#I’ve been in the fucking fandom since the beginning how in hell did I not know

[landhinlove]

wHAT

[lucystark12]

how to convince the ga that byler isn't rushed (kind of just a rant about lettergate)

they need to and i mean NEED to vecna mike because the only way the ga will understand that byler has been built up since the beginning is if we’re given scenes in context. we as bylers obviously get it but byler is at risk of being labeled “too rushed” if they don’t put effort into referencing the important parts of mike’s feelings developing.

the audience doesn't really have a problem with believing that will is gay and in love with mike because there are things in his arc that are just obvious and clearly point to that.

but mike on the other hand is in the middle of a love triangle. unlike most of the other main characters, mike isn't open about his feelings. we don't get his internal monologue. he doesn't tell others how he's feeling. thats why its so easy for bylers and milevens alike to interpret his every move in either direction. it's purely because we don't know. so, in season five, there are things they have to address and give concrete meaning to so that people understand how byler actually does make sense.

the most important scene that i’ve already kinda talked about to do this is...

this one, obviously, the most important little part of all of byler's season three. i want vecna talking about this. i want mike thinking about this. it’s crucial. it’s essential. his behavior here is weird as hell! it even reads weirdly in a script that was released and then edited quickly after. it's important and it needs to be addressed and treated as such. in the script (forgive me if i'm off, i don't have a copy of it so this is from memory) it reads as "what's wrong with me?" that obviously points our way, but since we don't get his internal monologue there's no way to be sure. it needs to be addressed.

this is also kinda lettergate proof because i think the unsent letters and the fact that mike did try to call will also be essential to proving what was going on with him during the gap between season three and four. if i were in charge of the show, i would do a whole flashback sequence to these six months. i want to know exactly where he is, what he’s doing, what he's thinking, how the people around him are reacting to his behavior. we need a shot of the love, mike. it's SO IMPORTANT.

literally i could scream about how important (and likely) lettergate is.

one thing that REALLY scares me about lettergate is the possibility of them reddieying us. yes that is now a verb. for any of you who never had an it 2017 phase, reddieying is where richie and eddie, two characters, had feelings for each other but never admitted it. at the end of the movie after eddie dies, we get this scene:

this is what i like to call reddieying. and yes that is also finn wolfhard. this is why we are scared.

the letters could be used in a VERY similar way if either mike or will dies to express the love that they both once had for each other. closure of sorts. i think that would be VERY poor writing (we've all heard my theory about how mike's love for will is literally essential to the ending of the show) but i think it's highly possible especially given the overlap between it and stranger thing's fandoms. the letters could be read at the end in a similar way to the way hopper's was, sad heroes and all. this draws another parallel.

yes i am bringing newtmas into this. fuck you.

above is a letter written by newt from the maze runner to thomas. newt is confirmed gay by the author of the book, and this letter is written to thomas but never read by him until newt dies. letterboxd reviews of this movie read:

"that letter at the end was the gayest thing I’ve ever witnessed and I’ve seen call me by your name."

"homophobia is thomas reading newt’s declaration of love and the shot cutting to thomas scratching his ex’s name into the rock ABOVE newt’s"

"newt, to thomas: "and i remember you. [...] i knew i would follow you anywhere. and i have." me: *im ready to be queerbaited again meme*"

and i didn't even have to search for these. these were like the top couple reviews of the movie. they were all on the first page of reviews.

all i'm saying is, by having the letter be an idea in our minds, they've set up a way to kill off one of the characters and still have a slightly resolved, weirdly up to interpretation ending. i do still think it's poor writing. i could kind of go into that too if anybody is interested.

i think that if lettergate is used as a device during mike's flashbacks to show how long he's felt this way that they will be using this thing they've set up for good, however, if they newtmas us and reddie us i might die. just letting you know.

[coolstoriesbro]

FOR THE ONES WE LOVE | CH. 1

FANDOM: The Walking Dead

SERIES: For the Ones We Love

STATUS: Ongoing

ERA: Prison

PAIRING: Eventual Daryl Dixon x Female Reader (No Use of “Y/N”)

CHAPTER ONE: Backseat Driver

WORD COUNT: 2k

SUMMARY: Daryl Dixon gets much more than he bargained for when his motorcycle breaks down while out on a run. Miles from the prison, he has no other choice but to hot-wire a car he comes across on the side of the road, only to discover that he wasn’t the first person to get there.

RATING: Mature

WARNINGS: Language, Mention of Attempted Sexual Assault, Symptoms of PTSD

A/N: While I’m not new to writing fanfic, this is my first attempt at Tumblr fanfic, which is somewhat different than what I’m used to. I have a whole backstory dreamed up for this character (she’s a nursing student who escaped from Grady Memorial after it was overtaken by Dawn and Gorman), but I know from what I’ve read of Tumblr fanfic, self-insert fics are preferred. This is my first attempt at that, so any constructive criticism is welcome. Please let me know your thoughts on the story as well. I have several chapters already written, just trying to decide what format to proceed with/if there’s an audience for it.

“Wow, thanks for that.”

At the sound of an unfamiliar voice coming from behind him, Daryl Dixon’s eyes flew to the rearview mirror as you sat up from where you’d been lying in the backseat of the car he’d just hot-wired. The all too familiar noise of a hammer clicking into place sounded as you lifted your arms, aiming a revolver directly at the back of his head.

With the way you trained the gun on him, combined with the intense gaze in your eyes, he knew that you’d shot it before.

Of course you had.

A woman, alone in this world?

There was no way in hell you could’ve survived as long as you had not knowing how to use a gun.

Daryl cut the engine and raised his hands. “This your car?”

You shrugged. “No, but I was here first.”

“I got it runnin’; makes it more mine than yours.”

“I was getting to that.” You said defensively.

“Bullshit.” Daryl scoffed. “Ya don’t know how to hot-wire a car.”

“How do you know?”

“‘Cause ya ain’t that kinda girl.”

The stranger’s assumption pissed you off, but what pissed you off even more was the fact that he was right. Before he came along, you’d been close to having a full-on meltdown when finding the car just a few minutes earlier, only to discover that the keys were missing from the ignition. There’d been a hell of a lot of abandoned cars that you’d passed during your travels over the past couple of weeks, because apparently even after a goddamn apocalypse, nobody left their keys behind.

And who was he to pass judgement on you? With his Harley Davidson vest, greasy hair and the ability to steal a car in the first place — this guy was lucky you’d given him any warning at all. Although you hadn’t spoken to another human being since escaping the hospital, and were beginning to think you were missing even the most trivial of conversations, you had quickly come to the conclusion that human interaction was entirely overrated.

Especially with this particular human.

“How the hell do you know what kind of girl I am?” You practically growled.

Daryl hesitated, knowing that he ought to tread lightly, yet somehow his mouth decided to run off anyway. “Just do.”

Your eyes widened as you lunged forward to press the barrel of the gun to the back of his skull. “You don’t fucking know me.”

Dumbass, Daryl scolded himself.

What was he thinking, arguing with someone who was pressing a loaded gun to his head? After all this time spent fighting to survive, did he have a death wish all of a sudden?

With his hands still raised, Daryl nodded, his senses finally returning to him. “We can change that. I’m Daryl.”

Suddenly, a memory of your mother warning you not to talk to strangers appeared as the man introduced himself, and you had to bite the inside of your cheek to keep from laughing. After a few seconds, you lowered your gun and laughed out loud, no longer able to keep it inside.

The entire situation was absurd. You were running on zero sleep, hadn’t eaten anything in days, and hadn’t spoken to another soul since you’d left Atlanta. It was the most inappropriate thing in the world to be laughing in your current situation, and yet you couldn’t stop.

Daryl hesitated. He thought he might be okay at handling a pissed off woman — but a crazy, pissed off woman?

Might as well shoot myself now.

“Ya crazy or somethin’?” Daryl found himself asking.

You laughed harder at his question, leaning against the backseat as your sides started to ache. “Or something.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Ya gotta name or not?”

Once regaining your composure, you peered over the passenger seat and noticed the large crossbow that he’d laid down while working on getting the car started. You also noted the backpack slung over his shoulder with several arrows sticking out through the flap. “Give me your arrows and any other weapons you have. Maybe I’ll tell you then.”

“Don’t wanna know that bad.”

“Hah.” You rolled your eyes, aiming the revolver at his head once more. “Wasn’t asking.”

With an irritated grumble, Daryl shrugged off his bag and handed it over. There was a brief pause while he rummaged around in his pants and pulled out a pistol, extending it to you handle first.

“No knife?” You asked suspiciously. 

He cursed under his breath, but a few seconds later you had a hunting knife to add to your collection as well. Finally satisfied, you met his eyes in the rearview mirror and told him your name.

“You alone?”

“Looks like it.”

The silence between the two of you clung in the air like smoke. Daryl kept his eyes glued to you now that you had all of his weapons, minus his crossbow, which was useless without the bolts. 

He didn’t pride himself on much, but one of the few things that he’d always felt he excelled at was being a good judge of character. The woman in front of him was young, probably mid-twenties, and pretty. In Daryl’s experience, pretty women were absolute bitches, but not necessarily dangerous. Even so, he couldn’t brand you with that particular title just for pulling a gun on him. You were only protecting yourself.

“Mind lowerin’ that thing? I did give ya all my weapons.” Daryl reasoned.

You paused, but reluctantly lowered your gun, your eyes locked on his as you sat it down on your lap.

“How’s that?” You asked.

“Depends, can I turn around without havin’ to worry ‘bout ya blowin’ my head off?”

You stilled at his words but found yourself slowly nodding your head in agreement.

When Daryl turned all the way around to face you, you held your breath. The last time you’d been this close to a man, it was Gorman, and he had tried to assault you.

The world had been a dangerous place for women far longer than it had been for men. Men may have recently had to learn what it was like to fear strangers now that the world had ended, but it had aways been something to fear for women, which made it twice as frightening these days.

As you studied Daryl, you noticed that he had lighter facial hair than that on his head, and pale blue eyes. With his intense gaze and bare biceps, he had a rugged air about him that you had a feeling he’d always possessed. He seemed like the kind of man who didn’t need an apocalypse to know how to fight for his life.

The two of you remained as you were, staring at each other for a tense moment, sizing each other up and down as you both tried to decide whether or not the other was a threat.

“Lay down.” Daryl grunted.

“What?” You blanched, your hand moving towards the revolver once more.

“Down!” He hissed.

Jumping over the partition dividing the front and back sections of the car, Daryl slid to his knees, tucking himself in the floor space behind the passenger seat, his hands clutching you by the elbows as he pulled you down, tugging your body flush against the backseat cushions.

When Daryl grabbed you, your first thought was a vile one, but your grip around the gun relaxed ever so slightly when he landed beneath you rather than on top of you.

“What the fu—” You cried as you both lurched forward, a series of bangs sounding at the rear of the car. Rather than finish your crude sentence, you cut yourself off when Daryl’s hand covered your mouth. Feeling your jaw tense against his palm, he raised a finger to his lips when his eyes met yours, slowly easing his hand away as a horde of walkers appeared from a clearing in the woods by the side of the road.

You both remained that way for what truly could have been hours, the only sound being your heavy breathing and the groans of the horde as they trudged along either side of the car like cattle. When the noise finally died down some time later, Daryl held a hand out to signal for you to wait, then eased up on his haunches ever so slightly, peering out the front windshield to find that the horde had wandered off up the road.

Once given the all clear, you slowly lifted your body from the backseat, your hand instantly going to the side of your neck as you attempted to work out the kink that had formed there from laying in such an awkward position. 

“Jesus.” You muttered.

Remaining where he was for fear that you’d think he might try something now that he was in close proximity of his weapons, Daryl kept his eyes on you for a few silent seconds.

“Look, I know all about wantin’ to be alone, but no one can make it alone now. You can keep my weapons, even hold your damn gun on me while I drive, but I have a camp a few miles back. My bike broke down, s’why I was lookin’ for a ride, but I can take ya someplace secure. I’m with a group of people back at a prison.”

“A prison? Really?” You asked curiously.

Christ. Was that actual hope in your voice? Had the last year not completely crushed you of that?

“Yeah.” Daryl nodded. “There’s eight of us. Men, women, a boy, and a baby.” Nodding towards his backpack, he continued. “Open it.”

Cautiously moving your hand to his backpack, you unsnapped the top and drew back the flap to reveal several tins of powdered baby formula. Running your fingers over the lids, you hesitated, your eyes slowly returning to Daryl. If this was some kind of trick to get you to come along, it was pretty elaborate.

“I just gotta ask ya three questions first.” He said.

With your curiosity getting the better of you, you shrugged your shoulders. “Go for it.”

“How many walkers ya killed?”

“Walkers? You mean, the living dead freaks that have taken over the world?”

Daryl nodded.

“I don’t know. Who keeps track of that shit?”

Daryl had to admit, at least to himself, you had a point. But it was one of the questions that Rick insisted on asking newcomers, and he wasn’t about to start breaking his rules for anyone.

Seeing that Daryl wasn’t willing to budge on the question, you sighed as you thought about it. “A dozen, at least.”

“How many people ya killed?”

Your mind instantly went to the lifeless eyes of Gorman and Dawn. 

“Two.” You answered, without a hint of remorse.

“Why?” He asked.

You stared at him, expressionless. “I’m a woman and I’ve pretty much been on my own since the world ended. Why do you think?”

Daryl stared right back at you, and in his fierce blue gaze, you knew that he understood you completely. 

“All right, let’s go.”

“That’s it? I passed?” You asked, surprised.

“Looks like it.” He grunted, using your choice of words from earlier and earning a small smile from you because of it.

“Okay.” You agreed. “I’ll ride back here, and I won’t hold my gun on you . . . unless you drive too slow.”

“Pfft.” Daryl scoffed as he climbed back over to the driver’s side and began to work on restarting the car. “Don’t gotta worry ‘bout that.”

[saintvainglorious]

Fics I Enjoyed in February & March

18 fics and ~720k (!!!) total. Includes fics from the following fandoms: Fullmetal Alchemist, Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, Hazbin Hotel, Helluva Boss, Kung Fu Panda

Pornstar Martini by blatantblue/@blatantblue and brightened Hazbin Hotel | Angel Dust/Husk | 5k | Mature | Part 1 of Pornstar Martini

Naturally, Husk’s kindness goes straight to Angel’s head. This is why he doesn’t do heroin — you try that shit once, you always want it. You may never take it again, but you’ll carry the gaping-aching hole in your chest until the end of your days. Or the end of eternity. Angel never needed aftercare before; he puts the blame squarely on Husk’s huggable shoulders.

Sour Dove by blatantblue/@blatantblue Hazbin Hotel | Angel Dust/Husk | 6k | Explicit | Part 2 of Pornstar Martini

“What do you need?” Husk asks again, hand in Angel’s hair, always in Angel’s hair. Angel needs to feel something that’s his and only his. He needs to know there’s a part of him, a pathetic inch, when he doesn’t yet end and Valentino doesn’t yet begin. He needs a lie. “Put me on my knees.” Husk doesn’t even flinch. “You know I’m not gonna do that, baby.” Angel and Husk get as close as they can without breaking each other.

Call Your Bluff by RazzAppleMagic/@razzapplemagic Hazbin Hotel | Angel Dust/Husk | 72k (WIP) | Explicit

Val may be a fucking monster, but he’s a monster that Angel knows. He’s a monster that Angel understands. Angel isn’t stupid; he made the choice to sign with Valentino because he was the only overlord that made sense for Angel’s lifestyle — for what Angel wanted out of Hell. But now you’re tellin’ him that his soul is owed to some random fucking jackass who swindled Val in a game of cards? How can that be fair? How can that be something that’s just allowed to happen? (In which, Angel's contract is acquired by a new overlord — Hell's very own Gambling Demon, and they both get more from the relationship than either of them bargained for.)

snipers solve 99% of all problems by silentwalrus/@silentwalrus1 Fullmetal Alchemist | Gen | 260k (WIP) | Mature

Ed had thought, after the whole Promised Day, homunculus, entire country harvested for alchemical batteries thing, the batshit quotient of his life would have settled down some. He really ought to have topped out the meter with that one. But no. The bullshit is just getting started. “Are you fucking kidding me,” Ed demands. “The wizards?”

Call Sign: Morning Star by blatantblue/@blatantblue Hazbin Hotel | Alastor/Lucifer Morningstar | 7k | Explicit

“You,” Alastor says slowly, “came up here to proposition me?” Lucifer shrugs. “And if I did?” Joy and the thrill of friendship are not on Alastor’s frequency, and neither is Lucifer. But it may be their last night in Hell; in the circumstances, Lucifer’s mouth on him is infinitely less of a terrible idea.

You're in MY House, Bitch by brightened Hazbin Hotel | Adam/Lucifer Morningstar | 3k | Explicit

“Is this what you’ve been up to?” Adam asks. “A rubber duck orgy?” Lucifer gasps, reaching for the nearest duck and clutching it to his chest. “How dare you! I’ve never fornicated with any of my ducks. In fact … I haven’t fornicated since Lilith.” Lucifer drops the duck in favor of drumming both hands on his chest. “Well, that’s embarrassing. Why am I saying this to you?” Lucifer propositions Adam. Not in that way! But also, yes in that way.

Dusk Till Dawn by Novaeris Helluva Boss | Blitzø/Stolas | 13k | Mature

When Blitzø gets drugged and kidnapped by an imp gang, he has to fight tooth and nail to make it out with his life. When his injuries prove to be a bit too much for him to handle, he sucks up his pride and goes to ask Stolas for help. Normally, not a big deal. Except this time, he hasn’t spoken to the guy since their shitty first date at Ozzie’s. And when one of his wounds gives Blitzø a nasty fever, he finds himself revealing a lot more than he intended. A post ep 7 fic with a lot of Blitzø whump and Stolas finally learning where the lines of communication had broken down between them.

Far From Heaven by Novaeris Helluva Boss | Blitzø/Stolas | 45k | Explicit

After their disastrous first date, Blitzo and Stolas struggle to pick themselves back up again in the aftermath. It takes many small steps before they can finally be honest, with themselves and with each other. Blitzo learns to tell the truth. And Stolas learns that, sometimes, things aren’t as hopeless as they appear. A study of Blitzo and a study of Stolas as they fall apart and then come back together after ep 7.

Palaces and Souvenirs by CloudySonder/@cloudysonder Helluva Boss | Blitzø/Stolas | 14k (WIP) | Mature

So Stolas is objectively. Objectively. Attractive. Kinda soft-looking, sometimes. Pretty. Whatever. Fuckin’ whatever. That’s always been a thing. Blitzo knew that, Stolas definitely knew that-- whatever. This is not, Blitzo thinks, sounding a little bit desperate even to himself, some sort of revelation. the lack of Slow-Burn Friends-With-Benefits to Lovers with Octavia & Blitzo Bonding as a Sideplot content in the stolitz community is Appalling, so i am merely fulfilling a demand in the market

"Red." by QUINADEN Helluva Boss | Blitzø/Stolas | 10k | Explicit

Another full moon, another sexual rendevous. But when Stolas suggests that he return the favor for once, Blitz has to confront the fact that giving over even more control of the situation might be the scariest compromise he’s ever had to make.

At Your Service by QUINADEN Helluva Boss | Blitzø/Stolas | 14k (WIP) | Mature

When Blitz was 10, his family sold him to the Ars Goetia family, believing that he’d have a far better life than he ever would in the circus business given his lack of general talent and skill. With his soul forever bound by contract, he has one job and one job only: to serve Prince Stolas of the Ars Goetia. Part of that duty eventually became having a nearly two-decades-long affair with the prince. But when their secret is discovered by Andrelphus, who threatens to expose them both to the Goetia family, just how far will Blitzø be willing to go in order to protect Stolas, and, by extension, his own life?

The Devil Is My Shepherd by QUINADEN Helluva Boss | Blitzø/Stolas | 28k (WIP) | Mature

No longer able to live in the comfort of the home and property he owned for decades, Blitzo has now moved in (at least temporarily) with Stolas while he recovers from his injuries sustained at the hands of the local Catholic congregation. No one said adjusting to an entirely new life in Hell would be easy, but between Stolas' daughter going through the motions of her parents separating, his new friends planning their wedding, a manager who is both younger and far braver than he is, and Stolas himself, it's been difficult, to say the least. Grappling with a brand new lifestyle and world without the comfort of the deity his parents raised him to embrace, things are certainly going to be rough. He's already been dragged down into the depth of Hell, though: how much worse could it get?

Traces of Spring by nehezt/@nehezt Kung Fu Panda | Gen | Mature

While investigating a strange phenomenon, Po inadvertently brings Tai Lung back from the Spirit Realm. Forced to live again, Tai Lung must grapple with his place in the world and the feelings that led to his attack on the Valley of Peace.

Competition by astolat/@astolat Game of Thrones | Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth | 11k | Mature

Almost the instant Brienne was out of earshot, Bronn turned to Podrick, jerked his head towards Jaime and asked, “Has he fucked her yet?”

Words by astolat/@astolat Game of Thrones | Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth | 10k | Explicit

“So we’ll look for you in the North," Robb Stark said, "coming to pay your debt."

Let The River Run by astolat/@astolat Game of Thrones | Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth/Robb Stark | 61k | Explicit

The deep satisfaction of having made the right choice; of having found a clear-flowing wellspring of true honor to protect.

Royal Flush by astolat/@astolat Game of Thrones | Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth/Margaery Tyrell | 85k | Explicit

Robb Stark had swept his entire hand of cards off the table, and Tyrion couldn’t see how to make a single play at all.

Winter's Crown by astolat/@astolat Game of Thrones | Jaime Lannister/Robb Stark | 76k | Explicit

“When the Night’s King rides,” the giant said, each word slow as cold honey pouring, “the King in the North must answer. The King in the North…whose name is Stark.”

[shsy7573]

Random Lucifer (Hazbin Hotel) Character/Song Analysis Kinda Thing… I Guess

Okay, so yeah, Luci has 100% taken over this page. So what? I’m not obsessed, you are.

Anyway, I’ve been listening to “More Than Anything” on repeat since it dropped, and like a lot of the fandom I tear up every single time… but unlike a lot of the fandom, it’s not because of the sweet father-daughter moment (which, don’t get me wrong, doesn’t help the situation because it’s just so damn wholesome).

No, what gets me is how, just through a couple subtle moments, the show is able to convey just how absolutely shattered Luci is as a character. And, you know, because he’s my favourite, bestest, snek-baby-duck-boy, it makes me a little emotional…

So now you’re all gonna hear about what goes through my mind every time I listen to it. YAY!

“Charlie! You don’t understand, Heaven never listens. They didn’t listen to me. They won’t listen to you!” / “You don’t know that—” / “I do!”

It starts before the song even truly begins. When I’m listening, it’s usually these first few lines that grab my attention. I end up replaying the first 4-5 seconds of the song over and over again because the pain in that “I do” is so fucking good! (And because I like to suffer apparently cuz I end up sad. Life of an angst lover I guess).

It’s the first time we see him with actual tears in his eyes. The raw delivery of that line is so attention grabbing, and manages to say so much in such little words.

I think the reason this particular scene tickles my brain so much is because it’s the breaking point for his character in a way. I am, and always will be, a sucker for moments where a character’s walls finally come down, and we get to see what’s been festering inside. When their deepest thoughts and how much they’re hurting are revealed. The entire song is what that is for Lucifer, starting with these two words right here. I truly cannot put into words just how much my breath is taken away by Jeremy’s delivery of this line. I cannot articulate how much I love it, and how important it is for Luci’s character. it just hits so deep and so right for me and I love it.

Lucifer isn’t just saying that he knows Heaven isn’t going to care about her plan (I don’t think anyone thought that’s all he was saying but whatever). He is saying that he knows what Heaven does to dreamers. He knows what they’ll do because he has already been there, and it destroyed him. They took his ideas that they saw as too outlandish, and they squashed them. Cast him aside. And he paid the price for it when he went bashing their back and did his own thing anyway.

Luci is a broken dreamer. Throughout the entire episode, and the series as a while, we are given very strong hints of this. However, it’s not until this song that we really see it in action. It’s not until these moments that we are able to see past both the veils of “Imposing King of Hell” and “Goofy Guy who’s trying his best but not great at Dadding,” and get a look at how genuinely depressed this man is.

“My dreams were too hard to defend.”

This scene eight here. The more I see it, the more I fall in love with it. Just a great example of ‘show don’t tell.’

He’s talking about having big ideas, he’s talking about giving people a chance and reaching outside the normal, he’s talking about being cast out of Heaven. I just love the parallel he’s drawing between Charlie’s mission, and his own past.

Charlie created the hotel in an attempt to give people who have been seen as lesser to all of Heaven some sort of chance. She is choosing to have faith in them, and to open up opportunities for them to lead a better life.

Lucifer, when he gave Eve the fruit, was taking a chance to allow humanity the chance to have free will. He wanted them to experience everything life had to offer for themselves like angels got to. He offered a chance for them to lead a better life.

He had everything, and he had complete faith that what he was doing was right. All the light and hope of his dreams was right in the palm of his hand. He had so many ideas that he thought, if they were saw through, would make the world a better place.

But it didn’t work out for him.

“And in the end, I won’t lose it all again.”

Now, the first seconds of dialogue may be what I keep rewatching, but this has got to be my favourite visual of the entire song. It’s such powerful imagery, and I fangirl over it every time.

Look at how small he looks in that shot (I know, I know, he’s tiny regardless, but like seriously). He is completely outnumbered, hopelessly overpowered, totally at the mercy of all his Heavenly superiors… and he’s all alone.

He lost everything because he had the gall to dream. It’s not hard to look at the song (and the episode at large, really) and find not only his feelings of being wronged, but also his immense guilt. It shows in how much he hates Sinners. They are basically the worst of what he did, a constant reminder of the day his mistake caused him to lose his home and everything he held dear, and they are all he gets to see. Only being permitted to see your failures for all eternity? No wonder he’s fucking depressed.

The day Heaven cast him out was the day he stopped dreaming. Because dreaming big only leads to pain, failure, and suffering.

“I just don’t want you to be crushed by them like… like I was.”

This next moment is kinda self explanatory and obvious and really doesn’t need any commentary, but I’m gonna talk about it anyway. Because I love it, and I love him, and… you know… angst. I’ve mentioned my lust for it several times now throughout this post, you really shouldn’t be surprised.

I just feel so bad for him. Lucifer made one mistake. One simple, misguided mistake that ended up introducing evil into the world, and all of Heaven came down on him for it. And, you know what, in the narrative presented by the show, what he did wasn’t that bad. He just wanted to give the world’s newest creations the same freedom angels had, and it backfired horribly. Lucifer, like Charlie, was an idealist who saw the best in people and wanted to help.

And what did he get for his good intentions? Shoved into the cesspool he unintentionally created, and forbidden to ever see anything good that came from his dream.

If I had to guess, Lilith was the only thing keeping his mental health afloat for a long time… and then they had Charlie.

“The tales about your lofty dreams. I’d listen breathlessly, imaging it could be me.”

His daughter became the light of his life. Something that he cherished and indulged more than anything else in the world. To him, she was perfect, and he wanted to do right by her in any way he could.

Lilith told their daughter stories of all her father’s dreams regardless of what he thought of them, and when the little princess came asking him… how could he refuse? How could he refuse her anything?

So he shared them with her. All the tales of grandeur, and fantasies of everything he wished the world could have been. All the dreams he had long since let go.

“And in the end, it’s the view I had of you that show me dreams can be worth fighting for.”

Now, the scene where Lily take’s Charlie away has always been excellent brain fodder for me because of how somewhat ambiguous it is. You could interpret his sadness to have SO MANY meanings. However, I have inevitably decided on two potential head-cannons/theories to share here for what could possibly be going through Snek-King’s head.

One: Lucifer loves his daughter, but he feels estranged and like he’s failed her in some way. She’s such a joy, such a wonder, and in a way it's his fault she’s trapped down here with all of human ties worst. He wasn’t to be close to her, and to make the world perfect for her… but he already feels like he’s failed her in the most unforgivable way. He keeps his distance because part of him doesn’t want her to have a super high of an opinion of him. It’s kind of his depression manifesting, saying that ‘she shouldn’t admire you and your stupid dreams when they’re the reason she’ll never see true light and happiness.’

The angst addict in me likes this one more, but still I’ve got another one that always pops.

Two: He feels like he’s selling her false hope, and he can kind of see the place her innocence is headed. He’s seen the horrors of the world, and he knows the more he indulges her dreams and fantasies, the more she’ll suffer when she sees that’s not what the world is like. He knows from personal experience how much it hurts when your dreams come undone, when you lose hope in the world.

Listening to Charlie’s actual lyrics, she tells him that he was the one who inspired her to dream, that he was right to dream, and that she’s not going to back down. In the song, Luci realises that 1: maybe he didn’t fuck us as badly as he thought and that she actually doesn’t blame him and wants her in his life and/or 2: she has her mother’s willpower, and she’s never going to stop dreaming or let her world be sullied like he did. She’s so much stronger than he was.

So he lets her in.

(Side note… AWWW, look how TINNYY he is! He’s so small. The start contrast in the second image gets me every time)

There’s a bit of symbolism in the song which I ABSOLUTELY adore, and it has to do with the wings. In the flashback, Charlie mentions his “lofty dreams,” when we see the duck, which later transforms to have multiple sets of wings. Later in the song, when Lucifer finally lets her in, he also sprouts those wings.

And I just love this, because I think it acts as the perfect symbolism of him finally opening his mind again. Not just to his daughter, but to the possibility of dreaming in general.

He takes her to a circus, a place filled to the brim with spectacles and thrills, a place where humanities wildest imaginations seem possible.

But even though he’s beginning to open up, and he’s willing to help her in whatever she does, he’s not ‘fixed.’ His depression and self doubt and feelings of hollow emptiness and guilt and apprehension aren’t gone.

And he’s still terrified of seeing her spark go out like his did.

This tiny smile break is so addicting to watch for me. It speaks volumes. Once again, my angst loving heart eats it up every time. It says, “I’m still worried, and there is still so much shit going on in my mind right now about all of this, but I’m here for you.”

And that’s what counts.

Luci’s character showed a lot of colours, and came a long way in this singular episode, but he’s still got a big uphill battle to climb. He still has to come back into his own where dreams are concerned. Maybe he never will, not completely. Realistically, he’ll never go back to the way he was.

But maybe, just maybe, in helping his daughter he’ll find something worth believing in again.

That is, of course, if they decide to give him a character arc beside ‘Dad who is trying and doing better,’ but for that only time will tell.

—

And THAT concludes my rant on the Rubber Ducky Ruler. If you stuck around this long, good for you! I wrote this whole thing on a limb at midnight, and NO I’m not going to go back and edit it because why would I ever want to see all the horrid grammatical and spelling errors I’ve inevitably made.

Maybe I’m off the mark on all of this. Maybe I’m head-cannoning too much. Maybe I’m just trying to suck out every hint of potential angst out of a song that’s supposed to be sweet and wholesome. That’s for you to decide. But for me, I’ve decided that I’m satisfied with this analysis. In the end, I just needed to express all the thoughts bumbling around in my head SOMEWHERE before I exploded, and unfortunately, I feel like I’ve run all my friends dry talking about this baby to them, so now it’s your turn. But, anyways, I think that about wraps things up. It’s time to go to bed.

Farewell, stay hydrated, and have a lovely rest of your day/night :)

[wanderingwomanwondering]

911 Season 7 Critique

This is a long post. If you don’t make it to the end, I totally understand.

I know we all have lots of feelings about this season and most of what I’ve read from others in the fandom here on tumblr has been overwhelmingly positive, but I have serious and persistent concerns. Here me out, if you’re willing and able.

This entire season something about 911 has felt off for me in a big way. I couldn’t quite put my finger on exactly what the problem was until recently. All I knew was that season 7 was weird out the gate. Now I finally think I have something coherent to say about this season now that it’s over. The whole season’s main plot(s) have been overblown and overworked. All season long, the characters have felt bodysnatched by extraterrestrials being just similar enough to our beloved characters to not raise total alarm - at least initially - but different enough to snatch some epic side-eye outta me. Then ep 4 happened and the whole time I was a mix of elated and confused. Anybody who’s been paying attention for the last 7 years knows that Buck is queer so that wasn’t the shocker. For me, it was the way everything went down in ep 4 with the characters that felt heavy-handed and untrue to who they are. The weird strange bizarreness through the season just kept on coming like a freight train with no breaks or relief. By the finale I was scratching my head and kinda irritated because the tiny bit of actual character work that we saw over the course of the season was odd as hell and now it’s over and I’m not really excited about much of anything that’s supposed to be coming in s8. The characters feel too ooc and the plots feel too uncharacteristic of 911. Like for a bit there I thought I was watching Days of Our Lives meets Miami Vice meets The Walking Dead, and that’s not what I signed up for with 911.

Season 7 left me earnestly wondering: Where are the family feels, the tight bonds, the heartfelt connections, the vulnerable conversations, the healing community that is the 118, the fucking togetherness? Everyone feels like they are adrift and alone without the found family support that they enjoyed in previous seasons. This season has been a trauma fest with little to no emotional payoff. Drama for its own sake. Problems resurrected, rehashed, blown way out of proportion, repackaged, and sold as authentic current issues. This season I felt like I was watching a completely different show.

Yes we are on a new network. Yes Tim is back. Yes a bit of shake up can be good. But this doesn’t feel like a good shake up. I feel like I’m being jerked around for sport. Like past BS is being thrown in my face instead of laid on the table and worked through by the characters that I know and love. Season 7 was mostly just trauma porn and I did not enjoy it.

Yes we could argue that Tim is trying to grab the attention of new viewers on a new network. But honestly that kind of feels like a cop-out explanation given what he delivered. If I were new to this show, I would not feel like I have any idea who these characters are beyond the wild crap that happens to them. I feel like I know more about how to sink a cruise ship or how to traverse the desert than I do about how the characters relate and connect with one another.

As someone who’s watched 911 from the very beginning live and in real time, the plotting, pacing, and character choices in season 7 feel like Tim is putting on a show instead of telling stories. Shows are a wacky wild ride with little cohesion and/or progress; characters take a backseat to whatever the ptb can cook up for the weekly plot. Stories center characters and what’s happening to them is processed by them and moves their arcs along in mostly coherent ways. A show is ‘shit happens’. A story is ‘shit happens TO ME AND I DEAL WITH IT in ways that show the audience who I am and what matters to me’’.

Maybe season 8 will feel more like a story since it won’t be a truncated season, and season 7 has reintroduced people to - aka dredged up long-past but somehow present again - character issues. I don’t know. I hope season 8 is more coherent, character-focused, and progress/healing-oriented like previous seasons have been. Honestly the show has been running too long to act like rehashing the past over and over again is enough to carry it for 7 more seasons.

Anyway, my specific concerns with season 7 are below the cut.

The main plots have just been hilariously bad. Soap opera levels of wtaf.

The cruise ship disaster had pirates, cheaters, and poorly-developed conflicts between lovers all of which (mostly) came out of the thin blue sea air and/or were handled in incredibly ooc ways. MIssing groom because of viral encephalitis. Hospital wedding like its a good thing and preferable to the warm fuzzies that Madney deserved. Long-dead wife put on such a high pedestal by Eddie that she walks the earth once more. Bobby chasing a random man from his past into the desert to say/do what exactly? All while mixing it up with a literal Mexican cartel. A desert crossing complete with traumatic flashbacks, a car crash, and a makeshift stretcher. (Bobby should have left Amir where he was after the crash and just walked the mile to the road without him in tow. But instead he slowed himself down and risked sunstroke in the process. That was a drama choice made by the writers, not a paramedic/firefighter choice made by the character.) Post-house fire Bobby’s heart stops for 14 whole ass minutes and he wakes up fine and perky as meringue. Athena Grant choosing cold-blooded vengeance over holding vigil for her allegedly dying husband. Racist and misogynistic Gerard returning for absolutely no narrative or character-related reason at all, at least not for one that couldn’t be more effectively accomplished by some/any other means.

The women have been side-lined in their own stories, and/or their characters altered in problematic ways.

Hen dismissed the councilwoman’s son in the season’s opening arc and ignored his potential injuries because he was being an asshole. A lesser paramedic would do that, but NOT our Hen. Also that plot point was unrealistic af because if someone is not in their right mind to make a life-saving decision for themselves, like in the case of intoxication, medical personnel can ethically treat them anyway. It was such a weird plot/character choice to Hen use that guy’s intoxication as a reason NOT to treat him when it’s actually a great reason to go ahead and check him out. She should have and would have worked the problem (poised and professional) instead of storming off in a huff (emotion-driven and unethical) because that guy was being a dick. Hen is not easily unsettled, nor is she unprofessional!

Hen and Karen were oddly clueless about Mara’s trauma and the fact that it was actively relevant to her behavior when they took her in, despite the fact that they have fostered several children at this point in the story. They considered “returning her” before they considered the trauma factor. Unreal. Our Hen and Karen were not born yesterday, are no strangers to hard times with foster kids, and have hearts the size of the 7 seas. This writing choice made no sense to me and made Hen and Karen feel like extraterrestrials to me. Ignorant ones at that. In the finale, Hen didn’t tell Karen she was going to see Mara. Like. Why? They talk about everything. Hen claimed it’s because Karen would have tried to stop her but we all know that would have been a half-hearted comment while she put her shoes on and grabbed her purse. No. Hen and Karen are partners and they act like it. The one woman show era between them has been over for a while. Especially when it comes to their family.

Athena and Bobby had a conversation at the end of season 4 about cutting each other out and leaving each other emotionally stranded and since then have been actively committed to communicating and staying a team. So what the hell was that vibe between them on the cruise. Athena was evasive and weird the whole time and in the most banal gender stereotyped way possible. In addition, Tim seems obsessed with women as damsels in distress this season which is not and has never been Athena’s vibe. Even with the Jeffrey arc in season 5 while she coped with the trauma of that encounter, she displayed agency. So I’ll never understand her indirect approach to dealing with Bobby running off to ‘Step 9’ Amir or her decision to turn right around and talk to Amir about Bobby instead of talking to Bobby directly. Athena is a direct person, especially about her family. She cuts to the quick and gets to the heart of things. The drama I needed was Bathena working through Athena’s fears for Bobby and Bobby working through his trauma/recovery with Athena…not a Mexican cartel and shenanigans in the desert. Then there was the way Harry talked to Athena when she discovered that he ran away from Miami. Athena’s response to Harry would have been understanding but corrective. She wouldn’t have stood there and let him disrespect her. Not in a million lifetimes. She also wouldn’t have left her allegedly dying husband at the hospital to reenact a revenge plot from some B movie. Plus what was up with her blaming herself for Amir supposedly burning the house down, and her doing no police work to puzzle out what happened? She just went on an emotion-fueled rampage. That’s not how Athena operates. Remember her namesake, goddess of WISDOM and warfare. Come on bffr.

Maddie. Oh where do I even start. From ep 1 she was treated like a means to an end instead of the first responder former nurse badass that she is. This whole season, she comes across as ‘just another dispatcher’ instead of the focused problem-solver and active agent that we know her to be. Prior to season 7 Maddie would have had her thinking cap fully on right along with Hen in the first episodes as they worked out a way to get in touch with the cruise ship. Calling Tommy could have even been Maddie’s idea since Chim and Tommy are still in touch but Hen and Tommy don’t seem to be. Then there was the whole Maddie hearing what she expected to hear with the abuse victim on that one call. Like. What?! This is not Maddie’s first rodeo, she is not easily unsettled, and she’s a damn professional. She would have done what she had to do to emotionally regulate and help the woman in danger before she let herself ‘hear what she expected to hear’. Admittedly she would have cried the whole time because that’s JLH’s jam and she’s good at it but Maddie wouldn’t have fallen down so hard on the job (especially not after what happened in season 3 with Tara and Vincent). And the wedding stuff! Maddie was just watching and waiting instead of using what she knew about her partner in life Chim to deduce where he might go or what he might do. Instead of collecting information about their previous calls and how they might be playing into Chim’s disappearance, she was busy being insecure about whether Chim actually wanted to marry her. Mind you, Maddie was the one who was originally reticent about marrying again AND she’s the one who proposed to Chim. After all the drama with the ring, there is no world in which Maddie would have imagined Chim was running from her. She would have known something bad was up and that it had nothing to do with their love for one another. In the finale Maddie calls Chim to talk about Athena’s suss behavior but Maddie has more connections and professional wherewithal than just ‘call my husband he’ll know what to do’. She would have called the precinct and asked about 727-L-30 in a discreet way and put most of the pieces together herself and then actually sent Chim and Hen to stop her. And she would have been ready at a moment’s notice to call the cops on the rogue cop. The way that scene actually played out felt more like gossip on the high school bleachers than Maddie doing her actual job.

The relationships seem plain odd/ooc, distant, and/or superficial. Very few vulnerable emotional conversations happened and when they did they felt generic, shallow, and/or incomplete.

Bobby and Athena on the cruise. Athena just didn’t feel like herself because she refused to talk to Bobby. When they did finally talk it was when they were about to drown and it was more of a mini-therapy session for Bobby. After Amir was introduced, Bobby pulled away again and Athena let him. Then Athena chose to approach the traumatized stranger rather than have a talk with her own damn husband. When they finally confronted each other about that situation, she walked away from Bobby almost like she was punishing him for walking away first instead of them both leaning into the conversation as partners. Really? Bffr.

Buck and Eddie having a bro convo about womanizing in the early episodes of the season. The ‘hey pal please talk to my kid bro because you have experience with these issues’ rather than the all important ‘there’s no one in this world I trust with my son more than you’ vibes of it all. Eddie making limited eye contact with Buck and ignoring him in ep 4. Eddie’s physical demeanor in ep 4 being bro-ed up and distant. Yeah I know we can argue that was all from Buck’s perspective in the moment but that explanation seems insufficient to me because it was so extreme, and was kind of maintained in some ways throughout the season. The ‘i’m gonna maim my best friend’ energy of the bucktommy origin story despite the fact that buck is not violent at all and definitely not towards loved ones. (Tim seems determined to ruin everybody just enough to generate unnecessary and ooc drama.) Buck’s weird dudebro conversation with Eddie while on his date with Tommy as if the foundation of buck and eddie’s relationship has ever been conversations about women solely to assert their heterosexuality * facepalm emoji * The super textbook sterile coming out scene in ep 5 like these guys aren’t besties and don’t actually know each other deeply. I wanted that coming out scene to have 504 patio conversation energy, not whatever it was we got in 704. Like that coming out conversation could have played out the exact same with one of the no-name background firefighters at the 118 or with Connor or some other rando. It felt so impersonal to who they are and to their particular brand of vulnerable courageous conversations. Honestly even the hug in 704 was weird. I was happy to have it but it was still weird. The kitchen conversation in ep 9 at Eddie’s place felt odd and incomplete for buddie. We get queer sexual innuendo (‘skulking around my back door’), basic mutual acknowledgment of worry about the dead wife doppelganger, and that’s a wrap? Okay I guess * eyeroll emoji * Then we had the finale where Eddie is obviously losing his mind and Buck is just sitting on the arm of the couch like ‘i dunno what to tell you man’. Like they’ve never had a (chris) conversation before in their life. Like buck wouldn’t have been the one to VOLUNTEER to go talk to chris without eddie spelling it out. Like buck wasn’t the person who stayed with chris talked to him and took care of him when eddie got shot and when eddie lost his damn mind in 513. The buck in the finale was not the buck who did all those things. He was so bodysnatched it’s not even funny. Also, in what world would buck have snarked that chris can’t keep eddie out of his room??? Buck, my good sir, if eddie wanted to break down chris’ door he wouldn’t have called you over bc he can do that on his own without a consult. That scene felt ooc af plus the dialogue was just plain dumb.

Hen and Chim have barely had a meaningful friend moment this season. It’s mostly Hen razzing Chim, a polite smile, or nada. Let’s not even talk about the ‘betrayal’ in the beginning with the councilwoman’s son and then the deeply meaningless drama that ensued after. So much so that they commented on it in a joking way on the helicopter. That’s not how Hen and Chim roll. They give each other clear and unapologetic honesty at all times. Not the cold shoulder for sport which is what it felt like when Hen finally said she wasn’t actually mad. The gender and racial implications of how that played out are not lost on me. It felt like a 180 from how these characters normally interact in serious circumstances. Complete waste of time and invented drama for drama’s sake. I don’t blame Hen and Chim for that, like everything else I’ve mentioned in this critique of the season, it’s pure writing room weirdness.

Bobby’s locker room conversation with Buck in ep 9 was more like mentor-mentee than father-son. We’ve stated that as their dynamic several times but that’s not what we got in that locker room. They were standing several feet apart, Bobby and Buck smiled politely, no hug, no shoulder pat. Just textbook sterile ‘you’re okay kid’. Bobby could have given that speech to no-name firefighter number 12 and it would have felt the same.

You mean to tell me in the finale that Bobby was just gonna stroll back into work in uniform after quitting like nothing happened? Like he’s still employed. My good sir, you didn’t even call headquarters before showing up to be like ‘just kidding i want my job back’. You mean to tell me Buck and Ravi were at work, in uniform and clocked in, but didn’t already know Gerard was there? You mean to tell me Bobby was supposedly that allergic to having a real emotional/vulnerable conversation with literally anybody that he strolled into work WHEN HE NO LONGER WORKS THERE like he was gonna get to actually work??? I just can’t -

Anyway, this post is long af so if you made it to the end, thank you. Honestly, I'm still processing this season but as of now, in the words of Lady Catherine de Bourgh, “I take no leave of you, [Tim Minear]. I send no compliments to your [season 7 showrunner decisions]! You deserve no such attention! I am seriously displeased!”

[ronaldmcdonaldstastytits]

It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia: Realistic Representation

Hello Sunnyblr!

I asked if anyone wanted to see my paper I did on Always Sunny for school and some people said yes, so here it is. It’s like 5000 words and it was super rushed, so it’s not brilliant. Hope you have fun reading it and I recommend you also check out the sources I referenced at the end because some of those where a hell of a read and so fucking interesting. 

[NOTE] This was originally intended for my teacher’s eyes who has not seen Always Sunny, so a lot of the first two chapters are very anecdotal and recount some plot points of always sunny, so if you know the show (which if you’re seeing this, you probably do) they aren’t necessary to read, neither is the log but I decided to include it anyway. 

Introduction

This personal Interest Project will explore the way in which homosexuality is portrayed in the media, with an emphasis and focus on the TV show “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” and the ways that they make the queer representation in it both realistic and relatable, to everyone in the audience. 

I chose this as my topic for multiple reasons: I love looking at and reading about the ways that the media presents queerness and the LGBTQ+ community. I’ve consumed a large amount of media with queer characters since I was first introduced to the concept, and of all the media, the most relatable and well presented I have come across so far has to be in “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” in the character of Mac and his struggles between religion and sexuality. 

The way that homosexuality and queerness in general is shown in the media is important for society as a whole, as it is always important to see yourself and others reflected in the media you consume. In this study I reference self made questionnaires, interviews and researched secondary sources to further evidence my judgements in a way so that I could get diverse opinions on a niche subject. My cross-cultural component included interviewing people who have been invested in the show far longer than i have to show what has changed in the community’s attitude towards Always Sunny’s representation over the years.

Log

My first step in creating my study was to do secondary research on the topics of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, LGBTQ+ representation in the media and the Queer habitation of fandom spaces. 

Once I had a list of both formal and scholarly and informal references I could use, I sent them to my email to ensure they would not get lost or forgotten and I started reading them all, making mental notes on what to use as I went along. 

Next I started by beginning an introduction to the study. I then made an essay plan for each chapter, making sure to note down which sources I would be using and where. I plotted exactly what I would talk about in each chapter and estimated how long they would each be. 

When I started the body of my study I realised it was actually far longer than I had been anticipating and I spent a long time cutting it down before continuing with my Third chapter, which I realised I would have to condense down from chapters three and four into just one. 

After I had finally finished the three chapters I made sure to annotate each of the sources I had used, add footnotes and graphs and relevant pictures. 

The last task I had yet to complete was the log, which was easy to fill out even though i had made no attempts at creating a project diary (which I should do in the future so that this last process is even easier).

Chapter 1 – Sunny’s Dark Satire

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is the longest running live-action American sit-com ever made. In 2003 two struggling actors, Rob McElhenny and Glenn Howerton came up with an idea that flipped traditional comedy on its head, made a pilot episode with a budget of $200 and titled it, “It’s Always Sunny on TV”. 

The show was to take place in Hollywood, about three actors trying to make it big. The three main characters were Rob McElhenny, Glenn Howerton and Charlie Day playing as themselves. 

The first episode, “Charlie has Cancer” started with Glenn visiting Charlie’s apartment to “borrow a bowl of sugar”, only to find out that his friend might have cancer. When Charlie starts confiding in Glenn about how he feels about all of it Glenn awkwardly responds, “Oh, I’m s--- did you wanna talk right now?”, creating the awkward, dark, satirical comedy aspect that It’s Always Sunny is well known for. 

Later, after the show was picked up by FX, It was decided that the premise of the show would need to be changed. FX believed there were already too many sitcoms set in Los Angeles and they decided the new show would be set in McElhenney’s home town of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. They also didn’t want it to be about actors as there were too many shows about that as well, but with the premise and comedy of the show the characters would need to have a lot of free time on their hands, and so the decision was made that the characters would be bar owners, and the name of the show was changed to “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.”

The characters’ names also changed, McElhenney was now Ronald “Mac” McDonald (yes like the clown), Howerton was now called Dennis Reynolds and Day was still called Charlie, only the last name switched from “Day” to “Kelly” and Dennis’ twin sister was played by Kaitlyn Olsen. The show that started with the characters and actors at 28 and 29 years old, now has them at 46 and 47 in the newest season of the show which only came out in early June this year and the show is still signed for two more seasons. 

Always Sunny was made to be an anti sitcom, a direct opposite to something like F.R.I.E.N.D.S. or How I Met Your Mother.

Most sitcoms feature lovable characters who  might be a little morally dubious at the beginning but eventually turn into better people, sometimes they fall in love and get married and the end of the story is nice and happy. 

Anti-sitcoms-- not so much. 

While a sitcom explores the characters’ growth as individuals through comedy, anti sitcoms often do the opposite. In Always Sunny every single character is set up to be one of the worst people imaginable. The point of the show is to make you hate the characters and root against them so that when they finally get what they deserve-- often physical violence-- you feel justified in laughing at them. 

Each of the characters has at least one thing that is absolutely awful about them so that if you get too close to liking them someone else can point out, How can you like him? He stalked a woman for 15 years! Making you like the character less. 

They all have their terrible flaws; Charlie stalked a woman for 15 years, Mac is incredibly misogynistic and homophobic, Dennis has harassed and assaulted women on multiple occasions. The characters are awful, you can’t help but hate them, and that makes seeing them get what they deserve at the end of every episode so much more satisfying. 

However, while we hate these characters, that doesn’t mean we can’t also relate to them. It also doesn’t mean that the show can’t have good representation. Because it does and we do; Topics like mental health issues, eating disorders, Childhood sexual assault and LGBTQ+ identities are explored by the characters. 

But one of the things that so many fans of the show relate to about the characters is the queer aspect. In every show that has a fandom, there are characters consistently “headcannonned” as queer in some respect. Always Sunny is no exception, however, it did go farther in seeing how they had been portraying the characters, noticing that one of them did seem gay even to them and actually taking the step to confirm that the character was gay. 

Chapter 2 – Mac’s Journey

In 2016’s season 11 finale McElhenney’s character, Mac, came out as gay. Mac was an ultra conservative man infected with so much toxic masculinity that he took any altercation and raised it to violence out of insecurity. He was also insanely homophobic, misogynistic and transphobic despite the fact that he once dated a transgender woman named Carmen on and off for two years.

Carmen was actually first introduced in season one episode four “Charlie has Cancer”, the pilot of Sunny on TV. Carmen was played by Brittany Daniel in the FX show, and the plot of the episode didn’t change much from the original: Mac tries to find a girl to get her to sleep with Charlie to cheer him up since he supposedly has cancer. The only girl he sees in the bar is Carmen, they start talking and Mac goes back to Dennis and Dee to tell them he’s “found the perfect girl for Charlie”. Then Dennis and Dee tell him that “that’s a dude”. When Mac goes to confront Carmen about it she expertly deflects the accusation and they continue flirting.

MAC: You lied to me.

CARMEN: No, I didn't. You lied to me. You don't work out? Please. I've seen you at the gym. You're ripped.

MAC: No. Don't turn this around. Wait. Really? You think so?

CARMEN: Yeah.

MAC: (flexes his muscles) I was afraid I was getting a little too ripped, you know?

CARMEN: Oh, no. I like it.

MAC: Wow! Hmm. Well, I gotta get back to work. Um, but I don't know. Maybe I'll give you a call sometime.

After that they end up going on dates and they seem like a happy couple apart from the fact that Mac is very clearly uncomfortable with dating someone with a penis. Eventually their relationship ends when while on a date, Carmen approaches Mac from behind and taps his shoulder and Mac freaks out and accidentally punches her out of instinct. 

In a later episode of Season three, “Mac is a serial killer”, the plot twist of the episode is that, while the gang thinks that Mac has been acting shady recently because he’s now a serial killer, it is actually because Mac has been trying to hide the fact that he’s been dating Carmen again from them out of fear of their reactions considering what they thought the last time they dated. Through this episode Mac still clearly is uncomfortable with her being trans but he also seems to really like her considering the amount of research he had been doing into her “condition”, as Mac puts it. Towards the end of the episode Carmen dumps him because she thinks he is ashamed of her. Upset, Mac goes to Charlie and tells him “It’s over,” since he had assumed that Charlie knew the whole time. The gang confronts Mac about being a serial killer and Mac immediately yells back “I’m not a serial killer! [...] I’ve been banging the [t slur]!” Just as Mac had predicted, the gang immediately seems disgusted by this. 

Carmen appears in two other later episodes as well, in one of them Mac runs into her at the gym and finds out she’s getting married soon. The rest of the episode is about Mac being so jealous that she’s getting married to someone that he decides that it is a “gay marriage” and therefore a sin and tries to dissuade the couple from getting married by using homophobic bible quotes. Predictably, this episode is called  “Mac Fights Gay Marriage”. 

The last episode with Carmen in it is one in which Dee gives birth after being pregnant all season, it is revealed at the end of this episode that after the Gang tried so hard to figure out who the father was all season and were prepared to look after this kid together, that Dee was actually a surrogate, and what’s more, she was a surrogate for Carmen and her Husband. 

Miraculously, Carmen is the only character or side character who has ever left an encounter with the gang unscathed, she even somehow came out the end better, with a family. Every other character has been dragged down into the pits of hell with the rest of the gang whenever they’ve had to endure anything with them. 

Along with being transphobic and yet dating a trans woman Mac was also very homophobic, and the best example of that comes from the season nine episode, “Mac Day”, in which Mac’s cousin from the country (“Country Mac”) comes to the city. Later in the episode Mac makes his friends participate in “Greasing up some Beefcakes” which is actually just rubbing oil on body builders. Mac says some very suggestive things when the Gang doesn’t want to do it-- “These guys work off their beautiful glutes for our enjoyment, okay? The least we can do is pay them back in tan and grease.”-- Country Mac seems all too up for the activity, however, and says he's been getting a lot of phone numbers. Dennis asks where there are women, to which Country Mac replies, “Chicks? No. Dudes. I’m into Dudes.” The Gang expresses their positive sentiments and when Country Mac walks away Charlie says, “It’s so much more comfortable when someone’s gay and open about it. And like, I know we’ve never said this as a group, but… Mac’s gay." The rest of the Gang all immediately agreed with no restraint. At the end of the episode, after Country Mac’s untimely death, Mac makes a eulogy which includes the characteristic homophobia, “And it turns out, he was totally queer. Which, as we all know, is a sin. And that, coupled with his radical religious beliefs, has most likely landed him in Hell, where he will burn for all eternity. So I will ask for a moment of silence, in which I will beg God's forgiveness for Country Mac's evil, homo ways…”

Although the writers clearly knew what they were doing with “Mac Day”, the season ten two part finale “The Gang Goes to Hell Parts 1 and 2” is where they really made their intentions surrounding Mac’s character and sexuality clear. 

Goes to Hell were two of the episodes that showcased exactly how awful each of the characters are. In the story, every one of the characters committed one of the seven deadly sins and ended up on the brig of the Christian cruise ship they were on. They were on the Christian cruise ship because Mac had converted from his Roman Catholic church he had grown up in, to a Christian one because his usual church was “getting too Vietnamese”, just showcasing again how Mac is a horrible person. 

Of course Charlie and Frank’s sin was gluttony in the form of alcoholism (they drank boat fuel), Dee was wrathful and punched a woman and Dennis attempted to have sex with a girl who was 19 even though he was 39. Out of everyone in the Gang, Mac was the only one who didn’t commit a sin and yet he ended up in the brig as well. 

The reason Mac was in the brig was because he had found out the men he had become friends with were actually married and gay and Mac, being incredibly homophobic as he was, had decided that he was put on the cruise by God to convert them to being straight. This of course didn’t work and when Mac told the men all of this they said: 

DAVID: You want to convert us?

MAC: Yeah!

DAVID: Do you realise how insulting that is? How would you like it if I tried to convert you?

MAC: Uh… Wouldn’t care. Cause that’s, like, impossible. There’s no way you guys could convert me to your lifestyle.

SCOTT: Let’s give it a shot. 

The next scene opened with Mac walking straight into the brig, closing the door and saying defeatedly, “Well… I’m gay.”

Mac’s sexuality was further explored in the Season 13 finale, “Mac Finds His Pride” in which he came out to his father and his prison mates through an interpretive dance, only for him to walk out of the room midway through his performance. Mac was clearly devastated by this and the episode ended with Frank, who had accompanied Mac throughout the episode and who was typically quite ignorant and homophobic, finally understanding how Mac had felt his whole life. 

Chapter 3 – Was it Good Representation?

Having representation in the media is important for all minorities. Minorities can see others like them, and non-minorities can see how minorities are affected by a world not catered for them and see how things need to change. 

In a survey regarding what people thought about shows with Queer representation, I asked the questions: what was the best queer representation you’ve seen in the media and why?

In response to what the best queer representation was, the results varied greatly as there are many different pieces of media containing good LGBTQ+ representation. However, the most recurring answers were It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia with 17.3%, Our Flag Means Death with 11.5% and The Owl House with 7.7%. The top qualities in good representation were (in order of highest to lowest); realism, normalisation, diversity, relatability, unashamedness, and acceptance. 

In an interview with a long time fan of Always Sunny, 22 year old Lillian H, in response to being asked what she liked about the representation in Always Sunny, said that while she didn’t think that the portrayal of Mac’s identity was as good as it could have been her favourite thing about the show was it’s portrayal of mental illness and trauma: “There’s not many aspects of the show that I would ever look at as “good” representation, I mean that would be the opposite of the message that the show is trying to convey. I don’t even think that Mac is as good a representation that he could be. But I also think Sunny is the best tv representation I have ever seen of trauma and mental illness. One of my favorite things about this show is that at its core, Sunny is about five traumatized people who were deeply affected by their terrible upbringing and continue to perpetuate the cycle and project it all over anyone they encounter.”

Lillian started watching the show around the time the first two seasons had begun airing and was introduced to it by her Dad who loved the show. “My dad was obsessed with it and when we weren’t watching it on television he was showing me his favorite scenes on youtube.”, she said. She also talked about how when she was in middle school and properly able to digest and process the humour of the show beyond a group of adults yelling at each other for 20 minutes straight, she started engaging with the online fandom on tumblr. When asked how the fandom has changed over time she said, “The majority of tumblr users were under thirty, so I think the fans there were a lot more accepting and open minded than the people like my dad who just watched it on tv. I never witnessed any kind of blatant homophobia or racism of any kind. From what I remember everyone for the most part understood the satire and knew what the show was portraying was wrong. The blackface was definitely an issue though. It was (rightfully!) openly shunned and criticized in the fandom. There were other tumblr users that had never seen the show who would attack sunny blogs for being racist and problematic for supporting a show and cast that performed blackface. [...] The response to Mac coming out was initially terrible. He came out of the closet only to go right back in at the end of the episode. I think the majority of LGBTQ fans felt this episode made it clear that Mac's sexuality was being trivialized and played up for laughs. It was especially disappointing coming from a crew who claimed to be gay allies, one of which had two moms and a gay brother who worked on the show. When Mac finally came out for good, the response was overwhelmingly positive and celebratory. I think at the time even the older fans (like my dad) were too caught off guard to be hateful. It was a bizarrely emotional episode.”

In a separate survey when the question, “what was the best queer representation you have seen and why?” was posed, the reasons behind people responding with Mac from Always Sunny were mostly very similar; “because he is the epitome of who I used to be (Catholic and extremely in denial about my sexuality)”, “Mac McDonald, mostly because I can relate to him a lot. We are both gay, we are both religious [...]”, “It’s really relatable for me. I grew up in [a] catholic setting, so it was just easier to lock away my true feelings.”, “Mac's shame and guilt regarding his sexuality and being stuck in the closet and denial was executed well and it's something many lgbt folks can relate to”, “Mac finds his pride is definitely one of the best episodes of the show and shows his struggle with his internalised homophobia and struggle to find a place to fit in, which i can relate to.”

Most people in more recent times, when talking about why they liked Mac’s representation, reference how they feel it relates to them. Most of these people are gay, religious or both like Mac was and understand that what happened when Mac first came out and then went back into the closet was a way of denial and repression and something they related to. 

This proposes the theory that perhaps this view in particular regarding Mac’s character and story has changed over time from something that people were unhappy about when it first happened to something that people now praise for making it feel realistic and relatable. 

However this is a phenomenon known only to those within the fandom. In an interview with 17 year old Jordan Wade, who only considers himself a casual enjoyer of the show and has only watched the first two seasons, he said that he hadn’t really noticed any queer aspects to any of the characters and had not picked up on any representation in the show where he was up to. It should be noted that there is LGBTQ+ themes and representation in the first season in the form of Carmen and perhaps this shows that the only people who really pay enough attention to the show to be able to pick out and examine each piece of representation are those who are engaged in the fandom. And most people who engage in fandom are queer or part of other minorities and as such are already used to searching thoroughly for any representation. 

In a survey, 10 memes from Always Sunny were presented to the participants and they were asked if they recognised the meme. On all of the memes 55 people responded and of all those memes the lowest number of people who recognised a meme was 32, with the highest being 51 of the 55 saying they recognised it. The spread of memes on the internet among people who know the show and don’t, contribute to the spread of the show, which contributes to the spread of its representation. Of the ten memes, before I had even watched the show, I had seen nine of them, just due to being online on platforms such as Tumblr and TikTok. 

Conclusion

Ultimately, It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia has some good representation of LGBTQ+ characters and also of mental health issues. The show is absolutely flawed but it is usually quite good at staying within the confines of a dark satire and using it to its advantage. Mac’s character could have been dealt with more gently and so could Carmen’s but ultimately they did really well with what they did at the time and many people relate really well to the characters. The characters and representation in Always Sunny is genuinely really good and many people agree that it is relatable, and realistic and not made a huge deal of, only increasing the value of the representation. 

The use of realistic and relatable plot points in Mac’s story help to make the character more accessible to queer audiences. The fact that he came out and then went back in only helps queer people relate to him more. His internalised homophobia is ever present throughout the show and drawn upon to add to his queer identity, showing how overtime he worked on and diminished his internalised homophobia and was finally able to feel himself after the season thirteen finale. 

While aspects of it may still be widely contested by fans of Always Sunny online, it stands without competition that Mac in many ways was good representation that fed people starved of representation. And while Rob McElhenney, Glenn Howerton, Charlie Day and the other writers of Always Sunny could have done better, it is undeniable that they were well intentioned and got their messages across quite well in the end.

Reference List

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXY0uDeZ5jw

 Charlie Has Cancer - Original Pilot. (2004). United States of America. Retrieved June 15, 2023, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXY0uDeZ5jw. 

https://whatnerd.com/what-is-anti-sitcom-explained-with-examples/ 

 McManus, B., McManus, C., Conall McManusConall McManus is a contributor at whatNerd. He’s an avid fan of cinema, Conall McManus is a contributor at whatNerd. He’s an avid fan of cinema, & Read more by Conall McManus ». (2022, October 12). What’s an anti-sitcom? Explained (with 5 great examples). whatNerd. https://whatnerd.com/what-is-anti-sitcom-explained-with-examples/ 

https://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/amusing-abusers-and-humourless-survivors-analysing-the-role-of-comedy-in-media-representations-of-sexual-violence 

Rose, L. B. (2021). Amusing abusers and humourless survivors: analysing the role of comedy in media representations of sexual violence. Galactica Media: Journal of Media Studies, (3), 344-373.

https://mediarxiv.org/8hgfa/download?format=pdf 

 Johnson Jr, M. (2020). Queer Incrementalism and the Emancipatory Rhetoric of Redemption on FX’s “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qj12BBtbRkM 

YouTube. (2022). The Gang Does Trans Representation. YouTube. Retrieved June 15, 2023, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qj12BBtbRkM. 

https://deadline.com/2021/12/its-always-sunny-in-philadelphia-addresses-blackface-controversy-1234884709/ 

 Haring, B. (2021, December 4). “it’s always sunny in Philadelphia” addresses blackface controversy in “lethal weapon 7” season 15 episode. Deadline. https://deadline.com/2021/12/its-always-sunny-in-philadelphia-addresses-blackface-controversy-1234884709/ 

https://www.teenvogue.com/story/lgbtq-fans-remaking-fandom-in-our-own-image-stitch-fan-service 

Stitch. (2021, June 9). LGBTQ+ fans: We’re here, Queer, and remaking fandom in our own image. Teen Vogue. https://www.teenvogue.com/story/lgbtq-fans-remaking-fandom-in-our-own-image-stitch-fan-service

https://www.tumblr.com/sunnykeysmash/717820696920719360/im-also-thinking-that-it-would-mean-mac-would 

Sunnykeysmash. (2023, May 20). “wait One Year” on Tumblr. Tumblr. https://www.tumblr.com/sunnykeysmash/717820696920719360/im-also-thinking-that-it-would-mean-mac-would 

https://repository.library.georgetown.edu/handle/10822/1043761

Kimmel, K. (2017). THE GANG’S IN A THESIS: AN EXAMINATION OF AMERICAN TELEVISION’S DARK HORSE SITCOM “IT’S ALWAYS SUNNY IN PHILADELPHIA” (Doctoral dissertation, Georgetown University).

And of course thank you to @lgbdee for helping me and @sunnykeysmash for unknowlingly giving me something to use as a source and a good read lol. And thanks to everyone who participated in all the polls and surveys i put out, it was a huge help and I was able to get a MUCH larger amount of data on my surveys than my classmates did which I count as a win on it’s own even though I have no idea what my marks for this assignment were.

Also if you’re going to read any of the sources above I highly recommend “Amusing abusers and humourless survivors: analysing the role of comedy in media representations of sexual violence” by LB Rose. I genuinely really enjoyed reading it and reread it later too.

[kafkasmjjw]

Hi :) can you recommend your top 5 moonjo/jongwoo (jongmoon?) fics?

i’m going to link my top 5 post-canon, canon divergent and aus because i’ve been in this fandom for too long to choose only 5. these aren’t ordered by preference, and i’m choosing complete fics and only one per author. please heed the tags and ratings in case any of it makes you uncomfortable!

post-canon:

origins by mslunita

Moonjo is hardly protected by tissue; his body is rough-cut. Bone-fed. It’s easy for Jongwoo to break the skin and feel as if he’s sharpening his teeth on the skeleton itself.

monsters call it love by finalizer

He looks like a statue, an impossible man cut from white marble—neat and composed and perfect. Jong-woo wants to ruin it. Poke at it, prod at it, mar it with his fingertips and his teeth. Something so perfect has no right to exist. He wants to destroy him.

since we’re feeling so anaesthetised by eris

Jongwoo flexes into the pain, fingers twitching around the phantom contours and pressure mapped out on Moonjo's throat. From somewhere almost outside himself, he says, “Would you have let me kill you?”

no angel speaks to me by gfriendly

“Want to know how I remember it?” Jongwoo asked.

if i were a carp by theletterv

“Eat me.” It’s a quick answer, and the disorientation of it just as quick. Jongwoo turns so fast it pulls something in his neck, blinks at him owlishly but the peace on Moonjo’s face never falters. “Eat you?”

special mention to 'choose happiness' by ennui_ing because their fics are absolutely stunning and a must-read. top tier characterisation.

canon divergent:

pyre by anthean

And really, why is he surprised? Jongwoo is special. He’s precious. Moonjo wants to know him inside out, skin to muscle to bone to marrow, in every way that he can. That Jongwoo wants him too only cements Moonjo’s own desire.

tender sugar by angelas

“Uhm, sorry,” Jong-woo says, “I think maybe I should lea—” “Oh,” Moon-jo intercepts. “There’s someone special in your life.”

on the seventh day we rest by SLq

“Are you lost?” Jong-woo looked up. A man stood at the bottom of the hill. He watched Jong-woo steadily, generous mouth curled in a smile.

как в старой сказке, я не знал, кто волк // i didn't know who my enemy was, just like in an old fairytale by fia_lka

“So the only way you could help me right now, ahjussi, is if you dropped on your knees right there and sucked me off instead of her. Would you do that?”

dangerous beginnings by uhlee

Honey, I like this side of you. Take what you want from me. You use me so well, jagiya. Is it good, jagi? Am I good?

AUs:

flower by mayday0329

I thought he would give up after that. But instead he smiled again, and fumbled in his pocket for something, before taking out a tung flower. It had withered a long time ago, but one could still see that it had been a startling white before. He pressed it into my hand, along with a crumpled business card. Will you come find me again, then?

do you ever feel lonely, jagiya? by sweetnsimple

“Do I make you feel lonely?” he asked. Jong-Woo opened his mouth. Swallowed and tried again. “Yes,” he said.

pray we never meet at the wrong hour of the night by mslunita (i know i said one fic per author but carli’s writing is a weakness of mine)

Moonjo laughs at the last one. “Cannibal,” he says aloud, a glint in his eyes. He clears his throat. “Well. This is quite the macabre list.” He drags his eyes from the screen back to Jongwoo. “You’re something special.”

why did it have to be you? by tooprofessional

“Are you going to punish me?” He took a step closer, slowly looking up the younger man’s frame, eventually meeting his gaze. He tilted his head to the side. “You know, for causing a scene.”

they live in the dark by vivisextion

“You know, I’ve heard supernatural presences can lower the temperature of a room…” Jongwoo shuddered. “Please don’t remind me.”

annnd that's it for the complete fics. as for wips, im currently devouring second circle of hell by reddiary. a true fucking masterpiece. and hell at your heels by an anonymous writer who should know they changed the trajectory of my life. ennui_ing's how much can you change before it's some kind of murder? has me by. the. throat. fills me with a good dose of dread every time and the characterisation is gorgeous. ANNDDDDD of course, this hotel au 'all the ghosts are in the garden', by b that is so so SO well-paced and in character it's actually insane.

[sigmashuffle]

I have a question!! So I’m a long-time BSD enjoyer but I haven’t read nearly as much of the manga as I would like. I’ve seen all of the anime though, most of it multiple times through. I didn’t realize until looking at the comments on Danny Motta’s video at how much people fucking hate Fukuchi and his sword. Up until this point I’ve thought it’s cool as hell and he, along with the sword, bring something kinda new and fun to the series.

HOWEVER, I know BSD is FAR from perfect and there’s a lot of dumb shit that faithful manga readers have a better perspective on. Would you mind explaining why Fukuchi and the sword are such a sore point? I hope this isn’t too much to ask. I just really want to know.

Hi anon! Its not too much to ask at all!

Unfortunately the answer to that is best explained in the context of ALL the issues I have with the manga/show so... this is going to be v long... and im done giving this show more credit than it deserves but don't take it that seriously lol I hesitate to even consider my pov to be on par with the average manga reader but ig we'll see how my opinions hold up after i post

And disclaimer: I don't mind answering this but ONLY with the context that this is 100% my opinion (as of late, bsd as a whole has just been REALLY bugging me so im just gonna take this opportunity to explain my gripes since most of them apply to or tie greatly into fukuchi's character/design/motivations/development)

I simply don't want anyone to come for my head bc of anything I say here tho, bc I feel like I may disagree with a large portion of the fanbase but WITH THAT SAID...

***from this point forward there will be a few spoilers from s5e11***

Here are my gripes with BSD...

1. BSD and its "magic system"?

bsd powers suffer from what i like to call a "lack of scope"

granted this could be due to the fact the story isnt complete HOWEVER im sure any anime fan can tell you this story doesnt feel like it is leading anywhere its just... going... (ill get to the awful pacing later)

for comparison sake im going to also talk about The Case Study of Vanitas since it is the world I have the most experience in

what does BSD not have that VNC does?

simply put, the magic system doesnt reinvent itself character to character

in VNC if you have an ability it is EXCLUSIVELY connected to "manipulations of the world formula" which is essentially elemental control (fire, ice, gravity, etc.) based on a sci fi version of chemistry (alchemy, if you will) and this rule applies to EVERY CHARACTER in VNC

its a structure that starts developing from the beginning

BSD however introduces a WHOLE NEW magic system for each character

some character abilities are similar, yes, and can be classified as such, but many cannot be classified

again a magic system doesnt NEED to have strict rules (its actually more boring that way if the rules are too simple) but it DOES need RULES... and solid ones

otherwise its tempting to use the MAGIC system to fill in PLOT RELATED gaps

and if that system isnt defined, well, to me that looks like lazy/sloppy/illogical writing

if you like the whiplash of not knowing whats gonna happen next, fine, (i did for awhile too!) up until the unpredictability started to come from powers that as a whole look like an authors way of trying to write themselves out of their own plot hole

ie: time travel

specifically time travel that isnt introduced FROM THE BEGINNING...

2. Fukuchi and his "deus ex machina" sword

time travel is NOTORIOUSLY difficult to pull off and especially by my standards

I have watched Doctor Who since 2008, before I even knew what tumblr was I was doing my own solo fandom stuff (basically just watching a LOT of youtube video essays) but basically I have high standards when it comes to time travel in stories

Amenogozen has the POTENTIAL to be a great weapon if used in a logical context... but theres one thing the sword (and BSD as a whole) does not follow

RULES

time travel is TRICKY mostly bc it has consequences... in BSD fukuchi gives nothing in exchange for his powers

lets even toss time travel aside for the moment

what is Fukuchi's innate special ability? Mirror Lion... (read below)

its essentially an attack multiplier of x100 at CLOSE RANGE

lets say your average untrained human punch is 150psi (pounds per square inch) which is the pressure equivalent of a point 100m below the surface of the ocean...

with Mirror Lion's multiplier you get 15,000psi which would be 10,000m or 10 kilometers

a pressure equivalent to the deepest part of the ocean (i dont need to remind you how powerful water is... we all know about oceangate)

MY POINT IS HE'S OVERPOWERED AS FUCK

dont even get me started on his motivations too

im glad we got backstory for him in ep 11 and im sure we are just supposed to sum up his motivations into "he was willing to pay the high price for world peace" but tbh royally fuck that

dont TELL me thats what he believes

PROVE to me how you made that conclusion

also the only reason he even dies is becasue he wants fukuzawa to kill him... we dont have any sense of accomplishment for stopping his scheme because NOW the scheme has been PLOPPED right into fukuzawa's lap which fukuchi intended to do from the start... apparently

and this seemingly retroactive decision-making is a problem A LOT of bsd characters have, especially the one and only character i hate THE MOST... *drumroll*

3. Osamu fucking Dazai

oh boy...

I have thought long and hard about Dazai... im not going to lie, after ch109 and ep10 I was about to admit Dazai might actually have grown on me BUT

this was all erased after 6 minutes into ep11 when he was confirmed to indeed NOT be dead

Dazai just *knows* everything thats gonna happen

Chuuya was never a vamp... he knew this... and somehow his ENTIRE escape plan was just hinging on that? bc yknow... hE kNeW fRoM tHe bEgiNniNg

OSAMU DAZAI IS A PLOT DEVICE USED *ONLY* TO FILL IN NARRATIVE HOLES

HE IS A WAY TO FORCE PROGRESS ON A STORY WITHOUT EVER GIVING A REAL EXPLANATION

HIS CHARACTER IS AN INSULT TO INTELLIGENCE

His character is paper thin, with motivations that do not translate to his actions

and frankly... im tired of it...

additionally... if sigma doesn't survive, all of Meursault was literally useless... so why pick him for nikolai's prison break game?

even if he does, it means the ONLY thing we get out of the arc is information about fyodor... as to WHAT information, who knows... but regardless, a villain arc that has been going on for TOO GODDAMN LONG (40 chapters?) should have a resolution that isnt "i knew what was gonna happen all along"

we spent the whole time being SHOWN that fyodor and dazai were of equal intelligence levels... or at least higher than what dazai was used to dealing with

if dazai could just predict shit like this from the beginning why was fyodor a villain for so long? makes ZERO sense, dazai would've defeated him AGES ago... what makes THIS time any different?

also... why is he even suicidal? yeah ok the author was... but like... why make it such a present character trait?... so we can fake kill him over and over? idk

can you tell i dislike him?

4. THEORY vs PRACTICE

I am a "show dont tell" girlie

ALL BSD DOES IS "TELL TELL TELL" ...its infuriating

almost every power/special ability has an element of "trust me bro" ok SOME OF THEM DONT but most of them do

ie: atsushi is a tiger (what does that even mean), kenji gets strong when he's angry (ok hulk?), and THIS JUST IN we STILL don't know how fyodor's ability works... and now he's DEAD?... we also dont know almost any detail about sigma's ability and he might ALSO be dead

but thats only regarding abilities...

when it comes to writing stories using people of high intelligence it is VERY difficult to not get into the aforementioned "trust me bro" mindset which BSD does REPEATEDLY

im not listing off every example but off the top of my head is one scene from s4...

ranpo explains his plan for saving yosano loosely involved "replacing the engine [of an armored vehicle] with an electric motor and playing engine sounds over the speakers so no one noticed" ...and only i can pick this claim to shreds lol (i engineer electric vehicles for a living) but this is so wrong on so many levels...

Internal combustion engines and Electric motors are IN NO WAY EQUIVALENT

ranpo would never be able to power a vehicle the size of an armored truck with a motor that he installed an hour before the truck was put to use... he just wouldnt... the vehicle is too big... ugh *facepalm*

and dont even get me started on batteries...

MY POINT IS

if you want to write some *genius move* at least TRY to do some research to make the action believable

thats like saying "oh yeah i ran out of gas so a threw a couple AA batteries into my gas tank until i could make it to the station"

BUT THAT WOULDNT FLY BECAUSE MOST PEOPLE KNOW THATS NOT HOW CARS WORK

*sigh*

5. Manga Readers' POV

the.chapters.are.too.short

especially for a monthly released manga

i am relatively new to anime and manga... like late 2020, so I am part of the "new gen" I guess you could say so i know i dont have any right to complain about pacing in comparison to like... the dressrosa arc of One Piece

with that said, not enough in bsd BUILDS on itself

it all feels like a self "one-up"

its been too long since any of my large questions have been answered

honestly its rare that any of my questions are ever answered because the narrative rarely follows logical progression anyway and any scenes thats ARE useful are cut from the anime

characters do not *develop* their powers, they just simply ARE

whatever ability you are born with limits what you can do and thats that... which leads me to...

6. Types of Ability Users

the most coherent thing i think i can speak on so this will be short lol

there are 3 types... i think (excluding lightnovels, i have not read 15, Stormbringer, or any others)

(1) natural abilities (ones that can be nullified by dazai or stolen like in Dead Apple)

(2) human/god fusions (chuuya) -> but this can ALSO be nullified???

(3) when an ability isnt an ability (it CANT be nullified) -> ie: whatever the fuck Lovecraft is

Sigma -> ??? (he could be part of the natural ability category but like... it feels weird to put him there)

but... there is never a comparison between these types so im not even sure of this "list" is exhaustive

this is just another way the story is leaving open ways to dig itself out of a plot hole... which isnt fun... bc now there are no stakes... there are no rules... its disorganized chaos where anything can happen

everyone will always be fine because there is a way out of everything

and thats BORING... and for me, downright infuriating

fukuchi likely falls into the first category... but then again he's also using a tool from another ancient ability user... so does he even fit there?

7. Anime Adaptation

rushed

rushed

RUSHED

and i know why...

BSD is so thin on STABLE plot the story would feel like its dragging if Bones wasn't animating at the pace they are (see Manga Readers' POV)

so to try and counteract the feeling that nothing is happening they are cutting "irrelevant" scenes BUT ALSO important portions relevant ones (ie: aku's death)

do all the plot points from the manga happen? by definition, yes... but the nuance the manga has is lost almost entirely

Atsushi doesn't physically throw an injured Aku's arm over his shoulders... Aku doesn't smile upon his demise... Aku doesn't reach out through the fog of the fire extinguisher (the adaptation of this scene was personally my last straw)

and then we have the new anime content...

why did we tack on an additional fight? zero context... didn't even tie up loose ends from fukuchi like...

is sigma alive?

are chuuya/dazai/nikoali still in france? europe?

is fyodor going to return in some way? (we know nothing of his motives, ability, or MOST importantly, what information did he learn from Sigma??? his ability is an EXCHANGE so why even have that happen if they are both dead anyway?) why would you fucking kill off a character like this

WHAT WAS THE POINT OF THIS ENTIRE ARC??? The mere reason I'm asking this question is, in and of itself, unacceptable

we MAY get an answer later... but its been 20 episodes... why the fuck dont we know anything about the arc we just completed? ...ludicrous

Final Thoughts

BSD does not have enough reliable rules in its magic system to form a solid foundation of... anything

Fukuchi is a disjointed character trying to do too many things at once, he doesn't have solid motivations, and his arc provides more questions than it answers

Osamu Dazai is not a character... he is a plot device used like a saving throw in DND

BSD frequently insults my intelligence to cover it's ass in its storytelling

being a manga reader is like taking 30 days to rip off a tiny band aid... the pacing is unbearable

even with the end of fukuchi's arc now known, there was no sense of accomplishment in defeating him bc technically we didnt… he gave himself up... so the sword was just to make him overpowered... it was pointless

the anime adaptation was rushed, scenes cherry picked, and plot narratively thinned into water... there was no depth this season

In my opinion...

There are very few redeeming characteristics about BSD now

The few meaningful scenes we do get in the manga are overwritten by later context that negates any emotion initially associated with the scene

even with the end of fukuchi's arc now known, there was no sense of accomplishment in defeating him bc technically we didnt... he gave himself up

Dazai is the worst written character I have ever read

It is very likely i drop this story entirely

If I seem salty/upset/etc. its because I am. However is NOT directed at you, it is simply a manifestation of my disappointment in this story.

...

And there you have my opinion... in way too many words... thanks for sticking around if you made it this far im impressed bc i am salty as hell lol

fin

[jammie3132]

Fandom: Glee Pairing: Blaine Anderson & Sebastian Smythe Story Summary: After a fight with Kurt, Blaine goes running back to Ohio…again! The problem is he doesn’t have Dalton to run back to. Chapter 1 Title: Are You Happy? Chapter 1 Summary: Blaine is back in Ohio after a fight with Kurt. His friends are determined to not let him fall back into old patterns Notes: 10 Days of Seblaine Week 2023 Day 3: Dalton

Canon through Season 6 with exception of 5 year time jump.

❤️🎉HAPPY ANNIVERSARY EVERYONE 🎉❤️

Ladies and gentlemen, we are beginning our approach. Please prepare for landing. Welcome to Columbus. It is currently 62 degrees…

Blaine put his tray table up and his laptop in his carry on. This was NOT the trip he expected to be taking this week.

“Kurt! I’m home! You’ll never guess…what’s going on?”

“Isabelle got me a showing for my accessories at Paris Fashion Week! Can you believe it?”

“Um…isn’t Paris Fashion Week next week? Our anniversary is next week. We’re going to Hawaii on the Honey…the trip we postponed last year because Isabelle’s assistant got the flu and she insisted she’d never survive Paris Fashion Week without you. And the year before that because... You know, I can't remember what excuse you used that time."

“Oh, yeah. I forgot. But Blaine, this time it’s for our future. It's not the same.”

“Yes, yes, it is.”

“Come with me. We can enjoy the city during our down time. Support me like I supported you at the Grammys.”

“You didn’t go. You decided it wasn't worth missing your classes the next day because my category wasn’t televised.”

“Not this again. It was 3 months ago and you didn’t win. Get over it.”

“You did not just say that.”

“Look, I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings. And I’m sorry I’m postponing our vacation again. I’m not sorry I’m going to Paris. Stop being so difficult.”

“Just go. I’ll go back to Ohio for the Groundbreaking Ceremony at Dalton. I was disappointed when I found out we couldn’t attend because we’d be in Hawaii. Since that’s no longer an issue…”

“Oh, hell no! I saw Sebastian Smythe’s name on the list of committee members. I’m not letting you go anywhere near that asshole without me.”

“Uh…excuse me. You’re forbidding, literally forbidding, me from going to Dalton’s Groundbreaking?"

"That's not what I meant."

"But it was what you said. You know how important Dalton was to me. I was devastated...”

“How important could Dalton have been if you left just because I asked you to?”

“Fuck you!”

“Blaine, don't…where are you going?”

“Ohio!”

*SLAM*

Three hours later Blaine finally relaxed when a friendly face opened his door and gave him a hug. “Get in here” Sam said, pulling him into his apartment. “Did you leave your luggage in the rental?”

“Nope. In my dramatic exit I only grabbed my school bag.”

“Good thing I’ve still got the stuff you forgot the last time you were here. For once my procrastination paid off.”

“You didn’t procrastinate, you've been busy. I remember how crazy it was preparing the Warblers for Sectionals. The New Directions are trying to three-peat at Nationals in a few weeks…big difference. I feel like an ass taking up your time, but I just couldn’t face my mom’s interrogation. At least not tonight. I mean it would be stupid if I didn’t stay with her when I go to Dalton.”

“But…”

“If you say one word about how I used to make that drive all the time, I’ll tell your new girlfriend about the time Sue was hypnotizing you and…”

“Hey! I had no control over what I was doing! And it’s not fair to use that stuff against me when I don’t remember any of it.”

“Except sleeping with Rachel.”

“I wasn’t hypnotized for that” Sam told him with an added wink.

Blaine’s phone went off (his mother not husband) so Sam went to his hall closet and brought out the box he’d stored there. Since Pam was on a tangent, it gave him time to go to the kitchen and make some calls of his own. He had a plan for his best friend and wanted to confirm the pieces were in place.

When he returned with drinks, Blaine was laying back on the couch rubbing his temples. Pam had that effect on people. “You’re going to have to go to Target for underwear and stuff like that. I’ve got a toothbrush…”

“Sam, what aren’t you telling me?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You got kind of defensive when I mentioned your new girlfriend.”

“I know” Sam sighed as he rejoined Blaine on his couch. “It’s just, I’ve been trying to find a way to tell you this. My girlfriend already knows about everything that happened with Sue, and Rachel.”

“Ok? Why is it so hard to tell me you told your girlfriend?”

“I didn’t have to tell her. I’m dating Kitty.”

Did not see that coming! “Kitty? Kitty Wilde?”

“Yes, and we have a date tonight. So do you.”

“You realize I’m still married, no matter how pissed I am at Kurt.”

“Not like that. I called a friend and he’s taking you to Scandals to get drunk and forget how big a jerk your husband is.”

“Who did you call?”

“It’s a surprise. You have time for a shower and nap. After you called, I went to the store and got a bunch of your favorite Kurt did something stupid comfort food. Please eat something before you go to Scandals so you don’t get drunk on your second beer.”

Blaine wanted to give a snarky comeback but didn’t because Sam was right. “Thanks, Blond Chameleon.”

“Anytime NightBird.”

Because he wasn’t getting picked up until later in the evening, Blaine had time to run to Target. There was also enough time to visit with Kitty before she and Sam left on their date. He had to admit he was having a little trouble getting past the whole former football coach/cheerleader thing. It was only 3 years ago.

But if they wanted to relive that time in private…

Oh God, now it’s worse.

At 9PM on the dot the doorbell rang. He was not prepared for who was standing in front of him. “David? What are you doing here?”

“Taking you to Scandals? “Ready?”

Dave Karofsky? Sam called the guy he broke up with and then married Kurt a week later? Sending them to the place where they reconnected after he returned to Ohio when Kurt ended their engagement? Well, if Dave is here, he must be fine with it.

“Sure, just let me get my phone.”

“No phone. You’re going to drink and talk to me and the others. No checking your phone every 10 minutes to see if Kurt called. Sam was very specific with his directions but I’m pretty sure Kitty was the actual mastermind.”

“Sam and Kitty…I wouldn’t check my phone…” Then it dawned on him. “Did you say others? Who?”

“No idea. Let’s go. I don’t want to give up any more of my time because you’re overthinking what’s going on.”

Blaine shook his head and chuckled. This was nice. “You know me so well.”

It was all small talk until they were settled in a back booth at Scandals and each halfway through their first beer. “Do you remember what you promised me when you came over to tell me you’d married Kurt?”

“David, I’m so sorry. You didn’t deserve any of that.”

“You’re right, I didn’t” Dave told him with a confidence Blaine didn’t remember. It looked good on him. “Now answer my question. Do you remember your promise?”

Oh yeah, he remembered. “To not lose myself in my relationship with Kurt again. To do what was right for me, even if Kurt threw a hissy fit. And I have, most of the time. Sometimes that’s not how marriage works.”

“And yet you’re sitting here with me and your husband is on his way to Paris. Weren’t you supposed to be in Hawaii for your Spring Break? On the honeymoon you never took? We both know that weekend in Rhode Island didn’t count.”

“How do you…Sam?” Dave nodded his response, not giving him a chance to go off topic, which they both knew Blaine would try. “When we had our fight, I couldn’t say the word honeymoon. I just reminded him it was our anniversary. It wouldn’t have made a difference. Kurt was going to Paris no matter what I said.”

“You still haven’t answered my question.”

Shit! He noticed. “No, but I’m getting better at it. At least I think I am, but he makes it so fucking hard!” Blaine stopped to finish his beer and motion to the waitress he wanted another. If those coming later were anything like Dave, he needed to get a good buzz going. “I was so happy when I got home but he didn’t give a chance to tell him my news!”

“You can tell me. I won’t tell anyone if you don’t want me to.”

Blaine thought about it, but not for long. The thought Kurt had to be the first one he told was gone. “Do you know about the song writing contest I won at NYU?”

“Who doesn’t? The prize was it would be recorded by a major artist and put on their next album. None of us expected Celine Dion or that the song would be nominated for Pop Song of the Year at the Grammys. By the way, you should have won.”

“Thanks.” Blaine tried to push out the memory of Kurt’s earlier comment but couldn’t. “Celine was asked to record a song for a movie, a big…big movie, but she hated what they sent her. She told the studio she’d do it, but she wanted me to write a new song.”

Dave rushed around the table and crushed him in a bear hug…maybe bear was a poor choice of words. “Oh my God! That’s huge! What’s the movie?”

“I shouldn’t say…in case things don’t work out.”

“Blaine…”

“Ok, it’s Deadpool 2.”

Dave pulled back, a blank expression on his face. “Are you shitting me? Seriously, are you shitting me? The first one is my favorite movie of all time!”

“I remember.”

“And Sam! He’s going to freak that you’re going to write a song for a comic book movie!”

“If they use it.”

Once again, Dave tightened his hold, this time even harder. “You are a Grammy nominated song writer and Celine fucking Dion asked you to write her a song for fucking Deadpool 2. Stop doubting yourself.”

“Ok, the walk down memory lane is over. Time for the male hobbit to forgo the sugar coating and get some tough love from Auntie Snixx.”

Dave whispered Good Luck before leaving. Blaine wasn’t sure if his abrupt exit was part of the plan, animosity toward one of the masterminds of his ambush wedding to Kurt or not wanting to piss off the girl who once told him she had razor blades in her hair.

Did it matter? Yeah, it did. Their time together made him realize how much he missed him. He’d like them to be friends again…if it wasn’t too weird for Dave.

His long awaited second beer arrived, but Santana declined anything stating she wouldn’t be there much longer. She then pulled out her phone and smiled a smile Blaine had seen enough to know it meant trouble. “What are you doing here Lopez?”

“In Ohio? Lord Tubbington needed an intervention for his latest addiction…Internet porn.”

Blaine didn’t question her explanation which for some reason made perfect sense. “I meant here…at Scandals.”

“Sammy called. He needed help getting in contact with the third ghost of Blaine Warblers past.”

“You are not a ghost from my past. I see you at least once a week.”

“Then Karofsky’s your past, I’m your present and the next person can be your future. Guess that makes you and your pissy mood Scrooge.” Santana took a deep breath and folded her hands on the table. “I’m only going to say this once and if you tell anyone, I’ll deny it…then cut off your balls.”

That was interesting. Interesting enough he prepared for what she was going to say by taking a big swig of beer. “Deal”

“I’m sorry.”

“Foooor?”

“I should’ve never let Britt talk me into the double wedding. She only remembered high school Klaine and then depressed Blaine who missed Kurt. She wasn’t here for the engagement and she definitely was around for toxic NYC Klaine. I was.”

For the second time since he arrived in Ohio, Blaine didn’t have a comeback because the person across from him was telling the truth. Was it progress to admit what they were saying were truths? “You didn’t have faith we’d make it?”

“Once I was out of the happy bubble of my wedding day? No, not a chance in hell. You and Hummel got back together only a few days before. You needed time to either work out the issues you had the first time or realize you were in a never-ending cycle, doomed to failure.”

“Wow, tell me how you really feel.” Blaine downed the rest of his beer for time to come of with a reasonable response. Like that was going to happen. “I thought we were ready.”

“Why? Because you went to therapy and a had rebound relationship with Karofsky?”

“Never, I mean never, say crap about Dave! I don’t care about shit that went down in high school. He didn’t deserve what I did to him, no matter what he did back then!”

Santana tilted her head then nodded, showing she was both stunned and impressed by Blaine’s outburst. “You obviously misunderstood Anderson. Was your relationship with Karofsky on anyone’s bingo card? No. Did some people think you were with him as revenge for Hummel ending your engagement? Yeah, probably more than you realize. But I know you had feelings for Dave, just not love. He was the wrong person at the right time.”

“Then who was the right person?”

“The guy who just walked in the door.” She took hold of his hands and asked “Do you remember when we went to Dalton to hear the Warblers sing MJ and they did I Want You Back? How I said we were in big trouble?” Blaine nodded because seeing Sebastian had rendered him speechless. “I didn’t mean for Regionals. The New Directions were in trouble because we were going to lose you. If that Slushie didn’t happened, you would’ve eventually gone back to Dalton. Not for the Warblers but for a Warbler…Smythe. You looked at him in a way I never saw between you and Hummel…ever.”

“San…”

“Just talk to him. Listen to him. And listen to the voice in your, thankfully no longer plastered into submission, head.”

“Hey” Sebastian said upon his arrival at their table, unsure of what he was doing there in the first place. Other than fear of what Santana Lopez would do if he’d declined, of course.

Santana stood to leave, kissed Blaine on the cheek, then took hold of Sebastian’s arm. “Thank you for coming but if you fuck this up, they’ll never find your body.”

“Understood.” Then as a shock to both men, she kissed his cheek before leaving. “That…that…my younger self would never believe that just happened” Sebastian stammered as he took the available seat. “I still live in fear of her revenge for the Slushie I threw at her. Sometimes I wish she would just get it over with. I mean, how many …don’t answer that. I remember. I’ve always remembered.”

Their missing waitress appeared out of nowhere, obviously due to Sebastian. Even though Blaine hadn’t finished his current beer, he went ahead and ordered one for each of them. Hopefully they’d arrive before the girl realized she worked in a gay bar.

They did.

The tension was awkward, but since Sam had gone to a lot of trouble to put this evening together, Blaine decided the least he could do was see it through. “How’s the Groundbreaking preparation going?”

“Crazy” Sebastian told him, but the former Warbler Captain instantly broke out a smile. “But it’s Dalton crazy so…”

“Organized chaos” Blaine finished for him. “How did you get involved?”?

“Long story.”

“Good. We can get comfortable while we get up the nerve to talk about whatever Santana told you.”

“She didn’t tell me anything. I had no idea you’d be here. In fact, shouldn’t you be in Hawaii? It’s the reason you declined your invitation.”

Blaine was still reeling from hearing Sebastian didn’t know he’d be here. As much as he wanted to ask how Santana convinced him to come, he decided it was safer not to know. “Kurt was offered a business opportunity in Paris, but that’s a conversation we should save until you’ve caught up to me. I’m on my third beer and I’m not the lightweight I used to be.”

“Challenge accepted.” Sebastian took a good-sized drink and looked for the waitress. She must have figured out flirting was a waste of time since she was nowhere to be seen. Fortunately, one of the bartenders remembered Sebastian from the old days who took care of him. “So, we talk about Dalton for now?”

“For now.”

“Ok, then I got involved because the Reopening Committee asked. It’s my Spring Break so I have a lot of extra time.”

Before everything went to hell between them, Blaine learned some of Sebastian’s telltale ticks. If he tapped his fingers on the table, he wasn’t telling the whole truth. He never lied. He just had a habit of leaving out important details. Right now, he was practically tapping the drum solo to In The Air Tonight.

“It’s my Spring Break too, which makes sense since I'm supposed to be in Hawaii. Where did you wind up going to college?”

“Stanford”

“Not Harvard like your dad. I bet that went over like a led balloon.”

“Ding, ding, ding…200 points to the Grammy nominee.”

“You heard about that? Never mind, seems a lot of people have.”

“You’re kidding, right? Everyone knew you’d end up in music, we just didn’t know how. But I have a question. When I read about your nomination, the article said you won a song writing contest at NYU. What happened to NYADA?”

“Kurt broke off our engagement, crippling depression caused my work to suffer, NYADA cut me.”

“They cut you? Depression that bad should've gotten you a medical excuse.” “My parents’ lawyers said the same thing. NYADA cleared my record, refunded my tuition, and when I refused to go back, the Director of NYADA convinced Tische into accepting me despite the fact I’d missed all application deadlines.”

“Let me guess, after NYADA (air quotes) fixed everything, you and your parents didn’t sue.”

“Ding, ding, ding…500 points to the Stanford man.” The tapping went into overdrive. “What aren’t you telling me?”

Sebastian moved his hands to his lap. “You remembered?”

“You’d be surprised how much I remember about you.“ Oh shit! Time to stop drinking.

Either his comment went over Sebastian’s head, or he was polite enough not to push the subject. “Let’s just say you weren’t the only one to switch colleges. I’m not at Stanford anymore. I’m at OSU.”

Huh? “Your turn to spill what happened.”

Sebastian finished his beer and signaled the bartender for another. They were both well aware this would be his third. According to their agreement, it was time to talk about the hard stuff. “Do you remember, back when we were friends, and you asked what was something I could never have but wanted more than anything?”

“Of course. You said my ass.”

“True, but then I said…”

Blaine’s eyes flew open even though they were heavy from the alcohol. “You told your father off? How you hated him for all the crap he’d put you and your mother through? Oh my God, what did he say?”

“You’re cut off.”

“Oh shit!” While Blaine was in disbelief (but in total awe at the same time) Sebastian seemed fine…peaceful. “That’s why you left Stanford? He even cut off tuition?”

“Everything. But Blaine, it was the best thing to happen to me.”

Huh? “What do you mean?”

“He no longer has control over me. I make all my own decisions. I’ll admit I was lucky this pissed off my grandmother, his mother. She gave me the equivalent of what I would inherit when she died. It didn’t take my finance classes for me to realize living in California, near San Francisco, was going to drain the money in less than 10 years. I finished the semester at Stanford then moved here.”

Blaine couldn’t take his eyes off Sebastian. He was practically glowing, and not from the beer. “You look really happy.”

“I am and it’s not just being free of my father. Dalton plays a huge role in what I call my recovery.”

“Dalton? How?”

“I’m not just working on the Groundbreaking. I work part time for Dalton. I’m still working on my Finance Degree, so I’ve been helping with fundraising. OSU gives me credit for practical experience. I’m also getting a degree in Education Administration.”

Excuse me?! “You? Sebastian Smythe are going to be Dalton’s Head Master?”

“Oh, hell no! I’m going to teach French and work as an assistant to the Head Master…title pending. The Head Master has to handle crap like curriculum and faculty. I’ll be in charge of budgets and making sure students don’t do stupid shit…title pending. The idea was who's better for the job than someone who broke practically every rule. There’s not a lie or excuse I won’t see right through.”

When Blaine found out his best friend was taking over the New Directions, Sam asked if he was jealous. His answer of a little was true. He had loved coaching the Warblers. But what Sebastian was doing? He wasn’t a little jealous. He was so jealous his heart hurt. “Are you happy?”

“Extremely. I know everyone expected me to be a lawyer or CEO. I’d rather work at Dalton and not have high blood pressure and ulcers by the time I’m 30. I suppose I’ve grown up.”

“I suppose you have.”

Sebastian took a chance to reach over for Blaine’s hand and was pleasantly surprised when he didn’t pull away. “Killer, when was the last time you were truly happy? Not with something in your marriage, or Kurt in general. Something that was only about Blaine Devon Anderson.”

Was it sad he couldn’t answer immediately? Blaine wanted to say his song writing. How he’d been asked to write a song for a movie. Neither was the truth. “When I was coaching the Warblers before the fire. My life was a mess, but for those few hours a day, safe inside the walls of Dalton, I was genuinely happy.”

Sebastian didn’t look surprised. “If you have time, you should come help with the Groundbreaking. Or, even if you don’t have time, could you please, please, please come help with the Groundbreaking? Some of the bigger donors asked what the Warblers were performing…yesterday. As of now, there’s no performances scheduled, just speeches. You, former Warbler and musical savant, showing up like this is basically a miracle. Unless you say you won’t do it. No pressure. You obviously have a lot to deal with, but please, please pretty please.”

It sounded perfect, but he didn’t want Sebastian to know Dalton was the reason he was back in Ohio. Kurt forbidding him from coming would somehow come out and he didn’t need that getting around. It was beyond embarrassing. “I have time and even if I didn’t, I would’ve found a way. Can we have lunch tomorrow and keep catching up…no matter how difficult it might be?”

Sebastian smiled as Sam and he assumed Kitty walked in. The only reason he wasn’t sure was because she was tiny, and every single McKinley Warbler was scared shitless of her. “B, your designated drivers are here.”

“Not quite Eiffel Tower…”

“Eiffel Tower?” Blaine and Sebastian asked in unison.

Kitty rolled her eyes at them, but Sam thought it was funny. “They’re both tall and French.” She rolled her eyes again when not only Sam, but Blaine and Sebastian, began to laugh uncontrollably. “Anyway…” she said in a way Sebastian suddenly understood why the guys were terrified of her “It’s late, you’ve been drinking and none of us are making the drive to Westerville and back. You’re staying with Tana and Brittany at the Pierce’s. Give me your keys. I’m driving you.”

The guys all began laughing again. They were so loud the other bar patrons could hear them over the music. “You…you?” Sebastian tried to say between breaths. “I don’t think my seats go up that far!!”

Sam pulled himself together. Kitty was almost at her Santana level. “I’ll drive Sebastian’s car. You and Blaine follow in mine.”

“No, I want to talk to the jackass about me and the McKinley Warblers singing Blaine’s song at his fancy shindig on Saturday.”

That got Blaine’s attention. “My song?”

“Rise…the one you wrote when Dalton burned down.”

Blaine quickly got up, and once the room stopped spinning, he grabbed his jacket. “I’ve got to get back to Sam’s. I need my laptop.”

Sam didn’t like the sound of that. Kurt had been calling Blaine’s phone throughout the evening. He hoped his plan hadn’t been for naught with his best friend wanting to Skype his husband. “Why?”

“My song writing software is on it. I’ve got an idea.”

NOTES:

I read somewhere Klaine’s original “introduction” in the 5 year time jump had Blaine as a Grammy nominated song writer and Kurt with a popular accessories line…no Virgina Wolfe. I went with that narrative.

Season 6 Wedding: Episode 6x08 2/20/2015. However, there was no fear of snow or cold, and that barn was VERY open. This is why I moved the anniversary to April/Spring Break.

Dalton Fire: Episode 6x10 3/10/15. While in canon it was 2 weeks later, I moved it to 1 week.

[confusedspaceotter]

A little(?) recap/guide thingy Warrior Nun edition:

This is my attempt to make a wn guide and will cover some basic information about the show, the plot and a brief introduction of the characters + my personal options about them.

A long post since I’ve been hypervixated on the show since s2 dropped.

Some basic info

Warrior nun(2020-) is a show created by Simon Barry based on the comic book character Warrior Nun Areala by Ben Dunn.

The first season of the show aired on Netflix( which we will refer to as Netflop) on 2020 July and was renewed for a second season that was released on November 2022.

Sadly, in December of 2022, that show was cancelled by Netflop BUT AFTER 6 MONTHS OF HARDWORK BY SHOWRUNNER SIMON BARRY, THE CAST AND CREW OF WN AND THE WN FANDOM, ON JUNE 28 2023, IT WAS ANNOUNCED BY SIMON BARRY ON TWITTER THAT THE SHOW WILL RETURN!!

(I’m so proud of us for real, I know is late but happy pride everyone 🌈)

Now on to the story( and the reason why I fucking love this show other then Avatrice)

The plot

The story begins with a quadriplegic 19-year-old orphan, Ava Silva, when she wakes up in a morgue with religious artifact known as the halo. Soon, Ava discovered that she now have superpowers and she was hunted down by both the owner of the halo, the Order of the Cruciform Sword(OCS for short), a group of secret warrior nuns that works for the Catholic Church that fights demons, and the literal demons from hell, who wants to use the halo to open the gates of hell.

Tl;dr Local 19-year-old girl Ava Silva who was previously quadriplegic and dead, was resurrected by a literal angel halo slap on her back by one of the secret nuns that work for the Catholic Church, Ava now has to fight literal demons.

(Slight s2 spoiler below)

Oh and she got a really cool sword and a gf later and that’s why we call her bisexual Jesus.

The characters

Not going to go too in-depth because if I do this post will go on forever, so I’ll give a brief overview of them + my some own opinions on them.

( I tried to keep it as spoiler free as possible but there might be spoilers of s1 now let us begin!)

1. Ava Silva( portrayed by Alba Baptista)

- Local quadriplegic orphan was resurrected by a mysterious devine donut so she’s understandably confused

- But that’s also why she’s so passionate about life( because she’s been trap in a bed for like years)

- Also that’s why I would describe her as child-like because she basically didn’t get one( she got a TV buddy in the orphanage tho, props to you Diego🫡)

- Chaotic ™

- At first glance, she might seem selfish but that’s only because girlie just wanted to live okay

- Is trying her best🥹

- Funny?!( personally I love her humour)

- Solid 10/10 character development in s2

- Will forever be my baby💕

- (Now slight s2 spoilers)

- AVATRICE AVATRICE AVATRICE( for those of you who don’t know, it is a wlw ship between Ava Silva and Sister Beatrice)

- Still can’t believe our bisexual Jesus got resurrected twice

- I just fucking love her okay

2. Sister Beatrice( portrayed by Kristina Tonteri-Young)

- part of the OCS

- Asian repppp( as an asian, any asian rep is a automatic W)

- Is the smart one( Carmila comes very close)

- Knows a shit tone of languages because of that private education( *in Mary’s voice* “yasss private education”)

- Is the one in charge because of how trustworthy she is

- Everyone is so badass but she is The badass( shameless plug to the badass Beatrice compilation I made)

- (Now on to some S1 spoilers)

- she’s a lesbian, gay🌈🌈🌈

- Asian lesbian representation my beloved

- Her coming out scene is literally perfect I’ve never since something this beautiful on TV for a long time

- It’s just so sincere and real and emotional and it’s making me feel stuff which I will allow

- (Now even more spoilers about s2)

- DID I MENTION AVATRICE

- also really really love how she now expresses herself more openly( get that character development Bea✨

- I can’t wait for them to reunite 🥹

3. Shotgun Mary(portrayed by Toya Turner )

- part of the OCS( as an independent contractor)

- just trying to get revenge for her gf sister warrior Shannon

- gives no fucks

- get shit done

- Miss “Baby girl I’ve got two shotguns” Mary

- Might look scary/ cold but she cares about everyone(yes, even Lilith)

- The older sister of the OCS

- The kind of friend that will whoop your ass if she thinks your making a bad decision to knock some sense into you

4. Sister Lilith(portrayed by Lorena Andrea)

- Part of the OCS( her family have been serving the church for like ages)

- Was supposed to be the next halo bearer(until it got shoved into Ava by accident)

- So she dislikes ava(understandable, again she’s the one who’s supposed to be the next halo-bearer)

- Ambitious

- Believes in the church/the rules more then the people( part of the reason why she is determined to get the halo back from Ava)

- Will do anything to achieve her goal(even if it meant hurting her friends/family)

- Strive for perfection(because she doesn’t want to disappoint her mother

- (S2 spoilers below)

- Idk what happened to her in s2

- The only way I could justify her actions is she was brainwashed or something

- Personally, I understand/like S1 Lilith more

- Doest stop her from being hot and making me simp for her tho

5. Sister Camila(portrayed by Olivia Delcán)

- must protect at all cost

- The youngest out of the OCS

- The most inexperienced(again coz she’s the youngest)

- Beatrice is her mentor/ closest big old sister( absolutely love their dynamic)

- Camila 🤝🏻 Ava being the chaotic child™

- Is the tech girl

- Is shy and soft but

- she’s very capable of whooping your ass

- Seeing her slowly growing and believing in herself more is just🥰🥺

6. Mother Mommy Superion(portrayed by Sylvia De Fanti)

- Mother of five (the OCS kids

- Girl boss✨

- Very protective of her kids

- Caretaker of the sister warriors( she trains them too

- Might seem harsh but is only because she wants what’s best for them

- Now how did mother superion get her title ohhh I wonder👀( it will be answered in S2)

- She means business

- Milf( okay have you seen her??

- Everytime she shows up my monkey brain just goes “mother is mothering.”

- Is serious like 90% of the time ( ohhh but I wonder whyyy did something happen I wonderrr(( also will be answered in S2))

7. Father Vincent(portrayed by Tristán Reuten)

- Is a man(I know is obvious but he’s literally one of the only few man in the cast I had to give him a shoutout

- The man in charge and give orders to the sister warriors

- One of the only few people Mary trusts( I view them as mentor & mentee but I can also see adoptive father & adoptive daughter too)

- Calculative(you know, from being a strategic leader to the warrior sisters

- The authority figure that kinda gone rogue( by being on Ava’s side

- Respected by the sisters warriors( you know he is a father after all

Other random shit

Reasons why I recommend this show:

- it’s wlw( yes I’m once again talking about avatrice what about it)

- one of the few shows on the market rn that actually have a diverse cast( and not just a cast full of white people and one black/Asian/Latian-American person)

- with a diverse cast, comes with multiple characters speaking in languages other then English( Spanish, French, German etc)

- a almost all female cast

- and they are all strong badass women who will whoop your ass

- a show with Christian/ Catholic themes which fits well into the narrative( ie is not overly anti religion but also not too religious that gives you religious trauma)

- which brings us to the clever parallels and metaphors( one of the most obvious one is Ava, a character that was resurrected by a divine power, is a direct reference to irl Jesus)

- the character development is real( the main character was held accountable for her actions, realised her mistakes, takes responsibility and learns to do better)

-we got action, we got comedy, we got heartfelt scenes, what more do you need?

Now since I know nothing about cinematography I’ll just link this wonderful edit I found on YouTube and let it speak for it self.

Hope this guide thingy helps!

[delektorskichick]

2 3 16 29

Assuming this is for the bored and anxious fanfic writer asks:

2) Do I read/reread my own fics?

Hell yes! Even fics that I’ve gifted someone else are written for me, by me, and it’s fic I want to see in the world. Since it’s fic I want to see in the world, I read it all the time!

3) What’s your favorite fic that you’ve written?

Honestly it’s probably one of the two I’m working on right now that both kind of spiraled out of control? One is a (mostly) canon-compliant Clint/Nat/Laura fic that I wrote mostly at @cassiesinsanity’s urging, and the other is a multi-fandom spin-off of ANOTHER fic I’ve been working on (that was SUPPOSED to be a ONE-SHOT, dammit!) that is now longer than what I’ve written of the original fic.

16) At what point in the process do you come up with titles?

Unless a title slaps me upside the head at the beginning of a project (like honestly most of my NaNo works) it’s the last thing I figure out before I post it. And usually you’ll find me screaming into the void or scrolling those Criminal Minds quotes for something. Or I steal one a friend who’s read the fic comes up with.

29) Share a bit from a fic you’ll never post OR from a scene that was cut from an already posted fic.

So here’s the thing. I don’t edit. I don’t cut things. I might spawn an idea or two that I never get to, but I don’t write them down. What little I do cut just isn’t really long enough to say that it’s an idea? I’m one of those people that will slap anything up on Ao3 once it’s complete enough to be coherent. Or I’ll use bits that fit for things like Whumptober.

BUT!

I dug through my word docs and found a thing that won’t be posted for a LONG time yet because I’m stymied on plot currently. It’s from a clintasha fic where Nat is a tattoo artist and Clint is a barista.

*

Natasha walked into Howlie’s Ink Parlor -affectionately known as just Howlie’s- on Fulton Street, fifteen minutes late and without her usual Starbucks.

How on earth Steve managed to see her from where he was bent over his buzzing needle, Natasha didn’t know, didn’t want to know, honestly. But see her he did, and she heard the raised eyebrow in his voice when he spoke.

“Cutting caffeine cold turkey there, Nat?”

Natasha growled quietly at him as she slumped down on the stool at her station, chucking her bag under the desk with a careless thud. Her head was pounding, and she couldn’t even manage to be disgusted at the gooey love eyes Steve was making at James over his literal labor of love. He was putting the finishing touches on the scar-covering tattoo that he’d been tweaking and refining for the last eighteen months on James’s left arm.

Normally, Natasha would have just rolled her eyes and pulled out either some new flash sheets she was working on or pull up a design to do some last-minute tweaking of her own for a client. Normally her ferry was on time. Normally the last Starbucks before she got to Howlie’s wasn’t closed to undergo surprise repairs.

Normally she probably could have handled all that and just laughed it off, getting herself a cup of Steve’s horrible instant decaf in the breakroom and pretending it was real and bitching about her, admittedly ridiculous, commute.

But damn Matt Murdock and his shitty-ass timing. She hadn’t gotten any sleep last night, and she was getting too fucking old for that kind of shit.

*

Hope that was what you were looking for!

[goldendiie]

My dream rn is to be to Sherdoc what you are to Sargemore

How did you get here

Like, other than the obvious, if you had to take your most comedic guess at how you got here, what would you say

i sold my soul to the devil so then i could have internet fame by writing sarge/fillmore fanfic. slash jay.

anyway, since i have a tendency to ramble, i’ll put a serious answer under the cut. i’m going to call this G’s Path to Accidental Internet Success.

1. i joined the fandom in 2016, when i was 14. as such, i bothered literally EVERYONE and tried to make as many friends as i could. i ended up with a pretty solid group of mutuals (most—if not all— of which are now deactivated. rip.) .

2. start asking for writing requests. the stuff i started out with was always in the 50-300 words ballpark (like drabbles). the main key here is to (a) have Exactly One Thing you write about (aka sargemore), and a handful of people that are willing to engage with you on that.

some cars fandom history for you: around this time (2018-ish), we had this anon “spam” (i hate to call them that, because we are now good friends) who would send many, many, many asks into my inbox about sarge and potatoes. i was able to turn some of their asks into legitimate oneshots, or take them a little farther than they likely expected. (see: wishes, as the sun sets, or anything else i posted in the summer of 2018). i guess what you can take away from this is that ANYTHING can be turned into writing if you are deranged enough.

it was also around this time that i bought the sargemore backstory comic off of ebay, and then spent an INCREDIBLE amount of time immersing myself in sixties history to write the third blink. i started posting that in june of 2019, and it went through the beginning of january of 2021 (covid fucked up my schedule). in that time, the fic gained a pretty decent following, a lot of whom usually still turns up for anything that i post on ao3.

so, number 3: if you put a lot of passion and time and effort into your work, people will notice! if you construct a good narrative arc for your characters, and do things that people aren’t expecting, they’ll stick around. a consistent posting schedule always helps too; think of it as tuning in to your favorite television show once a week, back in the old days of cable. i know i’m not one to talk about that (we all know i haven’t posted in like six months… yikes), but i’m telling you. it helps.

4. never shut the hell up about what you’re writing. i mean, seriously. you see the shit that i post about my AU. be obnoxious. have fun. start a discussion about your characters, or the narrative. in my case, i do this easily by creating a historical discussion through the use of sarge/fillmore as figures analogous to different political beliefs.

(actually. my ploy all along was to educate you guys. i can’t tell you how many comments i’ve gotten that are people saying “i wasn’t expecting to LEARN anything from a cars fanfic, but….”)

i think that’s all. i hate to say that a great deal of this is circumstantial, because i started in a height of the fandom in 2017, and the Potato Anon summer gave me a lot to work with, and i’ve been doing the same kind of thing for almost seven years now. but i think that you could still swing it. there’s enough people in the fandom that you could definitely attract the audience you want for your writing. i’ll be proud to be a part of it!

TLDR: have friends that want to engage with your writing, stay (mostly) consistent, and create a discussion about your “content.” and, most importantly— be passionate, be real, and HAVE FUN. none of this is worth it if you aren’t enjoying it.

[flydotnet]

Bad Things Happen Bingo! The event where you send me requests according to this marvelous card! (Red cross is the completed prompt, character headshots are prompts I’ve already filled).

Stairs, a taser, Yuto's fist, and more stairs. What do they all have in common?

Oh look, this is my yearly Arc-V fanfic where I'm ignoring most of canon because who gives a fuck about the Arc-V canon past, like, the Synchro arc (YMMV) lol. Anyway, this is a catharsis fic where I combine all of my other vague changes to the canon so that stupid ship only me still cares about in 2023 A.D. and also where the stupid parasites are easily removable by a good dash of Raidraptor magic. This fic can also be called "the floor is actually writing the Duel" because I didn't want to burden myself with how godawful the Parasite archetype is, especially since I can't just copy-paste a Duel from canon. The one I'd have to plagiarize really... isn't that good too, we're just all biased because Yuto is badass.

The title is a bilingual pun between the English "volatine", which is a synonym of "explosive" or "unstable", and the French "volatile", which is a term used for birds. Y'know, like Shun. He's the two meanings of the word "volatile". The word was, in fact, invented to trip my foot over during translation classes and also for Shun Kurosaki from hit "lowest ratings on Nico Nico Douga" anime Yu-Gi-Oh Arc-V.

Speaking of my favourite bird-wielding edgelord, post-Xyz Shun is always kind of weird to write too. He's not the same abrasive bastard I keep remembering as, but then I'm afraid I'm writing him too soft. I kind of tend to forget he's that angry, that destructive in huge part because of his bonds to other people. I don't want a Draco in Leather Pants situation, God knows I've bitched about when it was happening with Revolver VRAINS. Just... think that in this timeline I'm never describing Serena and he stuck around for much longer, like at least through Synchro, character dev' happened, or something, idk

-----------------------------------

Volatile

Summary: Serena snaps back to reality in the middle of a Duel, only to quickly realize her spirit is fighting herself(?) and her body is fighting a rib-clutching Kurosaki. Nothing about this adds up, yet there she is, not even in control of her own body anymore.

Or: Shun came across a possessed Serena before his sister after losing her track back in the Xyz Dimension, this is the consequences of that forced encounter.

Fandom: Yu-Gi-Oh Arc-V Characters: Serena, Shun Ship: Peregrineshipping (pre-rel)

Wordcount: 3K words

Event hosted by @badthingshappenbingo​

AO3 version.

-----------------------------------

Serena wakes up on both her feet to the smell of gunpowder and the heat of a reactor.

 Recent wartime experiences as a well-groomed doll turned soldier turned renegade have shaped her in a way that she doesn’t question how she got there, let alone why, and only on what’s in front of her.

She’s in harm’s way, so she sidesteps to avoid a chunk of shrapnel.

She’s near fire, so she steps backwards to avoid getting burned, or worse, outright set ablaze.

She’s in the middle of a Duel, which means she’s in the middle of battle, and needs to focus. Alas, no experience has prepared her for what she sees on the blade of her trusty Disk – and decidedly feels like a stranger to her own deck.

 She doesn’t recognize most of the cards she’s playing. Most of them are bearing garish bugs clad in colours that only push her eyes far away, which she don’t quite pay a mind to. They’re mostly Monster cards, with the exception of a set Trap card and a Spell one that’s still active. It seems to affect an archetype known as “Parasite”, which she’s never played nor even heard of. Why the hell did she play that, before seemingly going to sleep? How did this even happen to begin with?

It only dawns on her then to look up, only to see a semi-familiar face that, if it had organic eyes, would have absolutely been staring daggers right into hers. Mechanic wings, reactors, the smell of ruin and gunpowder. No, there’s no mistaking it, she’s watched it ravage through opposite fields before, in person, on a screen… No doubt about it, it’s –

 “Rise Falcon,” an even more familiar voice tells in a hoarse but firm tone, “reduce those bugs to—”

“Wait!”

Arm already risen in front of him, the individual on the other side of the field stops with a frustrated frown.

“What is it? Afraid of defeat?”

Her head hurts.

“What’re you doing, Kurosaki?! We’re on the same side!”

He tilts his head backwards just a little, one of his eyes twitches. He’s almost showing teeth now.

“I asked you that before you forced my hand into this bullshit.” He sounds so hurt, in a way that she hasn’t heard in so long, and her chest starts choking her too. “Don’t take me for stupid, asshole.”

It’s a downright migraine that she’s now stuck trying to shove back.

“What do you mean? I just… Why would I do that?”

His expression immediately softens.

“You were under the control of that… thing,” he points to the Parasite Queen in front of her, “and almost pushed me off that tower. Then you challenged me to a Duel.”

This sounds like an utter fantasy; but if there’s one thing Kurosaki doesn’t do, it’s lying, even to those he doesn’t trust, so there must be a rational explanation for this.

“What para—”

Don’t resist, Serena. Be a good girl.

She clutches her head now. What’s this voice? How did they get inside her head?!

“Serena?”

You’re my slave, now. Be a good girl and fight the Xyz remnant in front of you.

“Shit, Serena, snap out of it!”

And just like this, she loses contact with her own body.

 It’s an awful feeling of dissociation, drowsiness and loss of control. Her foot don’t touch the ground anymore, leaving her floating inside her own consciousness. Her eyes don’t look where she wants them to go, more fixated on the cards than on the guy in front of her, for worse and no shade of better – because even through the haze of her controlled mind, Serena hears it, the wheeze and the rasp of his voice.

 “You little pest,” her voice groans once even her cords have given back into the parasite’s clutches. “Back to you it is, bird boy.”

Kurosaki remains silent, the deep-set frown on his face enough to speak for him. Only now does she see, through the haze of glazed eyes, how battered he truly is, an arm wrapped around his chest and a trinkle of blood going down his cheek.

“I’m not leaving you in this state, not again, so don’t go thinking you’re out of the woods.” He clenches his teeth, spits back venom, “I’m not letting any of this fly by.”

He makes it sound like he’s here to save her – which doesn’t make sense. Kurosaki wanted to save Ruri, his other friend and his homeland. She wasn’t on the list. (Although Serena would’ve given her all to save him would have their places been the opposite, because she seeks redemption, because she wants to be a heroine, because she cares for Kurosaki less like a brother and more like a—)

“Oh, charming knight in armour, here to save the damsel in distress!” It chuckles. “You sound so full of yourself, for a miserable bug! You’re not the big bird of prey you think you are! Or did you abandon me back there? Didn’t just you faint from some small debris?”

“Tch.” He settles back into a deadpan. “I detach one Overlay Unit from Rise Falcon…”

 It wasn’t small debris – it was a lot more than that. She watched him run to save a girl he knew from her trauma and whatever her own homeland was trying to pull off in the middle of a Tag Duel, and only thanks to Kaito’s help was she able to finish them off before it was too late. She was scared beyond her mind’s comprehension, back there, but unable to realize until much late how much that had been; because there was no time.

No wonder why Kurosaki was so volatile. He hadn’t processed much of anything. Even now, she doubts he has.

What’s also no wonder to her is why she got so scared back then and a part of what’s grounding her to her body despite the phantom pain. She wants to do the right thing and stop this Duel from continuing any further. She doesn’t want to continue being a puppet for whomever infected her in Academia, her first and alleged only home for so long. She can’t hurt Kurosaki. She’s supposed to reunite with him and help him.

 And yet the Duel continues on without her, card after card sent to the Graveyard, Life Point after Life Point lost. Her “other self” has resorted to continuously bringing Monsters back from the dead to slap parasites on them, despite being unable to actually get a let up on Kurosaki despite having the upper hand in terms of cards on the field. He’s using all of his tools, constantly switching gears.

“You cheat,” that voice says. “You can’t beat me all on your own, can you!”

Kurosaki doesn’t reply, doesn’t even look like he’s hearing her.

“Action Magic: Miracle.” He smirks. “You could use them too, if you weren’t a coward.”

“You’re the coward, using you Lancers’ precious cards. You’re only delaying your oh so pathetic demise, Xyz remnant.”

To her surprise, even if it feels like it shouldn’t be anymore, Kurosaki chuckles at that.

“Oh, yeah, you’re definitely not there. The Serena I know wouldn’t say crap like this.”

“You don’t know me.”

“Obviously.”

 The other her destroys Kurosaki’s field with Magic, builds its side with more parasites, all summoned in various ways her dizzied mind can’t keep up with. The Queen squirms, ever so content with the suffering on the field, and she has to watch the one person she’s gotten attached to pay the price for what’s absolutely, by now and without question, her own rash decision making. She was made prisoner and now tortures other people.

She wouldn’t have wanted to put anyone through this to begin with, let alone him. No, of course Kurosaki isn’t the only friend she’s made along the way (that’d erase Yuzu, and Tsukikage, and Yugo…), but she’d lie if she said they hadn’t gotten strangely close to each other, the Xyz renegade and the former golden child of Academia turned against them. The groomed soldier and the one who had to become one to survive. It’s awful, it makes all too much sense.

 Another turn ended and he’s back to kneeling on the ground, hanging on by a thin thread of 200 LP.

“Oh-oh, having trouble standing up now, are we?”

“Shut it.”

“Hmph, I see you’re as unpleasant to talk to as always. You build yourself up so much yet struggle to do anything of substance once confronted. How does it feel, to be so useless, in the end? To be so powerless in the face of adversity?”

Kurosaki doesn’t respond, once more, only getting back to his feet.

“Tch. I set one face-down card and end my turn.”

 Serena’s heart skips a beat when she sees what card it is, as brief as it is. The name is blurry, so is the picture, but the chuckle of self-satisfaction that escapes her is enough to be weary of what’s about to happen; and if that wasn’t enough, then knowing it’ll absolutely decimate both of their fields but at the cost of his LP first would do more than the job.

She has one turn to get control of her body back, if not less. It’s a Magic card, so it has less chance to be activated on Kurosaki’s turn, but it’s not enough reassurance in this game of minds and prediction. If she doesn’t do something before it’s too late, he’ll suffer the consequences; and that she simply cannot let happen. He’s already struggling to breathe as is.

 “I activate from my hand Rank-Up Magic, Absorbing Soul Force. I pay half my Life Points to Special Summon Rise Falcon back to my field.”

“Then I’ll just destroy it again! You can’t win!”

“Shut up, I’m not finished. I Overlay Rise Raptor as Xyz material to summon two Ranks above its four.”

“Oh, of course, you Xyz users can’t get enough of your stupid Ranks. Come at me, I’ll just bury it six feet underground if need be!”

“Prideful falcon, spread your wings dyed in the blood of heroes, advance through the path of revolution! Xyz Summon, come forth! Rank Six, Raidraptor Revolution Falcon!”

“What’s the difference between that and the previous one? None, they’re all scum! Low filth of the Earth!”

Oh, a lot, but she’d rather let Kurosaki explain – who remains unfazed, if silently furious.

“I activate Revolution Falcon’s effect. By using one Overlay Unit, it can attack all of my opponents’ Monsters, once each.”

“Its Attack is inferior to Parasite Queen’s! Are you birdbrained?!”

Is he going to pull off the same thing he did back then?

“When this monster battles one that was Specially Summoned, that monster’s Attack and Defence become zero!”

But it scoffs and laughs, oh so amused by what’s in front of it, and she won’t have it let have its way. She’s putting an end to this battle that wasn’t meant to be now, no matter what. She’ll get back in control, at long last.

“Too bad for you, I’m ready! I activate—”

If she doesn’t do anything, this is going to be the bitter end—

No, I won’t let you!

“It’s over!” Serena screams with her own voice, finally, back in her body. All she has to do now is to…

Give it back to me!!

The pain is searing and it’s hard to think clearly, but one though is strong enough to pierce through it all.

“I’m not going to let you take over!”

“Serena?!”

She rises her hear to see an obviously concerned Kurosaki.

“Do it!” She yells at him, about to throw her own cards to the ground. “Finish this off!”

The voice screeches and burns inside his mind, claws its way out of a bottomless pit, everything burns burns burns.

He nods, takes a breath, and screams, “Revolution Air Raid!”

 And like it did the first time they saw each other, exchanged what could barely qualify as words, bombs explode to destroy their common enemy. Every single parasite on her field disappears in a blaze, the sky turns white. She almost loses consciousness, doesn’t withstand the knockback of the wind; but gets up soon enough, ignoring tremors in her legs, to at least realize something has moved inside her head.

She can’t quite worry over that yet however, because as soon as Cross-Over disappears, he falls to his knees.

 As if she hadn’t spent so long in her own pain, she rushes to his side, legs lighter than a feather. She doesn’t catch him per say, but decides to support him, concern tainting her every thought. From up close and through her own eyes, it’s evident that he’s taken quite the beating, a bruise already blossoming on the side of his neck and leftover hints of half-healed injuries speckle the few parts of his skin he leaves visible.

“Are you okay?” She asks, frantic, afraid she’ll lose him again.

Kurosaki doesn’t reply, exacerbating her pulse, but she soon feels something getting pulled from her ear. To her shock and disgust alike, through another dizzy spell, she watches him splatter an enormous bug under the sole of his shoe.

“You’re back, Serena?” He asks, his voice even raspier than it was before.

“Y-yeah. I was… controlled by that thing, wasn’t I…?”

“I think so, yeah. Scared the shit outta me.”

 She too has trouble getting her breath back, but before she loses all strength, she drags the both of them to lean against the nearby wall. Exhaustion is sitting heavy on her limbs, despite an urge to keep on – and she can only guess Kurosaki, because he’s struggling to get up yet trying so hard to, is feeling the same.

It’s always been difficult to know what he thinks, because he’s so quiet, so closed-off and so off-limits to everyone but two people he hasn’t found again yet. What is even going through his mind, right now?

Wait, did he just say he was scared?

 “You didn’t seem like it, though… Scared, I mean.”

“Only when you pushed me off the edge. After that, I was just focused on getting you back.”

His voice is gravely, his head is lulling on his shoulder, and it’s all too close to her, too warm, too welcoming. They’re soldiers in the jaw of the enemy, goddammit, is she this tired—

“Why didn’t you give up on me? I almost killed you, Kurosaki.”

He gives her one long, tired stare.

“You weren’t yourself.” He looks to the side next. “I wasn’t going to lose someone else again.”

“Am I really this important to you…?”

“What do you think the answer to that is?”

Dumb question… but it’s such a hard thing to believe. God, he surely sees her as his sister, or as a placeholder for her until Ruri is safe and sound again, that’s got to be it. She isn’t naïve enough not to know that now, that the world has never revolved around her and especially not his. (If only it didn’t hurt to think about).

“It’s hard to know, with you. I was your enemy at some point. You hate Fusion.”

“You’re not responsible for my homeland’s destruction, nor for Ruri’s disappearance. That doesn’t matter anymore.” He smiles a little, sends her back to flutter. “Plus, you did save me before. I was only paying you back so I don’t owe a debt.”

“We’ve talked about that, didn’t we? I was only seeking you for my own selfish gain. I said awful things to you, parading them as truth. I wasn’t exactly doing you a favour.”

He frows so, so deeply.

“Can’t you accept that I give a shit about you, or do I need to break a rib again?”

 Her blood immediately ices over, adrenaline replacing it shortly thereafter.

“Did I break something?!”

“I don’t know,” he says with an undignified uncertainty that doesn’t sound like him and stabs her as a result. “It’s not like I was in that good of a shape before coming here.”

Right, the debris, the rushed recovery process, the turmoil of questions never answered… No rest, all stress. It’s taken its toll on all of them.

“I’m sorry. It’s my fault if you’re in that state.”

“Skip the apology. I don’t want to hear it.”

“If I had been stronger, I wouldn’t have been infected by that… parasite.”

Vague memories she wants to ignore of a crazed man inserting something inside her mind, shivers that follow. It only ends when she feels pulled to him.

“I’m just glad you’re not gone.”

She nuzzles closer, for a moment uncaring of the dimensions, the Professor, the Lancers – all that matters is that they now breath together, that she doesn’t hurt him anymore, that they’re companions once more. It’s selfish. It’s insane. It’s easy.

“I’m relieved to see you again,” is all she replies. “We should… get going, though, shouldn’t we?”

“We should, yeah.”

She gets up, still dizzy and dazed, but nonetheless stable enough to give him her hand with a smile of her own. To her relief and joy alike, he gives it back to her as he takes it, gets to his own feet… and tilts forward just enough for her to catch him in her arms. If their worlds weren’t at stake, at the moment, she’d have relished in it, or let herself get overwhelmed by so much touch, so much closeness.

“I’ll support you,” she says, unsure of the extent to which she means it.

“I guess it’s fine, if it’s you.”

 She doesn’t comment on it, yet in silence can barely contain all of the thoughts that dance through her mind. Instead, like the level-headed companion she wants to be, she pushes that aside and focuses on the way his arm sits on her shoulder, of the one she has wrapped around his wrist, and not to aggravate his breathing. She can decide what to do with her feelings once everyone is safe and back home, when she won’t have to feel bad after a moment of reprieve. For now, they have a world to save.

And there’s nobody she wants to do it with more than the guy who’s just saved her.

[psychoticwillgraham]

long ass fucking emotional post about what it means to make it to my 28th bday under the read more

also making two bday playlists for myself: a funny one and an emotional one celebrating my journey so far. I know, 28 doesn’t seem like an important birthday, but for me? it’s everything. from something who planned to die on its 16th birthday to now, has been a hell of a journey. the vast majority of it has been heartbreaking, but through all the new trauma and old, I’ve become a much different person. i used to be a hermit basically, a high school dropout who wouldn’t talk to anyone irl and even barely online. then, the glee fandom (for all its evils) happened for me and I got to meet an Australian person irl, someone who flew all that way just to meet their weird little klaine mutual, at just 14.

then, I discovered cosplay and conventions, and in that process, the beginnings of my personal identity. I’d already been struggling with severe self harm and the realization that I was some kind of queer (initially a lesbian, then a trans man within the span of less than a year), and cons gave me a place that I could dress however I wanted, act how I wanted, even get lost in acting as the character im cosplaying. I didn’t have to be a girl, I could be a boy (which I did, and used the excuse of cosplay to get my mom to buy me my first binder, but after that she caught on), I could be everything, I could even be nothing. That was my outlet creatively which would eventually lead to my drag career once I turned 21, which was an impossible dream for 16 year old me since I thought I’d never make it to that age.

unfortunately, I met my major and longest abuser (for at least 9 years who continues to be in my life bc I can’t let go) at a con around this age (16). that would set off a 9 year period of sexual abuse, grooming, and rape, that I still struggle to recover from bc it was all I knew until I was 25/26. I’d never had a relationship with a man that wasn’t abusive in some way, and still haven’t. that’s a whole other post for another time when I can handle it better.

but over that period of time, I consumed all drag related media that I could and eventually responded to an open casting call for local drag performers, pretty much anyone who’d ever wanted to do it. most of them had already been part of established local ish drag families, except for me. I literally started from jack fucking shit and I was almost too scared to perform every time I did. I’d been in theatre, but I was always in the chorus and could never get the courage to actually be on stage in any kind of speaking role. but then fast forward to age 21, where I worked the grind for 5 years up the local drag hierarchy, even though I’m still being discounted on account of me being afab and a king, im more of the ‘underdog’ in ppl’s eyes. ppl love me and want more of me, but the current ones on charge just don’t. im still gonna work the grind until I get where I want to be.

but through drag, I found myself. i became an entirely different person. im miles more social than I’ve ever been, im light years more confident, and learning to assert myself. it was like a rebirth for me and I will defend this art form till my death.

i beat alcoholism, the thing that nearly killed me several times, most notably in 2019 when I was so far gone that they didn’t think even activated charcoal would work. thank god it did but if I’d had just one more glass of straight vodka or two more acetaminophen I’d be dead. and if I hadn’t told mom about what I did when I did, I would’ve also been dead. even five minutes later and I would’ve been dead. y’all I was legit about to be coded when they gave me the charcoal, and I did have a near death experience (i hovered above my body and saw the harsh hospital lights above me and they were extra bright, but I wasn’t being forced to go, I didn’t hear God or anything at all, i just hovered there for about 30 seconds and went back to my body) which I’ve suppressed the memory of until now.

I’ve come such a long way from that, and from my horrible childhood, and yes I was thrown off guard from grandma’s death, and I consider everything before that my old life, and everything since a second rebirth, like I have an entirely different life. it’s still haunting me every single day and it does whenever I go past her closed off room, and I still feel her very presence in this house and with me everywhere I go.

things have been immensely difficult, but I’ve survived, and yes I’ve come out a completely different person, and I’ve changed. but we all change through life and I was changed by my grandmother’s love for me and her presence from the very day I was born, and changed by her death. it’s been a change for the better, and she can rest easy knowing that I’ll never forget her or how fiercely she fought for me through my addiction when everyone including my psych team gave up on me and were about to just let me drink myself to death, but not her.

she let me lay on her floor every night and rant and talk about literally anything and everything, would share her saltine crackers and tootsie rolls with me so I’d have at least something to eat even if it was nothing substantial. she insisted that if I drank, I had to drink in her room so she could watch my every move since she was terrified of me dying alone in my room. if I passed out there (which I did most nights in the later stages of my addiction), she would do all she could to make me a bed out of blankets on the floor, even when she couldn’t walk anymore, so that I wouldn’t be sleeping on the hard, nasty carpet.

she gave me a place to just be, and I still think she’s the only reason I’m still alive.

because of grandma’s love, I’m still standing here today, a completely changed person, but at least I’m still alive.

i planned to die at 16, then 18, then 21, then 25, and then at 28. but I’m still here, against all odds, and I’m so grateful that I am.

here’s to the rest of my life, a very long life.

[fangirleaconmigo]

Hey! I'm not sure if this is technically a fanon or canon ask, but a question that's been nagging me for ages is does Aiden show up in the books? I'm wondering if he's mostly made up of a few lines of dialogue we heard about him or if he actually shows up somewhere in a canon

Thanks and hope you have a good one!

Hi Nonny, Thank you for the ask!

I have been asked about Aiden before, so I’m going to take the liberty of expanding on your ask and doing a full character breakdown. I hope that’s ok.

Witcher Aiden Character Breakdown

I’ll answer the following questions (roughly)

Who is Aiden?

Is Aiden in the books?

What part of Aiden is canon and what is fanon?

Why does the fandom love him?

How do fic writers write him?

Why is Lambert x Aiden so popular?

Will Aiden be in the Netflix show?

Who is Aiden?

Aiden (deceased) was a cat witcher and a friend of Lambert’s. We learn about Aiden in a TW3 supporting quest called Following the Thread, where Lambert asks Geralt to help him avenge Aiden’s death.

Does Aiden appear in the books?

No.

When I google his name, there is a website that has a notation of ‘the witcher books’ next to Aiden’s name. However, I’ve read all the books twice and the Kaer Morhen chapters of Blood of Elves like ten times, and I have never seen any references to him. Until someone actually gives me a page number and quotation, I’m sticking with my answer.

So who created Aiden?

Aiden is technically a CDPR creation, meaning he is created by the games. However, he does not actually physically appear in the games, since he is already dead when the story begins.

So, any visual character design you see in fandom, is a fanartist creation. Any personality/characterization you read in a fic, is a fic writer creation.

Aiden occupies this liminal space between canon and fanon. Canon, but not completely. Fanon, but not strictly.

So then where the hell are people getting their characterizations of Aiden in fics?

I’m glad you asked. They are reverse engineering him.

How the fuck do you do that?

(I will now let you inside the twisted mind of a fic writer. But please please keep in mind that this is all 🚨 SUPER SUPER INDIVIDUAL AND PERSONAL AND SUBJECTIVE🚨 Other people who write Aiden might be like...fuck. That isn’t why I connect with him at all. Or WHAT THE FUCK I DO NOT DO THAT AT ALL. So I do not consider myself the expert here. This is just me sharing my own thing.)

Ok that being said, reverse engineering a character is so fucking fun.

You start with what you know, identify anything intriguing about it, and invent your own explanation for it.

For example, with Aiden, we know that Aiden is a cat witcher. According to book canon, (Season of Storms) cat witchers murder people and act as assassins. We learn that they are not allowed to winter in Kaer Morhen, and when Brehen (the cat witcher we meet in the books) complains about that, Geralt is like...you fucking know why that is.

Dandelion explains to a third party that cat witchers' mutations are “failed” , that they are “psychopaths and sadists”, and “aggressive, cruel, unpredictable, and impulsive.”

So, we know that they pass their winters hard, cold, and hungry, and that Geralt, who is no pacifist, and is perfectly willing to kill people in defense of self and others (and frankly, can be pretty flexible about that) thinks their methods are evil. They are notorious.

CDPR, the comics, and other games (rpg, gwent) have added to that canon, but I am no expert on those, so I’ll stick to what I know.

What we know already creates an intriguing picture. Keep this cat witcher stuff in mind when I say that in TW3, Lambert says that Aiden was the best man he ever knew. I would like to remind the dear readers that Lambert knows Geralt and Eskel, two of the best men on the continent! That’s a high bar, folks. A cat witcher is the best man Lambert has ever known. When Geralt mentions that cats take human contracts, Lambert says that Aiden did not take human contracts and did not murder humans.

So, as fic writers, we ask ourselves questions about Aiden and explain them ourselves. For me what I ask is:

What kind of person is raised by dog-eat-dog people who teaches him that it’s cool to kill both humans and other witchers for financial gain, and yet grows up to be a person who refuses to kill humans or other witchers?

What kind of person experiences a failed mutation, then lives in constant hardship against the elements, facing chronic cold and hunger, and instead of resenting the Kaer Morhen wolves for the warmth of their castle and the family support they enjoy, literally attaches himself to the grumpiest one and loves him for life? (The romance may be fanon, but the friendship is canon, and friendship is love. People like to forget that.) By comparison, Brehen fucking hates and resents the Kaer Morhen wolves. He calls them hypocrites and blames his suffering on their refusal to let him stay there. But Aiden clearly did not.

What kind of person grows up around people like Brehen, who were obviously at least somewhat willing to kill Aiden for a contract (Brehen attempts to kill Geralt for a contract in Season of Storms), always having to look out for himself, yet manage to turn out so good?

And

How would a person turn out if they had to buck their community, the only survival options offered to them, and every last one of the ‘values’ they were taught, just to be true to themselves?

I think even the little bit we have so far points to a person with a deep well of compassion and kindness but also a whole lot of grit and spine. Like, he had to rebel to be a decent human being.

Fic writers fucking love that shit. A little structure, but a lot of room for creativity. Best writing prompt ever.

But let me be clear THERE ARE NO RULES EVER!!! WRITE HIM HOWEVER YOU WANT!!!!

Why do they love him then, if they mostly made him up?

You just answered your own question. It’s the freedom to craft your own lovingly wrought narrative about not belonging in the community where life has placed you, about struggling to break out of it, and about being true to yourself. I mean go back and read that sentence again and tell me that shit isn’t RIFE for queer narratives. RIFE I tell you. It is not a surprise to me that this is very popular with queer writers. (Ie, most fic writers, tbh)

Yes, but a lot of people just write him as a pairing for Lambert. They aren’t writing long character studies.

Yes, but even a PWP has character work, even a PWP has personalities and I’d argue with Aiden they all do by necessity since we don’t have his personality in canon. And JUST having him interact with Lambert tells us a whole lot about his character.

So when we write Lambert x Aiden we ask ourselves...

What kind of person can get past Lambert’s spikiness? His defenses?

What kind of person can get a famously loyal Lambert to invite tension between himself and Geralt or Eskel, who have past traumas with cat witchers?

What kind of person can inspire that kind of trust in a slow-to-trust Lambert?

What kind of person can impress the not-easily-impressed Lambert?

Basically this cat motherfucker strolled up to the hardest case, the most sarcastic, defensive, pissy wolf witcher, and won his literal undying devotion.

Who can do that???? And how??

It’s fun to imagine. It compels me. I’m compelled. And we all know that the spikiest character is the mushiest inside, and that’s exactly what fic writers love. We wanna crack open that egg and study the yolk.

It also creates the beginning of a personality all on its own.

For example, (again this will be different for everyone, this is just what I came up with) it would be difficult to write a spiky Aiden. Lambert is already spiky. Two spiky closed off people are difficult to get together because SOMEONE has to reach out first.

It would be difficult to write an Aiden who is easily intimidated or cowed. You have to be strong to deal with Lambert.

It would also be difficult to write an Aiden who is quick to anger. Lambert is sarcastic, so if you put him with someone who had thin skin or got pissed off easily, then you’re just writing them fighting all the time. I mean, you can! But most people want to get to the good stuff.

So you often end up with an Aiden who is not intimidated by Lambert AT ALL. There is often confidence there. Comfort in his own skin.(he’s had to develop that to break away from his community as it is, so that fits well anyway). You usually have an Aiden who is perceptive. Who swaggers up to Lambert and immediately sees how soft he is inside, then instinctively has the patience and flexibility to stick around long enough to prove himself.

You usually end up with an Aiden who is easy going and affectionate but also stubborn as fuck with a spine of steel.

You end up with something like that. At least I do. And a lot of other fic writers do.

So again, you’re reverse engineering. It is the most fun writing exercise ever.

So, why is this ship (Lambert and Aiden) so popular? Why would a character who is essentially an OC, be such a popular pairing with Lambert?

Well, ok. Three things.

One, you answered part of your own question. People who love Lambert get to lovingly craft the exact person they want to inflict upon him.

BUT

ALSO

Two. The revenge quest for a lost love just begs for fic to be written. It gets down on its knees and begs.

The quest Following the Thread, even though it is about a friendship, contains multiples INCREDIBLY popular romance tropes.

Two people from opposing sides of a conflict falling in love. Think sharks and jets. Think Capulets and Montagues. No, I’m not kidding. Yes, there are inherent tension and unjust external forces pulling them apart, creating space for a love so strong, they both go against their respective communities to be together. Half of the Lambert/Aiden fics are “Aiden goes to Kaer Morhen and challenges the other wolf witchers ideas about cats (also triggering their trauma and bringing up their bad memories of being betrayed by cats)”.

Tragic death/fixing a tragic death. This is a HUGELY popular romance trope. The other half of Lambert x Aiden fics are about Lambert either grieving Aiden’s death, or overcoming it somehow. (Ghost Aiden, curse lifted Aiden, crawls back from hell Aiden)

Avenging a lost love. This is very very romantic. Aiden is already dead in TW3. He can’t be touched or impressed by the fact that Lambert is avenging him. Lambert just loves him so much he NEEDS to in order to go on with his life. A quest to avenge a lost love is a super popular trope.

And three, it just fits perfectly for Lambert to have a fellow witcher as a love interest, who understands instinctively what he’s gone through, so it doesn’t require him to be super expressive of his pain, but NOT a wolf witcher, who may be connected to his own trauma.

Though it doesn’t always have to be about Lambert’s issues. The one I’ve written kind of centers around Aiden’s trauma with breaking away from his community and calls a bit more for Lambert to nurture him. And of course I’m not the only one who has approached it that way.

I did do a rec thread once for medium-rare witcher pairs and I have some Lambert x Aiden recs on there.

But let me tell you some of the absolute best writers in the fandom write them. So, just go in the tag and mosey around.

Will Aiden appear in The Witcher Netflix series?

It is highly unlikely, though technically not impossible.

So, whenever you adapt an existing property, you have to pay the original creator of that property. Like with Star Wars, the movies came first. SW was created by the filmmaker Lucas. So if you want to do anything Star Wars, you run him his money.

The witcher universe was created by the witcher book author. They began as short stories. So, the author owns the IP. He sells permission (usually limited by time, region, language etc) for the witcher universe to be adapted into other formats. He sold CDPR the rights to adapt it into a video game. He sold Netflix exclusive rights to make it into a show.

So Netflix has already paid the author.

So, say they want to use something that CDPR created new for the games.

They have to pay them too.

But, wait, you say. The show already includes game elements!

Yes, but they are VERY VAGUE elements so that they do not get a letter from CDPR’s attorneys with an invoice. CDPR does not own jokes about trolls. They do not own witchers sitting in bathtubs. They do not own handlebar mustaches on witcher mentors. (I used these examples in another post, but I can’t think of new ones lol)

So, they could have a character named Aiden. CDPR doesn’t own the name Aiden. But the more things they added to that character (cat witcher, Lambert friend) the more likely they are to get that letter from CDPR.

I can think of zero reasons they would do that for a character they don’t need. Kaer Morhen only appears in one book. If the show follows the book saga plot, it will never return there. So Lambert (unless they drastically change the books) will not appear anymore except via flashbacks or memories. Nothing bad has happened to him, the plot just leaves Kaer Morhen behind.

So they don’t need to pay to use a CDPR character that will have zero bearing on the plot.

Now, if they just pull a whole different plot out of their asses and want to have Lambert there and then want to give Lambert a friend, then hey. Maybe. I just don’t see why they would.

Ok, I think that’s all I have to say about Aiden!! If you’ve read to the end, hey, *Points at you* you’re a nerd too.

Feel free to flail with me about Lambert or Aiden. Or anything else! Add to it! Share why you love him and tell people I got it all wrong 😆 whatever.