#I keep getting sent to moon jail | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

raestarz · 1 year ago

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Rookie Hour

Chapter Five - I Don't Trust Her.

A/N: This is in Leon's POV so eat it up because this'll happen every once in a blue moon :) @neteyamsmunch <- my favorite girlie Word Count: 2.1 k

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I had tried to open the door that the mysterious woman had went through it was locked but after a couple of beats it was unlocked and I went inside keeping my handgun at the ready, I look over at my shoulder at Kyaire for a moment before going ahead getting a map of the Police Station B1 map. I head back over to her as she leans against the parking garage pillar still, “You doing alright?” I ask her softly, giving her a gentle smile. She seemed as if she was deep in thought, clearly not answering me, for a while and I took that moment to examine her features. Kyaire honestly was gorgeous, I don’t understand how that guy back there was her father. The way she furrowed her brows while she was in thought or fidgeted parts of her clothes when she was anxious. Her tells of her emotions were nearly so easy to see, her hair…locks I think? Looked fresh and brand new but also growing worn from our previous adventures, fighting her father and all. She had the prettiest hazel eyes but they leaned more toward green. I wonder if she got them from her mother, clearly her mother was African-American as she was. Kyaire suddenly snapped me out of my thoughts when she spoke, her eyes trained on me, “I’m fine, Leon. Just wondering if that woman is really a part of the FBI.”

I furrowed my brows confused, “Why wouldn’t she be?” I asked. Kyaire shrugged her shoulders pushing herself off the pillar getting somewhat closer to me and I felt the breath in my throat hitch. Jesus Christ. “I dunno know, just a feeling.” Her eyes examined my face, I felt the heat rise to my face. I blink hard for a long minute, “Alright well, I hope your feeling is…wrong? I think she’s a good person.” Kyaire raised a brow at me, “Uh huh, sure. Let’s just keep going, yeah?” I nod taking her back over to near the location where I got the map and we go down the hall of the jail. Kyaire sniffs and then snorts, “It smells like ass in here.” She whispers and I let out a low chuckle, “Yeah, definitely.” We both warily continue to walk down the jail hall spotting zombies holding onto the bars or just sitting on the floor looking completely out of it.

We find a man stuck inside of a jail cell, “Hello?” He called out to us and we rushed over. “Hey.” I greeted the man with a small smile, Kyaire trailing behind me. I knew she had my back at all times, I could trust her with my life at this point. “I don’t believe it. A real human.” The man stood up from the jail’s cement seat walking over to the bars. He gave a happy smile as if he couldn’t believe it, “Hello, human…Oh? Humans…?” I turned back looking over my shoulder, he clearly spotted Kyaire. Then I turned back to the man, nodding, realizing I needed to ask this man the important questions. Clearly he was in the cell for a reason right? “You been here long?” I ask, raising a kind brow, maybe he locked himself in here to protect himself from the zombies. The man responded enthusiastically, “Long enough. Are we the last ones alive?” I give the man a calm and reassuring smile, “No, no, there’s a few of us.” The man laughed and backed away from the bars, taking a puff from the cigarette I just noticed, I shriveled my nose in disgust while Kyaire walked over silently putting her arm on top of my shoulder but not exactly leaning against me, I look down at her giving her a soft smile which she clearly don’t notice. Which is okay, I don’t even know what would be her reaction to me looking at her like that. The man looks between us giving a weird stare before he speaks again, “Oh…that’s good news, I guess.” I nod giving a short yeah, and the man adds on, “Unless, of course, Irons sent you.” I lean forward a bit, my brows raising, maybe just maybe the chief of police knew what was going on. “Irons…? You mean Chief Irons? Is he still around?” I ask enthusiastically, I hear Kyaire give a snort and I shoot her a look, she stops leaning on me and gives a small shrug. “Chief Irons isn’t exactly…the best around here.” She explained, the man nodded in her direction, “The girl is right. But, who cares. Hopefully, he’s somebody’s dinner by now.” I furrowed my brows even more confused looking between Kyaire and the man.

“What do you mean by that?” I ask clearly wanting answers, because this makes little to no sense why would he? The man answers my question but not the right one, “He’s the bastard who locked me in here.” The man huffed, taking another puff of his cigarette. I narrowed my eyes a bit and nodded, “I’m sure he had a good reason.” I know Kyaire must be giving me a look right now because she grunts, and I know I’ll be in for it after we walk away from him. The man nodded, taking another puff of his cigarette, “He did.” I smirk feeling like for once I was finally right. He throws down his cigarette to the floor and smirks, “I was about to blow the whistle on his dirty ass.” Clearly feeling smug about his findings which I find hard to be true, why would people appoint a dirty cop to be the chief? He adds on, “I’d have done the same thing too, I guess.” Giving a small shrug. All three of us hear a noise down the hall from the jail, I look down and then back to the man and he meets my eyes. “Hey! I’ll make you a deal…” He offers, leaning against the bars again holding out exactly what we needed the parking pass to get out of here, he adds on, “Unlock this cell and I’ll give you this. There’s no other way out of that parking garage! Believe me!” He insists, and I look Kyaire in the eyes and her eyes meet mine. Kyaire nods, and I huff, “Sorry…I can’t do that. I have to talk to the chief first.” Kyaire elbows me in the ribs and I let out a low grunt. “Come on, Ky I can’t let out a guy who's clearly in here for a reason.” She gave me a look of disbelief and argued back, “Clearly he was tossed in here because of Chief Irons being a dirty ass cop!” I shook my head ready to fight back till the man behind the bars interrupted, “Look, we’re all prisoners in this station.” He said clearly motioning to the three of us standing here, Kyaire had her arms crossed clearly upset with me till we heard another noise that was from a zombie.

We both turn taking our weapons out again, then turn back to the man who continues to talk, “So either we play nice and help each other out─” I hear more noises but this time creaking, the man looks absolutely terrified and I whip my head to where he’s looking, Kyaire already has her gun trained ahead of her. I take a breath and the man adds on, “Shit. It’s coming.” He panicked backing up away from the bars. I need answers, and I need them now. I need to keep Kyaire and me safe, I don’t know what I would do if she got hurt even more than she already is. “What─what’s coming?” I shout walking up to the bars grabbing the bars. The man panicked even more, looking between me and the area past me and Kyaire. “C’mon─c’mon, don’t be an asshole…Ok?” He asked and held up the parking pass again, and in that moment I knew he was clearly wrongly imprisoned and Kyaire had been right as always. Fuck. “You need this!” He emphasized backing up to against the wall, “Just get me the fuck outta here!” He shouted at me. Suddenly a large hand bursts through the wall grabbing the man's head dragging up and I took out my gun training it on the large gloved hand, trying to see if I shoot anything beside the man. The man screamed and struggled, Kyaire turned and gasped, my eyes met hers and I could see hers dim a bit more. I felt my heartbreak for her, we looked back at the man who was still screaming, his arms flailing and the gloved hand squoze his head till it popped like a tomato. And then dropped the man's dead body onto the floor, I gasped and Kyaire gagged. I turned and looked at her, she looked away from the man’s dead body and seemed shaken by the scene. “Kyaire…” I whisper softly walking over to her, reaching out to touch her shoulder and she suddenly brushes my hand away. I took a breath knowing she was in shock and needed time. Oh my god…What was that? And what’re we gonna do? I looked at the man’s body for a moment then looked back at Kyaire. I looked at the hole that thing left and heard footsteps coming down the hall. “Who is that!?” I asked, training my gun down the hall and it was the mysterious woman from earlier. She comes into the light, “It’s just me, so you can put that thing away.” I sigh, putting my gun down.

Kyaire sniffled and walked over, standing on the opposite side of me where the woman was. Leaning against me again, I desperately wanted to wrap my arm around her waist, why…Would I wanna do that? Anyway, it doesn't matter. I had to explain the situation to this FBI agent, I sighed again, “I don’t even know what happened─ It just…happened so quick.” The woman leaned against the bars peering into the cell, looking at the man's body. Kyaire took out a breath and leaned against the brick wall near the cell not wanting to look at the man clearly for a good reason. The woman looked at us pointedly, “I told you to get out of here.” She shouted at us and then pointed at Kyaire, “I thought you’d be smarter than him, but clearly not.” I step in front of her pointed finger, “Don’t talk to her like that.” I huffed, and the woman smirked at us, nodding toward the man, “You two wouldn’t wanna end up like Ben, would you?” She added on to her previous statement. I furrow my brows now even more confused than ever, what is going on here?! “You knew him?” I asked softly now, feeling slightly bad for the woman. The woman crossed her arms explaining a bit, “He was an informant. Had information useful to my investigation.” I let out an exasperated breath, “So what he said was true?” I ask and Kyaire lets out an unamused laugh. I turned back to look at her for a moment before the mysterious woman started to walk away again, “Hey, you can’t keep walking away from me!” I gave chase for a moment grabbing her arm and she pulled her arm away, narrowing her eyes at me. “I don’t even know your name!” I huffed trying to at least get more information from her. I decided to give her my name, “...I’m Leon Kennedy.” I said hoping she would also give her’s, she sighed before stepping closer to me, “Find a way out, Leon. Before it’s too late…Then we’ll talk.” She stated, and for some reason the way she said my name sent shivers down my spine. It felt good, a weird kind of good. As she started to walk away she spoke again, “Name’s Ada…” I sighed, looking away from Ada to now…Ben. Knowing we had to get his parking pass to get out of here. Kyaire finally spoke up, “Now I don’t trust her even more.” I blinked and looked at Kyaire shocked, “Why not? She’s giving us more information, Ky…? Give her a chance, please?” I pleaded with her and Kyaire huffed. “Fine.” Stepping away from the brick wall near the cell, and the circuit breaker near it as well. “Well, I guess the deal’s on.” Kyaire murmured. I nodded, giving Kyaire a soft smile, “See I knew you weren’t too emo to give people chances.” She rolled her eyes in response, “Don’t get your hopes up, boy scout.” My face felt hot at the comment. “Yeah, yeah…” I muttered.

We started to walk down the jail hall hopefully going to find something to open Ben’s jail cell and get that parking pass.

These two are starting to grow on me…

#re2 leon #resident evil #blk reader #leon kennedy x reader #leon kennedy #leon x reader #resident evil remake #blktumblr #blk writer #leon resident evil #leon s kennedy #leon kennedy fluff #leon scott kennedy #leon kennedy fanfic

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drifting-pieces-blog-blog · 11 months ago

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Breaking down the comics: BENDIS. PART 2.

READING THINGS SO YOU DON'T HAVE TO!

See Part 1 HERE.

And we’re back! Weeeee!

Here’s some more brief Comic book history!

Alright, so it's always been brought up that ALL the heroes live in New York and no where else.

So back in 1985, they came up with "The West Coast Avengers". They operated out of Palos Verdes, California.

A lot of readers considered them to be the B team of heroes even though it had bigger names.

It had Hawkeye, Mockingbird, Wonder Man, Tigra, and Iron Man.

It ran until about 1994 then petered out.

It was revived in 2018 with Hawkeye, Kate Bishop, Gwenpool, America Chavez, Quintin Quire, and Johnny Watts.

I know who, like... half those people are.

It got canceled again in 2019.

So... There is a chance that Moon Knight and Echo was Marvel testing out the waters for another California based set of heroes.

Considering how this run ends… I’m going to say they kinda sabotaged themselves?

Issue #6!

Not a fan of this cover either. Is his art going down hill? Was he getting rushed? If this was the case, why did he keep doing his own covers? Why are his hands so big and weird there? Why is everyone staring at the reader so disapprovingly?

TRIGGER WARNINGS: It’s occurred to me that I need to figure out trigger warnings for this run, because they are there. They aren’t as straightforward as Bemis’ run was. Or even as blatantly obvious as Aaron’s. But I know they are there. How? Because I inadvertently triggered myself pretty hard with this issue so if I got triggered, I know there needs to be a warning.

These are going to be a bit more specific and a bit more vague. And I know this because I have some VERY specific triggers that aren’t exactly commonplace.

**Dissociation, possible derealization, possible depersonalization, mentally struggling, cry for help unheard…. Something in that general thought house without being overly obvious. Does that make sense? These next issues are going to get very difficult when it comes to how he starts to depict Marc’s mental illness and how much he starts to drown without anyone helping him. As well as wrongly depicting WHAT mental illness he has and overall generalizing mental illness as a whole into one big problem**

This is going to be your only warning. Please treat yourself with kindness.

SO!

Opening up, we find ourselves back with Buck, who is examining the Ultron head while he has the news on in the background.

On the news: "Has the mysterious Moon Knight made Los Angeles his new home?"

I love how Moon Knight is still always 'mysterious'.

"Residents of West Hollywood were treated to a very rare super hero appearance as Moon Knight had a run-in with local law enforcement."

Then we see amature footage of Moon Knight zooming by on the back of a car.

....This is not the first or last time we have ever seen him just standing on the top of a vehicle that's driving away. He has a ....HISTORY...with vehicles.

"Has Moon Knight made Los Angeles his quote unquote Territory? And is this the beginning of a New West Coast Avengers?"

Buck pauses and calls up a secret number then gives them a code.

The person on the phone tells them that they "No longer have that item in stock".

He declares a "Code White" and asks to speak to agent 13.

They tell him that they'll see what they can do then hang up.

Hmmmm...

Back at Marc's place, we see him taking a shower. Lots of blood to wash off. Not to mention the punched up face.

Captain America tells him to get sleep.

This is why Captain America needed to be Steven Grant. He’s trying to take care of them. To take care of the body. To come up with strategy and plans. Also trying to take care of Marc, who is spiraling a bit. Alright, and we're back with Night Shift.

They're about to explain to the boss lady Snapdragon why they failed and had to be bailed out of jail.

"I'm looking for one stripper and one C-List crazy Super Hero and I sent the, let's see, 1-2-3-4-5-6 of you. I sent SIX against TWO."

(Everyone always makes this mistake against Moon Knight. He fights best against groups. One big guy? He's gonna get his ass handed to him a bit. But a group? Half the time his fighting style ends up using the group against themselves! He is trained in the art of fighting when the odds are not in his favor! HE WAS A SPECIALIST FOR CRYING OUT LOUD.)

The leader, Tik Tok? Asks to make it up and face Moon Knight again at no additional charge.

The BIG boss isn't interested. In fact, he's there himself.

He shows up and the team is pretty scared.

We've seen this guy's silhouette a couple times and I gotta say.... I have not yet figured out who he is. If he's supposed to be some major player, I'm missing it. Supposedly he says he's faced Moon Knight before. We'll see if I'm impressed by the big reveal when we finally get it.

Here’s a picture. Let’s see if you figure it out before me.

Mystery Boss calls them all idiots when they have no idea what he wants from Moon Knight.

One of the Night Shift members gets upset and mouths off a bit.

Mystery Boss basically sets them all on fire and does to them what he did to the guy on the boat in the first issue. Turns them into a large pile of ash.

He tells Snapdragon to hire better people so he doesn't have to keep getting his hands dirty then disappears.

Back with Marc, we see him sleeping fitfully and having nightmares.

He wakes with a start and finds Echo in his room.

"I didn't want to wake you."

He stares at her, REALLY stares at her for a moment.

"I just came here to say...Are you okay?"

"Are...Are you real?"

"What? What are you--Don't!" Marc touches her to see if she's real and she recoils.

"What is WRONG with you? What do you mean: Am I real?"

"'Msorry, Echo."

"What is wrong with you?"

"I was having very...Vivid dreams."

PAUSE: So... This part breaks my heart a little. Because we VERY seldom see Marc suffering the side effects of his PTSD. We don't get to see him break down, have flashbacks, have nightmares, or question what he's seeing. We don't see his dissociative episodes, his derealization moments. We only ever see him angry. We don't get to see him STRUGGLE.

And in this moment, you feel the hope for a good comic. You feel the "This could be something" and it is so disappointing that it isn't. And maybe that's part of why this run is, to me anyways, listed as a HORRID run and not just a mediocre run. The 'what if' of seeing...REALLY seeing Marc Spector is just sitting right out of reach and it makes me want to cry.

UNPAUSE.

Marc turns away from Echo.

She tells him to look at her so she can read his lips.

"Did you come here to apologize for punching me in the face?"

"Yes."

"Repeatedly."

"Yes."

"I'm sorry I kissed you without permission. I was--I was caught up in the moment. I clearly misread the signs."

She tells him that he didn't entirely misread the moment.

But the moment has passed.

She notes that the lifestyle is getting to her and she isn't acting in ways that exactly 'resemble what I think of myself.'

Marc assures her that this is common for people in their line of work. Especially since she was undercover and having trouble getting out of that role and back into who she really is.

I'd also like to point out that Marc has REPEATEDLY been asked what his problem is and he has avoided the question every single time. It's to the point where perhaps that so many people ask him that as a means to discriminate against him or as a way to just call him crazy without actually wanting to help or understand, that maybe he's given up trying to explain himself.

She apologizes and asks if she can stay with him since she has no where safe to go.

"Why DO you have a giant empty house?"

"Probably for the exact same reason you have NO house."

"What does that mean?"

"Because I--I don't know how to act normal and I'm doing the best I can to keep up appearances."

(Fuuuuck. When it's good, it's very very good and it's why when it goes bad it's SO BAD. He could have done so much better! I think anyone with mental health issues can relate to this. Doing the best they can to appear to be doing fine, but not sure what that looks like so they just make themselves empty.)

Another issue is that while this is such a very good scene.... Bendis has done zero research onto D.I.D other than probably watching a few movies or a quick google. So his take on Marc's failing mental health at this point is VERY general...and currently bordering on a completely DIFFERENT psychosis all together. And this is going to start becoming a problem as the comic goes on.

I'd very much like to remind everyone of Moon Knight issue # 9-10 by Moench (Reviewed HERE). When Khonshu's statue was destroyed and Marc had a total meltdown.

THAT was far more accurate and done so wonderfully.

ANYWAYS....

Echo goes to use his shower and Marc takes a moment then finds the Avengers in his room with the Helicarrier outside.

Captain America: "Moon Knight."

"Wh-What's...What's going on?"

"You don't answer your phone."

"My phone?"

"You're an Avenger. I need you to answer when I call."

Clearly Marc is distressed by this.

This time there are more than Captain America, Spider-man, and Wolverine. Captain Marvel, Black Widow, and Luke Cage are now there.

Is this real? Or is the problem expanding?

Captain America: "Are you okay?"

Spider-man: "Dude! You live here? Can I have a student loan?"

Marc: "It's real. It's... It's really you."

Captain America: "So, the BIG question is-What are you doing with this?"

Luke Cage holds up the Ultron head.

And Marc freezes up. In fact, one could argue that he suddenly VERY heavily dissociates. He still can’t tell if this is real or just the other people he’s been seeing that he knows aren’t real.

It's actually painful to read because you can tell he's NOT okay, and while they ask him repeatedly if he's okay, they do nothing about it and make no other acknowledgement that he isn't well.

The Avengers everyone!

At this point, Maya comes back from the shower.

"Oh. The Avengers. Captain America."

This snaps Marc out of it. He asks what they are doing here.

Turns out Buck called them to say "Moon Knight gave him this Head of Ultron for safekeeping."

"Buck called you."

"He was worried about you and thought this was too dangerous an item to be tucked away in the prop department of a TV show set."

"So did she. She called us."

Maya had called to ask who Moon Knight was earlier.

Marc tells them all to leave.

"You--You all have to leave here. You--You're blowing my cover. You have the whole damn Quinjet out there!"

"It's cloaked."

Captain America asks why they even have an Ultron head.

Marc explains that there is an LA Kingpin, whose identity he has yet to discover.

Captain America expresses concern that this is a big problem and that it should be an Avenger's problem.

Marc tells them that this is NOT an Avenger's problem. The new Kingpin is trying to stake a claim, not face the Avengers and if they start causing problems then the guy will just 'pull up stakes and get out of town'.

And now we have another panel that a lot of you have seen floating around! I love finding context for silly panels like this!

Captain America confirms with Maya that she is teaming up with Moon Knight as Echo.

He asks for the next step.

"I'm going to offer him the head of Ultron. And he's going to come get it himself. And then I'm going to bring him down. I promise I'll call the second I need you."

Cap points out that this is a VERY dangerous move because if he gets the Ultron up and running...An AI that wants to wipe out humanity....

Sure you do, Marc….Sure you do…

END ISSUE!

This one was rough. It’s hard to watch him very obviously start to be in distress to the point where people NOTICE and still no one is willing to talk about it because mental health is SO taboo to talk about in this group. Perhaps in this world.

Let’s see where the next issue takes us.

ISSUE # 7

This is an interesting cover. I think that’s supposed to be Snapdragon? She’s kinda hovering over the cape though, and not really standing on it. The perspective is a little off. I don’t know… I find the ones where they just stare ahead to be unnerving.

Looking at the intro on the title page we got more problems.

"After a brutal fight, Moon Knight and Echo are victorious and manage to evade the police. Regrouping at Marc's mansion, they receive an unexpected visit from the Avengers. Despite his televised getaway from the police, Marc assures them he has the situation with the Kingpin well in hand, along with all of his other personalities."

I'm frowning so hard right now.

We open on Buck again.

"You told on me, Buck?" Marc addresses him.

"They got ahold of you already?"

"Yeah. The Avengers came to see me."

Buck apologizes. He didn't know what else to do.

Marc is disappointed, saying he thought Buck knew how to keep a secret and could help him.

"I like you, I do. And I dig what you're about. In theory. But, and I'm gonna be honest with you..."

"Please."

"I think there's something really wrong with you, and normally I wouldn't judge, but you're playing a dangerous game."

Ouch. The repeated telling of 'there's something wrong with you' is just more salt in the wound.

Marc gives him the Ultron head, telling him to keep it then.

Buck is shocked that the Avengers let him keep it.

"Captain America trusts me. Which you'd think would be enough to get anyone to trust me. I wonder what I would have to do to get you to."

"It ain't that I don't trust YOU."

"Sure it is."

"It's that I don't think you're all right. Bipolar, aspergers...I don't know what..."

This...This is about to get VERY uncomfortable.

That’s right… “I hear voices.”

"What do the...Voices tell you to do?"

"In general...Make the world better."

"Maybe you should see someone, get that evened out."

"I don't WANT to."

"See, that's where you lose me..."

"I dress up like a little-known Moon God and strike fear in the hearts of men... Did you really think I was normal? Do you think that any of us...ANy of the costumes are normal? We're all crazy."

Uuuuggghhhhhh noooooooo

"But we're the exact kind of crazy that the world needs right now. The EXACT kind."

No. Bendis...No. Marc does not 'hear voices'. And the jab about 'what do the voices tell you to do?' is a CLASSIC discriminatory move when they find out someone IS hearing voices. As if the voices will suddenly control them and make them do violent or scary things.

Not everyone who hears voices is violent, scary, or unpredictable. Some people just shrug them off. Sometimes the voices just say stuff and don't tell them to DO things.

And DID is not 'hearing voices'. DID is about the 'voices' being other people in the head. And again, Marc is deflecting. He isn't telling the whole story. ANd part of the reason is I feel like if he did, these people would instantly think him not only INSANE but also treat him differently.

He's struggling and he's grasping at what he knows people can handle because he's had to handle it before! He's telling the story that he feels is understandable and acceptable and not the real story!

GAH.

So... Buck buys it. He apologizes for screwing him over.

"I won't lie to you... It bummed me out."

"I didn't like doing it."

"You want to make it up to me? Do it again."

Back at the strip club!

We find Dragonfly upset that she can't find any good for hire crews to bring her Moon Knight.

One of her girls interrupts her telling her that there's a guy bragging about having the head of Ultron and he wants to sell it.

Dragonfly goes to meet the guy.

Buck tells her that he works for Moon Knight and that he needs off the 'crazy train'. He wants out and he wants Dragonfly to pay him for the head so he can get out of dodge.

He gives her a piece of Ultron to show to her boss as proof that he's legit.

He tells her that he wants to go directly to the big boss with this and not hand it over to her.

He tells her that if she doesn't take the offer by midnight he's going to Hydra.

She tells him she wants Moon Knight.

"Hey, when he finds out I turned on him... I think you'll see as much of that Lunatic as you want."

So she goes to her boss to tell him the deal.

The boss sees through the plan, of course.

"Moon Knight is trying to draw me out into the open."

"Yes, should I just kill the guy? That would send a message back."

He tells her that he's annoyed. Annoyed that of all the superheros out there, MOON KNIGHT is the one giving him troubles.

After a debate, he tells her to ask the man to step out back so that he might have words with him.

"You're here?"

"I am."

"Here?"

"Moon Knight wants me to come out into the open because he thinks he can take me down. He thinks this is a street fight."

Yeah I...Have no idea who Count Nefaria is. I'm going to have to look this one up.

Alright... This one is a villain that dates back to Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Don Heck 1965. So he's not some new guy.

So either he's a big deal in other runs of other comics that I don't read (a common problem if you don't read every comic ever), or he was a big villain back in the day, got forgotten about, then they dug him back up in the desperate search for bigger badder villains to 'bring back'.

A quick Wikki read later. Okay. He pops up now and then. I guess he's been in a few random things I've read, but I had no idea who he was then and I still don't. So to me, he's just some guy. Maybe you've heard more of him.

For whatever reason, I've just never found Moon Knight to mix well with villains like this. Traditional ones that fight the big fights with Captain America or X-Men just never really clicked or had the same sway over Moon Knight.

He always just kinda shrugs and goes "You're supposed to be scary?" Like, the man has no reasonable fear? And when it comes to the big leagues, he just kinda goes “Ain’t my circus” and bows out.

To each his own I suppose. Bendis is used to writing the big leagues. Writing for the Avengers, he goes for the big guns. So I’m not surprised that he would pull out a heavy hitting power villain like this. Just… Not for Moon Knight. It’s kinda like throwing Magneto at Spider-man. Why would you?

Moon Knight was indeed watching and he recognizes who this villain is.

He gets into an argument with Not Spider-man/Captain America/Wolverine on if he should handle it himself or call in the Avengers like he agreed to do.

Hey look! Another well known panel! Now we have it in context!

(Why are all the good meme panels from this run?)

Snapdragon brings out Buck.

To his credit, Buck sticks to his guns.

Buck insists that he just wants out and to get paid.

The Count demands the Ultron head.

Buck demands the money.

The Count tells Buck to get him the head and MAYBE he'll be granted mercy.

See... A big hitter Villain like this with all this power? Why is he trying to get money and become a Kingpin in LA? I just don't buy it.

So Buck goes to his car and pulls out the Ultron head.

The second he holds it up, it explodes.

It's a fake!

The Count demands the real head.

Buck stall and reveals the REAL trap.

"We WERE going to bring you the real one, we were. But then it dawned on us that we didn't need to take that chance.

See, all we needed is proof that you'd even TRY to barter for the head of Ultron. Which is on the same list as plutonium in terms of things that you are not allowed to have or buy or sell. I mean worldwide illegal tech."

The count goes in for the kill. But Buck isn't done.

"See, not only did you come out and reveal yourself to be the Kingpin of LA and try to steal an Ultron, you did it on video."

And Echo waves from a nearby building, holding a video camera. Oh, and one more thing…

You see, the Count was enhancing his powers with Mutant Growth Hormones (new street drug that gives people mutant powers).

Moon Knight had been asking Buck to not only enhance his own tech and weapons.... But to make him some pretty potent and illegal chemicals that only a former SHIELD agent had access to.

The Count lays on the ground: "He did somethinggg...to me... My powers."

"It's a chemical Agent. Used mostly on mutants. You released it when you crushed the tin can fake ultron head. Just like you were supposed to. Nick Fury thought it inhumane. Which he was right about. Except there's you."

Buck reminds Moon Knight that it doesn't last all day and they need to get this over with quickly.

The Count panics and flies off while he can, leaving behind Snapdragon.

While Buck and Echo are pleased that it worked and they have Snapdragon, Wolverine is not happy.

"He's going to hunt and destroy you for this, you idiot."

Spider-man comes to his defense. "Hey, he took on a thor bad guy and lived to tell-Give him a break."

Captain America agrees: "He doesn't get Ultron and we have his general. It's a tactical win."

And here's the problem...

While Moon Knight is 'chatting it up' with his own personal Head Avengers...

Echo keeps the video rolling.

He hasn’t talked to her about ‘the voices’ yet. She just knows that ‘something isn’t right with him’. Also? Echo is a lip reader. Even with a mask on, if the fabric is thin enough, she can still read lips. And Moon Knight? His fabric is thin. She just witnessed the whole pretend conversation.

I hate this. I hate that it’s implied that she now knows about his crazy and it’s going to be an issue.

Speaking of issues… This next one is a doozy.

ISSUE # 8

This cover I like. The birds, the moon, the outline of the building…. It’s just a pretty use of space and light.

We open with the Detective from before heaving up to his car.

He finds a knocked out Snapdragon on the hood of his car.

"A present for you, detective."

Moon Knight shows up and the detective pulls out his gun.

"Put the gun away, Detective. We're on, basically, the same side."

The detective fires his gun and Marc uses a new tech weapon to create a forcefield that appears like Captain America's shield, deflecting the bullets.

"Jeez...Settle down."

"What the hell is this?"

"Well I'm trying to have a conversation with you, jumpy. Two guys talking. More or less. Try to focus...Listen carefully..."

(I bet Moon Knight is missing Detective Flint right about now....I know I am.)

He informs the detective about Snapdragon, the Count, and the Kingpin of LA.

Moon Knight then hands him a USB of the video of the Count basically confessing.

The detective really hates the vigilante crap but Moon Knight isn't worth the paperwork so he lets him go.

Next up? We're back in TV land watching the show about Marc's life.

Except we have Marlene and 'Jake Lockley' vs. a werewolf.

Marc is upset by the werewolf's design.

He argues about how he wanted it to be a real looking werewolf. He gets push back on that.

"I thought this was all based on your old life as a soldier of fortune."

"It is."

"Why a werewolf??"

"That happened."

"You were attacked by a werewolf?"

"There's a lot of crazy in the world and--"

(Why is Marc growing a goatee? Does Steven know about this? Does Jake???)

In private, Marc addresses the 'Avengers'.

"What now? What am I doing wrong now?"

Wolverine: "You tell us, big hollywood producer guy."

Captain: "I'm a little confused by you, Moon Knight."

Spider-man: "Guys, leave him alone. Without a Civilian life, you could lose all sense of self. you--"

They tell him to stop goofing off and get back to work as Moon Knight. Count Nefaria is still out there and looking for him.

Marc says Echo is looking into some intel and coming up with a plan.

We head back to the mansion and find Echo still staying with him.

She watches as Buck helps Marc suit up in some new tech.

Marc asks for a web shooter, Buck wants to know why.

Finally Echo gets introduced to Buck and they make friends by him giving her some new fighting tech.

Back at the police station, the Detective is showing his Captain the video.

His captain tells him to get it to the feds, as this is above his paygrade and also illegal since it was gotten by a vigilante.

The Captain dismisses him and the Detective is not too pleased.

Know what time it is? TIME FOR A MONTAGUE. Or, in comic book land, a quick way to move things along over a period of time without taking up too much time to tell you about it.

You also get a lot of single frame wordless art out of it, which can be nice.

So we get Echo and Moon Knight hitting up known places that the Count was investing in. All while the Detective interviews Snapdragon for his own intel.

He tells her that she isn't his problem. The FBI special cases is on the way. He also tells her that he thinks it's interesting that she's been with them for over a day and no one has come to try to break her out or bail her out. Not even a fancy lawyer like what happened with Night Shift.

He goes to leave and she stops him.

MORE MONTAGUE OF MOON KNIGHT AND ECHO KICKING ASS.

They are lighting up the money laundering areas now.

Snapdragon has told the Detective where the Count hangs out. He goes to the Captain with the news and the Captain doesn't want to hear it.

Detective recommends they call in the Avengers and the Captain says they don't have a way to do that.

Detective asks him "With all due respect... How come I get the feeling you don't want to take down the Kingpin of Los Angeles??"

The Captain just leaves. Now that's fishy.

Marc and Echo stake out the next place to hit.

Echo tells him to take off his mask when talking to her so she can 'hear' him.

"Deaf, right. Sorry. You just don't ACT deaf."

"Now what the hell does THAT mean?"

"It means either you can't take a compliment or I can't give one."

Marc...You should know better. You've been on the bad side of discrimination since you were born.

But also... She totally CAN read his lips with the mask... She's lying to him.

Or perhaps it's just easier to do it without the mask and they aren't in a life or death situation so it's fine. Hmmmmm....

He asks how she's feeling, she tells him that she's feeling better and that she needed this.

Spider-man pops up and tells him to kiss her.

Captain America tells him to get moving against Nefaria. Spider-man starts to argue with him about giving Marc a break.

We see Marc physically flinch. Echo either doesn't notice or she ignores it.

Marc asks why she never thought to call the Avengers despite this huge operation she was trying to run alone before he got there.

"I --I never belonged there."

"But this is a big muscle operation. We're going to have to call them eventually. We have to call Somebody."

She kisses him.

She tells him they can do one more "rousing bit of super villain vandalism".

"Nefaria IS a Thor-level bad guy."

Marc tries to remind her that this is out of their league.

UH OH.

Okay so, Anyone else getting a vibe that Marc’s mental health is crashing down around him and EVERYONE is ignoring it? Just because he’s ‘sorta’ told them he hears things doesn’t mean he’s told them the problem. And they clearly don’t understand it. So they’re just looking the other way. Everyone just assumes “That guy’s nuts” and goes with it.

And despite Marc knowing that the three ‘Avengers’ are just in his head, he’s starting to see them more and associate them with him doing a poor job. Seeing them as there to chastise him. He’s also starting to physically respond to them talking to him. Reacting and getting more upset at their appearance. These are all signs of a failing control of the situation. …..They are ALSO signs of a different mental illness. But hey, in Bendis’ world, all mental illnesses are the same, right?

NEXT ISSUE!

Issue #9!

Now THIS is the famous cover! The one you think of when you hear Maleev’s name.

Those whites. Those colors. The way he uses a water color technique. DAMN. He was saving up for this one.

Wait a minute... They changed the title page blurb.

"While attempting to loot the temple of an ancient Egyptian god called Khonshu, mercenary Marc Spector was beaten nearly to death by a trasonous partner. Left to die in the desert, he was taken by a group of Egyptian people to the statue of their diety Khonshu who offered to save his life but only if Spector would become his avatar on Earth.

Spector agreed, and began his career as the costumed crime fighter known as Moon Knight. Night falls, the Moon Knight rises, and neither sorcery, science, nor mortal sin can win against him!"

WHAT THE FU- That's not what happened! That's not even close to what happened?! EGYPTIAN PEOPLE?! LOOTING THE TEMPLE?! Even the most CASUAL Moon Knight fan knows how the story went! How do they manage to fuck that up so badly!? Where's the continuity editor?! Why did they change it?! WH...GAHHHH!

"Unbeknownst to all, Moon Knight has developed split personality disorder-And his personalities have adopted the roles of his former Avengers teammates: Spider-Man, Wolverine and Captain America, all of whom give him guidance on how to be a hero."

Noooooooo. That's not what happened! He didn't just 'develop' D.I.D.

^%$##%^& Okay. I see it now. I see what they did and are doing.

They disliked the Steven and Jake aspect. They really had no idea how to deal with them. ESPECIALLY Bendis, who clearly knew NOTHING about Moon Knight except what the Marvel editors were telling him.

So they tried to give him a bit of a 're-write'. They took away Steven and Jake, made it so he JUST NOW developed DID out of the blue? And now his alters are the Avengers who can tell him how to be a Superhero and give him life advice...

I...I am not okay with this.

And on top of this? They did NO research into his mental health issue, probably watched some old Hollywood movie or two and then based it off of that. Then went with all the lines about him having "Schizophrenia" and just tossed those symptoms in there too for funzies.

I can't. I just cannot.

This run is SO triggering. In so many BAD ways. GAH. Okay. I'm...I'm going to keep going. I'll save it. Because I know how it ends and boy howdy....

BACK TO THE COMIC.

Alright, our comic opens up with...and I kid you not:

"Marc Spector's stately awesome house, last week".

He's trying out his new shield like Captain America's. And why is Marc growing a goatee? It looks terrible on him.

"No, Buck, I asked for a sheild like Captain America's."

"That IS a shield like Captain America's."

And they argue what his shield looks like. Buck questions Marc's Avender status because he's never seen him on the TV with the other team.

"Can you keep a secret?"

[....]

"I'm a secret Avenger."

"Moving on. See, Captain America's original shield is made of a vibranium/adamantium alloy."

"I know."

"Well then you know neither vibranium nor adamantium is exactly growin' on trees. I mean, you're rich but you ain't THAT rich."

So instead he made him a 'zero point energy shield'. Basically a retractable force field that pops up in the shape of Cap's shield. He can also throw it. So that's cool. Portable shield.

He asks Marc why he wants a Cap shield. Marc just says it's cool.

PRESENT TIME

And.... I have to laugh about this.

You have this god level bad guy with scary powers...

And he's just pissed off that MOON KNIGHT, of all the people in the world, MOON KNIGHT is the one that's just annoying the hell out of him. Just a regular guy.

And that's just spot on Moon Knight energy right there. Being obstinate and annoying to the bad guys since the OG run.

Cap deflects the incoming blast with his shield and tells Marc that they're out of their league and they need to get the heck out of there.

"Retreat, regroup, and plan the attack to your own strengths and your own rules. RUN!!"

Everyone keeps talking about how this guy has fought all the avengers and fought Thor to a stand still. LIke, we get it. He's powerful. I've still not got him on my list of known top villains but SURE! I Don't know every bad guy that makes their rounds in the comics.

But I still just feel like putting him in a Moon Knight comic where he's having break down issues is just unfair. And then the other Avengers KNOWING who he is facing and not standing by to help him...

"Superhuman strength, speed, durability.... He can kill you with his optic blasts. He can fly. Not going to listen to me? Then at the very least get HER out of here, Spector. If you're crazy enough to fight this fight, fine. But you get her out of here!" Cap continues to argue with Marc

Marc grabs her and shoves her into a building while he runs around to distract The Count.

Echo is pretty pissed at being tossed aside.

"And I thought I hit rock bottom hooking up with Murdock!"

(Oh honey, he's everyone's rock bottom.)

Captain America continues to lecture Marc about how this fight is above him. How the Count could kill him in an instant and is just toying with him.

Flash back to last week!

We see Buck fitting Marc with Web-shooters.

Buck once again asks Marc why he wants Web-shooters when that's Spider-Man's thing. Marc doesn't answer.

PRESENT. We see Marc get blasted off a building and he uses the web-shooters to stop his fall.

Spider-Man now tries to reason with Marc.

"Look at him. You gotta give him credit for dressing like Old School Dracula. I mean, seriously, where do you even BUY a monocle nowadays? What is he the Count of anyways? I bet nothing. He just decided to call himself count."

He says what I'm thinking.

I appreciate that.

Moon Knight turns on the villain and Spider-Man tells him to "NOT get within arm's length of the Super-Powered Bad Guy."

Yeah, Marc gets blasted back.

"Look, it's safe to say, when in doubt, ALWAYS listen to Captain America. I mean as religions go, that wouldn't be the worst one I've ever heard of."

Marc manages to get tossed aside but also web the Count down a bit.

Spider-Man tells him to get running.

He looks back and finds Echo there beating on the Count.

While she distracts him, Marc attacks and throws him into a car.

Yeah, way to arm the dude.

And for the second time in this run, Marc gets a vehicle thrown at him.

Ah. I see.

So, Marc puts himself up close and personal to attack again and this makes Spider-Man nervous.

"YOu're doing that thing where you're getting too close to the big super baddie."

But you see, this is Moon Knight's fighting style. Marc KNOWS he can take hits And when you are close, the attacker has a harder time fighting back. Especially one that uses fire and explosions. They can't explode you without hurting themselves.

Spider-Man's fighting style is always stay out of range, wear the bad guy down, and attack with long range.

In fact, Marc gets up face to face with this guy.

FLASHBACK TO LAST WEEK!

We see Buck fitting Marc with Wolverine retractable claws.

"It's not Adamantium, but it's the best I could do."

Buck explains that it's stronger attached to his arm than it would as a sword. It will reinforce his arm while also lending strength for damage.

"Good. I need close quarter weaponry. This is very good."

"You want to be Wolverine too?"

"I need to make sure if I get this close."

"You want to be Spider-Man, Captain America AND Wolverine...All at the same time."

Marc doesn't answer him.

"The voices in your head. The ones you told me about... Are these them?"

PRESENT.

Wolverine is now goading on Marc.

He pulls out the claws and stars stabbing.

"Gut the son of a bitch!!! Don't let up. Get in there. Cut off his @#$@$@ HEAD!!!"

And suddenly they are start arguing.

This is a problem. The three 'guides' are arguing wanting different things and even MARC wants something different.

Echo jumps in again and beats on the Count some more.

Marc attempts to cut off the Count's head with the claws and gets thrown.

This let's the Count turn on Echo and blast her.

Yeah... That's not good.

Warning for Character death I guess.

(She comes back in later comics. Nothing stays gone in Comics. Plus she's getting her own show in the MCU. You know they gotta bring her back so they can push her on the people. She's a deaf native woman. Marvel's gotta exploit the HELL out of that.)

Okay....Things are about to go SOUTH.

Wolverine goes Berserker mode. Captain America argues that they are better than this and don't kill. Wolverine wants blood. Spider-man wants them to just stop.

So Wolverine attacks Captain America.

That’s some really nice art. I love the lines for the shadows. The crisp edges. The colors. The shredded cape. Even the action is stellar. Maleev you get that bread.

ALRIGHT. That ends this issue. And we’re seeing what COULD be considered extreme System breakdown… Except this is not being written in a system sort of way. What we have is the Avengers acting as sort of Shoulder Angels that tell him what to do to be an Avenger and the three have conflicting personalities. And Bendis knows this because he WRITES for the Avengers. Famously so! So he’s given us Spider-Man, Captain America, and Wolverine, the three more famous characters in Marvel, who also have VERY conflicting personalities and views on how to be heroes.

But again… You don’t need Wolverine’s rage here. MARC has enough rage. Marc has lost a LOT of people. Marc is more than capable of going berserker on his own. He’s no timid snowflake. Marc has done some… truly terrible things in the past. Even Moench wrote it that Marc has a most violent rage and is capable of carrying out the most heinous of deeds.

And Steven is the one that would tell them to back off. Tell them to run. To keep strategic and protect Echo. Jake would be the one telling him to be careful. To watch his back. To stop making stupid moves that is putting them in danger.

Jake has lost people too. Jake is usually the one that faces the grief. That feels the loss of friends and loved ones.

This issue…This RUN should have been about System breakdown. The struggle of trying to give everyone what they want when everyone wants something different. About finding balance in how to live a shared life. In dealing with grief and trauma and danger.

It could have been Marc losing Echo and raging out and forcing front away from the others. It could have been about him trying to hide his DID and failing because Jake is tired of masking and Steven wants to do things differently.

It could have been about them fighting over how to gear up and Buck trying to figure out why they keep asking for such different things. Marc trying to explain things the way Marc always does (badly. Marc explains things badly. Marc is bad at things.) and making everyone around him worry. We could have seen Echo trying to figure out this relationship she’s suddenly getting in with what she doesn’t know is three men. About Marc struggling with suddenly experiencing more symptoms than he’s used to as the system breaks down. Time skips, waking up in different locations, trying to wave away weird things and being in Denial. We certainly saw a lot of that in Moench’s run as the system became aware of itself! Now the system is aware and STRUGGLING.

I’m forever going to be bitter over how good this comic COULD have been.

ANYWAYS. I’m going to break it into anther part here because I’m almost out of pic space and I don’t want to cut the last three issues up worse than I need to.

PART THREE HERE

#Moon Knight #Moon Knight comics #BENDIS #Analyzing the comics #Marc Spector #I just realized I can't put the Jake and Steven tags here because THEY AREN'T IN THIS #Ugh

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bookish-monster · 1 year ago

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BOOK REC

Exodus 20:3

by Freydís Moon - find them on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok

the storygraph link for this book contains information such as page count, publication date, and community-created content warnings.

Exodus 20:3 is a standalone love story centered around Diego, a Mexican-American trans man, and the relationship he forges with a Brazilian angel named Ariel as they refurbish an abandoned church in New Mexico together. It’s a beautiful blend of queerness and religious eroticism that comes in at around 100 pages on my Kindle edition, and has been recently updated with a new cover (see above) that is absolutely gorgeous. There is prayer, body worship, divinity kink where the divinity is no fantasy, hemipenes, and more eyes and teeth and wings than humans are used to experiencing in their love affairs. I absolutely loved it.

A note about body terminology for trans readers: Diego’s genitalia (he has had top surgery but not bottom surgery) is referred to using feminine terms such as “cunt” and “clit.” Some trans readers might find this dysphoria-inducing or otherwise upsetting.

Diego is what many people would call “troubled.” He does camming out of desperation for money, has recently quit using opiates illegally, and is struggling to deal with his mother’s disappointment once she found out about the latter through Diego crashing a car and getting sent to jail once the cops found said opiates inside the car. Basically, he’s not having a fun time as the family disappointment, so he reluctantly agrees to his mother’s plan for him to earn enough to pay her back for his bail money via refurbishing the church in New Mexico.

Ariel is the church’s caretaker. Diego is attracted to him from the jump, but that attraction is tempered with the wariness of a prey animal who has been hunted down and abused one too many times. Diego isn’t used to tenderness or genuine love from his sexual partners, and he isn’t interested in getting mixed up with someone and used in ways that don’t make him happy in the long term. I really loved how complicated Diego is—he’s tough as nails because the world hasn’t treated him gently, but also desperate for real affection because of how love-starved he’s become over the years.

Ariel isn’t smothering when offering that affection, nor parental in caring for his new laborer. Initially, he comes across as enigmatic and perfunctory, reclusive and emotionally distant. But as he insists on digging into Diego’s past, so too does Diego start putting the pieces together and realizing that Ariel isn’t quite the man he seems. During their first sexual encounter with each other, consent is kind of iffy, but it gets talked about later between the characters. The sex scenes are lavish and drawn out, abstracted by Freydís’ beautiful prose into things elegantly rendered yet primal in their intensity.

The writing in this novelette is exquisite, by the way. Freydís has a command of language that I’m nakedly envious of, and there were multiple points where I stopped to re-read certain passages just to savor the taste of them, as well as the beautiful wordplay and turns of phrase. I keep a list on my phone of 1-2 sentence snippets I read in various places that are too good not to write down, and that list gained several entries from this book.

Finally, I really liked Exodus 20:3’s frank discussions of trauma and oppressive systems. As a Mexican-American, Diego is no stranger to the violence constantly forced upon brown bodies by the United States government, and as a trans man he’s equally familiar with transphobic violence from cis people. Although Freydís makes absolutely zero attempts to gloss over or divert attention from real-world issues inherent to their characters’ identities, nothing ever felt hopeless. Diego is initially very cynical, but as his relationship with Ariel evolves so too does he undergo a change of heart toward the nature of faith. You can get a side of religious philosophy with your steamy monster fucking in this book, if you choose to accept it.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book and cannot recommend it enough to anyone who’s in the mood for queer Latino romance stories. I can say with confidence that nobody who chooses to pray at Freydís’ altar will be left unsatisfied.

find this book on Amazon Kindle (US)

#bookblr #monster lover #monster romance #book recommendation #terato #book lover #human x monster #monster smut #monster love #angel x human #fantasy romance #transgender #trans man #queer books #lgbtq books #trans romance #latino

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talltalesandbedtimestories · 1 year ago

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Rated: Teen and Up

Pairing: General, hint of Dean/OFC

Tags: Witchcraft, Animal Transformations, Angst, Fluff (and Fur)

Word Count: 5500

Hello, and welcome to my very first foray into a big bang! Of course, if I’m going to give one a try, Dean Winchester will be the focus. This particular one was also much less intimidating as it was the 2023 Dean Winchester Big Bang: Mini Edition. So, the word count wasn’t high, and we had a couple of months to work on the project with our artists. My artist is TwinOne. I had such a fun time sending over suggestions and watching their artwork come to life through the process.

I hope you enjoy and please let TwinOne know how sweet and lovely the artwork is. I’m over the moon with the results, and it was so satisfying to see someone’s interpretation of my story! It scratched that itch (wink, wink).

Thank you to the mods @deanwbigbang for hosting and running such a fun challenge! Your time and effort is appreciated!

Summary - Set pre-series, Stanford Era: Dean has been sent on a solo hunt in New Orleans. He meets up with an ingenue witch, Selina, who needs his help to save her mentor from a voodoo priestess. The plan doesn’t go as expected; when does it ever? Dean, though, gets a little breather in the aftermath, and it turns out to be just the thing to scratch that itch.

Prequel to "Oh, I'll Be Anything You Want"

Tendrils of smoke. It swirls, radiating bright white, pulsing with life in an empty void. Growls. Incessant barks. Distant at first. With every passing second, the panic rises as the sound pounds closer. Suddenly, hot and foul breath chases out the smoke.

Dean’s lids popped open from the nightmare. His head tilted from side to side, inspecting the area.

He’d hoped the entire thing had been a self-constructed comedy of errors in his mind. A bad dream from which he’d blessedly awakened.

Unfortunately, the current situation he found himself in was very, very real.

There was no way Dean Winchester would ever tell his dad about this.

If he somehow managed to escape this debacle, he might die of humiliation if someone found out.

New Orleans had been a disappointment in so many ways. No booze. No beads. No boobs.

He whined at the unexpected stab of pain emanating from his shoulder. He’d been lucky to win the fight in one piece. The sparring partner’s fangs had sunk into Dean’s flesh like malleable clay.

But before the ambush, he’d at least accomplished what he’d set out to do. The hex bag had been buried in the priestess’s backyard. Selina had provided specific instructions. Dean’s sense of direction easily found the northernmost corner of the parcel lot. The muslin-wrapped ingredients he’d been charged with rested beneath a half foot of dirt. All his tasks were completed well before midnight under the brightest full moon he’d seen in ages. He hoped Selina had gone ahead with the spellwork even if he hadn’t gotten back to her in time.

He stared out between the steel bars into the pitch-black. The absence of light left him bereft of shadows to discern as friend or foe.

An itch tap-danced over his neck. Skin rippled at the sensation while he fought the temptation to scratch. Discomfort from the wounded limb took priority for a short spell.

He hadn’t thought things could get worse but turned out jail time was the worst thing that could have happened on top of everything else. Getting caught, literally, in this condition left him vulnerable.

Dean’s nostrils flared and twitched at the overpowering stench of pungent piss and stale shit. He got a whiff of cat dander and sneezed.

The cell block buddy to his right barked to keep it down. It was lights out, after all. Just because he’d been brought in late last night, he was told with a fierce growl, didn’t mean he couldn’t acclimate himself to the way things ran around here right quick. Dean rose only to circle the middle of the floor again. He eventually flopped back down, forced by the pulsing throb of his barely treated and badly bandaged wound. He curled like a ball atop the hard surface. The bone-cold of the place sent a shiver through his body. He closed his eyes again and prayed for sleep.

A fluorescent electric buzz hummed into his ear canal. The flicker of light flashed over closed lids. Tapping into all his senses, something alien swept left to right along the surface of his eyeballs, lazy and slow, as his sight focused.

A languid yawn escaped. The clink-clack of a door unlocking bolted him upright. He scampered to the front of the cell closest to the hallway floor. Nose stuck between bars, Dean tilted his head in vain to glimpse who entered.

Whines. Barks. They echoed off the walls. The instinctual urge to join in added his voice to the chorus.

“I found one that fits the bill a few hours ago.” A raspy elderly voice mixed in with all the noise. Dean recognized it. It belonged to the dog catcher that had entangled him in what looked like a big ass butterfly net. He was the reason Dean was here. He’d done the bare minimum caring for the Pitbull bite. Dean transferred most of the front weight to his left paw. The ache of his right shoulder thrummed in sync with the beating of his little heart. Dean had to be the one to fit the bill.

All Dean could view in his line of sight were soiled, grass-stained tan pants from the knees down and dirty brown combat boots. Pride filled his lungs. The tug of war he’d put up in the net brought the dog catcher to the ground. Their scrap amidst dirt and weeds and a flounce in a mud puddle had left his mark on the human.

Human. Christ, it has to be her coming to claim me. Please.

Hope soared in Dean’s chest when his gaze clamped on the blue (which would be violet if he was looking through his human eyes) leather of a familiar pair of high-heeled ankle boots. A crepe skirt rivaling Joseph’s technicolor dreamcoat covered the boot tops and swished in time with the steps.

“I hope it’s him.” A barely audible female voice floated above, drowned out by the pound puppies’ cacophony.

Selina! Thank Christ! A tinny, high-pitched bark erupted from his throat. Down here! Down here!

Both pairs of boots stopped in front of him. “That’s him there,” the catcher added. A wrinkled finger pointed in his direction.

Selina’s figure descended. Hands gathered the skirt up as she settled into a squat.

Her big almond-shaped eyes, a tad oversized for the heart-shaped face, blinked in relief. Dean halted his bark in mid-yip. Instead of her usual deep purple irises - a breathtaking sight in and of themselves on any given day - he was met with equally captivating dark blue saucers, swirled with golden flecks. The sight of her large frame stirred up amazement.

She grinned. “Yep, that’s him!”

The dog catcher huffed and fumbled with the key into the padlock. “You should take better care of the mutt. No collar or chip. He’s lucky I found him.”

Lucky, my ass!

“He’s not a mutt,” Selina responded in her typical curt fashion. “Purebred beagle.”

“Aint never seen a beagle with green eyes ‘fore,” the dog catcher mumbled. He fished the padlock from out of the loop. “Or one with paws that damn big.” The cage door squeaked with Dean’s nose nudging it open. Dean bounced off his hind legs into Selina’s lap.

Selina slammed a hand on the concrete to remain upright. “Oh, thank God! Scooby!” She wrapped her free arm around Dean.

“Scooby, huh?” The old man removed his cap to smooth down the ten wiry hairs on his head.

Dean’s pulse began to slow, nestled tight and secure in Selina’s embrace. The scent he’d connected with her, spicy incense and pink bubblegum, enveloped his now small and furrier frame.

One back paw reared up and swatted repeatedly at one of his floppy ears.

“What happened to him?” Selina’s tender touch caressed the gauze bandage.

“Got ‘imself in some trouble. Looked to be an animal bite.”

Dean’s lids clamped tight. He cocked his head and continued to flick and dig his paw into the spot behind his ears. Maybe if he used his claws.

“Does he… have fleas?” Selina asked in a tone that regrettably already knew the answer.

Fleas? Dean whined, still scratching. Why the fuck not? On top of everything else.

“We’re gonna take care of this, Dean. Promise.” Selina white-knuckled the steering wheel, hands at ten and two. Her lithe, petite frame perched on the edge of the bench. It was the only way she could reach the Impala’s gas pedal.

Dean languished on the passenger side and sunk into the center of the seat. It was still dark out. Street lamps popped overhead in a rhythmic pattern and spilled light through the windshield. Cobblestone-paved streets jostled the chassis. His baby usually drove like a tank with barely a hiccup; all smooth sailing. He wondered how much the bumpy ride had to do with the road condition under the tires or the person driving his car.

He sighed, closed his eyes, and shivered at the pinprick, itchy tingle of his skin.

Apparently, the spell Selina had cast didn’t include telepathy. No matter how much he wished for her to reach under the seat, feel for the damn bar to pull the bench forward to close the distance between her and the wheel, she wasn’t tuned into his mental signals.

Dean straightened his front legs and stiffened his elbows at the sudden screech of tires. His paws dug into the leather. He lurched forward with the momentum, watching Selina do the same from the driver’s seat. Once they settled to a stop, she stared over at him with a regretful frown. “Sorry. I haven’t driven in a while.”

Dean slitted his lids and yipped.

“It’s not much farther to the shop.” The pointy toe of her boot met the gas pedal and the car sputtered along again. “Once I got a lock on your location and saw how far away you were, I didn’t have a choice but to take your car. But don’t worry, we’re gonna take care of this, Dean.”

You already said that. Dean’s little barks echoed in the Impala’s interior.

“I know you’re trying to tell me something. But I can’t read your mind.”

No shit, Sherlock.

“Man, you’ve got a powerful set of puppy lungs. Want some good news? I was able to lift the hoodoo trance off Esme. All thanks to you.”

Well, at least something good came out of this mess.

It was very good news. He was in New Orleans because his father sent him on a case to help out an old friend. The old friend happened to be a witch doctor named Esmerelda. Esme for short.

Dean’s boots had hit Danneel Street and crossed the threshold of “Step on a Crack” Magical Notions Shop, which Esme owned, one day too late to prevent the inevitable escalation. Esme had been cursed and was unsure when the fallout would take full effect. She hadn’t stepped on a crack but the toes of a powerful voodoo priestess in the French Quarter. That’s why he and Selina had partnered up. To save her teacher, who’d been rendered catatonic. Esme was currently being watched and cared for by the coven, whose members were taking shifts at her bedside.

Glad your mentor is on the mend. That’s even better for me. She can probably zap me back quicker than you. Why aren’t we heading there?

“She’s still pretty weak, though, from what Harold told me over the phone.”

Dean huffed.

“I’m sorry, Dean. I know you wanted to turn into a German Shepherd. But I did say I couldn’t guarantee what kind of dog breed the spell would transform you into. That’s not in my control.” Selina tangled her hands one over the other along the steering wheel column in a clumsy fashion. Dean swayed to the right with Selina’s left turn. “I’m pretty sure, though, the shop’s got some things that will take care of your fleas while we wait out the magic.”

It was true. Selina hadn’t guaranteed much about the spell. And it had been his idea to try it when they rifled through the pages of an ancient grimoire. The voodoo priestess had stitched some warding around her property, only permitting certain humans to cross. An animal transformation made perfect sense.

Dean groaned and rubbed the side of his head into the backrest to ease the itch. Fleas better not have been part of Selina’s witchcraft.

Dean scrabbled paws along the slippery marble floor, trying in vain to sit upright. Every time he thought he’d achieved a precarious balance, his body toppled. He’d starfished, even done a few Bambi-on-ice skating maneuvers waiting for Selina in the tiny bathroom. Claustrophobia settled in, though it’d only been a few minutes since she promised to return and closed the door behind her.

How old was this puppy skin he inhabited? All of Dean - his mind, sensibilities, and humanity - wrapped up tight in this fur burrito felt like him, except when it didn’t. Curious instinct made its presence known. Once he relented on the sitting still attempt, his nose glued to the floor and led the inspecting. He tried to zone in on something interesting to escape the fear. And the endless itching he’d been ordered not to scratch. When Dean thought about it, it wasn’t that different from any given human day.

Overhead, water poured out of the claw foot tub’s red copper faucet. Steam plumed over the deep basin. The impending bath temperature also drew concern. Being a beagle was terrible enough. A boiled beagle? Hell no!

Flared nostrils filled with the overwhelming scent of Selina. A sense of calm broke through the nagging flight response. He’d been in the small apartment only once since arriving in Louisiana. Perched over the magic shop, his first step into her home had flooded his sight. It was a treasure trove of textiles and trinkets blazing with gemstone brilliance. Shelves stuffed with books. Glass jars of unidentifiable powders. Vials of transparent or opaque liquids. Everything a young witch needed to learn the craft.

She smelled nice before. He’d caught whiffs of her here and there when he passed her frame on his human feet. But his canine senses were picking up every atomized particle now. He spotted a forgotten hairbrush hiding in the corner and catapulted forward to claim it. His speed and the slick marble took away any ability to stop in a semblance of elegance. He face-palmed into the rubber tines of the brush. Tangled hair in the brush tickled his nose, and rapid inhales took more of her into his lungs. Yeah. This was nice. It felt good. Safe. He debated chewing.

The door creaked. Dean spun in a flash and let out a pathetic growl of defense, having painted himself into a corner with no way out. Selina stepped inside, paying him no attention. The giantess silenced him with only her presence.

“Apple cider vinegar.” She held up a bottle in victory, clutching a few small droppers in the other hand. They clattered from her grip into the pedestal sink. Sitting on the tub edge, she uncapped the vinegar and emptied the contents with a rhythmic glug into the water.

Drops splattered up and out of the tub, landing near Dean. He flinched. Doggie brain told him this was not going to be pleasant.

“Okay.” Fingers twisted first one faucet knob, then the other, shutting off the flow. Her arm dipped into the water. Dean’s ear perked up at the sloshes. “Not too bad.”

Says you.

“Come on, Dean.” Her wet hand gestured with a come hither.

You know, I might be able to hang on until the spell wears off. I’m good.

Selina sighed. “You’re gonna make me come over there, aren’t you?” She slinked on the floor, knees stretching the fabric of her skirt as she crawled towards him on all fours.

Seriously, it’s fine. I’ll be fine. I’ve dealt with worse.

His insistence fell on deaf ears. She snatched him up in a second. The next, he dangled above the water. Her hands cupped him under whatever a dog’s version of armpits were. He kicked and wriggled. Whined and whimpered.

“It’s okay.” She submerged his hind quarters like a tea bag in and out three times until he gave in and went limp in her arms to steep. “Not gonna hurt you, no matter what you think of witches.” She leaned him forward with care. “Good boy.” When she let him go, he stood in warm water that rose up to just meet his back.

He shivered, puppy heartbeat racing. His nose twitched at the acidity of the vinegar additive. The sound of skin rubbing together crept up behind him. “Next ingredient we need is peppermint.” A soap bar popped into his peripheral vision. It smelled of candy mints left atop a restaurant check, then absentmindedly stuffed in a jacket pocket. “Okay?” she asked.

You gonna stop if I say no? Yeah, that’s what I thought.

Okay, so Dean had to admit to himself - even if he’d never cop to Selina - the bath hadn’t been that bad. Selina had a gentle but firm touch. She’d sudsed all of his coat, lifting him first from the front and then the back end. She apologized for getting a little more intimate than Dean had expected with his little puppy prick and ass. The fleas could be anywhere, she reminded him. As the tub drained, she sprayed water from the shower wand and rinsed him clean.

Once he was taken out of the tub and laid atop one towel, another enveloped and rubbed until his fur was damp and not dripping. She communicated all of her actions beforehand. The dropper bottles contained various oils to help rid Dean of the dreaded fleas. With fabric under his paws, he sat tall and tilted his head to study Selina while she worked. She smiled at him, patiently naming each essential or botanical oil she squeezed into a water bottle: Almond, Cedar, Eucalyptus, Lavender.

The concoction soothed immediately on contact. The mix of smells dispelled the last remnants of his anxiety. Delicate, soft fingers caressed his coat and threaded through the fur to find the skin. The blissful massage helped chase away the panic. Yet another thing he’d never admit to Selina. If he ever got the chance to admit anything to her with his human voice again. Weirdly, he seemed perfectly willing to accept such a fate. Maybe things could be much, much worse after all.

After tidying some of the bathroom mess, Selina opened the door and ushered him forth. Dean’s legs scampered toward the makeshift doggie water bowl beside the bank of kitchen cabinets. One would have thought he’d never want to dip his snout in water again. But he gobbled and slurped with his tongue like he hadn’t drank a drop in days. He didn’t know how much time had passed before a plate of cut-up deli ham had been deposited alongside the bowl. He was greedy for that as well. Fangs hooked into the meat. He hitched his head upwards to encourage the food down his throat.

“I know human food isn’t the best for you… like this. But let’s hope we don’t have to experience the results and the spell wears off before then.” Selina commented, leaning against the countertop. “Do you need to go outside and do some business?”

Again, without any say in the matter, Dean’s head sprung upright to lock his gaze on the sweet human caretaker at the words “go outside.” He mulled it over. He’d pissed in the nearest grass as soon as they’d left the pound. An impressively long and satisfying leak. He wanted to shake his head “No” but couldn’t do it. Instead, his eyes tracked a small rug by a chair. His claws clicked along the hardwood - thank god the entire floor wasn’t marble - to what he decided would make a perfect resting spot. He corkscrewed his frame into a compact fur ball atop the cushy velvet and let out a deep, well-earned sigh.

“Good idea. I’m beat, too.” She pointed somewhere behind Dean. “Can get a few hours of sleep before sunrise. I’ll be able to find out how long the spell will last with a clearer head in the morning.” She shrugged. The motion appeared to loosen a yawn from her throat. “But, maybe you’ll wake up all back to normal.”

Dean yawned in return, finishing it with a high-pitched squeak.

Selina giggled. “You are adorable, Dean Winchester. Night.”

Too exhausted to be any more humiliated, Dean’s tail thumped softly in response. He closed his eyes. Clean. Warm. Cozy. Well fed. Watched over.

He drifted off, hard-pressed to recall the last time he’d ever been all those things.

Dean’s running. His puppy paws gallop atop the soft, giving earth of a field. He’s darting through the wheat. His snout cuts through the crops, scraped by wispy stalks.

He can hear how heavy he’s panting. The exertion and speed has his tongue hanging out the side of his mouth.

But he’s not running from something.

Dean’s just running. Because he can.

He breaks through and into a clearing. The sun’s rays warm his furry coat. He spots a quintessential farmhouse in the distance. He can see the large wrap-around porch. A pair of rocking chairs. Off to one side is a laundry line studded with freshly washed clothes, flapping in the breeze. An oak tree, taller than the two-story home, stands guard along the other side. A tire swing dangles from one of its sturdy branches. A few white cotton candy clouds rest above it all in the bluest of skies.

He feels the farmhouse calling to him. He just knows. It’s home.

All the colors of the rainbow that his human eyes normally detect fill his vision. He zig zags between a row of apple trees, closing the distance. A fallen apple halts him. He sniffs; the sweetness is too good to pass up. He gnashes into the mealy flesh, attacking it from all angles. He tongues the juices into his welcoming throat.

“Deeaaan!”

His head snaps up. That voice beckons him home. He resumes his sprint. That voice. He hasn’t heard it in ages.

He cuts through a tall patch of sunflowers to find the voice's owner waiting for him, seated on the porch steps.

“There you are!” Sam calls out. He tosses a tennis ball a few feet in the air above his head, catching it without having to glance at his palm. This Sam is young. Thirteen or so. He’s spindly, a toothpick with knobby joints, and a smile that takes up half his face.

Just like he remembers.

“Mom said we’ve got time before dinner.” Sam juggles the ball from one hand to the other.

Mom. Mom’s here.

“Ready?” Sam asks, winding his arm back for a killer pitch.

Dean yips.

Dean yipped himself awake.

It’s morning.

He’s still a beagle.

Selina watched as Dean did his business in the backyard of the Magic Shop. Unlucky, she had to experience the results of feeding puppy Dean human food. But she didn’t complain, picking up after him. “All done? How about some breakfast? Eggs and bacon sound good?”

That sounds amazing to Dean. But he’s beginning to think Selina is a glutton for punishment.

The bacon sizzled in the cast iron pan. Selina explained why Dean was still walking on four legs instead of two. “So, even though the magic worked and Esme’s on the mend, I should probably have bound your reversal spell in with that enchantment to speed things along. You would have been human by the time the full moon set this morning.” She fished a couple pieces of bacon out of the pan with a fork and laid them atop some paper towels. “I’m pretty sure it’ll wear off by tomorrow. If it doesn’t, Harold said he’ll come by and see what he can do. He doesn’t want to leave Esme yet. I’ll ask one of the other witches if you can’t wait, though.”

Dean knew that Selina trusted Harold almost as much as Esme. The other witches in the group were fickle and not the kindest to Selina, from what Dean saw firsthand. Witches, man. Dean trotted over and sat by one of Selina’s legs. He rubbed his face along her smooth calf. She looked even younger in her sleep shorts and t-shirt. Still massive, though.

“I will, Dean. I’ll eat crow for my mistake. You’ve done more than anyone would’ve for someone they don’t even know.”

A friend of Dad’s doesn’t get left behind. It’s cool, Selina. How about some bacon to smooth things over?

“What does that whine mean?”

He raised up onto his haunches and leaned front paws on the oven door.

“Oh, bacon. Right.”

The rest of the day is easy, lazy. A day he hasn’t felt in a while. Not since Sammy left him.

The days without his brother have brought out more of the hard lines and jagged points in John’s countenance. Deep down, Dean wants to hope it’s not him bringing that out in their father. That it’s the void, the empty spot that used to contain Sam that no longer filters out the hate and hurt; that used to misdirect all that drill sergeant behavior. His little shit of a sibling was all of John’s fervent focus of protection for so long. Dean sees it plain as day. John doesn’t know what to do with all his feelings. So he bottles them up. Drinks them away. Or spats them out at Dean, chipping away at him.

Dean has been coping with his feelings as best as John. Realizing he’s handling the broken compass in his core the same way. Nose down. Find a job. Work the case. Kill the monster. Fill the despair with a win. Fill the despair with booze. Inflict rage on any other to empty out the despair. Stoke passion in any other to empty out the despair.

Anything and everything to kick the can down the line. Because he’s realized - Sam was his hope and lifeline as much as he was dad’s. And, without him, well, he doesn’t really know what’s left.

He’s been tossed a lifeline here and there when he’s built up the nerve to call Sam at Stanford—only a handful of times over the past couple of years. The knots and twists in his stomach unfurled when Sam picked up the phone. Accepted and acknowledged his presence. That he’s still here, he remembers he has a brother. Even when that brother had to risk the wrath of John if he ever found out a connection was made.

But this day, wrapped in fur, small, and defenseless, he’s reminded of what could be left for him. Selina softened around him in his puppy form. Her smiles widened. She shined sweet and gentle.

They holed up in the apartment for safety. Scampered out to the backyard for potty breaks and played fetched with a tennis ball. It’s the sunniest day he’s felt in years. Warm. Light. Clear. Fresh.

It’s the snuggles at the end of that day that he loved the best. Allowed entry into Selina’s bedroom. Allowed to hop onto the mattress and curl atop the crushed velvet comforter. “You’re lucky you’re so cute, Dean. No one gets to spend the night in my bed.”

He pushed in close, nuzzled into the layers that separated their bodies. Her energy - different, charged, holding what he thinks is potential magic - gives him comfort.

He slept like a baby.

“Oh! Dean!” Selina screamed.

Dean eyes popped open.

He’s chilly.

Bigger.

He’s back.

He’s naked.

“Shit!” Dean barked out in his human voice. He glanced at Selina's side of the bed. An upheld hand shielded her view. A racing heart matched the speed of his legs swinging off the bed, standing up.

But he doesn’t have a fucking clue where his clothes are.

Selina pointed to the bedroom door, still not daring to look at him. “Living room. Side table, by the chair.” She squeaked.

He fled the scene, spotted his folded clothes. Faster than a cowboy caught fooling around with a farmer’s daughter, he donned his underwear, t-shirt, and jeans. He called out, ��All clear. Nothing more to see here!” His cheeks blazed with humiliation under his attempt at nonchalance.

Selina crept through the doorway. Cheeks red and flamed. Excited, amused, and happy. Remnants of the smiles bestowed upon him yesterday in his canine form. “You’re back,” she sighed.

Dean outstretched his arms for display purposes. “I’m back.”

“How do you feel? Any different? Weird?”

He stopped to actually think, taking a moment to process. “Um, kind of hungover.”

Selina nodded, exhaled. “Okay. That’s normal, from what I’ve been told.”

Dean chuckled. “Nothing normal about this.”

“For us, it is.” Selina corrected.

Selina doesn’t skimp on the bacon for breakfast.

The celebratory feast tasted sublime, well-earned. He was starving.

Sat around the small bistro table, they talked as they ate. Their conversations before the spell had been curt, filled with sass. Selina had snapped at him with every one of her responses. He’d understood, of course. Even if he hadn’t given her an inch of understanding in his smart-ass attitude. She’d been under immense pressure. The stakes were high, and the outcome relied heavily on her ability not to screw up.

Man, did he understand.

Now, they’d both mellowed with the shared experience. Relief. Success. Dean cataloged every inch of her. Human eyes took in all the vibrant colors hidden from his doggie view. Her purple eyes and porcelain skin held an ethereal quality. A tad punk with violet highlights and a nose ring. She was beautiful.

“What was it like?” Selina dolloped more scrambled eggs on his plate. She leaned in, hanging on his every morsel of information.

“Man,” Dean snorted. “Trapped in a funhouse mirror, with none of the fun.”

“But, you still felt like you?”

“Yep.” He chomped away on a strip of bacon.

“You understood me,” she stated. “I could tell.”

He tilted his head in question.

Selina giggled. “Yeah, you’d give me one of those expressions like you were thinking things over. Wanting to communicate.”

“Hmmm,” Dean nodded. Lips smacked. He wanted to ask in a way that didn’t make it seem like he was overly concerned about the answer. “I know you said there wasn’t any telepathic stuff going on… you couldn’t read any of my thoughts?”

Her head shook, matter of fact. “Not a one. Which would have been super helpful if I could’ve. You typically can’t get that kind of bond or connection at my level. And, more often than not, that’s pretty rare. A familiar type situation.”

He chewed his thoughts down.

“I wouldn’t have pulled off the reversal spell that cured Esme if it hadn’t been for your plan.” Selina sipped her coffee.

Dean cocked his head, emphasizing the ridiculousness of that statement. “You would’ve figured something out.”

“Not as quick as I needed to.” Selina shook her head. “Not without your help. Making it so that the reversal spell had to be performed by the greenest of Esme’s students and without any coven assistance… the priestess wanted it to be next to impossible.”

“Well, I’m glad I could help.”

Selina grinned. “Even with fleas?”

Dean shivered. “Yeah, that I could’ve done without.”

“I’m glad you came back all in one piece. I was really worried there would be some pet residue. Like a tail or floppy ears.”

“I don’t know,” Dean contemplated. “A tail might come in handy.”

The thought had them both laughing.

“So,” Selina began, “any chance that brother you mentioned, Sam, is gonna find out about any of this?”

“No way. Not ever.” Dean shook his head.

“Well, I hope you get to see him soon. The way you talk about him. He seems like a pretty great guy. I don’t think he’d tease you too much about being a beagle.”

“You don’t know, Sam.” Dean almost added he probably didn’t know him anymore, either, but pursed his lips shut.

“I owe you, big time.” Selina offered.

Dean nodded. “Yeah, you do.”

“Well, I should get dressed and we should go out. Let me take you on a proper tour of New-or-lins.” Selina drawled, “Laissez les bons temps rouler.”

Dean swallowed hard and locked eyes with her. “I don’t know. We could probably just stay in and find some ways to let the good times roll.”

Selina side-eyed him, but Dean sensed the interest brewing underneath the show. “Didn’t you say you’d rather roll around in the mud with a pig than ingratiate yourself with a witch when we first met?”

He shrugged. “I think I can make an exception for you.”

Selina held a hand to her chest. “I’m honored.”

He grinned. “You should be.”

The moment was perfect for Dean to lean over and kiss her.

Of course, that’s when John called.

John needed him. There was no time for a tour of the French Quarter or even a half hour of good times in Selina’s apartment.

Dean stood at the door and waited as Selina packed him a breakfast sandwich for the road. “Don’t you think you’ve fed me enough?”

She waved a hand in the air, walking towards him. “Hard to tell. You never stop eating.”

He grabbed the bag she presented. “Thanks.”

“It’s the very least I could do. Thank you again, Dean.”

Instinctively, he wrapped her up in a hug. “Anytime.”

She whispered in his ear. “Next time you swing by, look me up.”

He breathed in the scent of her - wanting something else to remember her by - and placed a kiss atop her forehead. Anything more and he knew he’d never leave. “Absolutely.”

It wasn’t until he descended the stairs and was out the back door, away from Selina’s view, that he gave into the urge to paw at his ear like a dog.

Yeah, the next time he called Sam - which he felt would be soon - there was no way he was telling him about any of this.

Well, he might mention the beautiful witch he met in New Orleans with the purple eyes. And how she had been just the thing he needed to scratch that itch.

#deanwbigbang #spn fanfic #dean winchester fluff #dean winchester angst #spn fanart

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itsana004 · 1 year ago

Note

Pullin’a bit of a fast one, but I was quite curious. 👀

For the character questions; Mist/no.96? 🩵

Oooooo The Fun Astral, now this is a spicy character we're talking about in zexal, and I have some thoughts on him. Although I have to admit I didn't pay enough attention to him in the past rewatches, so my memories may be a bit fuzzy about him, but I always found him to be an intriguing villain in Zexal, so here lays my truest thoughts on Dark Mist, aka Mr. No.96

•How do you feel about this character

I really liked Dark Mist as a character, he's just a living and breathing slimy liquorice who likes to wrap tentacles around Astral and is so horny for hi- I mean posses him and dreams about making out wit- I meant become independent and powerful of course (we've all been there...) BUT SERIOUSLY THOUGH THIS MAN IS SO DOWN BAD FOR ASTRAL HE KEEPS MOANING HIS NAME EVERYTIME HE'S FRUITY ASF─

There is also a part of me that feels like he didn't appear often enough or there were missed opportunities to kind of hit the mark in terms of writing, but this is Yu-Gi-Oh Zexal we are talking about I didn't expect anything less about a show who keeps shoehorning protagonists and put unnecessary filler over actually interesting side characters (this is my and my opinion alone and I will stand by it).

Ideally what Dark Mist represents is an interesting concept, if Astral is the light then he's the darkness. "Where there is light, there is darkness" Dark Mist said in one episode, implying Astral needs to use the "Power of evil" aka No. 96, when necessary, or a part of Dark Mist will always be within Astral, but they don't use this concept beyond one episode, it's just cheap writing making him to appear once in a blue moon throughout the show and dip just like that.

Later we discover that he is born from a fragment of Don 1000 trapped in Astral and took the identity of a Number card, as Astral likes to randomly split into cards because Yu-Gi-Oh - but what I found very interesting is he's not either on Astral world's side, nor the Barian world, even though he was born from a fragment of the Barian God himself. He's just a free spirit who does everything for his own benefit, but in doing so he keeps getting sent to horny jail- I meant get sealed by Astral.

He is cunning enough to let himself be absorbed by Astral just so he can play him inside the Emperor's Key, which is very smart of him, but then he is trapped in a cycle of...

I feel like the writers just didn't know what to do with him at this point, he's as threatening as the Trix in Winx club (like- I can even draw parallels and similarities) and Astral keeps winning against him again and again cause 'Good triumph over evil yay', seriously I feel like he's a missed potential. Also can we talk about how many times he broke free? Like Astral, what lock are you using to seal him lmao?? (The writers doesn't even explain this btw)

Later on, No.96 just decided to trick Astral into releasing him and then for some reason decided to possess Donald Trump but good for him I guess.

ALSO

CAN WE TALK ABOUT THE PURPLE LIPSTICK

LIKE OMG, I KNOW HE WAS A FRUIT BEFORE, BUT THEY TOOK IT TO A WHOLE NEW LEVEL

He really put some lipstick and said "I'm a god now", can't blame him (Also I have to be honest about his God complex era, HE WAS SO ANNOYING, HE PROBABLY SAID "KAMI" MORE THAN KOTORI CALLING YUMA'S NAME)

Also him treating Vector as a pet while being used and Vector just seething inside was so funny to see, it's like a complete opposite end pair compared to Yuma and Astral.

Overall he's pretty solid, I just wish the writers treated him better and made him a more complex villain (like this guy wasn't in anyone's side they could have done so much more than "he bombs all three worlds cause he can now" like c'monnn they made him flat and one dimensional in the end compared to how he used to be???).

•All the people I ship romantically with this character

I like to ship him with Astral and Vector as a joke.

•My unpopular opinion about this character

He ate with the purple lipstick c'mon now

•One thing I wish would happen/had happened with this character in canon

I think I pretty much summed it up in the first part, but anyway he's not dead and alive in Zexal III canon.

#zexal #ygo zexal #yugioh zexal #dark mist zexal #black mist zexal #number 96 zexal #dark mist #black mist #zexal asks #character breakdown

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nysocboy · 9 months ago

Text

Gemstones Episode 2.8: Baby Billy sees a ghost, Judy becomes a mom, and Kelvin gets....

This ain't the 1970s: In 1993 Memphis, Junior and his dad Glendon are watching midget wrestling featuring "heel" Chris Blanton. Glendon thinks that it's the wave of the future, but Junior complains that it's old-fashioned. He wants to liquidate their gambling operation to raise money for some big wrestling promotions:"This ain't the 1970s. Wrestling has changed. You need big money to go after big talent." Glendon nixes the idea.

Next complaint: Glendon was going to leave Junior the business when he retired, but he never retires: "Look at me, Daddy: I'm going gray with my dick in my hand." Look at him, with his jaunty hand on hip, similar to after spending the night with Eli earlier this season. He's got some femme mannerisms going on I'm looking at a middle-aged gay man.

Glendon wants to know how he can retire when his idiot son has terrible ideas and does everything wrong? "You hurt my feelings," Junior exclaims, starting to cry. The boy gets hurt feelings a lot, doesn't he? Glendon mocks him. But he agrees that he's been holding on too long: let's liquidate the gambling operation.

We cut to Glendon being upset while Junior loads the slot machines into a truck for Mr. Dukare. Later, Junior counts the money, annoucing that they will triple it with their new wrestling promotions. But Glendon has other ideas. Brandishing a gun, he orders: "Handcuff yourself to that inversion table and shut the fuck up." He then moons Junior and leaves: "You ain't never going to see ths old ass again."

Junior screams and cries. Glendon goes off to visit Eli and get murdered on Christmas Day, 1993.

They're just kids!: In the present, Martin visits the captured Cycle Ninjas in jail: a group of scruffy teenagers. Sheriff Brenda tells him that they have fake ids, no fingerprints in the system, and they aren't talking. Martin tries to use psychology: "We know who sent you. Now you tell us." But it doesn't work; they just fart at him.

Cut to Baby Billy selling his health elixer in a nursing home. Afterwards the spirit of his sister Aimee-Leigh appears, and encourages him to visit his son Harmon, whom he abandoned in a shopping mall in 1993. "It's time," she tells him, and "You know I'm right." He tells her to get lost. Aimee-Leigh appears in the Seasons 1 and 3 finales, but doesn't interact with anyone. I wonder if she is a hallucination here.

Eli's physical therapy: Eli gathers the siblings, their partners, and Gideon to thank them for their role in his recovery. Keefe is not present, but Eli tells Kelvin: "You and Queef have been such a help. I keep saying 'Go back to your house,' but you wouldn't hear it. You've stayed on, helping me get on my feet with physical therapy." He gets Keefe's name wrong, but at least he acknowledges that Kelvin has a partner.

Wait -- how could Kelvin administer physical therapy with his hand injury? I'm getting an image of Keefe being run ragged from caring for two invalids. Surely there were nurses around, too.

Of course, they had an ulterior motive for not going home: the God Squad has taken over their house.

Cleansing the Temple: Later that day, Kelvin and Keefe spy on the God Squad as they dance, fight with sticks, run wild on a golf cart, and..um... masturbate into a watering can? "It's time to cleanse the temple!" Kelvin exclaims. How could the God Squad control the house for several weeks with no one noticing? There's a housekeeping crew and regular security patrols. This must be another chronological mishap.

The guys burst into the gym, knocking over things. "This was a house of prayer, but ye made it a den of thieves!" Kelvin exclaims. Torsten orders the men to put Keefe back in the tiger cage, but Keefe tries to fight back, Kelvin yells "No one re-cages Keefe," and they relent.

Next he reminds them of all the good he's done. Before joining the God Squad, Torsten was "a little doughboy" who still lived with his parents. "I chiseled you into the sculpture you are today."

When Cody had cramps, Kelvin "crawled into his yurt and massaged him until sunrise." A sexual reference, of course. The guys stare at Cody, who shakes his head -- that didn't happen. In a cult based on homoerotic desire, why would anyone disapprove of Cody and Kelvin getting busy? There appears to be a major misunderstanding here. Many of the God Squad musclemen are straight alphas, in it for the muscles, just tolerating the homoerotic activity of Kelvin, his boyfriend, and the guys he invites to the steam showers.

Torsten challenges "the Messiah of the Muscle Men" to another cross raising to determine leadership.

Whoa, there used to be twelve musclemen -- now there are 23. The cross used to be about ten feet high. Now it's over thirty!

As Kelvin grabs the base of the cross, the casts on his hands fly off -- a miracle! Although he is much smaller than the musclemen, he is able to raise the cross -- another miracle! Keefe drops to his knees, apparently in worship. He needs to decide whether he wants a boyfriend or a Savior.

When he has achieved "a proper erection," Kelvin orders the God Squad to get out of his house, then pulls Keefe to his feet. They hug and do their weird forehead press thing, but don't kiss. I guess it's been decided for him: Kelvin is the strongest, but not the Messiah, and Keefe is an equal partner, not his disciple.

No lions, no tigers, no bears: We cut to Eli and his children rehearsing for his welcome-back service. Notice that Kelvin's shirt and jacket display no roaring animals, and his pants display no club-bulge. His obsession with demonstrating his erotic potency is over. He has a job, a house, and a partner: he is a man.

Later, Eli tells Jesse that he's grown, healed his family, demonstrated his leadership ability, so he'll give him the money to invest in the Zion's Landing Resort after all.

But what about Junior -- won't he keep on trying to kill them? "I think it's time you know the truth," Eli says.

He brings his children to the amusement park, and tells them about Christmas 1993. about Glendon Marsh holding him at gunpoint and Daddy Roy coming to the rescue, or maybe just shooting. Afterwards, Eli wanted to protect his family, and worried that the scandal of having a murdering Dad would destroy his empire, so he and Martin buried the body under the roller coaster.

Eli determines that the only way to protect his family from Junior is to come clean, tell him everything. Gulp -- he's already trying to kill you because you rejected his friendship. What will happen when you tell him about his daddy being murdered? The end.

The full version of this review, with nude photos and explicit sexual discussions, is on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

#the righteous gemstones #kelvin gemstone #keefe chambers #adam devine #tony cavalero #The God Squad

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death-and-other-myths · 2 years ago

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The Queen of Nothing Deadass Book Review

Okay look, this book has everything. Our main character is an unhinged monster. Her husband was raised by a cat or something. There's snakes. GOD DAMN I LOVE THIS BOOK.

This is an unhinged book review of The Queen of Nothing By Holly Black.

*SPOILERS AHEAD*

Well the 3rd and final book in this series starts out with a bang, with the prologue painting Cardan’s tragic backstory as a baby taken to meet his father by his shitty, neglectful mom. Baefin, the royal astronomer shows up and decides to ruin everyone’s day by saying, “Hey, the stars say this kid is going to topple your kingdom and you’ll never have another child after him.” — so right out of the gate, everyone hates Cardan. His siblings play with him like a puppy. His Mom is the flakiest asshole. She uses a… cat..?? As a wet nurse?? Like WOW LADY. Both CPS and PETA would like a word with you.

There’s a super sad part when Cardan is older, and Dane is messing with him. They are shooting a walnut off of a mortal’s head, who happens to be Val Moren’s lover. Val Moren was the old High King’s sineschel, and his heart was broken for the rest of his life after his boyfriend got shot with an arrow by these big dumb faerie princes.

Dane offers to switch arrows, so if Cardan messes up and hits the man, everyone will think Dane did it. Cardan says fine, but chickens out when it comes time to shoot. So Dane shoots Cardan’s arrow into the guy’s chest, and tells everyone that Cardan did it. So as punishment, they sent Asha into jail and cultivated Cardan’s reputation of being a heartless asshole. It’s just shit all around. GOD THIS POOR BABY I CAN’T BELIEVE I EVER THOUGHT HE WAS A MONSTER. HE IS THE SWEET, MESSED UP PRODUCT OF HIS AWFUL FAMILY. AUGH.

Meanwhile, in the mortal world…

Jude is watching Oak play war games with the other 5 year olds and he keeps accidentally glamoring them (so he appears invisible until he attacks). When all of his friends leave, she sneaks up on him and you know, almost chokes him out. Like sisters do!

He’s all upset with her and she’s like “I’m just trying to show you that fighting is real, and it’s serious, and it’s not a game!” and he says he never ever wants to be king, which makes this reader happy.

At night, Jude makes money by doing odd jobs for the local faeries. They apparently can live in the mortal world, usually because they’re in hiding or exile or just because they want to. She meets up with one of the Roach’s old friends, who is a goat man that gives her a job to go talk to a lady named Grima Mog and tell her to quit murdering people.

Grima Mog is part of the “Court of Teeth”, and is a warrior who was banished for one reason or another and is causing a scene in the real world. Jude goes over, tells her to cut it out, and Grima Mog challenges her to a duel on the roof. Jude wins, because she is still a savage badass. And in return, Grima Mog tells her the latest hot goss: That King Cardan is going to be overthrown before the next full moon.

Jude is like cool I don’t care about him. Yep. Totally don’t care about that loser who is also my husband. Fuck him. Ima ride the bus home covered in blood. So she does that.

And when she gets home, Heather is there trying to pluck up the courage to see Vivi again. But moreover, TARYN IS THERE in her flowy pretty dress and Jude is like “Get the fuck out.” (still covered in blood by the way).

Taryn explains that she MURDERED LOCKE. Like not even in self defense or anything. He pissed her off and slept around, so she stabbed him with a LETTER OPENER and THREW HIM IN THE OCEAN so his body washed up a few miles downshore all chewed up, and now she has to go to Faerie court and be glamored to tell the truth. So she’s asking Jude if she’ll pose as her and go in her stead.

Jude can’t really resist the opportunity to get back into Faerie land and slap her husband, so she agrees. Also Taryn drops the bomb that she’s pregnant too. So ... damn. I guess being bloodthirsty maniacs runs in this family. Like whoa.

Alright, Jude goes back to Elfhame pretending to be Taryn. She spends a brief night in Locke’s house where she finds drugs just… everywhere. Gold stuff is smeared on the couches and the servants bring her a faerie apple with dinner, which Jude finds hella weird since that stuff is like heroin to humans. She’s starting to realize Taryn isn’t as innocent as she thought. As if the whole “murdering her husband” thing wasn’t her first clue.

She walks into the courtroom and gives a curtsey, and Cardon goes “…Taryn?”

She’s like “Yes m’lord tis I, sweet lil’ innocent Taryn. Look at me all in my pretty little dress being demure and cooperative.”

Cardon smirks and is like “okaaayyyy. Begin the questioning.”

Jude is standing there thinking “Cardon you dumb fuck I’ve tricked you. You’ve played right into the palm of my hand, you treacherous scum.”

And we as the reader realize it’s pretty fucking obvious that he knows its her. And that he looks elated to see her.

He “glamours” her to only be able to tell the truth and asks her if she killed Locke. Jude says no. So Cardon turns to Nicasia and his Mom (who are also there) and is like “Welp, she didn’t do it. Guess we can all go drink and party and forget this ever happened now. Like we did when Valerian died. Remember how no one seemed to care about that?”

But Jude has to take it a step further and be like “I think the sea had something to do with it.”

Nicasia is pissed. “WHY would the sea start shit if we have a treaty with the land? Also Locke was my friend! If anyone killed him it was probably your horrifying sister. She loves murdering people. She does it like, all the time.”

Lady Asha chimes in like “It’s court gossip that Locke was fooling around with both you and your sister. Maybe she killed him to get revenge because she loved him.”

And Jude (as Taryn) says, “My sister only loves one person, and it’s not Locke.”

Cardan is unable to stifle his glee.

“And she wants that person dead.”

Cardan bristles.

Nicasia says they can’t trust anything “Taryn” says because she could be wearing a charm to resist glamour (implying Jude should strip in front of the court). But Jude can’t do that without revealing herself, since she’s all scarred up and Cardan knows every single one of those scars.

Luckily, our boy is on to this so he’s like “How about I personally inspect her for charms in my quarters. Alone. Away from here. This is totally normal, right?” And the court is like “Right!” So they’re walking to his room. And a servant runs into her with a tray, and slips her a knife and is like “Don’t worry miss Taryn. Your father is coming to save you.” And Jude is like What? Shit. What??

But then she’s alone in Cardan’s room and he is immediately like “Oh my god how are you? Did you get my letters? I wrote you every day but you never replied. Hi.”

And Jude is FLABBERGASTED “You knew it was me?!”

“From the second you walked into the room?? You’re my wife? God, you’re cute.”

She’s still pissed at him though for tricking her, which to us is very obvious to us that it was for her own protection, but Jude thinks he’s awful. She shows him the knife someone gave her and for a moment he’s like… wait… shit… is she going to stab me? She kind of likes making him think she will. But she tells him Maddock is up to something, then there’s a huge explosion. And instead of stabbing Cardan, she goes back to her warrior ways like “Stay here!” Even though he’s shouting at her not to.

Jude takes like 2 steps outside the door and gets knocked out with Faerie chloroform by some of Maddock’s knights.

She wakes up in a carriage with Oriana being carted off to Maddock’s stronghold. And everyone is like “Sorry Taryn! It was just easier to get you out of there if you were… you know… unconscious for 3 days.” (Wtf faerie people??)

So now Jude is STUCK pretending to be Taryn in Maddock’s snowy army headquarters near the Court of Teeth territory. She has to hang out and pretend to like Oriana, her prim and boring stepmother, and convince everyone she’s Taryn or Maddock will literally kill her.

During her time in camp, she meets Grimsen the master forge guy, who likes compliments and young girls (which is hella gross). She flirts with him to learn about his magic weapons and learns he’s making a crazy powerful sword for Maddock to use to take Cardan’s crown.

Jude has an awkward conversation with Maddock where he’s like “I never much cared for Jude. God she’s so annoying. You’re cool though.” He also tells her that when he saved her from the palace, half his knights got murdered in the process. He said the doors shrunk and trapped his men inside, then vines came down from the ceiling and strangled them. Only the ones running with her made it out alive and everyone else got savagely choked to death. So like… Cardan is a badass and can still control the land around him. And clearly he does not take kindly to people kidnapping his wife.

Jude decides she needs to run away before anyone catches on to her, and on her way out, she stops to inspect this cave set far away from the camp. In it, she finds THE GHOST who betrayed her like a little fucking asshole just because his buddy Dane got killed. He tells her his whole sad story. That Dane was like, his friend and ally. He even gave Dane his “true name” (which is a big real. If anyone knows a faerie’s true name, they can command them to do anything). And then somehow Locke got his true name from Dane. And was commanding Ghost to do all these terrible things. Then Locke gave him to Maddock. So Jude is like SIIGHHH God damnit okay I’m getting out of here and taking you with me. I just need to get the key from Grimsen.

She goes BACK to camp, where Oriana is waiting for her like a huge dick. And she’s all like “You’re not Taryn, are you?” But thank god she doesn’t rat her out. Jude tells her why she was masquerading as Taryn, which Oriana totally understands (everyone in their family hated Locke) and the only reason she’s here is because Maddock FAERIE CHLOROFORMED HER.

Oriana agrees to write Vivi to come get Jude if Jude agrees to leave and never fucking come back to Faerie. Jude, being a lying liar, is like “yeah! Totes!”

So Jude goes to bed and plans on waking up before dawn and stealing the key from Grimsen to grab the Ghost and run. But she gets a hand thrown over her mouth in her sleep and elbows her assailant hard. Before she can STAB THEM, the Roach is laughing his ass off like “Jude, come on. It’s us.” And I nearly screamed and fell off the treadmill when she realizes that it’s CARDAN who has his hand over her mouth.

YAYYY!!! Cardan needs more screen time. I was so sad when Jude got kidnapped like god damnit. The high king is there in regular-people clothes. No crown. No gold eyeliner. He tells her that he knew where she was because he went to visit Vivi in the human world, which Jude cannot even picture and neither than I.

She’s like “Wtf did he even WEAR?” She tries to picture him sitting on their beat up couch next to Oak’s half eaten Lucky Charms. So apparently Vivi, Taryn, AND HEATHER are waiting for them in the forest. They bullied their way into the rescue operation by refusing to tell the high king where Jude was unless they could come.

Jude, difficult as usual, is like “Neat. You can’t rescue me yet. I need to free the Ghost from his torture cave first.”

Cardan is like “Can you FOR ONCE just let someone RESCUE you without being DIFFICULT?”

She’s like “No. Help me get this key from Grimsen.”

And he says “Okay.” (Whispers: “I love you so much”)

So the Roach, Jude, and Cardan sneak into Grimsen’s forge to get the key. Jude totally doesn’t notice how good Cardan is at sneaking around, nor how good he looks in those pants.

Before they left, the Roach told Cardan he could come on the dangerous mission if he promised to leave if they got discovered. Cardan is like Oh my god FIIIINE why does everyone make me promise thiiiings. Stupid fucking promise magic.

He also made a promise to Jude that if she returned with him to Elfhame, and told him what she needs to tell him, he’ll un-exile her. So Jude is like HOT DAMN YES.

They break into the forge, get the key, and immediately trip a booby trap. Some darts fly out of the wall and Cardan instinctively protects Jude with his cloak that is basically bulletproof. They look at each other as if they’re surprised at this, because they are having a little fight where they can’t figure out who betrayed who, if at all. GOD THESE KIDS ARE SO STUPID I LOVE THEM.

Well the romantic moment gets ruined because the Roach is down with a dart. Cardan carries him and Jude is like “BRB I GOTTA TELL MY SISTERS TO LEAVE or they’ll get caught” (The knights are scrambling now in response to the alarm). Cardan, who is honor-bound to return to Elfhame is like “Fine. Fuck. Fine. Damnit.” And leaves his woman, who totally does NOT go to her sisters, but runs to the cave to get Locke. AND IN THE CAVE, SHE FINDS MADDOCK WAITING FOR HER.

She’s like “When did you figure out it was me?” and he says “Later than I would have liked.” — apparently it was the way she looked at the BOATS on the MAP in his tent that tipped him off, which is kind of a slight to Taryn more than anything lol

Jude refuses to surrender, and knowing all she has is a dagger, she runs off into the snowy woods and does a halfway decent job of defending herself, but ultimately gets stabbed in the stomach. Maddock is kind of surprised at this too, and he even seems like he’s going to spare her life until an ARROW flies out of nowhere and into his chest. Vivi, Taryn, and GRIMA MOG (not Heather) show up and threaten him. So they let him retreat back to his army.

Jude is like “Ya’ll I don’t feel so good.” And collapses, asking Taryn to stitch her side. While she’s on the ground, she remembers that she is a queen and tries to heal herself with the land… however one does that… but it totally works because it heals up enough. And when she stands up there are flowers everywhere, because that’s a fun side effect of being royal.

Maddock said he sent the Ghost after Cardan, so Jude leaves Grima Mog to protect her sisters and rushes off to the palace to stop “Garret” (his real name!) before he can kill Cardon.

She climbs up in the rafters, which is the Ghost’s favorite killing place, and is watching Cardan and everyone below when the Bomb climbs up in the rafters too, and AIMS AT JUDE. Jude realizes that Maddock tricked her, and sent her there to look like SHE is the one trying to kill Cardan. So she dodges the Bomb’s arrow and FALLS straight onto the banquet table.

There’s this cute part where Jude croaks “I lost your cloak.”

And Cardan is like “You’re a fucking filthy mortal liar.” In front of everyone, which stings. Jude thinks he believes she was trying to assassinate him too. We all know it’s cause he’s pissed she keeps putting herself in danger after promising she won’t.

The court is demanding her death, because they love dinner and a show, and Cardan says “DON’T TOUCH HER. That’s my wife.”

Jude passes out. Wakes up in Cardan’s bed with him being super sweet and tending to her. Passes out some more. Wakes up naked and gross so she takes a bath. Sees her sisters, who are super happy she is alive (I love the sisters, even stupid Taryn).

After they leave, Cardan arrives, which is sweet. Then the Bomb shows up with a medical tray, and says to him “you should leave.”

And he’s like “I’m not leaving. This is my room. And she is MY wife!”

Bomb: “I know, you keep telling EVERYONE. But I need to take our her stitches and you probably don’t want to see that.”

Jude goes “Maybe he wants to stay and watch me scream.”

And Cardan says “Maybe I do. Maybe one day you’ll do that for me.” And touches her head and LEAVES. AHHHHHH!!!!!

Jude gets her stitches out. Later, Cardan comes to fetch her because the Living Council wants to talk to her. But they take a detour to the rose garden for these two stupid idiots to work out their issues. Jude is like “I’M STILL PISSED THAT YOU EXILED ME.”

Cardan: “I wrote you letters?? Every day?? The contents of which were BEGGING YOU TO COME HOME. Also? I very explicitly said that you were banished until pardoned by the crown. You are also the crown. You could have pardoned yourself and come back any time you wanted.”

Jude slaps him lol. Smears his cute gold shit he wears around his cheekbones.

SHE IS PISSED. And again. They are so dumb. But I love them.

Cardan explains that he never thought she was capable of breaking? Or being sad? Or being defeated? In his eyes she’s like this immortal warrior demon that he wants to make love to all day. So he thought he was proposing a fun riddle for her to work out. Like Jude would show up any day now like “Hah! Good trick to make Orla think you were an ally. Let’s conquer the world, babe.” — instead Jude fell into a DEEP depression and ate fish sticks for a few months, all the while Cardan’s shitty MOM was keeping his letters from reaching her.

Jude feels embarrassed and foolish and in typical Jude fashion, does not handle this well.

She goes off on a tangent about how she’s not an immortal warrior demon, she’s SCARED all the time. Scared of this world and of powerlessness and of CARDAN. It’s a cute exchange and sweet things are said, but none of which are explicit. Will you idiots shut up and kiss already??? GAWD.

Jude goes and talks to Lady Asha who is languishing in her bed over the trauma of watching HER fall off the rafters. Jude basically hears this woman talk shit about her son who “was difficult to love” and sasses her something fierce, then leaves.

A knight comes and finds Jude and tells her that Nicasia is in the throne room with a bunch of soldiers. When Jude gets there, Cardan is holding her hand and speaking closely with her (OH SNAP) - but nothing weird is going on. They’re just friends and he’s comforting her because MADDOCK SHOT HER MOM WITH SOME KIND OF MAGIC BULLET. And she’s not dead but is in a coma. So Nicasia has to leave and make sure no one tries to unthrone her mom.

Jude puts two and two together that it was the Ghost that probably shot the sea queen. He’s out there running around being all crazy under Maddock’s control. Jude is interrupted from her council meeting by a messenger saying Taryn needs to meet with her immediately in Hallow Hall (which is weird).

So she gets up to leave but Cardan is like “I’ll come too.” and he looks at her so innocently (but also knowing this annoys her) and off they go TOGETHER in a carriage. There, they find Taryn in Balekin’s gross dungeon with the GHOST who she has trapped in a hole. He tells them it was HE who shot Orla, and we also learn the Ghost’s true name (Larkin Gorm Garrett).

The Ghost tries to kill Cardan, but Taryn uses his name to say “Hey, cut it out. You’re free of any previous orders.” and he’s just like “AUGH THANK GOD.” – Jude hands the Ghost aka Garrett over to the Bomb’s custody, and on the carriage ride back, Cardan is being adorable and asking Taryn about the human world. She tells him about slushies and gummy bears. You know, basic human stuff.

Cardan escorts the Ghost to the Bomb, but never comes to bed that night. Which makes Jude sad.

The next day, Randalin bursts in on Jude, and is like “Your dad is such a dick! And he’s being a dick because you’re the queen. Step down and make this easier on all of us.”

And Jude says “No, fuck you.”

And Cardan comes in and in the most elegant, royal way possible, drags his advisor into another room to threaten his life for insulting Jude. It’s very cute.

But Ranndal makes a good point. The lower courts are starting to assemble at the palace because word on the street is that Maddock is going to challenge Cardan to a duel for the crown, and they are either here to show their support or usher in a new king. It’s all very shaky right now.

But in true Faerie fashion, they’re like “Let’s throw a party to celebrate everyone coming into town!”

Jude wears a gold dress with like… battle-esque looking leather shoulder pads and chain-mail lookin accents. She looks like a badass, and this is made even better when Cardan gives a toast at the party that is like “Welcome everyone. To you I offer my honey and wine and to any traitors or oath breakers, I offer you my queen’s hospitality instead. The hospitality of knives.” and everyone is like hahahaha cheers (Jude included)-- meanwhile she’s sipping her cup like “Hah yes it’s true, I will murder you all without batting a eyelash.”

Heather and Vivi are also there with Oak and having a good time considering they have some stupid deal where when they go back to the human world, they’re going to break up and Vivi will erase Heather’s memory. It’s even sadder because Heather seems to be regretting it and Vivi seems to be all about it. Jude is like… when I’m done with this whole “murdering my cat dad before he can murder my king husband” thing, this is next on the list.

OKAY.

OKAY….

So like… after the party…

Jude and Cardan go back to their bedroom, and this is the cutest fucking scene. They start making out and it’s getting super steamy up in there– Cardan picks her up against the wall, and the second she shows any sort of hesitation, he’s like “Okay we don’t have to.” (So sweet) But Jude is like no no, I’m cool. One sec. And she steps into her closet to compose herself, because she hates how inexperienced she is and how he’s an expert.

So this badass bitch gets completely naked, and steps out of the closet just to see the look on his face. Then she kneels and asks if this is what he imagined she’d be like when he thought about her obsessively in Hallow Hall. He’s like um yes. Exactly this. But with more groveling.

“So what did I do?” she asks.

“I imagined you telling me to do with you whatever I liked.” - he says, kind of mortified and scared of her. Like this is such a cute vulnerable moment from him where she has his heart in the palm of her hand. And yay Jude for discovering her sexy self, which like every other personality trait of hers, is also terrifying. Cardan’s into it though. And they have very sexy sex on the floor, which is fucking adorable and sweet and I love it so much, and I also know this means something TERRIBLE is about to happen.

(This was in Chapter 21 by the way!)

In Chapter 22, Maddock finally shows up. He wants to come parlay as per traditional fru fru tradition. The Bomb is like “How about this? How about I shoot him with an arrow?” and Cardan’s like “Nah, I’m not a coward. But I’m not going to duel him either.” – So everyone is just hanging out gathering for this like spectators. Even Vivi, Heather, and Oak who REALLY shouldn’t be there and I’m surprised everyone is okay with this. While they’re getting ready to have the parlay, Jude and Cardan have a little moment.

Before they go out there, Cardan comes out and says that he LOVES HER, and walks away all cool before she can reply, which drives her nuts. Jude realizes she’s loved him for a long time. She loved him before they got married. AUGH so SWEET.

Maddock comes in there like “Duel me. Lookit my big sword made by this master smith. I’ll even let you use it.”

Cardan’s like “I’m not going to fucking duel you, dude. And you better put that fucking sword down in my throne room, kay thanks.”

“Want me to put it down? Okay.” And he DRIVES the sword into the ground, which causes an earthquake so strong it makes the throne cut in half. Like this hundnreddsss year old throne that Cardan’s family has been protecting for generations, just destroyed. God Maddock is an ASSHAT.

Then Maddock starts spewing his shit like “Do you think your people actually care about you? Like your stupid murdered family ever cared about you? The only reason you accepted the crown was because you so desperately wanted to be accepted by your family. Your subjects don’t even like you. My army is super loyal. You suck. DUEL ME OR I KILL THE SEA QUEEN with my magic bullet that moves if I tell it to.”

Cardan has this interesting introspective moment and says “A king is not his crown. You’re right that loyalty or love shouldn’t be forced. But Elfhame shouldn’t be won or lost on a wager, either. You fuckin weird bloodthirsty old man.”

Cardan CRACKS THE BLOOD CROWN IN HALF and is like “The people shouldn’t swear loyalty to a crown. They should support the king they want to support. Your choice is your own.”

And boom, democracy is born in Elfhaim.

The folk are bowing their heads and nodding, totally on board the Cardan train. But then Grimsen interrupts everything by FREAKING OUT about his precious crown and how upset he is that it’s broken.

Jude remembers that everything Grimsen makes is cursed, just as Cardan’s eyes turn black, and the roses over the throne turn black, and his eyes start fucking BLEEDING BLACK and before she knows it, her adoring husband from the night before TURNS INTO A GIANT FUCKING BLACK SNAKE!!!!! *Pterodactyl scream* NNOOOOOOOO!!!!!

Grimsen says “It will poison the land. No true love’s kiss will stop it. No riddle will fix it. Only death.”

Maddock jumps on the opportunity and wants to kill the snake. Jude is like the FUCK you will. Her army seizes Maddock and his little posse. Snake Cardan bites and kills Grimsen, which kind of solidifies that his brain isn’t in there, because Cardan is very much against murdering people. It’s just pure chaos up in the throne room. There’s a cute part where Oak tries to save his mother with a little toy sword. Everyone runs away and the snake gets stabbed a little by Maddock but is okay, and it curls around the throne as Jude is dragged out the room.

Babygirl has herself a much-deserved panic attack. Grima Mog is like “Get a hold of yourself” and Jude says “I fucking will. I’m going to stand up. I’m going to be okay in a minute.” Grima is like “I know you will be.”

I like Grima Mog. I like her even though she’s like a bloodthirsty cannibal. What is it with this book and making me really like murderers?????

Alright so Jude immediately swings into badass bitch mode. Calls the Bomb. Tells her to go get intel on who out there is plotting her assassination and who is vying for the crown. She says not to ask questions. Murder anyone who looks like they’re trying to murder her. The Bomb is like yep. Roger that. Calls her sister in. Tells Taryn she’s good at decorating things (like Locke’s house of debauchery). Asks her to make up a room to act as a throne room where she can talk to people and be scary and intimidating. Taryn is like yep. On it. She tells Grima Mog she is the new army general, because she doesn’t like the guy Cardan chose.

Jude gets all set up in her makeshift throne room since the real one is currently being guarded by a huge fucking snake. She sees the Living Council in there and starts planning on what to do about Maddock and his stupid fucking army and all of the courts that are currently splintering off trying to figure out who to be loyal to. She calls in Baphen and tells him to consult the stars for a way to cure Cardan. The Living Council is like “we should just kill the snake” and Jude is like “We’re not fucking killing the snake. Focus on Maddock.” So they talk that out and rally the troops.

Eventually the snake gets out lol it gets through the crack in the floor, and then runs around the land for a little bit doing snake stuff.

Wherever it touches rots and turns black. And people have gotten it in their heads that whoever slays the snake gets to be king, so it keeps getting attacked and killing indiscriminately. But eventually, it comes BACK because apparently the throne room is its den now. It curls around the broken throne and it’s snowing in there. The weather outside is also nuts and thunderstormy and hailing.

After her meeting, Jude enters the throne room and tries her hand at talking to the snake. She tries to see if there’s any recognition in its golden eyes, but there doesn’t seem to be. She tries to call on the land to heal him, but nothing happens. There’s a sweet part where she says out loud “Take my crown. Take my power. Take whatever you need, just heal him. Please.” — and even though the land or magic doesn’t answer her, I hope somewhere in there, Cardan heard her.

Okay so the prophecy said… that if Cardan ever came into the crown, the throne and the crown would be destroyed. But the prophecy also said that only if his blood is spilled, would a truly perfect leader emerge. I THINK this means that Jude is eventually going to have to slay the snake.

Jude hangs out in the snowy throne room with the snake for like HOURS until the Bomb comes. The snake has gotten used to Jude’s presence and doesn’t seem to want to attack her, so that’s something. It’s still impossible to tell if Cardan is in there though. I mean it doesn’t react to his name.

Anyway the Bomb says “Hi. I killed a ton of people that were plotting against you. You wanna come out of the snake room now?” And Jude says “Okay.” Just as Grima Mog comes back with word that Maddock wants to talk.

So they move her whole complicated throne set up outside because Jude is livid and doesn’t want these people anywhere near her fucking home and her cursed husband. I don’t know if I mentioned it earlier, but the people from the Court of Teeth are weird. They’re like ice faeries and they have this little girl who is their queen, but she’s just a puppet for her parents who keep her on a literal bridle. When they get there, the bridle is gone, but her skin is all scarred from where it was. And she’s in these horrible chains that look just as painful. Maddock shows up with that lovely family and isn’t wearing any armor.

He’s like “Hey. I never wanted to kill you. I actually quite like you. You wanna strike a deal? I’ll give you this bridle so you can control your snake husband. It was made by Grimsen and gives you complete control over whoever you want to restrain. That way you can remain queen and make sure your snake stops running around rotting the earth and killing anyone who tries to pierce its apparently impervious scales.”

Jude is like “You threw a bunch of men at it and figured out it’s unstoppable, didn’t you? What are you up to?”

“Make Oak marry this tiny icy abused child and you get the bridle.” Maddock says.

AND TO MY SHOCK AND HORROR, Jude is like “Okay.” — well she agrees to accepting the bridle on the terms that the war should be put on hold and it’s better for everyone if there isn’t a deadly toxic snake running around.

She doesn’t agree to the marriage. She agrees to have a bridling… event? Where she is going to attempt to bridle the snake, and if she wins then yay. If she fails and it kills her, then the armies are all gathered and can duke it out. She thinks Maddock is trying to rule through her the way she ruled through Cardan. Oh gosh I hope she’s up to something and not actually considering putting that thing on the snake. That night, she throws a wadded up paper into the ocean that says “If you ever loved him, help me.”

Jude and the Bomb have a sweet convo and Jude goes to try to help the Roach, who is still poisoned. When Jude sees him, she’s horrified to find that he’s not just sleeping, he’s having like… nightmares. She tries to heal him, but the earth magic won’t come. The Ghost, who is part of the gang again (yay!) tells her not to force it, just let it come. AND IT DOES! The roach is back and confesses his love to the Bomb and it’s fucking adorable.

Jude takes the bridle to that old hag lady that once tried to trick Cardan into marrying her daughter. Now she’s good I guess haha. The hag tells her that if she followed the instructions Lord Nell or whatever his name is gave her, and tied her hair around the bridle, then she would have been bound to the snake as well. Basically, it was a trick that would have trapped both Jude and snake Cardan into servitude. Thank god she found this out.

Jude also visits Heather in the library who is researching snake-themed faerie tales looking for a clue. Heather tells her that she struck a deal with Vivi that when they go back to the human world, her memories will be erased. But Vivi will have to meet her again and win back her love. But do it properly this time and be honest about the faerie shit from the get-go. And if Heather falls in love with her despite that, she’ll get all her memories back. That’s super freaking sweet I love them.

There’s like a banquet before the snake bridling.

And Jude is doing her best to be a badass queen and make speeches, but she’s so nervous. She gets through it though. Her and Nicasia have this super sweet moment (after Kaye, Roiben’s lady punches her) where Nicasia is like “I know you’re a bloodthirsty monster who is only using Cardan for his power, but please save him. I beg of you.”

And Jude actually CRIES with her and says “Tell me the riddle I must solve. Tell me what to slay. What to sacrifice. And it’s done. I’ll do anything to free him. I promise you.” And they just stand there, two enemies, crying together and realizing how much they love this poor cursed snake boi.

Taryn and Vivi find a chest with some badass silver armor made for a woman, so Jude wears that to the big “snake bridling event” that is happening out in the woods somewhere.

The snake is out. Doing it’s thing. Turning the land to shit. The armies are gathered on either side, and everyone is watching Jude and waiting to see what happens. Will she bridle the snake or will she be eaten? It’s growing bigger too, so by now, it could swallow a car.

Jude has some internal monologue… where she actually wonders if bridling him is the right thing to do. She has no idea how to break the curse. This way, Cardan wouldn’t have to die. He’d be trapped as a poisonous snake forever, but at least he’d be by her side. But she also remembers what Cardan said before he got cursed. That no one should be forced to swear their love or allegiance. That’s the kind of thing you should decide for yourself. And she remembers that Cardan said something along the lines of “I was on my way to becoming Balekin. Becoming a monster. If I ever go down that path again, I want it to be you that ends me.” — SO SHE CUTS OFF THE SNAKE’S HEAD.

HE DEAD. There is blood EVERYWHERE.

And the second she does this, fighting breaks out. It’s just a bloodbath all around while Jude is in shock. Maddock’s army gets defeated because Nicasia shows up with the sea. But instead of trying to kill Jude, Maddock comes to help her up.

He tells her “You’ve already won. Look.” And turns her around to the snake where a bright golden light has emerged. And out of it steps naked-ass Cardan covered in blood and looking regal as hell.

“Only when his blood is shed will a great ruler emerge”

BOOM. He calls for the fighting to end and Jude runs and hugs him. They hang on to each other and it’s so sweet. THE BEST REUNION.

Someone literally is like “Welcome back, King! Here, you want this cloak?”

And Cardan goes “Nah. I haven’t worn clothes in days.”

And literally rides buck ass naked in the carriage, covered in blood. HAH. Like. Yeah nudity is a thing in Faerie world but alrighty. Here we go. Cardan is back and he’s not messing around.

Everybody gets a bath. The general mood is SO HAPPY and celebratory. There’s a big ole banquet where Cardan and Jude slip away to the pretty glowing mushroom room behind the throne (which he fixed with his magic and split into 2 chairs). They finally have a moment alone, and Jude blurts out “I love you.”

He’s like “You don’t have to say that out of pity.” — which breaks my heart. That he STILL thinks she hates him so much that she seriously never will love him. And he’s CONTENT with just being with her even if it’s just for power.

But Jude launches into this awesome, fumbling speech about how she liked him ever since they went out together during the revelrie, and he helped her learn about each court and how to win them over. She says being around him is fun. And walks through their whole history together to help him understand that despite her being a cold, unfeeling monster, she loves him to pieces.

And they kiss. And it’s fucking adorable.

Jude also asks him what it was like being a snake and he says it was hella weird. He definitely had an animal brain. And was filled with fear and strife and a feral instinct to kill indiscriminately. But he says, he knew Jude. That’s why he was calm when she came and sat with him. He always knew her. (Awww!!!)

The next day they have a formal coronation. Apparently 2 people have never ruled together. It’s always a king or queen who has a bunch of consorts. But they get the ceremony where the court gets asked if they accept their king and queen, and everyone says yes because Cardan is awesome and Jude is scary. But they like scary. Then they get to give out BOONS to all of the people that were loyal or traitorous.

Grima Mog gets to keep the earth-shattering sword and continue to be general. Taryn gets cleared of all charges even though she totally fucking murdered her husband. The ice princess with the bridle scars gets freed and her parents get put in her custody. And she gives a creepy shark-toothed grin that makes Jude think maybe her parents were keeping her in chains for a reason. But that’s their problem!

Maddock gets brought in and Jude sentences him to live in the mortal world for the rest of his days, and to forget the name he knows (she’s talking about the Ghost’s name). I like that her and Maddock totally come to this agreement. He’s like “Yeah, okay I lost. You’re absolutely a badass. I hate losing but I’m also pretty proud”. I think he was really sad when he thought he killed her. So this is a better punishment than getting executed for sure. Oriana decides to go with him and Oak is excited because he loves the mortal world and now his parents are going to live there too. YAY!

I love how this book ends. It ends with Jude and Cardan flying home with Vivi and Oak to the real world. And they find Cardan some normal clothes (a tshirt over his black pants) and they have a cute little party at Vivi’s apartment.

Heather is there and puts up a sign that is like “Congrats Newlyweds!” And says “Vivi has told me some wild things about ya’ll!” Jude just hugs her. They also got them a cake with little gummy snakes sprinkled on it. And Oak takes them to pick up pizza.

Heather also got everyone paper crowns, and there’s this cute part where Cardan tilts his paper crown at an angle, like he used to wear the Blood Crown and it makes Jude laugh. The book ends with them toasting to a new future, and pizza, and friends, and Cardan says “To scheming great schemes.”

I love that this is where we leave them. In casual real world clothes wearing paper crowns and eating gummy snakes.

Boy, I loved this book. I love the world building. I love the slow burn romance. The sexy times. I love that Holly Black makes me like and cheer for this cold hard bitch Jude. I love that Cardan, who at one time was SO NOT LIKEABLE it was CRAZY became one of my favorite characters in fiction.

I loved when that heel turn happened, when he was a prisoner of the spies, and was so cute and charming. We all fell in love with him at the same time Jude did.

Then we spent 2 books watching Jude be a complete idiot and be the last one in the world to realize how much he loved her. And how much she loved him. She loved him more than power, which was her single solitary goal this whole time.

This mortal girl overtook a bunch of magical immortals and it was completely believable and fun and baffling. Damn I can see why Holly Black is so highly regarded. That was SO GOOD. I am going to need a few days to digest this.

I just keep thinking of them all happy and celebrating together over pizza and paper crowns. EEEEE!!!

Deadass Rating: 9.5/10

#cruel prince #jude x cardan #queen of nothing #folk of the air #cardan greenbriar #books & libraries #currently reading #fiction #literature #writers #the wicked king #holly black #jurdan #deadass book reviews #book reviews #book recommendations

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spotlightstudios · 2 years ago

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If I were to Post Writing stuff, what would anyone following me like to see?

I'm... not expecting to get many votes on this one, but if any of y'all want to see more of my writing, this is the chance to decide what projects I do in my freetime!

Option 1) AEB is a space/merman based AU for Sun, Moon, and Eclipse! The reader is a scientist with some terrible amnesia who's been trapped on an oceanic planet for who-knows how long. They're also a wanted criminal for a crime they don't remember, so when they're cornered, they flee into the ocean hoping rid all evidence of their existence... Only, a huge entity saves their life, and they find themselves in an underwater civilization full of political drama and an overprotective guardian keeping them trapped.

Option 2) A bard/cleric gets into some shenanigans, stealing and smuggling to make his way, but one day he's caught in the act, and it's not anything like he'd expect. It's a kinda cheesy romance about Emphryean (the Cleric/Bard/Rogue) getting caught stealing from the collection of an ex-general turned noble, Lord Kensington (a Sorcerer/Artificer), and instead of getting put in jail or whatever, they fall in love :D

Option 3) Gambit Hub is a location in a VR game in which advanced AI are removed from their own games and kept in challengable dungeons for players to meet and recieve loot from. This follows the journey of Spotlight, a mage who is just a little bit too good at escaping their dungeon, their best friend Byal, a lizard-humaoid who's an expert at parkour, and Ideation Zero, Spotlight's jailer and companion. Those three, and of course, the Player/Reader that wants to know exactly how/why these AI are so advanced. (Interactive Story, even???)

Option 4) Constant Orbit is another DCA au being worked on at @the-neon-spotlight by my friend and I. Neon says they have plans for N, but in the meantime I'm writing some non-canon drabbles for N and DJMM!

Option 5) The Tower is literally just a self-indulgent OC×Reader thing that follows closely the story of The Arcana. You're an apprentice magician, but you find yourself sent away by your master to find supplies. It's the first time he's sent you on your own, and you're confident you can make it... that is, until you're lost in the woods. Luckily, you stumble across a traveling salesman in a clearing. They offer you food, shelter for the night, and save you from the beasts lurking in the dark. Maybe they can help you to your destination?

Anywho... happy voting! Hopefully I'll be working on some of these regardless, but this should motivate me hehe.

#light's spot #poll #writing

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thestupidhelmet · 2 years ago

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I posted 508 times in 2022

106 posts created (21%)

402 posts reblogged (79%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@that70sshowgoldencouple

@those70scomics

@thatseventiesbitch

@everysingleoutfit

@einsteinsugly

I tagged 508 of my posts in 2022

#that 70s show - 496 posts

#jackie and hyde - 109 posts

#that '70s show - 104 posts

#ask - 93 posts

#anon - 83 posts

#that70sshowgoldencouple - 80 posts

#red and kitty - 79 posts

#meta - 78 posts

#essay - 76 posts

#my meta - 75 posts

Longest Tag: 78 characters

#my feelings about that '90s show should be clear to people who follow my blog

My Top Posts in 2022:

i dont know if this has been asked but do you know when did Jackie started calling Hyde Steven? Also I noticed she calls him Steven during the prom episode and then reverts back to Hyde, so any headcanon of her switching from Steven to Hyde and vv?

Jackie starts calling Hyde Steven consistently in "Moon Over Point Place" (2x26), after he takes her under his wing in "Cat Fight Club" (2x25) and teaches her how to protect herself by revealing his own self-protection mechanism (and, thus, makes himself vulnerable to her). He also invites her to become part of the circle in that episode. In "Cat Fight Club," Jackie still calls Hyde Hyde.

Jackie clearly begins to idolize Hyde because of his respect and overall treatment of her in "Cat Fight Club". She's eager for his attention in "Moon Over Point Place". Her interest in him isn't romantic (yet). She's hungry for more of the platonic-intimate interactions she had with him in the previous episode. He treats her differently than most guys, most people, she's ever known -- as if her life and (emotional) safety have value.

She seems surprised people (or men) like him exist, people who'd put their own safety aside for someone else, push against long-established friendships to include her in the group, choose protecting a vulnerable acquaintance (her) who disrespected him repeatedly over loyalty to a childhood friend (Kelso) who betrayed her.

So her switch from calling Hyde by his last name to his first is indicative of the closeness and trust she feels for him. One of her lines from the circle scene in "Moon Over Point Place" demonstrates her thoughts and feelings about him: "You know, Steven and I tease each other. That’s what best friends do!"

She thinks of herself and Hyde as best friends. Again, platonic. In school, she's surrounded herself with people who'd betray her in an instant (and probably have). People she's likely betrayed herself. Loyalty, sympathy, and comfort in her social circle are foreign concepts.

Then Hyde puts his physical safety, his future, on the line for her by going to jail in her stead. That act multiplies her gratitude toward and idolization of him a hundred-fold. She confuses those feelings for romantic love (it's a common occurrence in people, kids, teens, and adults) and grows possessive and obsessive over him.

This isn't to say a seed of romantic love for him isn't planted in her during this time, but Hyde is the one who comes away from their S2-S3 arc with genuine and flourishing (yet unrequited) romantic feelings for Jackie.

37 notes - Posted June 25, 2022

To the anon who just sent me an ask about That ‘90s Show --

I just wanted some mention that Jackie and Hyde are together.

Same. I don’t need to see them on-screen. I want Jackie and Hyde’s prime timeline to be repaired (it was broken by season 8, and That ‘90s Show doesn’t repair it).

‘Tis not to be on-screen. Fanfic and other fanworks have sustained us since season 8 of T7S, and they’ll clearly have to sustain us ‘til the end of time. 😂

40 notes - Posted September 28, 2022

i just saw a spoiler for T9S of MK's scene and it's her getting remarried to Kelso 🤢 and getting slutshamed by Kitty? You can still see how badly the authors hate Jackie if they're not only keeping her in an unhappy marriage but letting her short screen time be one where she gets slut shamed by Kitty. How is this still the show's humour?

Jackie's a vessel for the writers' misogyny and misogynistic humor, clearly, not the nuanced character she's depicted as during S1-S7 of T7S. 🤦 🤷

43 notes - Posted November 20, 2022

That '70s Show copyright The Carsey-Werner Company, LLC and Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, LLC.

51 notes - Posted April 17, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Seems like everyone outside of Tumblr is excited about That 90s Show but everyone on Tumblr hates even the idea of it. Why is that?

I can't speak for anyone but myself, but I think others might feel similarly. Season 8 of That '70s Show caused a lot of pain for those of us who care about fidelity to the show's characters and their previous seven years of development. Season 8's depiction of the characters veered so far from S1-S7's depiction as to make the characters unrecognizable. The disrespect of Jackie from beginning to end is particularly egregious.

Similarly, the premise of That '90s Show makes little to no in-character sense. Eric and Donna having a child that old in the mid-nineties breaks the fictional dream. Jackie and Kelso being married, divorced, and getting remarried makes no sense either, considering who those characters are and their growth arcs during season 1-7 of That '70s Show (minus the cliffhanger that was hastily written to accommodate the newly greenlit season 8. In the originally-written series finale, Hyde supposedly goes to the motel and proposes to Jackie).

That '90s Show is clearly -- in the words David Trainer (T7S's series director) used to describe season 8 of T7S -- an alternate universe, one of many possible futures for the characters. It's not the canon future, which would've seen Jackie and Hyde married, Eric and Donna having a much younger child, and Kelso raising teenage Betsy (and six other daughters, lol) with Brooke.

In social media spaces outside of Tumblr, the That '70s Show message board at fanforum.com, Fanfiction.net, AO3, and parts of twitter, fans appear to have a more casual attitude toward That '70s Show and TV shows in general. Fidelity to characters and their storylines isn't as important as the laugh and seeing beloved characters onscreen again, despite that those characters don't internally resemble those they actually enjoyed watching on T7S. The characters have the same names and faces, are interacting on the same set, and those external factors are enough for a lot of people.

Red and Kitty might be the only canon (or canon-adjacent) part of T9S. But with the rest of the characters' lives being so off-model (a term used in animation to describe when a character isn't drawn properly [e.g., Bart Simpson's hair having twelve spikes instead of the standard nine]), I can't view this show as anything but an AU fanfiction onscreen.

T7S was an important show to me when it originally aired. Season 8 was horrible to experience. I lurked on fanforum.com's T7S spoiler board to learn if Jackie and Hyde would eventually reconcile. I learned there about the letter-writing campaign asking the producers to put Jackie and Hyde back together by the end of the series. Hundreds of letters were put into a packet a fan brought to a S8 taping. She was told by a producer that Jackie and Hyde were definitively over.

Unlike The Office, whose actors and writers paid great attention to its online fanbase and altered course when the show’s most ardent supporters said, “This storyline is on the verge of destroying X,” T7S’s writers and producers never tuned into what the show’s most ardent fans actually cared about and came back week-after-week to watch. They went by the typical TV series playbook: celebrity guest stars, setup-punchline.

With Eric’s absence, season 8 should have focused on Jackie and Hyde’s relationship, the show’s biggest draw after Eric. The online fandom during the show’s original airing was massively focused on J/H. People who went to the S8 tapings were, too. They booed whenever Samantha’s character came onstage, and they were told to stop on threat of being kicked out.

Once I learned that J/H weren’t going to reconcile, that's when I quit watching T7S. I watched the series finale because I'd learned from the spoilers board that Eric and Donna would reunite. That was some consolation. Then I didn't watch the show for three years because of the S8 showrunners' utter disrespect, misunderstanding, and mishandling of characters. For me, T7S show ends when Hyde says, "No, I've decided [to marry Jackie]," to Eric. This is the last vestige of the show's original ending.

T7S and T9S's higher-ups (save Debra Jo Rupp and Kurtwood Smith) don’t care about fidelity to character. They care about money and the number of viewers (which equals money). This became clear toward the end of S5 of T7S, but it wasn't all-or-nothing (until S8). With T9S, it is. Jackie and Kelso’s romantic pairing is the epitome of this. It makes no character sense, but it makes financial sense because their portrayers got married. Buzz! Media hype! But actors ≠ the roles they play.

I'm sure plenty of people will enjoy That ‘90s Show. Red/Kitty fans and Eric/Donna fans will get to see their favorite couples together again and know that they are still together fifteen years after the time of T7S. Many of us on tumblr (and elsewhere), though, are yet again being deprived of Jackie and Hyde’s happy future. Season 8 destroyed it once. That ‘90s Show had the opportunity to repair the damage (to both the fans and the characters). Hyde never had to be seen. Jackie and other characters could’ve simply talked about him.

Unfortunately, putting Jackie and Hyde together again probably would’ve brought negative media attention because of real-life circumstances. Putting Jackie and Kelso together brings mostly positive media attention, makes casual fans happy / gives them a laugh, and hurts “only” a contingent of the show’s most passionate fans.

It’s a smart, real-world move based on real-world considerations. It’s also one that does not depict the actual future of canon!Jackie and canon!Hyde. Season 8 of T7S didn’t depict that, either. And so their real (fictional) future is, as ever, left up to their fans to write.

If Jackie and Hyde had been put back together in T9S, however, and written to have -- say -- a fourteen-year-old kid, I’d probably give the show a chance. Even though J/H having a kid that old in the mid-nineties is totally OOC and ridiculous, as least my OTP of OTPs would be together onscreen (in some fashion) and “official” (even if the details of it aren’t quite canon).

I think the above is one reason why many people are excited about T9S and can ignore its 99.99% OOC foundation (i.e. Eric and Donna having a fifteen-year-old kid in 1995): their favorite couples are together and will be seen onscreen again (Kitty/Red, Eric/Donna, Jackie/Kelso). Another reason is a lot of people simply don’t care about character/story consistency or in-universe cohesion.

62 notes - Posted June 10, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review #Special

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emilreloaded · 2 years ago

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i miss when The Doctor was just a high school dropout who stole a decommissioned police car while everyone else was distracted with graduation day and decided "I'm gonna drive this baby to the MOON" and then drove all over Space Europe before eventually getting caught and sent to space jail (Earth) and then their sentence was commuted to community service after stopping the space terrorists who broke in because space jail is built atop a space uranium deposit and then the space police try to make them the commissioner but they fuck it up so bad the space cops immediately kick them out again and say "yeah you can keep the car but we reinstalled the LoJack and a radio so sometimes you have to do jobs for us" and then that's just the show until like 2008.

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a-regular-ol-pill · 2 years ago

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Sealed god reader

A child was originally going to get sacrificed to the remnants of a god, so the said god which is us will be revived. They survived and somehow ‘killed’ the remnants of us and got our powers. Yeah they lived and somehow got our powers and the people decided, hey, why not train them to be a God and degrade them for just being a child. Meanwhile, out of pure will to live or clinging to our last bit of reality we now secretly live in t this kid, feeding into their emotions which is alot btw. We relate to them being abandoned and having no one to care for. Our loved ones leaving or dying, yeah those are some similarities. We observe them getting mistreated being furious at those insects for hurting our ‘vessel’ and making sure we have enough strength to end them. We decided that it’s time to talk to them and end these assholes. In the end, We managed to convince them to escape and we’ll deal with the insects. We erased the memory of us killing literally everyone for the little innocence they left. We escaped, but they only remember the getting out part and stealing very important stuff to live off. They don’t know what happened to their abusers. We reassured them they wouldn’t hurt them anymore, unknowingly to the child we had kind of killed them. We planned to leave them but realized we both die if we separate since we’re kinda apart of them now. Which at first we’re mad at then we both have nowhere to go not knowing how much has changed in the world or how it works for the child’s part. We wander with them and became deeply attached to the child, and the fact they don’t blame us for their suffering which we are kinda root of which makes us more guilty and protective.

God Reader protecting our child is something so precious I will forever keep this in my heart.

Wandering the moon elf forest and running into Karina who had heard of the massacre and blames our child— meanwhile reader is listening to her monologue about how our child is a murderer and should be sent to jail. Reader comes out of child's body and threaten the dark elf. That if she ever touches an atom from the child, reader will kill her themselves. Hwisnskd

#brainrot #gremlin child #you have a tag for yourself now :D

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tezzbot · 3 years ago

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can we ask what the rebellion au is about? :U im very curious abt it

u can have this smile

jk lol This is gonna be a long one and im just copy pasting it from a group chat so sorry if anything repeats or its clunky and messy in places :P

okay SO

evil queen celestia for this one, rules with an iron hoof, super corrupt and all that ponies in like the upper class mostly those who live in cities are clueless to this like ahhh our beloved majestic queen can do no wrong she is so loving and poggers<333 while regular on the street lower class ponies are struggling to live theyre being like run dry but no one really has any power at all to do anything about it. no one but princess luna. luna had spent her whole life looking up to her sister in the same way the upper class citizens have but one day her eyes were opened to the squalor and shit that ponies outside of those spheres had to endure and she was outraged. she tried to talk to celestia about it convince her to do something, to Change something! help the poor ponies who were suffering below! but celestia shut her down quickly. so luna, faced with no other choice, began to sneak out under the cover of her dark nights, get to know the common folk, and eventually begin to light the spark of rebellion within them. eventually gaining enough support cobbling together a sort of army of her own and with her at the head a war starts between celestia and luna

flash forward however many years maybe hundreds idk i haven't decided lol maybe like however many moons bc moons are ambiguous lol, but throughout equestria its become unsafe to just Live bc. uknow. theres a fuckin war on. the ponies that live in richer areas are safer, places like canterlot and manehattan are still under celestia's rule and are 'protected' and 'kept safe' under her while everywhere else is dangerous to be, these heavily fortified places are Rife with anti-luna propaganda, to the point where shes only known as nightmare moon and they believe The Princess Was Stolen From Us By A Curse Or Whatever That Turned Her Into A Beast!!! lol

celestia has made life miserable for towns and lower class areas, the places are patrolled by her soldiers and Anyone who shows even a glint of disliking the queen theyre punished or hauled off to jail so luna's ranks wont continue to grow

to combat this, hidden villages im calling 'forts' start popping up where ponies can go to hide and live in relative freedom, places where ponies can be recruited into luna's ranks, or sent back to if theyre wounded and unable to keep up the fight

the mane 6 (except twilight) live in the Sweet Apple Fort, founded by the apple family hidden just on the edge of the everfree forest, its set up right by where ponyville would be, applejack and big mac run the place, dash is the head of the guard, pinkie works under her as one of the scouts to keep eyes on perimeter, fluttershy and rarity work in the infirmary, rarity as a surgeon and fluttershy as a nurse, they take in anyone whos running from celestias forces (ive also for some reason got it in my head thats theres an illness running rampant and fluttershy along w the other nurses are overworked from having to take care of any ponies that catch it while also working for a cure, zecora is the head nurse of sweet apple) also trixie and flim and flam are wandering traders they all know the routes of where all the forts are, they trade goods and also information from place to place, for the right price of course..

twilight at the start of the au lives in fortified canterlot with her parents and spike, shes studying in the hopes to become a high ranking scholar under the queen, and celestia definitely keeps her eye on twilights work/progress

the main base of luna's operation is cloudsdale, a lot of the pegasi fled and left the place pretty much abandoned when the war began, but luna managed to take it over right from under her sisters nose and a lot of pegasi returned to help with the rebellion effort, parts of it have been magically altered to allow non winged ponies to get around the important areas up there (uknow like the runway on the race track in the time travel episode that spike was able to stand on its that lol) many pegasi stayed on the ground to keep supporting the forts that took them in though, hence why dash is still on the ground lol

the crystal empire has been completely cut off from the rest of equestria, the amount of refugees fleeing there to escape the war was getting too much for the kingdom to handle so empress cadence reluctantly was forced to shut it off (but dw her and shining do end up together in a side plot me and a friend hav just come up with >:])

because luna and celestia raise the sun and moon, luna has taken to using having the moon out as a sort of like? calling card i guess? that the rebellion is like on the rise like a We're Winning Kind Of!!! thing to let all of equestria know but celestia twists the meaning of it and uses it against her, like i said the cities are Full of anti-luna propaganda and because when luna is winning she makes it night/brings the moon out, celestia tells her citizens that luna wants to bring about an endless night, and thats sort of how the nightmare moon image comes about

the scenario in my head for the first "scene" i guess goes smth like twilight and spike are out late like at a market and theres a security breach, since canterlot is fortified any unauthorised entry causes the city to go into a tiered lockdown so say the exterior wall is breached, theres like 2 layers of walls and the castle that get shut down, and the market that twilights in is p much on the furthest exterior section so she ends up getting shut out and shes like !!!! UHHH!!! but just as shes like LET ME IN PLEASE PLEASE PLE and sees a form overhead, she sees wings, she sees a horn, what alicorn would need to be sneaking around.. oh shit. thats Nightmare Moon. they make Sudden eye contact and twilight and spike are like AAAAA and BOLT in the opposite direction Away from and out of canterlot

from there i think twilight thinks canterlot is under attack so shes like aw fuck i dont think we can go back there for now lets try and make our way to manehattan but they get completely turned around and end up in the everfree where theyre found by a sweet apple scout(pinkie) and brought back to the fort

if youve made it this far thank u sm have some image lol

twilights discovered in rhe everfree by pinkie, i think i might give her a necklace or smth that shows shes like. allied with the queen?? and pinkies like uhhhmmm okay come with me ^_^ and twilights taken to the fort and straight to rd and shes like i dont have Time for every random pony who wanders in pinkie! and pp is like mm. Looks at the sun thing and dash is like. oh. hm.. come with me... and takes her to aj and aj is like well hi what can i do ya for stranger :) and dash is like uhh boss... Looks at the sun thing and aj is like oh. and twilights like Can Somepony Please Tell Me Whats Going On Im Very Tired My Leg Is In Pain (she broke it lol) and Im Very Far Away From Home Please Please Pl and aj is like. Okay. (thank god she doesnt know what/where this is) UHHH Dash! can you take our guest to the infirmary get her leg looked at and give her and her. uh. lizard? a place to lay down for a while <:) n dash is like. for real? and aj whispers (just until i figure out what to do with her....) n dash is like okay Fine

twilights stuck at the fort for a while cus she broke her leg in the everfree like a dumbass and has to heal so she has to just sit there like haha im surrounded by nightmare moons forces Thats Fun but then realises that. none of these ponies r under an evil spell or anything theyre all just trying to survive.. :( and then she meets luna and shits it a bit until luna is like... wait i recognise you... and she apologises for scaring her and spike and getting her into this mess etc and twilights like oh. this is. shes just a pony and nightmare moon really is just a lie made up by big celestia lol

twi at first once that scene up top happens is like bro we Have to leave and spike is like. your leg is BROKEN we're staying here until its fixed and.. idk these ponies dont Seem to be under any spell... n eventually twilights like FINE fine but as Soon as my legs fixed we are getting directions to manehattan and fucking Right Off but then yeah eventually shes like oh okay being here is fine actually fuck celestia

aaanndd i Think thats all i have so far?

NO WAIT THE CMCS

because aj and big mac run the whole operation they probably go into protection overdrive over applebloom but since shes like entering her teen years its getting harder and harder to keep her safe bc she just wants more independence but they r so scared of losing her :( but she just thinks theyre treating her like a baby and that they dont trust her with anything so she keeps sneaking out and around to try and help out so she feels useful theres a whole big dramatic thing about it where her and aj are yelling at each other and its like "I AINT NO MORE IMPORTANT THAN ANYPONY ELSE IN THIS FORT!!" "WELL YA ARE TO US OKAY?" kinda soap opera bullshit uknow you knooow

anyway its on one of appleblooms little outings that she finds and brings in Scootaloo who was wandering all alone, once shes in the fort they found out she was actually really good at figuring out ways of fixing things so they let her be just a full mechanic around the place (applebloom is mad about it lol but theyre still besties <3) whenever scoot has downtime she goes and talks dash's ear off and in this au dash is kind of a hardass bc shes head of the guard in the fort n stuff but w enough chat annoyance eventually becomes endearment Eventually and they do become sister figures :]

dearest sweetie belle... shes kinda fucked in the head lmaoo, bc rarity is a surgeon and she doesnt like to leave her side she basically grew up surrounded by like. ponies that have been Through Shit and she just is around gruesome stuff All the time so shes a bit kooky but shes entertaining for the injured soldiers n stuff

this basically sums her up lol

also aj and dash are married Get mad about itt lol

if you read all that im Kissing you on the mouth thank you so much lol, im drawing more stuff for this au as we speak so, keep an eye out for that :P

#mlp #mlp au #rebellion au #mlp twilight sparkle #mlp applejack #mlp rainbow dash #mlp pinkie pie #mlp rarity #mlp fluttershy #mydoodles #prays that this post doesnt fuck up praaayys so hard and good

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