#I showed her some of the stuff on the backup board i have for it and she specifically gushed over one of them

[moonlight-at-dawn]

😊 I love the little things that brighten a person's day. Their happiness makes ME happy. I love the simple and contagious joy that is giving~

[wafflebloggies]

Interlude

People said, music came from the soul. A melody in the right hands could disclose the secrets of a musician’s heart.

The Captain’s keytar wailed, the sound at once melancholy, petulant, and honestly kind of annoying. In the red room, in the usual corner, he sat keeled over to the side like an abandoned couch cushion, extemporizing a piece that might have been titled Variations on a Snit in B Minor.

It was unfortunate that the keytar, although naturally the super-epic stadium rockstar of the chordophone family, couldn’t exactly pull off the gravitas of its more sensible, more grounded brother, the piano keyboard. It lacked solemnity, even when it wasn’t blazing firetruck red with Atarashii Gakko! stickers all over the back. It was an instrument for big audiences, raucous crowds, slamming out blistering solos and sliding across the stage on your knees. You really didn’t get many aching ballads of loss and regret arranged for keytar, but the Captain was making do with what he had.

Beyond the noodling dirge of electronic lament, the ship was very quiet. Flare was probably shrieking at children in PvP lobbies from a temporary streaming nook somewhere on board, but he was nowhere within earshot. Although he was, in general, profoundly deaf to everything beyond his own scattershot interests, even he had picked up on the Tragic Vibes.

The Captain, clear-headed, eloquent, so skilled at expressing himself when it came to the concepts and stories surrounding the one thing he was supposed to be for, had run out of words. Years, and he was no better at being a person, keeping all the straggling and fragile little threads of a real life together and guarded from the estranging chaos that surrounded the tight-controlled core of his work. Careless, still, because if you cared you had to either understand, or admit you didn't.

Try harder, do more, do better. He kept this mantra close to his chest, significantly less shiny and generally acceptable than love with your heart, etcetera. He had shown his hand once, to everyone, in the really cool and fun way he had of displaying something horribly personal to the world as if it was just a weightless joke.

(I’m sorry! I can do better!)

Nobody had really noticed, because of course they weren’t going to notice when you snuck things that really pained you into a funny monologue about keeping healthy deadlines. Nobody had thought twice about it. Or… nearly nobody. Reading through that part of the script, Alan had looked at him in an odd way; uncertain, wondering, caught between concern and reluctance. That was before, of course, back when Alan still looked at him sometimes, looked at him properly as if he was a person and not some kind of optical trip-mine that would explode if viewed directly.

The other thing about the keytar, as an instrument, was that it did not sound optimal without backup. It sounded weird and thin, without the accompaniment afforded by, say, a keyboard, or bass, or an old black Squier stratocaster with a slightly wonky neck.

Everything was doing fine. The channel was doing fine. Disillusion Industries was doing- fine. And all the time, all the time, he felt as if he was doing worse. He felt as if he was slipping, as if he lived balanced on a tilting floor, watching everything roll away, keeping his place with more and more difficulty as his position became more and more impossible. And the things that fell, dragged away downhill by time and gravity, they weren’t meaningless ballast but the parts of a life, the things that mattered, the people around him- everything, that wasn’t just him, sitting in this red corner, talking to nobody.

The keytar yowled.

Now, Ami had stuff to do. Now, Blair was distant and uninterested- the Dreamfinder, not interested, not even curious no matter what. Now, Ellie wasn’t showing up every Monday morning, wasn’t even picking up her phone. Now-

Now, Alan was at lunch. Funny thing. Alan had been at lunch for two and a half days at this point. The Captain was dealing with it very well, very sensibly and realistically, by pretending it wasn’t happening and not allowing it to register emotionally at all.

Staring with wide glazed eyes right through the ceiling, the Captain played a complex, mournful chord, thumb wavering on the pitch wheel until the notes sobbed and trembled into nothing.

Ellie had been his first friend, the first real friend he’d made on his own. This statement was true, in a childish sort of way, a way that hurt, but not exactly true at the same time. His keen sense of accuracy, of objective truth, refused to let him forget for even a moment that before Ellie- before everyone and everything- he’d found Alan, and Alan had found him.

Alan had always been there. Except for right now, because right now Alan was, well...

At lunch.

[inchidentally]

I know wives and gf talk isn't for everyone so asks under a cut - and I hate the term 'wag' so I'll start tagging these 'f1partnertalk' for those who want to bl!

right??? and the fact that in his Australia tourism type video with her he refers to her as his 'partner' which to me is both him being socially minded but also respect bc by that time they'd been together 3 and a bit years!

and exactly !! on the one hand he's not using her as a status thing of 'look I have a gf' but he's also made the very smart decision (and I think this was the Webbers influence) of not having her be a secret or a mystery. her acc going private is pretty normal for F1 gfs who aren't using their profile for business but the fact that he casually reminds people about her and that she'll like certain content posted about her or them is enough to stop anyone thinking she's 'fake' or whatever. there were some feeble attempts to claim they were broken up just bc she didn't go to many races but when folks pointed out she was in final year of uni for a very difficult degree it died down.

gotta say though - and this isn't in reply to you it's an aside about comments I see - I find the straight people thing of jumping to theories about marriage for long term relationships SO weird. it's like there's this ticking time bomb for het relationships lol. it's esp weird since they're so young and his career requires him to be so selfish (his and Lando's words) that I'm like how do ppl see that and leap to them marrying buying a house and planning kids when they not only don't live together yet they also spend most of the year apart??? sure they're super mature and stable for their age but who I am now and who I was during hs and college has been so incredibly different! I couldn't imagine making that huge a commitment esp if I had an all consuming career like Oscar does. I just hope those comments (however well meaning) don't reach them bc that feels crazy over-stepping and would be so awkward to read.

these asks I felt like went together really well lol

(this is the post anon refers to) oh anon. idk if you've seen them but have a look through here to enjoy Oscar's 8-year little crush on Lando and I think it's safe to say that Lily will at least have had an inkling about it.

and the thing is that being physical just isn't Oscar's way even with Lily which if Lando was at all hmmmm about then he'll have seen that pretty early on. as anon listed above, Oscar shows his affection for people by including them when he talks about his life (which Lando also gets!) also acts of service and signs of respect (which Lando also gets!)

this is me projecting here but idk the way Oscar talks about the boarding school guys he's still friends with and his friends back in Oz but doesn't post about them or have them to many races just makes me think that Oscar decided very early on to just avoid the distraction of sharing himself on social media apart from memes? he's never wanted to establish any kind of online persona and he got really solid a levels as a backup in engineering if F1 didn't work out so he's never planned to be a public person anyway.

where I'm going w that is that Lando will absolutely by now have learned all of this about Oscar. Oscar will like and respond to content about Lando but most of what Lando gets from him will be the acts of service and signs of respect. which is exactly what Oscar does with Lily, his family, Mark, etc. Oscar's own content will be about generically positive stuff re McLaren and the occasional funny post (like P1,P2,P6?). but the people he considers his most inner circle will stay largely off the map. which lbr is what Lando himself does with a lot of his closest friends! especially since his fame began to grow he's stopped posting a lot of those people and we only hear them bc he mentions seeing them. Lando is Oscar's little long harbored 'crush' and Lily is his long term gf. I feel like if that's obvious to us then it def will be for Lando :)

so we can count ourselves incredibly lucky that Lando being Oscar's teammate means we get as much of a window in on them as we do <3

[ilcuoreardendo-fic]

Welcome. Ask is on. Anon is on. My inbox is pretty much always open for thoughts or thots, comments, ramblings, etc.

I take fic requests, but I’m a very slow creator with constantly multiplying ideas of my own. So, feel free to ask/submit, but know that it might not happen (or might not happen very quickly...)

Like what you see here? Give me a follow. I usually follow back. And I don’t bite (without consent.)

Lins. She/Her. Taciturn, introverted, word lover. Annoyed atheist. Jaded feminist. Pramgatist.

Been in fandom since I was a wee teen in the late 90s.

I have a low tolerance for BS. (Like ship shaming, fandom policing and fandom purity culture - just to name a few things.)

I tag liberally, so if you have a problem with something (kink, ship, whatever), you can block the tag. Curate your experience.

I’m currently living in the Star Wars fandoms, bouncing between the Prequels, Clone Wars and the Bad Batch. (Love the entirety of TBB, but I definitely have a huge soft spot for Tech, Echo, Crosshair. Especially Echo, my cyber cinnamon roll.) But I moonlight in others.

In addition to Tumblr, you can find me at: Archive Of Our Own | ilcuoreardendo Dreamwidth | raptureofthemoon (largely just a backup space)

I'm all over the place and not consistent on any one project (and I’m slow AF when it comes to creating new fic lately). 

But here are a few things I’m working on (and a few highlights for flavor). I’ll try keeping this up to date.

The Bad Batch

Most of my images/edits and gifs: TBB Media

One Shots

The Fall (AO3) S2. Tech, in that moment. And the moments that come after.

A Hole in the Universe (Tumblr) S3. Crosshair mourning Tech.

Nights Like This (Tumblr) S3, Post Series Finale. Some nights, they can’t sleep.

One Shot Reader Fics

Staring Contest (Tumblr; Crosshair x Jedi!Reader)

From Here On Out (Tumblr; Echo x Reader; post series finale)

Series

Written in the Dust (AO3)  [In progress] A fix-it series branching off of Season 1. Echo’s past finds him. Echo x F!Jedi. Maybe...some other TBB x F!Jedi...we go where the wind takes us.)

A Place Called Home (Part 1 of Written in the Dust) Meaningful moments Echo shares with his new squad as he thinks about his past and finds his place in the present. (Complete)

Rescue on Bernilla [Working Title] (Upcoming; Echo/Female Character/Fives)

Series extras

Untitled (Upcoming; Crosshair/Female Character/Tech) Crosshair and Tech’s shore leave on Chandrila.

TBB Headcanony Stuff

Gifset: “Care to introduce your new friends, Caleb?”

Mood Boards

Star Wars: The Clone Wars

Codywan

A Clone and His Jedi (AO3) [One-shot] Cody. Obi-Wan. A moment alone, waiting for rescue.

Star Wars Prequel Era (Samples)

QuiObi

And the Force Will Lead Them (AO3) [Complete; Zine fic] After Obi-Wan's actions on Naboo, he and Qui-Gon drifted from one another. A rare disease and a mysterious Jedi master draw them back together and lead them to discover the depth of their bond.

QuiObiKin

The Sacrifice (AO3) [Complete] It's been a year since Qui-Gon Jinn and his padawan, Anakin Skywalker, fell to the dark side. It's been nine months since the gifts started showing up at the Temple, addressed to Obi-Wan.

Vaderwan

Acquisition (AO3) [In progress] Wherever he went, Vader seemed to follow. And it became much too frequent an occurrence to just be coincidence.

[floripire]

@dopplgaenger has bitten the heart

"i'm sorry to say you came to the wrong person today." floribeth tries to go for a wry grin but it looks more like a grimace. "my mom, selena, was a harman witch, yes, but after she lost her younger twin sisters, she chose to drink the cup of lethe, forgoing and forgetting her identity as an active, practicing witch. instead, she became what is known as a lost witch. someone unaware of their heritage."

(more often than not, some sliver of power remained. her mom used to have trouble sleeping, sometimes. she had vivid nightmares. some of which she remembered and others that she couldn't quite put her finger on. floribeth remembered that, too.)

"which, i suppose, technically makes me a hybrid. but my mom never told me anything about anything, and i got turned into a vampire so it's not like i can access my would-have-been powers, even if i wanted to. so you'd have better luck trying my best friend loren. or you would have, if she weren't traveling abroad with bonnie at the moment."

for a moment, the younger of the two gnawed on her lower lip. "i mean, i could show you the library of our boarding school? there's plenty of books and stuff and i do know some of the theoretical witchy things but that's about all i know."

a thought comes to her, then, unbidden. "oh! i don't know where nadia is right at this moment but she's a witch too! and she's a friend of mine as well; she's cool. i bet if you asked her, she could be of assistance!"

and floribeth wouldn't be floribeth if her backup plans didn't have backup plans: "if that doesn't work, i suppose i could reach out to my cousins too. thea and blaise harman. they're witches as well."

[tuilathu]

Ngày 58

To the person I refer as my best friend,

Congratulations! I see the thing (or the love, whatever you call it) between you and her would last for a very long time here. You said she wanted someone different from all the guys she’s ever known, then you are different, indeed you are. You said she wanted someone would treat her and his best girl differently, and then you got it too. You said she hated gamer boyfriend, and some fucking how, you play less. And there are so many more things that I cannot or don’t care enough to remember. From the way I see it, you are turning into some sort of walking checklist, let alone a fucking backup plan. You are different to her, but you are just the same as other guys when they have a girlfriend to me. I know you’re in the process of changing her mind so you could be you. However, I do believe during that very same process, you’re changing my mind and yours about our relationship as well.

You know what, ever since you started dating her (or should I say EVERY FUCKING TIME), you always make me feel like a spare. Once in a while, you drop by, say some silly stuff, we may or may not laugh, and then you leave. What the hell is that? It’s like I am the last person on earth you want to talk to. You know, if that’s the case, you don’t really have to waste your energy on me. I know you’ve got tons to do already, let alone your relationship with her, your family, your other friends… And there are days when I walk into class, I sit there wondering if I am that invisible (I don’t know, other people see me really well, and they are not even that close to me. Do you know what the amazing thing they do when they see me? THEY FUCKING WAVE. Now, this brings me to the question: Are your arms ok? Are they broken or something? Or shouldn’t I expect that kind of greeting from you? Then tell me, what kind of greeting are you willing to do when you see me?), or if you just can’t see anyone else when you turn around, the love of your life is sitting right behind you and that would be a crime for not looking straight at her and blocking everyone else from view. Moreover, I don’t know if you notice, but I try so hard to add and combine down to every second we spend together. And you know what? Amazingly, they cannot be compared to 1 in a hundred of all the time you spend with her. You guys stay back to do class stuff, you practice everything together, you go to that fucking park, and she sits right behind you in class (sometimes beside)… Want me to go on? I can go on forever. I have no idea why, but every time I see you, I see her (or vise versa), and you know more than anyone that’s not the view I want to see. Sometimes, you make me feel like you’re just like her, having family troubles and you do all of this to run away from it.

I know I promised not to mention her, and I broke it a few times, and I’m sorry for it. On the other hand, YOU promised to at least try to limit your lovey dovey stuff between you and her. Think about it. Do you ever try? You know this is not what the exact words you promised me, I toned it down on purpose, and you didn’t even get there. You know you’re sitting right in front of the board, don't you? And by doing those puking things in front of me, you’re blocking my view to the board. If you want to show her your affections that bad, go sit somewhere else and bring her with you. This is not the first time I saw that, I’m not that selfish to do this if I only see that once. I’ve tried to suppress it and it’s stressing me out to see the whole thing is getting worse day by day. But it’s a good sign, isn’t it? Your relationship with her is getting better! I don’t know if I should just back off and leave room for you and her like everyone else is doing. Maybe I should. I just don’t feel like I am obliged to follow that promise anymore and neither do you if neither of us is going to actually keep the promise we made.

I know I should be supportive and just believe that even though you’re not with me all the time, you would be right there when I need you. Oh gosh, I tried. I tried a hell lot more than I should (this should be easier if we were on the same sex). You know what, this is the first time in my entire life, I’ve ever had to put my mind into a friendship this much (and fuck it, this whole thing’s just been going on for 4 months and a half). I didn’t even put that much effort into my 9-year friendship with my bestie (and FYI, that friendship is still going strong). You told me you were trying to balance, and believe it or not, I trusted you. I don’t know why I still trust you after all those broken promises (and somehow, I just feel like you take my trust for granted). I don’t really need to talk to you every day (save your stories, they’re getting really plain) like I don’t need to talk to my besties every day. They give me the secure feelings that even though they’re not here with me all the time (they really can’t, they all go study abroad already. But if they can, they would), I could still count on them. BTW, they all have boyfriends, and I’m not jealous of their boyfriends, just saying. So I figure this whole thing has not been about her, it’s about you and me only.

Let me tell you something about girls. Girls want attention even if they admit it or not. Funnily, your-so-called-best-friend is the worst of them all. You give that girl the attention she deserves (and you enjoy it), then what about me? Even if you don’t consider me to be 100% a girl, I still am. It’s been proven on my birth certificate and in my mindset. If you don’t want me to be so jealous, then why did you pay that much attention to me when you were not dating her? Am I your backup plan? You don’t think that you could go on and date any girl and then crawl back to me when they dump you, do you? If that’s the case, I don’t know what I want to say anymore.

At this point, I no longer know what I want from this relationship since everything I ever wanted just came all back and smashed me in the face. Maybe it’s my fault that I brought expectations into it. Get a guy best friend, they say. It’ll be fun, they say. Fun my ass. The only things this so-called-friendship has ever brought back to me are stress (a bank load, want some, I’ll give it all to you, I’m sure I don’t need it) and a bunch of I-don’t-know-what-to-do-with-them memories. I don’t know for sure, but I think I’m getting used to being without you. Although sometimes it stings me, but I’m getting there anyway. I don’t even know if I’ll come back when I get there or if this is a good thing. I honestly don’t know.

I’m writing this to you because I know there is no way on earth I could say this much to you face to face or directly through chat. Just read it and give it some thoughts. If you have anything you would like to say to me, write back. You won’t be reaching me tonight, so don’t try.

(Oh gosh, this is so us)

“I know you have found someone who is extra special and I know you both have a special “bond” or whatever, that you and I will never have. But we have another bond, we’re best friends. Or does the best friend bond disappear as soon as you meet somebody else? Maybe it does, maybe I just don’t understand that because I haven’t met that “somebody special.” I’m not in any hurry to, either. I liked things the way they were.

So maybe Bethany is now your best friend and I have been relegated to just being your “friend.” At least be that to me, Alex. In a few years’ time if my name ever comes up you will probably say, “Rosie, now there’s a name I haven’t heard in years. We used to be best friends. I wonder what she’s doing now; I haven’t seen or thought of her in years!” You will sound like my mum and dad when they have dinner parties with friends and talk about old times.

They always mention people I’ve never even heard of when they’re talking about some of the most important days of their lives. Yet where are those people now? How could someone who was your bridesmaid 20 years ago not even be someone who you are on talking terms with now? Or in Dad’s case, how could he not know where his own best friend from college lives? He studied with the man for five years!

Anyway, my point is (I know, I know, there is one), I don’t want to be one of those easily forgotten people, so important at the time, so special, so influential, and so treasured, yet years later just a vague face and a distant memory. I want us to be best friends forever, Alex.

I’m happy you’re happy, really I am, but I feel like I’ve been left behind.

Maybe our time has come and gone. Maybe your time is now meant to be spent with Bethany. And if that’s the case I won’t bother sending you this letter. And if I’m not sending this letter then what am I doing still writing it?”

From your best friend or whatever you refer me as.

17/11/2014

[elfwreck]

No. Nothing is ready to take up AO3's workload.

Squidgeworld.org is the closest. It doesn't have the same capacity but it does have the same structure, and it would try to beef up capacity.

The OTW is not going away.

The OTW was designed, at its core, for stability. For the ability to withstand any level of fandom drama (internal or external), media attention, or hostile activism from religious nuts, conservative politicians, or assimilationist "progressives."

Some events that shaped the structure of the OTW:

Strikethrough/Boldthrough, when "concerned citizens," not happy that Livejournal was brushing off their complaints, complained to advertisers about the horrible stuff their ads were being shown next to. So the advertisers complained to LJ, and LJ responded by deleting hundreds of journals that were not, until that point, in violation of their TOS. OTW decision: NO ADVERTISERS. Ever. Of any sort. Also no external host company, because that's subject to the same problems. We are done with letting outsiders tell us what is and isn't fit to put on a website.

FanLib: A "fanfic hosting" site with contests sponsored by tv shows. NSFW was hidden from public view; you had to be logged in to even know it existed on the site. Fics were rated 1-5 stars; you could search for the highest rated stuff. (Not: Highest-rated per fandom. It didn't really separate fandoms.) The contests were full of "you give us permission to use this work in any way we want, forever, no take-backs, but if you win, you get a t-shirt and your name in the scrolling credits after a tv episode." Its forums were a tangled mess of drama. The site lasted less than a year and then evaporated when the owners found a buyer for their software. OTW decision: No option for buy-out, ever. Nonprofits cannot be converted to for-profit companies; if Disney decides AO3 is the next best source for movie scripts and wants to give the OTW twenty million dollars for it... the OTW can't accept.

Detention: a Snape/Harry fanfic archive. (This one's less well-known, but several Snarry fans were among the core group involved with AO3's founding.) This was, at one point, the premier ship archive for Snape/Harry. Everyone loved it. But. The owner got into a fight with her co-mod and yanked the whole site one night with no warning. Snarry fans spent weeks crawling through Google to find cached versions of the stories, sometimes to give to the original authors who didn't have copies of them. OTW decision: No single person will have pull-the-plug permission. No amount of internal fighting amongst the board, committees, volunteers, paid staff if there ever is any, will have the right to say "nah I quit" and pull the archive down. (Some people do have pull-the-plug ability, but not permission. There are people on the coding side of things who could wipe the archive. But (1) they'd be in legal trouble for doing so and (2) there are backups.)

(Side note: the OTW decision parts are not all directly related to the causes mentioned. These are "three things that happened" and "some things the OTW built into their structure, partially inspired by these three things.")

In 2015, a few days after the election, the entire existing board resigned, leaving the whole org in the hands of the two new electees (who had to appoint 5 more people to the board).

Most of fandom today does not know this, because an event that would destroy most nonprofits was barely even noticed outside of the official communications channels.

Some of the OTW's problems - a lot of the OTW's problems - are the glacially slow pace at which it makes changes.

"Hey this would be a good thing to do" comes up, goes around gets agreed on, someone volunteers to look into the practical logistics, someone else mentions how it would affect this-or-that committee and yet another someone else starts putting together a list of feature requirements, and then there's costs to discuss, and legalities, and hey now we have a different committee head here or there and they need to be brought up to date on the project, and someone publicly posts some rumors they've heard about it so another committee has to be brought in to explain what's really going on, and then there's rumor-squashing both internal and external to deal with, and somewhere in that mess is a need for actual progress on the original plan. Which is slow. Very slow.

Note that all of this is unpaid volunteers working in their extra time. Sometimes whoever was managing most of it has a life event - change of jobs or address, gain or lose a family member, gets sick, goes to school/graduates, etc. - and the amount of time they have to pour into the OTW plummets.

The OTW is designed to function, business-as-usual, while all of that is going on.

It is possible the current round of communications, complaints, activism, are the start of another 2015-esque org-wide shakedown and changeover.

...If so, that won't be visible from the outside, until a handful of new features get released. They won't be obviously connected to the changes.

Even if Denise is correct about the OTW being out of compliance with various data laws... legal action about that kind of thing can take years to process. There is no "what if the OTW goes down tomorrow;" the OTW is not megaupload (and takes care to not become megaupload) (which, although it did vanish overnight, also had years of legal complaints involved... it wasn't a secret that it was at risk of gov't action).

If you trust nothing else about the OTW... believe that it knows how to say, "This problem? WIP. Not abandoned. Will update eventually."

Whether or not it updates is a separate problem. But it sure does know how to sit there in a holding pattern.

I mean... with all this stuff re: denise in mind, *is* there an alternative if the archive goes down? if otw is so abusive and incompetent an org as to be unsalvageable?

--

We would disperse to various sites.

Nothing current and good has the ability to host the level of traffic AO3 gets.

[star-gazer101]

Ortho the Concerned Brother

Part 3 of this and this

Pairing: Idia Shroud x Reader

Warnings: A little OOC-ness, mentions of a wedding dress despite reader being gender neutral, minor mentions of book 6 spoilers.

AN: The Ghost Marriage plans comes from this post.

Three times.

There’s been three times that Ortho had butted in whenever Idia had hung out with the prefect. 

One was when they were playing video games or watching anime (which was a complete success.), the second being when he showed up unannounced to their small café date that the Prefect slowly coaxed Idia to agree (another success, he even got a cool souvenir from the prefect as well.).

The third time however, was complicated. The special dinner meal that his brother had worked hard on getting due to its popularity, somehow got “inconveniently” lost during its delivery. Which resulted in the Prefect having a backup plan by cooking for them.

“We have a kitchen?”

“Apparently so. Ortho helped me unearth it from the piles of stuff you have.”

Impressive, Ortho thought. How long did you have that plan for?

In the end, Ortho considered this a draw. Plus, Idia was actually eating a home cooked meal for once, so he can’t really complain.

What he can complain about, however, was when they all hung out at Ramshackle dorm.

-

If Ignihyde’s dorm became too isolated, the three of you would wind up back at your dorm for a much needed change of atmosphere. And thanks to Idia’s help, the place looked better than ever. Even the air conditioning is a lifesaver once the summer heat rolls around.

For now, you and Ortho were chatting away, talking nostalgically about the ghost bride incident and the multiple plans on how to save Idia–much to his chagrin–during that time.

Idia had no idea why the two of you were even laughing.

“And then of course, Crowley had to shut down my plan! It would have been hilarious to see her reaction!” 

“I-it’s for the best, Player 2,” Idia managed to mutter out through his embarrassment. “I don’t think I need any more embarrassment with everyone else around…”

“What’s so embarrassing about ‘Operation: Homewrecker’?” You asked innocently, but Idia knew it was fake.

“The name! Just…everything and the name… “

You sighed with agreement, for once. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. It would be in bad taste for me to barge in with runny make-up and messy wedding attire just to fight for your hand…Do you think a wedding dress or tux would be better?”

“Y-you’re killing me Prefect…”

Ortho found himself giggling at your and his brother’s playful banter. Even if not all too approving of your relationship (platonic or otherwise), there are some moments like this that cannot be replaced nor recreated. It’s something that he had come to terms with early on.

Perhaps this conversation was starting to become too much for his brother’s well-being. If this keeps going on, there might be a chance for the dorm to suddenly combust.

“Okay, big sib. I think Idia’s had enough. How about we do something else?”

“Oh yeah, sorry about that Player 1. Sometimes I forget the time. I think there should be some board games on the shelf in the hall. Do you think you can get some for us?”

-

And that’s where Ortho was. Looking through the stacks of games that might look fun to play. Perhaps “Connect Dots”? “Monopolize”? “Who’s This”? There’s so many to choose from…

Hm?

Among the pile, he noticed an unusual piece of clothing that was neatly folded and iron pressed. The colors of black, purple, and gold were staring right back at him as he squinted at the words stitched across it.

Pomfiore…

This was Pomfiore’s dorm uniform!

-

Back at their dorm, Ortho curiously watched his brother working earnestly at his desk in hopes of finishing before the rest of the night ends.

To be honest, the whole thing that happened back at Ramshackle was very awkward when he brought out Pomfiore’s uniform for everyone to see. He remembered the look his brother made when seeing it: shock and a hint of betrayal flashed in his eyes before scrunching himself further into the dorm’s sofa.

Ortho had calmly asked why you still had it and you had replied with a bit of shyness in your voice.

“I did try to return it back to Vil and the others earlier today, but Vil told me to just keep it as proof of being Pomfiore’s unofficial member…Though I still feel bad for keeping it…”

Your heart rate was normal when telling them your tale. You were not lying. Even the cameras had shown what you’ve done.

But did it mean that Idia has competition? You are pretty popular…

“Idia, you’ve been working on that project for hours. Are you sure you’re okay with not taking a break?”

“Quitting at this moment is a total normie move. If I stop now, I’ll be one step behind and Mr. Vil will be two steps ahead. Can’t let it end as an epic fail!”

Upon glancing further at his desk, Ortho rolled his eyes as he shook his head. All this because his big bro was jealous…

-

By the next day, you were greeted by Ortho who gave you a gift from his older brother. Turns out the gift was a customized dorm uniform from Ignihyde with instructions on how to carefully care for it.

You asked what all of this was about, but Ortho just sighed in annoyance.

Honestly, he did not want to be a part of this!

.

[rwby-redux]

Back in V2 I was thinking Remnant Cyber Security sucks. They just had a major infiltration of one of their major tech centers (I apologize if I misuse the term) and they don’t think to check it for possible cyber infections? While it’s true they don’t know exactly what happened there you would think given it’s technological importance that it would be a major target for both data theft and cyber infections from the outside. So if someone goes to the trouble of infiltrating DIRECTLY you’d think these would be the first two things they would check.

And I am not really a major computer expert, just someone who knows enough to keep themselves safe online. And when that scene had ME questioning their competence, you know you have problems.

P.S. I am someone who genuinely loves the show, but I am a in spite of the flaws guy. Capable of taking it for what it is, enjoying it, but still capable of calling out the b.s. when I see it. I think that’s why I am glad to have found you. Normally I talk to other people about stuff I like in RWBY, it’s good to occasionally talk about my complaints with it.

P.P.S. On a more positive note, do you want me to link you to a video that notes some of the foreshadowing in the series?

My takeaway was that Remnant’s cybersecurity sucks because the writers had no idea what they were talking about. And I say that as someone who is painfully tech-illiterate.

That’s to say nothing of how woefully inadequate the CCT’s physical defenses are. Like, if the CCTs make long-range communication possible, then why does Weiss need to go there in-person, in order to contact the SDC rep? Couldn’t she have just texted, or skyped, or sent an e-mail from her scroll? Wouldn’t making the CCTs open to the public be a huge security risk?

Out of curiosity, I decided to rewatch the scene where Cinder infiltrated the tower. After a quick headcount, I realized there were only seven people guarding it (1 perimeter guard, 4 first floor guards, and 2 elevator guards). You would think—given how important these towers are for global communication—that the security measures in place would be slightly more aggressive. Like, if even one of these bloody towers falls, the entire internet gets taken out with it. We see political pundits talking all the time about how big of a deal it is when a country’s government deliberately shuts down its citizens’ internet. It foreshadows imminent civil rights breaches and genocide. It’s why activists constantly bring it up.

But we’re talking about a system that doesn’t isolate to one region, or one country. It affects all internet across the globe. Remnant’s communication system is structurally fragile because of its dependency on four separate broadcast towers.

Realistically, the CCTs should be more armed than the fucking Pentagon.

Why aren’t there more security personnel? Or motion sensors? Or external cameras? Why isn’t the central control room like Austin Powers, where it’s behind a tank full of laser sharks?

For that matter, why aren’t there Huntsmen employed to guard the site? As powerful as Cinder is, there’s no way she could dispatch a dozen licensed Huntsmen without alerting someone else, who could then call for backup. Like, that tower is where Ozpin’s office is, and you’re telling me that anyone can waltz in there just by muscling their way through the door?

Also, I’d like to state for the record—Amber’s fucking body is several floors under Cinder’s shoes. As far as we know, the access to the basement is restricted. You’re expecting me to believe that when Cinder boarded the elevator, she didn’t look at the buttons on the control panel, and think, “Huh. That’s weird. One of these floors is marked off-limits. I BETTER BLAST MY WAY DOWN THERE AND SEE WHAT OZPIN DOESN’T WANT PEOPLE TO FIND.”

If it wasn’t for massive contrivance and oversight, Cinder should have found and killed Amber then and there.

There’s no in-lore justification for why [1] the CCTs are accessible to the public, [2] they’re so poorly defended, [3] the security system doesn’t have several redundancies in place that make hacking it slightly more inconvenient.

I get that Watts is a skilled engineer. I get that Cinder is a prodigious saboteur. It still shouldn’t have been that easy.

[where-i-go-insane]

people had some thoughts to add and i AGREE.

i only realized after posting it that i didn't include any of Black☆Star or Kid's other instruments and i AGREE about everything the people said. i think Black☆Star would be an insane guitarist and he would have to purposefully be designated to only sing some songs b/c he would get to into it and definitely pop a string or something. same thing with the drums, i feel like there's probably One song that he absolutely has to play the drums in every time b/c he goes absolutely insane and shreds it (can you even shred the drums?) he's definitely also broken drumsticks and thrown them out into the audience.

Kid honestly i think would be a normal keyboard player when he's not on vocals. he would also do percussion stuff but i feel like he doesn't do it often. i like the idea of him being very Foundational when he's on the drums so i feel like when he's in drums that would mean there would be a Lot going on. it wouldn't be when they're "all hands on deck" (i feel like they'd definitely have a few songs where all of them are playing and i'll explore that further down) but i think that would be a song where Black☆Star and Liz were singing together and Liz is also playing guitar, Crona's on bass w/ their complicated bass riffs, Soul's on normal keyboard, Maka's busting it down with the soundboard.

i think Soul is like their wildcard. he can do piano, he can do guitar, bass, drums, vocals, soundboard, any other weird instrument like a keytar or whatever. he probably sticks to keyboard most of the time, but i can imagine that when they're changing and swapping out, if Soul leaves the keyboard, the crowd gets excited because they know he's gonna kill it, especially if it's vocals b/c he probably wouldn't do that odten. if maybe one of the band members isn't feeling like doing a part, he can jump in. he's honestly probably on stage the most and doesn't take many breaks, but he fucking loves performing.

i also agree w/ Synthy Keyboard Crona. they would have a lot of good handle on how to manipulate the synth for certain songs and they also have a really good ear so they can make some really cool chord progressions by winging it. i feel like they probably like playing bass the most, but they experiment more on synth (plus i imagine the synth is closer to the sound mixers and shit Maka would be doing and they of course like being close to Maka) i feel like they would also be busting out that one pose people do sometimes while playing a bass/guitar where they like can completely bend backwards and still completely play and the audience probably goes insane.

Maka could probably also do some very basic synth work (i'm talking she's the backup repeating 3 chords) but she probably sticks to the mixers the most. i feel like in songs if there's like a random couple words or lyrics that needed to have a bunch of voice effects, she would be the one doing them (maybe Patty too) i think she would also definitely be the one running all of their social media accounts, she's the one band member who's randomly taking pictures in the middle of a song and does the crowd selfie. she helps set up and i don't really want to call her a "mascot" but she's probably the person the audience sees the most before the whole band comes out and she'll say hi to everyone. she's throwing shirts and merch and collecting anything thrown on stage and showing it off if it's funny. i'm imagining her w/ some really cute oversized headphones on at the mixer board. when everyone's swapping out, i imagine it's very normal for one of the band members to like lean into their mic and go "thank you, Maka" and the crowd would say it back to her and she'd be like 🤗

i think having everyone on at the same time would be something like this: Black☆Star and Kid on vocals, Liz also on vocals but mainly guitar (Black☆Star would pick a guitar up at some point during these songs and do both), Tsubaki probably on her electric violin/viola and maybe doubling bass if Black☆Star is on guitar w/ Liz, Crona on bass, Patty on drums, Soul on keyboard, Maka at the mixer. these songs aren't usually super wild and crazy, they're probably a bit experimental. despite everyone being on at the same time, their parts definitely do drop out throughout the song to highlight some of the others in their solos or duets and whatnot. i also feel like some songs they do have a specific Set group that play it and those are the songs that have the most differing vibe from the other songs b/c they're probably some sort of personal song to whoever wrote it, but some songs they really like swapping each other out each time they play it just to see what it would sound like

as for who writes the songs, i think everyone does!!! Soul and Kid probably stick specifically the instrumental parts, Maka sticks to lyrics, but i think everyone else would help on both sides. they're all super group efforts and some they're all involved in the creation. they also would NOT be a super huge mega popular band, they're a good ol alternative group that plays at smaller standing venues and stays around afterwards to talk to fans and they probably can't all fit on a tour bus so they probably caravan travel

i have so many more thoughts about how they'd all interact and touring life and all that but it's 3:30 am and i need to go to sleep. i will be back to this b/c it's so so silly and fun.

i am legally obligated to think of a band AU for every piece of media i enjoy

silly little brain was imagining a Soul Eater band AU (as one who is normal about things often does) and i had a few thoughts and i think i will ramble about it a little bit here to make more thoughts. i think since they'd have such a large group, they kind of swap out/tap in for certain songs so they're rarely all playing at the same time. they all probably play a couple instruments because of this (with a few exceptions) and there's just a fun assortment that they've got going on and i also think that would make some of their songs sound drastically different since it would be like a different combination of people playing. overall, i feel like they're pretty gritty and punk, but they've probably got a wide span between more electronic and maybe even hyperpop adjacent stuff and like "original" punk and rock stuff. i think it'd really depend on who was playing.

some of the instruments are obvious. Soul is legally required to play the keyboard/synth/whatever keys exist, though he probably knows how to play the most instruments out of the group so even though he's mainly piano, he can play everything and he'll add his own little flair to it.

my brain is yelling at me that Tsubaki would play the bass. idek why but it appeared in my thoughts and i think that that's the gospel truth that Tsubaki would play the bass. i feel like she would also play some wildcard instrument like a violin/viola or flute or idk like an oboe and when she breaks that out you know the song is gonna go crazy.

now, i think Black☆Star and Kid are vocals, whether they're singing solo or together and they're probably "on deck" the most, though they probably do back off at certain points. Liz is also a vocalist (i feel in my bones that she'd be like a "talk singer" or like an ashnikko type thing where she's AGGRESSIVE with her singing) but my brain is telling me she's on the guitar a lot and wouldn't be singing most of the time. she uses a lot of cool guitar picks and she likes throwing them out into the audience and people would throw picks back at her to use (and she would use them). when all three of the singers are on at the same time, the balance would be insane and i can't imagine which ranges each of them would cover (Liz is a solid mid-range voice, but i can't decide who would be higher and lower registers between Black☆Star and Kid).

Patty would be Exclusively drums and percussion and random noise maker and she's damn good at it, she probably also does fun count offs for all them when they'd start playing. Crona also plays the drums and i feel like they would also play bass, very different vibe from Patty's drumming but still a banger (lol banger, drums, ha). Patty is more "lots of noise and funky combinations" while Crona is more complicated rhythms during the solely instrumental parts. struggling with Maka b/c i think it's funny that she canonically does not know how to do any sort of music, so i think she'd probably mainly be sound and organization help since there's so many of them. HOWEVER, i feel like she'd also be really good at having one of those soundboards and balancers and all that shit (thinking about those ones w/ the square light up keys and also the ones w/ the sliders and switches and whatnot) so she'd be in the back of the ensemble with all her little boards and buttons and be putting all the effects over their music. she could also maybe sing, but i'm talking backup vocals b/c she probably doesn't want to sing a lot, she likes her little tasks.

they are all probably INSANE on stage. jumping, doing flips, handstands, cartwheels, Black☆Star definitely crowd surfs, they're throwing t-shirts into the crowd ALL THE TIME. i'm imagining a situation where they have specifically placed speakers and boxes on stage some of them can literally be elevated above the others while they're playing or singing. none of them are dressed similarly but somehow it still works and you can obviously tell they're in a band. i think their band legally needs to be called Soul Eaters (or Death Sycthes??? Death Weapons???? something like that)

[lalainajanes]

For klarosummerbingo, my “mango lassi” square! Did I order Indian food for dinner? Yes, yes I did.

Masks Off

When she notices the goon tailing her – shaved head, seasonally inappropriate leather jacket, neck tattoos – Caroline’s pissed off.

And exhausted.

She’d spent all day cooped up in the boardroom at Forbes Industries, listening to men twice her age complain about dividends and try to suggest that workers didn’t really need a raise subtly.

It had been a tedious and pointless exercise, one she suffers quarterly. Caroline holds 51% of the company’s shares and can easily wrangle another block of shareholders into voting with her. Her parent’s wills, read out fourteen years ago, had bequeathed a stake in FI to several loyal employees. People they’d loved, who’d stepped in to help raise Caroline after they’d passed.

The board knows she has the final say, and it kills them. They think she’s an idiot, that she’d bought her degrees and can’t comprehend the financial statements. They try to ply her with compliments and flattery, attempt unsubtle fibs – Caroline plays dumb and tolerates the bullshit because she knows she can control them. Another board might not be so easy to manipulate.

She’d had a headache by the time the meeting had wrapped, had been so grateful to see Enzo waiting at the curb. She’d practically dived into the backseat of the town car, had rolled the partition down, and enjoyed a satisfying debrief and bitch session on the drive back to her apartment. Enzo had offered to grab her dinner before he went off the clock, but Caroline knew he had a date night planned. She’d shoed him away, told him she’d order in.

Once safely tucked away in her place Caroline had gotten restless.

She’d changed out of her boring suit, pulled out the pins in her hair, and loosely braided it back. After changing into a pale blue cotton dress and pair of oversized sunglasses, then selecting a few Forbes Industries prototypes, Caroline had headed out for sustenance.

She hadn’t bothered to let her security detail know. She’s adept at sneaking away under their noses. The detail is mostly for show, to make sure no one connects Caroline Forbes, wild child heiress, to the vigilante who’s working on tidying up the city streets.

She’ll slip into the leather ensemble she’d commissioned once night falls and load up with weapons. Then she’ll head to the garage where she keeps her armored vehicles and larger toys.

There’s a new villain who’s been popping up more and more frequently on her patrols. She hasn’t caught him doing anything untoward just yet, and he’s yet to make the papers and have a ridiculous name bestowed upon him. She’s scoured papers from England, then the rest of Europe, checking to see if there was a reputation that preceded him. So far, she’s found nothing, but  Caroline knows he must be working on something big.

Why else would he be so determined to attract her attention? He must have some kind of plan cooking up, wants her looking in another direction when he enacts it.

The walk to the restaurant had been uneventful. Caroline had to wait a few minutes for her order to be ready, but passing the time on a bench outside, unnoticed, her people-watching undisturbed, had been a nice change from how she’d spent the rest of the day.

It promised to be a hot evening, even though the sun would be setting shortly. Sweat had begun gathering near her hairline, forcing curls out of her braid. Caroline had added a mango lassi to her order and collected her dinner, inhaled appreciatively at the warm, spicy scent emanating from the paper bag.

She’d begun her walk home, sipping her drink contentedly, weaving through the growing number of pedestrians who were venturing out for the evening.

She’d noted the guy shadowing her about three blocks from her building, had heaved a dramatic sigh that had the guy waiting for the walk light with her edging away.

She’d just wanted to stuff herself with naan, biryani, and saag paneer and become one with her couch for a few hours before she went out to take out her frustrations on some bad guys. Was that too much to ask?

Caroline takes a turn, heading east to where there should be fewer people, reaching into her bag to slide her fingers into the modified brass knuckles (not actually brass but a proprietary FI compound) and grasping the extendable baton.

She takes another turn to check that she’s not paranoid, but the goon mirrors it.

As does another person.

Caroline pretends to adjust the strap of her dress, twisting her head to get a better look at her second pursuer. It’s an impressively muscular woman, her considerable height only enhanced by her spiked hair, dressed in skin-tight shorts and a mesh crop top.

She doesn’t seem to mind that Caroline’s spotted her, wiggling her fingers and offering a challenging smile.

There are two possibilities. Either the people following her are cocky and stupid – really the ideal scenario – or they’re cocky because they’ve got a solid plan and some big guns.

When a hand grabs her upper arm and yanks her into an alley, spilling the mango lassi and staining her dress, Caroline suspects it might be the latter. She’s thrown against a wall, just managing to get her hands up to save her face from being smashed into the brick.

She hears footsteps pounding against concrete, and the two pursuers she’s noticed join the man who’d yanked her into the alley. Regretfully, Caroline drops her takeout and her bag and backs away, hiding her weapons in the folds out of the skirt. She forces a quaver into her voice, “What do you want?”

It’s unlikely that three people who seem to have stepped right out of the goon for hire catalog have just decided to rob her. Caroline doesn’t want to assume there’s a larger plot. She’s hoping this won’t turn into a big thing, and she’s out of luck if people are planning to kidnap Caroline Forbes for ransom.

But it’ll be even messier if a bad guy’s clocked her extracurricular activities.

The spiky-haired woman takes the lead, stalking towards Caroline. She’s got a knife in her hand now, “What do I want? Twenty million dollars, to start with.”

Oh good. It’s just a kidnapping.

Honestly, kind of an insulting one. She won’t even have to liquate any assets to come up with the twenty million. Caroline stops moving, straightens her spine. “Done!” she chirps brightly. “Wire transfer, or cheque? I can do cash too, but that’s like ten briefcases. What are you going to do with them after?”

She’s been hoping to catch her attempted kidnapper off guard, but the woman doesn’t falter. She snorts, “You’re funny. I didn’t expect that.”

“Thanks, I get that a lot. I’m chock full of surprises.”

Spike lunges forward, and Caroline dodges, stepping past her and whipping her arm out, until her weapon lengthens fully. She crouches, extending her leg and spinning while slashing with her baton. Caroline lands a brutal strike on Spike’s kidneys. Spikes grunts, stumbles forward, arm banding over her stomach protectively. Caroline completes her spin and rises, catching Spike with a punch before she pauses, poised on the balls of her feet, back to a wall.

Her would-be kidnappers no longer look as confident. Spikes spits blood, expression enraged. The other two watch Caroline with calculative gazes.

“Girls gotta keep in shape, right? The tabloids are brutal. It turns out the elliptical is super boring, so I had to find something a little more fun.” Caroline leaps forward, tucking into a roll, snagging a brick from the ground and using her momentum to throw it into Leather Jacket’s face.

The brick makes contact with a gross crunch of blood, bone, tissue, and teeth. Leather Jacket howls, his hand coming up to cover his head. She jumps again, thighs locking around his neck, spinning to bring him to the ground. She digs her knee into his spine, gripping his head and slamming it into the ground for good measure until he goes limp underneath her.

Caroline stands, wiping her hand on her already ruined dress. “One down,” she says.

Only to instantly regret the proclamation. Bonnie says she needs to lay off on the monologuing, and maybe she’s got a point.

She senses movement behind her, near the mouth of the alley. Caroline turns warily, head swiveling between her two attackers and the men who are now freaking rappelling from the rooftops. Six of them. In black tactical gear, strapped with weapons and wearing black ski masks.

Well, crap.

If she’d been on patrol, with her protective suit and gadgets, she might have been able to take them. Now, in flats and a sundress, with two flimsy weapons and no backup, she doesn’t like her odds.

Caroline tosses the baton aside, pastes on the smile she uses when she has to ignore paparazzi shouting rude questions about her sex life at her. She lifts her hands slowly, palms open. “So, I’m guessing you don’t only want cash, huh?”

“Funny and smart,” Spikes says spitefully, coming up behind Caroline and yanking her hair. “What a rosy life you must lead.”

She feels a sharp sting in the side of her neck, then a flood of wooziness. Brief pain when she collapses.

She’s vaguely aware of being heaved up and over someone’s shoulder, of being alarmed by how her limbs won’t cooperate when she tries to fight back. She’s tossed in a trunk, encased in blackness.

Caroline fights it, the tiredness, her thoughts growing meandering and disorganized. When the engine rumbles to life underneath her, Caroline loses consciousness.

* * * * *

Caroline realizes she’s tied to a chair as soon as awareness returns.

She can hear voices murmuring, too soft for her to make out any words even when she strains. Caroline’s slumped over, pulling against the ropes. She’s definitely going to have some fun bruises tomorrow. Her head’s resting limply against her chest, and she stays as still as she can, barely opening her eyes while trying to get a good look at her surroundings.

Unfortunately, she seems to be in a pretty generic warehouse—grimy, smelly, cavernous, decorated with random overlapping graffiti.

She spots a tray of shiny, sharp medical instruments to her right.

Which is not ideal.

Caroline tests her bonds slowly, checking for any give or weakness. Any kind of opportunity. One of her captors has eagle eyes and notices her movements. She flinches when his voice booms out, “Sleeping beauty awakes!”

Damn it.

Caroline lifts her head, rolling her neck to work out the cramp that’s developed. “I prefer the modern Disney princesses, thank you.” She’s not the type to wait around for a handsome prince to come to her rescue.

She studies the guy who’d spoken. He’s got steel-grey hair and tanned skin, thick biceps. His face doesn’t show even a hint of emotion, and he doesn’t acknowledge she’d spoken. She’d guess he’s a pro, probably some variety of ex-military, likely expensive. Caroline hears the clomp of heavy boots and twists her head to see some familiar faces joining the party.

Moderately damaged familiar faces, but she’s not sorry about that.

“So about that ransom,” Caroline begins hopefully. “Twenty-five million, was it?”

The guy who’d taken a brick to the face grunts, “Thirty now. For our trouble.”

Caroline can admit that’s fair.

“I get it. Plastic surgery’s not cheap. Not that I’ve had any work done, despite what the tabloids might claim. I’m only twenty-seven. Of course my boobs look fantastic in a bikini.”

No one even cracks a smile.

“Okay, so you’re not interested in jokes. We could discuss the fact that it’s super gross that people follow me around the world and stalk me with long-lens cameras. Am I not entitled to take a vacation?”

No response.

Caroline sighs, shifting in her chair in an attempt to get more comfortable. “Tough crowd.”

Spike drags a second chair over, sitting down and resting a booted foot on her opposite knee. “Thirty million dollars. I have a list of six prisoners that I need to be released from the Super Max. And I want something from the Forbes Industries Vault. The subterranean one that most of your employees don’t know about.”

Caroline tips her head back, considering. Thirty million dollars, no big deal. The prisoners might be hard to arrange, but she’s got connections. She knows exactly who she’d need to bribe. She can always scoop them up later, wrap ‘em in a pretty little bow and leave them on the steps of city hall.

The Vault though? That’s not happening. She’s going to have to figure out how they even know about it, who else might have bought the info, but that’s a problem for later.

“How about fifty million dollars and a couple of extra prisoners? Maybe someone from the asylum?”

Spike leans over, her hand drifting over the tray of instruments. She plucks up one with a serrated edge, twirling it through her fingers. “I know you’re used to snapping your fingers and getting everything your little heart desires, but this isn’t a negotiation.”

She leans forward, resting the blade against the dip between Caroline’s collarbones. She taps it against Caroline’s skin with each carefully enunciated word, “Money. Prisoners. Vault.” She pulls back, gives the instrument another spin. “That’s my only offer. You can say yes, and we’ll give you a phone, so you’re servants can start arranging things. Or, we can do this the hard way.”

She doesn’t insult Caroline’s intelligence by spelling out what the hard way would entail.

Caroline swallows, straightens her spine. “No one gets in my vault.”

Spike sighs in faux disappointment, her eyes gleaming with anticipation. “The hard way it is, then.”

Caroline closes her eyes, holds her breath, waits for the first cut to come.

It doesn’t come from where she’d expected.

Glass shatters from high above, showering down, leaving dozens of tiny nicks across her bare shoulders. She feels a rush of air before a body landing in front of her, knees bent.

A familiar man, one who’s been taking up way too much of Caroline’s free time, smirks at her, “Hello, love.”

Caroline gapes at him, and he pivots, backing up until her bent knees brush the back of his calves. She sees few bright flashes, but his back obscures her view of what’s happening. Whatever he’s doing, it’s painfully loud. Popping sounds interrupt shouts and screams of pain, and heavy thuds ring out. Caroline cringes, tucking her ear against her shoulder in an attempt to muffle the cacophony.

Silence, when it comes, scant moments after the chaos began, is jarring. Caroline leans as far to the side as she can, eyes widening when she spots the pile of bodies. She watches as the man, who she doesn’t know if she can call her rescuer since at this point he might also be planning on ransoming her, yanks a handful of zip cuffs from his pocket.

He moves swiftly and with grace, seemingly very at home his body and aware of its capabilities. Caroline’s eyes narrow, mind whirling as he secures her attackers, and she tries to assimilate this new information. He pulls off his leather gloves when he’s done, returning to her side. His expression grows regretful, and his fingertips brush her shoulders, skimming over the cuts and scrapes there. “Sorry about these. The skylight was the best entry point. Make sure you clean them up, hmm?”

He steps passed her, and Caroline feels him make quick work of her handcuffs. She hears the snick of a knife unsheathing and stiffens, but he only uses it on the ropes that bind her legs and torso. Caroline shakes them off, stands hesitantly.

“Okay,” she says, crossing her arms and turning until they’re once more face to face, separated by the metal chair. “What exactly is happening here? Who are you?”

“I’m afraid I’m not yet ready for you to know my identity. In due time, I promise.”

Caroline sucks in a sharp breath, her teeth grinding together. “Um, how about no?”

He blinks, and Caroline steps a little closer. They’ve always met in the dark, and he’d purposely stuck to the shadows as he’d teased and tossed questions at her. She’s never been this close to him. His eyes are blue, his lashes annoyingly long in a way men never appropriately appreciate. He wears a black mask, covering from the top of his forehead to his upper lip. His hair is slicked back, but she thinks it might be on the lighter side, given the shade of his stubble.

He clears his throat and shifts his weight, but he doesn’t step back or shy away. “I… I beg your pardon?”

“I have had a garbage day. It was long, it was boring, I had to argue over things I know I’m right about, with people who think I’m a bimbo and spend way too much time trying to look down my tops. My dinner got tossed aside when goons r us scooped me up. I love this dress, and it’s ruined. I’m bleeding. I don’t know where my shoes are. I’m hungry, I’m tired, and I want to go home!” she’s shouting when she’s done ranting, out of breath.

“Right.” Her rescuer, she’s decided on the term now, shoves the chair aside. He steps forward until his feet bracket hers, wraps his arm around her waist. Caroline grips his biceps, too shocked to admonish this rude invasion of her space. “Hold on. Step up onto my feet.”

She throws her hands up in frustration, “Hello? Did anything I just said sink in?”

His lips, which she’s now noticing are very nice, full and soft looking, compress. She’s pretty sure he’s trying to swallow a laugh. “I heard every word. I’m trying to assist in getting you home. In service of that, if you could please step up onto my feet and hold on.”

His right arm rises, and Caroline recognizes the device in his hand. She’s about to ask him if he’s seriously rescuing her with a device he’d stolen from her but thinks better of it.

He’d stolen the grappling hook from a vigilante who rocks a rose pink leather catsuit, not from Caroline Forbes. It would have been a monster slip, a true testament to how rattled she is from the day’s events that she’d almost blurted out her secret identity to a guy with questionable motives and an unknown name.

Instead, she smiles tightly, loops her arms around his neck, and gingerly steps onto his heavy boots. “For future reference,” she says sweetly, “I generally only like following orders in the bedroom.”

The strangled choking noise he makes as they hurtle upward is immensely satisfying.

* * * * *

Two days later, Caroline’s on her couch watching news footage of a gala she’d been supposed to attend. She’d had a great dress, red and scandalous, all ready to go, but trying to cover her scabby shoulders with makeup had made her look like she’d contracted some kind of infectious skin issue.

She’d sent her regrets and a fat check, resigned herself to a solo evening in her comfy sweats. On her TV, a society reporter’s chattering away about the guest she’d just finished talking to, a lech who’s at least smart enough to hire a publicist good enough to hide his dealings with loan sharks. She trails off in the middle of a sentence, fingertips coming up to press at her earpiece.

The reporter looks right at the camera, excitement on her face. “I’ve just been given some breaking news! A surprise guest has arrived, all the way from the UK. Klaus Mikaelson has shied away from public life since his messy exit from his father’s corporation five years ago. He’s built his own tech firm from the ground up. Buzz had been building since they announced their intention to go public. Let’s see if we can get a few words.”

Bored with the fawning, Caroline’s just about to switch channels. She knows all about Klaus’ Mikaelson’s company. Blurbs about it have been showing up in the intelligence reports she has complied since he’d lured a pair of promising engineers from FI’s Paris offices.

She’s planning on investing in his IPO because he might have scummy HR policies, but his business is sound.

There haven’t been many pictures of him available; apparently, he’d hardly been a social butterfly even when he’d been welcome in the family fold. He couldn’t have been more than sixteen or so in the ones Caroline’s seen, in which he’d been gangly and angular and sporting a terrible haircut.

The image changes, swinging to the red carpet before Caroline can grab the remote. She pauses, impressed because Klaus Mikaelson has grown up nicely. She might be distracted by the flawless fit of his tux, which Caroline knows can cover a world of sins, so she leans closer as the camera pans up to his face.

And promptly drops her wine class.

The blue eyes. That smile, the dimple it carves into his stubbled cheek. She’d brushed her lips over that cheek barely more than forty-eight hours ago when she’d thanked him for what he’d done for her.

Klaus Mikaelson had accompanied her home the other night, had neatly deflected her probing questions, his amusement never turning to exasperation at Caroline’s dogged persistence.

She’d seriously considered inviting him into her home. She’d told herself it was only in search of more information, but a tiny part of her, the one that was unfailingly honest and sometimes gets her in trouble, had admitted her rescuer intrigued her, even without a name.

Well. Now she has one. A plan forms rapidly, and Caroline scrambles for her phone, digging it out of her couch cushions. She taps the screen, connecting a call to Bonnie. “Bon? Sorry to bug you when you’re off the clock. But I need you to find someone for me.”

She stands, walking into her bedroom as she explains what she needs.

Bonnie’s a genius, well worth the exorbitant salary Caroline pays her. She gets the address within an hour.

* * * * *

Caroline drops a rope onto the terrace of Klaus’ apartment, slips down with barely a whisper of sound, landing lightly. She hugs the side of the building, inching over to the open French doors. She’s fully suited up, hair tightly controlled, and mask on. She eases her foot over the threshold, eyes darting around.

Ugh, of course, he has excellent taste.

Caroline likes light and airy, fun patterns and textures. But she can appreciate the sumptuousness of Klaus’ living room. It’s done up in burgundies and neutrals, hints of gold. There’s a buttery leather sofa facing a fireplace, thick carpets that muffle the sounds of her boots as she walks further in. She can imagine a pleasant night in front of a crackling fire, curled up on the couch when the weather turns cold.

But she’s getting ahead of herself.

Her nose twitches, picking up the smell of curry, cardamom, and turmeric.

She hears a door click shut, whirls to find Klaus, barefoot and still dressed up from The Gala, though he’s ditched the jacket and tie. He leans against the now-closed doors to the terrace. He smiles at her warmly, “Hello, Caroline.”

Which answers one of her most pressing questions.

Caroline yanks her mask off, tossing it aside. “I realize this is going to give you déjà vu, but what exactly is happening here?”

Klaus pushes off from the door, ambles towards her, studying her reaction carefully. Caroline doesn’t flinch away or retreat. “I have a proposition for you. And I have dinner. Takeaway from that place you visited the other day when your evening plans were… interrupted. I even got the mango lassi.”

Caroline narrows her eyes, “I have weapons, you know. Way more than you’d think, given how tight this outfit is.”

He laughs, a low husky sound that Caroline knows would be easy to get addicted to. “I’m sure you do. I’m not worried about you using them on me. I only want you to hear out my proposal. You can leave anytime you wish.”

She wonders if it’s stupid to believe him, but she does. He’d had the upper hand two days ago, had no trouble dispatching the group that had taken her. If he had nefarious intentions, he could have picked up right where they left off with the torture.

Caroline’s learned to trust her instincts. They’re telling her she’s safe.

She tugs her hair out of its elastic, loosens her collar slightly, pulling the zipper down a few inches. “Mind lending me something to wear? This totally isn’t designed for sitting for long periods.”

Klaus directs her to a guestroom, gathers a few things of his for her to wear. When she gets to the dining room, she finds he’s arranged the food on gleaming platters and lit candles. Her mango lassi, in its plastic cup, looks wildly out of place.

Caroline refuses to find it endearing.

At least until she’s confirmed that her instincts are correct.

[paulsbettanys]

Claire Foy and Paul Bettany for “What She Said”

The Duke gets into these violent rages and fits. How did you get yourself there?

Paul Bettany: I think you have to assume that he’s feeling a massive sense of injustice as to how she’s behaving. That’s warped and twisted but I can feel injustice in my life and tap into a moment when someone has been unjust to me in a way that is unforgivable. You tap into that and when you add that feeling to someone being reprehensible and disgusting, you have a backup.

If there was ever a film to make most people feel good about their marriages, by contrast, this is it.

Claire Foy: Yes, (laughs). Maybe it’s going to save a lot of marriages or maybe a lot of people won’t get divorced. Paul Bettany: I’m throwing people into sharp relief, and they are not as bad. I’m not sure the Duke is a very high benchmark of behaviour!

Claire Foy and Paul Bettany for “Entertainment Weekly”

The three-part show features many acrimonious moments between the two characters. After shooting such a scene, was it all smiles between the two actors, or did they skulk back to their respective dressing rooms in a Method-induced rage?

"Different sort of actor, dear," says Bettany. "I can't play like that."

"We don't go in for that sort of stuff," agrees Foy.

"No, I can't play like that," says Bettany. "I feel like that would be a miserable way to work. You have a common goal, whatever the scene is. You've just been terribly mean to each other, but it feels great. If you feel like you might have achieved the purpose of the scene, that's a great feeling."

"Yeah, and you have to feel quite safe with the other actor to be able to be so intimate," says Foy.

"Intimate" is perhaps not the right word to describe one fantasy sequence in which Foy's character advances on Bettany's Duke with an ancient battle axe and informs her husband that she is going to "chop your f---ing hands off."

"That was sort of ludicrous," says Foy. "It's very weird when you're doing a dream sequence as an actor, because you're trying to root everything in reality. At the time, Anne (Sewitsky), the director, was like, 'I'm not sure this is going to be in it.' So that just made me go, oh great, then I'll just go for it then, it'll be funny. And then, there you go, it's in it!"

Claire Foy and Paul Bettany for “Entertainment Tonight”

Both Foy and Bettany were coming off well-known roles -- her as Queen Elizabeth on The Crown and him as Vision in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. They acknowledged that that was something they took into account when they boarded this project.

"It was great counter-programming to be playing a cold, mirthless sadist having been playing Vision so much in the Marvel universe," Bettany said, "so it was kind of fun to let all of that out, to explore it in a safe environment with friends and safe words."

"For me actually, I really had to consider it because Margaret is at the same period of time [as Queen Elizabeth]," Foy said. "Admittedly I’ve played the queen for, like, five years or something, but I think that for me... I hate when I’m doing it all the time, but all of this is a bit risky and I’m not really sure. Because the women of that time, of that upbringing in England, you’re limited with your choices. But that was also I realized the challenge of it was to find the tiny nuances. They have very different behavior obviously, but the nuances in the way that they behaved and maybe that would be a real challenge for me, whether I succeed or fail to make that difference. But to help the audience see the differences of women at that time."

Bettany joked that working with Foy "made it very easy" to be cruel to her character onscreen. "Yeah, I loved it," Foy affirmed.

"It was both playful but also there were some moments when we would check in with each other," Bettany said, alluding to the more physically intense scenes. One example was when Bettany's duke strangles Foy's duchess in one particular scene. "I hated all that stuff and we would have conversations like, 'I'm gonna have ugly hands but there’s gonna be no pressure on your neck.' That stuff was awful."

Claire Foy and Paul Bettany for the “Emmys”

"He was a cruel bastard."

"She was a piece of work."

It may read like the poster for a two-bit potboiler ("and yet somehow they fell in love..."), but it's Paul Bettany and Claire Foy describing their characters in A Very British Scandal. The limited series from BBC One and Amazon Studios tells the true story of the tempestuous marriage and incredibly cruel divorce of the Duke and Duchess of Argyll, a melodrama that played out in public in Britain in the 1960s.

"I just think Paul Bettany is brilliant," Foy says.

"I wanted to do it because for a long time I've been a huge fan of Claire Foy," Bettany says.

As much as the actors admire each other, their onscreen relationship isn't quite so cordial: A Very British Scandal, arriving April 22 on Prime Video, is three hours of intramarital war.

Claire Foy and Paul Bettany for “E! News”

"There was lots that was hard to film, actually, because there was quite a lot of navigating the right tone to get," Foy explained. "It's quite difficult when you're filming an entire relationship."

"Any of the scenes where Margaret was belittled because of her stammer was always really difficult to do," Foy noted. "I found the courtroom scene really hard, because by that point, I was really attached to Paul."

Bettany felt similarly and revealed that he played his character as if he were playing a game, highlighting how toxic the pair were. "I think he's so gobsmacked that she opts out," he said. "I think he wants the game to continue, he will belittle her, he'll build her back up, and she'll become his plaything again."

Bettany said he felt the divorce "was devastating for" the duke. And despite the messy dynamic the couple had, the actor is convinced that the duke had feelings for the duchess. Whether it was love is still up for debate.

"I think there was a lot of attraction and desire and want of ownership and domination," he shared. "He loved her, but I don't know that he was capable—or what my version was—that he was capable of love."

Claire Foy and Paul Bettany for “Everett Post”

“I do tend to judge my characters,” Bettany admits. “I mean, I think that is often nonsense. You can’t play [Adolph] Hitler and not judge him.”

Foy adds, “But it is true, though, that you do get to a point where…once you understand the human being, it’s very difficult to hate them because you kind of go everybody’s got their stuff going on haven’t they? Right.”

Claire Foy and Paul Bettany for “7News”

Claire Foy: “There’s a complete lack of limits with her. She doesn’t really have any limits. She doesn’t really know when to stop, which I really loved because I have lots, and so it was really nice to play someone who didn’t understand the concept of when enough is enough.

Paul Bettany: “I think his worst quality is a total inability to imagine somebody else’s perspective, and that he can only feel sympathy toward himself.”

Claire Foy and Paul Bettany for “Rotten Tomatoes”

Claire Foy and Paul Bettany for “The LA Times”

Claire Foy and Paul Bettany had never met before arriving on the set of “A Very British Scandal.” But both were drawn to the three-episode limited series, which stars Foy as Margaret Campbell, Duchess of Argyll, and Bettany as Ian Campbell, 11th Duke of Argyll, because they hoped to work with the other.

“There was some very heavy reluctance on my part, because I wasn’t particularly looking to play another posh English lady,” Foy recalls of being sent the scripts, written by Sarah Phelps. “And so I was a bit nervous about that. And a bit like, ‘I don’t know whether I’ve got enough in me to make that interesting.’ But then they were talking about who the man would be who [would play] Ian, and Paul’s name was there. I said, ‘Well, that’s interesting. Wouldn’t that be nice if he wants to do it?’ And then he did actually want to do it.”

“It ticked a lot of boxes for me,” confirms Bettany, who was Emmy nominated last year for his performance in “WandaVision.” “I wanted to work with Claire. I wanted to do something back in England — because I don’t believe they really believe you exist unless you’re on the telly. And I wanted some sort of counterprogramming where I got to play a less fluffy, nice, warm person.”

“It’s an emotional and fascinating experience,” Foy says of working with Bettany. “I think he’s just a really exciting actor — like, really exciting. He’s got so much force.” Bettany adds, “She’s surprising, and her choices are surprising, and that’s amazing to work with. The scene reads a certain way, and then [Claire] comes in and offers something so different from what you might have had in your head. That’s really refreshing.”

[sanstropfremir]

episode nine babes!!! it's the final stretch!!

this episode felt much more like the final round before the finale!! as always brave girls and hyolyn absolutely delivered on the drama and the panache! i had a lot of fun watching these stages, but i'm not gonna ramble on too much in the intro since this review is already a day late lmao.

hyolyn

costume

perfect. 10/10. LOVE the croptop based off a lifejacket, very inspired. plus the lil accessory pouches on her belt!! this is a really good example of how to theatricalize a uniform with a lot of flair, but still keep enough of the recognizable elements.

it's a very interesting choice that they went for bike shorts across the board than something skimpier (like the original styling), which would have been the easier choice to portray summer beach vibes. i don't think it was a bad choice, in fact i think it was a more challenging and creative one! it was the more conceptually difficult option and that's an uncommon avenue for kpop.

lighting

i feel like they blew the white balance out a bit too far on the cameras, which didn't help with all that bright bright red and magenta. those are very hot colours and there are a few moments were stuff blends together. human eyesight is the worst at identifying shades of red so it's especially a problem when it's in both costume and lights, but it wasn't egregious enough to really detract from the performance for me.

related: some of the more eyesearing red moments and the very strict red/blue colour palette paid off for the uv light dance break. and with the hats in the audience!!!

sound

literally no complaints. she sounded great, the arrangement of see sea was perfect and it was cute as hell that she substituted the 'babe' with 'bae'. slam dunk.

staging

looooooooooooooove the structure of this stage and the literal integration of the 'fan' aspect!!!!!! the steadicam intro with the fan on the subway car in the secondary area was the perfect framing device for the beach/lifeguard concept! also not gonna lie i got faked out by that backup dancer on the subwar car who had a very similar haircut to hyolyn, i thought she was gonna be on the subway car and do some kind of costume change lmao. i'm not sure if it was intended as a misdirect but it got me

i like that hyolyn travelled over to the subway car and it wasn't just used the one time, it kept her from being confined to the main stage, and it was a fun choreographic element to use

it's more of a general note but i liked that the three groups that went today had more significant set than we've previously seen. it made all the stages feel more worthy of being for the penultimate round and overall they were all fun. i loved hyolyn's lil lifeguard shack, it looked real sharp and added a set of levels that gave more oppurtunity to direct blocking. also the cannon on the top was a cute detail.

like with the touch my body stage, the projections are doing a lot of work with the limited set elements to build a very convincing beach, that then also transitioned very seamlessly into the cityscape for the fakeout/reveal at the end. the chainlink fence was a particularly inspired dual element choice! once again, a lot of careful and smart planning on the part of hyolyn and her performance director.

brave girls

costume

unironically i love these. they're a little bit ugly and a little bit ballet based but they so ridiculous and surreal that i do not even care. i love ugly. i really really appreciate that they were intending to go for a metaphor and they were extremely literal about it. they could have just sprung for a big flower on each of them as their spring has finally come but instead they opted for all flowers all the time and i love that. this is a go big or go home type of show and even though brave girls had a stellar track record so far, this costuming feels like both a natural evolution and needed exaggeration.

also the dresses pair so well with the all white of the dancers. i'm not even going to complain about how high the exposure is because they're meant to be snow.

lighting

speaking of snow, GOD the projection work here is SO fucking good!!!!!. they fully used the capacity of the screens to establish the boundaries of the space with the pillars and windows and drapery, and then also set the videos+'cinematic' elements within that established space! having that permanent setting kept the scale of the space feeling very grounded, and it made the widening of the 'hall' when spring came so much more visually impactful! you could actually feel how the change in perspective of the modeled space from a flat perspective to a rounded one opened everything up, even though there's basically no actual set

also i love love love a pastel sunset/sunrise palette like this. it's one of my favourites and they use it so well in the 'sky' and then carrying that throughline out into the stage lighting too

sound

i think this is the rearrangement of theirs that i like the least of all the ones we've heard so far, but it's still good. the encorporation of strings does a bunch of the heavy lifting in terms of tying all the numerous visual elements together. like strings (generally) imply classical music (they did actually use a classical piece also), which links the ballerina figure. classical music also links to the vaguely romantic type architecture of the 'building', which links it to a ballroom, which further links it to ballet, but also links it to the cinderella style slippers. 'classical' music also tenuously links the silent film type cinematic elements (even though silent film soundtracks were usually done on piano but i did say this was a tenuous link. i think the general 'old timey'-ness covers this one)

staging

speaking on how all the references in this stage are linked together, here's a continuation: there are several very famous classical pieces based around the seasons, and there are ballets of some of them. classical ballets often also have themes of transformation in them (giselle, swan lake). cinderella is also a story of transformation. the changing of seasons is always a transformation but winter into spring is associated with rebirth and success after a period of darkness and hardship. the classical piece that they remixed in is tchaikovsky's waltz of the flowers (duh) from the nutcracker (another ballet about transformation!!!) i feel like i need to make a diagram to map all the connections of the references out so that y'all can properly see how much thought was put into this. i'm literally so impressed.

it's so easy be haphazard with these types of stages because a lot of designers don't understand that spectacle requires as much care as any other type of stage or performance type. when you put the effort in to synthesis your ideas you can come up with something so beautiful and creative and it shows in the way that people respond to it! the improvement trajectory from the aimless concept of their first stage to this is so impressive, they and their creative team have clearly learned a lot and it's paid off for them.

loona

costume

i don't.........know how i feel about these? i don't think i like them because i don't think they make sense. while i appreciate that there was finally an effort to go a bit more surreal with it, why are they just plain ol' beige. you do a song literally called butterfly and you have all the costumes in unpatterned beige, a colour butterflies are famously very not. this was a perfect opportunity for bright jeweltones or interesting patterning or just some of those really big chiffon scarves with butterfly wings silkscreened onto them. you know, the ones they sell at the botanical/butterfly garden gift shops.

tbh my main issue is that the costumes are not saying anything. i don't know what the theme of this stage is. i've said it numerous times at this point but the fastest way to convey concept is through costuming and i just do not know what they're trying to do. sometimes that's not an issue and styling doesn't always have to be super prescriptive, but imo this stage is screaming for some proper visual direction and having more clarity in the member's costumes would have fixed that lickety split.

no notes on the backup dancers tho, those are perfect chef's kiss MWAH

lighting

say it with me babes: WE! LOVE! PROPERLY! UTILIZED! PRACTICALS!!!!!!!! yes turn off those overheads we want it DARK for those leds baby!!!!!!! it also helps that they used blue/cool toned leds, because it makes them cut through the warm/amber wash that they're using as the general stage light.

other than the excellent practical use there really isn't anything else special or noteworthy happening with the lights. the projections are very benign and inoffensive. i do like that that they did a could of nice cues with those floor cannons, it made some nice underlighting in a could of the darker sections

sound

i'm not familiar with loona's music so i have to assume there was some importance to choosing this song, but i really think they should have done some more arranging to it to make the song fit this type of spectacle performance more. it was very sedate and also it felt like it wasn't mixed properly? like the levels were alllll over the place: the mics were way too hot and the backing track was way too quiet and also very flat? like it was compressed down to a single channel and not stereo optimized. which could have just been a volume issue and it might have been fine in the space, we have no way of knowing since it's a recording, but there was the same problem in the fullcam, which is just the raw space audio.

staging

loona has the contact of a very good set designer bc the detailing on that platform and those stargate ass rings is really fucking good. like i was SHOCKED at how nice that platform looks. i'm also very glad that they went for a level in the back, it uses up some of that upstage space (this stage is weirdly kinda square) and forces a lot of the main action to take place closer to the audience. i've noticed it in a couple of stages over the course of the show but sometimes people and choreo has been getting lost in the upstage ether and it's much better for this type of performance to bring it downstage. and levels are always a bonus.

i liked the big spiderwebs! great way to shorthand conflict visually and it was a nice cutaway from main stage.

am i just tired or did this seem very similar to their choreo from their intro stage? i might just be watching too many too large groups doing big choreos.

---

since i'm a day late on this and twitter was unhelpful i'm not entirely sure what the outcome of the episode was? my personal rankings were:

hyolyn

brave girls

loona

wjsn

kep1er

viviz

and it looks like the round three rankings were:

brave girls

wjsn

loona

hyolyn

kep1er

viviz

which i will agree with on first and last but NONE of what's going on in the middle HOW could you rank hyolyn so low!!! i also think this means that no one is getting eliminated? since i don't think anyone ranked last twice? which, hooray!! i think that was a dumb rule anyways and there's only six groups, just let them all perform there's no need for these fake stakes. anyways we love brave girls getting full points like they DESERVE. and now it's just the finale left!!!!

[seulbby]

give me a reason

╰┈➤ chapter four; vertigo

➛ y/n meets an old friend. 

➛series masterlist / regular masterlist

⧖ natasha romanoff x fem!reader

⧖warnings; angst, swearing, blood, gore, and lmk if i missed anything.

⧖a/n; sorry this took me so long to upload. i had a lot going on. but here it is!

•°. *࿐

natasha was truly dumbfounded. where the hell did this little fuck nyx go? first she has her against the wall, fingers laced around her neck. then next thing natasha sees is a black fog thing in place of nyx, or now should she say y/n. natasha truly hated her now. if natasha didn’t hate y/n before when she found out y/n was trying to kill her, she sure does now. 

nyx or y/n or whatever her name is, truly is something natasha has never seen before. and natasha has seen some crazy shit. she literally say giant aliens come out of a wormhole from space! she’s seen fricken asgardian gods! 

natasha, like any child, were told stories either from friends or family about the gods and goddess, greek or celtic, evil or good. nyx was the goddess of the night. when natasha was little and learning about the greek gods while going to that shithole boarding school the red room, she learned even zeus, the all powerful god of the sky, was afraid of nyx. now some wack job with some party tricks and mind control is coming out to kill her and is called the nyx for the exact reason zeus feared her? yeah, natasha has never seen anything like her before. 

•°. *࿐

y/n was used to whole fighting thing. she’s been up against some of the worlds deadliest people, including the winter soldier. she’s been there and done that. but for some reason she can’t get natasha, the infamous black widow, out of her head. 

the way she had elegance in the most crude way. even choking her up against the wall natasha had some grace to her. which y/n finds hard to understand given her background, but not really. 

after y/n literally vanishes out of natashas grip. she goes to where she was staying. in this old raggedy hotel. she didn’t like staying at the higher class hotels because it wasn’t what she was used too. or what she was comfortable with. 

when she was back in her hotel room all showed and clean to some degree she receives a text from a stranger, or so she thought. 

(xxx)xxx-xxxx

heard you were stirring up trouble with a friend of mine. 

y/n

who are you?

(xxx)xxx-xxxx

you don’t remember me? ill give you a hint - 🧙🏻

y/n

wanda??

wanda maximoff

ding ding ding

y/n

holy fuck. you know natasha?

wanda maximoff

of course. i’m in the avengers you know?

y/n

well my apologies for trying to kill her but i have a job to do you know?

wanda maximoff

i’m in paris this week. as backup for nat. everyone knows how the notorious nyx can be. can we meet up? 

y/n

shit let me check my schedule. i have a lot to do. killing people and stuff. 

wanda maximoff

cut the crap, y/n. 

y/n

im free idiot. how about we meet right under the eiffel tower? 

wanda maximoff

your wish is my command. get it? cause you can control people's minds?

y/n

so can you.  

after y/n’s conversation with wanda, she started to get ready. wanda was an old friend. they were both experimented by hydra at the same time. while wanda volunteered to try and save her country, y/n wasn’t so fortunate. but they had gotten to know one another and became good friends. y/n was even good friends with pietro. wanda would say they were better then friends because they might have had something going on, but y/n would never admit that. 

y/n’s whole world was turned upside down when pietro died and she hasn’t seen wanda since. so safe to say that y/n was surprised that wanda reached out. well, it might have been because she was trying to kill wanda's mentor. 

•°. *࿐

natasha knew wanda was there, and as backup. she just didn’t acknowledge it. she would rather die by the hands of her hit women then let her mentee clean up her mess. she’s stubborn (she’s a scorpio what do you expect). 

•°. *࿐

once wanda and y/n met up, there was only one thing to talk about. and it wasn’t the thing anyone would expect. 

“i just have one question, y/n” y/n was hoping it wasn’t the question that she was anticipating. she wasn’t really up for discussing it. 

“well how can i say no to an old friend?” she can. she could just disappear right now. but no. she’s gonna stay and try to be a good friend. 

“why did you leave?” well shit, that wasn’t even the question she was anticipating. but she already has an answer. and she already gave it to wanda. 

“i already told you before i left. i had an out and i took it.” y/n says without a second thought. 

“you didn’t even give me or pietro a second thought. you just left.” wanda might start crying. being friends was an understatement from the both of them. they were like sisters. getting experimented on at the same time can do that. 

“i did. i asked you both to come with me. you both said no.” y/n really didn’t want to have this conversation again. she was sick of feeling guilty for escaping a literal nazi organization. 

“but we were family. we were supposed to stick together. pietro and i had to fight for our country.”

“and i had to fight for myself! you guys volunteered for struckers shit. i didn’t. i was forced. so excuse me for wanting to leave somewhere where i was held captive.” y/n was on the verge of strangling the living shit out of the girl in front of her. 

“you didn’t even stay after i told you what happened to pietro.” 

“i couldn’t, and im sorry. but i lost my first love and i couldn’t stay.” that was the first time y/n as ever said that she loved pietro. wanda always suspected it, but now she has proof. 

“and i lost my brother!” wanda was yelling now. which is new. y/n never heard her so angry before. 

“i know. i wanted to be there for you. but i needed to leave, and im sorry. i wish i never did.” this was the first time y/n was actually showing any emotions since the death of pietro. 

the both of them didn’t say anything else after for what felt like years, which it was actually around 5 minutes until wanda put her hand over the table to grab y/n’s. 

[anna-justice]

Superman - Upstead

Summary: Jay and Hailey are a part of an officer involved shooting, the aftermath puts Hailey in a very dangerous situation, causing her and Jay’s lives to be at risk. (Pre-Established Upstead)

Warnings: violence, mentions of blood & gore, swearing, angst, over-protective Jay

Requested: Yes! #71, “Get away from him/her!” & #74, “He’s/She’s not yours.”

…

“5021 George, we are in pursuit of the offender on foot. The offender is armed, all units advised. Send back up to the corner of Garden and North Malcom.” Jay said into his radio as he and Hailey raced down an alleyway. They were in a nicer part of town, the streets were more open and Jay could see an open field at the end. “Hailey, I’m gonna cut him off.” Jay called out to his partner, before darting out of the opening. He beat them to the end, taking off as the offender exited the alleyway. 

Jay sprinted towards the large man, tackling him to the ground. He knew he had a gun, but it was his only choice. They rolled across the grass, Jay immediately trying to get the upper hand. Hailey caught up, drawing her weapon. “Chicago P.D. Stand down!” She shouted from yards away.

The offender was restless, flipping them so that Jay was pinned underneath. Jay kicked him in the groin and knocked the gun out of his hand. Neither of the men had noticed Hailey’s presence, and when Jay reached behind him to grab the gun, the man punched square in the jaw, disorienting him. The man smiled, standing and grabbing his gun, pointing it at Jay. 

There was a loud pop, followed by a thud. Jay sat up immediately, seeing his partner with her gun raised. “You good?” She called out, racing towards him. 

“Yeah.” Jay said, jumping up and kicking the gun away. He wiped the blood from his nose as he checked the guys pulse, he was gone. 

Hailey sighed as she reached her partner, “That was stupid.” She said sternly.

Jay nodded, “Yeah, I know.” He looked her in the eye, holding their gaze, almost like a silent apology for scaring her like that. They were interrupted by the sounds of sirens. Patrol had made it to the scene. Pretty soon the field was flooded with officers and crime techs. 

“What happened?” Voight asked, finally arriving on scene. 

Hailey shrugged, “He ran as soon as we knocked on the door, Jay tackled him, he had a gun. It was us or him.” She explained. Jay nodded, backing her up.

Voight gave them a short nod, “Well, I guess that’s justice. Let’s head back, we’re back to square one.” The two nodded, bidding him goodbye and walking back to their rig.

They had been working the case a few days, it was a quadruple rape and homicide. The offender they were chasing was Jason Forbes, they knew he was one of them abusers because his DNA was found on all four victims, but now they were looking for his partner. 

Jay jumped in the driver's seat of the truck, Hailey following suit on the other side. “Thanks,” He said, once they were settled. “For earlier…”

“Yeah, Of course.” Hailey said, smiling at him. “You're my partner, I’ve always got your back.”

…

It was a long day full of almost no leads, it was like the trail died with Jason. There wasn’t even anything to chase down. All they had was everything they knew above Jason, and no one he knew met any of the criteria they were looking for. No one looked good. 

Eventually, Voight told them to all go home and get some rest. Hailey suggested getting a drink, Jay didn’t do well cases involving children, especially rape cases. Plus, she knew he was beating himself up over his attempted arrest earlier. They agreed to meet at the pub a few blocks away from Hailey’s apartment. It had become their own personal Molly’s. 

They sat at a high table near the back, the only thing it was near was the old fashioned jukebox, that they were both sure didn’t work. “How’s your nose?” Hailey asked, taking a sip of her beer.

Jay chuckled, “Fine, thanks.” 

Hailey put her hands up in surrender, “I’m being serious, he hit you pretty hard.” She was trying to hide her genuine concern behind the humor, cause she couldn’t get the image of that man standing over him with a gun out of her head. 

“I’m a little sore.” Jay admitted, sighing. “But, I’m fine. Thanks to you.” He smiled softly, making direct eye contact yet again. 

Hailey shook her head, averting her gaze. “You’re acting like I took a bullet for you.” 

Jay shrugged, “Close enough.” 

They sat in silence for a few moments, neither of them really knew what to say. There was a cloud looming over the table. It wasn’t lost on Hailey that if she had been just 10 seconds later, Jay might be dead. And Jay knew how close he came to death today, just because he overestimated his own abilities. They came close to losing each other, but wasn’t that the job? It wasn’t a new thing, but it felt different. 

About an hour later, they walked out of the bar. Heading towards the parking lot to their separate cars. Jay walked a little behind her, he wasn’t ready to part ways yet, but he didn’t know how else to make her stay with him. “Hailey-” He started, but something caught his eye.

“Yeah?” She asked, turning around.

A car passing on the street slowed slightly, the back seat window rolled down and Jay saw the tip of a long gun. “Hailey, get down!” He shouted, sprinting and tackling her to the ground. Bullet after bullet hit the brick wall behind them as Jay used his entire body to shield her from the fire. When the assault finally stopped, they both waited a few seconds before sitting up. Jay grabbed Hailey’s shoulders, scanning her body. “Are you okay? Are you hit?”

He subconsciously placed a hand on her cheek, running his thumb over the pavement burn just above her jawline. Hailey placed her hand over his, “I-I’m fine. Are you okay? What the hell just happened?” She asked, taking his hand as he helped her stand. 

“I-I don’t know. I saw the gun and-” Hailey cut him off by launching herself into his arms, wrapping hers tightly around him. Jay hugged her back immediately, holding her close. She was shaking, Jay combed his fingers through her hair. “Hey, it’s okay. We're okay.” They stood there, wrapped up in each other for a few minutes before a patrol car rolled up. 

“We got a call of shots fired?” The guy asked, stepping out of the car. 

Jay pulled up the bottom of his shirt, showing the officer his badge. “Yeah, a black SUV rolled by and just started shooting, I couldn’t get plates.” 

While Jay talked to patrol, Hailey looked around, finding a set of security cameras. “Hey Jay!” She called out, she got his attention immediately. “We should check with the owner and see if these work.” She said, pointing up at them. 

Jay nodded, “You guys call for backup, I’m gonna go talk to the owner and call my sergeant.” He ordered, clicking on Voight’s contact information. It was going to be a long night. 

…

“Matthew Zimmerman.” Kim said, taping his picture to the board. “That’s who the car is registered to. Now, there is no obvious connection between him and Jason Forbes other than them being in the same facebook chat room.” 

Kevin turns his computer screen so that they can all gather behind it. “We didn’t find it before, because somehow Jason was able to make it unassessable on all his devices. It’s called the Misunderstood Brotherhood, and it is an invitation only, unmarked room. So you can only get in with a code from an invite.” 

Kim continued, “We searched through all of the members and there are near 75 in the Chicago area, many of which are registered sex offenders or have previous allegations against them.” 

“So, it’s a bragging ground for rapists?” Jay snapped, leaning on Hailey’s desk and crossing his arms. 

“Sort of.” Kim said.

“Most of the messages are pretty disturbing, they talk about urges and possible intent, but they are smart. There is nothing specifically incriminating, well, except for this.” Kevin scrolled through the chat, stopping so they could all read the bolded message. “This was posted yesterday afternoon.”

This morning, one of our brothers, Jason forbes, was shot and killed by Hailey Upton. A Detective in the Intelligence Unit out of the 21st district, badge #55055. We will not stand for this and we must avenge his death. The brotherhood will award a $100,000 reward to anyone who can eliminate the officer as a threat. Do us proud.

Hailey gasped, taking a step back. Her back hit her partner’s side, who instinctively wrapped a protective arm around her waist. “Holy shit.” Adam said.

“So last night, that was a hit?” Hailey asked shakily. 

Kim nodded, “It looks like it, and we can assume at least 200 other people have seen this message.”

Voight took over from there. “Alright, we need to get Hailey to a safe house. Halstead, you’ll go with her. I’m gonna call the ivory tower, they are gonna want to be in the loop.”

As soon as Voight shut the door to his office, Adam stood. “Maybe I should go with Hailey.”

Jay scoffed, “What?”

“I’m just saying, your head doesn’t really seem in the game.” Adam snapped, Jay’s arm wrapped around Hailey catching his attention.

“Do I need to talk to you?” Jay asked, his jaw clenched.

“Jay-”

Jay took a step forward, “Where the hell do you get off?” Jay asked, seething. “She’s my partner.”

“She’s not yours, Jay.” Adam said, getting in Jay’s face.

Hailey stepped forward, holding her hand up to Adam. “I’m not anyone’s,” She snapped. Jay took it as a chance to step back, the last thing he wanted to do was piss Hailey off. Hailey glared at Adam, shaking her head. She didn’t understand why he was causing such a scene. She turned to Jay, “Let’s get our stuff.” She stormed off to the locker room, Jay hot on her tail. She turned around exasperated when she entered the room, Jay cracked the door behind them. “What the hell was that?” She whisper yelled.

“I’m sorry-”

Hailey cut him off, “I won’t be the prize you two sword fight over. That was incredibly embarrassing, if Voight had been out there, there would be hell to pay.”

Jay slouched in defeat. “I know, I’m sorry. He just makes me so mad sometimes.” 

“Jay.” She said, “Do you really think I would have let Adam come with me over you?”

Jay sighed, “No.” 

Hailey stuck her arms out at her sides, emphasizing his statement. “Thank you.” She collapsed onto the bench behind her, running a hand through her hair. Jay cautiously walked toward her, sitting down about a foot away and leaning on his hands. Her fast mood changed, scaring him a bit. Hailey sighed, running her hands over her face. “There’s a bounty on my head.” 

Jay shifted a little closer to her, letting his hand rest on her back. “We’ll get through it.” 

Hailey looked up at him, something about the way he said we made her heart skip a beat. Before she could say anything, the door swung open and revealed Kevin. “Hey, you guys ready to go?”

Hailey jumped up immediately, sniffling. “Yeah, let’s go.” 

…

Three unmarked cars and a safety evaluation later, Hailey found herself sitting on a not so comfortable couch. For their own safety, neither of them knew quite where they were. There were alarms on all the windows and doors, so if someone tried to break in the team sitting in the house would immediately be alerted. 

Jay was pacing, his hands on his hips. Hailey huffed, “Are you gonna do that all night?” She asked.

“Maybe.” He deadpanned. 

Hailey rolled her eyes, “Can you please just come sit down.” She asked. 

Jay sighed, admitting defeat and sitting on the other side of the couch. “Better?”

Hailey smiled, “Much.” 

They sat in silence for a while, deciding to turn on the TV in front of them, not that there was anything good on. Jay snuck glances at his partner, even though he had been seeing more and more of it lately, it was nice to see her so casual. She had on leggings and a sweatshirt, her blonde hair falling over her shoulders. Her sock covered feet pulled up on the couch and tucked under her as she watched the screen absently. Jay watched the way the colors danced over her face in the dark room, smiling softly. He swore she got more beautiful everyday. 

Hailey looked over at him, blushing slightly when she found his gaze already on her. “What?”

Jay coughed, “Nothing.” He could see the gears in her head turning from across the couch. “What are you thinking about?” He asked.

“Eh, I don’t know,” Hailey shrugged, smiling weakly at him. “That we’re even now.” 

Jay chuckled, “Yeah, I guess we are.”

“I-” Hailey started, “I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t been there.” She looked down at her hands, feeling her eyes well up. “I know we put our lives on the line everyday, but…” Jay held his breath, her heart aching for her. “I could’ve died last night. I could have died last night, and you could’ve too, and that would have been my fault.”

“Hailey-”

“No Jay,” She said, looking at him with teary eyes. “You can’t talk yourself out of this one. You put yourself between me and a gunman and I just, I don’t understand.”

Jay shifted, moving a little closer to her. “Hailey. I will never not protect you.” 

Hailey sucked in a breath, his gaze hot on her skin. They had never been quiet about trusting each other, they both knew they would follow the other anywhere, that at the end of the day, they would be there for each other. But this, this was new. Not to him, he had always protected her, but for the first time in a while Hailey got a glimpse at how much she really meant to him. “I, uh, It’s getting late.” She rushed out, looking at her hands again. “We should get some sleep.” She stood, glancing back at him. 

“Uh, I’ll take the couch, you take the bed.” He busied himself gathering pillows from the other chairs and grabbing the throw blanket off the back, trying not to think about Hailey’s complete dismissal of his previous statement.

“Jay.” She said, and his head snapped up. “Are you really going to make me sleep alone tonight?” It was forward, she would admit. But the thought of sleeping alone in some random house while people were literally racing to kill her, wasn’t so appealing.

He stood, shaking his head. “No.” 

Hailey smiled, letting him follow her to the hotel-like bedroom. It was a big enough bed for two people, thankfully. Hailey pulled back the covers and climbed it, she hadn’t slept in over 48 hours and she was feeling it for sure. Jay climbed in cautiously, glad that he had a pair of sweatpants in his overnight bag and he didn’t have to sleep in his jeans. They laid on complete opposite sides of the bed facing each other. “Goodnight Jay.” Hailey said quietly.

“Goodnight Hailey.” 

…

Jay woke up in the middle of the night, needing to pee. When he registered where he was, he noticed that he wasn’t alone. Hailey’s back was pressed against his chest and his arm was wrapped around her waist. He smiled to himself, careful not to wake her as he climbed out. 

The bathroom light was blinding as he flipped it on, waking him all the way up, he noticed he had creases all over his arms from the blanket. Means it was a good sleep. He thought, grinning. Honestly, he was surprised he was sleeping so well, given the circumstances. He guessed he was more dependent on Hailey than he thought, she really did calm him. 

He did his business quickly, itching to get back in bed and enjoy his partners embrace, even if it was for just one night. He was halfway back to the bedroom when he heard a loud crash. He took off running, and when he reached the bedroom, he saw a masked man standing in front of the broken window, staring a Hailey. 

The man took a step forward, not noticing Jay’s presence. Hailey woke up confused, screaming for Jay when she saw the man. “Get away from her.” He yelled, charging forward. The man pulled a gun, but Jay kept going.

“Jay!” Hailey screamed again, thinking her partner was crazy. 

Jay grabbed the gun, ripping it out of the guy's hand and punching square in the jaw. He tossed it on the bed, “The safety was on.” He said, getting on the top of the guy and flipping him on his stomach. Hailey jumped up and ran to her belt across the room, grabbing a pair of handcuffs and handing them to Jay. Jay cuffed the guy and pulled the mask off, revealing a younger man. Jay stood him up, “Let’s go in the kitchen, we don’t know if there are more coming.” 

Hailey nodded, following behind him. She removed the rounds from the gun and placed it on the counter, watching Jay sit the guy down on the floor. A few minutes later there was commotion outside and the pair immediately raised their guns. “Chicago P.D!” Someone yelled and they both sighed, relaxing. The rescue team kicked the door in and was surprised to find the duo alive and well on the other side. 

Jay picked the guy up off the ground and handed him over. “He came in through the bedroom window.” The detective nodded, hauling him out of the house. 

As part of protocol, Jay and Hailey were both checked out by paramedics. They went over details with the detectives and their team, hopefully giving the information they needed to get ahead of and take down the brotherhood. Eventually they found themselves in the back of another unmarked car, Hailey leaning into Jay’s side, she was physically and emotionally exhausted, way too exhausted to worry about how things might look or come across.

Jay held her close to him, letting his thumb rub over the fabric of her sweatshirt. Hailey yawned, “You really have been playing superman today.” She said groggily. 

“Yeah?” Jay asked, smirking.

“Yeah, you’re pretty good at it.” Hailey confessed, leaning further into him. “But don’t quit your day job.” 

Jay smiled, leaning down and pressing a kiss to the top of her head. “Wouldn’t dream of it. I couldn’t leave you stranded like that.”

Hailey smiled contently, “You better not, good partners are hard to find.” 

“Yeah they are.” Jay agreed, hugging her closer. Good partners were hard to find.

…

A/N: This got so long, sorry! I really like it though, I haven’t written anything like it. Thank you so much for reading! <3

[duhragonball]

Hellsing Liveblog Ch. 77-81

This is the Seras vs. Captain fight, which is for some reason broken up over a one-shot “Operation Wolf”, and two 2-part arcs “Warcraft” and “Wolffang”.  

Seriously, why not just call it “Wolf Stuff” parts 1 through 5 and be done with it?

Okay, so The Captain has been hanging around Millennium since they debuted in Brazil, but he hasn’t done jack shit so far.   He intercepted Walter and Integra when they were trying to drive home to Hellsing HQ, and Walter sent Integra away, claiming that he doubted that he could defeat the Captain at his advanced age. After Integra left, he remarked that the Captain was just as strong as he had been when Walter last met him, presumably in 1944.

Then it turned out that Walter was secretly in league with Millennium, and as the invasion of London started to turn against the Nazis, you had the Captain and Vampire Walter both sort of hanging back and protecting the Major.  Then Alucard showed up and the Captain got right in his face, along with Alexander Anderson, as if to suggest that the three of them were the “big guns” of their respective camps.   But he still didn’t do a whole lot.   I mean, he attacked Alucard while he unlocked Level 0, but so did everyone else and it didn’t do any good.   When Anderson tried to fight Alucard one-on-one, the Captain and Walter held back and watched.

Finally, when Walter made his big play against Alucard, the Captain only stepped into keep anyone else from stepping in.   He shot Heinkel in the face, but not fatally, and even gave her a medical kit before he headed back to the Major’s blimp.

So this part where he confronts Integra and Seras as they fight their way to the Major is supposed to be a big deal, like when Darth Maul appears on Naboo and the Jedi have to fight him while Queen Amidala takes her soldiers on a detour.   Except it works in Star Wars because we had seen Darth Maul fight earlier in the movie, and we knew what he was capable of.  With the Captain, I guess the main appeal is that the story treats him like a big deal, as if hyping up the eventual moment when he finally shows us what he can do.    Well this is it. 

Leading into this fight, the Major was explaining to Hellsing that he and his Last Battalion crave death, but not just any old death.   They want to go out in a glorious struggle, which is why they spent 55 years preparing to pick a fight with the Hellsing Organization.   At this point, just about everyone in Millennium is dead, so now it comes down to the last few guys to choose their partners for their own final dance.   The Major wants a showdown with Integra, so the Captain points out the way for her so she can leave Seras and the Captain to have their showdown.

At this point, it’s really just process of elimination.  I think by now, Millennium’s down to just five guys: The Major, the Captain, the Doctor, Walter, and Warrant Officer Schrodinger.   Dok and Schrodinger don’t seem like fighters, and apparently Walter vs. Alucard suits the Major’s plans, so either the Captain can fight Seras or he can stand around and watch everyone else fight.  That seemed obvious to me when I watched the OVA in 2016, but now I’m thinking about it a little more.

I mean, for me, this is great, because Seras is my favorite character, and this means we get another Seras fight out of this story before it wraps up.   And the general idea here is that this is Seras’ first real battle after she leveled-up and turned the tables on Zorin Blitz.   This is a chance for her to face a much stronger enemy and show off what she can really do as a “true” vampire.  One advantage of late-game Seras is that Kouta Hirano draws her a lot more seriously.   Her stockings aren’t as baggy and her boobs aren’t flopping around like two walnuts in a condom.   I’ve always felt like a lot of early Seras art was intentionally silly just to emphasize her as a rookie-sidekick-comic relief.   That never completely goes away with Seras, but in the later volumes she gets to at least approach the dignity of her masters.

So for my money, this whole fight justifies the Captain’s existence in the story.   He was waiting in the wings to fight Seras once she had grown powerful enough to rise to the challenge.   And they did a good job building the guy up for this.  He never fought anyone up to now, but Walter acted like he was a big deal, and we’ve seen Walter wipe out a lot of bad guys over this story.  And his three-way showdown with Anderson and Alucard suggests that he could fight Alucard and not look too stupid.  

Also, I finally found a scanlation of Hellsing: The Dawn, and confirmed that yes, Kid Walter and Girlycard faced the Captain in 1944, and Girlycard cut and run.   The Dawn ended right after that moment, so we still don’t know exactly why Alucard abandoned that fight.   Was he actually afraid he might lose?  I suspect there was more to it than that.   The point is that if you know about that moment, you realize that Seras is in deep water here.   She’s throwing down with a guy who stood up to Walter and Alucard and survived.  

So this fight is a big deal for Seras’ character arc, but I sort of wonder if this was what the Captain wanted.  Everyone else in Millennium was looking forward to this big epic battle in London, just killing and eating civilians left and right, and then dying in some climactic battle with Hellsing and/or the 9th Crusade and/or a nuclear bomb dropped by the Queen.    I can imagine Zorin Blitz anxiously awaiting any of those outcomes.  

But the Captain’s almost too powerful for his own good, and I suspect he’s the one guy who understood what the Major had in mind for Alucard.   So he knew he wouldn’t get to fight Alucard or Walter or Anderson, because they’d be too busy fighting each other.   Anyone else is a mismatch for him.   He beat Heinkel Wolfe like she was nothing.   None of the 9th Crusaders would have stood a chance against him.   Seras is giving him a decent workout, but Seras wasn’t even on the board until a few months ago, and she didn’t start drinking blood until last night.

So was the Captain just sort of going along with the Major’s plan, hoping against hope that there’d be sport for him in London?�� Maybe he was the backup plan in case something fell through with Walter or Anderson.  Maybe he was thrilled when they learned that Alucard had turned Seras.  “Maybe she can give me the fight I want,” he might have thought to himself. 

You know, I’m just thinking out loud here, but I think I’m starting to get into this guy.  I never cared much for The Captain’s strong silent act before, but he makes a nice blank slate that you can project things onto.   Maybe he’s been observing Seras this whole time, trying not to get his hopes up, but also knowing that she was his only chance to get anything out of this battle.   He’d watch the Dandyman fight and hope that Dandyman didn’t kill her.   He’d watch the crisis with the H.M.S. Eagle and be relieved that Alucard was sent to stop Rip van Winkle and not Seras, who might not have survived the attempt.   He’d watch Zorin Blitz’s unauthorized assault on the Hellsing Mansion and wonder if Zorin blew his chance or saved it.   There’s a fanfic in this.   I gotta write this down.  Wait, I am writing it down.   Sorry.

Let me get back to the fight itself.   After we get past the “shooting big guns at each other” stage, the fundamental problem becomes apparent.    The Captain can become intangible, allowing him to hit Seras without getting hit back.  This is something I had trouble following the first time I watched this fight, because early on, the Captain seemed to fake out Seras by slipping out of his coat and using it as a decoy.   Like, that’s a trick a mortal fighter could pull, but the point is that The Captain keeps doing that same gag without the coat.  But I didn’t pick up on it because he transforms into a wolf-like creature, so it didn’t register that he’s a giant werewolf and he can turn intangible.  But yeah, he can do both, and that’s why he gave Walter and Al such a hard time before.   You can’t hit the guy, and even if you could, he’s not a vampire, so the usual anti-vampire tactics we’ve seen so far aren’t going to be enough.

Meanwhile, Alucard is fed up with this fight against Walter.   Walter’s body is powerful but unstable, so it’s really just a matter of time before Alucard wins by default.    But he’s not willing to wait that long, because Walter’s a shithead turncoat who doesn’t deserve the honor of a glorious last stand.   Anderson got that honor, but Walter?   Get outta town.  So instead, Alucard decides to drink a bunch of blood to power up and crush Walter in one fell swoop.  

“But where’s he gonna get blood at this hour?” you might ask.   “The Blood Store” doesn’t open until 9:30am!”

Oh, that’s no trouble at all.   After all, there was an enormous battle in London last night, so Alucard can just summon all of the blood from everyone who was killed.  London civilians, Ninth Crusaders, Millennium troops, all of them.   I don’t know what the range is on this ability, but if you’re dead and you have blood, he’s taking it.  

This development pleases the Major, who reflects on the nature of vampires, and why he would never want to be one.    He flashes back to what I assume was the Battle of Berlin?  There were Russian soldiers beating the shit out of him and then they shot him and left him for dead.   I guess that could be any German town invaded by Soviet troops in the final months of the war.   Anyway, that moment bears a striking resemblence to Vlad Tepes’ final human moments in Chapter 68.   The blood even seems to seep towards the Major, as though inviting him to drink before he dies, so that he can become a vampire himself.  But the Major refuses.

Then the Doctor and the Captain happened along and saved him, I guess.  This marks the first confirmation that the Major is not a vampire like his Last Battallion troops.   Somehow he looks exactly the same in 1999 as he did in 1944, but it’s not because of vampire powers.    Well, the Doctor might have turned him into a vampire after 1944, right?   Wrong, the Major despises the very concept of becoming a vampire, because he understands the whole deal with absorbing the souls of others when you drink their blood.    As he sees it, doing this represents a dilution of the self.    Alucard has been drinking the blood of thousands of people over the centuries, which has made him powerful and nigh immortal, but you can make the argument that he’s lost his own identity in the process.    The Major respects his power but he considers the price too high.   “I am me,” he declares, in defiance of all the glorious, beautiful power that Alucard has.    That’s what makes them enemies, in his mind.  

So the Major resolved to defeat Alucard without becoming a vampire himself.   For him, this “war” he keeps talking about has been like a mountain climber looking for the ultimate mountain to climb.    How could he achieve this lofty goal?   Everything he’s done has been to set up this singular moment.    That’s why he treated his own goons as expendable, and why he never cared much when one of them failed a mission or defied him.   The Doctor thought Dandyman might beat Alucard, but the Major knew it would never be that easy.   It was just a test run to guage Alucard’s abilities.  Rip van Winkle and Zorin Blitz were never supposed to succeed in their missions, they were just pawns sacrificed to get the opposing pieces into position.   The Catholic forces were there to force Alucard to unleash Level 0 and then lose all of his stored-up souls.   And then Walter would attack Alucard, goading him into drinking all this new blood to finish the battle. 

But what good would that do the Major?  Well, he seems to think he can “poison” this “wine”.   But we’ll get into that later.   For now, the point is that the Major has good reason to be smiling, even though he seems to be on the verge of defeat.

But let’s get back to this shindig.   You know, the Captain looks kind of cute this way, like he’s just sniffing Seras to get to know her.  

Just as Seras begins to despair, she suddenly hears a guy with a French accent speaking in her mind.    It’s Pip!  He’s alive!  Bullllllshit he is, he took a scythe in the back and Seras drank all his blood.  He’s as dead as it gets, but she can hear him anyway.  

The OVA explained this better.   There, when Zorin tried to read Seras’ mind that last time, she saw Pip’s memories intermingled with hers, and when Shrodinger appeared to relay the Major’s message, he also mentioned that when a human gives up his blood to a vampire willingly, it has a more profound effect on the vampire who consumes it.   And this always struck me as a good explanation for why Seras overwhelmed Zorin so completely, and why Pip could still retain his consciousness inside Seras.    We already saw Alucard’s host of absorbed souls, but they were little more than mindless drones.    I always found Dandyman and Rip to be especially frigthening, because we know they were bitter enemies of Alucard, but they seem completely oblivious to this as they fight in his service as familiars.    But Pip is his own man.   Maybe it helps that he’s the only one in Seras’ “castle”, but it’s probably got more to do with the fact that they were friends before and he wanted it to be this way.

Anyway, Pip starts giving Seras advice during the fight.  He convinces her not to give up, and then he gives pointers on how to use her powers in more tactical ways.   For example, instead of using her left arm to throw her shadow tendril at the Captain like a spear, he tells her to cast it along the ground.    This way, she can attack him along a plane, instead of a single point, making it harder for him to avoid it.  

But it still doesn’t solve the problem of the Captain’s intangibility.   I guess he can turn into something like mist?  I’m not sure what it is exactly, except that he can’t be touched unless he wants to be.

The Captain knocks Seras down into the cargo hold of the airship, where Seras discovers a gold tooth, and Pip observes that this must be a horde of treasure that the Nazis stole from all of their victims in World War II.   It’s easy to lose sight of the Nazi angle with this story, because it’s introduced like this shocking development, and then it becomes to commonplace in the story that it’s almost like background noise.   But this moment offers a helpful way to bring that back into focus.   There was never any cause behind Nazi Germany.   It was always about killing and brutalizing other people and taking all their stuff.   Likewise, Millennium’s been doing all this horrible shit for no other reason than the sick fun of it.  I think Kouta Hirano chose the Nazi imagery because he’s a World War II buff, but I’m glad he threw in scenes like these to remind everyone that this isn’t just some aesthetic choice.   He’s using the Nazis’ real world atrocities to bolster this dark narrative where the good guy is fucking Dracula of all people.

On another note, why did Millennium bring all this shit with them?   I guess they knew they wouldn’t be coming back to Brazil, but the Major seems pretty sure they won’t be leaving England alive either.   Then again, it seems like a lot of his men didn’t understand this, so maybe he only allowed them to bring their treasure to humor them.  

But it works out for the Captain because he brought Seras down here so he could kick a silver tooth at her.   Pip realizes that it’s a hint.   I don’t know if the Captain is trying to lose this fight, but he at least wants Seras to know how to beat him.   Maybe he’s just bored dodging her attacks, and he thinks he needs to give her a handicap to make this more interesting.    Or maybe he honestly doesn’t care about this fight, and he’s just trying to find someone to put him out of his misery because he can’t do it himself.

Something I noticed in the manga is that Seras is only briefly surprised to hear Pip speaking from within her.   Like, she wasn’t expecting this to happen, but it doesn’t take her very long to get used to it.   Maybe this is part of her development.    Stuff like this no longer throws her anymore.    She just instinctively understands how her vampire body works now.  How is Pip smoking right now?  How is she aware of him smoking?  Why does she care if he does it or not?  I dig this sort of thing because we never find out, but even if we had the answers we could never understand what this is like.  

My only complaint about the whole “Pip’s inside me” development is that it threatens to undermine Seras’ rise as a hero in her own right.    She became what she is now when she made the decision to drink blood and embrace her true nature.    But now that she’s here, she’s taking orders from Pip and calling him “Sir”, which sort of implies that she’s only doing this well because she’s merged with Pip and he’s giving her directions.  

Like, I know that’s not the real message her.    This is just Seras getting deeper into her own powers, one of which is the ability to use familiars like her Master did earlier.   It just plays out differently because she only has one and it’s a more personal connection.   She’s probably only calling him “sir” because Seras is just respectful of her elders and that’s in-character for her.   But I’m still not crazy about some of this.   

Anyway, they figure out that the Captain has to turn solid when he attacks, so the key here is to eat a hit from the Captain and then hit him back before he can go intangible again.

So Seras puts it all togehter for one final attack.    He picks up a huge bomb and throws it at the Captain...

...then she tries to divekick him through the smoke of the explosion.    He spots her anyway, but it doesn’t matter because...

... she needs to hit him while he’s trying to hit her.   I think the smoke was just to make him think she was making a mistake when she was actually trying to get him to stand his ground.   Note that Seras is punching with her left arm.   Usually it’s just a trail of shadowy tendrils, but she’s been coalescing it into a more typical arm shape during this fight, mostly to hold guns and such.  

So they punch each other’s hands so hard that their arms explode, but Seras recovers faster, because she’s used to that left arm being all disintegrated, I guess.  Then she says “Oo-wa-a-a!” like she’s either singing “Down With The Sickness” or doing the Count von Count laugh.   Take your pick, I got no idea what these word balloons are about.

The Captain throws a knee, but this time Seras catches his leg in her teeth, so I guess he can’t just go intangible like he normally does.  This sets him up nicely for...

... Pip emerging from her left shoulder with the silver tooth.    It’s a cool moment because it confirms that Pip isn’t just a voice in her head speaking from beyond the grave or whatever.    He’s in there, inside of her, just like with Alucard and all of his familiars.    This is Seras Victoria’s version of “Level 0″, which makes you wonder if she has the same Control Art Restriction thingies that Alucard had.   She just seems to have inherited these abilities from Alucard, powers which I’m pretty sure the Hellsing Organization gave Alucard when they enhanced him over the past 100 years.    Seras is doing all this naturally, if you can apply a word like “naturally” to alchemically enhanced vampires.  

Anyway, Pip coming out to say hello means that Seras has a  longer reach on her left side, so he drives the tooth into the Captain’s heart before he can do anything.   Then Pip flips him off for good measure.

And that does the trick.  The Captain seems surprised to be beaten this way, and then he laughs silently as he bursts into flame.   I almost wonder if he was relieved to meet his end.   The other Millennium soldiers died smiling, but he seemed more haunted by his time as an immortal monster.   Anyway, Seras is fucking sick of these Nazi Vampires and their nihilist bullshit.

So has Sir Integra, who has finally found the Major, only to discoer he’s behind some reinforced glass dome or something.   She uses up her ammo trying to shoot it, and then she breaks her sword on it.   

And this is standard for the Major, as he seems to relish the chance to explain everything.   Now that there’s no one left on his own team to listen, he seems to really want to go over it all with Integra, since he needs her to understand that this was all part of his plan.   Alucard’s about to disappear, and I guess he couldn’t stand the thought of Integra thinking it was a coincidence.

So yeah, Alucard is busy gathering up all the blood of all the dead people in London, something like three million people.   There’s rivers of blood flowing through town, converging on his location, and Warrant Officer Schrodinger is watching all of this when he suddenly whips out a knife and decapitates himself.

Then his head and body plunge into the river of blood.   I guess it was impossible to kill this little turd, so maybe it figures that he had to kill himself.

And Alucard, completely unaware of this, sucks up all the blood without a care in the world.   He’s finally ready to end Walter once and for all, but the Major thinks this is the end of Alucard instead.   But why?   Well...