What did you think was going to happen?”

“Does it matter?” Ryan snaps venomously. “Aren't you going to arrest me now? Agent Sully, or whatever your name is?”

“It's Scully,” she says automatically, and is ready to say more, when she hears a distinctly female shout from somewhere in the building. Joy, she thinks immediately, and mentally curses herself and Mulder for leaving a civilian alone in a potential crime scene. Even if she doesn't believe in the ghost.

Ryan jumps at the sound, startled. “What was that?”

Hoping briefly that Mulder will get there sooner, that Mulder is okay, Scully says, “You know what, Ryan? I should take you in, but this is all very juvenile, and Mrs. Seers has vouched for you multiple times. So I'm going to look the other way.”

The kid looks stunned. Beyond stunned. He says, “Are you serious? Why are you doing this?”

She doesn't know why, she really doesn't. Outside of the face that is stuck at the back of her brain, along with pain and death and visions of the end of the world. Her son out there, somewhere, and she shouldn't let it affect her work, but… She says, “Look, I need to go. If you're still back here when I come back, I'm taking you in. If I ever catch you doing something like this again, my first call will be to Sheriff O'Connell. Do you understand?”

His face white, Ryan nods. Unwilling to wait any longer—unwilling to linger or analyze why the hell she did that, she really can't believe it—Scully turns and heads the other way, back to Joy Seers's classroom.

Inside, she finds all the fluorescent lights flipped on, Joy sitting in a chair heaving air like she is going to run out and Mulder crouched on the floor. Scully runs straight to her side. “Are you okay?” she asks, kneeling to examine the prominent red line on Joy's neck. “I'm a doctor, I can help you.”

Joy waves her off absently. “I'm okay, I'm okay,” she says, her voice only a little rough. “My necklace… it was being tugged, by I don't know what. It was choking me, and then it just broke.”

Mulder stands, the broken silver chain in the palm of his hand. “I saw it,” he says, and his voice is filled with some panicked emotion that Scully can't quite place. “It was being pulled by an invisible force, Scully, she was choking and it was just held up in the air. By nothing. And then it just snapped.”

Joy takes the necklace, muttering, “Damn,” under her breath. She rubs at her forehead, her eyes, in a tired sort of way. “I'm okay,” she reassures Scully again. “Scared me more than anything. I guess I have my proof now that the Specter is hostile.”

She laughs briefly, but Mulder doesn't, and Scully doesn't know how to ask why. She stands up a little reluctantly—she’d have preferred to check Joy a little more, but she really does seem fine, she's waving her off insistently—and dusts her palms off on her pant legs. “Deep breaths,” she says gently. “Try to stay calm.”

Joy clears her throat a few times, rubbing her neck with her empty hand. “So did you find anything, Agent Scully?” she asks raspily. “I heard more sounds in the cafeteria.”

Mulder looks at her curiously, but Scully doesn't know how to tell them what she saw, much less explain what could've convinced her to let Ryan go. She lies, “I think some furniture may have fallen over. I didn't see anything.”

---

They leave the school after that. There doesn't seem to be much point in staying. They have the video in the classroom, and therefore proof. Joy seems spooked by the whole encounter, seems to have lost interest in all of it—she thanks them profusely in the parking lot, but says that she doesn't see any need for them to stay if they don't want to. “I guess I can call you if anything else happens,” she says, “but I don't know if there's anything else you can do. And I'm sure you have more important work to get back to.”

Mulder doesn't bother telling her that they probably don't—he’s almost sure that Scully shares Joy's opinion, that the lack of an actual crime here doesn't justify their position. They shake Joy's hand and get in their car to head back to the hotel.

They're both quiet on the drive. Mulder can't get past what happened in the hallway, his encounter with the Specter. At the time, he'd mostly been fascinated, caught up in the excitement of seeing an actual ghost, but now, all he can think of is the other part of the legend. The part that promises that something bad will happen if you see the Specter. He drives back to the hotel with a precise carefulness that Scully doesn't seem to notice—she seems as lost in her own thoughts as him, fidgeting with her hands in her lap. He keeps sneaking glances at her, as if something is going to steal her away, because by his count, the only two people besides him who could be affected by the Willoughby Specter and his bad omens are Scully and William. He doesn't relax until they get back to the hotel, and even then, it is a cautious relaxation. He's extraordinarily glad that they are sharing a room.

He waits until they get up to the room to say it. He nearly blurts it out—he says, “Scully, I saw it,” and it feels like an exhale.

Scully, in the act of peeling her coat off, freezes. He can see the muscles of her back, can tell how tense she has suddenly gotten. “What?” she says.

“The Specter,” he says. “I saw the Specter, Scully, in the halls. It disappeared just before something pulled at Joy's necklace.”

Scully isn't looking at him. She drapes her coat over the back of the chair, her knuckles nearly white as she clutches it. “It's not that I… don't trust what you saw, Mulder,” she says carefully, her nails scuffing the side of the jacket. “But… are you sure that's what you saw? That it couldn't have been some kind of… projection?”

Twenty-odd years ago, this skepticism would've driven him mad. Now, he pretty much expects it. But it feels like there's something different here, some unusual emotion. The familiar stubbornness, and then something else layered under it. Almost fear. He wonders if it is because of the legend, the implication that something bad will happen to him. He swallows, reaches out and brushes a slow hand over the small of her back as if trying to offer comfort. “I really think it was,” he says. “It couldn't have been a projection, it was too… It couldn't have been.” She's still not looking at him. He flattens his palm against her back, rubs a circle with his thumb. “I don't know what that means, Scully,” he says softly. “Whether or not it's…”

“It probably means nothing, Mulder,” Scully says immediately. She finally turns towards him, and her expression is guarded, but she reaches out and squeezes his arm. “It'll be fine,” she says softly, firmly. Leans forward and kisses his cheek. “I'm going to take a shower, okay?” When she draws back, she won't meet his eyes. He watches her go into the bathroom, until the door closes behind her.

He showers next, tries to shed the thought of more misfortune, but he can’t quite shake the thought of it. After everything they've been through, he can't imagine going through more, even if it is a bit inevitable at this point. He doesn't know if he could bear it. Especially if whatever misfortune the Specter brings involves losing his wife or son. (He is praying it's something trivial, like a flat tire, or someone breaking into his house.)

When he exits the bedroom, Scully is lying in bed on her side, facing the wall. He climbs in behind her, touches her shoulder gently and briefly before settling in. He's ready to fall asleep and try and forget the whole thing, give Scully her space, but she rolls over first, rolls towards him until they're facing each other. “Ryan was in the school,” she says. “In the cafeteria. All that crashing around was probably just from him breaking in.”

His eyebrows raise in surprise. “Seriously? What happened, did he get away?”

“No.” She bites her lower lip, looking away from him. “Sort of. I… I decided to give him a warning.”

His expression shifts to confusion. “A warning?”

“Yes.” She is almost squirming, avoiding his eyes. “I… I don't know why. It just all seems so silly, the whole thing. And he insisted that this was the first time he had broken in. But I told him if I ever caught him doing that again, I'd call the police without hesitation.” She rubs at her forehead with embarrassment, her voice full of shame. “The security system was out, though. We hopefully don't have to worry about it ever getting back to Skinner.”

“Do you believe him?” Mulder asks, astonished and trying like hell not to show it. He's more surprised than angry, it doesn't really matter to him, but he can tell how foolish Scully feels and he hardly wants to make that worse. “That it was his first time?”

Scully rubs her forehead again, presses her palm over her eyes. “I honestly don't know, Mulder. I really do think that he's involved in this… it makes the most sense. I don't know how or why, but I hope he gets his act together. I… I hope that I've made this better instead of worse.”

“I definitely think Ryan has something to do with this,” says Mulder quietly, reaching out to squeeze her shoulder, “but I don't think it's the same way that you think so. I think he's a… catalyst of sorts. I think he has a connection to this ghost, and I can't put my finger on it. But I think Joy Seers was right. I think there's more to the legend than people take at face value. And I don't think that Ryan was responsible for what was happening in that school.”

Scully yawns, burrowing down into the covers. “Whether there is or there isn't, it doesn't really matter, does it?” she mumbles, sounding like she wants to drop the subject. “We're going home in the morning. I just hope that no one finds out what happened.”

“Yeah,” he agrees, quietly, and reaches over to turn out the light. They settle in next to each other in the dark, their arms pressed together, hands side by side. Mulder swallows, bumping his finger against hers absently. The adrenaline of the night hasn't completely left him, the implications of his encounter in the hall, and he's grateful that she is close by. As if that can prevent everything bad from happening.

“Do you think I made the wrong decision?” Scully asks softly, and that shame is still in her voice. “To let Ryan go instead of taking him in?”

“No, I don't,” he tells her honestly, covering her hand gently with his. “I think that isn't nearly the worst thing we've gotten away with on the job.” She chuckles at that, and he grins. “I don't see why anyone ever has to know about it,” he adds. “The cameras are out, and I'm not planning to tell anyone. And I'm sure Ryan will keep it to himself. You may have given that kid another chance that he'll take.”

“Mmm,” Scully says, and he can tell by her voice that she is tired. “It feels so convenient, the cameras. Especially considering how much I asked about them earlier. Mulder, I bet Ryan either knew about the system being down or took it down himself, if this really was the first time he'd broken in.”

“Hmm,” he says softly. “Maybe.”

“I guess I just didn't think he was dangerous,” she whispers. “I feel so foolish. I feel like I haven't done my duty as an FBI agent. I don't know what I was thinking.”

“You don't have to know,” he says, and he intertwines his fingers with hers. “You don't.”

She makes a small sound that indicated she disagrees with him, but she doesn't argue. Their elbows bump together companionably. Her palm is cool under his. They fall into quiet again, hands clasped together under the sheets.

Mulder matches his breathing to hers, calm, and he is nearly asleep when he hears a low whistling sound, akin to a moan. The shutters of the windows rattle.

A sudden panic shoots through him at the noise. “Scully, did you hear that?” he whispers.

“It's the wind,” she says, her voice sleepy but hard. “Just the wind, Mulder.”

The wind howls against the glass again and Mulder shivers, crawling closer to Scully. “You sure?” he asks, and she nods, almost growly in her delivery. Scully does not fuck around when she is tired, and he senses she's already in a bad mood from the Ryan Caruthers thing.

But the sound is too human, too eerie, and Mulder can't ignore it. He never thought he'd be this much in regret because of a supernatural encounter, but this is the kind of thing that is too hard to let go. He's as embarrassed as Scully about tonight—embarrassed about how badly he wanted to see the ghost, and embarrassed (and fearful) of the repercussions it will bring.

He drops a light, impulsive kiss on Scully's hair before curling up closer to her than before. He doesn't particularly want to leave Scully anytime soon, not if he can help it. Not with the wind howling like that and with the eerie figure of the Specter hovering at the back of his mind. It's silly, but considering how their last run-in with ghosts went, he doesn't think he's overreacting. He holds her hand tight and lays close to her, and she doesn't protest, and he thinks that is what gives him the courage to say what he says.

He says, nose against her hair, hand on her waist: “Scully, do you want to come back to the house with me tomorrow?”

She says nothing; the only sign of surprise is the slight lilt in her breathing. He adds quickly, “Just… to look over that tip I got last week. The one about the river creature?”

“Oh?” Scully asks, and her voice is very nearly coy. “It doesn't have anything to do with what happened tonight?”

He rubs his nose into her hair; he is moving entirely on impulse now. “If it did,” he says softly, “would it change your answer?”

She's quiet. He can hear every breath. It goes on for so long that he begins to consider pulling away, but she hasn't let go of his hand yet.

Finally, she says, “I hope you're ready. I've been thinking of lots of rebuttals for your river creature theories.”

He laughs, a little nervously, a little relievedly. She squeezes his hand once before letting go. She shifts a little in bed, turning over on her side, but she doesn't move away. His chest is against her back, his arm against her hip, and she doesn't move away.

The wind wails and the shutters rattle, and he thinks that the heat must be broken because he's freezing, but they're together, and she's warm. She is so warm, and she's here, and he loves her. He presses his cheek briefly to the back of her head before settling in to go to sleep.

---

Joy leaves the broken necklace on her desk. It's so dark out, she'd probably just lose it, and she couldn't do anything with it tonight, anyway. She feels nearly naked without it around her neck, but she feels equally relieved at the absence. Her breaths are still ragged, her neck still stinging, her heart still pounding. She can't quiet leave the fright of the moment, sweat slicking her palms, a shivery feeling up her spine. She just wants to get home and fall asleep for a few hours before she'll have to wake up and go back into school. She realizes that tonight hasn't exactly made any progress in the way of getting this ghost out of her classroom, and her temples throb. Tonight seemed like an ending, but she doesn't see why it would be. The ghost is likely still there.

She rubs at her eyes with exhaustion, texts her husband to let him know she'll be home soon and starts her car.

The streets are dark, orange and black streamers hanging limply from street lamps and candy wrappers littering the streets. Joy yawns, making a left turn. Driving in the dark has always given her the creeps. She likes to think it's the product of moving to the country after growing up in the city: no lights, no noises, just endless black and silence. She turns on her brights, just because no one else is on the road, and hums absently to herself, drumming her fingers on the dashboard.

All of a sudden, out of nowhere, the radio springs to life. It's playing Monster Mash, and Joy never thought a goofy song like that would bring as much terror as this one does, because her hands were nowhere near the dial.

Spooked, frantic, Joy tries to reach out with her right hand and turn it off, but she can't move. Her hands are frozen, her wrists achey and her fingers spasming around the wheel in her attempts to move, but it's to no avail. She can't reach over and turn off the radio.

Her eyes yank from side to side frantically, the only part of her body she seems to be able to move. And then her foot moves without her meaning to. She presses down harder on the gas, increasing her speed far past the limit.

Joy tries to thrash, tries to break her hands free from the wheel or her foot from the gas, but she still finds herself frozen, helpless. She can't decrease the pressure. The bouncy sound of Monster Mash continues, too loud, echoing in her eardrums. She whimpers, just a little, as she shoots past 70 in a 35 zone. At least there are no other cars in front of her.

Her eyes jerk again, almost painfully, and land on the rearview mirror. There's no one on the road behind her, but there is a shape in the back seat. A hulking, humanoid shape that seems to be watching her.

Joy's breath catches in her throat, unable to take her eyes away, unable to look away. She is helpless. She can't make out the face of whoever, or whatever, is in the backseat, but she thinks it may be smiling. Smiling maliciously.

The next thing she knows, the shape seems to be lunging at her. Her hand suddenly moves, not of their own accord, swerving the wheel hard to the right.

The next thing she knows, everything is going black.

---

November 1, 2016

Willoughby Daily Press; Willoughby, Virginia

SEVERE CAR CRASH ON PINE TREE ROAD LAST NIGHT

Last night, a car swerved off Pine Tree Road and flipped in the adjacent field. The accident was estimated to take place a few minutes before midnight.

The car belongs to a Mrs. Joy Seers, who was reportedly driving the car when it crashed. Mrs. Seers reportedly obtained major injuries, and was transported to Willoughby General Hospital from the scene. No one else was harmed in the wreck.

Seers's husband was contacted, but declined to comment on his wife's condition. According to a source who requested to stay anonymous, Mrs. Seers is in a coma at Willoughby General, and it is unknown when she is expected to wake up.

The Willoughby Police Department declined to comment on the accident. It is assumed that no foul play was involved, although this is unconfirmed.

#xf rewatch #xf fanfic #i wrote this

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once-upon-a-ouat · 6 years ago

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OUAT Rewatch 1x03 “Snow Falls”

I feel like this episode slowed down a bit because they wanted to give us a bit of Snow and David’s story. They mostly focused on making parallels between the Enchanted Forest and Storybrooke to show us that Snow and David’s love transcended even the Curse. David being in a coma was a parallel of Snow being under the sleeping curse and she woke him up by reading him their story and then saved him by performing a mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on him. That was awesome because it was the physical action that saved him, but was it really? It blurred the lines between science and magic and more importantly True Love’s magic. I also loved how parts of the dialogue from the flashbacks leaked into their first meeting in Storybrooke.

In the flashbacks we saw how the whole I-will-find-you thing started. I, personally, think it was an awesome idea to make it start like a threat but then evolve into the promise of everlasting love that we know it to be. Snow once again proved that she is a badass by standing up for herself (when David called her a girl) and also managing to one-up him. We also saw some bitterness and cynicism that we did not expect from Snow White. She seemed to have lost faith in the existence of True Love (which we later see explained in 6x07 when she told the Blue Fairy she no longer believed in love) and Charming appears at just the right moment to restore her faith.

I love how she started calling him Charming and even when he told her his name was James, she kept using the nickname she gave him. It was as if she had a feeling James wasn’t his real name.

When you think about it, Regina actually played a big part in Snow and David’s first meeting. If she hadn’t sent Graham to kill Snow, Snow wouldn’t have run away and she wouldn’t have met David. Besides, Snow thought the carriage belonged to Regina and she robbed it in an attempt to gain enough money to run away from Regina for good. Plus, David blackmailed her to help him by threatening to turn her in to Regina.

In Storybrooke though it was Regina that kept them apart. I have to admit that this time her plan worked out pretty well. We once again saw how much power Regina has over everyone and everything in town. In this episode she also managed to keep her agenda hidden which is impressive considering how epically she failed in the previous episodes.

Kathryn was introduced and I actually really liked that because I love Kathryn and think she is an underappreciated character. And as long as she did her part, the writers cast her aside, which they have done with countless other characters. I know managing a big cast is difficult and you can’t really give every character the screen time that they deserve, and OUAT has one of the largest casts of characters, but I still think Kathryn deserved a bit more*. She was an awesome character. It looked like we knew exactly where her story would go the first time we saw her. She was obviously the spoiled rich bitch but then the writers surprised us by making her a layered character with a good heart and I really wish we had seen more of her.

What I loved about this episode was that the details really came together once again. David having the poster with Snow’s face on it almost got them killed later. Snow intended to use the fairy dust to get rid of Regina (which I think contradicted the fact that she wanted to run away because there’s no point in doing both; if she was planning to use it on Regina, she would have her kingdom back and there would be no point in running away so yeah... that didn’t really make sense) but then she used it to save David. And it was still used for ‘a special someone’ because she had already fallen for David at that time. The ring was one of the greatest details in this episode. It was the reason why David set out to find her in the first place and it was the engine of their interaction, which led to them falling in love. The fact that Mary Margaret had it in Storybrooke made me want to scream both from happiness and frustration. It’s the symbol of their love and a proof that they’re meant to be together but she doesn’t know it.

Speaking about love, the whole thing with Mary Margaret and Whale’s date was just so heartbreaking. She was searching for love while her True Love was literally under her nose the whole time. I also sensed some kind of tension between Mary Margaret and Ruby which is never present after that but it might just be me. Or the writers were still figuring out where they wanted to take the story.

Emma accepting Mary Margaret’s offer to crash into her place was awesome. Mother and daughter are finally together and also Snow was right that one day Emma would find her and David. It’s also sweet because Emma was reluctant at first but then she accepted, which leads to her slowly opening up to Mary Margaret in later episodes.

Emma’s way to handle Henry’s ‘delusion’ was actually pretty great. And I also loved her shock when Mary Margaret said it had worked.

We also got a hint at who Graham was in the Enchanted Forest. His tracking skills and Snow mentioning the Huntsman... smooth move, writers.

Favorite scene: The scene in which Regina explains to Emma how they found out Kathryn was David’s wife. I love it for two reasons. The first one is that Regina finally did something smart. It turned out that she had a plan in case David ever woke up and it was indeed a rather good one. Also she was calm and collected this time around and played her cards just right, praising Emma for bringing husband and wife together. That was a smart move. The dialogue in that scene was also great. All of Regina’s lines had hidden meaning. The second thing I love about the scene is that Emma questioned the situation in the first place. It showed once again that she’s smart and good at her job and also the writers used her to point out the things that didn’t make sense and then explained them instead of just brushing them off like they did so many times in the later seasons.

Least favorite scene: The scene in which Regina grabbed Henry’s arm. It was a little too rough for me and in my country it’s not unusual for parents to sometimes punish their kids physically if they have misbehaved so it says a lot that I found that gesture disturbing (I mean, I’m not supportive of using physical punishments on your kids but I’m used to the idea since it’s normal in my country). I think that was a bit overboard and I really didn’t appreciate the Evil Queen routine. Besides, the references to Cora’s methods of making Regina behave put me off a little bit.

Favorite line: “I will always find you” - David to Snow

Least favorite line:

Snow: She blames me for ruining her life.

David: Well, did you?

Snow: Yes.

This is only here because I needed a least favorite line and this one is just proven incorrect in 1x21 when we see that Snow didn’t know Daniel was dead so what else could she be referring to here?

This episode was a bit slower than the previous two but was also very enjoyable and I love how everything that happened throughout it came together in the end. It just gives me a sense of fulfillment to watch something so beautifully executed. I loved it.

*I accidentally pressed Caps Lock and the sentence looked like that - “I still think Kathryn deserved A BIT MORE” - and it looked like I was hella mad about it and honestly, I kinda am so... perfect timing, I guess.

P.S. I wanted to post this yesterday but I didn’t have internet connection and now I’m behind on my schedule and it’s only been three days (although this delay wasn’t really my fault). So today I will also be posting my review for 1x04 in order to catch up with my schedule.

#ouat rewatch #ouat #once upon a time #season 1 #1x03 #snow falls #operation end

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vampirepatrickau · 7 years ago

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tl;dr pete and patrick stop being so mean to each other asdladfjalkdjf

Joe and Andy had left for a hunt before Patrick could even ask to go with them, and Pete appeared to be trying to be friendly. It was pretty interesting behavior, considering that Patrick definitely didn't overhear his boyfriend trying to convince Pete to just fucking make friends. He totally didn't hear that, definitely not.

It was odd, though, because Pete seemed genuinely interested in not tormenting Patrick. The vampire, honestly, just wanted to be alone, to have Pete just… stop. He wanted to be able to sit down and watch MASH and be alone. Pete seemed to be thinking otherwise, though. The human was trying to talk to him over the sounds of the television, poking his side in an attempt to get Patrick's attention. As if he didn't have his attention already. Patrick shifted his heated blanket, wishing that Pete would just get the idea and give up.

And it seemed like he did, Pete got up and left Patrick alone in the room.

The vampire was getting himself comfortable in his space when Pete returned into his view, holding something.

“Okay, what,” Patrick said, almost frustrated. He didn't want to deal with any of this, he wanted to sit down and watch his TV and, like, not be near Pete. Patrick just wanted to rewatch his favorite TV show. Was that too much to ask?

“Look, man, Joe want me to—”

“To be friendly with me, yeah, I get it, I'm too tired for your shit.”

“You're giving me all the reason in the world to be an asshole.”

“I don't fucking care.”

“Can you care about more than just yourself for once? I've heard enough about you, your life, y’know. I think I can make the call that you're one of the most selfish fucking people on earth. Maybe I wanna actually be your friend.”

“You try being a vampire. You try facing death everyday, literally, just by opening a window to get some fresh air. I fucking dare you to try, to live in isolation, to live with everyone you ever care about to die, or worse, leave you, leave you in complete isolation, leave you wishing you weren't a fucking monster. All I have is my past and, and, and Joe, okay? I don't even really have him. You aren't any worse than the humans I've dealt with my entire life, you aren't worse than my own brother! You've never ran home from a concert, scared you were gonna die from either someone unhappy that you could have fun, or, or that you spent too long talking to the few people who could tolerate being in a crowd with you, and that the sun would kill you before you'd even have a chance to fight back. I could never get a job, you know. I used to try, and then I realized no one would ever want a vampire. Why would they?” Patrick was, like, nearly crying, honestly. It wasn't that he, y’know, was truly emotional, about all of this. No, he had found himself stoic, over most of these, but he really just wanted to get Pete off of his back. “Maybe if you didn't try this shit so long after signalling that you didn't care, I wouldn't be so harsh. You showed me that I shouldn't bother trying to befriend you, because you don't see me past a pair of fangs and a thirst for blood. Fuck off.”

Pete didn't reply, not for a while. Patrick looked to the TV, having missed an important plot point as he spoke. No matter, it wasn't one of his favorite episodes, and he, like, already knew the plot.

“I want to grow, as a person, and it's clear to me that you aren't leaving my life any time soon. So, like… Can you let me change? I want to make your boyfriend happy.” He spoke it carefully, as if he put time into thinking of whatever would make Patrick feel guilty enough to go along with it.

Patrick didn't feel guilty for not letting him, like, grow, or whatever. He was moreso just tired. “Okay, whatever, I don't care.”

Pete grinned. “Okay, um, God, I have almost nothing, like, planned out. Um. Can I, like, paint your nails, or something?”

“Why?”

“Like, bonding purposes.”

“Okay,” Patrick mumbled. He pushed his blanket off of his arms. “Isn't that, like, a chick thing, though?”

“Well, like, I wear makeup, so I don't think that there's really a—”

“I had hair around your length in the 30’s, and my momma thought I looked too feminine. It's not a problem, I just don't understand why you'd choose that.”

“Because it's, like, fucked up that there are things that guys shouldn't do, 'cause they're traditionally girl things.”

Patrick shrugged, and Pete grabbed his hands, putting them on the coffee table and putting down what was in his other hand—a couple colors of nail polish. “I'd usually just wear black, but you're, like, a pretty cheery person when you aren't around me, so I chose the agency colors.” A dull green and a bright red. “Which do you want?”

“I don't care.”

“Okay, I'll do, um, both, I'll just use the red to accent, yeah?”

“You can do whatever.”

“Cool.” Pete unscrewed one of them, the green, and took the top with shaky hands. “So, um, like, why are you so antagonistic, to, like, most humans?”

“Defense mechanism. Why are you so antagonistic to, like me?”

Pete didn't reply, and Patrick couldn't tell if it was intentional or if he was just focusing on painting Patrick's nails.

“Seriously,” Patrick mumbled, “Making Joe happy didn't seem like a goal of yours, or anything, before today.”

Pete didn't reply.

“I really don't, I don't understand.”

“I don't wanna talk about why I had, like, what you might think is a sudden, or whatever, change of heart.”

“Then, like, don't ask me why I don't like things that have tried to fucking kill me numerous times over the 80 years I've been a vampire.”

Pete obviously wanted to, like, change the topic. “So, like, you said you couldn't get a job?”

“Yup. Because the only employers out there are either gang leaders or, guess what, would rather me be dead than work for them.” Patrick paused. “Don't think you could ever get away from this subject. If you wanna believe I'm alright, you can't view other vampires as leeches.”

“I wanna see you as—”

“I'm not a human. You'll never be able to see me as a human. Don't change your view of me, change your view of what I am.”

“I don't…” Pete sighed. “So, like, you talk all the time, about how much you love Bowie, and whatever, like, is that, y’know, a crush thing, or just, like, an idol thing?”

Patrick chuckled slightly. “I guess it's a bit of both. He's, I mean… you should have seen him live, back in the day. I wonder if he'd recognize me.”

“I probably shouldn't tell you this, but I've heard that Joe's been saving up, in case he does any meet and greet stuff, y'know?”

“I…” Patrick was sure he'd be blushing if he could. “I'll keep that in mind. Gosh, he's too nice to me.”

“So, like, were concerts, like, all you did, pretty much?”

“Yeah, I mean, I guess. Even, like, aside from Bowie, I've probably gone to a few hundred shows since World War Two ended.”

“Holy shit.” Pete grabbed the red bottle of nail polish, apparently nearly done with the job. “Can you play, like, guitar, and shit?”

“If I wasn't a vampire, and I was born so I'd be, like, 20 when the Beatles first started getting popular, in America, I'd almost definitely be a working musician. So, like, yeah, I can, and I have a reason for being so angry at humans for restricting everything to the point of not being able to even consider breaking into the music industry.”

“Joe can play guitar.”

“He's better than me, honestly, I love him so much. No, I'd say I'm better at, at drumming, than guitar, or whatever. I was better, at least.”

“Yeah, I dunno where we'd put a drum set. Y’know, Andy can play drums, too.”

“He can?”

“He's really good, actually.”

“Can you play anything, man?”

“Eh, I can kinda, like, kinda play bass.”

“Do you have one?”

“At my parents’ place.”

“Maybe we could quit the whole, um, the whole hunting business and get a singer and make a band.” Patrick paused, then frowned. “If only I could.”

“I don't see why we couldn't.”

“Do you think Joe would like to do something like that?”

“Dude, we met at metal shows. We were in a band or two, together, before we started the agency. He was, like, fourteen.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, dude! People occasionally recognize me, still, from that shit.”

Patrick grinned. “Y’know, maybe you're a little more tolerable than I thought.”

Pete smiled, then capped both of the bottles of nail polish. “Okay, so, like... don't really touch anything, for maybe, like, fifteen minutes. Just to make sure that the polish isn't fucked up.”

“Alright. Can you turn up the volume, on the TV? This is one of my favorite episodes of MASH.”

“What's MASH about?”

“It's about medics in the Korean War, this one, this one's pretty close to my heart.”

Pete turned the volume up, watching the title of “George” fade to the first real scene of the episode. Patrick watched his response nervously, how Pete seemed genuinely interested, so he went to actually watching the episode with him. Then another, and another, so glad that Pete seemed to be enjoying it. Eventually, Andy and Joe came back, and Joe curled up against him.

“I didn't know you were in a band,” Patrick mumbled, putting his head against his boyfriend's neck.

“Yeah, I was. Pete hazed me hella bad, I came home in tears a couple times. Did he tell you that?”

“Eheh, no, he just said you guys used to be in one together.”

Joe chuckled, holding Patrick close. “I'm glad that you guys are starting to not hate each other.”

“I'm glad that you told Pete to stop being a dick.”

“Hey, you weren't supposed to know about that.” Joe kissed the top of Patrick's head. “I was trying to be sneaky with that, so you could be surprised by, like, Pete being nice to you.”

Patrick laughed. “You’re really cute, Joe.”

Joe grinned, finding Patrick's hand and squeezing it, staring at his colorful nails for a moment. “You're cuter.”

#storyline #ft. symbolism using the hit tv show MASH #literally NOONE will get the symbolism #but thats fine bc. i get it. i get the symbolism #and its my au so

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one-of-us-blog · 7 years ago

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Valentine’s Day (TGG, Season 4, Episode 15)

Today Eli is forced to watch and recap Valentine’s Day, Episode 15 of the fourth season of The Golden Girls. When the girls find themselves without dates on the most romantic night of the year, will they band together and comfort themselves with cherished memories and friendship, or drown their sorrows in chocolates and ice cream? Keep reading to find out…

First of all, as usual, let me comment on Jon’s latest Doctor Who write-up. Cap, you beautiful bastard, you’ve done it again! I loved your take on Asylum of the Daleks, and it really made me want to rewatch the episode. As far as Oswin being a super hacker, I think I assumed the idea was that she was able to do so much because she was connected to the Dalek systems all along (as a part of her conversion), but just didn’t realize this. Anyway, I like that particular twist at the end, and now I’m eager to see what you think about the rest of the season. Series 7 is a bit different as it was divided up into two halves when broadcast, and that makes it feel almost like two separate chapters in my opinion. But at any rate, I’ll be looking forward to your next post! For now, I am running late yet again, so let’s head to Miami!

Buttocks tight!

Episode written by Kathy Speer, Terry Grossman, Barry Fanaro, and Mort Nathan, directed by Terry Hughes

The episode opens on the evening of Valentine’s Day, with Dorothy eating chocolates. Unfortunately, Sophia has already sampled them. Dorothy got ditched by her date, and Rose announces that her date has the flu. Blanche shows some sympathy to her pathetic, dateless friends, at least until her own date calls and cancels. Blanche does not take this news well, to say the least. She declares this officially the worst day of her life (which seems a bit hyperbolic, given that her beloved husband is dead), but Sophia assures her that there are worse things that can happen on Valentine’s Day. Hot damn, it looks like this is a flashback episode!

We leap back in time to Chicago, where Sophia’s husband Sal has been attempting to drive her and her father across the country from Brooklyn to a wedding. The car has broken down, and Sal is being pelted with insults from his father-in-law. The local mechanic is unable or unwilling to help out, but he lends Sal his tools while Sophia’s father wanders off in search of a bathroom. Briefly alone, Sal gives Sophia a box of chocolates that he bought several days prior in anticipation of Valentine’s Day. What a sweetheart! The two briefly share a tender moment, until Sophia’s father returns with the sounds of gunfire echoing behind him, the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre now underway.

Back in the kitchen, Dorothy dismisses the dramatic turn at the end of her mother’s tale, and the girls move on from chocolates to ice cream. Blanche and Dorothy recall an old grudge, and begin pushing Rose around in retroactive retaliation for a mistake she made last Saint Valentine’s Day. Let’s take a look, shall we?

Rose, Dorothy, and Blanche arrive at a vacation lodge for a relaxing weekend retreat, and move to the counter to check in. It is upon discovery that the clerk is nude that the gals realize that Sunny Meadows is a bit unusual. In fact, the resort is entirely clothing optional. All of the buses from the lodge have left for the night, so the girls are forced to stay despite their alarmed reaction. Hiding in their room, they blame Rose for making the reservations. It doesn’t take long, however, for Blanche to have some fun watching a volleyball game through the bedroom window, and Dorothy and Rose get on board. Heck, why not throw inhibitions the wind and enjoy themselves? It’s not like they’re ever going to see these people again! The girls decide to have a good time, and they strip. Their confidence wavers quite a bit as they head downstairs to dinner, hiding behind whatever is available, but they eventually burst into the dining room ready to party. Unfortunately, they stride into a room filled with fully clothed individuals, and learn that guest always dress for dinner. An insult from a saucy waiter doesn’t exactly help them retain their dignity.

In the present once more, Rose suggests moving on from ice cream to dinner. Heck, they should go out and have a good time, surely they aren’t the only ones without dates! Sophia speaks up to mention that she has a hot date with the one and only Julio Iglesias, but nobody believes her. Meanwhile, Blanche is feeling nostalgic again, and claims that Saint Valentine’s Day is the most romantic day of the year…

Blanche is at a restaurant, having a traditional drink to remember her late husband’s proposal on Valentine’s Day. She also lends moral support to a young man sitting nearby at a bar, who is also planning to propose that very night. She tells him that they may come from different generations, but love is love, and she would be happy to share her own experiences with him. She recounts her husband’s proposal, until the man’s partner, Victor, enters the restaurant. The two men embrace, and the studio audience laughs. I mean, can you even imagine? Thankfully, Blanche still seems to be happy with her good deed.

We briefly step back into the kitchen for Blanche to remember some more Valentine’s Day shenanigans. This time, the story takes place as the girls were preparing for a cruise, and doing some last minute pre-trip shopping…

The gals are browsing in a small shop in preparation for their time at sea, when Blanche suggests they take along “protection.” Dorothy has to spell it out for Rose, resulting in her famous shouting declaration of “Condoms, Rose, condoms, condoms, condoms!” The trio is embarrassed to make their purchase, but Blanche takes control and strides to the counter confidently. Dorothy and Rose follow suit. Unfortunately, the clerk takes it upon himself to ask for a price check through the store microphone (on Dorothy and Blanche’s lambskins, and on Rose’s black ultra-sensitive variety). People all over the store begin to stare. Blanche again takes charge, grabbing the mic and telling the prudes that she and her squad feels no shame for pursuing passion, and there’s nothing to see. Dorothy and Rose, meanwhile, have run away.

For our final scene, the girls recall that they never even got to use those condoms, but at least Rose had some water balloon substitutes on the ship. The doorbell rings, and…surprise, surprise! All three dates are here after all! They just wanted to surprise the girls, and will now take them out to dinner (Side note: This twist makes zero sense, as I will explain below, but oh well). Sophia rushes everyone out of the house, and then lets her own date, Mr. Julio Iglesias, in through the back door. It’s time for a serenade.

The End.

I have to say, I liked this episode a lot! It has taken me a while to warm up to the flashback format, but this one was a definite winner. I think I laughed more at this episode than I have at any for quite a while, and an episode featuring Dorothy’s famous “Condoms!” scene is bound to score big for me. Some of the plotlines were a little far-fetched in typical sitcom fashion (such as the lodge trip, or the arrival of Julio Iglesias), but I can’t say that I minded much. The scene with the gay couple seemed like it might be disappointing at first, given that the studio burst into laughter at the very idea of two engaged men, but there was nothing mean-spirited behind the joke, and Blanche was ultimately happy for them and accepting; overall, I think that’s a net positive for the era. I cannot, however, give this episode a perfect score, because the premise behind the surprise at the end is ludicrous. Let me get this straight…Dorothy, Rose, and Blanche all had plans for Valentine’s Day dinner with their fellas. These fellas wanted to have a surprise for their best gals, so they all pretended to cancel their dates. Then, after letting the girls stew in disappointment for a while, the surprise is revealed: we’re going to dinner! The very thing you had planned on in the first place! It’s a pointless surprise, and it only serves to make the girls unhappy for a while. I’ll take it further; the guys were just assuming that the girls would be dressed, ready, and still waiting to go after the cancellation, and not lounging about sadly in sweatpants (as I would be) or out looking for a better man. PLUS, now the girls have all consumed a large quantity of chocolates and ice cream before the dinner (which isn’t even really a proper surprise)! Just give me a second to get over it. That problem aside, the rest of the episode was spot on, and I give Valentine’s Day a score of 4.5 poofy hairdos out of 5.

Join us tomorrow (or perhaps later today), when Jon will share his recap of (look out!) Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, the next episode of Doctor Who. I will be back on Friday, with my recap of Two Rode Together, the next episode of The Golden Girls. Until then, as always, thank you for being a friend, and for being One of Us!

#golden girls #the golden girls #one of us

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