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inmyarmswrappedin · 4 years ago

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So, because Fatou’s season ends today and, as far as we know, Druck hasn’t been renewed yet, I want to go over the things I feel the team did well in this season and the things I hope they take with them when they sit down to write the next season (which I’m manifesting will be Ava’s).

I think that s5 and, perhaps to a bigger extent, s6, were the team’s attempt to address fan feedback for and criticisms of s3 and s4. So I have hopes that, after possibly the most scrutinized season of any Skams, they are still willing to read even more feedback and sit down once again to craft a couple more seasons (possibly even 3 or 4 more seasons!).

So, without further ado, things that were done well! (Do I have to add “in my opinion”? Do I??)

I liked that for both s5 and s6, the thorough-line for the season wasn’t made obvious or shared in a press release, but rather it was up to fans to connect the story threads for themselves.

I loved that the team sought to address one of the biggest criticisms of s3, that is, that Matteo was given so many symptoms of a mental illness, but it ultimately went unaddressed in the narrative. They did this by giving Nora a dissociative disorder, and Fatou dyscalculia. (Matteo has been headcanoned as being mentally ill and having a disability.) It allowed the teams to develop both fan theories into full-blown seasons and give each of them the importance they deserved.

I have said this already, but I really appreciate that the team chose misunderstood, misrepresented and underrepresented mental illnesses and disabilities. I feel like s5 and s6 will be referents for many years, because they really took the time to portray a dissociative disorder and dyscalculia in a down-to-earth, unhurried way that isn’t meant to shock and awe, but simply allow us to understand why and when Nora and Fatou will struggle. Druck got the viewers to anticipate when Nora and Fatou would struggle, and that’s the first step in being able to anticipate and accommodate the needs of the Noras and Fatous of the world. I really can’t overstate how important this is and what a difference it makes in a real, tangible way. These seasons aren’t meant to be enjoyed for voyeuristic reasons, but they will legitimately help people.

One of the biggest criticisms of s4 was that Amira and Sam didn’t connect as women of color. In fact, it seemed like in s4 Sam was treated as another white friend, when in s2 both she and Amira were the victims of Kiki’s racism. The team addressed this by giving us Ava and Fatou’s friendship, which I want to say might be the first friendship between main characters of color where their race is a substantial reason for their bond. (There are the Sanas with their Jamillas, but the Jamillas aren’t main characters, and then there are friendships like Jo and Megan and Zoya, or Imaan and Liv, or Luca and Yasmina, but iirc in every case their bond as women of color isn’t made explicit.)

Another criticism of s4 was the way Kiki turned into the world’s most understanding white friend offscreen. The team addressed this with the Ava and Mailin storyline, which I think was wonderfully and subtly set up in s5, then built on with the biology test leaked answers.

On the topic of race, I think a major criticism of s3 was that David’s ethnicity wasn’t acknowledged (to the point where a white actress was cast to play his sister gvhvhv). The team has made up for this with Josh (more in the s6 sm than in s5, but I still count it) and with Kieu My. Fatou and Kieu My bonded over being first/second gen children of immigrants, and in doing so, they acknowledged that these characters aren’t white and have different experiences than white Germans.

The first 6 episodes of this season were some of the finest writing in the Skams. The storylines all connected and built on each other. The motifs were just so good and beautiful and fitting. The themes were all clearly defined and easy to follow.

The tortoise plot was one of the most fun and imaginative storylines in any Skams, it connected Fatou and Ismail in a believable way. And not to rave about a fucking tortoise, but animals can be really uncooperative and that tortoise delivered every fucking clip. Druck has a reputation for being one of the most depressive versions of Skam, but the Maike/Burger plot was just plain fun.

I feel like some of the old gen’s instas were a bit self-indulgent. I’m thinking specifically of Matteo’s memes and how they they weren’t necessarily the kind of memes a gay dude born in 2001 would pick, but someone a decade older. I think this is much better done with new gen. Fatou’s memes reflect her age and her sexuality, and not just that, but Ava, Mailin, Kieu My, Josh, etc. all pick memes and even focus on different aspects of recent news, based on their gender, race, personalities, interests, etc.

I appreciate that the team found a way to fit a sex scene between Fatou and Kieu My to add to the small catalogue of wlw sex scenes on Skams (I’m including the scene in lovleg or we’d only have two lol). While I understood the reasons eskam opted not to include one, I thought there were ways to feature a sex scene that didn’t sexualize the actresses and didn’t require nudity. Cases in point: the lovleg scene, and this scene in Druck.

And it also needs to be said. This is the first original season with a main of color, and the third season overall (after Liv and Imane) where 10 episodes are given to a character of color and no one else. Of the three, it’s certainly the season that loved and respected its main the most. The bar is so low it’s in hell, but Druck did clear that bar!

With all that said, let’s talk about the things I would really want the team to address in following seasons:

The thing I most want them to fix might be small or unimportant for a lot of people, but I think it’s at the core of why the season has been unenjoyable or certain plot points haven’t come across the way the team wanted, for many people. I am talking about the overly expositional nature of the writing. It appears as if the team approached the writing of the clips with the intention of hitting each beat as noted in their agreed upon outline, and absolutely nothing else was to be added. This is an issue both in s5 and s6. It’s just less noticeable in s5, because s5 is setting up stuff for Fatou’s season, and possibly even seasons that haven’t been written yet. The fact that absolutely every second counts makes for a stressful watching experience for me, because the narrative tension is always heightened. Whereas with Skam, the narrative tension would build throughout the clip. Take the Pride scene in Skam, for instance. The clip allows for Isak and Eskild to get increasingly more agitated as they butt heads. I feel like if this Druck team had done the Pride scene in s5 or s6, the clip would’ve started with both Isak and Eskild already on edge, and cut much of the dialogue that got them there.

On the topic of naturalistic dialogue, this season doesn’t have it. Here is an example from ep 10 clip 2, Wieder vereint/Reunited 11:37.

Fatou: I’ll get a certificate too and bring it over to you. And I checked it, I only have to change one course and my schedule will work.

Teacher: Miss Jallow, you are not the first one to come to me with an epiphany. We could fill entire school weeks with the lessons you missed. In addition, Doctor Steinberg told me about your, well… activities. You don’t have a lot of arguments on your side.

Fatou: But I’ve spoken to all of the teachers and they said they are okay with it.

Teacher: You seem to have friends among the teaching staff. Mrs Pavlovic put in a word for you. Okay then, do it and go before I change my mind. [translated by @kieu-tou! Thank you!]

Like. This is the bare bones version of a dialogue. This should be the first draft, not the final version. The coordinator goes from absolute no to yes, with just one line from Fatou. The coordinator gives reasons that would necessitate more than one sentence of counterargument, like Fatou’s absences and the Biology test leaked answers. The coordinator even says Fatou doesn’t have a lot of arguments on her side, and yet it takes Fatou one line to change her mind!

And of course we viewers don’t want or need a lot of time with the coordinator. And particularly at this point in the season, no one would enjoy a naturalistic dialogue with the coordinator of all people. But my point is that this is an issue with the dialogue all this season (and last season as well, but this season has been more scrutinized), the reason I picked this example is because of how easy it is to see here.

Which brings us to the pacing of the clips, and specifically the Friday clips. Because the script goes straight to the information the team wants to convey to the viewers, skipping the build up to it, many Friday clips have fallen flat, felt abrupt, and have been, tbh, unsatisfying. Again, I had this issue in s5, but as that season went on, I felt like the team had a better grip on Friday clips. But then they did it again in the first Friday clip this season, and so I think this is something the writers really should work on. The first Friday clip in Isak’s season closes on Isak being sandwiched by Emma and Even on a bench, visually setting up the love triangle, or more accurately, the personifications of who Isak should want to hook up with and who he really wants. But in order to get there, we’re shown a good amount of info, from the way Vilde, Eva and Sana are handling Noora’s absence, to Chris and Kasper, Even hovering around Isak, Emma trying to impress Isak, Isak escaping and, like, draping himself on the walls because he’s so over it all. Isak playing a game on the bathroom to stall for time. The paper towel maneuver to immediately give us a sense of what a weirdo Even is. A conversation between Isak and Even that gives us some clues about Even’s shame, as well as establish interests in common (like weed), and this is all before Emma even joins them! Just think of all the stuff we learn about who Isak, Even, Emma, Eva, Vilde or Sana are as people, before we get to the point of the clip! Fatou’s season simply didn’t have that. Compare it with the first Friday clip of Fatou’s season where the cashqueens quickly talk about the leaked answers, one of the major storylines this season that only gets a couple lines, before Fatou says she doesn’t want to talk about school (Fatou’s struggles with school, another major storyline), and then we’re onto the point of the clip, which is that Kieu My likes girls too. AND FADE TO BLACK. When people say they want longer clips, what they mean isn’t artificially inflate the clip length or add more plot stuff. Just let us watch the characters interact with each other so that we get a feel for how they relate to each other. I know I wish we’d have gotten more of Ava and Fatou interacting with each other before things turned to shit, and Ava with the other girls, so that I know why they all like and value Ava so much. I wish we’d have gotten more of Kieu My talking to the cashqueens about, like, why she didn’t make use of the biology test answers, instead of getting it on a chat. Or food combos they don’t like. So it makes more sense that later on Kieu My actually thinks she and Fatou are friends. And every line doesn’t have to count. In Skam España, the characters are constantly talking and not everything they ever talked about ended up being relevant. When one of the characters lied about her house undergoing renovations to hide the fact that she was poor, the characters joked about Italian marble and put on bad Italian accents and made that Italian hand gesture. None of this was important to the plot because those renovations weren’t real to begin with, but they made viewers feel like these were real friends joking around, instead of characters needing to hit every storyline beat in a clip.

I have this joke with my friends about Druck always going 🤪🤪 in the last third of every season, in which a season that was very tightly written and cohesive suddenly pulls something inexplicable and pretty much impossible to resolve in 1-3 episodes. Hanna’s season suddenly switching to Mia, Björn creeping on Mia in episode 9! of a total 10, David getting outed in episode 8 and then disappearing for a whole week, Amira’s season pivoting to Mia and Hanna. It has happened in every season except Nora’s, so I thought the team had learned its lesson, but then the forgotten date with Ava happened. To be clear. It really makes no sense that Nora would have hung out with Ava several times since Tuesday, and the topic of the cashqueens being officially introduced to Kieu My wouldn’t have come up. it’s just not realistic.gif I feel like at that point the writing for the rest of the reason became super contrived to keep Fatou miserable and apart from Kieu My and Ava to artificially delay the reunions until episode 9 and 10. Why add a cheating insinuation and the main checking her partner’s messages in episode 8 if you know you won’t be able to properly resolve it? Why make Kieu My mock Fatou’s “uhm” if it’s not going to be addressed in their reunion clip? Kieu My had taken the initiative for a lot of the relationship, so it’s okay for Fatou to take the initiative when it comes to making up. You don’t have to add things that can only be resolved through an expositional info dump. (Please no more exposition than it’s necessary! I think we’ve established that at this point lol.) In the case of Fatou’s season, this is even sadder because I feel like Kieu My’s intimacy issues could’ve been the reason to drive them apart for two weeks, rather than the Maya/uhm stuff. This could’ve also been resolved through Fatou and Kieu My explicitly negotiating their boundaries and how they want to be comforted and how they want to comfort each other, which I thought was the issue with Fatou rejecting Kieu My’s attempts to help while wanting physical touch, while Kieu My didn’t want to be touched but rather seen.

There are going to be many thinkpieces on why a myriad of stuff didn’t work for people, so I’m going to keep this simple and address one last thing. I think that choosing to focus on Nora’s mental illness and Fatou’s disability is a great choice that doesn’t complicate the themes too much, but Druck (and all the Skams, but I’m invested only in Druck succeeding at this point) still struggles with being intersectional. This is the major reason why the Ava/Mailin storyline ended not with a bang, but a whimper. There just wasn’t enough work done to connect Fatou’s struggles not just to her disability, but also to her race (and even her sexuality). I think that if people really want (and lbr, it’ll be mostly poc who will put in that effort and work), they can see how Fatou’s race affected the way other people and especially adults reacted to her, but this wasn’t made explicit. If Ava and Mailin are going to argue about racism all season, why not connect that with Karin firing Fatou from Aquarius? As it stands, Karin fired Fatou because of a disability neither of them knew Fatou has, and that was the resolution to that storyline. Why not make it explicit that the Physics teacher had preconceived ideas about Fatou because Fatou is black? Why wasn’t Fatou’s disability addressed in the meeting with the coordinator? Why didn’t Fatou express to Mailin that Fatou, too, had issues with how Mailin was acting wrt racism? It felt like, with the way the season was putting so much emphasis on racism, all these threads were going to be connected. In the end though, it almost felt as if only Ava is affected by racism (aside from Mailin mentioning Fatou in the last episode). It’s not like talking about how racism affects Fatou is going to make the topic redundant for Ava’s or Ismail’s season. As a light-skinned black lesbian with a disability, Fatou’s life is going to be impacted by racism in a different way than Ava’s will, as a dark-skinned black fat straight cis girl, or Ismail’s, as a Turkish-German possibly Muslim possibly non binary person. All these experiences are specific enough, and different enough, that they can be touched upon in different seasons without becoming redundant. The fact that Fatou’s season almost seemed to forget at times that she is a black lesbian, doesn’t bode well for Ava’s and Ismail’s season to acknowledge all their struggles.

The bottom line is that this season really was great and did a lot of good, and I feel like the writing just needs to be tweaked a bit for further seasons to be even better and more enjoyable overall. I am very pleasantly surprised by how the team took s1-s4 fan feedback to heart and worked to implement suggestions, and so I really trust them and hope they keep working on the show. It’d be a shame if Druck wasn’t renewed, with this team at the helm.

#druck #this post is 3K+ words in word I'm so sorry #but I really hope it makes its way to the writers and is helpful

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nobody-wants-ice-cream · 5 years ago

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Everything Wrong With The Umbrella Academy. Episode 6, The Day That Wasn’t.

We Only See Each Other at Weddings and Funerals

Run Boy Run

Extra Ordinary

Man on the Moon

Number Five

Disclaimer: This is all in good fun! I wanted to do a really nitpicky re-watch of the series and found some really cool and interesting things I didn’t notice before. This is meant to have a Cinema Sins-esque tone. However, I did take off a lot more sins than Cinema Sins would have because I do genuinely like the series and the people that made it possible. So all of the good things got one sin off and all the bad things got one sin added. This is a really long post, so grab some popcorn. If there’s anything that I missed, feel free to add it!

I would also like to add that normally you wouldn’t watch a show this way. I am purposefully looking for mistakes, easter eggs, and other things that we’re not supposed to notice. I am watching not with the goal of entertainment, but for analysis. So most of the things that I sin, I am seeing for the first time.

Also, no I can’t do better. I am in no way qualified to give this level of criticism about anything.

[Today we got the s2 release date!! I am so excited. To answer any questions about that, I will probably do a season 2 version of this a year after it comes out. Since some of my sins involve fandom and any fic tropes/theories we might come up with, I want to make sure that has time to happen.]

The Day that Wasn’t

Only Dave notices Klaus coming to Vietnam via briefcase. The flashing blue lights and loud “oof!” isn’t loud enough to wake anyone else up. +1

Cody Ray Thompson’s workout routine. -1

“Katz” isn’t a fandom thing! The dude that is yelling at all the soldiers and Klaus to get ready (some sort of commanding officer?) calls Dave “Katz”! -1

Klaus is so confused that he just puts the pants on without really questioning it. What the fuck was going on in Klaus’s head? +1

Where is Ben? +1

Right where I’m paused Klaus’s face is hilarious. “It was at this moment Klaus knew. He fucked up” -1

The Power of Boners is what keeps Klaus in the fucking Vietnam War. +1

For all future Dave sins, I am calling it The Power of Boners because Dave gets one line. As soon as the show corrects this and shows us why Dave was so wonderful, these remain sins. Sin for the show for not providing more Dave content. +1

Overly saturated forigen country cliche. +1

Seriously, why is Vietnam so orange? +1

The Doors. -1

This one shot in the foreground of the girl with white boots. I want those boots so badly. Costume people, where did you get them? Sin until I know, damnit! +1

Cool white boots are cool. -1

Klaus’s dance moves. -1

Klave. -1

Scene does not contain a lap dance. +1

Or any other indication that Dave and Klaus didn’t just make out once and decided to remain friends. Please give me more Klave content show. If anything, just to flesh out this character who motivates Klaus for half of the season. +1

Luther barges in on people in the bathroom. He has six siblings! Anyone with at least one sibling knows that barging in on people in bathrooms is a shitty move. Heh, shitty move, bathroom, get it? +1

Klaus’s face when Luther deadpans “the world’s ending in three days”. It’s the face of someone who completely forgot about that since he’s been in the 60s for ten months. -1

Also, the way Luther tells Klaus “the world’s ending in three days” is the same way I might tell my brother that it’s time for dinner. +1

“Five’s a little- [coo coo whistle]” Emmy Raver-Lampman kills this line. -1

Luther’s face when Allison asks “what did Five even see?” brings me so much joy. That is the look of complete panic. Love that. -1

Luther can’t lie for shit. Checks out. -1

Anyone with siblings can relate to Diego, Allison, and Klaus’s reaction to this bull. -1

The dramatic music leading into the little “we died” followed by a sip of coffee. Priceless. -1

Title umbrella scares the shit out of Klaus! -1

Comic power foreshadowing? Sin until we get answers. +1

Foreshadowing that Five is in HQ by sending orders that don’t follow the same format as the rest of the ones on the shoe. Fiveshaddowing? -1

Kate Walsh plays an excellent villain. Part of that evil demeanor is getting all up in Five’s personal bubble. This is the closest Five has been to someone in the entire show without any injury or being drunk. -1

The Handler is creepy. +2

Five makes demands after setting foot in the building for less than one minute. +1

The masks from the comics are on the wall in the briefcase room. -1

Based on the two agents we see in the briefcase room and Hazel and Cha Cha, the uniform of the commission assassin is a blue suit, yet all of Five’s are grey or black like management. Inconsistency. +1

Typewriters. I hate those things. +1

I think Aidan Gallagher forgot what he was doing in this scene. His expression doesn’t look like Five, it looks like some kid who is letting a math lecture wash over them. You could make the argument that Five is sort of letting this wash over him too, but I would call bullshit. Five knows how dangerous of a situation he’s in right now. He shouldn’t look this calm. +1

The Handler touching Five’s face. +3

Dot has the “i’m in danger” expression when meeting Five because Dot let Five live in hell for 45 years. Five also looks like he wants to kill her. Great acting, Patrice Goodman. -1

Five’s expression when Dot says “No hard feelings” brings me so much joy. And fear. -1

The Handler makes Five the teacher’s pet on his first day by calling him leadership material in front of his new coworkers. +1

Kate Walsh was temporarily directed by Tim Burton for this scene. +1

That weird look one of the commission management people gives Five once Five sits down and starts working. I don’t like it, I don’t like it! +1

The Hargreeves mansion looks really fucking chaotic on the roof. I don’t like it. +1

Leonard’s face at finally being allowed inside the Hargreeves mansion. Just the right dose of satisfied and creepy. Well done, John Magaro. -1

Leonard is raising so many red flags that he may as well be a stop sign. +1

Umbrella Academy action figures. Oh, Reggie. +1

Luther has to explain that everyone in the whole world dies and not just them. The Umbrella Academy School of Delayed Reactions due to Stupidity was too long of a name so Reggie shortened it to The Umbrella Academy. +1

Allison’s right, Vanya isn’t being fair. However, Allison isn’t specific about how Vanya is family but Leonard is not. Sin for both of them for being dumb as hell. +2

“I’m gonna go find Vanya” “There isn’t time, we need to figure out what causes the apocalypse” irony. +1

“Nuclear war” cited as one of the possible causes of the apocalypse. Comics fans, enjoy this sin off. -1

“But I’m thinking this is about the Moon, right?” well yeah, but not for the reasons you think. Foreshadowing the moon. -1

That creepy portrait of Five behind Diego. No, not the big one, the other one by the bar. What the fuck, Reggie? +1

Leonard steals the action figure of The Monocle (reggie for those who don’t know the comics), which symbolizes the way Leonard feels he is controlling the Academy through Vanya. -1

Leonard is creepy. +1

Ben doesn’t realize that Klaus is going through withdrawal despite seeing it the day before. Sure, Ben could have been more focused on the tourture, but because Ben points out Klaus’s withdrawal by name in Man on the Moon, we can assume he noticed and that this is a continuity error. +1

Vanya’s powers affecting the world around her as soon as she is a safe distance away from the academy because reasons. Seriously, there should have been at least something while she was confronting her siblings. Show plays fast and loose with the rules of Vanya’s powers. +1

“If you tie me up after.” “Come again?” Diego and Klaus have the most sibling like relationship on this entire show. -1

Klaus’s Diego impression. -1

Excessive use of the word “bro”. One sin for every time I have to hear it in this scene. +2

“Mr. Five”. Is Five’s first name “Number” or did he not give the Commission any other name? Does this imply that he doesn’t go by Five Hargreeves? +1

This is one of the few scenes where Aidan Gallagher no longer looks like Aidan Gallagher and instead looks like Five. Acting. -1

Dot is really trying to get murdered. Don’t engage the man you put through hell for almost fifty years, moron. +1

The Handler has nothing better to do than to stalk Five. Does this lady have a job or did she take the day off specifically for this? What was she doing in the tube room?+1

The origin of “deadly little thing” is fucking Gloria? Really, fandom? +1

Five is too good of an actor. I understand why Aidan Gallagher might make some of these choices as an actor but I don’t understand how a man who grew up alone in the apocalypse can act this well. +1

The Handler keeps singling Five out in front of his coworkers. +1

The Handler’s arm around Five’s shoulders. +1

Creepy dude is back. I’m not even going to try and look up this guy’s name, but the expression suggests something I don’t want to think about. +1

Creepy guy’s name is Herb. Of course it is. +1

The file Five picks up just has a smiley face inside of it, which suggests that the Handler put it there as a red herring. Nice touch, show. -1

Gender neutral bathrooms. -1

Five’s expression when the Handler continues talking to him as she is peeing. -1

The Handler talks to Five while peeing. Gross. +2

His expression when she starts coughing is so funny. -1

Rugae +1

The Handler peeks over the door of the bathroom stall. +10

Cha Cha says, “Sure, shoot” when Hazel asks if he can ask her a question. +1

Where did the gunshot come from if Cha Cha didn’t shoot Hazel? I get they’re using it to make us think that she did, but there is no other explanation for the noise. +1

Luther frantically searching for his moon research makes me very sad. +1

Also, I’m kind of bored with this episode at this point. It’s such a low episode with the only interesting parts that make me as excited as the last episode Number Five, being the Commission parts. Everything else is kind of boring. Pick up the pace, show. +1

Reggie is a dick to Luther. +7

Luther looks so lost and broken and sad. I’m sad. Fuck you, Reggie. +1

Why the fuck was Luther carrying an axe?? +2

And rope?? +2

When and where did Luther find the time and money to get the engraved gold locket for Allison? This interaction is so full of plot holes and stupidity. +1

However, Cameron Brodeur and Eden Cupid do well with this dumb writing. -1

Seriously, who wrote this scene? The fact that I can’t bring myself to care about what is going on right now says a lot. +1

Reggie jump scare. +1

Cliche record scratch. How did that happen? Did Luther or Allison bump into it? Sin for lack of clarity and for destroying a record. +1

“Fun and games are restricted to Saturdays between noon and half past noon” Reggie is a dick to his children. +7

Klaus and Diego bonding. Literally? -1

Ben is in this scene! -1

I forgot how weird the soundtrack is for this scene. It’s too ominous. Scoring is important. +1

“Dave must have been a very special person to put up with all your weird-ass shit.” -1

“He was kind and strong and vulnerable and beautiful” that’s great, show. Why don’t you show us that instead of having Klaus say it. Just once scene where Dave shows these qualities so that he’s a real person instead of someone created to drive Klaus’s storyline? Please? +1

I feel really bad for Ben in this scene. From Ben’s perspective, he wasn’t good enough to motivate Klaus to get sober, but this random guy was. Ben angst. +1

Also, Justin Min manages to convey this without any lines. Major props. That takes some serious skill. -2

Bro. +1

“Everyone I like is already dead”. Fridging. +1

I can’t tell if this is Ben walking away or if this is the transition between Diego and Klaus’s point of views. If this is meant to imply the pov switch, It would have been easier to have Ben disappear from the same spot. If it’s Ben walking away because he can’t take being told that he isn’t good enough to get sober for, Ben angst. Either way, it’s a sin. +1

“Aww shit! I need to pee.” Diego’s expression is amazing. -1

“If this [having powers] is even true, everything I know about myself would be different.” That is Vanya’s storyline in a nutshell. This line is really underrated. -1

All of Leonard’s lines point towards the book. All of them. Which makes total sense. -1

Vanya is starting to show more sass and personality because the pills are gone. I wish fanfic writers would explore this. Including myself, I am sinning fanfic writers for not taking into account how cool Vanya is without the meds. +1

“I’m sorry you got stuck with the ordinary one” See! +1

“Ordinary” This word keeps coming up. Probably because of the whole rumor situation that we’re not supposed to know about yet. Rewatches are fun. -1

“My life is so weird” “I like weird”. And if you weren’t such a colossal creep, Leonard/Harold, I would like you too. This line is super sweet. Sin for manipulation. +1

Ellen Page isn’t my girlfriend. Have you seen this scene recently? She looks so cute/hot/beautiful here. +1

No transition, just straight from Leonard and Vanya kissing to The Handler slurping her smoothie. It’s jarring. +1

I want to know why they decided that killing Archduke Ferdinand would start World War I. Noodle incident. +1

“I had a bad Twinkie in the apocalypse once. Kinda put me off desserts.” Yet you still ate the fluffernutter sandwich, Five? +1

The Handler’s office is really cool. Once again, set designers you win this one. -1

Why would Five go straight for a decade instead of a flavor? How does something taste like the 1950s before it tastes like a popular candy from the time for example? +1

The suit is blue like the rest of the time travel assassins have. This suggests a uniform that the Commission didn’t make Five wear before, and suggests a sort of power play. Details. -1

The Handler is a fucking creep. +1

“M26 grenades from the Vietnam war”. This is the comment that sparked the theory that the Commission killed Dave. I want answers. +1

The candy that tastes like the 50s is really chewy. Why is Five still chewing it? +1

The Handler gives Five a pistol and he doesn’t immediately shoot her, which suggests that the pistol is empty. So why was the grenade still operational if the other weapons were not? You would think she would make sure that the grenades couldn’t be used against her. +1

The Handler is a fucking creep. I think Aidan Gallagher was a little uncomfortable in this scene. The look in his eyes isn’t something you can fake. +1

Kate Walsh is an awesome actress. -1

Out of all the candies in the bowl, Five conveniently takes one that is an actual candy and one that is a tracker. +1

So I want to talk about Luther. I think the show did him a great disservice by setting up his story this way. Compared to the Commission stuff, Luther’s story arc doesn’t seem important, hence the “Dad sent me to the Moon” jokes. If this was in a better order, then maybe the fandom would like Luther more. Not that I know what that order should have been, but it definitely shouldn’t have been this one. This whole episode seems kind of disorganized and Luther’s character suffers for it. After this sin, I’m going to shut up about it, so I’ll just add a few and move on. +5

“Four years of my life. A lie” “What an asshole” That’s a bit of an understatement, Allison. Seriously, this Moon research has got to have some value to it. Luther was studying the moon for four fucking years. Who knows what kind of crazy shit he could have found out about the moon’s atmosphere and what the Earth was like when the moon split from it. Those soil samples would tell us a lot about what the developing planet Earth was like. Luther’s moon research is important scientific material. And Reggie just locked it away. +3

This scene is excellent independently. Tom Hopper and Emmy Raver-Lampman play off each other extremely well. -1

“Can I show you something?” +1

The tools in the greenhouse have not moved in seventeen years. +1

And neither has the dust free record player. +1

Two cans of generic cola from seventeen years ago. And these two morons drink them. The family brain cell is dying. +1

This is such a sibling moment. Trying to do something nice and then it all goes up in flames? Sibling. Culture. -1

You know what isn’t sibling culture? The fucking locket. +3

This is a really human moment for Cha Cha. Burning the note shows that deep down, she cares about Hazel. -1

However, I don’t understand why she’s so pissed about Agnes. Is the show trying to ship Hazel and Cha Cha? Because that would be a stretch and I really don’t see it. +1

Klaus asking for one last hit is believable. Diego’s reaction is really good too. Well done. -1

Klaus’s ptsd. Putting my boy through trauma. +1

The wound on Dave’s chest has to be an exit wound. He was behind the barrier, so there’s no way he could have been shot from the front by the enemy. Someone (like a Commission agent) shot him from the back. So I guess we sort of got answers? I’m going to sin this until we know for sure. +1

Klaus is distraught. My poor boy. +1

Why is the chandelier still on the ground? You would think somebody would have attempted to pick that up at this point, right? It’s been two days. +1

Grace’s more relaxed hairstyle shows that she isn’t under Reggie’s strict control anymore. The tight pin curls are now replaced by gorgeous waves. Symbolism, well done hair stylist. -1

Grace lies because Pogo is standing behind Diego. Otherwise, I think she would have told him the truth right then and there. Secrets. +1

Yo, @ Luther. Who the fuck eats a hot dog like that? +1

Also, it was bright daylight when Diego was talking to Grace and now it’s pitch black out. What happened in those hours? +1

Talking about their regrets, Allison says “we can’t go back”. Insert every season 2 headcanon and the whole “Where are they?” tag line from the season 2 promos. +1

Allison attempts to see the silver lining of child abuse. This works and is a valid coping mechanism that I think is totally in character. Well done, writers. -1

The kiss on the cheek is very “this is the last time I will see my sibling whom I love very dearly and who also loves me for me”. This should have been it for Allison and Luther kissing because it’s a really good moment. -1

I love the dancing in the moonlight scene because it’s a reference to something from the comics. -1

The choreography is really, really good. Emma Portner fucking rules. -1

And I love the earrings that Allison is wearing. No joke, someone please tell me where I can find them, they’re adorable and I would love to have them. -1

However, the show made us see two sibling characters kiss. In a very romantic way. +15

And it’s very clear that this kiss happens outside of the fantasy too. +15

Also, without the lights and the music, were Allison and Luther just two weirdos dancing in the park to nothing? +1

The transition to get back to the Commission is really good. -1

“Gloria. The Handler knows that Five is up to something. Get this to Hazel and Cha Cha immediately.” Was the extra info about Five necessary? I feel like a regular person wouldn’t say that. +1

Gloria doesn’t know who the second best assassins are. +1

Five gets that stapler out of nowhere. This goes back to his unexplained power from episode 1, but now the question is: Is this switching power stapler based? +1

Five’s expression when he finally gets the name of the man who will cause the apocalypse. -1

And now we know the origin of the terminate Hazel message. Five, you clever bastard. -1

Did we see the terminate Cha Cha message before this? I can’t remember. If we didn’t then it’s a great reveal. If we did, then I didn’t care enough to pay attention. [I looked back] We didn’t. Great reveal. -1

Five, hide your bodies better so they don’t start waking up for comedic timing. +1

The comedic timing of Gloria waking back up. -1

“You’re a first rate pragmatist!” no he’s not. Have you been paying attention to Five’s character at all, Handler? If he was, then he never would have broken his contract because he was safe in the Commission.+1

Also, this is what a lot of fanfic writers base Five off of. Not his actual character, this fucking line. Sin for the fandom. +1

Why did they have to split up this scene? The Handler just attempted to shoot Five and now we’re supposed to care about Mom and Diego?? +1

Grace finally gets to tell the truth! Sin for Pogo and Reggie for forcing her to lie. +1

The truth. -1

The Commission desk people do care about Gloria. Caring. -1

Vanya finding Reggies book. This could have been the original trigger to the apocalypse in the first timeline. I want answers. How did it go down originally? +1

Dave! -1

“I do owe a debt. But it’s not to you.” This is one of those lines that will be referenced in a future season. “See, [this character and/or relationship] was referenced in season 1” or something like that. This is my favorite Five line, too. -2

Five once again stands too close to an explosion. Fuckin’ run, dude! +1

The ending of this episode reminds me of the “and it was all just a dream” ending that 5th graders write. Nothing in this episode has any consequences. +3

And I am adding back the sins I took off and then some for the important bits like Diego and Klaus bonding, Grace telling Diego all the secrets, and Klaus seeing Dave. +4

Wednesday. 8:15 A.M. (...again). The time stamp is pretty good though. -1

“What gives us a win this time?” And then Five appears. -1

Five snatches Allison’s coffee. And he should be bleeding from the shrapnel wound. +2

Allison’s face when Five snatches her coffee. -1

Diego, Luther, Klaus, and Allison are all watching Five stumble weird and chug Allison’s coffee with the funniest expressions. I want to know what they were thinking. Ya know, beyond “What the Fuck?”. +1

Those expressions, though. -1

“So if y’all don’t get your sideshow acts together” Five this whole season has been you saving the world and everyone else as a sideshow act. That’s gonna take a lot more effort than saving the world. +1

Aidan Gallagher fucking nails this scene. Expletive required. This is why I respect him as an actor. This scene would have been so easy to over act, but he kills this monologue. -5

If you look closely at Five’s hair, it looks sort of like the triangular shape from the comics. I can’t tell if that was intentional, but it was a good detail. Hair department. -1

“Who the hell is Harold Jenkins” followed by a coffee slurp. That is how they end the episode? Really? It would have been stronger without the coffee. +1

Season 2 comes out on July 31, 2020! I got the announcement just as I was finishing this episode! I’ll take off a sin because we finally know! Whoop!! -1

Overall review:

After the powerhouse that is episode 5, this episode feels odd and out of place. My favorite parts were the Commission parts, and everything else felt like an interruption. Even more so when you consider that the commission parts are the only parts of the episode that actually happened. Sure, it’s great character building, but without any consequences, it feels cheap. I feel like I’ve said everything I needed to say, so I won’t get crazy with the analysis. I would say more if anything in this episode actually mattered.

Total: 112

Sentence: The Umbrella Academy of Reacting to things Slowly due to Stupidity. Say that 10 times fast. Then I will undo all your hard work through the power of time travel. Seriously, fuck this ending.

#The Umbrella Academy #all in good fun #luther hargreeves #diego hargreeves #allison hargreeves #klaus hargreeves #five hargreeves #ben hargreeves #vanya hargreeves #dave katz #leonard peabody #harold jenkins #the handler #dot #gloria #the commission

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per-ineptia-ad-astra · 5 years ago

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fixing The Menagerie

The circumstances behind The Menagerie pose an interesting writing problem: how do you take an already shot, totally completed episode for an earlier version of a TV show that differs considerably from the version that actually made it to air, and turn it into an episode that you can use now, as part of that later version, in a way that actually makes sense for your audience? That would be challenging enough without the additional problems that 1.) you can't reshoot any of the original episode because you no longer have access to the sets, costumes, most of the cast, etc., and 2.) the whole reason you're doing this in the first place is because you can't get a completely new episode out in time to meet your air date, so whatever your framing device is it has to be something that can be shot and finished very quickly--and cheaply, because at absolutely no point in the making of this show has there been spare money to throw around.

When I recapped The Menagerie (eons ago, it now seems) I said in the conclusion to the second part that I thought the framing device used wasn't as effective as it could have been. So, I figured I’d put my money where my mouth was and see if I could come up with another one. Before I start I want to put out the same disclaimer I used for the Return of the Archons post: I am not a professional TV writer (or a professional anything) and I intend this only as a fun exercise and not an angry and serious screed about the writing quality of TOS, which I do very much love for being what it is. I can only offer what, in my opinion, would make a more enjoyable episode, which may not necessarily be what you would find to be a more enjoyable episode. And if you already greatly enjoy The Menagerie as it is, you probably won’t want to read this.

For the purposes of this post, I’m going to take The Cage itself as written. It has its own problems, and that might be worth its own post at some point, but I’m not going to take it on here. We’ll assume The Cage exists exactly as it was produced, and the problem now is entirely focused on how to turn it into an episode—or two—of TOS.

(And, just to get it out of the way: I’m not going to talk about how either The Cage or The Menagerie play into Discovery, AOS, or the rest of Star Trek in general. It’s obviously a very important episode backstory-wise, but for this, right now, I’m just going talk about it purely as a TOS episode.)

So, with that out of the way, let’s talk about The Menagerie for a moment. What’s wrong with it?

Well, the framing device could certainly have been worse. It’s not terrible. Hell, Part I even won a Hugo, so, guess I’m up against the Hugo committee on this one. But, there are a number of things that I find awkward about it.

In a general sense, there’s the way that, once the flashbacks start, the story is attempting to maintain two separate threads of tension: the flashback story, with the tension being on what’s going to happen to Pike, and the present-day story, with the tension being on what Spock is doing, why he’s doing it, and whether he’s going to wind up getting the death penalty for it. This second thread starts out well—by this point in TOS, we’ve gotten to know Spock well enough to know how out of character all this is for him, which makes the mystery quite gripping. However, once the flashback starts, the story struggles to maintain the tension of this second thread. The attempt to keep the present-day story as tense as the past story only results in breaks away from the action for scenes in the courtroom where something or someone stops Spock from showing the footage, which never results in anything because by the next commercial break they’re back at it. Most of these interruptions are either arbitrary (the screen goes off for no reason and then comes on again for no reason; fake!Mendez randomly decides he’s had enough and tries to stop things) or just not that interesting (Pike fell asleep), and with each one it only becomes more obvious that the only real purpose they’re serving is to pad out the framing story.

The resolution of the present-day story is also rather unsatisfying for a lot of reasons. After so much tension built up about what’s going on and why Spock is acting this way and is his life on the line and is Kirk’s career on the line and how’s he going to get out of this...it turns out that Mendez has been fake this whole time, so nothing he said or did since Kirk left the Starbase matters at all; Starfleet casually waves the whole thing aside with no repercussions, making all the build-up about Spock risking the only death penalty remaining in the Federation mean nothing whatsoever in the end; and we never really get a satisfactory answer as to why Spock insisted on carrying out his court martial the way he did. Sure, eventually the Keeper says the whole court martial was basically staged to stall Kirk so he wouldn’t focus on getting control of his ship back, but not only does that raise further questions—if Mendez was only ever an illusion sent by the Talosians, why did he try to stop the court martial several times? Why did the Talosians turn off the footage at a crucial point, and why did it come on again?--there’s also no reason given why Spock couldn’t just recount what happened himself, which could have taken up enough time if he was careful enough about it, instead of needing the Talosians to broadcast a video version of the events.

There’s also the simple fact that Pike’s ending is itself rather dubious. I suppose this one comes down to a difference of opinion between me and Gene Roddenberry (one of many) since both The Cage and The Menagerie end with a character going to permanently stay with the Talosians, with no concern at all expressed about the fact that the Talosians are cruel, torture-happy, and frankly insufferable wannabe-slavemasters who see humans as nothing more than brute animals to be caged, bred and make to work. I said I wasn’t going to tackle The Cage here so I won’t go off about its ending, no matter how much it pisses me off. But The Menagerie is also at fault here, because it needlessly repeats the exact same problem (with a bit less sexism, but still). The ending of The Menagerie gives us no sign that the Talosians have reformed in any way, and no explanation as to why they suddenly care so much about Pike to go to all this trouble for him. We’re just expected to believe that Pike’s gonna go have a nice happy illusion-life with them even though the last time we saw them they were trying to breed a race of human slaves. Really, Gene? Really?

On that note, the treatment of disability in both The Cage and The Menagerie bothers me a great deal. The effect of Pike becoming disabled is to essentially strip him of all his autonomy. I mean no disrespect to Sean Kenney here, but if they’d replaced him with a mannequin it wouldn’t have made any difference at all to the episode, because in The Menagerie Pike is not a character, he’s a prop. We’re assured repeatedly that Pike thinks and feels as much as he ever did, but we have to be told that by other characters because the episode certainly never takes any opportunity to let us in on any of it. Here’s the sum total of what we know Pike thinks about the events of The Menagerie:

1. He doesn’t want to visit with Kirk and McCoy at the beginning of the episode but allows Spock to stay.

2. He tells Spock “no” when Spock tells him his plan.

3. He keeps repeating “no” the rest of that day, which everyone is confused by but no one makes any effort to understand.

4. He falls asleep at one point.

5. He votes for a guilty verdict for Spock during the court martial, when asked.

6. He says “yes” when asked if he wants to go live with the Talosians.

Pike is treated with sympathy and the respect due to his rank and history, but mostly he’s an object of pity. We’re told he can move his chair himself, but he appears to be confined to one small hospital room that’s not even set up for his needs, and he spends the entire episode being moved around by other people. Everyone talks about how bad his situation is, but only Spock attempts to do anything to improve it—and he does so knowing that Pike doesn’t want him to do it. When Pike tells him “No,” Spock doesn’t ask any questions, he doesn’t try to find out what part of this whole thing Pike is objecting to, he just overrides Pike’s objection on the assumption that Pike is only concerned about Spock doing something so very illegal, a concern he pretty much disregards. He turns out to be right—as far as we can tell—but for all the information Spock has at the time, Pike might have been saying, “No, I don’t want to live with the Talosians.”

It doesn’t need to be that way. Pike’s condition is certainly very severe, but as I mentioned in the recap, there are plenty of other things that could have been done for him, or at least attempted. And even if none of those were done, there are other ways that the episode could have developed his character, or at least treated him like a character. Spock’s discussion at the beginning of the episode could have been a mind meld that allowed us to hear Pike’s thoughts on the matter. Spock could have heard his objections and addressed them, and he and Pike could have come to come to an agreement and actually become co-conspirators instead of Pike spending the entire episode as a helpless hostage to Spock’s plan. We could have gotten a scene of Pike and McCoy interacting after Spock tells McCoy to look after Pike—McCoy’s not only highly suspicious at that point and unlikely to be greatly put off by Spock's order to not ask Pike any questions, he’s also the one who gives a whole speech about how cruel it is that Pike “can’t reach out, and no one can reach in”--so give us a scene where he does reach out! We could have had a scene of Kirk talking with Pike—he’s certainly got plenty to ask the man about, both in general and in regard to the current situation. All he has to do is put a little extra work into how to frame his questions. The Talosians could have delivered a message from Pike at the end, or one of them could have astral-projected in earlier to have a telepathic exchange with him. We could have seen Pike express himself by moving his chair, turning towards or away people when they talk to him, interjecting a “yes” or “no” into a conversation instead of only replying when asked something, or repeating a response incessantly to show that he’s emphatic about something. (Yeah, we kinda get the latter when he’s saying “no” over and over early in the episode, but that’s only treated as a “what could he possibly be trying to communicate??? oh, if only we knew!” moment.) There were so many ways Pike could have been treated as a character, as a person, instead of a plot element who exists to be pushed around in his chair and have speeches made about how tragic his situation is.

Both The Cage and The Menagerie end with a character who is disabled choosing to spend the rest of their lives isolated from the entire rest of humanity on a barren planet inhabited by jackass aliens because, as everyone around them nods and solemnly agrees, that’s a better fate for them than living among human society. To be clear, it’s not Pike and Vina seeking solutions to their problems that I object to. If Vina wants to be represented by what is essentially an avatar of her own choosing, or if Pike feels that an illusory world offers better quality of life for him, that’s entirely their right. But when life with the Talosians is set up as a situation so horrible that we see four characters literally willing to die rather than remain on Talos 4, and then have two disabled characters say “actually it’s better this way if I stay here,” you kind of wind up with a message that looks a lot like “being disabled is a fate worse than death.” I doubt that was intentional, at least not entirely, since we see other disabled characters in TOS who are treated considerably better—but there it is, all the same.

This is not to say that there’s nothing of value in The Menagerie’s framing story. The tension between Kirk wanting to trust his friend but being forced to act in authority over him because he’s undeniably done something very seriously against the rules, and he won’t tell Kirk why, is great while it lasts. Spock’s character is expanded considerably by showing us that there are some things he places above his honor and obligations as a Starfleet officer—and indeed above his own life. We see a bit of his history, a glimpse of a relationship with a former captain that he respects so much that Spock will put everything on the line to secure a better future for him; and we see how much he respects and values Kirk, that he foregoes the chance to explain himself—and thus gain an ally and aid in his cause—because to do so would put Kirk in danger as well. And we get that great little moment where Spock tells McCoy to call security on him and McCoy has absolutely no idea how to react. And we get backstory! And kind-of-continuity! Okay, it’s not much backstory, but by TOS standards it’s practically a goldmine.

I don’t want to throw all that away. But I think there must be some way to address the problems without totally losing the good parts.

It’s only fair, though, that any attempt to improve the episode should keep in mind the circumstances it was made under. I don’t know enough about budgeting and producing TV in the 1960s either generally in or in this specific case to know exactly what was available to them when it came to producing The Menagerie, so I’m just going to try to deduce roughly what we might have to work with based on what what was in the finished episodes:

Much of Part I and all of Part II take place in preexisting sets, either the Enterprise ones or the shuttlecraft interior set. The new sets include the Starbase 11 exterior—which is mostly a matte painting—Mendez’s office, Pike’s hospital room, and the Starbase computer room. The computer room is a redressed Engineering set; I suspect the hospital room is also a redressed existing set, but I don’t know for sure. It’s quite simple regardless, and is clearly mostly using existing pieces (the bed and the chair). Mendez’s office is likewise set up with pretty standard preexisting TOS set dressing pieces, with the exception of some cut-outs outside the window standing in for the Starbase exterior.

Discounting any background extras we have five new characters: Commodore Mendez, Piper, Chief Humbolt (the computer room guy), Lt. Hansen, and Pike himself. Of these, only Mendez and Pike have much significant screen time. So, we can assume that hiring an extensive guest cast is probably not on the table here.

Most of the original cast from The Cage are probably not available. Pike we know is definitely out—Jeffrey Hunter wasn’t willing to come back after The Cage failed, and probably would have been too expensive to hire for two episodes anyway. Leonard Nimoy and Majel Barrett were, obviously, still working on TOS, so presumably we could incorporate past-Spock and Number One if we really needed to. Since Malachi Throne was also on hand for The Menagerie, we could record new dialogue for the Keeper (as The Menagerie did indeed do), but presumably no new footage (Throne voiced the Keeper, but they and all the other Talosians were portrayed onscreen by female actors). I don’t know if any of the other original cast could have been gotten back, but since they weren’t, let’s assume we can’t use them.

Let’s also assume that all of the sets, costumes, makeup, etc., from The Cage are inaccessible. In reality I’m sure at least something was still kicking around in storage somewhere, or was reused for TOS, but there’s no point in trying to figure out exactly what, so for simplicity’s sake we’ll say anything we might want to use from The Cage has to be recreated from scratch, and if it can’t be then we can’t use it.

Because the entire reason this is going on in the first place is because the effects work was making TOS run behind schedule, we can’t have much in the way of effects for The Menagerie, especially post-production effects. There’s a shot of the planet Starbase 11 is on, a matte painting for the Starbase 11 exterior, a couple uses of the transporter, Pike’s chair and makeup, some shots of the Enterprise and the shuttle flying around in space, and some things being shown on screens—and I think that’s more or less about it.

So. If I was told that I had to take The Cage and wrap it up as a TOS episode with the above restrictions in mind, here’s some things I would keep in mind:

If we look at this from a starting-from-scratch perspective, it seems to me that if you have an episode that you need to incorporate into your main show that has an almost entirely different cast, and one of the characters from your original episode, who has never once been seen or even referenced in your main show, is played by an actor that you can’t get back, the simplest thing to do is to not show that character. We don’t actually need Pike himself to be onscreen for The Menagerie. That he would be at least mentioned in some capacity, sure, but we do in fact have the opportunity to avoid putting some poor dude through five hours of makeup by simply having Pike remain offscreen. We'll probably wind up putting someone else through five hours of makeup, but we'll get to that in a bit.

For me at least, if the Talosians are going to re-appear, they either need to still be villains in some sense or we need to know that they have begun to change their behavior in some way. To have them simply show up again and be treated as friendly after everything that happened in The Cage, with absolutely no acknowledgment of the fact that they did do everything they did in The Cage...it just doesn’t make sense, and it’s much too distracting for me to get past.

Although I’ve set the rule that I’m not going to change The Cage itself, The Menagerie being a sequel to those events opens up the opportunity to follow up on the ending of The Cage in a different direction. In other words, I’m going to rescue Vina, because her fate in The Cage really, really bothers me.

Insisting on the preexisting footage being literally shown as a video in-universe has always felt pointlessly awkward to me. It’s so weird that the characters have to stop and go, “Hang on, what? Where’d this come from? This can’t possibly be security footage. Why does it have different camera angles?” to forestall the exact same questions the audience were probably having at that point. And, as I said above, there’s really not a good explanation as to why the footage did have to be shown in that manner. It seems to me that it would be much simpler to have the flashback footage be just that: a flashback. A story which is being recounted, but not literally shown, in-universe. By doing so you avoid having to open up a bunch of dead-end plot threads about why the footage looks the way it does and is being shown the way it does. I think we can give the audience at least enough credit to assume they’ll understand that if a character starts recounting an event, and the scene cuts to footage of that event, that footage is a representation of what the character is saying, not literally something being shown in-universe.

I’m not going to bother with the whole “going to Talos 4 warrants the death penalty!!” thing. It doesn’t make a great deal of sense to begin with, and it never actually pays off in The Menagerie. We can manage a better source of tension than that, I think.

All of this would ultimately take my version of The Menagerie in a pretty different direction than the actual episode, I admit. It's a rather drastic change, but, if I was tasked with writing a framing story for using The Cage in TOS, here's how I'd do it:

The Enterprise is out tooling around doing their usual business when Uhura picks up a distress call from a ship stranded in space. It’s very faint, distant, and there’s something odd about it, but of course they’re gonna follow up on it because that’s how they roll. So they head off in the direction of the call, but the funny thing is that as they get closer, Uhura says that the source of the distress call appears to be moving around. They follow it, send some hails, and finally get back a scratchy, staticky response: it’s coming from a ship that’s been heavily damaged, and the crew is no longer able to steer it, so it’s drifting erratically through space. Kirk has Uhura send a hail: “We’ve received your signal. Keep broadcasting it and we’ll find you.”

They keep following the ship. It’s difficult—the call is weak, and the Enterprise has to go carefully or risk overshooting it. After they’ve been chasing it for a while, Spock points out that they should be wary of entering a nearby star system, because it contains a planet all Federation ships are warned to avoid. Kirk, of course, doesn’t want to give up on the damaged ship, but Spock steps over to his chair and quietly says, “Captain...I should warn you that it may be the lesser of two evils to abandon this ship, rather than risk going too close to Talos 4.”

Kirk, of course, is stunned to hear Spock say this, and asks what makes Talos 4 so dangerous. Spock says it would take rather a long time to explain. Kirk says that Spock almost sounds like he’s familiar with the place, and Spock replies, “More than familiar, captain. I’ve been there before.”

[dramatic sting, cut to commercial]

Since it looks like the damaged ship will take a while to track down, Kirk has McCoy, Scotty and Spock convene in a briefing room to hear Spock’s story. Spock gives a short introduction: “What I am about to tell you, gentlemen, occurred as I said thirteen years ago, when the Enterprise was under the command of Captain Christopher Pike. I’ve pulled up the log entries of Captain Pike pertaining to this time to provide his own perspective on the matter, as it was he that had the closest encounter with the Talosians. At the time, the Enterprise had only recently escaped a disastrous encounter on Rigel 7 which had resulted in the deaths of three crewmen and injuries to several more, including myself. Some of the injuries were beyond the capacity of the ship’s doctors to treat, so we were en route to the Vega colony for treatment when we began receiving a distress signal...”

Spock’s voice-over fades out over a transition to the Cage footage. We watch that--perhaps interspersed with the occasional bit of narration from Spock, or a question from Kirk or McCoy or Scotty--until about the point where the landing party encounters the fake survivors' camp and Pike is captured by the Talosians. Then Spock is suddenly interrupted by Sulu calling Kirk to the bridge. Everyone hurries up to the bridge, where Uhura reports that the distress call has suddenly disappeared. Sulu says it's not just that: somehow, he doesn't understand how or why, his sensors are suddenly showing that they're not on the same course or even in the same place that they were only moments ago. Somehow, they've wound up in the Talos star system--and they're heading directly for Talos 4.

"It is just as I feared," Spock says gravely. "This has all been a trap."

Kirk orders Sulu to change course, and he tries—but somehow the ship doesn’t divert even a little. It’s like the helm just isn’t responding. Kirk does all the usual things, telling Scotty to do something, etc, nothing’s working, and then Uhura reports that they’re receiving a hail. And it appears to be coming from Talos IV.

Naturally Kirk tells her to put it on. The voice on the other end is staticky and faint. "Greetings. Is this...the Enterprise?"

"This is the Enterprise. I'm Captain James Kirk."

Silence for a moment. Then the voice on the other end, obviously surprised, says, "Captain Kirk? Not Captain Pike?"

"Captain Pike no longer commands this vessel."

There's a long pause. "I see. We were...in error. We apologize for the deception, Captain Kirk. It was important that we bring Captain Pike to this planet, but we feared that his...past experiences here...would leave him unwilling to come close enough to hear our message.”

“That would be a most logical decision for Captain Pike, were he here,” Spock says coldly. “Considering the nature of those experiences.”

“You speak as though you are familiar with what transpired here before, then.”

“I am First Officer Spock. I was present aboard the Enterprise as Science Officer during the events thirteen years ago.”

There’s an even longer pause. When the voice returns, the signal is even more crackly than ever. “Our apologies, this communication is...difficult to maintain. We must wait to deliver the message in full until you are...closer to our planet. However...until then...you may be assured, Spock...that this time...” [pause for more crackling] “This time...the intent of the Talosians...is peaceful.”

The signal cuts out, and Uhura can’t get it back. The ship appears to still be locked on course for Talos 4. With seemingly nothing else to do for the moment but wait, everyone goes back to the briefing room, where Spock continues recounting Pike’s story.

At some point, Spock has to pause so everyone can go take a break, and everyone else files out of the room while he remains behind for a moment, staring at the computer contemplatively. Then suddenly, we hear a voice saying, “Spock--” and Spock turns around in surprise. We can’t see exactly what he’s looking at, only a soft glow at the edge of the camera, and then the scene cuts away.

Kirk’s grabbing a nap in his quarters when he’s woken by an urgent message: they’re still some way from Talos 4, but the ship appears to have stopped moving all on its own. He hurries up to the bridge, where Sulu tells him that it seems like they’re having some kind of computer error with the helm, but they can’t track it down yet. In the middle of all this, Uhura whirls around and exclaims, “Sir! Shuttle bay reports Mr. Spock has knocked out the tech on duty and is boarding one of the shuttles!” Kirk yells for security to get down there, but they are, of course, too late: Spock rigged the shuttle bay doors to open automatically and flies out before they can stop him.

Stunned and confused, Kirk orders Uhura to raise the shuttle, which she does.

“Spock, are you out of your mind?!”

“Negative, captain. My reasoning is quite sound, though I regret I cannot explain it to you just yet.”

Kirk yells for the tractor beam to grab the shuttle, but Sulu can’t get the tractor beam to respond either.

“You need not be concerned, captain. I believe it is well within Mr. Scott’s abilities to repair the computer in due time.”

“You did this to the computer?”

“It was necessary. You will find the transporter similarly incapacitated. I could not risk you coming after me, or stopping me. Not yet.”

“Spock—do you know what you’re risking by doing this? You were the one who warned me not to go near Talos 4!”

“Yes, captain. And it is because I know what the Talosians are capable of that I am doing this. Either they are telling the truth, in which case there is no danger...or they are not, in which case it is better that I alone risk doing this.” A pause. “Jim...wait 24 hours for me. If I do not contact you by then...you must leave in all haste.”

“I’m not leaving you behind!”

“You must. 24 hours.” And with that, Spock ends the call. As Uhura’s trying fruitlessly to reestablish contact with him, she suddenly looks up and says, “Captain...we’re receiving a message from...Fleet Captain Pike?”

“What?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well...put him on.”

So Uhura puts Pike on speaker, and Kirk says, “We’re, er, in the middle of a bit of a situation, sir...what can I do for you?”

“I might ask what I can do for you, captain. Mr. Spock left a message requesting that I contact you.”

Stunned pause for a moment. “He did what?” Kirk finally says.

“About an hour ago. I regret I wasn’t able to return his call earlier, but it’s the middle of the night here...Kirk, what’s this all about?”

Kirk sighs. “It’s a long story, captain, and I don’t entirely understand it myself. Uhura, patch this into the briefing room...it’ll take a while to tell.”

A little later, we see Kirk and McCoy sitting in the briefing room as Kirk finishes up explaining everything to Pike. “What do you make of that, captain?”

“I’m not sure what to make of it, Kirk. I can’t imagine why Spock would want to go to Talos 4. All Federation starships have been warned away from there ever since our encounter with them, and Spock’s well aware of that.”

“Yes...Captain, I confess I’m not familiar with the entire story of that encounter myself...Spock was telling us about it before he, er, left, but he hadn’t finished. Could you enlighten us about the rest of it? We do have your logs, of course, but you might have more information--”

“Yes, I see what you mean. I’m not sure I’ll be able to help, but I can at least tell you what I know...”

Pike continues telling the story where Spock left off. Around about the point where Pike and the others escape from the cell, there’s a call from the bridge reporting that their sensors show that the shuttle has landed on Talos 4. Frustrated, Kirk wonders once again just what Spock thinks he’s doing down there.

We then cut to a shot of what looks kind of like the barren landscape of Talos 4, only this time there seems to be a small surface settlement among the cliffs. Then we see Spock entering a small, plainly decorated room with windows looking out to the rest of the settlement. “I am here, as agreed,” he says, and then the camera turns to show us a figure wearing a robe and a hood sitting at a table in the middle of the room.

“Welcome, Mr. Spock," the figure says. "Won’t you sit down?”

Back aboard the ship, Pike finishes telling Kirk and McCoy the story.

“So...that’s all of it?” Kirk says.

“Yes. We left Talos 4 and never looked back. Never heard anything from the Talosians, either, but Starfleet marked the place as too dangerous to visit just in case.”

“Poor Vina,” McCoy murmurs.

Pike sighs. “Leaving her there is one my greatest regrets. She seemed determined to stay, but...Even put in a request to go back, once, but Starfleet wouldn’t allow it. Too risky. I often wonder what happened to her. If she was really happy with them after all. But, as you may have gathered, Kirk, none of this explains just what the devil Spock thinks he’s doing--”

He’s interrupted by a call from Uhura: “Captain—message coming from Mr. Spock!”

“Put him on! Spock, what’s going on? Are you alright?”

“Quite well, captain. Has Captain Pike contacted the ship yet?”

“I’m on the line right now,” Pike says. “Spock, what do you think you’re playing at?”

“Ah, captain. I have someone here who wishes to speak to you.”

We then cut back to Spock sitting at the table with the figure, who takes his communicator and says, “Hello...captain.”

Pike is too stunned to speak for a moment. “Vina...? Is that you?”

“The very same. I’ve missed you.”

“I don’t understand. What’s going on?”

Between them, Spock and Vina explain just what is going on. There's been a change in Talosian society since the Enterprise left. Not all of the Talosians agreed with the plan to breed a slave race to begin with—others felt that they could, and should, attempt to reclaim the surface themselves. The incident with Captain Pike brought matters to a head, and a rebellion erupted shortly afterward. Once in power, the new leaders dedicated their efforts to repairing their ancestors’ machines and establishing a colony on the surface.

The reason the Enterprise was lured back to Talos 4 was Vina: she's had medical problems as a result of the crash and the botched surgery, and it's been getting worse for years, to the point that she likely won't live much longer if she doesn't get proper treatment. The new Talosian leaders wanted to make up for what their predecessors had done and gave her the best care they could, but simply didn't have the human medical knowledge to fix the problem. So Vina asked if they could help her get home, instead. The Talosians were concerned, however, that the Federation wouldn't believe a genuine call for help, given their history, so they hatched the plan to lure the Enterprise, and Pike with it, back to Talos 4. They've been waiting for quite a while, listening to subspace chatter, hoping the Enterprise would come near. Once it did, they put out the illusion of the damaged ship to bring the Enterprise close enough that they could maintain an illusion over the helm controls, making sure the helmsmen were not altering their course as they thought they were.

When they discovered that Pike was no longer aboard the Enterprise, they instead sent a telepathic message to Spock, hoping that his own experience with the Talosians would make him see the difference between their current society and the old one, and thus be more likely to believe them. They had to wait until the ship got close to Talos 4, because the new society of Talosians have been deliberately letting their psychic powers weaken, attempting to break the addiction to illusion that was holding them back from reclaiming the surface. They were able to keep up the illusion of the damaged ship for a while, but couldn't manage that and the illusion on the helm and extended contact with the Enterprise at the same time, making the whole thing very nearly fall apart at one point.

Kirk demands to know why Spock ran off on his own, and Spock explains that while he found the Talosians' message plausible, a risk remained that this was all an elaborate set-up. They might have been attempting another pass at the plan that failed thirteen years ago. If that was the case, Spock would be the least risky member of the crew to make contact with them, since as a non-human he wouldn't be suitable for their plans. Since he knew Kirk would never agree to that, he took the shuttle and hacked the ship's computers to ensure that they wouldn't be able to follow him, at least for a while. He now feels confident that this is not a trap, though, as the Talosians' powers have weakened enough that his own mental defenses are strong enough to mostly see through them.

So Vina accompanies Spock back to the shuttlecraft, and they fly back to the ship. Vina's taken to Sickbay while Kirk confronts Spock about stealing the shuttlecraft. Spock says he'll accept all punishment, but felt he had to do it--he saw what almost happened to Pike on Talos 4, and couldn't risk the same fate happening to Kirk. But he also felt he owed it to Pike to investigate Vina's story, and help her return if that was truly what she wanted. Kirk lets the whole matter go, because of course he does, telling Spock not to try that shit again because he can't lose his best officer and all that.

Kirk and Spock go to visit Sickbay, where McCoy reports that with proper Federation medical care Vina's prognosis is good. Kirk wants to talk to her, but McCoy tells him to wait because she's got another visitor. Kirk glances around the doorway and sees Vina sitting up in bed looking at a video monitor, from which Pike's voice is coming. Kirk smiles and says he'll come back later.

Everyone goes back to the bridge, and with the computer damage now fixed, they're preparing to leave, when Uhura reports that there's a call coming from Talos 4. Kirk has a short conversation with the Talosian on the other end, who is glad to hear that Vina will be alright. They also ask that Kirk relay a message to Pike, extending their apologies for what he went through, which Kirk assures them he will. He then adds that the Federation would likely be willing to open trade negotiations with the new Talosian government, and the Talosian says they may take them up on that. And with that, the ship flies off.

Most of this story would only require the existing Enterprise sets, and potentially some brief shots of the shuttle interior. The only new locations needed would be the Talosian settlement exterior, which could be a matte painting, and the inside of the building where Spock meets Vina, which wouldn't require much dressing. The only non-main-cast characters would be Pike, Vina, and the Talosian that contacts the Enterprise. The Talosian is a voice-only role. Pike is also a voice-only role, and would require someone who can approximate Jeffrey Hunter's voice, but it's a lot easier to find a sound-alike than someone who's a sound-alike and a look-alike--plus Pike would be thirteen years older than in The Cage, which allows some leeway. I don't know if Susan Oliver would have been willing/able to come back to play Vina, but if she wasn't, a hood, wig, careful camera shots and some old-age makeup would probably serve well enough to disguise another actress. The only special effect needed is a bit of glowiness for the Talosian that appears to Spock just out of frame.

As for the fate of Pike himself, I don't want to erase a disabled character, but I also don't really feel that Pike's appearance in The Menagerie does any justice to him as a disabled character. Did Gene always envision that kind of fate for him or did he simply seize upon it as a plot device in a desperate moment? I don't know, so in the end I decided to leave it more or less open. There would be considerable leeway for multiple options that would still allow him to serve the same role in this episode: he could be commanding another ship, he could retired and settled down somewhere, he could have suffered an accident as he did in canon and spend this entire episode talking through a voice synthesizer. Imagine whatever one feels most suitable to you.

This is only my own take on the story. I know it would have considerable repercussions to later Star Trek canon and I'm not going to make the claim that those repercussions themselves would be better than what actually happened. It's certainly a more hopeful ending than The Menagerie, on the whole, which may not be everyone's cup of tea. But it was an interesting exercise.

#trek talk #1.11 The Menagerie Part One #1.12 The Menagerie Part 2 #fix-it post #fixing The Menagerie

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everybodylovesrand · 5 years ago

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Raje Judkins answered some questions about the show. Filming spoilers for the show below:

Q: What part of the books should you be caught up on for the first season?

A: Depends on if you like to read something before you watch it or not.

Q: What are you finding most challenging about going from book to screen? A: The hardest thing is the physicality of production. In the first book alone they go to more than 20 villages and cities. To try to do that is physically impossible for the show, so most of the work we don in the room is geographical, figuring how to condense the story and move it through places we can physically create.

Q: Do you have a favorite chapter from the whole saga? Mine is Veins of Gold. A: So many. But Honey in the Tea is the one off the top of my head.

Q: We can’t wait to see Elayne, Aviendha and Min

A: Me either. Three of my favorites.

Q: Has any post-production work begun or does that not start until filming is completed?

A: Nope! We do it simultaneously. Before the corona hit, I was prepping 2 episodes, shooting 2 episodes, in post on 4 episodes and writing Season 2 simultaneously :-0

Q: Will there be a soundtrack? Who’s the composer? A: Of course! David Buckley. Plus a few incredible musical guests we’ve already had.

Q: Are Min/Elayne in season 1? A: The Wheel weaves as the wheel wills

Q: Are you going to merge Min and Elayne? A: Hell no

Q: First moment you were speechless on set? A: First time walking into Emond’s Field with my mom

Q: Is mat fluent in the old tongue yet? A: We’ve had a couple cast members speak in it already and they NAILED IT

Q: Which character has your favorite costume so far? A: Ooo this is tough. Probably Geofram Bornhald.

Q: How is the cast and crew weathering the pandemic? A: Our team in Prague did an amazing job of getting everyone out and keeping them safe. And now everyone’s home and we all live on Instagram.

Q: Who is your favorite Forsaken? A: Ahhh. I love the ladies. Graendal, Lanfear, Moghedien. And Ishamael holds a special place in my heart the more time I spend with him

Q: What’s been your favourite shooting location so far? A: Slovenia! Spectacular stuff there

Q: Yes or no. Have you had to make any cuts be it a scene or character, that has been painful for you? A: Yes.

Q: How are you planning to handle the visualization of the weaves? Any little tidbits? A: We are trying to stay as true to the books as possible. I’ve been giving a bunch of VFX folks long diatribes about channeling, weaves, threads, earth vs. air, etc and they early stuff has started coming in. It looks FUCKING AWESOME. I screamed when Rosamund started channeling

Q: Similar to Them performing in an old Inn, what other iconic moment filmed stands out to u? A: Rand and Tam walking through the Westwood

Q: Blink twice if Min is in season 1. A: 😉😉

Q: Will Jeff Probst be one of the Aiel? Can you make some calls? A: If he dyes his hair red 😉

Q: Which WOT book title best describes your self isolation experience? A: A Memory of Light…

Q: Can we expect a trailer for the show anytime soon? A: Probably not for a long while sadly.

Q: Can you guys do a big WoT Wed announcement during the hiatus to keep all us fans hyped instead of al A: Yea! It would cheer us all up and we have some fun news

Q: Is Lan going to be as much or an absolute stud in the show as he is in the books? A: You’ve seen @danielhenney right?

Q: If you were an Aes Sedai, what Ajah would you choose? A: Such a good question. They all have merits but GREEN for the win. If only to hang with @priyankabose20

Q: Will we have to wait till season 2 to see any Aiel? (Other than Rand)

A: Nope. And the one you see will shock you. Hah. Amazon shouldn’t let me be on here when I’ve been cooped up for a week.

Q: RJ writes a lot of internal headspace stuff. What’s 1 hint on how the show will handle that? A: That’s the biggest difficulty of any novel adaptation. Figuring out how to make the internal monologue come out clearly to the audience. A lot of the changes we make and stories we tell differently are designed to serve exactly that purpose – showing you what those characters internal monologues from the book are without them just saying it out loud in exposition

Q: Are you using taller actors to portray the Aiel, or camera trickery? A: Trying to get tall folks. But I’m less concerned with height and more concerned with acting ability.

Q: Since JordanCon was cancelled, can we maybe get an extra treat next month? A: Sure! What do you want?

Q: Do you have a favorite Wise One? A: Avi

Q: How many trollocs do I have to take out to become a writing assistant? A: Violence is never the answer

Q: What would you say the CGI to practical ratio is going to be? A: Tring to do as much in camera as we possibly can!

Q: How are you handling sword forms and their names? A: We have a for real sword master on the show who walks into every room and tests out everything as a weapon. He could most definitely kill me with any item in my office.

Q: How are the horses on set? Is Mandarb spectacular? A: They are so great. Honestly I love our horses. Mandarb and Aldieb are downright sexy

Q: When will we get more casting announcements to hold us over? A: I’ll try to get them to put out something soon. A lot of folks in all departments are affected by the state of the world right now though, so I can’t promise a timeline

Q: will we see the prologue from the Eye of the World on screen in season 1 A: You will hear that phrase

Q: What has been your favorite set so far? A: Fal Dara!

Q: Please tell me you’ve cut Narg!! A: Never!!

Q To what extent has Harriet McDougal been involved with the project? A: She’s a consulting producer so she’s been out to Prague to the sets and reads all the scripts and sends me her notes on them. She and Maria are hugely helpful for maintaining the truth of the series and always keep me honest when it comes to things that change too much

Q: Is any aspect of the show still in development, or has it all stalled because of the virus? A: A lot can be done virtually! I’m still doing VFX, editing and the Season Two Virtual Writers Room! And I can do it all in pajamas

Q: Will min, elayne, and avienda have to be combined into a single character?

A: Girl you crazy. I’m not going to combine huge characters like that. Maybe sometimes a minor character folded into a more major one to make better use of our cast but nothing nutso

Q: RJ created 1000’s of character. Given that did you feel the need to create new characters? A: Anyone “new” is inspired by characters in the books or a number of characters combined. If we paid to cast all speaking roles in the book we could only afford to have a radio play

Q: So far, what is your favorite prop in the show? A: Great Serpent Ring. We all want one.

Q: Will Loial portray the Ogier species, or will he be humanised for screen? A: He’s an Ogier!

Q: How involved, if involved at all, is Sanderson in the writers room? A: Brandon is hugely helpful. I talked to him before we started Season Two while he was in Prague to get advice and he reads all the scripts and gives notes. He’s incredibly thoughtful and understands the process of adaptation and what’s required from it. I feel so lucky to have him involved. I would have him do more if I could make him!

Q: What words of hope would you offer a fan afraid that the show will cut out a lot of content? A: I genuinely think we are cutting less than most people think. When I see people ask questions like “are you cutting Min?” It blows my mind. I don’t know how you do an adaptation without some of these characters. I think it’ll be more of the smaller stories you’ll miss. We can’t have Rand and May (sic) travel to many many inns on their travels across the countryside for instance. It’s just not producible. So that will be more of what you miss I think, and the books always exist to read for that 🙂

Q: I think Bella is such an important character, will the same horse play bella through the series A: We’ve already had to have two Belas. It turns out a horse for riding on film is not the same as a horse for pulling a cart and SHE MUST DO BOTH

Q: Can you please make sure you do a great job? Book are so great A: This is are a really good idea

Q: Now you’ve met them, settle the score: who’s better with women? Rand, Mat or Perrin? A: I think they’d all say it’s the other

Q: Will the show be understandable for those who didn’t read the books? A: That’s the idea. If there are little things they don’t get though, luckily google exists

Q: Who is your favorite Aes Sedai in the books? And you can’t say Moiraine/Siuan or the Wonder Girls A: So many rules. I honestly love all of them though (except Galina that bitch) Alanna Liandrin and Verin are probably my Top 3. And Siuan! There’s too many I love. Sheriam! Pevara!

https://www.wotseries.com/2020/03/22/show-runner-rafe-judkins-does-an-ama-on-instagram/

#Wheel of Time #The wheel of Time #Rafe Judkins #answers questions #WOTonPrime

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sugarcookiesandsins · 5 years ago

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Charmed [Episode 3]

➰ ot7 x reader, poly!bts x reader, mafia!bts ➰they wouldn’t notice her until she was standing above them, a smoking gun in her hand a bullet in their heart 🌡 M 🛑 heavy violence 🕛 6.1k+

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Stepping out into the main room of the restaurant, it wasn’t difficult to gather that something big had happened. You bristled at the sight of the men who sat at the bar only meters away. You knew that they had seen you from the way their brown eyes widened, but you glanced over that sudden movement not giving a reaction in favor of pretending to be looking for a seat which seemed to be the better option

Thankfully, the owner waved you over to the same bar and placed you in the next seat over from Kim Taehyung, whose eyes had already begun to trace your form. Neither he nor Jungkook had noticed that Seokjin had recognized you —and if they did — they didn’t give anything away as you sat down. In proper restaurant fashion, you were asked for your order and delivered your food shortly thereafter. Since sitting down, you had only lifted your head a few times, mostly noting the nearest waiter or watching the people around you in a rather absent-minded sort of boredom.

Soon enough, the boys had come to the conclusion that the man they were looking for was not there and nodded covertly to signal it was time to leave. Just as the two younger members started to put weight on their feet, they were dragged back down, a rough tug coming to lay on their shoulders. Glancing at each other in bewilderment, they looked up.

[KTH]

I looked at Jungkook, my eyes widening. Shrugging my shoulders in response to the offending hand sitting on my jacket, following it down to the shoulder it was attached to. I wondered what reason Jin hyung had for keeping us here when it was obvious that Eli had given us the slip again.

His eyes lay focused a little ways down the make-shift bar that Jungkook and I sat at. Sadly, the alcoholic selection was limited, but the ramen smelled divine; I had half a mind to ask if we could eat here but I already knew the answer. It would always be ‘one day’, and if that were truly the case, then I could wait.

The girl that Seokjin was focused on appeared forgettable at best, she didn’t do much to stand out in the crowded restaurant. Her shoulders were hunched towards her phone in pure concentration, her eyes focused intently something colorful on her screen.

She was utterly forgettable. No need to think too much.

Eli on the other hand, he was someone that I had always loved to watch. He worked with such grace that it was difficult to tell whether he was even human with the way he moved. He was like smoke. He was just dark enough that you could feel the tendrils on your fingertips for a split second before it faded into the atmosphere.

Kim Seokjin, much like the younger boys had dismissed you swiftly as a commoner, only pausing momentarily to think back to that day at the mall. Yet, he found that his eyes kept trailing back to your form, which sat illuminated by the soft light emitted from your smartphone. He didn’t know what it was that caught his attention — but like Hoseok, you had drawn him in.

He recalled the day in the mall. The contrast between your active form in the store and your currently relaxed one against the window was startling. Even now, you broke all the right stereotypes, forgoing the expensive restaurants for this hole-in-the-wall. True, there was an art to home-cooked comfort food, but most old-money didn’t have that appreciation due to having been fed gourmet food since the day they were born. This gave him more information about you: you were new money. There was no heiress under the denim jacket that you wore.

However, different from the prior situation in the mall, he could now come up with a reason to interact with you. Though not a very strong one, you were the closest person to them and they could question you about their current target. Deciding that there was no point in stalling, he stood up from his chair and almost rolled his eyes at the sudden silence that enveloped the room. Despite that, he kept his eyes on you as you realized the newfound silence and turned your head to find the cause.

Almost immediately, Seokjin locked eyes with you, continuing to stare in your direction. You simply raised an eyebrow and tilted your head to look around the room. After all, you were supposedly a foreigner who hadn't the slightest clue about BTS. Locking eyes with Seokjin once again, you acknowledge him as the cause and turned back to your phone with disinterest. Realizing their hyung’s target, the two glared at the rest of the patrons, who immediately snapped back into the conversation.

Stepping out into their walkway, Seokjin rounded Taehyung and made his way towards you. You sensed him but gave no indication that you knew he was moving in your general direction A sixth-sense was something only built up after years of training and would be a dead give-away if any of the boys were smart and you suspected that they were.

Keeping your eyes on your phone in one hand and your chopsticks in your other hand, you ignored his imposing figure until you felt a hand come to rest on your shoulder. You attempted to resist the urge to twist his arm, the more common line of self-defense if you ever felt an enemy coming at you from behind. Yet, nothing could stop the minute twitch of your fingers as you consciously resisted that urge.

This was what Jungkook zeroed in on as he watched the interaction between you and Seokjin. So, she had some self-defense training, he thought to himself as he recalled his own strategy for cowards who came at him in the same way. Taehyung, on the other hand, focused on your face and the expression of surprise. It was pure in a way that he hadn't seen on any of the girls he had been with previously. There was no sinner’s glint in foggy irises.

Pretending to startle, you whirled around to face the “unknown” assailant who had retreated into a placating gesture, both palms facing you, fully intending to ward off any attacks

“Sorry about the scare. I was just wondering if I could ask you some questions?”

Well, that wasn’t odd at all. You tilted your head, running through all the possible responses you could give. The love-struck fool was out of the equation, and so was the innocent dove.

Deciding that the less you interacted with them — the better you would be in the long run — you pulled out the ‘Levi’.

Raising your hand, you counted your statements, “No, we have not met before. Yes, I am new to Seoul. Yes, I come here often. No, I don’t want you to buy me a drink. And no, it did not hurt when I fell from heaven, but it did when I crawled up from hell.”

Tilting your head at him, you followed up with a question. “Did I miss anything, or do you actually have something unique to try on me?"

Seokjin could only stare at the spitfire in front of him. Yes, he had met with all kinds of girls before, but never one with the audacity to immediately whirl around and continue her meal, ignoring his looming presence. It was an immediate dismissal and wounded his pride more than the snickers of his blood-brothers from behind. Clearing his throat to reign in his composure, he tried again.

“Actually, I was looking for someone and I was wondering if you've seen him.”

Stupidly, it seemed, you had hoped that it was someone else that they were looking for. Coincidences were miracles, but they did happen. “well, you see, his name is Eli and he said he would meet us here, but we haven’t seen him. He’s about your height and has blonde hair.”

“I guess miracles won't just happen when I need them to,” you thought wryly to yourself, hiding your annoyance behind a mask of indifference.

“So you're not quite the same as the others, you chuckled, waving your hand, “and again, I have an answer for you. No, I haven't seen your friend.” You ended your sentence with a tone of finality as you tossed a couple bills on the counter and collected your backpack. This had taken enough time out of your day as it was. You still had to go to the mall and check the furniture store records.

With hardly a glance, you stalked out the door, not bothering to hide the form that years of training bestowed upon you. Mostly out of personal curiosity, you wondered how well Jungkook was trained. Apprentices had knowledge of it, while masters recognized it, not only in themselves, but in others. It was a bearing of the deepest shadows, light on the feet yet each step purposeful and in preparation. For what? No one could tell, but it was predacious to the core.

A slight gasp of breath gave you an answer. He was very well trained indeed, but you were better.

“So, is she crawling into your bed tonight Jin-hyung?” It was a low jab and Taehyung knew it.

“Not tonight, but hopefully one day.” There was no backing to that statement, but a man could hope. Especially when a fellow predator was involved.

After leaving the boys in the noodle shop, you made your way back to the mall where you had bought furniture. Following long internal debates — each of which made you wince as you recalled the tattoo — you finally decided to say screw it and go through with it. Besides, worst case scenario, you would have to just follow the on the day they came to pick up the furniture from the store. Either way, you would be getting their home address before they found you or Eli.

The walk to the mall had given you time to think about what BTS could possibly want with Eli. It was obvious that his escapades had caught the attention of BigHit and now they wanted something with him. The real question was what? At this point, you were leaning towards the fact that they wanted to eliminate him. The reasons were clear. He had no loyalty ties to any one sect. He was a wild card that they couldn’t account for and they didn’t seem to like that. On top of that, you never paid much attention to who you took for and it was almost guaranteed that those people may have been BigHit associates.

Thus, if you wanted to avoid death, you would have to hold an advantage over the boys. Not only did the surprise visit from Jin allow you to figure out Eli’s stance from here on out, but it also gave you an opportunity to observe them at a closer distance. It was then that you noticed the silver medallion. It was small to say the least, barely the size of the pad of your thumb, but it was enough. It seemed as if there was something carved on it and taking a small detour to your blurry mental images of Taehyung and Seokjin, you could have sworn that they had the same crimson caressing their necks and shoulders before disappearing below the color of their button-ups. That wasn’t the only thing. While you were sitting at the shop’s bar, it was not difficult to notice the glare of the lights across their wrists. Their watches were of a similar fashion too.

Leaving that thought for the insomniac’s brain, you entered through the glass doors of Coex Mall, making a beeline for the same furniture store that had plagued your thoughts. Walking past the familiar store front, you encountered the very salesman that had sold you your wares. He was all too happy to oblige, thinking that you had come in to add more items to your already long list of deliveries, thus getting him a fatter paycheck at the end of the month. This feeling you knew all too well, having been subject to commission work under Maestro with only a percent of contract cuts delivered to your private account. Yet, that was more than enough considering the level of your clientele lately.

“How can I help you, Miss?” The man's voice was laced with the customer service sweetness that you had come to hate. Still, what could either of you do? Both of you were subject to a power higher than your own. You, to your need for revenge and him to fulfill his boss’s desires.

“I came in a couple weeks ago and ordered some items but I lost the receipt and the date of purchase.”

“Don’t worry ma’am. I can check our system for your information.” He turned towards the store’s front desk, motioning you to follow him. You obliged as if there were any other option. Soon enough — his search was done and with a small smile — you requested that a copy of the receipt be printed. The moment the door swung closed behind him, you leaned over the desk to view the screen that he had printed from. Clicking the back button, you were met with the screen of recent orders, yours highlighted in a blue so that it was identifiable among the hodgepodge of text. Scanning the lines above and below, it was surprisingly easy to find the order labeled 'Jung Hoseok'. Half suspecting the lack of a fake name and half thankful as your job became easier, you clicked the 'Print Receipt' button that was next to his name. The automatic pop up had a lot of information — but since you heard the familiar footsteps of the salesperson — you snapped a picture with your phone before maneuvering back to the screen with the list of names.

Before turning to the suited man, you plastered a face of slight panic across your features, like a child making up an excuse for why their hand was in the cookie jar. “I’m sorry. I was trying to read more about the information on my order, and I think I accidentally clicked something.” Eyes blown wide and a slight blush on your cheeks, it was an act that deserved an Oscar for best visual effects. The worker could do nothing but let out a small chuckle at your flustered state and rather ungraceful Korean.

In all honesty, he wasn't too worried about you viewing the other orders. The font size was quite small and as a foreigner, and as your salesperson, he had already seen that your Korean wasn’t overly comfortable. Anything you had seen probably looked like lines of jargon. It was a blatantly easy way to dispel any concern about you being a security risk to the store.

If he had looked closer, he would have recalled the speed with which you understood the screen when the topic of discussion was your own purchases and order. If he had cared to notice, most of your writing to him had been in Korean, indicating a decent knowledge of the intricacies of the language. If he had shifted his gaze to the right by about a foot to your phone on the table, all the commands and labels were in Korean. Though there were a few extenuating cases, most of the time, a person’s phone was programmed in a language that they understood perfectly.

But he was only human, and a very untrained one at that. His brain liked to take the easy way out of troubles and subconsciously, that is what he did. Though he did not think of the paperwork a security risk would entail, some part of him did, so he chose to dismiss you and let the torturous documents float away in the breeze.

There was nothing stopping you from snatching the paper out of his hand like the strike of a snake and making your way out of the store, letting empty words of ‘places to be’ fill the space you had just vacated.

Making your way through the mall towards the entrance, you were pleasantly surprised when there were no signs of any of the Bangtan Boys. Then again, you understood why there was no one there. They were looking for Eli. A male with blonde hair who looked like he slept in the cheapest apartment in the city. They were not looking for you — a girl with enough money to make heads roll — decked out in attire that practically screamed wealthy.

Once in the safety of your own home, you wasted no time in getting comfortable in the office with the covert picture you had taken earlier. The order was most certainly under the name Jung Hoseok. It had bugged you ever since you first saw it on the computer screen. You had no idea why there wasn't a fake name on the screen. True, there would be no need to hide anyways. His presence in the shop would be enough to cause a stir, so, anonymity was out the window.

Pulling your gaze lower on the paper, you scanned briefly over the items that were ordered. It was an interesting collection of items. As far as you know, they had been together for quite a long time. Either one of them had destroyed a room, so they were setting up for a new housemate. Obviously one of the guesses would be Eli. They were looking for him, and you doubted it was for shits and gigs or a coffee date.

Or, it could be someone else that they were looking for and they wanted Eli to help deal with said other person. It was still up in the air at this point.

Towards the bottom of the paper, you were astonished to see an address within the information about product procurement.

Huh. Miracles do happen when I want them too.

Still, you were wary. Much like the mystery of the missing alias, your brain was confused by the mysterious nature of the delivery address. The second one didn’t have that same ring to it, but what did it matter? Both things puzzled you..

The delivery date was set within the next week or so and it wasn’t difficult to keep away from the people chasing you as you maintained a wide berth from the center of their search, the noodle shop which still housed a set of your costume. Thankfully, you always had extras so the mall bathroom became your new art studio as you painted on a more masculine face to cover the softer curves of your natural features. It would be useful to get more used to this personality. After all, you would be using it more often, especially when Bangtan finally got their hands on you.

There was something off-putting about the location of the delivery of furniture. Then again, empty warehouses always had a certain eeriness about them. Still, you'd be damned if the dark and shadows deterred you from your goal. Here you were — almost a day before the designated delivery date — and making yourself comfy among the rafters, settling down to wait.

You hated yourself for your choice to come early. On the other hand, he trained side of you knew if it were any later, you would be on their radar. In true mafia fashion, they began to scope out the location five hours prior. Even then, the members were smart enough to know to never make a direct reference to the building, choosing to only drive around its vicinity and a few other buildings erected on the waterfront. Police were on their tail 24/7 waiting for one of them to mess up. They wanted anything that would give them an excuse to blow Big Hit wide open with evidence irrefutable even by the higher-ups who were feeding their family off dirty money.

So you waited until one of the cars came closer than the rest and idled near the front of the east entrance of the building. You listened to every movement: from the driver walking across the crunchy gravel to open the door, to the deep rumble of voices alighting from italian leather couches, and to the opening of the door as you finally saw the men that you would be staining your hands with. Granted, not all of them were there, but a majority were. You were more than happy with the outcome. Hoseok entered first. It was obvious enough. His name was on the order and he would most likely be the one signing the papers. The four that followed were the ones that came for security purposes and to help move the boxes. Their physical strength was painfully obvious from the way that their jackets hugged layers of muscle that rippled with each step they took.

Their faces were like stone as the door closed behind them. By blocking out the light from the outside they also blocked prying eyes. It hit you with great intensity the pressure on their shoulders. There was a stark difference between their stone cold faces and the bright grins they now directed towards each other. You knew they were still in their prime and they were subjected to far worse at a younger age, but it never hit you until now. Their voices floated up towards you as they cracked jokes in the fragile cage of a warehouse.

Taking the time to observe them, you noted that they were still in semi-formal clothing that appeared to be the epitome of haute couture, tailored to follow every plane of skin. Tracing the flow of fabric down their arms — you stopped at the right wrist of each boy — pleasantly surprised at the familiar gleam of metal that hung there.

You continued to silently watch as the boys messed around, killing time until the furniture delivery arrived. Seokjin was the only one that didn't participate, opting instead to be on his phone a little ways away, typing away with such ferocity that you could hear the click every time a manicured nail hit the glass screen. You assumed that he was talking with the Kingpin, Kim Namjoon. It was no secret that the two were close, having been trained by their fathers together “So,” Jimin started, already bored of the antics of the younger two, “any news about our trouble making pickpocketer?”

Taehyung and Jungkook both paused at the mention of the person that warranted them being taken off other things they were working on and had therefore forced them to sit in a run-down noodle shop for the better part of the day. They didn’t even get to eat anything while they were there.

“It seems that he went underground,” Jin muttered angrily, frustrated at his own inability to complete the assignment. He had tailed the boy and had — only lost line-of-sight for a second when he had rounded a corner onto a side-street where the noodle shop was located —which had apparently been enough time for the boy to disappear among the bystanders littered across the street.

Taehyung snickered, amused by the annoyance on his elder’s face. It was a rare emotion that marred the normally soft features that characterized a conversationalist of Bangtan. It was amusing to see Jin so emotional about such an insignificant person. Well, perhaps not completely insignificant, especially if their boss wanted him brought in for a job. Normally, BTS wasn't bothered to lose new street players to their partner groups as thievery was never part of their modus operandi. This could be the first time in history that BigHit was looking out of their familiar circles for a member, even if he was a temporary one.

“Annoyed, hyung?” Jungkook had grown up with the seven boys and was sensitive to their moods as the youngest. It may have been that he was practically raised by them, not having too much contact with his own father outside of training sessions which had ended pretty early due to the fateful disappearance of the previous Bangtan generation. He knew exactly who was responsible for taking them away, all the boys knew, and now they were just waiting for the moment to strike

“Probably not as annoyed as he was when that chick rejected him.” Taehyung’s snicker echoed through the giant warehouse You thought they would forget about you, dismissed as some eccentric foreigner and leave it at that. You didn’t think that your words would warrant getting attention from the males over whom you were precariously hanging.

Not even a bladed glare could deter Taehyung from spilling the details to a clueless Jimin who was looking questioningly at his partner in crime, who erupted into a full-body laugh. Being another one of the members with more of a social role — especially with the fairer sex — always made Taehyung interested in the unbreakable, especially when he was cocky enough to believe he was an exception. And from what he had seen, you were a diamond, but so was he.

Jungkook had been there that day and he had only filled in details such as your exact words when you took Jin down a couple notches, metaphorically in this case. Still, Jungkook had observed you stalk out of the shop, with the same controlled pace that he had. There had been no doubt that you could've knocked Jin down physically as well.

After he had heard the full story, even Jimin giggled. He may've been assigned a more introverted role, but his sharp looks were enough to draw any unsuspecting woman into his bed for a night. He had always enjoyed spitfires whose personality he could control like one would control a candle with an oxygen supply. The more he fed into them, the more they emitted sparks and crackles. It always made for a sore back the next morning, but he didn’t mind. It was a small price to pay for the immense pleasure that they gave him.

Hoseok could practically see the smoke rising past Jin’s ears and decided to make them quit before their new furniture became stained with blood. It wouldn't make a good impression on their guest. Initially, they had been tasked with repurposing the spare room in their home for a temporary guest, who they doubted even the company knew all the details about. This prediction was confirmed later when they were tasked with finding Eli. They needed a job done and had been planning for it since day one. It was only now that they decided on the person that would be involved with the boys for this.

“Shut up.” It was short, simple and to the point.

He would've elaborated if it weren't for the familiar noise of an engine pulling up to the building. Hoseok nodded to Jin as he opened the garage door to allow the delivery truck to go into reverse.. Immediately after, Jin — who had exited at Hoseok’s signal — reversed their own truck into the garage. It was all hands on deck to transfer the boxes over in record time and none of the boys wanted to extend their interactions with civilians.

You remained silent as you watched the time, bored at the lack of useful information. It took half an hour to transfer everything over and another half an hour of annoyed glares at the unsuspecting males in the room. Once everything was finalized, you perked up. Finally, there was some action. Realizing that soon they would be leaving to go to the next location, you raised yourself into a crouched position, balancing on the metal bar with the balls of your feet. Keeping your eyes on the figures below, you crept backwards, careful to avoid faults in the metal.

Once you reached the wall, you waited until you heard the roar of the truck’s engine before sliding down a metal pole along the seam of a wall. While Creeping along the sides and staying in the shadows cast by dusty crates, you came close to the truck. Jungkook seemed to be the only one at the back of the truck, going over a final check of all the boxes to make sure none would shift on the ride back.

This was where your plan became slightly more risky. You needed to figure out where the truck was going without the boys finding out about your current location. You didn’t have Eli with you, and there was no way you could risk anything today. Silently berating yourself for not planning for all contingencies, you readied the tracker. Your plan was to place it on the underside of the tire protectors. If you were lucky, they would travel over dirt or mud and that would cover over the circular device for you. Still, Jungkook stood in your way.

From the slight encounter back at the noodle shop, you knew that he was well trained. It would be easy for him to hear the soft hiss of a gun. This model was powered by pressurized air, softer than regular guns so that the internal mechanics of the tracker would not be damaged, but still enough to propel the piece of technology towards the target. The downfall was the inability to use a silencer as there was the risk the disc would catch onto something and the concentrated pressure inside the barrel of the muffler would break the unit.

Your ears picked the familiar sound of an engine starting and — realizing that Jungkook didn’t seem like he was moving anytime soon — you decided to take the shot, hoping that perhaps the engine of the truck would drown out the noise. But you underestimated the acuteness of Jungkook’s hearing.

His head snapped in your direction, and you could have sworn that he made eye contact with you through the small gap in the crates. Still, as much as you would have loved to test that, you didn’t dare look back as you ran towards the other exit where your bike had been hidden away under some canvas.

Your step faltered a little at the sting that radiated from your bicep, and the liquid that got absorbed into your sleeve. You kept running. A graze didn’t mean much in the grand scheme of things. Being captured by them, however, would be worse. You wasted no time in ripping off the pale-colored canvas despite the heaving breaths that pumped your blood faster with each gasp. With the background noise of your own heartbeat and the muffled shouting, you rode off disappearing behind another warehouse.

[JJK]

I think the first coherent I had after hearing the air gun and pulling my semi-automatic would be to just question who was dumb enough to try to shoot at the Bangtan Boys, be it with an air gun or otherwise.

From between the crates, I saw the gleam of white as the lights reflecting in two eyes. Eyes that belonged to body and a body that belonged to a person. I recognized those eyes, wide and helpless for only a second before the turned tail and ran in the other direction. I saw them run; the controlled gait and the light steps that confirmed my suspicions.

She had been trained. Her body was human, but her mind was panther-like. She worked to blend into the background and moved in a way that kept her in the embrace of the shadows.

I wondered if she knew us in the ramen shop. She certainly managed to act like she didn’t. I don’t think Taehyung or Jin hyung noticed anything either. Still, I doubt Tae would remember a girl unless he had slept with her, and even then, it was still a little unstable.

“See you soon doll,” I whispered to the empty space between the boxes. It was a promise. There had to be more to the pretty little foreigner to handed hyung’s ass to him on a silver platter with her big eyes and bratty mouth.

Pocketing his semi-automatic, he let the sound of the motorcycle fade into the distance as he apologized for the sudden chaos.

“It’s nothing. I thought I saw someone behind the crates,” The bashful look on his handsome face was replaced by the hardened face of an Ultra, “Better to be safe than sorry.”

That'ss how he left his brothers in arms, who glanced at each other before following in his footsteps. They knew better than to ignore his instincts. He may have been the youngest, but the older boys had been told of the training he had gone through. To this day, it rattled their bones when they thought of the horrors that he had faced and compared it with who he was today. It didn’t seem possible to them that their smiling maknae had once been forced to fight off wild animals or survive in a jungle with only a knife. Still, he was a smart boy and by the end of the month, his teacher had found him sitting pretty, sipping from a coconut.

Tucking away the topic of a possible witness, they regrouped in their transport. Immediately, the oldest reached for the glass bottle on the counter of the limo, and poured himself and the others a glass. He didn’t drink often but the adrenaline from the warehouse needed to disappear soon. What better remedy than the numbness of alcohol? None of the other boys shied away from partaking in the amber liquid, each nursing a tumbler as they escaped to their thoughts.

Jungkook’s mind still held the last image he had seen of you, your eyes looking up at Jin, an untamable look in your eyes and a silent challenge that he would have been more than happy to take on. His pink tongue swiped across petal lips as he imagined the many ways he could have tamed your bratiness.

Since the beginning, he had a thing for foreigners. Especially the spiced cider type that never knew when to stop pushing the limits.

He cleared his dry throat and treated it with a large swallow of the liquor in his grasp. He allowed the burn to go to his head as he composed himself.

“Hey hyung. Any new information about Eli?” This was another issue that had been irking him since the start. This new player that had been better at evading their seven-man team than any other in this goddamn world.

The way Jin finished off his glass in one large gulp was enough to answer his question. Closing his eyes against the warmth in his belly, Jin leaned his head against the leather headrest and threw an arm over his eyes. “Ugh. Don’t even remind me Kookie. Namjoon is on my case about him.”

Taehyung scoffed, “Who the hell is his sponsor?”.

All of them had agreed long ago, that not only did this mystery thief have the slipperiest fingers this side of the Atlantic, but he had some great connections. How else could he have stayed off their radar for so long? Since that day in the noodle shop, Bangtan had put out feelers both above and below ground for the blonde man. To this day, they had nothing. Zilch on a possible adobe, and nada on any personal information.

Hoseok, still the optimist, let out a loud laugh. “I hope he introduces me to them some day.”

In his head, gears were already turning about the possible benefits of a sponsor that could successfully evade both them, but even more importantly, BigHit.

“I’m more interested in that girl,” Jimin grinned at the image he had concocted based on Taehyung’s recollection, “You said she had an attitude?” Taehyung solemnly nodded as Jungkook elaborated.

“Even more than you do hyung.”

The atmosphere was permeated with the laughs of the other boys, while the accused pouted.

Taehyung calmed down before allowing everyone’s thoughts to taint the air. “But she would have been fun to break. I wonder how feisty she can get when she's begging for it.”

Even Hoseok had to hold in a groan. He had never thought of you much since that day at the mall, but based on what the trio had recounted of your encounter with Jin, he understood that you were not the type to bow to anyone. Even if they were the one with more leverage.

“Can you all just shut up? I said I didn’t want to talk about it.”

By this time, Jin had recovered from the long drought of liquor he had taken and took to glaring at the younger boys for discussing his failure at a mission. Since day one, Namjoon had placed this mostly on his hyung's shoulders as he sorted out the new leadership of BigHit. And what does he have to show? Nothing more than an empty folder and a verbal battle with a girl too confident to give him the time of day.

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demonkidpliz · 4 years ago

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Things I learned while re-watching Star Plus Mahabharata (Part 16/many):

1) As ever with Duryodhan, I cannot disagree with anything he says.

2) Oh god. This scene. Panchali’s curse. Her walking away as Arjun looks on. Gold.

3) Not sure I like this new version of Krishna seekh.

4) Also we have not seen Krishna fight once in this battle of Dwarka vs the King of Shalva.

5) I also don’t like crying Krishna. Not saying he can’t. But I can’t take him seriously when he cries. I need him to be infinitely more chill than SRJ is being right now.

6) Ah, Arjun swearing at the Kurus. A+ 10/10.

7) Oh my fucking god, Subhadra’s opening line to Arjun: how could you let this happen? I expect nothing less from her.

8) Madhav is back now, after chilling in his war. He’s still in a self-driven chariot.

9) Wow, he’s so pissed at the Pandavas and rightfully so.

10) Draupadi telling Krishna that she’s become impure. And anyone who comes near her would also become impure. No. NO. Every woman in the world knows this feeling.

11) Okay, first of all, Krishna, you moonlighting feminist, the first thing you should tell Draupadi is that she has not become malin because of what Duryodhana and Dushasan did. This is on them, not on her. I cannot but compare StarBharat with BR Chopra Mahabharat, the comparisons come very easily to me. And the truth is, they just did some things better.

12) Draupadi’s now fallen at his feet. Krishna is just like, Lord give me strength.

13) This scene is important because I feel like for once Krishna is putting his grand plans on hold for one second to give Draupadi back her peace of mind. Because first and foremost, the Lord is kind to those who follow him.

14) It’s so nice that StarBharat has shown this sort of sisterly solidarity between Draupadi and Subhadra, which is so important.

15) Draupadi is not even remotely impressed by Yudhishthira’s theatrics.

16) Draupadi’s pratigya makes her sound like Bhishma. Intentional or unintentional.

17) I cannot imagine Subhadra watching idly by as the Pandavas and Draupadi walk to the forest. I’m sure she put up a fight against her brothers to be allowed to go.

18) Speaking of, where is Balaram in all of this? His cousins are heading for vanvas and he is still chilling in Dwarka? Unrealistic.

19) Oh nice, Abhimanyu hasn’t even been born yet but somehow Krishna has managed to name him.

20) That scene where Arjun stops Subhadra from touching his feet. Some of StarBharat’s dialogueless scenes are just as touching.

21) Krishna’s glare as Shakuni enters the Indraprastha palace lmaoo.

22) A well executed scene but the watering hole scene happens only towards the end of the 12-year vanvas period.

23) This is hilarious. Yudhishthira is basically like Krishna is going to whoop my ass if I let something else happen to Panchali.

24) Oh god. Everyone loves Arjun the most. But I think Yudhishthira loves Bhim the most.

25) It’s time for Yudhishthira to meet his bio daddy!

26) Arjun doing tapasya for Shiv is my jam.

27) Bhim is such a cutie.

28) This Hanuman story is different though, right? Something to do with some lotus for Draupadi.

29) Is Hanuman a Yadav? He wears the same tilak. Or is this some Ram/Krishna connection we don’t quite know about.

30) I love Hanuman’s character! He’s so playful. And also the Hanuman Chalisa in the background score.

31) Oh so Hanuman knows that Krishna is Ram/Vishnu avatar and says he will chill on the chariot that’s being manned by God.

32) Oh no they never told us about the magic bowl Draupadi had that was gifted to her by Surya Dev which gave them unlimited food.

33) Also, do the Pandavas and Karna ever realise that they are all ‘gifts’ of Durvasa.

34) Krishna creeping in the background like some mega creep 😂

35) This is a conversation for another time but some day we need to talk about the incessant whitewashing of our gods such as Ram and Krishna in modern mythological serials. Also of Draupadi/Dhrishtadyumna/Arjun—basically anyone who’s described in canon as dark. There is some modern fetish for fair-skinned gods that just doesn’t sit right. I miss the dark-skinned Aruns and Nitishs.

36) Durvasa is still not impressed by Krishna. This man is literally god.

37) Arjun is fishing.

38) Oh nice, Indra is also here. Old gods and new.

39) Not sure whether I like this Shiv. Shiv in general I love.

40) Aaaand Jayadrath is here. Can’t wait for this guy to die in tomorrow’s BR Chopra Mahabharat episode.

41) Duryodhan low key throwing shade at Jayadrath is my jam.

42) Really, what does Dushala see in this man?

43) Kaun ho tum? Really? Draupadi doesn’t know her own brother-in-law? That seems highly unlikely.

44) Why is Arjun wasting time with all this trash talk?

45) Arjun is having a lot of second thoughts about keeping Jayadrath alive for Dushala’s sake but this is going to change very quickly during the war. Also Nakul rightfully points out that this man will give grief to Arjun later on.

46) This is by far the worst and most inaccurate map of Aryavarta to ever exist.

47) Oh no Jayadrath’s hair makeup is so not on point at this moment.

48) Mamashri Shakuni is literally fortune telling at this point and this is my jam.

49) So it’s canon that both Shakuni and Krishna are Slytherins, right? Yet they are the two most diametrically opposite Slytherins we have ever seen.

50) Also I want to see Dushala but these shows never give me what I want. When I make the Mahabharata I will make sure the women get equal and opposite screen time and character development as the men.

51) Yudhishthira is getting on my nerves.

52) This Draupadi is infinitely nicer than BR Chopra Mahabharat’s Roopa Ganguli who used to give it to her husbands every opportunity she got.

53) I also have lots of complaints. They didn’t show Dhrishtadyumna taking Draupadi’s sons home to Panchal to raise them.

54) They didn’t show Arjun chilling with his bio dad in heaven! They didn’t show Urvashi hitting on him and him rejecting her advances! Then she curses him, causing him to lose his manhood. And then she reverses the curse after Indra begs her and she limits it to lost manhood for one year of his choosing. That’s how Arjun uses the Brihannala guise for a year during agyaatvaas!

55) Shakuni training himself to think like Krishna. Looool.

56) Nakul bullying children is my jam.

57) Clearly this sattoo ke laddoo business is some sort of secret code amongst the Pandavas.

58) At least Uttar and Uttara are aptly shown as young teenagers.

59) My fav is back! Brihannala! 😍

60) Also what is this face covering nonsense by Sairindhri?! Women in the Later Vedic Age did not cover their faces or their heads behind purdah!!!

61) The Pandavas meeting together after a long time is giving me hope! This is what it’s going to be like when lockdown is over and I meet my friends 😭😭😭

62) This Keechak guy looks evil but I can’t take him seriously because his voice makes him sound like a prepubescent boy.

63) What is this casual classism from Keechak? Like Jesus, what a dirtbag.

64) Again there was no ghunghat back in those days?!?!

65) But iss Keechak ne toh consent ki maa behen kar di.

66) How happy the Pandavas are to see Panchali! Arjun the most, perhaps 😍

67) Virat making a dig at Dushasan. I’m here for this tea.

68) I can’t take Keechak seriously because of his voice.

69) This logic whereby if Draupadi has five husbands so she can have one more—like I will never understand this! She consented to five and no more???

70) Brihannala, my one true fav, is back!

71) Keechak vadh is my favourite episode, behind Shishupal vadh and Jayadrath vadh. Do you see the pattern?

72) Why is Draupadi here? I wanted to see Bhim’s giant form hidden as a lump under a blanket, enticing Keechak.

73) Bhim is here! 😍 Seriously, no one loves Panchali as much as Bhim does. Arjun toh is smitten by our Yadav homegirl.

74) Now Arjun is going to do his tandav dance. This should distract the others from the noise nicely.

75) Oh nice. Nakul and Sahadev are also participating.

76) Predictably, Jyesth Bhrata, Yudhishthira, is not invited to this Keechak vadh party.

77) King Virat is like oh no what a loss.

78) Yudhishthira looks pissed, as always, when his brothers have done something good.

79) Haha. Duryodhan has caught on to the fact that Bhishma is trying desperately to stall so that the Pandavas are not found out.

81) Now Duryodhan is now accusing Vidur of partiality. Again, he is not wrong. I’m so impressed by how well his character has been written. Not one word he says is incorrect.

82) Nice. Duryodhan has his father wrapped around his little finger. He knows exactly how to manipulate him so that Dhritarashtra rises to the bait.

83) After all these centuries Bhishma realises that Shakuni is after the destruction of Hastinapur.

84) Shakuni is admitting now that all of this is revenge for Gandhari. Oh man. Do you think Bhishma knew that the Mahabharat was the result of his poorly executed actions (intentional or otherwise)?

85) King Virat is so smart. I like him. I’m going to be so sad when he dies.

86) Brihannala is going to stay behind. Great. It’s so interesting to see this story in retrospect (which is how it’s told to Janamajeya and Vajra) in the first place.

87) I like Virat with open hair.

88) What the hell is this? I cannot be attracted to Pitamaha Bhishma and Mama Shakuni with their open hair and battle armour?! Adharm!

89) Oh what a cool sundial!

90) I’m glad they showed Uttar as nothing more than a teenager.

91) Mama Shakuni is so fit.

92) Do you think Bhishma recognises Arjun as Uttar’s chariot?

93) Poor Uttar is probably shitting his pants.

94) Arjun praying to Agni Dev to return his Gandiv. Old gods to the rescue.

95) This background score! It’s my absolute favourite! Parthasya Dhananjaya! My fav song on my fav, Arjun 😍

96) Bhishma looks thoroughly pleased. He recognises the sound of the Gandiv’s twang.

97) Now they will fight about the authenticity of the calendar. They should go to a calendar expert.

98) Bhishma looks proper chuffed at Arjun. How on earth will they fight against each other in the Great War?

99) Oh man, Karna is here. Ugh.

100) Karna is here to trash talk as per usual. Oh god both these men are useless. Fight no instead of talking so much.

101) Oh man, the charioteer’s son has been thrown from his chariot but not before taking a shot at Arjun.

102) Ah Karna’s divine armour makes an appearance!

103) Oh shit, this just got real! They’re calling on divine weapons!

104) Bhishma steps in. Of course.

105) Duryodhan’s hah! 😂😂

106) Arjun crying that if he is responsible for Bhishma’s death, it will be hell on earth for him. Oh, Arjun. You must still suffer, a lot.

107) Arjun’s threat, that all the Pandavas will come to avenge Draupadi’s insult. Yes. 100%. I hope in this yug even if men are not punished for their crimes against women on earth, they will suffer forever in hell for their misdeeds.

108) The Pandavas and Draupadi are ready. It’s time for the Great War. It’s time for Mahabharat.

#mahabharata #mahbharat #starbharat #siwt #starbharat recap

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jaceyneedsabetterusername · 5 years ago

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Playing With Fire ~ Part 2

Pairings: Michael Gray x Pregnant!Reader

Warnings: Talk of abortion

Author’s Note: I know I posted this really soon after posting part 1 but I am just excited to get this story going! Also, yes, I did steal a part of this from an actual episode (Season 3, Episode 5). I’m not claiming to own that part at all. I just used it because it was a good canonical response to the situation by the characters but everything else is mine!

__________________________________________________

This couldn’t be happening. There was no way that this was actually happening. The whole scene kept playing in slow motion in your head and you felt as if you were frozen in time. “You are pregnant, Miss. L/N. About two months along as far as I can tell.”

The room felt freezing and then you weren’t sure if you could feel the temperature anymore. Your heart dropped and all you could see was your mom’s shocked and disappointed face. She was here with her unwed pregnant daughter who was impregnated by a key member of the most notorious gang in Birmingham. You couldn’t tell if you felt numb or not. It was an intense fear and shock that completely disassociated you from the real world.

“There are other options if this isn’t an ideal situation for you.” The doctor said carefully.

You looked up at her quickly, “No, um, can I think about it?” You asked, your brain still too fuzzy to make a decision like that.

“Of course. Take all the time you need and come back when you’ve made a decision.” She explained, leaving the room.

The walk back was full of silence. Nobody uttered a word until you returned to the shop when you couldn’t stand it anymore, “I’m so sorry mom.” Was all you could manage.

She sighed, “Y/N, I just… I don’t know what to say.” It was quiet again. She was disappointed and it was clear. “It’s all going to be okay, though, sweetheart. You just need to talk to Michael.”

Oh gosh, Michael. You almost forgot about having to tell him. How would you tell him? Would he leave? Would he demand you get an abortion? Would he be angry? Would he, by some crazy miracle, actually be excited? Probably not.

You couldn’t focus on the work that you were supposed to be doing. You sat at your sewing machine, blankly staring at the metal contraption, lost in thought.

There was a human inside of you. You were growing a child. No matter how many times you said it or thought it, it never felt real.

Suddenly, the bell rang, grabbing your attention. You glanced up and your heart dropped. In walked Arthur, John, Finn, Isaiah, and Michael, looking as intimidating as possible because that was just their natural state when in public. Immediately, your eyes found Michael’s and he sent you a small smile.

“I’m ‘ere to pick up me coat.” John announced, leaning on the counter.

You stood up, walking in the back to grab his coat, making eye contact with your mom on the way. She nodded her head slightly, indicating that you needed to talk to Michael. You returned with the coat handing it over to John. The Blinders never had to pay. They never threatened your business but they weren’t charged for services in return for protection and insurance.

“Here you go.” You said, handing over the jacket.

“G’morning love.” Michael said, stepping up.

Arthur and John snickered in the back, “Awe little Michael’s all mushy for his girl.”

“Shut it!” Michael snapped, returning his attention to you. “I was wondering if maybe you wanted to get dinner tonight? It’s been a while since we talked.”

He wasn’t wrong. He came in when he could or you would visit Shelby Limited when you had time but he had become really busy with Blinder business that he wouldn’t tell you about and now you hardly ever saw each other for longer than twenty minutes at a time.

I guess this was the universe telling you tonight was the night to tell him, “Yeah, that sounds great. I’ve missed you.” You told him, trying to pretend like nothing was wrong but Michael could see it in your eyes that something was bothering you.

The group of men started leaving the building so with a nod and a smile Michael followed, “I’ll see ye later tonight then.”

The day sped by and now you sat across the table from Michael, both of you looked pretty nice and dressed up. “Can I get you anything to drink?” The waiter asked politely.

“Two whiskeys please.” Micheal ordered for the two of you.

“Actually, can I just have a water please?” You corrected. The waiter nodded and said he’d return shortly.

Michael looked at you strangely, “No whiskey? Are you feeling alright?” He teased, finicking with his napkin on the table.

You forced a smile, “Yeah, I’m feeling fine. Water just sounds good.” Keeping this secret was killing you. He literally had a child on the way and had no idea! “So what is it you wanted to talk about?” You asked, hoping to stall for as long as possible. You at least wanted things to end on a good night.

Michael looked uncomfortable, “I know that I promised you that I was only involved in the legal aspects of Shelby Limited but something has changed. Tommy needs help with something on the… less legal side of the business and I have to take the job.”

Oh. “Is it dangerous?” You asked, unsure of how to really take this news.

After a moment, he shrugged, “There’s always the possibility of things going wrong. But I promise that you’re going to be safe.”

Woah, woah, woah. It may have been ridiculous but it had never really occurred to you that you’d be in any danger because of his work. He wasn’t doing anything illegal after all. He wasn’t involved with the dangerous people Tommy was involved with. Now you were realizing how naive that assumption was.

Wait, what did this mean for the safety of your child? Maybe if you told him he would be able to get out of whatever the job was.

“I have something I need to tell you too.” You blurted.

Michael looked nervous, “What is it?”

It was now or never, “I’m pregnant.” You couldn’t breathe and clearly Michael couldn’t either. He sat there staring blankly.

“What?” He paused, thinking, “Is it mine?”

“Yes it’s yours! You’re the only person I’ve ever been with!” You exclaimed, slightly offended that he would even consider the fact that it wasn’t his.

“How long have you known?” He asked, color drained from his face.

You found it hard to make eye contact, “I just found out this morning. Doctor said I was two months along.”

Michael ran his hands over his face and through his hair, “Fuck.” Was all he said. After a long pause, he asked, “Are you going to keep it?”

Your heart dropped. This was it. He was going to leave you. But you’d already made up your mind. “Yes. I’m keeping the baby.” Again, silence. That deafening silence that tore your soul to bits. “Please say something Michael.” It took everything to keep your voice from breaking.

He lifted his face from his hands and shook his head, “I don’t know what to say.”

“Are you leaving?” You couldn’t help but ask but you wished you hadn’t just blurted it out like that.

His eyes shot up to yours, “No! No. We’ll just have to figure this out. I just… shit.”

You might have been irritated at him if it weren’t for the fact that you were still in shock too. “Yeah, shit.” You huffed.

The waiter returned, interrupting the tense silence, setting your glasses down, “I’ll be back in a moment to take your orders.” He said politely before leaving.

Michael grabbed his whiskey and downed it in one shot and you flinched for him, knowing that that much of the liquid must’ve burned like hell. You, on the other hand, could only sip your water, eyes finding the flickering candle on the table much more bearable to look at than anywhere else in the room.

Michael watched your face as you sipped your water, knowingly avoiding his gaze. You looked stoic and almost emotionless but he could see the fear behind your eyes. Those same beautiful E/C eyes he fell for months ago, even before your first night together.

He reached across the table, gently holding your hand, your skin soft against his. You looked back at him, waiting for whatever he was about to say. You braced yourself for the inevitable I’m sorry but I can’t do this that was sure to come.

“It’s goin’ to be alright, Y/N. Whatever happens, we’ll figure it out.” He assured. You swallowed the lump in your throat away, nodding, and trying to hold back the tears.

Obviously, you hadn’t expected him to be jumping up and down in excitement at the news - and he definitely handled it better than you’d expected - but the intense stress of the whole situation finally chipped away and you weren’t sure how much longer you could hold back the tears. Stupid hormones.

________________

Michael leaned against the kitchen counter of Tommy’s home, speaking with John, Arthur, and Johnny Dogs. “Look, mate, you got two options. Fuck off to America with Arthur to live with the Apaches or marry the girl.” John explained.

“This isn’t a joke!” Michael couldn’t figure out why John couldn’t take the situation seriously. You were literally pregnant with his child. He had a child now!

Arthur puffed on his cigar, “Now you’re sure the kid’s yours?”

Michael sighed, “I wish I hadn’t told ya.”

“Think of marriage like a beautiful road with flowers all the way down it.” Arthur seemed to be lost somewhere.

“Is he joking?” Why the hell did Michael even bother to come to these blokes about it? John had five, going on six kids, and an angry cocaine addicted wife while Arthur had become domesticated by some Christian girl carrying his kin that was trying to break his drinking habits. Clearly, they weren’t prime examples.

“It’s hard to tell these days.” John shrugged. Michael walked over to pour himself a drink, needing to feel something other than stress.

“Do you love the woman?” Arthur asked.

“Fucking what?” Michael leaned towards Arthur. In all honesty, he hadn’t thought of it but at the moment the question just seemed irritating and unhelpful.

Arthur didn’t care, despite Michael’s tone, “Then you gotta marry her like the rest of us.”

Marriage. The thought had been whirling in Michael’s head since last night when you told him. That was what he supposed to do, right? You guys were supposed to go get married and start a little family now so you’d be right in the eyes of God. Aside from the thought popping into his head, he hadn’t made any decision on whether or not he’d propose the idea. All he knew was that he was going to be there for you in some way, whether it be helping you raise the child or sending you money.

“I want to be apart of the child’s life. I’m not going to just leave her.” He announced, “I just… I don’t know about marriage right now.”

“Tommy’s gonna make you marry the girl when he finds out.” Johnny added from the counter over his glass of rum.

Shit, he was right. Tommy was going to kill him. And forget Tommy, Polly would have his head!

Suddenly, a bell rang from the other room, signalling Tommy requesting the men to join him in the other room to discuss business. Baby business would have to wait.

_____________________

Back home, you set the table quietly, thankful your father went to work early so you and your mother would have time to talk. “Did you tell him?” Your mom asked.

“Yes.” You answered quietly.

“And I’m assuming he’s going to marry you like an honorable man?” She continued, setting a plate of food on the table and sitting down.

You sighed, joining her, “I don’t know mom. We didn’t talk about marriage and quite frankly I don’t know if I want to be married, especially to a Blinder. It’s not the best place to raise a child. But he said he wasn’t going to leave me so… there’s that.”

“Of course, it’s not safe to raise a kid in the Blinders! When I joked with you about grandbabies that night I didn’t mean go get yourself knocked up then and there by a fuckin’ Peaky Blinder!” You mom shouted. You froze. You knew from the beginning she wasn’t happy about the situation but this was the first time she actually spoke this bluntly about it. She took your stunned silence as a chance to speak again, her voice calm this time, “You’re keeping the child?” She asked, already knowing the answer. You nodded. “Then have the child and move to America or somewhere far from here. Goodness knows that boy will only bring your trouble.”

You shook your head, “He deserves a chance to be a part of the baby’s life.”

“Well then you better hope to God he goes with you.” She stood, rinsing her dish without a word and heading downstairs to the shop.

You sat there in silence for a moment before slamming your hand on the table with a loud smack and allowing your head to fall into your hands, crying for the first time since you’d found out. This was nothing but yours and Michael’s faults and you knew that. Neither of you were dumb enough to not know how babies were made but it was one of those things that you didn’t think would actually happen.

What were you going to do? You couldn’t up and leave to America but your mom was right. Being involved with the Blinders was dangerous work but Michael had promised that you would be safe before he even knew about the baby. With the boys looking out for you and Michael trying to keep you out of everything, maybe your child would be safe.

Suddenly, the phone rang and you jumped up to grab it, “Hello?”

“Y/N?” Michael’s voice asked over the phone.

You sniffled, wiping your nose on the back of your hand, “Hi, Michael.” You tried making your voice sound as if you hadn’t just been crying.

“Can we meet? I need to talk to you. It’s about that thing.” His voice dropped low and you wondered if Polly was in the room.

You leaned against the wall, “I can come over to the shop around noon?”

“Alright,” he whispered, “Come ‘round the back when you get here.”

Noon came quickly and you found yourself waiting at the backdoor of the betting shop you’d become quite familiar with. The door opened to reveal Michael who stepped out of your way so you could step in and he led you to his office, closing the door behind you. You took off your coat and he seemed unable to move his eyes from your stomach despite the fact that you weren’t showing yet. Just the idea that his child was in there right now overwhelmed his thoughts.

He shook out of it, though, and leaned against his desk, turning to you, “We should get married.” You were shocked to say the least. Even though it had been a thought in your mind too, you didn’t expect him to say it so outright.

“Michael, we don’t ha-”

“No,” He cut, “It’s the right thing to do. And that way I can take care of you and the baby from here. We’ll get a house together out in the suburbs and everything will work out. I thought it all out, Y/N.” Michael looked like he really had thought the whole thing out.

A thought had occurred to you earlier though at the shop, “Michael wait,” You stopped him, “I haven’t told anybody yet except my mom. And honestly, a lot can happen in the first few months. I don’t want you to marry me because you feel obligated to, especially if we lose the baby. If we get married, I want it to be because you love me.”

“I do love you.” He admitted. Both of your eyes widened and he looked just as shocked that he said it as you were.

“What?” You asked, completely taken aback.

He looked unsure of himself for a moment but confidence overtook his features, “I love you,” He repeated, “We can wait until we know for sure the baby’s going to make it but I do love you.”

You weren’t even sure what to say. Does this mean you were getting married? “Okay.” You said, almost laughing. It was the only thing you felt like you could do. “I guess we’re possibly getting married.”

Michael stepped towards you, closing the gap between you. His lips carefully brushed against yours and his large hands came to rest on your waist, pulling you closer. When his lips left yours, he rested his forehead on yours and glanced down between your bodies, hands moving to your stomach. “That’s our baby.” He whispered in disbelief.

Your heart swelled with a mixture of fear, excitement, and love. Your hands ran up his firm biceps to his shoulders as you spoke, “Yeah, Michael. That’s our baby.”

The two of you stood there like that for a moment in silence, breathing each other in and letting the situation finally settle in. You felt so secure in his arms, so safe. Being with him, this almost felt like it was supposed to happen and you were almost glad everything was happening. Michael made you feel things that you’d never felt before and it made you want to spend every second of every day with him and then soon with your child as well.

“I love you too.” You whispered, moving your hand to his neck and pulling yourself against him, his arms coming around you to wrap around you like they would protect you from any harm in this world and, if Michael had it his way, they would.

#michael shelby #michael gray #michael gray imagine #michael gray smut #michael shelby smut #michael gray x pregnant!reader #dad!michael gray #dad!michael shelby #peaky blinder imagine #peaky blinder headcanon #peaky blinders #peaky blinders smut #playing with fire

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rllysick · 5 years ago

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Master list:

This is my master list of fanfics that I enjoy reading! I will continue to add to it as I read more or maybe write my own! Most of these fanfictions are of ao3 or tumblr

Rick Sanchez x Reader:

Ricky Doll by rickssugarplum: You’ve missed Rick for so long and you have a Rick Plushie to fill the void. Rick finds out.

Rest Easy by sammys_lover: You're frightened by a storm that's way too huge for your liking.

Innuendos by Hoodoo: You just needed to get some grocery shopping done. Rick turned it into a thing.

Long:

F*CKING YOUNG / PERFECT by baconprincess: The Smith-Sanchez family meets the new neighbors. (11 Chapters, but unfinished)

Curiosity by PsychoLolita: You get swept into Rick and Morty's lives thanks to a favor from Beth. It isn't until you see Rick using his trusty portal gun that you decide to find out for yourself just what kind of scientist Rick Sanchez is. Along the way, you find yourself falling for Rick's unorthodox ways and personality. Even though he seems disinterested in you, it all feels like a strange deja vu. On the other hand, Rick knows something that you don't, and wants to keep it from you (and Morty) at all costs. Will things go completely awry, or will you settle with what the future holds? (15 Chapters, but unfinished)

Rick Sanchez x Reader (Smut):

...the line broke, the monkey got choked... by Hoodoo: You catch sight of an old guy with a Mohawk. He catches sight of you too, and makes a daring suggestion.

Heat Wave by Hoodoo: It's too damn hot. You decide to surprise Rick in his garage with some sexy times. Maybe that'll cool things off?

Honey, I'm Home by daddyzanchez: You knew the sound of a portal opening in your sleep, could recognise it in a crowd and it made you giddy. Rick being home after a long adventure with Morty meant that he was short on a dose of you, making him a little rougher than usual, and you loved it.

Interrupted Plans by daddyzanchez: Rick portals home briefly (despite having plans) to take care of you.

Slow Sex or Mushy Pancakes by daddyzanchez: Rick gets pissy about having to choose between sex or mushy pancakes, so he chooses the next best: A quickie and non-mushy pancakes.

Did You Read It In Cosmopolitan? by daddyzanchez: Rick is away on adventures a lot, making your sex-life consist of a little too many quickies. You want slow for once - you'll never believe what happens next!

More Than Just A Dance by daddyzanchez: Your apartment is in for a Spring cleaning, so when you are mopping the floor whilst shaking your ass to a groovy beat, Rick sees you and orders a dance for himself.

Steampunked by Hoodoo: Rick and reader get dolled up, but sneak away from festivities for some naughty fun.

Good Vibes by rick-frickers: Written from a request: Can you do a Rick/Reader fic incorporating a vibrator?

There’s a first time for everything by ricks-frickers: Written from a request: Please write one of your sexyass female self-inserts of Rick taking a young woman’s virginity

Provocateur by PsychoLolita: Rick wants to spoil you on an expensive lingerie shopping trip when decides he can't take the heat anymore, and pulls you into a dressing room stall for a little fun.

Hard Candy by PsychoLolita: You and Rick Sanchez have been flirting for months. When you pay him a visit this time, he's working on a "special candy for Summer" that he insists you don't touch. But how can you resist trying one when he isn't looking? You can't- and he's the only one who can quench your thirst after you realize the candy was actually an aphrodisiac.

Tequila Sunrise by PsychoLolita: You're secretly into some kinky stuff, but you're too shy about it to bring it out on your own. Rick C137 knows exactly what to do.

A Woman’s Place by rehpicllib: Rick’s kind of sexist. But still manages to fuck you up.

You Asked For It by Hoodoo: You make a request of Rick: can you have a night of hardcore fluffy sex? Can he do that? And then contrariwise, what about the opposite of hardcore fluff sex? Chapter 2. Requests from an ask, first chapter fluffy sex, second chapter hardcore sex (with detoxified Rick and Toxic Rick) (2 Chapters)

Up In The Air daddyzanchez: Your job as a flight attendant suddenly gets a little more exciting (and shameful) as a tall, strange man with spiky blue hair gets onboard... (4 Chapters, but unfinished)

Extra Credit by GoldenSnowflake: As the clanking of plates and silverware gathering food filled the air, a tall, slim figure swept into the room and took the chair opposite of mine. He stared and I blinked at him, my fork in my mouth. "Who's this?""We're partners for a project," Summer muttered as if he should've known better, despite the fact it didn't seem like she warned anybody that I was coming over at all.

Sext by Hoodoo: Rick got a piercing. It's wrecked a month's worth of havoc on his sex life, until tonight.

Hair-pulling+ by Hoodoo: A short, filthy fic about being fucked from behind by Rick, with him holding onto my ponytail. Just some nice hair pulling and dirty talk.

Mint Chocolate Chip by Hoodoo: It's summer and it's too hot. Ice cream should make it better.

Erotic Advent by Hoodoo: 24 days of new sex toys for Rick/reader!

Zero G by Hoodoo: You always wanted to have sex in anti-gravity. Rick makes that happen.

Focused on masterbaiting:

Tracker by NikkiDoodle: Rick catches you during your alone time. But how does he know what you're up to?

Desperate But So Far Away by daddyzanchez: Rick is not able to be reached right now which is a bummer. You have had your hand in your pants for an hour or more but your orgasm was just not happening.

Better Than Fantasy by NamelyCranberries: Rick catches you masturbating. Lend a Hand by deliciousdeaddove: You walk in on something interesting...

House sitter by deliciousdeaddove: You're watching the Smith's house while they're out of town. Your mind drifts to one of the usual occupants and you become carried away. Then you're caught.

Caught Rick-Handed by CrazyRaynebow: Rick walks in on Reader masturbating and well... what else is there to say?

Focused on eating out:

Originality - A New Year's Eve Story by daddyzanchez: How does one enter the new year with Rick Sanchez? A Slip Of The Tongue by daddyzanchez: It took a moment before you realised what you had just said but when you did, your heart dropped and it felt like a train was hitting you at maximum speed. Distractions by rick-frickers: Written from a request: reader/Rick with reader as Morty’s tutor or something and the tutor and Rick have been flirting (which Morty notices) and Rick goes under the table and goes down on tutor and she’s gotta play it cool so Morty doesn’t notice and Rick’s really into it but also wants the girl to make a lot of noise so she’ll feel embarrassed. And later the reader gets her revenge and does the same to Rick when he’s in the garage or something!

Period:

Monthly by NikkiDoodle: You're on your period and hate it. But that didn't stop Rick. (3 Chapters)

Bloodhound by Jinkies_Lydia: This story is about period sex. If that is not your thing turn around now. Takes place after season 2 episode 7, “Big Trouble in Little Sanchez”. The Reader comes onto Rick at her bloodiest time of the month after a wild ride previously with Rick after killing his other clone bodies, drenched in his own blood.

Monthly by GoldenSnowflake: “She’ll be watching the house while we’re gone,” Beth explained pleasantly.Long limbs draped across the back of the sofa and the coffee table, Rick looked at me with the barest hint of interest. “She’s cute,” he assessed, turning back to the television. “Just make sure she stays the hell away from the garage.” A little odd or not, the Smiths paying to housesit while they're gone is nothing less than perfect timing. Except for the fact that Mother Nature doesn't care whose life she's ruining. Oh, and neither does Rick.

#masterlist #fanfics #fanfic masterlist #rick and morty #rick #rick sanchez

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wheres-the-pool-ladder · 4 years ago

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The Sycorax Killed and Saved the Time Lords, and Also Killed Clara

The title is mostly a joke, but hear me out.

Warning: Major Spoilers for a number of series finales.

Literally every New Who Master episode wouldn’t have happened if Ten hadn’t lost his hand in the sword fight against the Sycorax. Hell, a lot of New Who would be changed. There are several points in the timeline where the Doctor might have just straight up died.

Because Jack found the Doctor’s severed hand, and used it to track him. Jack finally catching up to the Doctor caused the Tardis to fly all the way to the end of the universe just to shake him off. This wouldn’t have happened had there been no hand to find. Which means they never would have come across Professor Yana, who wouldn’t have opened the chameleon arch and become the Master and then steal the Doctor’s Tardis. So the entirety of the three-part series 3 finally wouldn’t have happened, since the Master’s still stuck as a human at the end of the universe. (As an aside, The Lazarus Experiment wouldn’t have happened either, since Tish only got the job working for Lazarus because of Saxon. So she wouldn’t have ended up on the news, thus never prompting Francine to call Martha about it.)

Martha likely continued traveling with the Doctor, since she had left to be there with her family after the trauma they endured during the Year That Never Was. They may or may not run into Donna, since without the metacrisis, Dalek Caan doesn’t need to manipulate events surrounding her. Let’s say they do. Turn Left doesn’t happen since events aren’t converging on Donna. But all of reality’s at stake, so Rose would have to find another way of warning the Doctor.

Now, the show could’ve likely ended at series 4, since the metacrisis wouldn’t have happened without the hand, so the whole of reality could’ve ended up destroyed. But let’s assume they find a way to save reality since A) Dalek Caan had set the whole thing up to betray the Daleks anyway, and B) without the hand Ten would’ve regenerated into Eleven, who had managed to save the Earth from the Atraxi in 20 minutes without his sonic or Tardis while dealing with post-regenerative trauma, so he’d probably figure out how to stop Davros. Since there’s no TenToo, the Doctor probably wouldn’t leave Rose at Bad Wolf Bay, so she may end up traveling with him again. This may prompt Martha to leave since she might feel like the third wheel now that the man she fancies has reunited with the woman he loves. Donna would likely stay, since she doesn’t need to have her memory erased.

So we move onto The End of Time, which wouldn’t have happened. Plain and simple. The Master’s still stuck at the end of the universe, so the whole reviving him wouldn’t have happened. The Doctor doesn’t need to stall for time after The Waters of Mars (which probably wouldn’t have ended the way it did, as he’s likely still traveling with Donna and Rose), so he never marries Elizabeth I, so the very end of the Shakespeare Code doesn’t happen either. Liz One still remains the Virgin Queen, and the Doctor doesn’t regenerate, but they’re already Eleven, so...

Since the Tardis doesn’t get completely obliterated by the Doctor regenerating, he doesn’t crash into Amelia Pond’s garden and then end up returning 12 years later due to the Tardis repairing. Maybe different circumstances cause Amy and Rory to become companions, maybe not. If not, then River wouldn’t exist, so Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead never occurs.

Gonna skip series 6 for a minute and move onto Clara. Since the Master’s still stuck at the end of the universe, Missy isn’t able to give Clara the Doctor’s number. So Clara never travels with the Doctor and jumps into his time stream, becoming Oswin and Victorian Clara, so the Doctor never tries to find her in the first place. She also never ends up dying in the Trap Street. So the Sycorax started the chain of events that led to Clara’s death. The Doctor may have ended up dying in the Dalek Asylum if he hadn’t met Oswin. If he survives, the lack of Amy and Rory means he doesn’t end up in the Victorian period to mourn them, so he doesn’t meet the Great Intelligence. This would also end up changing Classic Who a tiny bit, since Eleven accidentally gave the GI the idea that the London Underground is a “key strategic weakness”, which they use in The Web of Fear. So The Bells of Saint John doesn’t happen either. Neither the GI nor the Doctor have any reason to be there. The Name of the Doctor doesn’t happen either, since the GI doesn’t try to enter the Doctor’s time stream, which means Clara would have no reason to enter it. Paradoxes are confusing.

Even if the Doctor had met the GI in Victorian London, this might mean the GI succeeds at rewriting the Doctor’s timeline. Let’s say he and whoever his companion is manages to find a way and move on.

If TNotD doesn’t happen, or they stop the GI, The Day of the Doctor might still happen. If it doesn’t, then the Time Lords are dead, so we can thank the Sycorax for the Time Lords being alive for a while. It would happen without Ten though, since in canon Ten is somewhere between The Water’s of Mars and The End of Time, so Journey’s End has already happened, and he’s regenerated in this universe. So we have 33% less bickering. Current Companion may still inspire the Doctor to try to save Gallifrey. If that does happen, then the Time Lords would still try to come through the cracks in time, prompting the Silence to try to kill the Doctor, and trying to blow up the Tardis would cause those very cracks in time. Paradoxes are still confusing. They probably wouldn’t be able to kill him at Lake Silencio, since River might not exist if the Doctor hasn’t met Amy. If he has, then that likely goes the same way as canon. If he hasn’t, maybe they would have succeeded in blowing up the Tardis, since the Doctor only noticed the cracks because he met Amy. So the Silence cause the universe to never exist, while simultaneous causing another paradox by preventing the very events that led to them blowing up the Tardis.

If they don’t succeed in erasing the universe, the Doctor would likely stay on Trenzalore longer than he had in canon, since he doesn’t need (or rather, doesn’t think he needs) more regenerations yet. He still thinks he’s got one left. He may end up regenerating into Twelve while on Trenzalore, which may end up triggering the whole gifting-the-Doctor-more-regenerations thing at some point down the line. So then we end up with Thirteen.

Post-Trenzalore, the Doctor doesn’t meet Missy. The Master’s still stuck at the end of the universe, and even if they weren’t, the Doctor doesn’t know Clara, so Danny’s death (if it even happens) doesn’t cause them to search for the afterlife.

Assuming DotD happens, since the Master’s still stuck at the end of the universe, Simm!Master wouldn’t have been able to leave Gallifrey, and never got stuck on the Monasian ship where he encountered the Doctor and Missy. So he never regenerates into Missy, and the Doctor never goes to the Mondasian ship to test Missy’s ability to be good. The Doctor Falls never happens, and Bill never gets turned into a Cyberman. This also means she never gets turned into a Pilot by Heather, so she never gets to go on adventures with her space girlfriend. The Doctor might have never even met Bill, since they’re not guarding the vault at St. Luke’s University. The Doctor doesn’t regenerate, but she’s already Thirteen, so...

Since they don’t regenerate, the Doctor doesn’t fall out of the Tardis and meet the Fam. Series 11 doesn’t happen.

Since the Master was never on the Mondasian ship, they never regenerate into the Dhawan!Master. So they never go back to Gallifrey and hack into the Matrix, learning about the Timeless Child. The Master doesn’t kill the Time Lords. So the Sycorax started the chain of events that led to the Time Lord’s death. The Doctor may or may not find out later, depending on whether the Time Lords keep “granting” them more regenerations just to keep the secret.

TL;DR: The Sycorax are responsible for every bad thing that’s happened to the Doctor from series 3 onward, paradoxes are super confusing, and the Doctor needs to up their sword fighting skills.

To quote Mabel Pines: “Time travel, man! Why you gotta be so complicated?”

#doctor who #the doctor #the master #Jack Harkness #clara oswald #the christmas invasion #long post #at first i had only realized that the time lords and clara would be alive and the master would be stuck at the end of the universe #as well as the metacrisis never happening #but as i kept writing i kept noticing more and more things that would change #i don't think rtd realize how big an impact this one decision would have #not even really the decision to chop off the doctor's hand #but the decision to use the hand in later episodes #cause the episode utopia is where this snowball really starts rolling

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onwardintolight · 5 years ago

Link

Han x Leia, ESB, Trip to Bespin, angst, hurt/comfort, fluff

Summary: ESB from Leia's POV. A journey from despair to hope, a blossoming, an opening to vulnerability and love.

Warnings: Deals with some heavy themes, incl. working through trauma, depression, self-harm, attempted sexual assault. Each chapter will be individually warned.

Note: I’m currently in the process of reposting the first nine chapters here in full, since when I first wrote this fic, I only shared links to the chapters on AO3 and FFN. I will try to post at least weekly. In the meantime, if you’d prefer to binge-read it, the entire fic is posted in full on AO3 and FFN.

Part: Masterlist | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | Epilogue

~~~

I’m sorry, Han. I’m sorry we didn’t make it in time. Leia sat in the pilot’s seat—Han’s seat—and steered the Falcon away from Cloud City, feeling as if her heart had been torn apart.

He was gone.

It’s not your fault, the memory of his voice echoed in her head. She almost argued back out of habit, but then she stopped herself.

He was gone. Blaming herself wouldn’t help him now, nor would it help her. And… he was right. She knew that, deep down. Vader had done it, just as he’d done so many unspeakable things before. Vader would pay when the Rebellion won. In the meantime, she would fight with everything she had for that victory.

And she would fight with everything she had for Han.

She glanced at Chewie, who was sitting silently beside her in the co-pilot’s seat. “Anything on the sensors?” she said softly.

«Nothing,» he replied. «They are not chasing us yet.»

“Only a matter of time,” Lando muttered from behind them.

She knew he was right. There would be at least fifteen minutes worth of atmospheric and sublight flight before they made it to a point where they could safely jump to lightspeed—maybe more. Plenty of time for the Empire to try to cut them off. At least, she told herself, they had a head start.

She guided the Falcon over the top of a particularly dense cloud, black against the slowly dwindling fire of the sky—

And then she froze; her hands mechanically guiding the Falcon forward, her mind tugged elsewhere. An image appeared: a figure hanging from a vane on the bottom of the city, nothing but endless clouds below. A voice: Luke’s voice, in pain.

Leia, he was saying. Hear me, Leia.

“Luke,” she whispered.

The image dissipated. But she knew without a doubt that like her dream, it was real. Luke was in danger; there was no time to spare.

“We’ve got to go back,” she told the others.

“What?” Lando said, incredulous, Chewie echoing him.

“I know where Luke is,” she said, calling on her royal voice and all its commanding influence. She looked Chewie in the eye, silently pleading for him to believe her.

“What about those fighters?” Lando questioned.

«How do you know where he is?»

“Chewie, just do it!”

“But what about Vader—” Lando had hardly started saying the words before the Wookiee turned around and gave him a threatening roar. “All right, all right!” he said.

Chewie trusted her. Warmth spread through her, even as they turned the ship back towards danger, and maybe death.

She knew what she knew; the how didn’t matter right now.

They may not have been able to rescue Han, but they sure as hell weren’t going to leave without Luke.

~~~

The underside of Cloud City was deep violet, faint with the last echoes of the setting sun. Leia’s eyes scanned it, searching.

Maybe she was being ridiculous. Maybe the torture droid’s drugs had left her hallucinating. Or maybe all the trauma was finally, truly, catching up to her, shredding what was left of her sanity. But she wasn’t ready to give up hope just yet.

“Look, someone’s up there!” Lando pointed.

And there he was. A little to the left and ahead, clinging onto a weather vane, just as she’d seen it in her mind.

“It’s Luke,” she said. “Chewie, slow down—slow down and we’ll get under him. Lando, open the top hatch.” She heard the cockpit door open as Lando went to follow her orders.

Luke. What had happened? Even from here she could feel the pain radiating off of him. “Easy, Chewie,” she said, and together, they maneuvered the Falcon until it floated right underneath the vane. She saw the indicator light for the top hatch blinking. Suddenly, another sensor lit up. Several small ships were dropping around the rim of the city and heading their way. She looked closer; they were definitely TIE fighters. “Lando?” she called, her voice urgent.

“Okay, let’s go!” he replied through the comm, and they sped off. Ahead, three more TIEs came into view.

She heard the sound of the cockpit door again, and she got to her feet, trusting Chewie to take charge of the Falcon.

Oh, Luke.

He stood there in the doorway, supported by Lando. His face was bloodied and bruised; his eyes haunted. She rushed to him and buried herself in his arms as Lando went to take her place in the cockpit.

“Leia,” he whispered. He clung to her as if clinging to life itself. She held him tight, hoping that somehow through her embrace she could impart the strength, courage and comfort he needed. It felt good to hug someone, after everything. She hadn’t since—

Abruptly, tears stung her eyes again.

She swallowed down her grief. She could deal with it all later; right now she needed to take care of Luke. Gently, she slipped out of the hug and eased him down the hallway to the crew quarters. Helping him onto the right-hand bunk that had been fitted with medical equipment, she quickly analyzed his wounds. The burn on his face looked painful but not threatening; she could treat it later. More immediately, he needed fluids and possibly a blood transfusion; he was clearly on the verge of collapse. Her eyes traveled down and stopped short. She gasped.

His hand. He was missing a hand. Suddenly, his symptoms of shock became very clear.

Swallowing, she forced back the familiar crescendo of panic regarding needles and hooked him up to the fluids generator, trying to stall the shaking in her hands. Next, she turned to rummage through the med cabinet. Finding what she was looking for, she knelt beside his bunk. That put her a little low, but she needed to be steady—right now, with the beating the ship was taking from the TIEs, the gravity emulators weren’t exactly at top performance. She examined his wound again. It was completely cauterized, she realized, so there would be no need for a coagulant. As gently as she could, she daubed the stump of his wrist with an antiseptic. He tensed, moaning. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. Carefully, she placed a bacta patch over the wound, then she wrapped the whole lower arm in a protective bandage.

When she was finished and satisfied that there were no further injuries that demanded her immediate attention, she pulled a blanket over him and grabbed a compress, soaking it with cold water in the ‘fresher. Coming back to his side, she dabbed at his forehead.

The ship lurched; a particularly bad one. She looked up, concerned. Glancing back at Luke, she leaned down and kissed him lightly. The gesture felt instinctual and familial, meant to comfort, and she did it without much forethought. But immediately she felt a twinge of guilt as she remembered the last, awkward kiss she’d given him to spite Han, and his strange attempt to kiss her before that. She hoped he wouldn’t mistake this one for anything more than it was, if he remembered it later.

Right now, though, the pilots needed her help. “I’ll be back,” she murmured. Setting down the compress, she rushed back to the cockpit. They’d emerged from Bespin’s atmosphere and were finally approaching a suitable hyperspace jump point. Unfortunately, Chewie and Lando were busy turning the ship in barrel rolls to avoid TIE fighter fire. In the distance, a massive ship came into view. “Star Destroyer,” she said, pointing. Executor-class, no less. She cursed under her breath. The grav emulators trembled once again, and her stomach lurched. If they continued to get worse, Luke could be even more seriously injured.

Chewie growled at her to set the lightspeed coordinates, and after a brief moment’s thought she reached up to enter them. The Kaliida Nebula would be a fairly easy sequence of jumps from here. She’d rendezvoused with members of the Alliance there after Mako-Ta; perhaps there’d be a scout there for her to make contact with now. At the very least, it was a good place to hide and plot their next course, provided that they stopped along the way to check that they weren’t being tracked.

“All right, Chewie,” Lando said. “Ready for lightspeed.”

“If your people fixed the hyperdrive,” she muttered half-sardonically.

«It was fixed when Han checked,» Chewie assured her.

She saw a light flash green on the panel, and she sat down. “All the coordinates are set. It’s now or never.”

“Punch it,” said Lando.

The stars remained tiny, frozen points of light. They sat in stunned silence as the whine of the failed hyperdrive filled the cockpit.

Leia and Chewie looked at each other, then over at Lando. At that moment, another blast rocked the ship. Chewie exploded with curses. Leia fell back in her seat, her head in her hands.

Of course it’s not working, she thought. How could they have expected anything else?

“They told me they fixed it!” Lando seemed even more shocked than the rest of them. “I trusted them to fix it!” he shouted. “It’s not my fault!” She heard banging noises as he charged around the cockpit, looking for something, anything, that he could do to help. Chewie brushed past her on his way out; to dig in the bowels of the ship, she presumed. He nearly knocked Lando over in the process.

Sighing, she moved forward to take charge of the controls.

~~~

It was a trick out of Han’s book, pulling the ship in close to the Star Destroyer at an angle where the tractor beams couldn’t lock onto them (she hoped). The TIEs were following them still, but they were free, for the moment.

Seemingly out of nowhere, a chill ran down her back. She heard the door open and looked up to see Luke wandering in, staring out the viewport at the Destroyer. “It’s Vader,” he whispered. The familiar clench of anxiety came at his name. She felt cold.

Luke sat down beside her, muttering deliriously. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she heard him say. Frowning, she tried to ignore him for now and focus on flying the ship, avoiding the TIEs and keeping out of the tractor beam’s range. She knew she was unlikely to succeed. Executor-class Destroyers had particularly powerful tractor beams that would be hard to evade; more likely, the Imperials simply hadn’t finished readying them yet. She felt as though a hand were tightening on her throat. Vader, in that ship, and them, stranded here….

All of a sudden, she was thrown back in her seat. From the back, she heard Artoo screech, and a light started blinking furiously on the panel in front of her. Hardly believing her eyes, she reached forward, breathless, and grabbed the hyperspace lever, pushing it forward.

The stars outside the viewpoint lengthened, coalescing into woven light.

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journal-of-an-outlaw · 5 years ago

Text

Price to be Paid

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

AO3 Link

Chapter 6

Waking up was a chore. Your head was pounding from the almost all night party, and you groaned while you pulled your blanket over your head. Who thought it was a good idea to sleep outside? Damn the sun and its infernal brightness.

Little Jack was splashing around in the water barrel near your tent which woke you up. He was holding a little wooden boat and pretending it was crashing through the make believe waves.

After you debated with yourself, you decided to move back to your tent. You dragged the bedroll past Jack who just stared, and slowly threw the soft padding into your tent. Someone outside laughed but you couldn’t care less who it was. All you could think about was sleeping off this damn hangover.

A few hours later you felt vaulgey better and decided to grab some coffee. The sun was halfway through the sky, but it wasn’t like anyone else had noticed the day was creeping by; only half of the camp was conscious. Hosea was eating lunch at the main table.

You grabbed a cup of coffee and sat at the old campfire. No one had bothered to light it yet and you stared at the ashes.

“Jesus, YN. You look like hell.”

Charles stood above you. Looking up was painful and you couldn’t bend your neck for too long. You grunted and motioned to the spot next to you, causing Charles to laugh softly at you. The splitting pain in your head was now just a constant throb that you could try and ignore while the two of you talked.

“I was hoping I could hunt today, but everyone here looks like shit. No offense, but you included.”

“I feel like hell, so none taken.” The thought of being on a moving horse made your stomach turn, so you drank your coffee in peace. “I’m happy hunting with my bow, but I can’t go today. Could you wait until tomorrow?” Charles contemplated, and finally agreed to wait until the next day to ride out. You wanted to get some supplies from Valentines anyways.

A little while later, John emerged from his shared tent with Abigail and sauntered over.

“YN! How are you today?” You groaned again as the loud voice rattled around you brain making it hard to think. “I’m heading into town to look at some livestock, y'all need anything?”

“Actually, I’ll join you John. I need some supplies for hunting." You stood and stretched, then dumped the remaining coffee into the old fire.

The two of you walked over to the horses, and he jumped onto his brown bay and you hesitated. “John, mind if I ride with ya? I’m looking to buy my own horse in town today.” He held his arm out without hesitation and pulled you up.

The ride in was short and bumpy, and you tried not to vomit all over John. The hangover pain was almost gone by the time you were dropped you off on the main road which was a blessing, and you waved as John rode back to the outskirts to look at the livestock scam he had started cooking.

When you walked into the general store, a familiar ding met your ears. The shopkeeper smiled and waved you over. “Come, see this new coffee brand we have!” You browsed the wares and picked out what you needed. A few cans of food, some oil to clean your bow, little objects. Nothing that you couldn’t carry back incase the horse was gone.

While in the shop you treated yourself to a bag of candy as well, thinking you deserved some sweets for that wicked hangover.

After you popped a piece in your mouth you walked into the stables. “Hey, mister! Is that gray mare still available?” The man waved you in and motioned to the stall she was in. You rushed over and she was just as stunning as you had remembered.

Standing tall, the mare bent her nose and nibbled your fingers for a treat. Her coat was soft and shiny under your fingers as you stroked her neck. At full height she was 16.2 hands with her head high above your own. Her grey body gave way to a white tail and mane, and small socks around her hooves.

“For a pretty young thing like you? I can do a price of $9.50.”

Despite the inappropriate look, it was a good price so you paid him and left. She rode beautifully and you were so excited to finally have a horse of your own. “Heyaw!” You kicked her sides and she started galloping out of town and you headed north.

The landscape changed more mountainous under her light feet. You debated what to call her. Names from your novels ran through your head, some better than others. Greek Gods? Other gunslingers? You finally settled on Eclipse. Something about the mysterious phenomenon called you. She galloped on and on, never faltering as you tried to test her limits. Finally you stopped to rest near a beautiful stream bed and let Eclipse get a drink. You brushed her and hoisted your skirt up to your knees to wade into the cool water for a few moments and ease your mind.

Over the past few months your life had changed so much. Leaving Blackwater, living with a gang, killing someone, it was all a lot to process. You were smart, resourceful, and brave. Three things your always admired about yourself. Seeing the change and growth you've already made, there was no way you could ever look back at the life you left far behind.

It was late that night when you got back into camp. Your new horse Eclipse made you so happy, and she whinnied appreciatively you finally took her saddle off for the night. She joined the other horses to graze easily.

Heading back towards your tent you ran into Jack again. He eyed the candy you had bought so you shared a few pieces with him happily. He giggled and shyly looked at you. “What are you hiding, Jack?”

“Momma and Pop said you were dancing with Uncle Arthur.”

“We did dance, but don’t worry it didn’t mean anything.”

He smiled. “My Pa and Ma met when they danced. Are you going to marry Uncle Arthur?”

You gagged on the candy you had just popped into your mouth, and were completely mortified when Arthur himself walked over to the two of you sitting near the overlook.

“Jack! Are you bothering that nice lady?”

“No, Uncle Arthur. Just eating candy.” He smiled at you coyly, and ran off when Arthur started chasing him. Arthur came back to plop down next to you in front of the log.

“Candy?” you offered. He reached in and pulled out a piece. “I’m a sucker for candy, can’t ever say no.”

“Really?” he looked at you, “I never took you for having a sweet tooth.”

You laughed and pulled the bag back to yourself. “I went into town today with John. Got that mare I’ve had my eye on.”

Arthur looked back at the group of animals and you pointed out Eclipse. He nodded approvingly. "I know you said you'd go, but no one was up for much of anything this morning. Nearly showed John my whole breakfast again after that bumpy ride into town."

"'S no bother. Glad you got it worked out. I, uh, didn't get up for a long while this morning. Damn whiskey nearly killed me. Although ridin’ anywhere with Marston will usually end with the same result."

You wrinkled your nose at the mention of the drink. "Whiskey always makes me sick. Can't stand it at all."

He chuckled softly, "Can't be a real outlaw until you have at least one awful whiskey night, YN."

"Maybe sometime. Takes awhile to get over a smell like that though…"

Unknowingly your hand fluttered to your ribs, a phantom ache from where your father liked to land his drunk fists. It had been months since his last episode and all the bruises had long since faded. But the memory still lingered and you thought it always would.

Arthur turned to face you, then suggested you move somewhere away from the main camp. You settled on your favorite stop to look out to the valley as the moon climbed up the sky, and sat down on a log.

“YN...why you still here?” he said it cautiously, like you would bolt at any moment. It struck you wrong and you stood to leave feeling this was going badly, but he put his hands up and continued. “Not like, here here, but...you coulda gone back to Blackwater after your side healed from the bullet. What’s kept you from that?”

Finally understanding, you sat back down and put your head in the palm of your hand to think.

“I...I’m not sure. I guess I could have gone off on my own, not that I woulda lasted long,” you laughed shortly, “but I love this...family you have here. Sometimes I feel like a voyeur, wishing to be more than just halfway accepted.” The next part felt hard to admit, but you rushed forward anyways.

“My home was nothing like this. In fact it was the opposite. All I ever wanted was to be on the other side of that little window at home, looking in and dreaming what could be instead of lying awake in the dark in fear of it. I would give anything to unknow what that version of family felt like. To keep walking and let that moment of life just pass me by.” Arthur watched you with an inscrutable expression.

“I like to see the good in folks, Mr. Morgan. I try real hard to believe that people are born good, and hold that in their heart. Not that I’m naive about life, sure. I know I'm living with a group of outlaws. Michah laughed when I said something similar, but ain’t it important to believe in something? To truly believe?”

“Miss Moore, you almost sound like Dutch. 'Course we ain't all good, but I think you are gonna get along here just fine if you keep believin’ like that,” his face was hard to read, but Arthur had a flush in his cheeks that you knew wasn’t from a drink.

The two of you moved closer, your confession hanging heavy in the air about the goodness in men’s hearts.

Arthur dipped his head and you angled your chin up to his, all the while feeling your heart beat like it was about to come right out of your chest. His hand moved to cover yours, and in that heated moment Pearson chose to beat a metal dish with his wooden spoon.

“Food’s ready! Come grab it while it’s hot!”

“Jesus!” The word burst from your lips. Pearson had popped the bubble of you and Arthur, and the moment was gone. Your eyes held the gaze you had been sharing, and a small half smile formed on your lips. Arthur squeezed your hand in his then rose without a word and walked off.

It took a few minutes to compose yourself but not long after you followed, hungry for the stew cooking away. Abigail was near and she called you to join her at a table.

“How did John’s livestock scam go today? He was kind enough to bring me into town but I never heard how it ended.”

She stirred the soup around before answering. “I’m not too sure. He won’t talk to me about such goings. I’m not honestly sure if I want to know.”

“I’m sure it’s for some silly reason like keeping you safe, Abigail. He’s a good man.”

Abigail sighed heavily, watching Jack run in the background of the camp. “For all our sakes, YN, I hope you’re right.”

Much later in your tent you finished one of the books you had found in town. A silly little novel, but in the glow of the lamplight the romantic ending made you feel safe and warm. As you lay down you ran your fingers over the cover that was illustrated with a rose.

“YN? You still up?” The voice was no more than a raised whisper coming from outside the flap. You sat up and warily moved towards the entrance.

“Arthur? That you?” Pulling back the tent flap slowly revealed the tall man crouching to meet you. “What can I do for you?”

“I just...uh...didn’t want you to think I was tryin’ to take advantage of anything earlier.” Sheepishly he pulled on his coat, glancing around to make sure no one saw you two meeting this late. He may not have to fight for his moral standing in this camp but you sure did.

Slowly, you responded, watching his face the whole time. “Nothing truly happened, Arthur. Just talkin’. Caught up in the, uh, moment was all.”

“‘Spose that’s so. You going hunting with Charles tomorrow then?” You nodded back at him. “I want to see how Eclipse runs out on the big fields. And I wanna shoot that bow again.”

“Well, you be careful then, you hear? Don’t want to be going on any big rescue missions.”

Smiling back, you felt your chest swell a bit at the kind words. “I’ll try then, not to be kidnapped or taken off. I’m sure Charles will be a fine hunting partner. Plus I can fight real good if I need too, mean left hook no one sees coming.”

Arthur chuckled. “Alright. Night then, YN. See you in a few days.” He tipped his hat and jaunted back towards the center of camp, leaving you to drop the flap and head to your bedroll.

“Mr. Arthur Morgan...huh…” You traced the rose on the novel again, this time picturing that it was a handsome face. Giggling, you sat up and blew out the sole flame of the lantern, plunging the tent into darkness to get some rest.

The next morning Charles was waiting for you by the horses. You had dressed in pants for one of the first times in your life and loved it. The flexibility alone was enticing enough to make you want to throw your dresses and skirts off the overlook. You chose dark jeans, a blue shirt, and brown boots and satchel. The red bandana you picked up yesterday was tied around your neck to protect from dirt or lawmen's eyes, depending on the situation.

While walking over you finished tucking in your shirt and attaching everything in its correct place, watching Chalres pat Eclipse and feed her a treat. He didn't say much in the early hour except a wave while you loaded up your horse.

“Ready?” You nodded, and the two of you kicked off.

The plan was to hunt for three days. It meant a lot of riding and shooting and you couldn’t wait to build up the muscles in your shoulders, giving you better control over your shot. Focusing on the rocky path took a lot of focus, so the first few hours of your ride were quiet. Every hour the horses would get a chance to rest and eat and you walked to stretch your legs.

Heading up north was all new territory for you. Charles seemed comfortable enough, and was happy to discuss the local fauna.

“This one here? Red Cedar tree, can grow to be massive and every part of it is usable. The needles can make tea to help many sicknesses, and Native Americans use the trunks to make canoes as the wood never rots.”

You rubbed the needles in between your fingers, wondering how the tea tasted. Charles went on to talk about other traditions of his people and how they made use of everything around them.

Finally you arrived where Charles wanted to camp. The ground was dry and free of rocks were you set up your tent, far from the view of anyone passing through.

Night passed quickly and you rose early to begin hunting. Stalking a group of deer, you brought down two after a long chase. Eclipse ran swiftly over the hills and Charles commented on how well she was doing, listening well to your commands. His own horse Tamia was a bit smaller, but just as quick.

A lone stag caught your attention and you veered left to focus and take aim. The bow was getting heavy in your outstretched arm and your anchor point of the corner of your mouth was a bit wobbly, but he soon joined the other deer you were bringing back to camp. Finally satisfied you both worked your way through the woods back to your site.

Sitting around the fire that night, Charles taught you how to smoke meat and make it last. It was much better to store it versus try to eat it all right away in this life of constantly running and moving around.

The next day was much of the same. Hunt, rest, smoke meat, hunt some more. Nothing truly exciting happened until the third morning as you packed up camp.

“There’s lots of strange gangs around this country. I’m not sure gang is the right word, but I’m not sure what to call them. Down south is the Lemoyne Raiders, east is the Murphys, then of course the O’Driscolls and…well us I guess. Van der Linde gang.” Charles was pouring over a map of the area, and drew large circles where he warned of other groups. “I think there’s more but not as large as us.”

“Lotta folks to look out for, then. I’ve never heard of most of them to be honest, but you missed the Skinner Brothers out near Blackwater,” you took his pencil and drew a circle around the area they used to terrorize. “Took a lot of good folks. Burned farms. Finally some group came in and cleared them out but it was bad a few years back.”

“Heard of them, but never knew where they started. Huh,” he observed the circles you had drawn, then continued on. “This is where we’ll stop for supplies on the way back and to sell pelts. Long ride from Amarino country down to Valentine.”

Agreeing on where to stop was easy, but getting there was another problem. A bridge was out along the way which added a good hour to your journey. Both of you were cranky and tired by the time you rolled into Valentine, quickly selling the pelts and leftover meat that was of no use to the gang.

“Alright Charles, I’m ready to head home,” you paused and looked over. “How fast you think Tamia can run? Faster than Eclipse?”

His eyebrows raised. “You challenging me to a race, YN?” “Damn straight,” you replied confidently, and dug your heels into Eclipse causing her to sprint off.

Pealing laughter followed the two of you as the town gave way to the green muddy fields, and eventually the wooded aread of Horseshoe Overlook. Nothing felt better than the rushing wind in your hair and the sun warming your face. You debated throwing your arms out wide but didn’t want to look silly.

Both horses were magnificent, and you admitted defeat when Tamia pulled ahead at the last moment.

Eclipse huffed as you swung yourself down and nudged your arm playfully. She was ready to relax and eat with the other horses, so you took your hunting spoils and patted her affectionately.

Walking over with the deer you met Pearson who was ecstatic. “Look at this folks, a real feast ready soon!” He eagerly took the meat from you and Charles and shooed you away so he could begin to prepare it.

“Well done, YN. I would hunt with you again anytime,” Charles clapped your shoulder and walked off towards his tent.

All you wanted to do was bathe and sleep so you started towards the river.

“YN! Need some company?” Mary-Beth came running up besides you, not so secretly hiding from Ms. Grimshaw. “Sure, let’s get you out of here before she notices,” and the pair of you took off running down to the river.

Tily and Karen were doing the wash when you arrive, and they all greeted you cheerily upon returning from the hunt.

“How did you two get on then? Hunt anything more excitin’ than deer?” Karen play snarled and lunged at you, making the group laugh. “Charles is as stiff as a board around women Karen and you know it,” Tilly countered.

“Oh, I’m not -” Mary-Beth cut you off before you could finish. “Charles! No, I saw YN getting cozy with Arthur the other night when they thought no one was lookin’.” You playfully hit Mary-Beth’s arm in response and the whole group was set off.

“First ya’ll dancing, then hiding on the lookout, whatchu really come to our gang for anyways!” Karen laughed while she said it, but you did fear they all thought of you as just a hopeless romantic.

“There is more than just goin’ after men in this life, and I intend to explore those avenues first. Just so happy to be free. And sides ain’t he got a girl?” you replied while washing your arms.

The other moaned. “Ugh. Mary Linton. She beckons, and he calls. Been years since he last saw her but still thinks of her I’m sure. It’s hard finding someone in this life that agrees with it, that’s why she’s been gone all this time. Her daddy threw a fit at who Arthur was,” Tilly informed you.

“I heard he went and rescued Michah from some town east called Strawberry,” you tried to change the subject.

Karen roller her eyes. “Damn fools shot up the whole town and can probably never go back.”

“I know Strawberry. Small and backwards place. Used to think I couldn't go when I was young on account of me being allergic to the fruit.” the girls laughed at your answer, and as you slowly felt cleaner.

Eventually the chores were done so you left the river with the group. They carried the baskets up on their hips and you watched the colors dance in the wind. It was a sight to see the clothes hung in trees to dry out for camp.

Arthur came into camp that night in a blaze, not able to focus on anything. Something about a letter and going into Valentine, but no one could tell. Hosea had a knowing smile but refused to spill information to any gossips in camp, and Arthur left in a hurry once again.

Laying on your side in your bedroll, you tried to finish the next chapter in your book but you eyes kept sliding shut and your head bobbed around. Finally you admitted defeat and stood up to stretch and blow the lantern out, but someone was muttering around your tent.

“H-hello?” you whispered cautiously, not sure who was out there. A loud bang and a stream of curses alerted you that it was Arthur back from his night ride. Muttering around, you caught wind of a word that made your silly jealous heart run cold.

“Mary.”

#red dead redemption 2 #red dead redemption #red dead fanfic #fanfic #reader story #arthur x reader #reader fanfic #arthur morgan #john marston #charles smith #price to be paid #the price to be paid #chapter 6 #dutch van der linde #arthur morgan x reader #romance

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stop-breaking-my-heart-telltale · 6 years ago

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Finished s2 ep1 again.

Some random thoughts as the episode progressed:

“We’re not calling our baby Omid. One of you is enough.”

Well, there’s about to be one less Omid here in a minute so...

I love how Christa and Omid just suddenly become stupid. The Christa and Omid from s1 wouldn’t have left Clementine alone like this, even if it is to just clean up. What if there was a walker in one of the stalls? I know Clementine’s capable, even at this age, but that’s not an excuse. The number one rule guys: NEVER GO ALONE

Y’know, I get that Carver is supposed to be a main antagonist this season, but fuck this lady in particular.

“I’ll pop you!”

Oh, shut up.

Omid... what was the plan? Really....?

I will never not be salty about Omid’s death. I’m pretty sure he’s never mentioned in s4, but this has to be a death that Clementine carries with her and thinks back on sometimes, especially when she’s with Louis given how he likes to crack jokes and lighten the mood similarly to the way Omid did.

Omid is dead and the salt crystals forming around my heart are thriving.

“I miss Lee.”

😭😭😭😭

I’m upset she loses that picture of Lee. Can you imagine a scene in s4 where Clementine still has it, and it’s torn and tattered but you can still see Lee’s face and she sits AJ down and finally shows it to him?

A FASTER WALKING MECHANIC AHHHH THANK YOU

How the hell did Clementine not lose her hand going down the river?

Oh hai Sam

I hate this part of the episode. I hate killing Sam, but I’m not going to leave him there to suffer. Ugh, they were really going for the throat at this part, huh?

Oh hai Luke! ❤️

It always makes me laugh when they’re all arguing on whether or not it’s a walker bite. You can’t tell that it’s a dog bite? Carlos, I don’t believe you’ve ever been to medical school, sir.

Alvin gave me a juice box and now he’s my favorite person.

I’m stealin’ this watch.

“This is gonna suck.”

Yep. YEP.

Ah ah ahhhhhhhh aaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

How many damn stitches do I need??

“Still. Not. Bitten.” EEEYYYYY

I love Nick. I really do, despite all his flaws. This poor guy has such a great arc set up for him that could’ve been amazing if he survived all five episodes, or at least through episode 4.

Big Brother Luke is my favorite, too. I have to savor him being a good character because I know that he spirals downwards to make room for Jane after episode 3. I’m still salty that he was kicked out of the equation because a final throwdown between him and Kenny could’ve been great. But, I will admit that it would’ve made the decision a lot easier since I wouldn’t have to pick the lesser of two evils, I suppose.

And they would’ve given him a dumb death in s3 anyway, so...

I’ll never pass up an opportunity to talk about Lee...

“Sometimes people die because of me...” CLEM 😭

Rebecca lemme tell you something. You better be nice to me because that baby in your belly? I’ll be the one raising him and let me tell you a thing lady-

Oh hai dead Roman.

Pete’s one of my favorites, too. Wish he didn’t have to go so quick, y’know? I always pick to go to him rather than Nick because I know Pete dies anyway, but he was on my side when everyone thought I was bitten and I don’t want to leave him to die there. Nick makes it out okay regardless, and I feel I owe to Pete to try and help him survive a little longer.

This episode is actually wonderful. It’s a promising start, even though the rest of the season has plenty of downfalls.

Woah, it’s nearly a 50/50 on if you accepted Nick’s apology. Really? BUT, more people went with Pete like I did, so I guess that does make some sense.

#twdg #twdg clementine #twdg christa #twdg omid #twdg lee #twdg luke #twdg pete #twdg nick #twdg louis #twdg aj #twdg rebecca #twdg alvin #twdg carlos #twdg sarah

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71tenseventeen · 6 years ago

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Take My Hand (Take My Whole Life Too)-4

Pt 1, Pt 2, Pt 3 Warnings for sexual content, male pregnancy, non-hockey Sid. Sid and Taylor’s ages have been altered to fit the story.

July

Sid sighs heavily and checks his watch for what feels like the eighty-seventh time.

He’s running late. He overslept for the third time in two weeks and now he has less than an hour until his flight and he’s stuck in the security line.

It’s not like him at all to oversleep, let alone be late yet here he is. It’s just that he’s been so tired lately. No matter how much he sleeps, it seems like he can’t get enough. Even when he wakes up rested, he’s ready for a nap an hour later.

He probably just needs a break—a real rest. The end of the semester had been a whirlwind and he’d been finishing up all his tutoring jobs and everything had just been so busy.

And then there’s Geno.

Not that they’d spoken again, not really.

Sid had gotten one text from Geno, about twenty minutes after he left his house.

-Have good day at work, Sid with prettiest eyes. See you in fall-

It felt… final. So Sid had just texted back a stupid smiley face and then immediately regretted it, feeling like an idiot. He hadn’t heard anything since but Geno had said he was leaving for Russia so that made sense.

He really hopes Geno will call him when he gets back from Russia.

“Sir, you’re next.”

Sid snaps his eyes open and steps forward with a sigh of relief. Finally.

He makes his flight but only barely. He’s flown a lot and never really cared where he sat before but this time he feels like he’s crawling out of his skin.

He’s too close to the bathroom and he swears he can smell it and it’s… unpleasant. His stomach starts to turn less than ten minutes into the flight and he squeezes his eyes shut in frustration. Of course. Of course he would come down with something on the day he has a five hour flight.

Sid swallows hard and takes slow, deep breaths through his mouth, desperately hoping he can fall asleep soon. If he can’t, it’s going to be a long, long flight.

It’s a rough flight and he spends the better part of two days after he gets home sleeping in his old bedroom, emerging only for broth and sips of tea. Sometimes Taylor sits on his bed and talks to him quietly about her college applications, her upcoming senior year of high school, her friends—anything she can think of until Mom comes in and shoos her out so Sid can go back to sleep. And it’s not like he puts up much of a fight because whatever this is he’s caught, it’s knocking him on his ass. So he drinks the tea and broth and sleeps as much as possible and wakes up feeling a lot better on his third day in Nova Scotia, happy to put it behind him.

Except he’s still tired all the time.

He’s never as sick as he was during the flight but he seems to have a constant low level nausea and moments where he thinks he’s seconds away from violently losing his lunch. Thankfully, he doesn’t and most of the episodes pass quickly.

Most of them.

He does his best to keep it quiet—the last thing he needs is Mom catching wind of it and starting to ask questions because he’s not stupid. He knows viruses don’t last this long and that the timing is scarily suspicious but he’s just not ready to let himself really consider that yet. So he tries to be discrete and hopes like hell it passes and that works until Taylor catches him running for the bathroom twice in one week. The first time she believes him when he says he’s got a virus. The second time she’s waiting for him, wearing a concerned expression as he emerges from the bathroom feeling like he’s been hit by a truck.

“Sid, it’s been two weeks, you said you were better. You’re still getting sick?”

Sid sighs heavily and glances at his watch. Just over four hours until their parents get home from work. “Tay, I need a favor,” he says, mentally berating himself for what he’s about to ask of his seventeen year old sister.

“Anything. What is it?”

Sid takes another deep breath and forces himself to meet her eyes. “I think I need a pregnancy test.”

_X_

Sid sits quietly on the couch, staring at nothing. The instructions said he only has to wait five minutes but right now that seems like a really long time. Taylor sits next to him takes a deep breath. “You wanna tell me about it?”

Sid shrugs. “What’s to tell? I was careless and now I might be pregnant.”

“I didn’t even know you were dating anyone.”

“I’m not.” Sid avoids her eyes, knowing they’ll be wide and curious.

“That doesn’t sound like you.”

Sid can hear the tentative tone in her voice and sighs. “I know. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be weird it’s just—god, it’s such a fucked up situation. I had a, um, one night stand. With this guy I sort of met through a friend.”

“It’s not a crime to have a sex life.”

“It’s more complicated than that.”

The timer on his phone dings, saving him from having to explain any further. He feels sick as he turns it off and stands up. “I guess I better go look.”

Taylor stands and slides her hand into his. “I’ll look with you.”

_X_

It’s positive. Of course it is. Sid knew it would be.

Taylor holds his hand and rubs his back while he sits hunched over, hands in his hair, trying not to panic.

“What am I going to do, Tay? I’m twenty one years old. How am I ever… “ he trails off, suddenly at a loss for words.

She hesitates before asking softly, “What do you want to do?”

“I honestly have no idea.” He shakes his head.

“I think you need to just take a little bit of time to figure that out, you know?”

“How am I supposed to do that? How am I supposed to make that kind of decision?”

Taylor squeezes his hand. “I don’t know but I know it’s going to be okay.”

“You can’t tell Mom and Dad, okay? I’ll tell them, I just, I need to figure out what I’m going to do first.”

“I promise. I won’t say a word.”

“Thanks.”

“And—” Sid hesitates as he thinks of Geno, stomach sinking, “I think I need to tell… I mean, the guy…” He can’t bring himself to say father. He just can’t.

Taylor hesitates again and then says softly. “Are… are you sure the guy is, you know, okay? Are you sure you should tell him?”

Sid sighs heavily. “I—he’s okay.”

“I just want you to be sure. I mean, you don’t really know him at all.”

“I, um, I know a lot about him, I guess you could say.”

“Through your friend?”

“Sort of. I mean, some of it, yeah.” Taylor looks confused. Sid can’t blame her so he sighs and says, “Okay, you have to promise me you won’t freak out when I tell you what I’m about to tell you.”

Taylor’s eyes grow wide. “Okay…”

“That’s not a promise.”

“I’ll do my best, Sid, damn.” She glares at him and he knows she annoyed with his stalling.

“Okay. So, the guy is, uh, one of the Pens.”

Taylor blinks at him, face blank for a few seconds. He can see the exact moment she processes the news. “What?!”

“You said you wouldn’t freak out!”

“That was before you told me you slept with a freaking Penguin!”

Sid puts a finger up to his mouth. “Shhh. Shhh! Taylor, please,” he pleads.

He can see that it takes her a tremendous amount of effort but she draws in a deep breath and then levels a look at him. “Tell me everything.”

_X_

Sid stares at his phone and runs a hand through his hair for what seems like the hundredth time. It’s four in the morning and he’s barely slept at all but he wants to make sure he’s factoring in the time difference. He wants to reach Geno at a good time, a time when he won’t be in bed or on a date or…

Sid forces himself to stop that line of thought and dial Geno’s number.

The call doesn’t go through.

He tries again and gets the same result before looking at his phone, confused. He’s sure he has the number right but he opens up the one and only text Geno sent him. He just wants to get this over with so he types out, -Hi Geno, it’s Sid. I’m sorry to bother you during your summer but I was hoping I could call you. Something came up and I wanted to give you a heads up.-

Before he can change his mind, he hits send and—the text doesn’t go through.

“Fuck.” Fuck.

Sid sits back and looks down at his phone again as his reality slowly washes over him. He’s pregnant with Evgeni Malkin’s baby and now he has no way of getting in touch with him.

He hadn’t thought this situation could get worse but it just did.

Part 5

#Take My Hand #sidgeno #my fic #mpreg #rpf #heed the warnings

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stevenuniversallyreviews · 6 years ago

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Episode 105: Know Your Fusion

“Cuz everybody loves a callback.”

While praising Kindergarten Kid, I talked about the subjectivity of humor, and here we have the downside. This isn’t a bad episode of Steven Universe, but it doesn’t matches my sensibilities, which matters quite a bit when comedy is its major selling point. Meta humor is tricky, and for me, Know Your Fusion pushes just a smidge too hard at that fourth wall.

I’m not against meta humor in principle: going off the discussion of Looney Tunes from Kindergarten Kid, no appraisal of Daffy Duck is complete without Duck Amuck, an uproarious deconstruction of animation. Steven Universe is no stranger to self-commentary, from Crying Breakfast Friends to Peridot’s teen drama fandom to Ronaldo’s whole shtick. Hell, we even have Say Uncle, a non-canon episode with similar energy to Know Your Fusion that I mostly enjoy!

But I’m not into this canon iteration of the joke. I don’t think Sardonyx switching from a theatrical egotist bound to her native dimension to someone who knows she’s in a cartoon feels natural, and I’m not compelled by talk show or game show parodies. I’m thrilled for anyone who does enjoy this type of thing, because it’s not as if the joke is executed poorly, it’s just not the kind of joke that I’m looking for in Steven Universe.

Part of the problem is pacing, which I’m happy to criticize independently from my personal mismatch with the humor: considering Sardonyx’s goal is to find out what makes Smoky Quartz unique, it’s absurd to have them try to recreate the abilities of other fusions. It gives us decent setpieces (and Aivi and Surasshu give us glorious recreations of the music that accompanies Opal, Sugilite, and Alexandrite) but the whole thing feels forced. There isn’t a moment where it isn’t obvious that these scenes aren’t going anywhere, so instead of progressing the plot it’s as if we’re just stalling for the eventual reveal that Smoky’s specialty is humor.

It’s a shame, because the episode starts strong: Steven and Amethyst are adorable rehearsing their reveal, and the presentation itself is amplified by Pearl going full mom mode and Garnet correctly answering that it was Peridot that beat Jasper. The older Gems aren’t quite patronizing, but there’s a sense of bemusement that translates well to Sardonyx’s more extreme attitude, in the same way Steven and Amethyst’s nerves translate to Smoky’s awkwardness. All the pieces are in place, but then the episode takes another eight minutes or so to continue hammering in the point that Sardonyx is a steamroller and Smoky doesn’t feel like they measure up.

None of this is to criticize Natasha Lyonne or Alexia Khadime, two guest stars who carry the bulk of Know Your Fusion by themselves. Lyonne seamlessly shifts from quippy to embarrassed now that Smoky is in a social situation that can’t be solved with yoyo, and Khadime fleshes out Sardonyx’s loud first impression with quiet sass and condescension becoming of such a diva. This is the longest amount of time we’ve spent with "guest fusions” (so not Garnet, who’s a lead, or Stevonnie, who I’d consider recurring), and it’s cool to see all four main Crystal Gems condensed into a duo.

It’s less obvious than Cry for Help, but this is the second Sardonyx episode that acts as a sort of sequel to Coach Steven. We get an aside about whether Nicki Minaj gets paid for archived audio (which is the only fourth wall joke I really loved here) and a Strong in the Real Way reference, but we also get a similar message: that fusion might be great, but it amplifies the bad as well as the good. Sugilite is awesome because she’s Garnet’s power and Amethyst’s vim, but the recklessness of both Gems doubles up as well. Sardonyx also has Garnet’s power, now with Pearl’s precision, but Garnet is a leader, Pearl is a control freak, and both can be insensitive when their minds are set, so Sardonyx is a big scene. And Smoky Quartz, whose existence sprung from Steven and Amethyst commiserating over their status as “the worst Gems,” is now shown to have their own issues with self-esteem. Relationships are important, but they don’t fix all your problems, especially if those problems are shared among all members of the relationship. It’s telling that the resolution comes only after everybody’s back to normal.

I feel that the conclusion takes too long to arrive, but when it does, it’s almost worth the wait: I think it’s clever as hell to wrap up a meta humor episode with a metaphysical action sequence, considering the existence of Sardonyx’s room hinges on an ephemeral being’s existence and every thing falls apart when this person stops being one person and is instead two people (but is actually three people, because one of them is also two people). This is the perfect episode to put this trippy scene, as we go from contemplating the nature of this show to the nature of its characters. It has a similar feel to Steven reaching the roof of the gauntlet construct in The Test, but trades the emotions for hi-jinks befitting the tone of Know Your Fusion.

And while the fourth wall jokes aren’t for me, it’s not the only comedy to be found here. Estelle’s extended shout of delight at Smoky’s arrival is amazing, and my unhealthy appetite for puns was sated by the abundance of wordplay. I don’t hate this episode, I’m just not the right audience. But don’t worry, I’m sure Sardonyx could make a better audience if that bums her out.

(There’s really not much to write about for this one, huh? Sorry for the self-commentary in a review about how I’m not into this episode’s self-commentary. We’ll be back to normal review length when we return to episodes I find more interesting, which is very soon.)

I’ve never been to this…how do you say…school?

I wonder if this episode was ever gonna be called Self Study? The actual title is in there, just smaller, but it makes you wonder. I also love that Peridot is by herself while the less fusion-phobic characters are grouped; I’m sure she’s grown past this phase by now, but again, everybody loves a callback.

We’re the one, we’re the ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!

Episodes like this are why my “Enh” rating exists. But as a reminder, because this is the first episode that hasn’t at least made “Like ‘em” since Gem Drill, this is a personal list, not what I think the definitive ranking should be.

Top Twenty

Steven and the Stevens

Hit the Diamond

Mirror Gem

Lion 3: Straight to Video

Alone Together

The Return

Jailbreak

The Answer

Sworn to the Sword

Rose’s Scabbard

Earthlings

Mr. Greg

Coach Steven

Giant Woman

Beach City Drift

Winter Forecast

Bismuth

When It Rains

Catch and Release

Chille Tid

Love ‘em

Laser Light Cannon

Bubble Buddies

Tiger Millionaire

Lion 2: The Movie

Rose’s Room

An Indirect Kiss

Ocean Gem

Space Race

Garnet’s Universe

Warp Tour

The Test

Future Vision

On the Run

Maximum Capacity

Marble Madness

Political Power

Full Disclosure

Joy Ride

Keeping It Together

We Need to Talk

Cry for Help

Keystone Motel

Back to the Barn

Steven’s Birthday

It Could’ve Been Great

Message Received

Log Date 7 15 2

Same Old World

The New Lars

Monster Reunion

Alone at Sea

Crack the Whip

Beta

Back to the Moon

Kindergarten Kid

Like ‘em

Gem Glow

Frybo

Arcade Mania

So Many Birthdays

Lars and the Cool Kids

Onion Trade

Steven the Sword Fighter

Beach Party

Monster Buddies

Keep Beach City Weird

Watermelon Steven

The Message

Open Book

Story for Steven

Shirt Club

Love Letters

Reformed

Rising Tides, Crashing Tides

Onion Friend

Historical Friction

Friend Ship

Nightmare Hospital

Too Far

Barn Mates

Steven Floats

Drop Beat Dad

Too Short to Ride

Restaurant Wars

Kiki’s Pizza Delivery Service

Greg the Babysitter

Gem Hunt

Steven vs. Amethyst

Bubbled

Enh

Cheeseburger Backpack

Together Breakfast

Cat Fingers

Serious Steven

Steven’s Lion

Joking Victim

Secret Team

Say Uncle

Super Watermelon Island

Gem Drill

Know Your Fusion

No Thanks!

5. Horror Club 4. Fusion Cuisine 3. House Guest 2. Sadie’s Song 1. Island Adventure

#know your fusion #steven universe #su #steven universally #review

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