#I’m only like half way through s1 and it’s already wild

[an-actual-floof]

lowkey thought u guys were havin a laugh about Odo and Quark but like. damn. they really are just Like That huh

[venfx]

magnus fic roundup

as tma comes to a close, i thought i'd post some of my favorite fics to come out of this fandom. most of these are classics, listed in no particular order.

A Weather In The Flesh by @cuttoothed​ | 3K | S1-S4 | Jon/Martin | Complete

"There is a span of years where Jon doesn’t touch anyone other than the occasional hand shake. It’s not so bad. He’s never been someone who’s needed physical affection."

Jon has never been any good at making people want to stick around.

↳ this is such a well-done exploration of jon’s character and his relationship with touch, and i’ve re-read it at least five times. sweet and sad and phenomenally well-written.

in the chillest land and on the strangest sea by imperfectcircle, singlecrow | 20K | Safehouse, S1-S4 | Jon & Daisy, Jon/Martin | Complete

Jon remembers a statement he read years ago given by a Jesuit priest, who said that the shortest prayer he knew was, just, fuck it, as in fuck it; it's in God's hands. He takes Daisy's hand and trails on after her.

or; hope is a thing with feathers.

↳ hey, you wanna fuckin..... feel things? read this.

The Magnus Institute vs the 21st Century: a series of emails and IMs by shinyopals | 26K | Series | S3 | Pre-Jon/Martin | Complete

The Magnus Institute hires a Data Protection Officer. He sets about diligently booking in meetings, writing policy documents, and training all the staff in the importance of confidentiality. Now if only he could get hold of the Head Archivist, who seems to have vanished again...

(Jon is only trying to save the world, but apparently some people think he should still be doing his day job.)

↳ i’d be surprised to find people who haven’t read this series, but it’s the definition of “the magnus archives is a workplace comedy”. also, alasdair stuart has actually read some clips of this on Twitch, so that’s a fun bonus.

Bell, Book, and Candle by yellow_caballero | 102K | Series | S3 into S4 | Jon/Martin | Complete 

In accordance with the Ride or Die Pact of 2009, Jonathan Sims can call upon Georgie Barker at any time for aid with no strings attached. Despite their rocky history, their childhood friendship, and Jon’s barely recovered alcoholism, this pact is sacred and must be upheld.

Georgie Barker may regret this. She may regret it when she discovers that the world is full of monsters and eldritch gods and dickhead managers. She may regret it when a punk rocker who should be dead collapses on their doorstep, a teenager again who needs their help. She may regret it when her stupid ex-boyfriend starts selling his soul for knowledge and the ability to keep his new family safe.

But she probably won’t. Georgie isn’t scared of anything - not a Clown’s apocalypse, not the apocalypse that Jon is destined to begin, and not Jon’s own loss of humanity.

Maybe she should be.

↳ if you’re looking for an everyone-lives-no-one-dies-happy-ending fic that also happens to be massively chaotic, look no further. 

The Reverb in These Holy Halls by @wolftraps​ | 98K | AU, S1-S4 | Jon/Martin | Complete

Undoing the apocalypse would have been enough for Jon, if all his people survived. Without them, Jon's only recourse is making it so it never happened in the first place. He's going to do better this time.

↳ quintessential time travel AUs. plot-wise, i feel like these can be difficult to write, but op does a fantastic job of tying things together in a way that makes sense. plus, it’s just fun to read.

jon sims v the nhs by @thoughtsbubble​ | 12K | Series | S3 | Complete

Joan Bright has a new patient. He's carrying an old tape recorder and is covered head to toe in scars. Jonathan Sims looks dangerous, but Dr Bright has dealt with all sorts of atypical individuals. She has no reason to be nervous.

Right?

↳ if you’ve ever thought “hey, jon should probably go to therapy”, then 1) you’re absolutely right and 2) this is... probably what would’ve happened. prior knowledge of The Bright Sessions is not required. also, apparently, this fic is written by the showrunner of The Underwood Collection? wild.

Family, Found by Dribbledscribbles | 9K | S4 | Complete

It’s Basira who catches onto it.

The collective shift that seems to come over them when heading in or out of the Institute. Not just the oppressive sensation of being observed, their every move catalogued for the voyeuristic cravings of some unseen Eye(s). That feeling remained with them even when they left the Institute these days, but it was always stronger inside its walls. That wasn’t the change. Nor was it the point.

The point was: making life worse for Jonathan Sims.

↳ i think being part of the avengers fandom circa 2012 has given me permanent found-family-trope brainrot, but you know what. jonathan sims can have a little happiness, as a treat. 

Road to Damascus by @titanfalling​ | 107K | Series | S4 | Jon & Tim | Complete

n. an important moment of insight, typically one that leads to a dramatic transformation of attitude or belief

Or, in which Tim becomes an avatar for the end of all things.

↳ tim dies and then he doesn’t. there is catharsis and world building. just....read it.

Come, Change Your Ring With Me by @backofthebookshelf​ | 29K | S3 | Peter/Jon, Jon/Martin, Peter/Elias | Complete

The Lukases demand the Archivist marry into the family, and the Institute relies on them too much to say no. Peter is smug. Elias is fuming. Martin is suffering. Jon thinks this might be tolerable if only Peter would hurry up and leave him alone already.

OR, the soap opera we call an Archives revolves around Peter Lukas this time.

↳ superb evil-bastards-in-love content, feat. martin pining, tim being obnoxious, and jon being... well, tired, mostly. i will literally never get tired of how op writes peter. 

creatures that i briefly move along by @dotsayers​ | 16K | Series | AU, Post-S4 | background Jon/Martin 

Mr Sims was so weird, was the thing. Miss Grant always said calling people weird was rude, and Anna sort of agreed, but she didn’t know what other word to use to describe Mr Sims.

He’d only been in with the class for a few days, really, and half of that he just sat at the back listening, but that didn’t stop her from making a swift judgement. 5BG had had student teachers before, back when they were 3ST, and they’d been uniformly normal.

Mr Sims was… actually, Anna had a better adjective. He was interesting.

↳ i just.... love teacher!jon fics. this series delivers. 

Once Bitten by @apatheticbutterflies | 1K | S4 | Jon & Daisy | Complete

Jon Sims has always been a jumpy kind of guy. Nervous. Twitchy. Daisy used to think it meant he was guilty. Turns out he was. Just not of what she’d thought.

Daisy learns how to peel an orange.

↳ daisy and jon’s relationship is an example of an instance where i’m happy to say “fuck what you wrote mr. jonny ‘chocolate torte of tragedy’ sims, i want them to be friends”.

pins and needles by mutterandmumble | 13K | S1-S4 | Complete

He’s got a reputation to uphold anyways; an uptight, rigid reputation that dictates the way that he interacts and functions and is such an integral part of him that he can’t let go of it anytime soon. He likes his safety nets. He likes his contingencies. He likes his privacy, and everything around this place right down to the walls seems to have ears, so he’ll stay tight-lipped up to and beyond the threat of death.

He’s good at that.

In which Jon takes up embroidery and bumbles through life the best that he can.

↳ out of all the introspective jon pieces i’ve read (and there are many), this one stands out. maybe it’s the symbolism or the characterisation, or maybe it’s the fact that i have an embroidery kit lurking in the back of my closet along with a hundred other half-pursued hyperfixations. whatever. this is excellent.

sleeping in by @ivelostmyspectacles | 5K | S2 | Jon/Tim | Complete

“Who are you trying to convince?”

Jon gives up, letting his head sag against Tim’s shoulder. “I don’t know.”

aka Elias gets tired of Jon and Tim's bickering, sends them away for a "team-building" weekend trip, and is sure to book them a room with only one bed

↳ this has everything you’d need from a “oh no there’s only one bed” fic. someone please get these men therapy.

if you try, sometimes (you get what you knead) by @ajcrawly​ | 3.5K | S1-S4 | Jon/Martin, Tim/Sasha | Complete

It starts with an abundance of boeuf bourguignon and ends up as a team tradition.

Food and love in uncertain times.

↳ more found family fic, this time with a diverse og!archival staff and food as a metaphor for love. hurt in all the right ways. made me hungry in the process.

[multimetaverse]

HSMTMTS 2x06 Review

Yes, And was a messy ep that brings us to the halfway point of the season. Let’s dig in!

Tonight took some big steps towards the Rini breakup. The conflict isn’t quite earned as they did too much too quickly in making Ricky overbearing; to go from Ricky supporting Nini going to YAC and them singing love songs to each other just 3 eps ago to Ricky now accusing Nini of changing because she didn’t get pineapple on her pizza just doesn’t work. Largely that’s because it’s clear that the writers are working backwards from an outline that requires Rini to be broken up before the finale.

The Rose song is great and Olivia’s vocals are wonderful as always but again it’s not quite earned. The lyrics make it seem like Nini thinks Ricky is holding her on a pedestal and holding her back when that’s not what we’ve seen on screen. Ricky and Nini went through a lot as they were finding their way back to each other and they learned not to see each other through rose coloured glasses and while Ricky was sad that Nini went to YAC he was supportive and respected her wishes, notably the only time he admitted how much he wanted Nini to come back to Salt Lake was after Nini had already made up her mind to return.

Rini was always going to break up both because writers struggle with writing happy or stable couples and because Tim became enamoured of Rina after writing 1x05 and will want to explore them at some point. Tim’s claimed that he has future seasons all planned out but I’m skeptical that he’s really thought out how to keep Ricky and Nini and Gina on goodish terms with each other for the remaining 2 seasons of the show while also not completely closing the door on the Rini endgame the show’s been aiming towards since the pilot.

It’s clear that Ricky has unresolved issues from his mom effectively abandoning him which are impairing all his relationships. And while it’s true he could try calling Lynne it’s the parents job to reach out and she is obviously fine living her life without Ricky. Not sure how much closure we can get with Lynne when she comes back in 2x09 but I hope we at least get an apology on her part.

Yet another ep of Gina going through it. That flashback to Gina tearfully telling Ricky that she wouldn’t have ‘’given up on us’’ if she hadn’t moved certainly paints Ricky’s behaviour this season in a worse light. I do hope the show doesn’t take the cowards way out and have Ricky being too stupid to realize that Gina had romantic feelings for him. Though again we run into the problem that these emotions aren’t fitting the story. There really wasn’t an ‘us’ for Gina to fight for, she and Ricky had only been hanging from 1x05-1x08 and never actually dated or went on dates. Also by this point Gina should be questioning her feelings for Ricky and whether he’s worth it; it’s not like he’s done anything nice for her this season like getting her chocolates for Valentine’s Day. 

Still Gina did make some strides tonight. She finally opened up to Ashlyn which seems to have lifted a weight off of her shoulders and makes the decision to stay in Salt Lake. She also brushes off Ricky wanting to be improv partners which leads to her accepting EJ’s offer which led to a sweet callback to them being wonderstudies. I’m glad she’s not going to Louisiana but it does mean we were robbed of a HSMTMTS/Secrets of Sulphur Springs crossover. 

Kourtney and Howie are finally together. I’m glad they didn’t waste time dragging this out. Kourtney’s confession was very in character and I liked the earlier hufflepuff dragging. As an aside I wonder if say 10 years in the future, shows will still be making light hearted unqualified references to Harry Potter or will J.K. Terfling have completely destroyed the goodwill the series has by then.

Lily continues to act as if she’s in Glee working for Sue Sylvester to take down the One Directions and honestly I’m here for it. I especially liked that she stole some of the condiments on her way out of Salt Lake Slices. Antoine seems alright, the espionage bit was funny. Seems like Salt Lake City would be a pretty shitty place for a French student to study.

EJ remains underused especially since this is his last semester as a student. His Gaston answer was surprisingly thoughtful and hinted at him getting over Nini with Gina as he sat down next to her. His may I have this exercise was just the right amount of smooth and goofy. 

Ashlyn had a good ep, she killed Home, Julia has a great voice. And she stood her ground with Gina but was also there for her and managed to help her decide to stay. Loved her line that she was still part Caswell.

Mike Bowen is sweet, thoughtful, and rocking that beard? Must have been hard for Miss. Jenn to let him go but ultimately she made the right decision as it would just be too messy to date the parent of one of your students.

Lots of funny little moments this ep; the camera panning to the exit sign during Gina’s confessional, the group chat with Miss. Jenn and the real group chat without her, Seb hula-hooping with wild abandon. 

Looking Ahead:

Well we’re now at the official halfway mark of the season. It’s been an uneven first half, lots of pacing issues, and clear signs of the covid pandemic impacting production. Disney + has announced that future seasons of Disney + originals will be released on Wednesdays from now on so we have that to look forward to for S3 and S4.

Carlos uploading the Rose song will inevitably lead to disaster. Nini is very right to tell Kourtney not to let Ricky know, the lyrics paint him in a very bad light. The song gives us more context for why Lily said to Ricky that his gf needed some space in the trailer. I suspect Lily will end up being the party crasher that Ricky re-evaluates in 2x12, I don’t think Tim is going to keep Lily as a one dimensional antagonist this entire season. 

Ricky said in 2x01 that he’s never breaking up with Nini again and I think that’s true because Nini will break up with him. I think it comes before 2x12, maybe them exploring an old haunt in 2x08 is where it happens though the description for 2x11 also sounds like it could be hinting at a Rini breakup.

Well we now know what one of the secrets rising between Gina and Nini will be in 2x10, Nini was already jealous of Gina and Ricky in S1 and I doubt she’ll enjoy hearing that Gina confessed to Ricky in 1x10. Since Gina has already confessed to Ricky it makes it less likely that her speaking her truth in 2x12 is related to her and Ricky. 

EJ and Gina doing the morning announcements starts next ep, that should be fun. Especially since Mazzara is aware of EJ’s feelings for Gina. There’s a pretty clear path to end the season with Portwell or at least set it up for S3. EJ already likes Gina, the announcements help bring them closer, Gina starts getting over Ricky and realizes that EJ puts her first,  maybe Mazzara helps one or both of them at the cast party, and Gina shares her truth and confesses to EJ. So far the show hasn’t done anything it can’t pull back from but sooner or later the writing will have to commit one way or the other. One thing I’ll say is that it’s already clear that making EJ a senior was a big mistake and I expect it to cause a lot more problems for the show in the remaining two seasons.

There’s also a path for Ricky and Gina to get together but that seems less likely given the clear mess Ricky is right now. Seeing his mom in 2x09 probably helps a bit but it’s hard to see how any relationship Ricky gets into won’t swiftly crash and burn. There’s also the matter of when exactly Rini break up, if it’s too late in the season then there wouldn’t be time to jump right into Rina. There’s also the matter of the unexpected facetime call he gets in 2x10 and the party crasher he re-evaluates in 2x12. Even if they’re not linked it does suggest there will be some curveballs in Ricky’s story and at least the party crasher info suggests there’s some non Rini or Rina related twist being planned for Ricky in 2x12. 

Until next week Wildcats

[bleulone]

It’s very interesting to consider how they will file the Polin love scenes. Partly because I can’t think of many (if any) plus-size female romance scenes that aren’t played for humour at the woman’s expense or where she has to be deeply insecure about her body the whole time and so is filmed mostly covered up.

Obviously it depends on the comfort of the actors but my main concern which is really shallow is the 12 inch height difference which makes Pen and Colin look really awkward on screen. Phoebe and Simon only have a 6inch difference for scale. I’m worried they will skimp out on any good season one style love scenes to avoid it looking awkward on camera. I’m thinking they’ll go safe which is so boring.

Hey! Thank you for sharing this interesting point of yours :) In all honestly, I don’t find Polin’s height difference to be that awkward. On the contrary, I really love it and see it as rather aesthetically pleasing and... very sexy in some ways! I feel like the level of hotness radiated by their upcoming love scenes will highly depend on the visual storytelling, on the choices of the camera angles— the way they’ll focus on the bodies’ movements and espouse our characters’ feelings, enhancing the colorful erotic shade of their relationship.

Plenty of sex scenes featured actors in movies and series despite a considerable height difference. For instance, we can think of Euphoria’s Alexa Demie and Jacob Elordi. Thanks to a specific color palet for the lightning, the scores and a large range of shots chosen to increase intimacy between two characters, viewers are immersed in this steamy atmosphere. They present themselves as useful tools which meticulously help creating physical and emotional intimacy between two people— these tools underlining their common story which naturally fuel the burning carnal desire they feel for one another. You can check this interesting little video concerning this topic in the hit-series Normal People. It reveals the key elements needed to its creation : chemistry, comfort and getting to know the character you play.

With that being said, I don’t think Luke and Nicola’s twelve inches of difference can work in their disfavor nor that it risks to be accidentally cringy. Though a certain cringe of another nature could appear mainly due to the way both Penelope and Colin were portrayed in season 1. Young, uncertain and shy, they don’t stand, walk nor behave confidently like their elders, not when they’re actually making their first steps into the world. By the time the future seasons come out, some radical changes are yet to be seen, first in their personalities then in their physical appearances, making them the self assured and experienced adults they are meant to be. Thus, we, (especially the readers), won’t struggle to picture them being all horny and naughty after the amount of cuteness they served us in s1 ahah.

About the sex itself, in Romancing Mister Bridgerton, Colin is very conscious of his imposing 6 foot-ness which will push him to be even more careful with our (5’1) Penelope when he initiates intimate touches with her. He doesn’t want to intimidate her. He makes sure to not crush her with his weight on the plush cushion of the carriage/of the soft mattress of his bed when he places himself on top of his love and passionately kisses her. He even pulls her on top of him at some point to make her feel comfortable with his body (and the proof of his need). It’s a nice call back to the scene in Chapter 18 where Colin, before deflowering Penelope, is very concern about hurting her or doing anything she doesn’t like during the act. To what she lovingly answers “Let me be the judge”, meaning that Pen’s pleasure is put in the center of his attention... or a wonderful mark of the female gaze : Penelope takes her own agency in the deep exploration of her sexuality. Those elements are most likely to be translated on screen through the uses of close ups on their faces, eyes, hands and other body parts... and DIALOGUE ! It will be so adorable seeing Colin eager to put her needs before his and making sure that Penelope is enjoying herself as much as he does.

I don’t know what our couple are willing to show but I’m still hoping we get the same type of steamy scenes Daphne/Simon and Anthony/Siena had in season 2 (and why not more lol)— IF, like you said, the actors are comfortable with nudity obviously (which they’ve probably signed up for). Once again, I feel like it’ll be very gripping to see a plus-size woman’s half naked body in a period drama getting the same depiction as a slim one, showing that curviness doesn’t prevent you from being desirable or sexy to the eye of your significant other as well as the mainstream public.

In any case, I’m sure Lizzy Talbot, Bridgerton’s intimacy coordinator, and the directors will perfectly know how to stage and depict this fondamental aspect of the show, aka hot!Polin, on screen. Hell, they can even surprise us, innovate, by not necessarily being “boring” but still going safe. They’re a fan favorite couple so I have faith in what the production has in store for us and for our boos. After all, the show already set its tone in season 1 : it’s lavish and sexy as hell. Plus, Chris Van Dusen and Jonathan Bailey said in previous interviews that season 2 will be even more sexier... so yeah, season 3 and 4 are definitely following on from this. Even Nicola and Luke are very fan of the ship and the fandom’s love for them ^^. Either way, having a very long slow burn like Polin will be such a wild ride and trust me, when the payoff’ll finally arrive, imma savor every second of it!

[stop-breaking-my-heart-telltale]

Top 5 Brotps

Ahh... to be a pair of bros trying to survive the dreadful world of the apocalypse together...to have a bro who watches your back so that walkers don’t get the drop on you, and to have a bro who is willing to actually listen to you when things are extra rough and you need support.... to probably watch your bro die a super shitty death because it’s twdg and you have no control over the situation...

Good times. 

So yeah, I wanna talk about some of my favorite brotps across this series. We tend to put more focus on romantic duos rather than friendships, so why not shine a spotlight on some platonic love, y’know? 

Also wanna note that I’m more talking canon brotps... as in I’m using what the actual games gave us rather than going off of headcanon... if that makes sense. So like, as much as I could like to put something like brotp Clementine and Mitch on the list since they’re one of my favorites to write, there isn’t enough in the actual text to justify putting them in a top 5. Understand? Cool? Cool. 

5. AJ and Tenn

I have such a soft spot for these two... which is super unfortunate since Tenn always ends up dead whenever I replay TFS because I refuse to have a dead or tongueless Louis by the end..... but that doesn’t mean I don’t love the friendship between these two before tragedy strikes. 

If you’re brave enough to not trust AJ, therefore sacrificing Louis or Violet, Tenn survives to the end of the season where he and AJ have a really nice heart to heart. If you haven’t at least watched how the scene plays out, I recommend it. 

I love the idea of AJ having someone closer to his age that he can have as a buddy, and I love the idea of Tenn learning how to be a better survivor from AJ. They can teach each other how to be better, y’know? 

Plus, it’s cute to hear AJ say that he likes Tenn the most, that he’s his first real friend. Somethin’ real wholesome about that. 

...Which again, adds to the tragedy of trusting AJ. Sigh. 

4. Javi and Tripp

I know I’ve said in the past that I wish these two could’ve had an actual romance, but y’know, we gotta accept that it’s never gonna happen in canon.... sigh. 

However, it’d be a sin to overlook the bromance these two have. 

Sure, they got off to a rocky start after Clementine kinda murdered that dude, but that doesn’t stop them from developing a friendship over the course of the season. 

One of my favorite moments between the two is when Tripp confides in Javi about his feelings for Eleanor, and in turn, Javi can explain what’s going on with him and Kate. While I disagree with the love interests actually being talked about, it’s still a quiet, real moment between them. Tripp isn’t afraid to be a bit of a poet when talking about his feelings, and Javi is supportive of that. Two bros who listen to each other? Love that. 

Also there’s something so damn tragic about Javi wanting to save his bro when Joan decides to be a proper antagonist and does the ol’ switcheroo on him. 

All in all, love this bro dynamic and will be forever salty that Tripp has two unpreventable deaths. 

3. Lee and Doug

I won’t talk too much about this one because I already covered it in my Top 5 Reasons Doug's Pretty Great, but I gotta put them on the list. So, to summarize:

Lee and Doug are the real bros of S1. Y’all thought it was Lee and Kenny? Nah man. When you’re friendship is so fragile that it could totally break with one single disagreement, then I can’t say it’s all that great. And yeah, you could argue that Doug is only Lee’s bro is you save him, and that’s true because otherwise, he’s super dead.

But after saving him, if you disagree with Doug on anything, he doesn’t immediately get all “Ya saved me ONE time, Lee! What have ya done fer me lately?? >:(” In fact, I’d argue that even if things went down differently, Doug would still be a good bro to Lee. 

So Doug wins the bro award. 

The two of them care about each other, from Lee worrying about Doug’s mental health, to Doug going out of his way to save Lee’s life at the dairy, to them having genuine feeling conversations. 

Again, want more details then go read the previous T5F. Just know that they’re best bros and I’ll die on this hill. 

2. Michonne and Pete

The Michonne mini-series gets a bad rap and that’s not okay. If you're one of many who skip this one when going through the series then shame because you’re missing out on one of the best pair of bros in this series-- Michonne and Pete. 

Listen, Michonne and Pete are great. They’re a couple of bros who have each others backs at all times, Pete cares so deeply about Michonne’s mental health and making she she has what she needs, Michonne feeling comfortable enough with Pete in confide in him about her daughters and the visions she has of them, and they’re more than willing to fight and sacrifice themselves for the other if necessary. 

Sure, they disagree on things, but their friendship isn’t built on “you have to agree with me” so they can actually work things out and be better for it. 

I just love them, okay? Pete wants her to feel like part of the crew and give her a safe space, and Michonne wants to help him in anyway she can, I just.... no one talks about them and it’s not okay. 

Go play Michonne, even if just for these two. They’re worth it. 

1. Clementine and AJ

Surprise.... but not really. 

C’mon, I think we all know that Clementine and AJ are the ultimate bros. Do I even need to explain? Probably not, but I will anyway. 

Clementine has know AJ since he was born, she has cared for him and did everything she could to get him back-- good and bad things. She could’ve said, “A baby? Fuck that.” but she didn’t, she took little baby AJ and protected and raised him. And we already know that AJ would do whatever he had to in order to protect Clementine back. 

True, the relationship isn’t perfect and miscommunication is, uh... a thing sometimes, but together they grow and become better. Even AJ makes terrible mistakes [y’know... like murder] she promises to help him atone... unless you’re one of the ones who tells him he’s justified which like no judgement or anything but..... y’know. Maybe a little side eye.

Anyway, more than that, they play off each other well and feel like two people who have know each other for years, they feel like a pair of siblings trying to survive in this shitty world and find a home together. 

And can’t forget to mention the cave scene. Not the one with James, but the one where AJ gets upset and the two of them talk some shit out. Don’t get me wrong, I love the James cave scene for how wild it is, but there’s something about the cave scene where it’s just Clementine and AJ, and the choice to trust him or not. 

Oh, and the barn scene? I mean.... c’mon. 

Over all, as far as platonic relationships and brotps go, Clementine and AJ are my favorite. Could write an essay on them and why their dynamic is one of the best parts of TFS but that’s not what we’re here to do. 

Clementine and AJ.... bros for life. 

---

Honorable Mentions

- AJ and Louis.... bros even after everything that went down with Marlon and Tenn.  -Clementine and Rosie. Rosie is best girl.  -Lee and Omid. Two history nerds who should’ve have more bro-time.  -Kenny and his mustache. -Lee and Ben. Yeah, I stand by it. I won’t shut up until someone gives me my Lee and Ben buddy cop dramedy.  -Mitch and Willy until the dumb thing happened.  -Clementine and Lee would count, too, but only really the second half of s1. -Nick and Luke but only for two episodes. -Louis and Violet’s friendship routes are pretty good, too. 

---

What are your thoughts? Do you agree or disagree with my picks? What are some of your favorite brotps? Lemme know! 

Have any suggestions for future T5F’s? Feel free to send ‘em in! :D

—

Next week’s T5F Top 5 Best Executed Deaths

[samwritesforyou]

For me

fandom: yuri on ice!!!

pairing: viktor x yuuri

word count: 6.4k

genres: established relationship, hurt/comfort, fluff

description: our favourite couple for the first time since s1 makes it both to the tournament, both as ice skaters this time. yuuri is sent to rostelekom cup, whereas viktor was selected to skate on the china cup. how will they sort out their separation and what will happen on the grand prix? will they finally debut as lovers-opponents on ice?

“What?!” Yuri exclaimed, his eyes flushing open even more violently than they were before, his gaze shooting from Viktor and back at the tv in the living room.

“Well, you heard it, I got selected to participate in China Cup and you in Rostelekom Cup, Yuuri,” his husband shrugged with a light smile, leaning in for another kiss as they were laying both on the sofa, cuddling under the same blanket.

“Nononono, how can you be so calm about this?!” Yuuri pulled away from him, intensely continuing in watching ice-skating news.

“We still have Grand Prix to attend together, I doubt either of us won’t make it there, dumpling,” he mused, at least brushing his lover’s cheek with his fingers.

“Are you going away from each other for at least a week then?!” yelled Yuuri’s ballet teacher from the armchair behind them, quickly hopping to their side.

“I don’t know! Apparently!” yelped dark haired guy, now being violently shaken by Minako.

If you didn’t know, currently the worldwide famous couple Yuuri Katsuki and Viktor Nikiforov were on a short holiday from all the training and skating, residing at Katsuki family house, just enjoying their time together.

Because both of them were often abroad, they left Makkachin here, since Yuuri’s family takes an excellent care of him and a happy doggo has a lot of space to run around the place.

So now he was loved by these two over the moon, being kissed and patted all the time.

Ever since they returned they were always surrounded by Katsuki family, the only time when they were truly alone was when they got out of the house and went for a walk in nature or at night in their shared room.

It might seem like a lot, but they were doing just fine, everything was perfect.

Viktor was talking about “debuting” together both as ice-skaters at the tournament for the first time and Yuuri got fired up by the idea as well.

They foolishly believed that they would be able to do it even before Grand Prix.

But destiny has its own way and now they’ll have to wait.

So that’s why the younger man was so emotional about the news, while Viktor was just sure that their “debut” together will happen a bit later than they anticipated.

He was calm, when Yuuri was worried, he was angry when his partner was reassuring. They were really the perfect couple.

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Soon enough it was time to part as they arrived at the airport.

“Babe, why did you go with me this early?” Viktor smiled tenderly at his partner, placing a light peck on his cheek, “Are you forgetting that I’m the one who’s accustomed to flights and not you?” he kept smiling sweetly, looking at his husband, eyes filled with love and affection.

Yuuri was hardly listening to any of the things that were being said to him, his eyelids basically glued together, blue-ish bags under them - clearly all this rolling around in bed wasn’t because he was dreaming about something, he simply wasn’t sleeping.

Viktor’s flight was at 4am, yet he looked like he was just freshly out of the spa salon, hair on fleek, light make-up made, outfit styled.

Yuuri’s flight was, on the contrary, at 9am, so he could easily still be sleeping in their cosy bed, but he really wanted to be with his love as long as he could.

“You’re adorable,” Nikiforov said, chuckling to himself and then hugged him tightly, only then letting his guard down and actually biting his lower lip, eyes filling with sadness, “I’m going to miss you, Yuuri,” he sighed near his ear.

The man in his arms got a bit more wide awake by that, clutching his coat and trying to get closer to him, even though their bodies were already pressed firmly together.

“Viktor.. best of luck. I love you so much,” he said quietly, breathing his familiar scent while being snuggled in the crook of his neck, eyes closed.

“I love you too, baby,” he answered and pulled away, encouraging smile already plastered on his face.

He wants to give all the strength to his husband so he doesn’t have to worry about him.

“You need to go already, come on..” Yuuri nodded at him, shooing him away, trying to fight tears.

It’s just a week, come on!.. he thought to himself, wobbly smile threatening to fall any second.

“Okay, okay. See you very soon,” he leaned in for the quick kiss and then pulled away, dragging his silver coloured luggage by the handle, waving and sending air-kisses, not letting their eye-contact fall until the very end.

Yuuri felt tears rolling down his cheeks and he let himself have this little cry in the middle of the airport at 4am, after a while just waddling towards the closest chair and collapsing there, falling asleep.

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Both of the parties made it safely to their destinations, settling into hotels and making themselves comfortable.

As soon as Viktor was free, Yuuri felt his phone ring and immediately jumped to it from his bed, hitting answer with a camera.

“My love, how did Saint Petersburg welcome you?” Viktor asked excitedly, for some reason with a glass of champagne in his skinny hands.

The man on the other end was instantly reminded of the memory of numerous insisting taxi drivers offering him a ride to wherever he needed for a cheap price, then some older women bickering in the public transport, but most importantly one little girl that recognised him as a “famous ice skater who married our Vitya Nikiforov” and wanted to take a picture with him. To which he obliged happily, even though he was tired from the road.

“Wonderfully,” he answered with a warm smile, looking at his phone screen, wishing the man he’s seeing was right next to him right now.

“Amazing to hear that,” he sipped on the bubbly liquid and smiled, even though his eyes were clearly indicating how much he’s battling sadness.

“Viktor?..” Yuuri started, kinda nervous. He wasn’t the confrontational type, really.

But he felt like his other half was trying to put on a brave face just so he doesn’t have to worry, but Katsuki did feel all his sadness even miles away.

At that, Viktor’s blue eyes shifted to look at him directly.

“Look.. I’m sad that we can’t be together right now, especially during the tournament time,” Japanese said, rubbing his hands in front of himself, “but I feel like you’re trying to act that it doesn’t bother you that much, maybe.. for me not to worry about you?”

Nikiforov’s thin brows knitted together, glass being slowly put aside.

“But you don’t have to do that. We can be.. I don’t know, sad together? I still see your longing in the eyes, you can’t really hide that,” he concluded softly, smiling almost apologetically, that he had to make this into such a big deal.

It looked as if some weight was literally lifted from Viktor’s shoulders, as he just plumped himself onto the couch he’s been sitting on, phone firmly in hand, placed above his face.

Suddenly his brows started to go up and Yuuri saw first tears rolling down his cheeks.

“I just miss you,” he said quietly, wiping them off with the free hand.

“I miss you too,” Yuuri said, his own eyes watering as he laughed a bit at how ridiculous they were being.

It was less than a day without each other.

“You know what, Yuuri Katsuki,” said Viktor, laughing already as well, but not being able to stop crying just yet, “being in a relationship with you is the most wild thing that ever happened to me,” he finished, shaking his head with a wide smile on his face.

“I know right?” his partner answered, filling the audio with laughter.

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When Yuuri’s phone rang, the whole room was still dark, the sun didn’t even think of getting up, so why the hell should he?..

It kept ringing, sending a lovely melody through the space.

Caller was a stubborn one, that’s for sure. And ice-skater was almost entirely sure of who that might be.

“Good morning, my not so early bird!” literally sang into the device Viktor, mood thousand times better than what Yuuri was experiencing in the current moment.

“Not so early?.. Did you forget about the timezones, because here it’s 6am!” Katsuki sighed in disbelief, making himself sit on the bed, rubbing his tired eyes.

“Oh.. that’s true! I completely forgot,” Viktor laughed, which made Yuuri involuntarily melt into the warm smile, despite his half-awake state.

“I was just wondering, Yuurochka, do you want me to guide you through St. Petersburg? Because our choreographies are well learned and I believe you can sometimes go into that lovely city!” Viktor smiled at the camera, blue eyes flicking from one side to another.

What was he looking at?..

“Uhh.. yeah, sure! Sad that we can’t be here together, but even through the phone it’ll be nice, I think,” Yuuri smiled sleepily, putting his phone on the stand on the bedside table and opened his luggage where he packed just some clothes, charger, earphones, costumes for the performance and figure skates.

They often did this with his husband, just video call together and each of them doing their own thing, kind of a simulation of their normal life when they’re next to each other in flesh.

“Darling?” black haired boy looked up at the camera, in hands with his picked outfit for the day - grey sweater and dark denim jeans.

When Viktor saw that he has his lover’s attention, he smiled sweetly, “I noticed you have two zits on your face, so apply some cream on it, will you?”

Yuuri blinked a few times comically and then yelped, running to the bathroom to see for himself. And he was right.

No, wait. He wasn’t.

Japanese skater had three zits, it’s just that Viktor probably couldn’t see the other one due to the camera quality.

“Thank god,” Katsuki sighed and then returned in front of his phone.

“I will,” he said and started doing it right away, pushing out some white cream out of the tube that his husband specifically bought him. Probably something expensive, as most things from him were.

Then he didn’t really give this any thought, but he started undressing right in front of his phone as well, putting glasses aside, stripping off the white tee and then pulling over his head some black shirt and then grey sweater.

Once he was also done with the bottom half of his body he heard a whistle from the other end of the line.

His hazel eyes immediately shot up to the screen where Viktor was watching him intensely, smug grin on his face.

“I was glad to witness your dressing up session, babe, such a shame I can’t be next to you right now,” he sighed theatrically loudly, putting slender hand to his forehead, making it seem as if he’s fainting from the longing.

Yuuri, on the other hand, was more and more turning violent crimson, mumbling something indecipherable and putting on his glasses, taking the phone in his hand so now ice skater Nikiforov could only see his husband’s flustered face.

“Shut up, Viktor, let’s head out,” he said, furrowing and making the man on the other end laugh heartily.

Then it was time for the handsome man with platinum hair to be surprised and blink comically.

“Uh... head out?” he asked, not really getting it.

“Well, it’s not gonna be fair if I’m the only one who’s going out to see your city when you’re sitting comfortably inside, is it?” now Yuuri was the owner of the mischievous smirk, looking at his partner with pleased face expression.

“Ah, you’re so smart sometimes, baby,” Viktor teased and then went to change his clothes as well, but as it turned out he didn’t have any clothes under his robe, so Yuuri had to quickly avert his gaze to prevent any undesired “excitement”.

After all, Viktor’s body was always such a treat, even thousand miles away.

“Aw, you weren’t looking?” said Russian in a pouty manner, when he turned back to face the camera.

“W-what?! Of course not, let’s go,” Yuuri mumbled, putting a scarf a bit higher to cover even bigger portion of his face.

He didn’t really experience winter in Russia yet, but he was prepared.

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When Katsuki was out and about St. Petersburg’s streets, Viktor had absolutely no problem guiding him through all of the corners that he knew and that normal tourists don’t get to see, all of that while he himself was striding through completely unfamiliar Chinese neighbourhood, every once in a while being called by fans and had to stop to take a picture and give autographs.

Nobody noticed Yuuri outside, maybe it was because he wasn’t that popular yet, despite being Viktor’s husband, but most probably it was because his face was a literal mess.

His brownish scarf was covering half the face and his glasses were foggy most of the time because he kept breathing into the cloth and thus all the air was brought back onto the surface of his lenses.

Viktor made Yuuri go all the way to his most memorable café of all times and he also recommended him to order his favourite dessert there, leaving the beverage choice up to him.

Younger man of course trusted Viktor’s tastebuds and got himself a relatively small cupcake, decorated astonishingly with cream in form of leaves and a rose on top of that.

He bit right into it, tasting all the magical flavour of the dessert, making Viktor melt into a warm smile while watching him munch on it.

Nikiforov himself had to go into some Chinese café as well, to make it seem as a date, as if they’re really together. And it kinda worked, he was full of love for his partner, rarely thinking about how much he’d want to see him in real life instead of the phone screen.

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As the days went on, both of them spend a lot of time training, sometimes even on the call when practicing, looking at each other’s progress and cheering one another.

Every once in a while their schedules met and they could go on a “virtual date” of sorts, Yuuri being navigated by his lover’s voice through the streets of St. Petersburg and Viktor finding himself some spot in the Chinese corners as well.

And on one of those walks Viktor led his husband to one of the prettiest parks, covered in snow, making Yuuri speechless from the beauty all around him.

“Hey, you!” he suddenly heard a voice that wasn’t coming from the phone, but rather somewhere behind him.

Japanese skater turned around and his eyes widened in light surprise as he saw a familiar figure in front of him.

“Baby? What’s up?” said Viktor from the device, being able to see now only Yuuri’s lower part of the face, because he put his phone instinctively closer to his body.

“Why aren’t you training, huh?” said younger lad, blonde hair covering half of his face.

There wasn’t a usual scowl planted on his features, rather just an arched brow in the question.

“I’m just.. taking a break! That’s healthy too,” Yuuri answered, smiling at his friend.

Ever since Nikiforov and Katsuki got officially married, Yurio lay off of his aggressive behaviour towards the latter one, accepting him as a part of his close friends circle now.

It was a nice change and Yuuri finally got the opportunity to get to know the teenager better, talking to him without bickering.

“Yurioooo, I can hear you all the way from China!” suddenly a loud statement was heard in a singing manner from the phone that Yuuri was holding near to his stomach and then he flipped the device in his hands so that both of the Russians could see each other through the camera.

Viktor was waving at his younger friend enthusiastically, apparently walking through some Chinese park as well.

“Yo,” blondie said, way less enthusiastically, just nodding into his direction, “kinda sucks that we didn’t meet on Rostelekom cup,” he added, adjusting his scarf so it’s less in his face.

Harsh Russian climate will make even Plisetsky wear something warm, huh.

“It’s okay, we’ll meet on the Grand Prix~” Viktor answered, not even for a second doubting any of their victories.

“That’s true,” Yurio smirked.

“Well, since you two met like this, why don’t you guys go and have lunch together? Would be a nice bonding time,” Nikiforov mused, his smile wide and pleased.

Yuuri was ready to start protesting, since he knew that the guy standing in front of him wasn’t a fan of companies, when his companion surprised him.

“Yeah, why not,” Yurio shrugged and then turned around, probably ready to guide him towards some restaurant.

“How splendid!” Viktor clapped his hands and when Yuuri finally turned the cellphone back to his face, he looked at his husband, “Have fun with Yurio, alright?” then he sent an air kiss to the camera and their hours-long call ended.

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The week of the tournament was already at close, bringing the day of performances to light.

Both Yuuri and Yurio landed all their jumps, flips and quads, gaining best results, younger skater getting a bit more points for the artistic lifts of his hands, making the choreography difficulty higher.

Katsuki was trying to dial Viktor’s phone right away but the number was unavailable, so he sat in front of the tv in the changing rooms, watching intensely to see the results of the China Cup.

“And we can see here the winners,” said moderator’s enthusiastic voice as the camera zoomed in on the pedestal with three people standing on it, Viktor with a smile waving from the highest level, then taking his gold medal in hand, kissing it.

Yuuri melted into the warm smile, his eyes filling with tears.

Of course they’ll meet on Grand Prix. Of course. It’s Viktor Nikiforov we’re talking about, after all.

“Viktor Nikiforov standing proudly with a golden medal,” was the only thing Japanese skater registered from the tv before his phone rang.

“Darling,” he heard his lover’s voice, full of contentment, “I will see you on the Grand Prix, right?”

“Of course, Viktor..” he answered, smiling almost shyly, getting up from the bench and only then realising that he can still see him on the screen, “wait! how are you talking to me when—“

“You see me on the tv? Magic, my sticky bun, it’s not live, if you noticed,” Yuuri’s eyes immediately drifted to the corner of the screen, which indeed said ‘prerecorded’, “the ceremony was held like an hour ago and after that I was literally bombarded with interviews of all kinds. As soon as I got the chance I called you,” he concluded, Katsuki could practically feel his husband smiling into the device on the other end, all the way in China, “What’s your score, baby?” he asked in the end.

“I.. you’ll see it soon, we’re going for the broadcast in about ten minutes,” he said nervously, clutching the phone closer to his ear.

“Hey..” almost whispered Viktor gently, “even if it’s not gold, I’m so proud of you,” he then hung up, leaving Yuuri shaking from the tears he was trying to surpass.

I love you so much, Viktor... I want to show you so much more of what I can do...

And with these thoughts he wiped his watering eyes, making his way towards the ice ring, to the pedestal where he stood next to Yurio, on the second level, receiving a silver medal.

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Next reunion of the loving husbands set place in Vancouver, Canada.

They welcomed each other with a warm hug and passionate embrace, Yuuri rushing towards Viktor from his flight that was slightly delayed, so the older one had to wait for him way longer than they first anticipated.

“I really missed you,” said Nikiforov, gently kissing the golden ring on his partner’s finger, making his other half blush.

“I m-missed you too,” he whispered back, kind of anxiously looking at the front seat of a car they were riding in, at a taxi driver who was just minding his own business.

The younger man still had quite a hard time in expressing their romantic affection in public, feeling almost ashamed for some reason and Viktor had countless talks with him about it, assuring him that everything is okay and that in comparison to him, Katsuki family supports him.

But he never got angry at him because of it and just didn’t push any actions further once he noticed that Yuuri was nervous in public again for any reason.

“Hey, babe, it’s okay,” Viktor just gently took his hand in his, squeezing reassuringly in a silent ‘i love you’ in his ocean eyes that Yuuri knew so well.

He replied with a wide grin, feeling the warmth of their connected palms.

The whole world seems complete when they’re together.

And in a few days the miracle couple started relentlessly training on the ice ring, alongside their friends and rivals like Yurio, JJ, Otabek, Chris and many others.

It was filled with a lot of different emotions, frustrations and happy moments, all mashing together in a big pile.

“Are you sure you want to do this flip?” said Viktor, gracefully doing a round slide on the ice, leaning towards the left side, making it look like what he was doing didn’t acquire any effort.

When these two were practising, all eyes were on Nikiforov. He was just brilliant on trainings and very rarely fell or did some kind of mistake, even in the absolutely new choreographies.

“Yes, I really do,” Yuuri confirmed, his gaze not shifting from his partner’s blue eyes, his own hazel ones filled with determination.

“Alright,” Viktor stopped practicing his own routine and skated closer towards his lover, once again showing him all the moves required for the action he wanted to try.

“Okay, I got it,” said Katsuki and then did the steps just like Viktor, after a moment spinning in the air like nobody dared before and when the landing came, he didn’t count with the speed and fell hard on the ice, feeling an instant crack somewhere in the leg.

“Yuuri!” Nikiforov slid towards him immediately, helping him to get up, but his husband only yelped in pain, “I told you it was too difficult for you yet!”

His tone was stern and soaked with worry as he helped him get up, Yuuri hissing in discomfort and putting his hand around Viktor’s shoulder, being dragged out of the ring.

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One week later was the Grand Prix that they all trained so hard for.

Every corner was buzzing in the training wing. Figure skaters were talking together, some were watching tv that showed the judges that were discussing the whole event, having usual speeches, some people were listening to music and doing their regular stretches on the yoga mats, coaches were trying to hype their skaters as much as they could... It was lively.

It was everything that Viktor loved so dearly, his heart was beating for this atmosphere. He knew every participant and everyone in turn was awaiting his show. Everything was perfect.

Except next to him sat silent Yurio, angrily drinking from the water bottle, lion shirt on top of his beautiful costume.

“Don’t be so fucking sad,” he growled at him, finishing his drink and putting it on the floor with force, his green eyes piercing at the tv in front of them.

“Whatever,” Viktor answered quietly, standing up and slowly making his way towards the available yoga mat, stretching his muscles. His whole body hurt, he didn’t sleep well last night.

Of course, sleeping without Yuuri by his side was a new thing to get used to. Even Makkachin was all the way in Japan, not being able to keep him company.

It wasn’t unusual for Viktor that his emotional state went to the pits of hell, it was quite normal for him to experience burnout since he was present on the ice skating stage ever since he was 14 - just like Plisetsky, by the way, no wonder he’s so angry all the time - and the thing that kept him going was that burning passion for skating no matter what.

But ever since he took that break for one season to train Yuuri, his main motivation has become his partner, funnily enough. Even now, when they were supposed to be opponents, he still found himself demotivated by the fact that he is not participating due to suffering an injury and is now currently in the hospital.

“This was supposed to be our debut as opponents and lovers!” he clutched his fist and hit the wall, making everyone stare at him, room getting silent.

“What are you looking at?!” yelled Yurio at everyone, putting the attention on himself, stripping from the lion shirt, revealing his breathtaking costume for the show, “You all better look at me now, I’m going to skate first,” he said, making his way towards the ice.

Viktor mentally thanked his younger friend for drawing the attention away from him as he lost his control for a second, now retrieving to the staircase of the building, not wanting to be seen like this.

When you’re in love you really take all the good and the bad from the attachment to the person.

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Katsuki just finished watching Yurio’s routine from the tv that was by request put into his hospital room where he was alone. Viktor paid for the more expensive service even though Yuuri said that it wouldn’t really matter to him where he was spending time if it’s not with him on the ice.

He felt incredibly sad, guilty and angry at himself for trying that reckless jump on the training, resulting in him injuring his left leg.

It wasn’t actually anything serious, but he needed to rest the muscle. So that meant no Grand Prix. No skating with Viktor for the first time.

He could only imagine what his husband was feeling. Trainings always got more intense right before the competition so the last time when they heard each other was about a week ago when he shortly called to simply ask about his well-being.

Just as he thought about it, though, his phone rang and Yuuri visibly flinched, not being used to receiving any calls lately.

He didn’t even look at the caller ID, automatically going with, “Viktor?!”

“You dumbass, it’s Yurio,” the agitated voice on the other end said, clearly still partially out of breath from the show that he just skated.

It was incredible.

“Oh!” he blinked a few times and then regained his composure, quickly saying, “I just saw your routine, it was amazing! Good job!”

“Yeah-yeah, whatever,” he said, gritting his teeth, continuing, “I’m calling because of Viktor. He’s.. in bad shape,” his voice grew quieter, “so you better cheer him the fuck up. Understood? I don’t know how, but do it quickly,” he was speaking seriously, probably clutching the phone in his hand with all his strength.

Then, before the Japanese had any time to reply, he hung up, leaving Yuuri to listen to the beeping on the other end.

Bad shape?..

His thoughts, everything in his mind speeding up and racing back and forth.

I need to fix that!..

During his time while he was in a relationship with Viktor, Yuuri has learned a lot of things. One of the more fundamental ones were.. being creative.

Sometimes they would have fights and he had to come up with a way to surprise him to both make him speechless and want to talk to him again, not being angry anymore.

So he really did master this skill of being creative and now he’s going to put this to use.

A plan came up to his mind almost immediately and he instantly pushed a red button for calling the nurse into the room.

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A few skaters already had their go, Viktor was supposed to show himself right in the middle of the tournament but he felt like in this state he won’t reach even his usual score.

Is this it? Has love ruined Viktor Nikiforov’s incredible talent and years of grind with hard work?..

His eyes were wide open as he was watching young Otabek finishing up his routine flawlessly, getting a second place right after Yurio, who was currently sitting on the top.

He felt how someone patted him on the shoulder and looked behind himself, spotting Chris with a warm smile, extending a hand towards his friend with a phone.

“It’s your husband, Viktor,” he winked at him flirtatiously and Russian took it hesitantly, all thoughts mixed up together.

“Viktor!! I couldn’t reach you on your phone, so please turn on the tv on the channel two right now!” he almost yelled in the device, making his partner furrow his brows together.

“What?..” Nikiforov said, confusion written all over his expression.

“Please, I’m so sorry that I ended up with an injury but it should’ve never affected you, любимый*!” at the last Russian word Viktor just bit his lower lip, tears threatening to fall down his face.

“Don’t hang up, Yuuri, whatever you came up with, I want to be with you at least like this,” said the older man, putting Chris’ phone closer to his ear, as if shortening the distance between the two of them.

As the reply he just heard a hum in affirmation from his husband.

He quickly took the remote of the tv and changed the station from the official tournament broadcast, making the majority of the people in the room questioningly turntheir head towards the genius skater again, but he didn’t care.

On the tv he saw Yuuri in normal clothes, not a hospital robe, standing behind some white wall, clearly nervous and with a microphone in his hand.

Once Viktor saw this, he couldn’t control his emotions and just ran around the whole wing, turning every single screen to show channel two, now Yuuri looking at him from every corner.

“At first I would like to apologise for disturbing your preparations for the tournament, competitors, but as you all know I badly landed one of the jumps at practise and ended up with a moderate injury, resulting in me being unable to participate,” he took a deep breath before continuing, still looking somewhere at his feet, “and I suspect that Viktor Nikiforov, who once used to be my coach and who is now another one of my opponents in the competition.. I think he’s not doing well, because we promised each other that we would skate together on the Grand Prix no matter what,” he now lifted his hazel eyes, wobbly smile on his face, “Who knew, huh? Well.. I am here to lift your spirits, Viktor. Even if I’m not there,” he smiled broadly, cheeks heating up, becoming slightly pink.

Japanese cleared his throat and proceeded.

“Whatever I wouldn’t do, my life is always bringing me back. Back to you,” his eyes were now filled with determination and love, “Before I met you, I didn’t know what love was, I didn’t know what it meant when you couldn’t breathe in your normal tempo without the other person anymore. I didn’t know that this could ever mean so much to anyone,” he slowly lifted his engagement ring on his finger, fighting the stinging sensation in his eyes, “before you, I was just a lost boy, lost person, lost life. You made me find myself professionally and as a person. You made me whole. I know, I don’t say there things often and especially in public when we see each other, so hearing it like this is probably even more frustrating to you, but.. I want you to win. Don’t you let my absence discourage you,” he furrowed his brows together, not stopping “You were so open about me and your feelings, I think it’s time for me to finally pay you back. Viktor, you once captured my heart and it stays perfectly still in your hands, forever,” Yuuri put his hand with the golden ring on his chest, on his beating heart,

“Please, win. For me.”

The broadcast ended after this, everyone turning the screen back to the original channel as Viktor stayed in place, wide-eyed.

“Viktor?..” he heard Yuuri close to his ear now, gently bringing him back to reality.

He sighed deeply, a smile slowly appearing on his face, “Babe... Watch me,” he said, voice full of so well known hazard for skating the routine well.

From all his excitement he didn’t even notice all the commotion on the other end of Yuuri’s side as they exchanged a few more phrases and then hung up.

“That was a long ass call,” said with a pleased grin Chris as he got his phone back, “You guys are my favourite couple. I hate to encourage my opponent, but go get that win, Viktor!” he yelled at Nikiforov’s back already, as the Russian skater made his way towards the ring, ready to capture gold.

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Metro at this hour was full with people and Yuuri did his best to spectate Viktor’s performance on live tv and to watch where he’s going.

Despite the recommendations of doctors at the hospital he said he needs to be there with him, so he was now rushing towards the skating ring, his stamina now being able to withstand longer distances, ever since he started training with his partner.

He’d have to push through the endless crowds of people, someone recognising him and immediately wanting an autograph or to talk, sometimes his leg would send a pang if pain right through his whole body, making him grunt on his journey.

But he was determined. Yuuri wanted to see his husband on ice as he’s winning a medal. Because he just knew, Viktor is winning one. There was not a single doubt about it in his heart that beat so much faster and more passionate for this particular Russian skater.

Finally, when he made it to the arena, he sprinted through the training area, making multiple coaches and participants look up at him in awe, fully realising what the fool came to do.

He was here for Viktor only, and everyone knew that. Their love towards each other was unstoppable.

As the skinny, incredibly beautiful and elegant skater gathered up strength and lifted his body off the ground like a feather in his signature flip, the whole world was watching. Everyone caught their breath, not daring to move, awaiting the landing and therefore the result.

Not a lot of people knew this, but the only thing that Viktor was thinking about at that moment was his husband, Yuuri. How he clutched his hand to his chest, where the heart is, golden ring shining into the camera.

So much emotion and genuine agitation over the fact that they can’t yet make their debut as partners on ice... all mixed up in a beautiful whirl of tears slowly falling down Yuuri’s face, and when Nikiforov landed, he did it perfectly.

The execution of his last move in the astonishingly difficult choreography was nailed perfectly, without a single error, his body bending in a curve for the last burst of the ending posture, before the music stopped.

When the top skater let himself breathe again, his cheeks and nose was red, throat and nostrils almost not catching up to the speed of his breathing.

“Viktor!!” suddenly he heard the desired voice so clear as if they were the only ones present for miles and whipped his head towards the source, ocean eyes wide, threatening to start getting filled with tears.

“Yuuri!” he yelled right back at him, forgetting all the gifts on ice behind him, with an incredible speed closing in to his husband.

And when their bodies touched in the sudden hug, chests tightly pressing to each other, Viktor let himself lose it. He started sobbing, clutching the back of his partner’s coat, trying to get even closer than they already were.

“You... how did you make it here?” the pair pulled away from each other only to look into their faces, eyes meeting and creating an entirely different reality between them, it seemed like.

“I’m so proud of you, Vitya.. Я люблю тебя,**” he said with a blush on his cheeks and a terrible accent, but the Russian skater’s eyes just watered even more at that, him jumping into his arms once again.

“Господи, а я тебя как люблю! Напугал меня со своим ушибом, а сам знаешь-ли пришёл всё-таки на муженька посмотреть!***” the word vomit from his husband in foreign language made absolutely no sense to Yuuri as he just confusedly nodded, caught off guard.

“Baby, I’m so glad you’re here..” Viktor finally said in the language that he could understand, with far less volume than everything that’s been said before.

“I just needed to see you live, not on the screen..” murmured Yuuri into his shoulder, “Doctors were against it, but.. here I am,” he laughed nervously, just snuggling in closer into the cloth with his nose.

“But I think if I remain resting at home and I’ll have someone taking care of me, then I wouldn’t need to stay at the hospital during the recovery,” he continued, pulling away to just smile at Viktor.

“Of course, jesus. You’re not staying there but since I’m pretty sure I just won another Grand Prix in my career, we can go anywhere to relax together for a bit,” he answered, getting quieter towards the end of his sentence, his fingers instinctively reaching up for Yuuri’s lower lip and opening his mouth a little, squeezing on the skin.

“Only you and me, honey.. You have to pay me off for not showing up to the competition, “ suddenly Yuuri felt a hand on his back, firm on his ass.

He started blushing, nervously chuckling and just nodding, accepting defeat. After all, he wouldn’t really mind anything that Viktor has probably planned for them to do.

And just like this, Viktor Nikiforov skated back to the ring, towards the pedestal with the winners, stepping onto the first place, soon enough already pressing his lips gently to the gold metal, then meeting brown eyes of his husband, looking at him with his azurites full of love.

*my love

**i love you

***jesus, and how much do i love you! you made me worry with your injury, but of course you came to see your lovely husband perform, right?

[scream-into-the-voiddd]

this looks like fun! [I can’t seem to find the og poster but i got it from @lizzaroona]

September 1st: Favourite s1 episode?

Honesty a super hard pick, and i think there are better episodes in the season but the one i go back too most often is ep 10 “The Sear of Selene” 

It just has some of the best character moments (for me) and is truly funny and interesting. And has some real insight into Donald and Dewey’s feelings about Della and her being gone. we saw glimpse of this in ‘dime chase’ and ‘woo-woo/Atlantis’ but here we actually see the pain Della left in her wake. And what it means going forward. 

Plus stokeulse is a big sweet boi and i love watching him and Donald ‘re-connecting’ speaking of witch it is also the frist time Scrooge and Donald have a form of re-connection to 

“just like old times ah lad”

look at that face.

its a strong ep and lead the way for bigger ‘emotional hits’ down the line (the last crash of the sun chaser)

September 2nd: Favourite triplet?

I don’t really have one as they are all fleshed out and well rounded, that being said I am looking forward to more of Huey this season. But i don’t have a fav.

September 3rd: Favourite member of team magic

Webby, but i don’t know if that counts as she is main cast so i see her more often then any other Team Magic characters. The girl is fun and filled with so much love and she is to be feared. and I love her faults to she is awkward and hyper-fixated on Mcduck history to the point that its scary. and is a fun loving social shut in.

She is just so multifaceted and complex that i love her with all my heart.  

September 4th: favourite three caballeros 

I am bias on this one as i love José Oliveira (the og José) and anything involving that funky little parrot makes me happy. But in DT17 I do love that there is elements of that Og Jose in his characterisation

like in s2 ep 4 

when he calls over and hugs Donald (so sweet), and that he knows how to claim Donald down so fast (by making him dance and then getting him to sing) and to my knowledge he is the only one to do this in the whole show not just once but twice, so it shows that he has a deep understanding of Donald that most just don’t, and i have always loved that about their friendship.

plus from what i can tell from that ep as well it was Jose’s idea to meet up and he planned the trip (as he payed for it) so the fact he made arraignments for Panchito, Donald and THE BOY’S (+ scrooge) shows how much Jose really loves his friends, and plays an umbrella as an trumpet.       

September 5th: favourite ep of season 2

This was a hard one as most of the eps knock it out of the park, but i’m going to have to go with, ep 16 “the Duck Knight Returns” its just such a good ep and has so many wonderful layers to it, and i was actually caught of guard with the final Jim Starling twist. like i can’t even remember the lat time a twist hit me that hard (i got side swiped) I actually had to sit in silence for a solid minute or two and then watch the whole ep again.

they wasted no detail big or small in this ep (like that Jim was already wearing an unbuttoned DW suit and had the hat in the box next to him, or the sound drake made being thrown into the bathroom just like og DW, and the meta jokes and the animation, the whole ep just went so hard) 

and it was a really fun way to ‘pass the torch’ from one actor to another, especially playing with the idea of someone just not being done with the character yet and not wanting to let go, (as a lot of audiences have that issue, with re-boots and relaunches, and especially when a version of a character has an unfinished story left, think Andrew Garfield’s spider-man for e.g.)

i could honesty talk forever about this ep but i’ll spare you all.     

September 6th: favourite hug? 

Honesty its a three way tie...

1) Scrooge and Della when she first comes home. Just they way he scoops her up like a kid and holds her tight, makes my heart full. 

2) this one with Louie, just the mother son embrace was really earned here. 

3) and this one with Jose and Donald, its rare we see Donald so happy to see anyone (who is not his family) and just how naturally he ran into his arms was so nice. And Jose dropping his umbrella right away show how he knew what was coming. Plus i am a big fan of men showing their love and friendship in sweet fun ways like this, so a win for non-toxic masculinity here.   

September 7th Gizmoduck or Darkwing duck?

this is a hard one as i do like both of these hero boy’s and i have talked about how they have conflicting views of their own success through the other (basically, Drake has is personal life together, but Fenton has his hero life together, and i think it would be a point of envy for both characters) And I love Fenton and Drake for different reasons, but at their core they are somewhat the same just two people who want to help others for no other reason then it is the right thing to do.

And i Love what the show has done for both characters but...I will have to give it Drake by a fraction of a hair (feather?).

As unlike Fenton I only needed one ep to be 100% on board with Drake and i know everything i need to know about him from that. As DW had a whole ass show for a reason and that one ep showed it. As Fenton is a wonderful character and he is a very well done character, but one of his defining traits is that he is all over the place (like in his life, work, the way he specks ect) but that can get messy from time to time as it can be hard to be ‘on board’ with someone with no clear ‘goal’ persay (they did cover most of this in “who is Gizmoduck” but some of it still lingers now that can be a tiny bit jarring at times) But like that is SUPER Neat-picky, tho. 

And Drake has that chaotic feral energy that Fenton just don’t have (Fenton has more Bi panic energy), but Drake also has tired dad energy (like how he growls at GD in moonvation and when he calls to LP before the set explodes) and i love that about him. 

Get this man his Gosalyn already so he can be the dorky dad he is destined to be.     

September 8th: Favourite duck cousin?

I’m going to have to go with Gladstone, because he is a HUGE prick, but in a way he is not fully aware of. He is generous (he literally offers the boy’s a bucket of diamonds, just because they came by)    

And I love that half hazard nature about him, he is true neutral, things just happen to him and for him and he just takes it, and that is actually really interesting, (don’t get me wrong i love Fethry, Della and Donald) but Gladstone is such a wild card in the duck/mcduck family when compared to everyone else that its a nice change of pace from the rest in a way (all of them good hearted and well meaning people) I generally have no idea what he might do when presented with an actual problem/ choice, so to see that will be fun and this crews take on Gladstone in that regard.

As i think out of all the cousins he has the most growing/changing to do.      

September 9th: favourite ship?

Ok here is the thing.

in general fandom 

I don’t really have any strong feelings about most ships one way or the other. I think a lot are nice and I enjoy seeing others enjoy themselves and all the wonderful art and time they put into it. That being said out of all my years of being in fandoms I have had a grand total of 5-10 ships i am super passionate about and that is over the span of 10+ years. 

and one of the things i love the most about ducktales is how much it focuses on family love and pure platonic friendships (for both kid and adult characters). And that makes my ace heart happy.  So basically I’m saying is I have no strong feelings about most ships in general beyond “aww” or “man i love how much the fandom loves them” and “that is some great art/ fic / creative output I’m happy for them.” 

But with that out of the way, the question at hand.

I’m going to have to go with Donald and Daisy, as from a writing sand point it was so well done and sweet and cute. And it gave a new perspective on a relationship that has been around for 70+ years, so that was impressive all on it’s own, and it is going to be a loving, interesting relationship going forward.

September 10th: Favourite season 3 episode  

I am going to assume that this is out of the 7 eps so far (duh), which again is hard cause this show is just so damn good. But I would have to say it is ep 6 “Astro B.O.Y.D”

now cue story of me as a kid in 3...2...1...

when i was a kid, I was obsessed with Astro boy, i was maybe 6 years old and i loved it. I was a relatively poor kid so in the early/mid 2000′s i would get a lot of my reading/watching materials from my local library. This included 4 VSH tapes of Astro boy episodes for the 80′s series and i would watch the 2003 anime dub on Saturday mornings TV (one ep a week if that), The library also had the first 2 vols of the og manga that i read so many times that i could probably re-sight it from memory. anyway, the reason i love astro boy so much was because it gave me a feeling i had not felt in my young life before that point, even if i did not full understand it at the time.

Its a feeling i still can’t fully put into words, but i will do my best. Astro boy goes right for the heart in every way possible, but it always twist the knife when it goes for, grief, regret and longing agony. specifically when in looks at lost love, usually platonic love (Tobio and Tenma e.g), the feeling these story’s gave me was the complexity of pain that losing love can bring, but it is most effective because it is through the lens of a child (astro/ tobi) and an innocent, loving child at that. The child is (somewhat) untouched by the tragedy (via memory loss) but is still shaped by the love that was put into them, despite the grief's overall out come (the abandonment of said child). So the feeling is a bitter-sweetness that comes from a place of innocents but also personal understanding of the self Astro was made by Tenma, but he was not what tenma made him to be (his lost son) but astro became his own person who loves and is loved by others, and is a whole person on his own outside of what he was made for (and is in a way still A son to tenma just NOT Tobi). and there is that sense of a child just wanting to be heard and understood for who they ARE and not what others what them to be, regardless of their “potential” (in other words personal choice’s and passions that the child actually wants for themselves)

I just love Astro Boy ok...and i never get a chance to talk about it, so i thought i would here, as this list was foolish enough to give me an opening.

Moving on to the DT17 ep.

The Astro Boyd ep. hit all of these notes, the longing agony of lost love (Gyro and Boyd) the regret that came from Gyro for boyd’s creation.

Boyd’s innocents and loving nature coupled with his wants and identity not being fully understood (gyro thinking he is evil, Fenton wanting him to be a hero, Akita having him be a tool and Tesuka thinking he is just a mindless robot) and just wanting to be seen for what he truly is “a defiantly real boy” and he gets that conformation from Gyro at the end!

and Gyro has is own actualisation, about his own grief, after thinking his love was “misplace” for years on end in a way that made him shut down his heart almost completely. Only to find that he was right to let himself love and that love is actually what helped Boyd help himself. Gyro in essence realising that both him and Boyd are not mistakes or failures but two people who lost the one they loved (each other) and have finally found a way back to each other so they can both begin to fully heal.    

So it was a good episode *wipes tear away from eye*

September 11th : favourite villain?

I don’t really have a favourite villain as the show don’t tend to focus to heavy on them and when they do it is somewhat short lived, (like Magica in season 1 and Lunarus in season 2) and since this season has a group of villains (FOWL) and not just one main one like the last 2 seasons, I have a feeling that one of the up coming FOWL members may take the top spot later down the line.  

but if we are going off the one i find most entertaining...

I’m going to have to give it to

Magica she is played as scary, funny and damn relatable on occasion (the funzo scene), and i am never disappointed to see her. I think she is very different from comic magica in a lot of ways, but i enjoy this version for different reasons. And i think this magica has room to grow/ change (for good or for worst). So safe to say i am looking forward to the first ep in the line up.  

September 12th : favourite character?

why must you make me choose...

seriously all of the characters major or minor is shown in a way that makes them feel very real and well rounded even if they have very little screen time. for god sake the ottoman empire guys get character development (one left the show to pursue acting and they fight with scrooge in the moonvation). So this is not an easy pick to say the least.    

but I will be judging it by the one i ‘get the most out of’ so to speck....

and I have to say its a tie...

Donald Duck

I love him ok. He is very small and very angry and he will fight god(s) for his family safety. Anyway, I have always love Donald Duck shorts and everything else he shows up in he is always my fav.

I have always been able to relate to Donald as i too have a bit of a disability that makes it hard for people to understand be (in writing) and i have a ‘voice issue’ that makes me different from everyone around me. So i really understand the feeling Donald have and the anger that comes from being misunderstood in the most basic ways. Its not fun

So Donald has always been important to me in a sense,  

The thing about Ducktales 2017 that i love is that it fleshes out Donald’s already established characteristics, by giving them context (e.g. using his outbursts to protect the boys). this gives him something that me has been missing (in animation) for awhile now, and that is how functions outside of himself.

what i mean by that is that Donald is kind of unique when it comes to the Disney sensational 6, unlike the rest is/ can be

-selfish

-cowardly

-rude/ mean spirited

-a loser

these things are what make him different to the rest but in animation for a while he has been shown by himself (without his family or even Daisy) so all of the above characteristics are not “diluted” or held to any standard outside of Donald’s personal misery.

So he can be super selfish and an all around ass cause, yeah, if your life was one pain after the other no matter what you did and you were all on your own all the time, then yeah, your going to be a miserable little shit.  

But by reintroducing the boy’s and giving him a more defined role (father/ solo care giver) at least at the start of the show, it gives Donald a reason to “fight off” his less than noble parts of his personality. It also makes his action have more weight as everything he does or fails to do effects the boy’s. So that makes him more appealing overall as what he does (or doesn’t) do now matters, and all the tragedy in Donald’s life are also given weight (Della being gone for 10 yrs, and what that did to his relationship with Scrooge) so his pain is now REAL and even tho he is funny and reckless, he is now a person with flaws and failings but also victory's (getting Della back and his family being close again) and dreams (the three caballeros and his relationship with Daisy)

I do love this little Rage machine  

the other fav is

Drake Mallard

(maybe I just like single duck dads? idk, lol)

I have already talked a bit about his intro ep,

but as of right now i am more in love with the potential i see in the character. As we have not really seen to much of him like maybe 4 ep’s total. But Drake is the character i am most hyped to see more of (and the people who are around him, Gos and LP etc.)  

as i find him really interesting and he is (ironically) one of the more “normal” people in the show as a whole, He is not rich (high society rich anyway) he is not an explorer, not a scientist, he don’t have a ‘crazy’ backstory (like Gyro in Tokyok) and he doesn't have a direct connection to Scrooge himself (he never worked for him directly, and is not a family member)

so he is just a random guy, who thought “I’m going to do this crazy shit just because a handsome pilot man said i could if i wanted to”

and honestly that’s cool.    

he is fun and goofy in an engendering way, and his ego is the right amount of controlled (ish) but still over the top. the character is full of story’s that can be taken from the og show and mixed in with the new show (like his intro ep),

Drake is a just fun to think about, and how his world relates to the world of ducktales in general, as they were separate for such a long time, so seeing it come together in a new way is super existing.

I was already blown away by his last solo ep I can’t wait to see more of him (and his how he will be with his Gos, and how that adventure will unfold)  

September 13th Favorited actor/ actress 

now this is just an unfair question, this is a star strutted cast and everyone is amazing. There is a pop culture icon and a Disney legend in the cast (and the fact your not 100% sure which one’s i’m talking about proves my point)

So i am going to cheat a little here, I’m not going off the actors and actress themselves per say but rather I’m going to talk about my favourite performance in the show.

I judge this on two things

1) how much the act ‘disappears’ into the character (as in i don’t see the human person when there talking, even if its still just their normal voice)

2) I can’t see (/hear) anyone else being able to do the role

So on those two things in mind i will have to go with.

Paget Brewster

she just plays Della with this fun life to her, she can switch on a dime from crazy adventurer to comic foil to herself and then have moments of deep self refection. And she had to carry the introduction to the character all on her own, as Della was isolated, so if she didn’t sell Della to us (the audience) then the whole mystery/ build up to Della would have fallen apart. So that was not easy but she pulled it off (with great writing as well).

and she was/is amazing as Della, she is just awesome and I love listening to her and how she plays Della.

September 14th Favourite song

Oh for me it hands down has to be “not good enough” I love a good Bond ballad and Ben kills it. Plus it plays a big part in the episodes theme’s for LP,

its perfect, it fits the story, character and the parody.   

September 15th: Favourite scene from favourite episode.

well out of my top 3 episode (that i have already listed) I’m going to not talk about ‘the dark duck returns’ as there is a scene in there that i will talk about later. my favourite scene out of the other 2 episodes i have picked, i would have to go with...

The ‘Defiantly real boy’ scene from Astro BOYD

(i have already talked about my love for Astro boy and this ep in relation to that)  what i love the most about this scene is that not only did Gyro and Boyd ‘find’ each other again, but they found themselves again.

Boyd turned back into the real boy Gyro ‘made’ him to be (the boy Gyro always believed he was/could be) and that not only was that ok, but the best way for Boyd be himself. Thus his reclaiming of the word Boyd, he is still ‘the same’ but now has a clear sense of what it actually means to himself, mixing both 2BO and Boyd into one. With the love given to 2BO by Gyro and the life experience he has had as Boyd, so Boyd didn’t have to change everything about himself to be complete he just needed to understand that he was loved for being himself and to get confirmation that he is what he believes himself to be a ”Defiantly real boy” (T-T)

as for Gyro, he realised that his love, care and idealism (as he put it) was not misplaced (on Boyd), as when the little boy he loved so fully seemingly turn on him, that broke his heart and his spirit in a way that just would not fully mend. (thus his cold and rude behaviour through out the show so far...) But when Gyro fully embraces his idealism and loving side again (by embracing Boyd) he realises that he can bring his true feeling to the surface again as it was never a mistake for him to do so. thus why he embraces Fenton as an equal, by calling him Doctor and showing the respect he actually always felt for Fenton.

They found themselves through each other, and it melts my heart (T-T) 

September 16th: Favourite moonlander

Penny.

September 17th: Favourite Beagle Boy

Black arts Beagle,

I mean he is the reason we have Duckworth back so thats got to count for something.

September 18th: Favourite scene of your favourite ship

I have to say its this little moment here...

Donald spent the whole episode wanting to impress this woman (Glamor), but after spending time with Daisy decided that Daisy’s dignity was more important then his Big Break. And Daisy returns in kind like ‘yeah i shouldn’t be treated this way’ and its just really sweet. It also got Daisy noticed and most likely jumb started her career and Daisy (again) returned in kind (most likely) by having the three Caballeros perform on stage right after.

so its a small but very insight look into the new dynamic Donald and Daisy are going to/ do have in this show.

[plus this screen shot was funny to me,

i think it has meme template vibes]

September 19th: Favourite scene of  your favourite character.

oh my, where oh where to take this?

every character in this show is so good so this is just hard man....

but I will go with “The Duck Knight returns” one of my favs, and honesty i could talk about this episode all on its own (and I just might after “Lets Get Dangerous” airs)  but for me one of the scenes that really stuck out to me (that others have not really touched on) Is when they have the “meeting” with Alister, Jim, Scrooge and Dewey and then Drake comes in (and then immediately gets his shit wrecked by Jim).

As a film student, I feel this scene on a personal level.

the old(er) man who knows nothing but wants to take control.

the Pretentious “artist” that thinks “making it dark” makes it meaningful.

the person who pretends they know what there talking about but is to stuck in their ways to really change their mind.

and a child or child like understanding (its more common then you think)

(tho i would place LP in the audience position, which is the point of this scene) This scene hit me where I live, and is a really good commentary on Corporate meddling. As there are three ‘battles’ happening in this scene

1) Scrooge Vs Alistair

this acts as a money vs art argument, that is seen all to often in movies and shows, as I can guess we can all name at least one movie or show that has the “the record studio is changing your sound its not authentic...”

but Dt 2017 shows the other side to this and asks

authentic to what? like its one things when its your own creation but what if its was someone else's (like a reboot)  

is it better to be authentic to what was before (the og material), or is it best to take a new direction because its more ‘comfortable’ for you to do (fits your style / sensibility's)

thus leading to

2) LP Vs Dewey  

or a young audience vs the older audience, now Dewey and LP don’t really clash in this ep per say but, they act as a more “aggressive” views on audience backlash now they are Not Malicious but they do act as conflicting presences. Dewey (understandably) doesn’t get why it has to be dark and gritty, or what was happening at all as Alistair is going for a high concept film, but guess what, kids aren’t always great at picking high concepts up (at least not right away) and they can be easily bored by it, if its not engaging in a way that can appeal to them.  

and LP as an older audience member does know what the show/ movie is “meant to be” so seeing these high concepts added in a way that is not in the sprit of og material can be unnerving. And high concepts can miss the point or main message/style of the og material to the point that unrecognisable (*cough*Live action, Titians *cough*).

both of these points are legitimate concerns for audiences to have, as if something is so different its not unrecognisable then why not just make something original? and not draw a comparison.

and if your main audience is meant to be younger, they how are you going to engage them in way that matters to them or in a way they can understand (youth culture or ‘young truths’ i.e. things kids deal with/experience when growing up)          

speaking of which

3) Jim Vs Drake

this one is kind of the mix of the pervious two, or nostalgia vs update? (i can’t think of a better word),  

Jim is so determined to be in the spot light that he is willing to ‘throw away’ is morals (as seen at the end), his ‘artist integrity’ no longer matters as long as DW gets to come back, he just wants some sense of being back that it doesn’t actually matter how (*cough* Teen Titians Go*cough*), so he losses a big part of what made it DW to begin with and not because he don’t care about DW but because he places his value of it in one spot (himself as darkwing)  

as Drake on the other hand. understands that changes need to be made but he knows the movie is off base (he says so himself later), but he puts the value of DW in more then himself, as he has felt it be bigger then what was just on screen (Jim) and has carried that with him here. And since he is set up as an ‘enemy’ here (Jim jumps him) new is seen as an enemy as well, but he literal gets attached for just existing, so yeah not a great move by Jimbo there, and due to nostalgia (both in and out of the show due Jim starling/cummings) most may not of have pick up on it right away.

so yeah, this is an underrated scene and i wanted to talk about it a little as it sets up the rest of the episode.  

September 20th: Favourite friend group 

hmmm....

I have a feeling that this is going to change after the new wave of episodes (i like how team hero is shaping up) but for now i will have to say team science. They just have a nice balance of personalities and ability's, plus they the most team (ish) as they literally have to work together (most of them)

huey, gyro, fenton, manny and lil bulb

and all have their own style and smarts

Manny and Lil blub don’t even talk but they have big personalities and now with the addition of Boyd this little group feels well rounded.

I love them nerds

[takadasaiko]

Time and Trust (a Superman & Lois one shot)

FFN II AO3

Summary: Pre-S1. Lois needs time to work through her emotions after Clark reveals who he really is to her, but a close call helps her find perspective.

Time & Trust

It wasn't that she didn't understand the risk he'd taken. Logically she knew that to do what he did as Superman, he had to keep secrets from - lie to - nearly everyone around him. It protected him and it protected his mother back in Smallville. It even protected the people he surrounded himself with that would never know. It protected her, and Lois knew that. She understood that. That didn't mean that she didn't need time to process the fact that the man she'd fallen in love with had kept so much of himself from her.

Clark had been ridiculously understanding about the whole thing, even to the point that he'd come up with an excuse to cut their trip to Smallville short to give her the time she needed to process it. Which, of course, only made her feel more guilty about all the lingering - and irrational, she kept reminding herself, as if this would be the time it would sink in - irritation at the fact that she hadn't known before now. That he hadn't told her.

Three days alone with her thoughts hadn't done a lot to help clear up those feelings and as Lois spit the toothpaste into the sink and washed the remainder out with a swallow of water, she was dreading seeing Clark back at the Planet that morning, and she hated that the most. Before their trip she'd looked forward to every second that they had together. The collaborations, the late night takeout pouring over the case files they'd put together, and the stolen moments away from prying eyes. She loved the way he stumbled through their earliest days of dating the same way he had the day they met and how she caught him looking at her out of the corner of her eye. All of it. She loved him and she wanted to look forward to seeing him, but he'd want to know where they stood.

Or worse, he'd give her all the time and space she needed.

The call from Perry came as she was tugging her shoes on. Superman and some as-of-now unknown assailant were battling it out in downtown Metropolis not too far from Lois' own apartment. He expected her there ten minutes ago. Jimmy'd meet her there and if she saw Kent, the boy'd better learn to answer his damn phone.

A crowd had gathered, giving a wide breadth to the battle raging in downtown by the time Lois arrived, but she found Jimmy in closer and snapping photos aimed at the man with what looked like a set of braces on his arms, clearly giving him a boost of power that the average person wouldn't have had. "What'd I miss?" she demanded, watching Superman - watching Clark - block a blow aimed at his face and… "Did he just shove Superman back?"

"Yeah, it's been wild. So, that dude -" Jimmy pointed to the man that was currently winning the power struggle - "started tossing cars around. Eye witnesses think he was trying to lure Superman out. No clue why. No one's ID'd him yet, but take a look at this. Recognize that?"

Lois forced herself to look away from the ongoing battle to focus on the enhanced photo displayed on Jimmy's screen. "That looks like Lex Corp tech."

"Yeah it does," the photographer said with a grin.

"I need to check those to the ones our anonymous source sent us a couple weeks ago. We may finally have a break."

"See, that's why you should take time off more. You come back and everything falls into place." She caught him looking at her from the corner of his eye. "How was Smallville?"

Lois whipped around. "How did you know I was in Smallville?"

"Oh, c'mon. You and CK take time off at the exact same time and you think we wouldn't put it together? You meet his mom?"

"Yeah."

"So how'd it go?"

"Listen, Jimmy, I don't want to talk about it. I -"

A shout drew her attention back to the scene at hand. Time seemed to slow as her mind processed that there was a vehicle barreling through the air and aimed directly at them. There wasn't time to move or even duck, but just a flash of an instant that told her this was the end. It didn't matter why she'd been upset, only that she was about to die before resolving the issue with Clark. Before telling him that she loved him, no matter what. Before -

The car made a terrible crunching sound as Superman zipped between it and her, catching it midair. He eased it off to the side and turned, those familiar blue-green eyes focused on her. "Are you alright?"

"Behind you!" Lois shouted and watched as the man wearing the Lex Corp tech slammed into Superman, driving him into the concrete and sliding. She saw something in his hand - green and glowing and sharpened to a point - just before he brought it down hard. Superman's eyes widened and Lois felt her chest tighten as she saw flecks of blood on his blue costume from where the strangely coloured blade had pierced through between his ribs.

"What the hell?" Jimmy breathed beside her. "I thought he was invulnerable or something. I mean, that's not supposed to happen, right?"

"No. It's not," she managed as Superman's attacker drove the blade in deeper and gave a vicious twist, pulling a pained sound from the Man of Steel. From Clark. Lois felt sick.

"Lois!" Jimmy called and she hadn't even realized that she was moving forward. He tried to grab for her, but she slipped out of his grasp.

"Hey! I know who you work for, and you can tell your boss I'm not going to let him get away with this!"

The man turned, his eyes wild, and Lois wondered if the strength-enhancing braces weren't Luthor's only "gift" to him. She wouldn't put it past him to use a cocktail of drugs to put someone into a state of no fear. A slow, dangerous smile tilted his lips as his gaze fixed on her. "You shoulda run when you had the chance."

"Then who would have distracted you?" she asked, nodding behind him to where Superman was making it to his feet, eyes glowing dangerously red before the blast threw the other man back hard.

Superman was on him in a second, lightening fast and angrier than Lois had thought was even possible. He ripped the tech from the assailant, crippling his ability to continue the fight, and dropped him to the ground where he stayed. For half a second she thought he might throw another punch, but as sirens wailed in the distance she watched red fade, even if his breathing didn't even out.

"What is this thing?" Jimmy asked from where he'd scooped up the strange knife, red blood standing out against the green blade.

"Put it down."

Lois turned, the question dancing on her tongue until it was startled into silence as Superman's eyes flashed red again, the burst of energy shattering the blade as soon as Jimmy dropped it.

The assailant chuckled hoarsely from his place crumpled on the street. "You think that's all he's got? He's coming for you."

Lois' gaze traveled to where blood had soaked through and up to meet his eyes. She couldn't say what she wanted to, not out in the open like this. She didn't dare.

"Are you both alright?" he asked.

She managed a small nod. "Are you?"

His thin lips stretched into something that likely was meant to be a smile and then he was gone, in the air and faster than the eye could follow as the police arrived to make their arrest.

-------

Clark wasn't at the Planet when she arrived and he wasn't picking up his cell phone. Lois felt the panic start to build even as she fumbled through a half-baked excuse to get herself out the door and across town to his apartment, hoping he'd be there.

No one answered the door when she knocked and she'd settled for grabbing the spare key he kept along the top of the door frame. It never made it to the actual lock before the door was opened from the inside, revealing a very disheveled Clark Kent on the other side. He was pale, a little feverish looking, and she didn't like the way that his right hand lingered over where the wound had been. "Hey," he managed, voice raspy and exhausted sounding. "Sorry, I should have -"

She pushed her way in and he didn't offer any resistance. "What happened? What was that?"

"Off the record?" he asked, the faintest hint of a teasing smile tugging at the corners of his lips and she felt at least some of the anxiety start to ease.

"Yeah, if there's something out there that can hurt Superman, I don't want to be the one to spread it to the masses. I'm already arguing with Perry over it."

"Too many people saw for you to keep it out of your article," Clark grumbled, wincing at the sound of the tea kettle on the stove. He turned, as if he were going for it, and Lois reached out to touch his arm.

"I'll get it."

There was only a beat of hesitation before he managed a tired "thank you" and shuffled over to the couch. "Let's just keep the details of what it actually is between us, okay?"

"Of course," she answered, pulling the tea kettle off of the stove and the whistling slowed to a stop. She reached for a mug and the oolong tea, listening to him speak from the adjacent living room.

"The knife was made out of Kryptonite. It's, uh… fragments from my home planet. It's poisonous to me."

Home planet. Well, those were words she never expected to come out of her boyfriend's mouth. She swallowed hard, focusing on putting the tea together as she talked and hoping she sounded more natural than she felt. "Why would pieces of your home planet be poisonous to you?"

"Krypton wasn't exactly in good shape when it broke apart."

She grabbed for the honey on the counter and put a spoonful into the mug before steeling herself to circle out into the living room with him. She found him slouched down on the couch and looking perfectly miserable, but he did take the mug when she offered it to him. "Are you alright?"

There was a longer pause than she was comfortable with and he blew lightly against the steam, frosty breath cooling the tea beneath it. "I will be," he promised and his eyes flickered up to meet hers. "But I almost wasn't. You saved my life today."

Lois motioned to the open space next to him and let him give a small nod of acknowledgement before sliding into it. She settled in with him, leaning against him, and turned to press a gentle kiss to his left arm, her hand settling on his knee. "I'm sorry."

"For what?" he asked, sounding genuinely startled. Of course he was genuinely startled. Clark was genuinely every emotion he wore on his sleeve. As much as it could drive her mad, it was one of the things she loved about him.

"Cutting our trip short and for…. making you wait."

"You need time. I get that." He shifted the mug to his right hand, but didn't reach for her own that was dangerously close to it. Even after everything, he was still giving her as much space as she wanted.

"You're infuriating."

"I don't mean to be."

She felt the smile take hold and she leaned in a little closer. "I know. That's why I have to work to stay mad at you."

"Are you still? Mad, I mean?"

She pulled in a deep breath and reached out, lacing her fingers through his and she could feel him relax next to her. "I don't think I was ever really mad at you."

"Exactly who were you mad at then?" he mumbled and she huffed a laugh at that.

"Myself."

"Why?"

"Because I'm an investigative report. Because you were my best friend and partner before we even started dating and I… I should have known. I feel like an idiot that I didn't."

Clark shifted, pulling away only far enough to look at her. "You're not an idiot."

"Oh, I know. I said I feel like an idiot," she pointed out with a small smirk and watched him echo with a softer version of her own expression.

"In my experience people see what they want to see. I'm… really good at hiding in plain sight."

"You really are." She squeezed his hand in hers and leaned her temple against his shoulder. "I was terrified today. It wasn't just Superman, it was you. I saw you and you were…. I could have lost you." She steadied herself, forcing the walls down. "And I never want to lose you."

Clark's thumb drifted over her knuckles and he turned to press a kiss against her dark hair. "You won't."

"Promise?"

"Yeah. Do you trust me?"

"I do."

"Thank you."

Lois could feel the tension drifting away and she wrapped her free arm around his middle to pull him a little closer. Realization hit her like a ton of bricks and she instantly pulled back, sitting up to look him in the eye. "Did I hurt you?"

He flashed her that charming, honest smile of his. "Nah. I'm mostly healed up. Just trying to shake the last effects from the exposure. Give me a couple hours and I'll be totally back to normal."

She nodded and settled back in, her free fingers toying with the hem of his t-shirt. "I think we should focus more on Tony Phillips than the Kryptonite for the story. That's the way we get around Perry."

"Who?"

"The guy that nearly killed you."

"Oh, that guy."

"I'm waiting on a source to verify it, but I'm ninety-nine point nine percent sure that tech came from Lex Corp."

"If we can prove it, that'll be a heck of a story."

"Yes it will be."

"I should probably figure out an excuse why I never showed today and call in."

"I already told Perry you had food poisoning."

"Saving my life and my job all in the same day," Clark murmured tiredly.

"Yep. Looks like you're stuck with me." Lois risked a look up when he didn't respond and found his eyes closed behind his glasses. She squeezed his hand, releasing it just long enough to take his mug - precariously balanced on his knee - and set it on the coffee table. He mumbled something too softly for her to hear and she smiled, settling back with him and taking his hand again. "I'm not going anywhere," she promised and felt herself inching towards sleep with him.

End.

-----

Notes: I have had another Superman & Lois one shot half-finished for weeks now, yet this is where my brain went when I decided to sit down and write on some fanfiction today. Ah well. Apparently the muse wanted hurt/comfort today. Hope you enjoyed!

[piccolina-mina]

The Misadventures of Mischief & Mayhem

Show: Roswell, New Mexico

Characters: Michael Guerin, Maria DeLuca

Pairing: Miluca/Marichael 

A/N: A previously unpublished story from the archives. One-shot. Random rambles. Takes place somewhere in s1 after Songs About Texas. It’s … whatever. Enjoy, or not. To each their own. 

/////////////////////

 "I hope you can dance, Deluca,“ he shouted over his shoulder, not wanting to risk taking his eyes off of the mob of cousin-f*cking, backwoods rednecks and wannabe cowboys advancing on them.

"I can get down if I have to.” Maria’s voice was like steel to anyone in the vicinity, but he heard the trepidation, and it killed him.

He knew she was likely outnumbered on her end as well when he felt her back press alongside his – her body taut and ready to fight. He could partially smell the adrenaline.

She was so close to him he could feel her exhale as she readied herself for whatever was about to go down. Their bodies melded together – backs slick with sweat as they shifted and moved in sync.

His default was anger; anger was better than the sadness and pain, and maybe he gained a reputation as the volatile one, but it fueled him when necessary.

He hated this. He hated being stuck in a position where he couldn’t protect Maria. He knew DeLuca didn’t need saving, but he protected his people, and the dread he felt at the mere thought of not getting her out of that bar without a scratch was unlike anything he felt in some time.

His anger was burning hot and searing. He could barely hear anything beyond the buzzing in his ears. The chides and jeering faded away.

“When I’m done wiping the floor with you, I’m going to make your colored bitch put that mouth to better use,” the instigator, some muscled, sweaty brute’s lips curled in a sadistic smile, and it was all Michael needed to see red.

His anger rolled off of him in waves, his jaw clenched from beneath the brim of his cowboy hat; his eyes burned a hole through the drunkard front and center leading the charge.

“Guerin … ” his surname on her lips was a question, a statement, a prayer, and a battle cry all in one. He felt her muscles contract as she took a swing, and his fists clenched as he did the same.

The only sound he didn’t tune out was the unmistakable smack of his fist connecting with the douchebag’s face.

He was a brawler, and his objectives were simple: never lose track of Maria, and get them the hell out of there by any means necessary.

Those were his final thoughts as his world descended into violent chaos.

Several Hours before

“You’re going to really make me get on my knees, DeLuca?”

If it was anyone else, he wouldn’t be caught dead scooting around the Wild Pony on his knees, hat in hand, but he had long since accepted Maria made him do unthinkable things.

“Guerin, I’m busy.” Maria signed off on another shipment and flashed a stunning smile at the delivery man. He promptly ignored the twinge of jealousy over someone else being on the receiving end.

“DeLuuuuca,” he practically whined, as she crossed the room ignoring him as best as she could.

DeLuca,“ he called out again, raising an impressed brow at her commitment. "De–”.

She attempted to flounce past him, but this time he grabbed her hips, stilling her. The heat of her skin burned his fingertips, and he peeked up at her through his lashes.

Maria raised her brow, but the corner of her mouth pulled up in a bemused grin.

“I kind of like you down there; it looks good on you,” she jutted her hip out, placing her hands on her hips above where his rested, but at least she gave him her undivided attention.

“Yeah, I remember,” he teased.

He should have been prepared for the knee to the chest, but he wasn’t and found himself falling back on his haunches.

“C'mon, ‘Luc. I just need you to drive me there to pick up a part. It’s the last part I need to restore this vintage baby out back, and the going price is,” he whistled.

Maria was a survivor like him. She was often hard up and respected the hustle.

“I’m not one to knock a person for securing their bag, but what do I get out of this?”

He exhaled. Once they reached a point of negotiation, he always knew he had her. His heart ached a little when he thought about how behind she was in her payments to the facility she placed Mimi in.

He caught a glimpse of the letter the last time she was poring over her finances; ironically, it was while he was swiping a bottle of booze from behind the bar like a total cad.

He found a way to make it up to her, but he still felt guilty about that.

“Ten percent of the profits,” he offered.

“Twenty,” she countered. “And gas money. I’m being generous.”

“Fifteen, and I’ll tune-up your baby free of charge for the next year.”

She snorted. “You already do that, remember?”

He frowned. She was right. He regularly did whatever mechanical work on her truck on his own dime and time, but it was the least he could do for not paying her for all the booze.

“Fine. Eighteen, and I’ll fix the freezer and the eye on the stove.”

“You already fixed both two weeks ago.” She didn’t bother to hide her smirk that time, and it came equipped with her head canted to the side as she peered down on him only slightly smug.

“Shit.” How the hell did he always end up doing so much for her? The worst part is he never minded, and still didn’t, but it put him in a sticky spot whenever they bartered. “You’re hell on my rep.”

“See a sucker lick it,” she replied sweetly.

He stared at her momentarily dazed his tongue peeking out.

“You promise,” escaped from his lips before he could bite it back. He cleared his throat after an awkward beat and pivoted the conversation. “I know a spot.”

Unfortunately, he didn’t realize how graceless and suggestive it came out until her eyes got a faraway look before she schooled her expression.

He didn’t miss that though.

“A scrap metal spot. Eighteen percent and a side hustle.”

She breathed a sigh of relief, or so he thought, he could never tell with her.

“Deal.”

She stuck her hand out to shake it, and he squeezed tight using her as leverage to hoist himself off the sticky floor.

“Do I need to ask?” She waited for him to read her mind so to speak, and lucky him, he knew where she was headed.

“Trust me, DeLuca. No people or puppies will be hurt by the stripping of this copper. No one will miss it. Certainly no one decent.”

She studied him for a long moment. “I would’ve settled for 12 percent, you know.” It came out smug at first, but then she softened. “I know how hard you worked on that car.”

It was one of the things he liked about her. She was somehow ruthless and soft-hearted at the same time. She needed the money, but she didn’t want to infringe on his profits either.

Haggling was part of their spiel, so they came prepared, but it was her way of making sure she didn’t take too much.

Maria had no idea how much he would sacrifice for her. Even he didn’t understand their thing, but she was his people – somehow, at some point, it just happened, and he didn’t fight it.

Love them or loathe them, he was a self-absorbed bastard, but he always looked out for his people.

“If you plan to get sentimental on me, I will exploit it,” he teased. She rolled her eyes and stormed towards the door to lock up knowing good and well he would be at the heels of her feet.

He always liked driving with DeLuca. It was the main reason he called in a favor in the first place.

Cruising with Maria was pure escapism. It was also when he saw her the most carefree. She laughed and sang, and she drove like she was running away from her problems, and there was no way in hell they’d catch up to her.

She escaped into the open road and wherever it led her, and he escaped into her. It was something simple about that.

Half the time, she forgot he was there at all until he jumped in with the chorus of a song he barely knew the words to, and she laughed uncontrollably at his terrible voice and crappy lyrics.

Some days, he felt like he was drowning, but Maria was like catching a breath.

And there was something refreshing about her never asking him questions.

She didn’t ask much of him, which made him want to share more, so when he directed her to the archeology department of a college campus and had her stay idle in the truck because campus police are a bitch, she only left him with a cryptic, “play nice.”

And when he bolted out a side door with his hat pulled down obscuring his face, an impossibly large box in hand, and a fire alarm blaring loudly, she shot him a puzzled expression but swung the door open.

He jumped inside with the grace of a gazelle, and she sped off before his foot left the pavement – the door swung shut during their hasty escape.

She slowed down as she hit the highway but looked back in the rearview mirror to see if anyone was behind them.

Max or Isobel would have given him hell, and Alex disapproved of his less than lawful pursuits.

“I liked it better when you were speeding,” he broke the silence.

She let out a soft snort. “When you have a body in the trunk, you drive the speed limit.”

“You sound like you speak from experience,” and just like that, he eased them back into their banter. Nope, only Maria would put up with that from him.

“Not yet,” she eyed him and then the box with curiosity. “Day’s still young, though.”

Her smile momentarily dazzled him, and he forgot how to breathe. He admired her restraint; she still hadn’t asked him about the mysterious box that definitely wasn’t a car part he liberated from an establishment with her help.

No one steals car parts from the archaeological wing of a university, but covert space ship pieces? Definitely.

He almost wished she would ask. He knew she suspected something was off – she sensed things, but she never called him out on it. She just gave him the benefit of the doubt in a way no one else did.

If she asked, even once, he would probably take one look at those deep brown eyes and spill it all. It scared the shit out of him.

“Careful, Guerin,” she snuck a look at him before her eyes returned to the road. “You’re going to hurt yourself with all that thinking.”

“You and I both know I don’t do much of that,” he said. He didn’t realize how self-deprecating it sounded until she responded.

“If you were fishing for a compliment, you caught me on a good day because you’re one of the smartest people I know.”

The lump that formed in his throat was unexpected, and the silence that befell them even more so.

“I need a drink,” he said after a while. He googled the nearest watering hole and directed her to it.

She said nothing the whole time, but he couldn’t decipher the inscrutable expression on her face.

They parked some ways away, and he hopped out of the truck to escape the silence – the intensity of it. The intensity of his convoluted feelings for her.

He found the confined space stifling like someone was squeezing the little air left in his lungs, or so he thought, but what did it say about him that he didn’t find his breath again until she was beside him?

Even though it was dusk, the place had a following. They followed the dirt road to the dilapidated shack of an establishment, and he tipped his hat at her while he held open the grimy door.

It smelled of stale beer and cigarette smoke, a scent he was all too familiar with, and he rolled his eyes and swore under his breath at the rebel flag proudly taking up an entire wall over the bar.

Maria merely shrugged. “It’s Texas,” she sighed with a weariness he never thought about.

She shimmied her way to the bartender, and he appreciated the view.

“Two whiskeys neat, please,” she said coolly. Her fake smile was frozen in place when long moments later she still hadn’t gotten them.

His confusion morphed into disbelief, then doubt, but she merely raised a brow and motioned for him to order.

The barkeep gave him the drinks lightning quick, and Maria only snorted when the flirty bartender ran her fingers across his hand and smiled at him.

He slid a glass towards Maria, but it didn’t stop his new friend from engaging in small talk that roughly translated that she was down to screw.

“Always drowning in ass, aren’t you, Mikey?” She slid the glass back toward him, reached across the counter, and grabbed the bottle, pouring the two whiskeys she intended for herself.

She ignored the dirty look and exclamation from the bartender, tossed a wad of cash on the counter and disappeared into the crowd.

He tossed his own money down, grabbed his drinks and followed after extricating his hand from that of the overly friendly blond.

He figured Maria was in search of a jukebox, but instead, he found her at the pool table, stick in hand.

A group of guys was looking on, some with the type of interest that made him snarl and others with a disdain that made him worry.

Sure enough, a scruffy looking redhead made his way to the table and had his hand on Maria’s ass before Michael could reach her.

His jaw clenched at the sight, along with his fists, and he reminded himself not to cause a scene of the inhuman variety.

Before he could blink again Maria had kneed small Red to the groin and bent back his finger to the amusement and annoyance of some of his crew.

“Next time it won’t be my knee,” she hissed before releasing him.

Maria DeLuca’s her own damn hero. She could save herself, but he didn’t give a damn.

“Everything OK, babe?” He said, placing his hand to the small of her back while eying the room.

The only sign she gave acknowledging his little display of territorial machismo was a snort.

“Everything is about to be,” she responded, sensing a challenge.

He followed her line of sight and watched as a muscled guy emerged from the huddle of men and grabbed a pool stick of his own.

Michael recognized him as one of the men whose leering was more disdainful than lust.

She tossed him another stick, and they had a loaded conversation in just one look. Maria was a mystery to him, and despite her psychic claims he knew he was to her, but there were certain things of which they spoke the same language.

Their kinship was in what they did to get by – how they survived. No judgment, just mutual respect and understanding.

It’s why they worked so well together. It’s the reason they barely needed to exchange a word with one another in the hours they spent at that pool table.

He felt the tension in the room, and it made him uneasy. However, the money stacked up.

Maria’s way of fighting back against a world of people that saw her as nothing more than scum was to channel her energy into bleeding them dry. She told him it was more productive than wallowing.

He respected the hell out of it and her, but she made too much of a show of it during her last round. He could tell.

Around the time she crowed a “thanks for your business, gentlemen. Now run me my money,” he knew tempers were on the cusp of flaring.

She won, of course. Or rather, they won. The funny thing was the clowns surrounding them probably thought they hustled them when in reality, he and Maria were just that good.

It wasn’t either of their first times at a table. Maria was a shark in more ways than one, and he relied on some betting to feed himself often growing up.

“Bitch!” Their opponent wasn’t taking the loss well, and he hurled the pool stick in a fit of anger as he advanced on Maria.

He stepped in front of her without a second thought. It wasn’t the first time he stepped between a beatdown and made himself the target. But if he didn’t learn anything from those years of bouncing in and out of shitty foster homes, he learned how to fight and how to take a beating.

“Michael …” he felt her warm breath on the back of his neck as she exhaled. He didn’t have the time to unpack the use of his first name or what she was trying to say.

He swiped the stack of cash off the table and palmed it in his hand, not breaking eye contact with the group of men as he walked backward shuffling Maria along with him.

“You stole our money, and if you think we’re letting you leave here with it, you got another thing coming.”

“Oh, now that’s not true and you know it. Don’t be a sore loser, champ,” Michael responded with a smug grin that earned him a pinch from Maria. “Like the lady said, 'thanks for doing business.”

He tilted his hat and turned to leave with Maria’s hand in his. He knew they were in for hell when he heard a whistle.

“God damn assholes,” Maria muttered under her breath. “They’re really doing this.”

Her irritation was unmistakable, and she picked up her step only slowed long enough to twist the arm of some random drunk who grabbed at her.

They made it as far as the bar before Michael stalled as a mob consisting of most of the patrons at the shithole advanced on him.

The bar grew louder by the second as half the members of some biker gang headed in his direction. He swore profusely. There was no way in hell they were getting out there without a fight.

He shouted as much over his shoulder to Maria, and she was resigned to it as well. He mentally filed away her response curious as to how often and in what capacity did she find herself in a brawl.

They shared a look, then a nod before turning back to back and throwing their punches simultaneously. He heard the guy DeLuca hit howl in pain.

He landed another punch with the drunken prick in front of him and grinned when the guy’s nose gushed with blood; he broke it.

Maria groaned, and his smile turned to a grimace. He still felt her at his back, pressed against him, which was a good sign.

“Maria!” He called behind him.

Someone landed a punch to his gut that knocked the wind out of him, and he doubled over for a moment.

“I’m –” she was winded as she ducked a fist and landed a one-two number that sent some guy to his knees and impressed the hell out of him. “I’m fine, just …”

She was poetry in motion, graceful as hell, and he realized she may very well have some experience with this. He made a note to ask her about it later as her foot met the groin of one creep as her fist connected with the chin of another.

He eyed a guy out of his peripheral rushing toward Maria with a clenched fist. He swung his arm out making the guy land hard on his back and pushed him down harder with his boot.

“You were really about to sucker-punch a woman?” Michael growled.

“I haven’t seen a woman yet,” the guy coughed.

Michael didn’t get to respond. The punch to his eye had him seeing stars, and he blindly swung, landing as many punches as he could.

A sickening smack and a grunt that was all Maria had him seeing red again. He stole a glance over his shoulder and was stunned by how many guys she warded off, but he heard her labored breathing.

He growled loud and animalistic as he drove the heel of his palm into someone’s solar plexus, and he sent the guy sprawling out across the floor.

Fuck it; he couldn’t limit his powers if they ever hoped of getting out.

His heart seized in his chest when Maria disappeared from behind him. He reached around, groping at bodies but not finding her.

The distraction was all anyone needed to get the better of him, and he went down hard. Only then did he find Maria on the floor, but damn that woman, she was still fighting like hell.

It was enough. He tapped into his powers and sent multiple guys looming over them sailing across the room – hitting the walls and sliding down.

“DeLuca,” he croaked. He grabbed her hand and hauled her up. “We gotta book it, babe.”

He slung his arm around her waist, ignoring the sharp inhale of breath she took, and they took advantage of the break in the mob and hobbled out the door.

“Guerin!” Maria yanked on his hand to get his attention. “Looks like those cowards called in the calvary.”

He blinked, his left eye made everything blurry. “A new group of people was trudging down the trail laser-focused on them.

"We’ll go around,” she whispered. She pulled him around the back, her hand sweaty and her gait off. They spotted their truck in the distance, but a linked gate stood in their way.

“Make yourself useful, Guerin,” she barked. Her voice was strained without the fire and heat.

He didn’t need to see her to know what she meant. Her foot was in his cupped hands within seconds. Her soft hands burned his skin as she used him to hoist herself up.

His hands were on her ass, pushing her over the gate until she was comfortably straddling it, and she reached out to help him over too.

They dropped to the dirt and gravel around the same time, but he flanked her as they made a run for the truck. Based on the way she ran, he was betting she sprained her ankle.

They ignored the shooting and hollering from behind the gate as some of the mob celebrated running them off, but a few stragglers attempted to climb the gate as they had done.

Maria wasn’t looking, she was too busy clamoring into the truck and swearing when she realized she had climbed in on the passenger side.

He contorted and twisted the gate sending those on it flying toward the dirt.

“Screw it, DeLuca, I got this,” he slid into the driver’s seat and sped down the dirt road still running on adrenaline.

“Easy there, Clyde,” Maria murmured breathlessly.

He smirked at the reference, then winced at the shooting pain in his jaw.

He slowed down, the adrenaline fading and the pain starting to sink in. It hit him that he and Maria barely escaped a full-blown brawl with some rednecks and not like anything at the WP either. This time he was actually scared for …

He jerked the truck over to the side of the road before Maria could so much as protest and flicked the overhead lights so he could see her better.

“Shit, Maria.’ He studied her intently his hand reaching out not knowing where to touch her but needing to. "Are you OK?”

The light was dim, but he saw she had a busted lip. Her tank top was torn and bloody. His expression and his fist clenched around the steering wheel must have given away his inner turmoil.

“It’s not mine,” she said pulling at the tank top that was nothing more than tattered pieces. Her skin was exposed and her bra, but after a tug, she gave up trying to cover herself knowing it was futile, and she was shameless anyhow.

She had a cut on her forehead that fortunately didn’t look too deep, but he couldn’t fully assess the damage.

He unbuttoned his shirt and wiggled out of it handing it to her so she could cover-up.

“Thanks,” she said with a hiss as she struggled to drape it over herself. She pressed against her ribs and grimaced some more. “Yup, those are definitely bruised.”

He could barely contain his rage.

“Cool it, cowboy.” She smiled past her pain, her pearly whites tinged pink from the bloody lip. “You didn’t exactly get away unscathed.”

She pressed against his swollen eye and cringed sympathetically when he winced.

“I’m fine,” she laughed a caustic noise. “I’ll heal.”

“Good to know. Now, what were you thinking?” He heard the severe tone, but he couldn’t be bothered to soften it. He was too keyed up.

“Wha-”

“You were goading them, DeLuca. Those … those–”

“Racist, misogynistic assholes?” She supplied. He squirmed under the weight of her intense stare. “You didn’t know.”

He started the car back up and headed for the gas station further down the highway.

“I mean the rebel flag is usually a dead giveaway for what kind of establishment we were probably dealing with, but you didn’t know. It’s not on you, and I sure as hell won’t take a lecture about instigating anyone from you, Guerin.”

Just like that, she sliced through his guilt and fear like a hot knife through butter.

“I’m not used to you being the one to start trouble,” he muttered, as they pulled into the parking lot.

“I’m off the clock,” she quipped wryly. “I can’t let you have all the fun, now can I?”

She grabbed his hat and placed it on her head, pulling the brim down until it covered her eyes and all he could see was that smirk of hers.

Maria gave him whiplash in the best possible way. She always managed to surprise him.

He ducked his head, swallowing back a chuckle, the adrenaline that was coursing through him waning.

“Hell of a scuffle to get into over $300, but you kept me on my toes,” he hopped out of the truck and shut the door. “I’ll go in,” his eyes shot to her tattered t-shirt, lingering a second too long on her breasts for it to be innocent. “You’ll draw more attention then I will.”

She barely heard his last words, too busy snickering and wincing over his error. “Oh, babe,” she emphasized the term of endearment mockingly, clearly recalling his usage earlier. “Three hundred? No, it was $3000.”

She pulled a wad from her bra and peeled off a few bills, handing them to him. “For the supplies,” she ignored his surprised expression, the gravity of what they endured finally hitting her as she laid back against the seat.

It turned out the gas attendant wouldn’t have noticed Maria. The kid barely paid him attention.

Maria was dozing when he got back to the car, and he opted to drive a bit more and pull off the side of the highway into the desert.

He hopped out and opened the truck bed, scattering the bags of first aid kits, snacks, and booze.

“Ah, the essentials,” she said at his side. Of course, he felt her before he even registered that she was really there.

He said nothing as he picked her up without warning and sat her on the bed. He tore the rest of her shirt off of her and shoved the remnants in his back pocket.

Maria had popped the cap off of the bottle of Jack Daniel’s he bought and took a swig. But she shot him a look.

“What?” He sighed gingerly prodding at her ribcage. He didn’t see any visible bruising, but he noted how she winced at his touch, so the area was at the very least tender.

“You’re the reason I can’t find my underwear from that day, aren’t you?” She narrowed her eyes at him assessing.

He activated a couple of cold packs, placing them against her and wrapping an ace bandage carefully around her. She hissed but took another sip, brow raised awaiting a response.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” his hands were resting on her hips, and he practically dared her to challenge him.

Doing that song and dance with Maria was almost as effective as a salve and booze.

“I had no need for your …” he slid his hands down her legs, stopping at her calves as he eased her foot out of her boot. “Black lacy underwear with the purple detailing. Not at all.”

He knelt down and ghosted his fingers across her ankle, noting every movement and verbal response. He proceeded to wrap that up too.

“Perv,” she hissed, flinching and squirming beneath his grip.

“I had to commemorate your poor decision making somehow.”

Her finger pushing a curl out of his face was unexpected, and his eyes met hers with a slight frown.

“You’re really good at this,” she said suddenly, seriously, her voice dropping to a whisper like she was trying to keep this observation a secret between them.

As if the desert wasn’t a keeper of secrets.

“I had a lot of practice,” he slipped. He knew he did. He always did with her. And it scared him shitless.

She let it go, reluctantly he could tell, and he almost wished she didn’t. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking, but he could tell her mind was racing with a dozen things she wasn’t saying.

“You gonna tell me where you learned to fight like that?” He studied her intently.

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” she responded, looking as closed off as ever.

“I would, that’s why I asked the question.” The snark jumped out, but she didn’t seem to mind.

“You were impressed,” she mused. “Noted. You weren’t so bad yourself.”

She handed him the bottle whiskey and hopped off the truck bed landing on her uninjured foot.

“Your turn,” she ignored his protest and grumbles, and he hopped on the bed in her stead.

The desert air was cool, and he watched the open shirt he loaned her rustle with the wind. He saw barely visible goosebumps across her skin. His nimble fingers buttoned her up while she cleaned up his lip and eye.

He flinched and whined at every turn, and she called him a baby, but he loved it. He loved the way her face scrunched up in concentration, the warmth of her breath against his face, the way she looked up at him, and her eyes were soft and caring beneath the brim of his hat.

His hand reflexively halted her movements after she dabbed alcohol on the cut along his forehead, and she shook her head, leaning further into the slot between his legs to blow on it.

When her eyes met his again, she gave him an arresting smile that made him inexplicably emotional. He turned his away to shake it off, but her soft hand was under his chin, compelling him to meet her eyes again.

“You good?”

The truth was, he couldn’t remember the last time someone cared for him like that, tended to him. Hell, he couldn’t recall the last time he let someone try.

“Good is not an adjective anyone would ever use to describe me, DeLuca,” he winked at her.

“You know you don’t always have to–”

“Snacks? He shoved a cellophane-wrapped package of cupcakes in her hand. "You should eat something. I got sweet, salty, and spicy.”

He bit into a spicy piece of beef jerky and took another swig of whiskey.

Her lips formed a tight line, but she let it go for the moment. He knew she would file it away for later, though.

She used him as leverage as she climbed into the truck bed. She scooted to the back and stretched out looking up at the stars.

He followed suit, unfolding the blanket in the back and throwing it over both of them.

They fell into a comfortable silence outside of the munching and swallowing, as they looked at the stars.

“I didn’t mean to get us into this,” he broke the silence.

“Driving to another state to steal something that definitely isn’t a car part and getting run out of town by an Aryan motorcycle gang after hustling three grand from them? What’s life without a little excitement and adventure?” Her tone was so nonchalant he wanted to laugh.

“I don’t get away from the Wild Pony much. It’s been a thrill,” she continued

“The last time you were out, it was pretty thrilling,” he teased, grabbing the bottle from her for another swig.

The lip of the bottle left her mouth with a pop, and she frowned at the loss and cursed him under her breath.

“Was it, though,” she posed.

“You certainly weren’t complaining. In fact, as I recall you were begging me to do that–”

She shoved a mini doughnut in his mouth, and his eyes lit up with mirth as he chewed and swallowed.

She shivered, removed his hat from her head and placed it beside her.

When she snuggled up to him, wincing along the way, he only pulled her in closer, his chin resting against the top of her head.

The last time they were like that, they were buzzed, and she told him he ran hot like a furnace.

“Desert, dirt, and truck beds, next time we should opt for a hotel room,” she grumbled.

“Oh, there’s gonna be a next time?” His tongue peeked out, as he bit back a genuine smile.

“You owe me copper. On that alone, it damn well better be one, but bless your heart for getting your hopes up, Guerin.”

He snorted. “I’d be okay. I can hold my breath well, but you know that already.”

He felt her face burning red hot against his skin. Mission accomplished. He waited for a snappy retort, but she fell silent again.

“So you knew there wasn’t a car part, but you didn’t say anything?” His voice was low and husky, hushed. “Why didn’t you ask?”

“Did you want to tell me?” She whispered.

The long silence was answer enough. She didn’t know how much he grappled with telling her so many things.

“I figured if you really wanted to tell me, you would if you were ready. It’s important enough. Does it affect me?”

She sounded tired. And he tensed because maybe it did and maybe it didn’t.

“If it was important to you, and it didn’t affect me, it’s all I needed to know.”

His eyes stung with emotions he preferred to keep at bay. He sniffled, and she chose to ignore it. He was grateful for that.

He slid the whiskey from her fingers and put the top back on it. He used his foot to bunch the part of the blanket at their feet up as best as he could to make sure her ankle was elevated and pulled the rest snug around her.

He could sense a shift in her mood, but all he could do was ride the wave or wait it out.

“You always take care of me.” Her voice was small, hoarse, nothing above a whisper as if it cost her something to say it – like she trusted him with it but was afraid of how he would respond.

It was wonderous, like the mere thought– the concept was so foreign to her she couldn’t process it.

He recognized it as the thank you that it was.

“You always let me,” he whispered back.

This time when she shuddered, he knew it had nothing to do with the cool desert air.

She yawned, then hissed when the action caused her to ache, a litany of curses spilling from her lips to his utter amusement.

“Next time only call me if you’re robbing a bank,” she grumbled.

He scoffed softly but pressed his lips to her hair so lightly he doubted she could feel it. “Will do, Bonnie.”

“Go to sleep, Clyde,” she mumbled. Her soft snores following.

He didn’t, but she never needed to know that.

[mego42]

Best of Brio Hitlist: 1x04

Alright, so I am making my way through the Brio hitlist and due to a combination of @sothischickshe​’s encouragement and my own inability to have a thought about a tv show without sharing it with the internet, I’ve decided to foist my reactions upon you as I go. Cool? Cool. 

Onward under the read more!

I will be super honest I do not remember what happens this ep it’s been a minute (somewhere between 2 months and 84 years, time has lost all meaning)

Oh right!!! Eddie!!!!

I’m sorry this is after the pearls and the kitchen bourbon showdown????? How did that not make the hitlist??????? 

Fine, whatever

The main point of this rewatch is for the Beth and Rio content but sidebar shoutout to the the way Ruby hands that entitled little milkshake drinking pissant his entire ass in front of his friends and then later in front of his karen of a mother

Before there was jumpsuit!Annie we had heavy eyeliner and flannel!Annie aka they have been dressing her like a bisexual the entire time which makes her lack of a girlfriend that much more erroneous 

“He’s not my bff I don’t even know that guys name” 

I legitimately forgot that they learned Rio’s name from Eddie’s call history which makes it entirely possible that is not actually even his name, amazing

HOODIEEEEEEE RIOOOOOOOOOOOO

“who’s at fault is not important” classic beth

S3 may have become a drag but here’s a plus I haven’t properly appreciated: with the exception of one ep, no Boomer

Question for the class: is Turner supposed to be bi/pan/queer (vs gay) or did the writers forget he talked about being into girls in s1

G O D the s1 soundtrack slapped

I ship tf out of Annie and Gregg and none of you can stop me I SAID WHAT I SAID

I’M ONE SORRY BITCH!!!! A CLASSIC!!!!!!!!!!! 

It’s depressing how much I can’t even enjoy Beth and Dean being estranged bc I know how little it’s ultimately going to matter 

and lo! A wild Rio appears!!

please @ god @ Santa bring back Rio dragging Dean

🎶I see it I want it 🎶 #rioisbeyonce

I miss when Beth cared about things and got mad about stuff and wasn’t just generally numb and shut down and tired

The bullet holes in the van and the stickers Beth puts over them remains on of my all time favorite minor visual gags the show’s ever done

SO WHICH ONE OF YALL BITCHES LIKE TO PULL PANTS DOWN

Crying hours that Eddie didn’t get to stick around tbh he was gr9

HOOOOOODIIIIIIEEEEE RIIIIOOOOOOO X2!!!!!!!!!!

god do y’all remember when the show used to do multiple meaningful Rio scenes per episode

and multiple hoodies???????? truly I am blessed

OH YOU GUYS DIDNT HIT ME UP TO DO BRUNCH

RIO NOT KNOWING WHAT TO MAKE OF ANNIE

ILL NEVER SMUGGLE ANYTHING UP MY BUTT (Annie’s like I mean....how much will you pay me)

BETH CALLING RIO A BITCH

RIO BEING LOWKEY INTO IT

THAT LIP!!!!!!!!

I fcking love that gd scene so much

shockingly low amount of stupidity this episode (obvs I am not including Dean in this statement) Beth and Rio clearly haven’t been in each other’s orbit long enough

Biggest takeaway: for real though the s1 soundtrack S L A P P E D

Second biggest take away: half of s3′s problems would be solved if Beth and Rio could take naps and get some of this energy back

Third biggest takeaway: s1 was so FUN I can’t believe I only watched this show for the first time what? 2 months ago? and I’ve already forgotten how fun it used to be

march 2020 was a fcking trip y’all

awww now I have a sad

what do you guys think Mick’s doing? shopping for tiny jackets? dreaming of hot tubs? can’t believe there was a time he wasn’t really a thing

[thethirdwheel404]

Med Rewatch Series (#1)

Right, monkey brain said no sleep no rest, only suffering at the hands of med.

I am going to start with the first episode of S2: Soul Care. Reasoning? I need to check if Latham references Ava in his first interaction with Connor.

If my memory serves me right, when Connor is passed over to Latham for his fellowship, Latham says that he was not his first choice. In fact, his first choice was a brilliant surgeon from South Africa. In the first episode of S2, a season where Ava Bekker is only introduced with one line at the end of the last episode.

If I remember correctly and Latham does actually say that in the first ep of s2, it will be huge for the continuity (and my theory that I came up with today, if you’re interested in following this you should really read that really long post that came a little before this where the basis of the theory is laid out). 

Also in rewatching this I see more of Sarah which, again, I have not seen in two years, and she was the reason I became invested in the show, and the reason I stopped watching after she left.

And all of this even before I start the episode.

There are so many emotions and thoughts running through my brain it literally hurts. I think i’m getting a headache. I’m already really regretting this, this cannot be healthy for me.

(btw, this will basically be a train of thought type thing, I’ll do my best to keep it coherent)

- omg its starting

- i completely forgot how s1 ended but its not importnat in anyway

- just, why are they in a helicopter

- how fast does the episode move ive forgotten and i need to know

-JESUS CHRIST SO DRAMATIC

- THE BEGINNING WITH WILL WHY

- it is at this point where I apologize to all those who made it this far bc we’re literally not even 30 seconds in yet

- i just have a lot of med thoughts

- oh god save me

- i am laughing hysterically

- JESUS CHRIST THE APRIL TB STORYLINE AND TATE WTF

- god that feels like a lifetime ago it was relevant holyshit

-remember when she was pregnant?

- literally what have I missed

- side note, i really like the cup april drinks out of.

-THERE SHE IS

-SARAH

-SHE’S HERE

-and she’s a barista

-literally wtf is this show

-and the dramatic music is still going literally chill man god

-THE WAY SARAH SMILES HOLY SHITTTT come on man there was literally no way i’d survive this but fuck not even a minute in...

- okay but i never understood charles’ family scenario but this is already too fucking long for a minute in so i hope we can just skip past that

-hahahah sharon’s fucking divorce? holy shit, this is too dramatic for the first ep literally save me (at least she acts well)

-yeah the one thing I will say about med (thats a lie ive already said a hundred but yk) is that for the crap storylines and all, the actors take what they’re given and give it their all and i appreciate it so much

-the helicopter’s number is N365UCC and just... succ

-ethans bird (!)

-also the fact that’s so big for ethan to be chief resident is so weird to me. like the last medical drama I watched was greys and they are all like grizzled veterans and have been doing that stuff for actual decades and i tend to put med and greys on like the same level bc they are the only medical dramas ive watched but.. holy crap the people on med are so young?? half their main cast is med students and residents. when nearly every main character on greys is a department head. its wild.

-proud of ethan. proud of my boy (did you know that adam jacobs who played aladdin on broadway was in a s3 episode? fun facts) (fun fact: did you know that ava is the only main character on the show who’s status is now deceased? I’ll shut up now.)

-oh my god i say roland buck III’s name and GOD noah jesus

- i find noah incredibly annoying, especially bc he tries to overshadow reese (my fav) but also just bc hes spoiled [that thing that said that one of the biggest mistakes med made was not having sarah get the emergency med residency at the end of s1 comes to mine, and the fact that noah got his residency easy peasy] - but, i will say that the moment at the end of this season where noah and reese dance together at the party is very adorable. (pre reesker brain showing lmao I really did love sarah with my whole heart) (moreover my snapchat memories were filled with just recordings of reese scenes lmaooooo)

-okay at this point I need to stop once i get to the potential ava thing bc what is happening we’re not even two minutes in why is this so long. (so many thoughts)

- i find will annoying but,,, he is kind of nice to look at. and what i mean is like facial acting (i am a lesbian). like. just. don’t speak. and when he’s being a good character he’s fine. it’s very few and very far between ig

-natalie annoys me so much and shes only had one line, and it wasn’t even a character line, it was mainly exposition.

-EW

-FUCKING EW

-ITS CONNOR HE’S HERE. god i forgot what he looked like in red scrubs and his poofy hair. child compared to s3 and s4. hopefully we see latham soon so we all don’t have to suffer through this. and he looks so angsty. he definetly glowed up in the later seasons.

- i have no clue how to spell definetly. I am guessing literally everytime.

-latham please come and end this all.

-oh haha there’s downey hes dead.

-okay so i actually watched s1 after i watched s2 which is so weird to think about. like that means that i liked s2 so much that i BOUGHT THE DVD FOR S1. yeah. I liked it that much (it really only means I was that much of a simp for sarah). but it also means that technically i watched s1 after i met ava?? like i honestly had NO CLUE what was in my future. did young me ever think she was going to stay up late at night, avoiding history hw while analyzing a defunct character from this show on a whim? a character i was super annoyed with at the beginning? who has no become a huge part of my personality? honestly? no. no she did not.

-and the story with downey was so jarring. and the story with zanetti. like i think i first started watching with the first ep of s2 (the one im talking about rn) and i was a bit lost. so going back and watch s1 to like connect the dots. but i never expected the dots to look like that. its like each season of this show is a completely different show from all the other seasons. like i’ve said before, this show is a headache. but literally latham please come and end this for now.

-GOD CONNOR LOOKS SO YOUNG WHAT THE HELL thats so weird lmaooooo

- like i had absolutely no clue who downey was going into this. and they they started talking like ‘oh yeah he killed his attending’ and i was just like ‘damn bro ill cheers to that’

- that’s literally ava’s first line actually. “i heard your girlfriend went insane and you murdered your attending.” - which was why she was hated at first. that was literally her first line to connor which is like, so hilariously rude that it was instantly iconic.

-also HAHAHAHAH CUE FUCKING ANGST ABOUT CONNOR HURTING EVERYONE AROUND HIM WTF BRO THE EFFECT YOU HAVE ON PEOPLE

- but i’m also sad now. --- “I heard your girlfriend went insane.” Oh. Oh, sweetie. Ava... No. --- but why does s2 ava (all two lines) foreshadow s4 ava in so many ways. like literally what were the writers on.

-baghdad.

-ah yes. the return of baghdad. been a long time since i heard that one, but it is easily one of my favorite running things about med. its just a little detail but the nick name is like perfect. (when i read fanfic where the chars are actually doing doctor stuff in the hospital it makes me light up) the WORLD BUILDINGGGGG. but whatever

-this is the girl who has the fake baby right? that was a really good ep (bc sarah content. can you see my favorites? for the same reason the one where the girl has split personalities easily ranks high with me.) oh wait this is the one where the dad like dies but then comes back for a split second to see his grand child. there’s not really a lot I can say about that, but the fact that i remember it vividly is... weird.

-okay but I actually love the ED in this show. I love how the show is centered around the ED and not the OR like greys. its fast paced, you see a lot about the characters really quickly (one of the reason’s connor’s intro to the hospital in the pilot is certified iconic in my mind [his interactions with will are gold]). the team works well together (usually, when things are good. - which is another reason I hated the show more as time went on. The personal lives interfered more and more and more with their work as time went on. it got so annoying). but like right here will just calls maggies name and maggie is just On It. I love it. I love the fast pace. it’s why this show got me to come back. so many things happen, it overloads my brain, like the way a video game works y occupying all of your attention.

-when is the dad gonna pass out i’m just waiting

-AHAHAHAHAHA JEFF NOOOOO. what even was the deal with jeff that storyline annoyed me so much I never got it. he was friends with nat’s husband (who died) and they were both named Jeff? and she actually ended up getting with Jeff a few times?

- the more you watch med and see how the characters get with each other, the more jaded you become

-omg they’re transferring the girl to the bed i love it when they count

-maggie was great but from what i heard/read they ruined her character too??? just not the same

-lmao only real g’s remember the chicago fire backdoor med pilot (if you want an explanation ask me lmao it was a ride)

- i was a real med simp bc I bought that episode on apple video.

-ahahaha this is so stupid. Jeff tries to do things and Will (being a fucking asshole and jealous, doesnt’ let him). he’s a med student let him fucking learn. also i remember why i hated will

-okay but if you look at greys vs. med, greys literally gives their med students no rights. scratch that. they give they’re interns little to no rights. (i only watched the last three seasons bc lesbian, but in those seasons they introduce the bottom of the totem pole, the sub I’s, who are a step ahead of med students, yet they are jokes on the show.) its just a weird juxtaposition is all.

-”lungs are wet.” dramatic music intensifies.

-OKAY BUT I LITERALLY FORGOT NATALIE SPECIALIZED IN PEDS. LIKE I COMPLETELY 100% FORGOT. HOLY SHIT THATS SO FUNNY i can’t believe in my mass hyperfixation i forgot, just more proof that she doesn’t deserve anything.

-why did will make nat do that call? also idk why but is it weird to anyone else when the characters call each other but just.. their names.

-ahahahah i laugh literally everytime i remember that will is supposed to be in charge like he is threatened by anything that MOVES. (also more juxtapositon to greys bc here the attendings are treated as a joke!)

- hly shit i just remember monday mourning and god damn the angst literally never takes a day off but whatever.

- i dont usually get like this but the dad’s acting here is actually making me sad lol. Usually i get annoyed when family members get emotional (im weird uhhhh)

-why did we have to watch the tube being put in for so long - med is so dramatic this fucking show whyyyy

- i bet u the dad is gonna pass out

-oh ig not oops

-OKAY FUCK ME THAT LITERALLY ONLY TOOK US TO THE TITLES HOW DO I HAVE THESE MANY FUCKING THOUGHTS.

-wait latham introduction we may just be able to call it here.

-haha i fucking hate him (connor). he just... comes off so fake-charming its annoying. i cant get over it lmao

-okay but literally every gives connor shit and I am here for it. Latham: “did you kill him?”

- it is literally so funny but annoy how connor throws hands with literally everyone in his path (like dude just chill come onnn)

-okay. okay. okay. finally the part i was waiting for.

- Latham: I preferred a young woman from Groote Schuur, but I was outvoted.

That’s an actual quote, from Latham. For those who are wondering, Groote Schuur is a famous hospital in, you guessed it, South Africa. This is where I’m calling the episode. This is all I needed.

I just want to restate. This is the first episode of season 2. Ava Bekker is introduced to the show in the last episode of season 2. What does this mean, my friends? It means everything.

For those of you who stuck through to the end, I am very thankful. Here we have probably the first piece of evidence to my theory, at least chronologically.

I, personally, think it’s absurd I remembered this point, but I did. That point, that line, presently, watching this episode with no idea of what the future holds, is only there to tell us that Latham and Connor are not going to agree. But this is the single greatest piece of foreshadowing med has ever done.

Med has never planned anything. I feel confident when I say that. Look at their storylines. They are literally on fire, and every decision the characters make reads like the writers going ‘we have no idea how we made it this far, we thought we would get stopped like ten steps ago.’

When has med ever planned things more than a few episodes in advanced, honestly? Almost never, and going a full season sitting on a plot point, that’s major. This was the first time med has ever planned something miles in advance.

In all honestly, yes I am probably giving the med writers a lot more credit than they deserve. It’s quite possible that as the season progressed they just decided connor needed a new love interest or at least a new dynamic, so they could have just easily looked back and thought ‘oh, hey, here’s a fun little thing we said earlier in the season, wouldn’t it be fun if it paid off?’ That could be true.

Here’s why it probably isn’t. The med writers have no respect for their own continuity. you really think that, in order to come up with a whole new character, they went back to the first episode of the season and paid off a line that is said in less than 2 seconds? no way. Bull. Shit.

honestly, it is probably equally unlikely that either of these things happened. The med writers don’t look back at their story. It’s true, but they also don’t plan things in advance either.

here’s the thing, the more i write, the more absurd it starts to sound. Yeah. Sure. the med writers sat on a character for an entire season, that’s totally a thing that happened and not sarcasm. When pigs fly. everyone knows med is impulsive and messy. But what I am saying is that they planned one thing. One thing.

Ava has an accent. That was a commitment. A pretty uncommon one too. South Africa is such an out of the box choice that god its barely on the map. It asks a lot of someone to act hard while also doing an uncommon accent. If the med writers just decided they needed to give connor a new dynamic, they could have made it a n y o n e. Yeah, sure it would have been nice to have the latham dynamic with the new character, but it would have been so much easier to just create a new character that doesn’t have such a commitment. We all know people who play opposite of Connor Rhodes do not stay around that long.

There is absolutely no reason Connor’s s3 love interest had to be the girl from South Africa. It could have literally been anyone. They could have kept Robin on. They could have made the new character not have so many specific requirements.

At this point, I’m pushing this really hard. Yeah, obviously Ava was planned from the beginning of s2. She had to be. It’s way too specific to be anything else.

What I’m pointing out here is med has never done that before. (at least to my knowledge, if i’m wrong please tell me i don’t want to be a fool) They have never had such a concrete plan for a character, so much as to tease them a full season before they were introduced.

I’m saying, that Ava was special. She was the only character who was teased ahead of her arrival. The one who they knew they wanted, other than the originals, and honestly saying the ‘knew what they wanted to do with the originals’ is being generous. But Ava was different. They had big plans for Ava.

It’s undeniable. Ava was the only character who was planned and teased ahead of her arrival. Ava has such a different style and character than anyone else on the show. She was always planned to be, even when she was just being teased, a rival to connor, meaning she could stand her own against him (or without him).

Now of course, the med writers forgot this when writing s4 and s5. But for the purposes of the important things, all that really matters are the two mentions in s2, and what happens in s3. (for the theory at least).

In conclusion: think about how odd it is that Ava was the only character that was planned over the course of the show. Like sure the characters are planned, but never this far in advance. Med writers don’t really plan anything. I would be shocked if they did anything but through a dart at a spinning wheel. But they had plans for Ava, and they had plans for s3, when she was good.

Think about how odd it is that the med writers had a character planned from the start of s2, that they sat on for a whole season. They never, ever did something so slow and deliberate. Never. It goes against their formula. Like a fucking shark, they have to be moving or they die, at least in their heads. But Ava was always a change to the formula. They had a plan for s3.

that’s it for now. we will see what happens when i watch the last episode of s2.

read the next parts:

Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5 / Part 6 / Part 7 / Part 8 / Part 9 / Part 10 / Part 11 / Part 12 / Extra

[ayankun]

The Asset

so I’m making my mom watch Agents of SHIELD (obviously) and today we watched eps 1x03 - 1x06.  That’s The Asset, Eye Spy, Girl in the Flower Dress, and FZZT.

THEN I ACCIDENTALLY SPENT LIKE FIVE HOURS DISSECTING MY LEAST FAVORITE EPISODE YOU’RE WELCOME

First off, full spoilers ahead, of course.

1x03 is, hands down, the worst episode of the series.  PERIOD.  I didn’t give it my full attention when I did my rewatch, because I remembered it well enough for some reason and the guy that plays Quinn looks too much but not enough like Tahmoh Penikett to seriously irritate me.  DODGED A BULLET THERE.

Giving it your full attention does not do it any favors.  I was physically discomfited, squirming in my seat and dropping snide remarks every 12 seconds.  It’s bad, you guys. 

First off, we have this guy, who is, for now in S1, the one and only “Agent Mack.”

THE SIMILARITIES ARE UNCANNY.

Then this big rig gets dropped like 50 feet and I’m supposed to believe that this guy strapped in the back only had his glasses knocked askew?

Ok then we go see what the team is up to, and lord, three episodes has not been enough time for Chloe or Brett to Figure Their Shit Out.  They’re so awkward and dumb looking.

After a passable briefing scene, where we learn that Baldy McGlasses is a valuable asset (and beloved advisor to FitzSimmons) who was being transported with maximum security before being kidnapped, we get this wildly wild “we have to put something on the screen while exposition happens” shot:

Which cuts contemporaneously to

Thanks I hate it

Where did the atmospheric smoke go?  Was that highway always there?  What time of day is this supposed to be where the ambient light changes so drastically over a matter of seconds?  They couldn’t have kept the camera on the left side of the lane marker?

But it gets worse because Simmons has a line and the coverage for this is basically just a matched jump cut over to the other half of the line up and back again.

I can’t stand it.

So Agent Mack survived the fall and is still on the scene of the accident.  My mom was pretty incredulous that he was alive, and I was thinking it was too bad that he had to sit there for hours waiting to be debriefed instead of being taken to a hospital.

THEN there’s some FitzSimmons pratfall-adjacent sci-fi nonsense that my mom really got a kick out of.  But I was too distracted by Iain’s decision to play Fitz as a douchebag so far this season so I wasn’t in the right mood to be impressed.

Ok then we go back to the lab to do some science on the MacGuffin, and I will admit my favorite part so far is Skye challenging Coulson on the existence of the truth serum, and Coulson plays it so Coulson-y it’s truly chef’s kiss.

BUT THEN May comes along and drops 100 pounds of print media for Skye to review (oh yeah, there’s a key subplot about there potentially being a mole inside SHIELD, which is how McGlasses got got) and MY MOM who REGULARLY prints out things like Facebook posts to keep for posterity rightly pointed out that they have high-tech on this plane like holograms and stuff, so printing out all this correspondence in order to go through it page by page makes 0% sense.

Also we never see it again.

OKAY THEN COULSON AND WARD ACCOST A COWBOY RIDING A HORSE THROUGH THE WOODS.  Said cowboy also just happens to have the incriminating bag of gold on his person, which Coulson and Ward straight up steal.  That’s it.  That’s the whole concept for the scene.  Coulson’s just parked his car along a narrow woodland path, just waiting for a cowboy to come riding along so he can accost him/steal his gold. 

Check out how whack this scene-setting shot is, too.  We have Coulson on the left, facing the Cowboy on the right.  At this trajectory, you can see that Lola and the horse are basically pointed perpendicular to one another.

Yet cowboy pulls to a stop without banking and addresses something dead ahead of him.

Surprise!  Coulson’s over there now and Lola and the horse are facing dead on.

To really drive this home, cowboy spends the rest of the scene on the left, addressing Coulson who remains on the right.

Anyway so yeah, this scene is about roughing up an innocent civilian for intel and then stealing his legally acquired wealth.

At least they can’t take the sky from him.

The purpose of the cowboy gold is that it’s directly traceable back to Quinn Worldwide, which is hilarious considering that one assumes the under-the-table transaction used this method of currency in order to not be easily traced.

Coulson name drops Quinn like he’s some off-brand Tony Stark that we should be impressed with, and we are immediately shown that Ian Quinn’s defining characteristic is that he has an assistant to hang up his cell phone calls for him.  We are not impressed with Ian Quinn.

OKAY AND THEN WE GET THIS COMPLETE MIS-READ OF SCRIPT INTENT IN THIS SHOT

why why why why why why would you ignore a character’s line like that.  Why are you choosing to TELL me that a man is tied up when it would be SO EASY to SHOW me. 

Especially since the narrative so far is that McGlasses has been skillfully kidnapped by a very determined adversary, and this moment, this interaction, is where that assumption is proven erroneous.  Quinn’s line is a very specific cue that we are meant to SEE that he’s restrained, per our expectations following a kidnapping, specifically to introduce the twist that Quinn is just that budget Tony Stark who actually has no malicious intentions towards his former colleague.

A super close close up of McGlasses fails to achieve that moment the script was hunting for.  I’m feeling that the intent was to keep the focus on this dude because of the upcoming secondary twist where he is revealed to be the SHIELD mole who masterminded his own kidnapping, but this guy is So Bad at acting I don’t think keeping him front and center is ever going to pay off.

(ok I just checked and it turns out Ian Hart is a prolific English actor.  this makes me feel like I ought to chalk it up to “difficulty emoting while doing a fake American accent” but guys this performance is so bad I’m really not willing to believe there’s a good excuse)

anyway it turns out Quinn’s good guy!

.....but then he’s on the wrong side of the shot all of a sudden for no good reason and HEY maybe this set up with the wide angle on the lab and a clear look at McGlasses’ physical situation within that environment would have been an alternative for, you know, maybe some sort of establishing shot?  Maybe?  No?

Also here let’s take a moment to let the “plot” really sink in.  These two chuckleheads are former classmates and colleagues, even though one of them looks about 20 years older than the other, and Quinn discovered that “an asset” was being moved, “deduced” that the asset was McGlasses, and wanted to bring McGlasses in on his semi-nefarious science plan.  So to avoid SHIELD interference in his schemey scheme, Quinn

kidnaps McGlasses directly from SHIELD custody,

in the showiest manner, not only using but LEAVING BEHIND the exact product at the core of his scheme,

and pays a local cowboy with easily traceable gold in exchange for just some regular backhoe to bust open the big rig transporting McGlasses, instead of, I don’t know, using his massive wealth and influence and in-house R&D products to not massively incriminate himself

He couldn’t have just invited McGlasses over without calling attention to himself? 

There is the way that “the asset” was being “moved” makes it sound like McGlasses was on top secret lock down with no civilian rights or means of making/receiving contact with people like old colleagues.  But this is never clarified, like, the only other thing we know about him is that he evidently advises classes at the Sci-Ops branch of the SHIELD academy. 

ALSO we have yet to learn that McGlasses personally staged “being moved” and leaked the hints regarding the identity of “the asset” to Quinn just so that Quinn would do all these nonsense things he done.  He couldn’t have just invited himself over???

Also the conversation they have at this point is real rough, with non-sequiturs, shambling exposition, and garbage jokes that wouldn’t float even if you didn’t have a log and a ham struggling to mimic human behavior.

Also Quinn bought the PRIME MINISTER OF MALTA’S old manor specifically because it has a huge underground lab????  What about Malta do I need to know about before this makes sense?

Let’s move on.  FitzSkimmons have an only-mostly painful scene of exposition in which Iain is still having a hard time with the lines/characterization the Powers That Be are forcing Fitz to be at the moment.  I’m going to say it.  Season 1 Fitz is Utterly Unlikable.

However, this rant has given me the opportunity to 1) stand corrected and 2) appreciate this understated joke:

She’s still on page 1 of 1 billion LOLOLOLOL

The other nice thing to come out of this scene is the casual validation that the public school system may not be right for everyone, and that being a high school drop out does not mean you can’t also be an intelligent self-starter who finds value and satisfaction in picking up a trade skill on your own.  *coughs in Robbie Reyes*

UGH but then we go back to McWooden and Bargain Ham.  Their story is UNINTERESTING and their performances are HARD TO STOMACH.  Also it ends on a mirror of the shot we started with (so there is some evidence of intelligent design at play here after all)

But this framing makes me so uncomfortable like, I’ve shipped for less don’t put weird ideas in my head that no one wants least of all me--

Ok.  We’re a third of the way through.  It doesn’t stop getting worse.

So here’s the correct way to reposition your characters if you want to change up the eye lines without making it super jarring!  The start of this scene is actually really textbook-nice, just look:

The pre-mission planning is already in full swing, but we follow Skye, the outsider on the outside, approaching the scene with some amount of hesitation.

She starts on the right, facing left, and crosses across the path of the camera as it follows her towards the meeting, ending up on its left while the folks currently giving lines are framed over her right shoulder.  Your eye line and sense of positioning has fluidly followed hers, and this makes sense.

From this establishing shot, we do a real nice punch in on Coulson as he’s speaking, using a really action smooth cut as he does a bit of business with his hand.

We’re still coming into this scene from Skye’s POV, and this shot reflects that -- close enough to focus on the important action, but distant enough to show Skye’s current position (literally and figuratively) relative to the rest of the team.

The reverse shot is ... fine.  It’s fine.  I don’t like that she’s framed on the right hand side of the screen (exactly where Coulson was a split second ago), but the eye lines still match up and it does give the impression that the camera is the avatar of the audience and we just turned on the spot to look at her as she quietly invites herself to this scene and starts putting that big beautiful brain of hers to work.

Then we leave her to it!  Feel the difference this cut has, emotionally, from the last time we looked over at Coulson:

We’ve left Skye’s aloof POV and now we’re all up in his biz.  This framing tells us he’s no longer the subject of Skye’s contemplation and has gone back to being a character of the TV screen doing TV character things.

The remainder of this scene holds onto that “normal” shot-reverse-shot framing of the team as they give their opinions and work through the plan.

This laudable result of thoughtful camera work is almost instantly ruined by Fitz yammering on about using a brave little monkey to do their serious spy business and HOLY COW Iain does his best with the dreck he’s been given but there is no universe in which I will find this type of dialogue acceptable.

The valuable plot point here is that Skye is finding her footing on the team, doing hacky stuff on her phone and putting herself out there as -- wait for it -- an asset to Coulson.  Ward responds to this with bafflement, being generally supportive of her known abilities while also being doubtful that she’s a complete package, and turning to Coulson for advice on how to round her training out.

This results in yet another JARRING AF transition (read: there’s no transition) from Ward and Coulson’s heart to heart to Ward pointing a gun at Skye at some indeterminate amount of time later.

Look we haven’t even had time to ingest Coulson’s line yet and BAM we’re here.

This scene’s fine.  It’s doing double duty and that’s admirable.  Triple duty, even.  Many duties are being performed in this scene.  We have

fledgling Skyeward

the introduction to the gun-manipulation maneuver Skye will use later on

Skye’s irreverence butting heads with Ward’s need for brass-tacks

at least one solid joke at Ward’s expense

Ward valuing Skye’s er, assets -- I’M TALKING COMPUTER SCIENCE YA PERVS

a very competent conversational segue into Ward’s Whole Deal, wherein we are introduced to the concept of his childhood trauma (lolol and man does Brett just fail to deliver these lines in any sort of a way that inspires human empathy wowowo he’s so bad in this one)

a callback to an earlier conversation as well as a set up for a future joke

SKYE STEALING WARD’S GUN FROM OUT OF HIS PANTS A++++

Now we go into pre-heist plan-walkthrough mode, and it’s so boring and lifeless that Skye’s actual summary line is “Plan, green, drop, walk ... pie.”  To be honest, she got more out of the discussion than I did.

May has an interesting character moment where she’s complaining about going into the field and then immediately regrets it because she was never going to be sent in, but that means Coulson’s going in instead and that worries her.  I keep thinking back on this season as being unfocused, but that’s because I forget that the sales pitch for this entire shebang is “we killed Coulson in Avengers but now here’s a show where he’s the lead because everyone loves him so much” and the subsequent focus of the inaugural season is everyone’s burning curiosity to find out how they undid his murder. 

Aside from the sci-fi/Marvel/generic spy show gimmick of the week, these early episodes never fail to prioritize the interpersonal dynamic of their team while simultaneously teasing out the Coulson mystery with these nice little regular hits.

I let it keep playing while I was typing, and we flew over some whatever business where Skye goes to Quinn’s party, and Coulson and Ward land their little raft on the beach, and the other kids are watching from the Bus and FITZ IS AGAIN TERRIBLE

I feel you, Jemma.

(Also, am I wrong in hearing him give in and say “boobs?”  The Netflix subtitles have it as “oops” but that can’t be it.)

Anyway so Skye’s busy using her Assets to win Quinn over, and Chloe’s shining moment in this scene is the delivery of the drivers test joke.

Back to stuff that’s gratingly awful, we’re supposedly on Malta, right?  And you know how Hollywood generally and the spy show/movie genre specifically tries to stretch their location budgets by putting on color filters to “evoke” distant lands?

We go from the above, washed out and unfiltered, to this sepia-toned nonsense:

This is supposed to be taking place basically right outside.  Why not just keep the filter on for the interior scenes, too?  There’s plenty of searing Maltese light coming in through that wall of windows.

(They must have had a hard time on location for the manor shoots, though, it’s just as washed out in the earlier scene set outdoors that I didn’t show you because it was boring but I’m showing you know because it’s not even the same color filter as the Coulson/Ward shots

)

((Also, yeah, I get it.  You can’t fly to Malta for a day for a television shoot.  But how many people are you fooling when you put the Santa Monica mountains in the backdrop of every exterior shot?))

So we go back and forth between these high-grain-low-saturation beachfront stuff to these holy angelic light of judgement shots and I hate it.

Like, why choose to shoot against this nuclear-blast light?  It’s not doing your actors any favors.

Especially when you’re ALSO choosing to depict that same “natural” light with a whole different palette and then continue to give us the opportunity to compare and contrast.

Also I hate the Ward/Coulson business because it’s just generic spy stuff where some guards come out of nowhere and I guess maybe it’s implied that their cute boat was found but it could just as easily be that it was explicitly stated that there were guard patrols and I forgot. 

But then they fight and defeat the guards in literally under 8 seconds and that’s that.  End of stakes.

The character moment that validates this trivial obstacle is that Coulson tries to do something with a gun and finds that May’s concerns weren’t entirely unfounded.  He’s a little rusty. 

Also Ward’s response to this is to chuck the gun into the laser wall and I don’t know why.  In any case, the energy from both of them in this screenshot really resonates with me.

So then Skye Does The Thing with her Assets and if you’ll let me be picky again about plot holes, why does the wireless access MacGuffin need to have an interface for Skye to check that the connection is possible, and THEN have that connection activated by LITERALLY dropping it on the table.  They couldn’t have set it to auto-scan and then tell her through her earpiece to stay still when the connection activated itself?

Whatever.  Success!  Immediately followed by ... INEXPLICABLE OBSTACLE

WHO, praytell, is on the other end of that walkie talkie?  Because the downed man is the man you see.  Typically, it would be like a survivor of the scuffle who radios for backup, but here we see the scene of the scuffle and some unknown unseen ADDITIONAL MAN who I guess is just spying on them from somewhere and radioing still more unseen men?

Instantly hearing this news, the Unseen begin a sniper assault on Coulson and Ward, and we get to see their bullets getting evaporated by the laser wall.  Remember those guards walking along the sea cliff towards the sign?  There’s no place for the snipers to be sniping from, unless they have some kind of invisible floating island.

This scenario is made even more hilarious once Fitz brings down the laser wall and Coulson and Ward dive through like they think they some kind of James Bonds and then the wall goes back up and the snipers keep sniping.

Why aren’t the guards on the inside of the perimeter of the compound which they guard?  This laser fence is now protecting the intruders.  Minor design flaw.

Anywho, Quinn is still talking about how he doesn’t trust SHIELD and SHIELD doesn’t trust him, so it’s like, what are we supposed to believe about this guy anyway?  Why did Coulson introduce him as bargain bin Tony Stark if he was known to be bargain bin Justin Hammer all along?

So now that snipers have failed to snipe the intruders, some Seen Guards come to alert Quinn so he breaks the wireless MacGuffin and turns a gun on Skye.  (Just sayin, if it had been some secret device that was still in her bag, she’d have plausible deniability) 

I think, at this point, I have two conclusions

Team Coulson has no extraction plan for getting McGlasses out of the compound since they don’t have a Plan B to get back through the laser wall, no firepower to use on the Seen Guards, and no available land-or-sea getaway vehicles.

There was never any sort of extraction plan for Skye even if the laser wall and the Seen Guards were not an obstacle.

Here’s where it gets the messiest.

Coulson busts in on McGlasses but is told no rescue is required.

AT THAT SAME TIME

May has just popped open a tablet over in some room by herself, evidently disinterested in whatever FitzSimmons is probably doing right now in light of this drastic turn of events, and she’s randomly googling up on the SHIELD leak mentioned earlier, only to discover that it was MCGLASSES ALL ALONG.

Keeps a cool head, our May.

Yeah, we know, we .. he ... he just said ... you know what?  We didn’t actually care, though?  Who the mole was or that it was McGlasses.  We certainly didn’t spend the last half hour watching May diligently tracking down some breadcrumb trail of clues to get to this dramatic reveal, only to find out a second too late.  We didn’t even see her checking up that Skye had/didn’t have this angle covered.

Did she print out the contents of the four-foot binder as some sort of eco-terrorist cruel joke since she was just planning on spending three seconds on the computer to complete the same task?

Ok so Coulson misinterprets McGlasses’ decline of his rescue operation as collaboration with Quinn until May clues him in.  We then go to commercials and come back and have to go over all this info again just in case we didn’t follow that super exciting double-cross the first two times.

At which point we figure out where all the pre-production time was sunk -- somebody had to spend a lot of effort envisioning how they were going to do the wacky-gravity scenes.  My feeling is that fun challenges like that are what stand out to people who are working on a thing, and sometimes the prestige of “pulling that off” can overshadow the need to pay attention to other, less exciting aspects of filmmaking, like making sure your eye lines stay coherent in a scene or that your color gradings aren’t super distracting.

Anyway I do really like the load-bearing scene where Quinn threatens Skye at gunpoint because it is one of those many examples this season has of laying ground work for and paying off character moments.

Skye’s flip and smart and completely not ready for this level of field action, but she remembers her training, remembers how earnestly Ward wanted her to be ready for this defining moment, and gets the gun!

That “nOPE” when she can’t shoot the man is also Classic Skye and we Love Her For It.

Anyway oh yeah, McGlasses reveals his master plan to get kidnapped, so that he could get on site and ruin Quinn’s everything because he’s a Bad Justin Hammer.  His performance is SO PAINFUL and his reasoning has yet to make sense.  Coulson doesn’t ask “why did you have to be kidnapped to get in, though” but he does ask “why didn’t you try reasoning with him” as if that were the question we needed an answer to.

Also it turns out FitzSimmons has been pretty chill this whole time since their agents lost their extraction plan (well, they’re smart, they probably knew all along that there wasn’t one) and are just puttering around the lab working on what looks like their regular day-to-day science, talking excitedly about gravitonium rather than panicking that the whole plan’s gone to shit.

Unflappable.

COME ON PEOPLE the mission wasn’t “throw McGlasses into the gravitonium and do high-fives” it was “rescue McGlasses from Quinn’s grasp.”  From the way that this plays out, there is 0% indication that their initial plan was ever expected to succeed.

WE DON’T EVEN SEE HOW THEY GET OUT OF THERE, WE JUST LOOK AT SOME MCGRAVITONIUM AND THEN SEE COULSON ON THE BUS INSTRUCTING THE CONTAINMENT FACILITY ON HOW IT SHOULD BE HANDLED.

Oh well, the gratuitous plot is disposed with after this point.

In the denouement, we get to see May and Coulson interact over his experience in the field and her experience being stuck watching him in the field.  She’s finally ready for combat, but strictly for his sake.  And he’s at the point where he’s ready and willing to take her up on her offer instead of trying to prove that he’s everything he was before he died.

Following that, we get some Skyeward with some really gross romantic comedy type music.  Bear, you’re better than this!!  But the scene is nice, Chloe really brings it (almost brings too much) and Brett is there to support her.

It’s a really on-the-nose admission from Skye that her allegiances lie with SHIELD, but its an organic continuation of that bit from earlier where she wandered all up on their meeting, the outsider, and pushed her way into the heart of it.  She wants this.  She wants to feel like she belongs here.  And now she’s been trusted with some opportunities and tools to prove it!

This early in the season, we’re still doubtful that she’s on the up and up, what with that Rising Tide plot thread hanging so loose and tantalizing over our heads.  Due to the potential of a storyline revolving around her betrayal, there are a lot of fun little moments in the next few episodes where Ward gets to say some betrayal-related stuff that is absolutely excellent in retrospect.

I was watching some old interviews and while it is very clear Brett did not know the fate of his character in advance, it’s also distinctly implied that no one knew and the arc of the season may have developed episode by episode.  That’s so nutty to me, considering how strong the structure of the season is, how there are so many satisfying call backs and payoffs later on.

I think I’m more likely to applaud a well-plotted narrative, in which foreshadowing and a deliberate order of events slowly unravel to great effect.  But I can definitely appreciate the ability to force the illusion of the same by being crafty and attentive and not letting any usable threads go to waste.

Ultimately, whether by design or by providence, Season 1 is successful in pulling it all together.  It’s just that episodes like this one don’t really inspire you to believe that that outcome is likely, or even possible.  Episodes like this one cause a person to give up watching halfway through the season and walk away for years until cajoled into giving it another shot because “it got good somehow.”

But what this season has, every episode, especially ones like this one, is a pronounced, chaotic, relentless prioritization of Character over Plot.  What is this show about?  Who cares.  That’s the wrong question.  This show could have been about anything, and these early episodes are all too aware of it.  What kind of story can you tell when every option is on the table and no one knows what to expect from you?

You find that story, step by step, episode by episode, through the eyes of your characters.  The forward motion of the story isn’t “how did Coulson come back to life” but “what is life going to be like for him now?”  It’s not “will Skye betray the team” it’s “what does she want and what is she willing to do to get it?”

Posing and answering these character questions generates the Story of Agents of SHIELD.  Plots be damned.  Remember how at one point in this episode, our heroes robbed a cowboy at gunpoint?  Yeah.  Me either.

And I can’t agree more with this approach.  In my experience, PWP works best when its about the characters.

[deafeningnightcollection-things]

Worlds Collide ~ TEEN WOLF

Chapter 4: Why is the truth so hard? (S1 E2)

Cassie was at war with herself the entire drive from the vet. Her parents needed to know that there were hunters in town and that these hunters knew about them. But she wasn't ready to leave Beacon Hills behind. She couldn't leave Derek or Stiles and she couldn't bear to leave Scott like this. Not when he'd just turned, and felt scared and alone, perhaps not ever.

When she pulled up to her house she couldn't force herself to get out of the car. "They're going to kill me. I survived hunters only to be murdered by my own parents."

Derek laughed, but his eyes were dark. She knew he'd worried and truthfully so had she, but it was easier to laugh and pretend nothing scared her.

"Come in with me," she begged. "My parents love you and they would never yell at me when we have a guest."

"Ok."

"Thank you. Thank you." She tossed his keys back to him with a smile.

"Wait." She turned, half out of the car. He tossed her his jacket, "you really don't want to go in looking like that." He indicated the blood and dirt caked on her shirt. She zipped it up gratefully. Pausing a moment, she dusted the dirt off her pants as best she could. Thankfully the jacket hung low enough to hide the worst of the blood.

Derek reached the door before she did, she was purposely dragging. She wasn't ready to lie to them. He stepped aside and let her open the door, she turned the knob slowly, trying not to make any noise. But, of course, parents always seem to know.

"Where have you been, young lady?!"

"Hi, mom." She answered sheepishly propping the door open the rest of the way. "Before you freak out just know that I brought a friend with me."

Derek stepped through the doorway awkwardly. "Hi, Mrs. Narm."

Immediately her mother's whole demeanor changed. "Derek Hale, sweetheart. It's good to see you. I was so sad to hear about your sister."

Derek nodded, seemingly unsure what to say.

"That still doesn't explain why you weren't in your bed this morning, Cassaia." It was her dad's turn to use the 'disappointed parent' voice.

"I know. And I would've called, but Stiles and I were talking last night and it was late and I just fell asleep." She rubbed the back of her neck, not sure what else to say, "sorry." She tried awkwardly.

Her mother narrowed her eyes before nodding and Cassie made a mental note to tell Stiles her alibi when she got to school. School! She realized.

"Mom. Dad. As fun as this has been, I have to get ready for school or I'm going to be seriously late." She nudged Derek in their direction before taking off for her room. She knew he'd get back at her for tossing him to the wolves, but she was going to be very late if she weren't ready soon.

She tossed Derek's jacket onto her bed. She'd wash it and give it back to him later. Her hair was a mess, greasy and frazzled. It needed a full wash, but for now, she ran fingers through it, wincing at the tangles, and threw it into a messy bun. She swapped her dirty shirt for a clean one and changed out of her jeans in favor of a pair of clean shorts. Her shoes were in good enough condition to leave alone.  A spritz of perfume and she was ready to go. She was halfway out her bedroom door before she realized that she'd forgotten her backpack.

She spotted on her bookshelf and tossed it over her shoulder.

"Record time." She congratulated herself as she made her way down the stairs. She was grateful to see that Derek was still waiting for her. He looked pretty uncomfortable, trapped in a conversation with her parents. So she decided to throw him a bone.

"Derek, ready to go?" He looked up, nodding.

Her mother frowned, "but we were having so much fun talking to you, sweetie. You have to come back soon, it's been too long."

Derek nodded again, standing up.

Cassie waited until they were in the car to breathe a sigh of relief.

"Sorry about that," she told Derek as he started up the car. "I know how they can be."

"You'll make it up to me by getting the blood out of the back seat."

She laughed, he knew how to do payback. "Of course, but only if I get to school on time."

———

They made it to Beacon Hills High with 10 minutes to spare.

"Thank you." She waved as Derek pulled away.

She grimaced as she saw Scott and Stiles walking towards her. God, I am not ready for this conversation. I can't lie to them, but I can't tell them anything. Gah, why is the truth so hard?!

"Hey." She greeted them as nonchalantly as she could. "How are you guys?"

"How were you in the Preserve last night?"

Stiles gaped, apparently this was news to him.

Cassie sighed, way to beat around the bush, Scotty.

"I can't tell you that."

"Cassie. You saved my life, at least tell me how. Are you like me?"

She bit her lip, maybe she could skate the line a little bit. She let out a deep breath. "Truth. I'm not like you, I can't tell you what I am." She held up a hand to stop protests before they came. "It isn't my secret to tell, and even if I could tell you. It would put all three of us in even more danger. There are hunters out there, Scott." Her shoe scuffed the ground as she made a wild, frustrated kick at thin air. "People who like nothing better than to put a bullet before our eyes. Just for the crime of existing. You have bigger problems than my secret."

"Hi normal person here," Stiles interjected with a raised hand, "back up, please. No one said anything about hunters. Who are they? What do they want?"

"They want to wipe us out." The words hung heavy in the air, and she almost regretted saying them, but she needed to make them both understand the stakes here. This wasn't some movie where you got superpowers and went off to save the world while the adoring public cheered. This was a fight for survival, where the slightest mess could cost you your life.

"But, why?" Scott's voice was quiet, scared. "Why do they hate us?"

"Because we're stronger than them and people are always afraid of those that are stronger than them. They hunt us because it makes them feel strong. We're an endangered species, Scott. Welcome to the fight."

Scott's breathing was becoming erratic.

Crap. She was regretting snapping at him, if only he knew the night she'd had.

"Hey. Scott. Scott. Listen to me, you're not in this alone. Stiles and I are here for you." Stiles nodded.

Scott's eyes were still full of panic. She couldn't stand to see him like that any longer, she wrapped him in his fierce hug. He hugged her back with a force that was almost bruising. She pulled away when she heard his heartbeat slow down. She met his gaze steadily, giving him every emotion she had. "It's ok. You. Are. Not. Alone."

Scott's eyes clouded for a moment and he sniffed. "You smell like blood." He tossed it at her like an accusation, but she could hear the worry in his tone.

"Uh, yeah." How to phrase this so it didn't sound bad. "I got shot." Oh no, she cringed.

"What?!" Scott and Stiles screeched nearly in unison.

"How?" Scott.

"Where?" Stiles.

"It's no big deal, Derek found me before I bled out."

Stiles's eyes bugged, that had been completely the wrong thing to say.

"Before you what?" Stiles looked like he was about to faint.

"Ok. Keep your eyes in, Stiles." Cassie took a steadying breath, she was not ready to recount her near-death experience only hours after it had happened.

Ring.

Saved by the bell, literally.

"Come on, we're going to be late." There was a silent 'we'll finish this later' passed between them as she turned towards the school. She started walking without looking back at them. She needed something normal in her life right now and there was nothing more normal than highschool.

———

The day seemed to fly by and all too soon the last bell was ringing. Cassie packed up slowly, not eager to talk to Scott and Stiles. She was not ready to talk about last night and if they asked why she'd probably break down. It was a very lose-lose situation. She picked up one of her pencils too forcefully and it snapped in half. Thankfully, everyone else was too busy chattering and packing up to notice.

Stiles and Scott had already rushed out to lacrosse practice, though not before Scott had given her a questioning look. Curse that boy for being preceptive sometimes. She slid notecards into a bag pocket before snapping it shut. The rest of the class had gone and the teacher was watching her expectantly. She swung her backpack onto her back with a huff and headed off towards the lacrosse field. She almost didn't go, but if Scott wolfed out on the field there would be no one else who could stop him.

Her dawdling had unintended consequences, she'd managed to avoid Scott and Stiles, but now the only available seat in the stands was directly in front Allison and Lydia. Cassie almost turned around right there. She did not to just calmly sit in front of Allison when only hours earlier she'd almost died from a bullet her father had fired.

But then she saw Scott's face and how happy he looked doing probably the one thing that still made sense to him right now. She couldn't turn away from that. As a last resort, she dug around in her bag for her headphones. She slid them on, blaring music to drown out the rest of the world. Hopefully, this would keep her from having to talk to Allison.

She slid into the seat carefully, doing her best not to draw attention to herself.

Tap.

Maybe it'll go away.

Tap. Tap.

"Yes?" Cassie spun around to face Allison. She did her best to keep her face neutral.

"Scott really bolted out of that party. Do you know if he's ok?"

"Scott? Yeah, he's fine." She answered distractedly, trying to end the conversation as soon as possible. But then Allison said something that surprised her.

"Are you ok?" Was that genuine concern in Allison's voice?

"Yeah." She lifted a hand as if to brush the comment away, but Allison caught it.

"Cassie, you're shaking."

I am? She hadn't noticed, but now the trembling grew worse. There was a faint ringing in her ears. I need to get out of here.

She tore her hand from Allison's, not even bothering to offer an explanation. Her fight or flight instinct that hadn't kicked in last night was choosing now to shoot her body full of adrenaline. She wrung her hands together, silently begging them to stop trembling. She moved as fast as she could while still walking. She just needed to get...away.

She didn't even notice where she was until she slid down against the back wall of the school and started bawling. It was all too much. She just sat there.

It could've been minutes or hours before she heard a voice calling her.

"Cassie?" It was Allison. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to upset you. I was just worried about you."

She wasn't able to form a clear sentence in the midst of all her blubbering so she just shook her head, unsure what else to do. Allison slid down the wall next to her, slowly. She paused for a moment before cautiously wrapping an arm around Cassie. In any other circumstance, she would've shaken the Argent off and been on her way, but she needed human comfort and at the moment she didn't care where it came from.

"Shhh," Allison whispered as she walked rocked Cassie gently. She didn't say anything else, just held her softly. It was as though she knew that silence was the best cure. Eventually, Cassie ran out of tears. She sniffled softly one last time before removing her head from the crook of Allison's neck.

"Thank you." Cassie's eyes were red and puffy, and she still had a lot of the mess of the previous night on her, but the Argent girl just smiled at her sweetly and nodded.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Now the silence that fell between them was awkward as Cassie avoided Allison's gaze. She was sweet, yes, but she was still an Argent. How much did she already know and how much could Cassie say before she became suspicious? Allison had shown her kindness though, perhaps she could tell her, with a few details omitted, of course.

"I was in a bad situation, a while back. I got pretty banged up. I guess...I never really processed it before today. And something just made it all come tumbling back."

Allison nodded slowly, and gently squeezed Cassie's hand. "If you need someone, I'm here."

Thank you. The words got caught in her throat and she was only able to nod. But Allison seemed to understand. They sat like that for a little while longer. The silence was thankfully less awkward.

"Practice is probably over now. I wouldn't want to miss my ride." Cassie stood up stiffly, her muscles screaming in protest. "But, maybe we could talk again soon?" She'd intended it as a statement, but it ended up more like a question.

Allison smiled at her kindly. Maybe she's not as bad as the rest of her family. The thought popped into her head unexpectedly. The last thing she'd expected today was to be sharing an easy smile with an Argent.

As Cassie approached the school she found Stiles, already changed out of his lacrosse uniform, sitting in the now-empty stands. He appeared to be waiting for her because as soon as he saw her he hopped down and jogged over.

"I didn't see you when practice ended." He used the accusation to forgoe a normal greeting, jumping straight to the point.

Cassie shrugged. "I just didn't feel like watching today."

She didn't know why she bothered to lie. Stiles had this uncanny ability to see right through her deceptions every time. Evidenced one again in the way his eyes pierced her, thankfully he didn't call her out. Instead, he changed tack.

"Scott seemed pretty bummed that you weren't there."

She reached across to smack him lightly, a half-glare on her face. "Low blow, Stliniski."

Stiles shrugged in response, clearly feeling unashamed.

"Where is Scott anyway?" Cassie hadn't noticed his absence until Stiles brought it up.

"Trying to patch things up with his girlfriend." She stumbled, an icy feeling in her chest. Why was she surprised, she knew that Scott wanted to make up with Allison. But something about the fact that he'd actually done it left her feeling cold.

Stiles's eyes watched her once more, with that look he always had. Like he knew so much more than she'd said. They continued toward Roscoe in a moderate silence, Stiles tossing in his usual brand of humor now and then. They were feet from the jeep when Scott barrelled toward them, his face white as a sheet.

His hands flailed wildly as he tried to explain his situation, but the words kept coming out jumbled. Cassie caught one of his flailing hands and squeezed it gently, not releasing it until he'd finally calmed enough to tell his story.

"Allison's dad is the hunter. He's the one who shot at us." You could hear a pin drop in the silence that followed his words.

On instinct, she gazed in the direction he'd come from. Allison stood next to a black SUV talking to a man that Cassie knew to be her father. Almost as though he knew someone was watching he glanced at her. Cassie shuddered as she met the steel grey eyes that had almost killed her the night before. She ducked her head down quickly, wanting to disappear. The tremors that Allison had helped her through were threatening to rack her body once again.

She couldn't break down, not here. It was one thing to break down in front of a girl who seemed to want to be her friend, but to break down in front of Scott and Stiles, the people she always tried to be so strong for. She couldn't let herself do that. She took a couple deep breathes and shoved the fear back down into a deep dark hole where she could forget about it for now.

Scott and Stiles were too wrapped up in the shock of his news to notice her moment of weakness. Scott was still moving around sporadically, trying to come to terms with this new piece of information.

She squeezed Scott's hand again, beckoning them both closer to make sure that they weren't overheard. She grabbed Stiles's hand as well pulling them both close.

"I have experience with hunters. As long as we keep our heads down, and you don't go crazy on the full moon. We'll be fine."  

Scott nodded.

"And this means you have to extra careful around Allison," Stiles added, a tad patronizingly.

"I know," Scott sighed. "I know it's the right thing to do. I just...don't want to."

"Ah, to be young and in love," Stiles said sagely, clapping Scott on the back.

"Shut up."

[steve0discusses]

Yugioh Ep 36 S4: Seto Joins Dragon Wife in Hell

So I dunno about you guys, but 2020 aged me like a lot in just these 8 months, so I figured it was time to embrace the feeling of being on death’s door and I decided to learn Mahjong. So I could truly embrace the ancients and vibe in their natural habitat.

Anyway, once I learned some Mahjong lore, some parts of Yugioh just open up. Namely--Seto’s dragons. Like a whole lot of stuff about early Seto Kaiba that confused me at the time just makes so much more sense now.

But unfortunately, he dies this episode, and he never pulled out his Blue Eyes White Dragons, and it’s just like...

...but my Mahjong deep cuts...

Like every episode I’m just rubbing my palms together in anticipation that someone will die, but like...I never get to talk about how in Mahjong, there’s only 4 white dragon tiles, but if you have 3, you can steal the fourth white dragon from another player’s discards, and that when you that, other stuff happens...I don’t get to talk about that because Seto’s hella dead.

So lets just get to the death. Dartz decides to make all of our soldier frenemies attack Pharaoh--because that’s all he needs to raise the Leviathan. Like Dartz doesn’t even really need to finish this game. He just needs Yami.

Seto picks up that these friend (and Pegasus) soldiers that Yami refuses to kill are probably going to end the world very quickly so he decides to do something about it. If this were a blog where I talked about cards instead of Mahjong, then I’d dive into the intricacies of what that even was.

But, we’re not, so lets just talk about Pegasus.

(read more under the cut)

This guy harnesses some psychic energy he’s got leftover from S1 and communicates directly to Pharaoh’s mind.

So, hey, what was that about Pegasus not having powers anymore? Like? He’s still doing this? He’s still psychic and he very clearly can still make blank cards so like...I guess you can take out the eyeball and make him nicer, but you can’t take out some of the effed up magic side-effects. (like there was a comment I didn’t respond to (which, sorry about that, been a little nuts over here in California), but apparently there was a movie in between seasons where Pegasus saved their lives--so he’s legit good now...there was a DLC where character arcs happened.)

Which kind makes you wonder about Marik, but we’ll probably never see him again so o well, save it for the fanfiction.

PS Yami is totally fixating on that eye we can’t see, right? Like...it never outright tells us, but does this spiritual Orichalcos manifestation of Pegasus still have the golden eye? A human eye? Or no eye at all? Just skin?

Not like it matters because Seto does some sort of card shenanigans that undo the whole friends that are soldiers thing like it never happened.

MMMMM I don’t like these weird legs on Yugi. Don’t like the thighs it gave to Joey. No! I’m seeing like this skin-tight silhouette of half an ass right now and I really don’t like it.

Along with other card things I won’t go into that consumed most of this episode, Seto finally got hit by a...well, I mean you can clearly see it in the next cap.

So, in Mahjong, there are 3 types of dragons: a white dragon, a red dragon, and a green dragon. I used to think it was really lazy that we’re just calling monsters straight up “white dragon” or “red dragon” in this show, but now it makes more sense because this whole time it was probably baby’s first Mahjong reference but I’m too Western to know that.

Anyway, the white dragon is funny looking because it’s a white tile--just a completely blank white tile. I thought it was a wild card at first but nah--it’s a white dragon in a snowfield--which is a very funny Dad joke from 200 years ago we’re still doing today. But, often, instead of a Dad joke, they’ll just make the white dragon tile a drawing of a blank card, like this:

Kind of funny that the guy who’s shtick is white dragons, ended up with his soul in a blank card. Was that a mahjong reference? Probably not, but I noticed it.

And mahjong aside, the show paid it’s respects to Seto dying and so he took his sweet time passing on. It’s still not that much respect. We aren’t gonna get that amazing Joey death sequence from S3 that took like half an episode of scene-shredding for our mains to recover from, but like...Seto was very determined to keep going, despite not having a soul.

He even finished his turn of cards, as if to just spite Joey Wheeler for that one time Joey hella died before killing Marik.

Shippers rejoice, it’s a Yami and Seto Kaiba death sequence. If you squint really hard, it might even be an embrace. I mean they both have very sharp duel disks on, and if Yugi’s closes for whatever reason, it’ll snap Seto’s head clear off, but what other “hugs” do we really get on this show?

And as for Mokuba, he was quite tragic this episode. I mean it’s Yugioh, so it’s not like you’re gonna cry or anything, but Mokuba just doesn’t really have anything else going for him without his brother so it is legit like...man Mokuba gets a lot of crap thrown his way and even when he’s happy, he still has to live with Seto so just...Mokuba...

Again we get this bubble effect of other people trying to enter the Orichalcos which happens just a Hell of a lot this season. Like Dartz probably has never had a single person WANT to go in the green zone in 10,000 years and then these bizarre children happened and they just want to bounce off that thing like a jello pudding.

I think it took over 5 minutes for Seto to die, and he was very, very, VERY angry the entire time. Just fueled by literally nothing but rage. Could probably go a couple more episodes if he had taken a nap in the KaibaCopter, but alas, even Seto Kaiba eventually runs out of fumes.

Anyway, another Mahjong fun fact. The dragon tiles are considered an “honor tile” and how many times have we heard Seto--who is such a scumball--go off about his honor? It can be hard to use honors tiles because their rate of success is lower, so when Seto’s like “I have to live up to my dragon’s honor or I can’t keep these in my deck” could he be like...making a Mahjong pun as well as a literal reference to whatever he defines as honor?

...Again, just a Mahjong reference I noticed, but probably not what they intended at all. Which is Good Enough for this blog.

After he tragically passed on, and Yami delicately put his body on the ground, -- Dartz decided to make this moment very funny for me, instead.

Bless.

Not as good as Yami the both times his body was chucked casually across the screen this season--but a very good toss, nonetheless.

I have made so MANY clips of this season!

Tristan and Tea kinda just stood there this entire episode while this was all going down and like...I know they can’t really do anything else at this point but like...can someone give Mokuba a hug???

I can’t believe Valon was the only guy in this entire show about friendship who knew how to hug people. He was in prison since he was 9, and then was raised by freakin Dartz, why is he the only hugger?

PS, apparently Seto’s yummy soul was enough to make the Leviathan open a single eye-ball in curiosity.

Mokuba out there flinging so many insults that he got everyone else banned from watching devil cards. It’s like sports competitions in Middle school with that one kid who won’t stop cussing. That one kid who is the reason everyone else has to sit through a boring ass assembly about sportsmanship? That’s Mokuba.

Now that everyone is ‘passed out’, we can get to the juicy stuff only the olds talk about--which sounds a lot like I’m about to do another segway into talking about Mahjong again, but I’m actually all out of the Mahjong juice. Again, I’m ass at Mahjong.

(and like...the peanut gallery died in the original version, right? I know to never trust a “they’re just sleeping” line in Yugioh.)

Dartz telling me he dragged that ass length blue hair across Egypt?

Man.

I would say that it must’ve really thrown people, but then again, their Pharaoh looked like...that.

So Dartz ended up wandering the earth for 5000 years, cursed to live immortally, unable to revive the great Leviathan, wallowing in his failure. Sentenced to suffer the entire existence of humanity that he never wanted to see survive anyway, unable to die himself.

That’s an interesting plotline that I wish I saw more of. I really like the idea of a supervillian who is already past his prime, who’s already burnt out, who’s so far removed from what happened that he’s fully accepted his demise and is just wandering around out of habit. But, most importantly--that changes my math. That’s like...5000 years he wasn’t slurping no souls because he was too damn depressed. So I’ll append the Deathcount. One second.

OK so we can just subtract 7.3 million from what we had, leaving us with: 7,805,844,047. Barely even made a dent but...eh...when you got the current population of the Earth in there it’s really hard to make a dent in that thing.

PS I still have that google doc where I keep track of the deaths, we have 55 lines of entries, haha.

Yugioh is interesting because you do have some racial stuff going on here where Yami is SO OLD that he doesn’t remember not only his own name--he doesn’t remember what he looks like. He’s even seen it a few times in hallucinations but like...Yami legit doesn’t know what it is to be an ancient Egyptian anymore. It’s been a hot minute, and he still sees himself as a pale skinned Yugi clone when he spiritually manifests in the show. Because the modern day, set in Japan, through Yugi’s eyes--that’s all he knows about life.

Dartz was so impressed by Pharaoh’s magic powers that he knew--he just KNEW that this Pharaoh with the worst hair would be the yummy soul for the Leviathan tummy. But unfortunately...

This is a show that has had so MANY overlapping apocalypses that I did have to sit back and kind of count off on my fingers which crazy person this would be about.

Honestly? Either Seto or Bakura...guessing Bakura because we haven’t finished his storyline yet and I know that he’s the big bad of S5. But man...Dartz was just like “oh...no thanks to that guy. I’ll just take a nap for 5000 years, BIG no thanks.” and it does make you wonder...

...oh...so that’s why you didn’t bother Bakura in this timeline.

It also helps make Bakura even more of a threat. Again, Bakura is great because he’s just constantly leaving nuggets of what a threat he is and then just...disappears for seasons on end. The Bakura we’ve made in our head is probably way more awful than what he may end up being.

But for now, it’s fun to just fill in the gaps instead.

anyway that was it for this episode, I’m off to pretend it’s Thanksgiving week and will look forward to drowning my anxiety in a 16 lb turkey shared between four people.

Anyway, I brought up the cat that falls asleep on metal rods so I have to do this:

And for those that are new, this is a link to read these in chrono order: https://steve0discusses.tumblr.com/tagged/yugioh/chrono

[novantinuum]

SU movie predictions

Okay, we may not have a trailer yet to go off of but trying to predict things is fun. (And it’ll be funny looking back later and seeing how epically wrong I was lol) 

So my predictions of what I think is realistically plausible to happen:

A Gem actually gets physically shattered/we learn what actually happens to Gems who are shattered

Okay, so this may be a little edgy but hear me out... this movie is 90 minutes. And it’s a movie. Some serious chaos gon’ have to go down to fill the time here. It wouldn’t surprise me to see the Crystal Gems caught in a more perilous situation than usual.

There’s been a lot of theories over the years that shattered Gems are actually still conscious. I think we might gain some more info on that.

I genuinely doubt it’ll be a big character. Prob a one-off character. If anything, just a scenario where the villain is showing the audience that she’s not here to play games. 

There are at least three songs.

Change Your Mind had three and it was only 45 minutes. With double the length, how many more might we see?

My bets are on Steven having at least one, an ensemble song, and p e r h a p s a bad guy song.

Steven and Connie get a relationship upgrade.

These two have such a close bond, and are so obviously smitten with each other that I’m kinda surprised it hasn’t happened already. But what better time for even further development for them than a movie?

There’s definitely gonna be a fusion.

I’ll be surprised if I don’t see some past fusion encores.

And what about new fusions? So many possibilities!

It will be set post Change Your Mind.

I genuinely don’t see the storytelling purpose of setting it before Change Your Mind, so I will be surprised if this movie isn’t set in between CYM and s6. 

I am, however, still unsure whether I think the plot events in the movie will be relevant to the wider arc, or a standalone threat.

The movie reveals a fairly significant remodeling to Steven’s house.

We know Bismuth repaired it while everyone else was on Homeworld, but we still haven’t seen the inside yet.

Perhaps there will be more doors in the Temple now, for the newest official Crystal Gems!

The villain actually isn’t ‘Red Diamond’ or related to the diamonds at all.

While those theories are pretty cool sounding, I’m beginning to doubt that we’re going to be dealing with more diamonds after having pretty much half of season 5 dedicated to rooting out the mysteries with the Great Diamond Authority. At this point, what the show needs is to stretch its wings into the greater ‘universe,’ and what better way of doing that than to introduce an entirely new Gem type? Or, heck- even an entirely new species. Let’s go hog wild.

Rose’s chest in Lion’s mane will have some relevance to the plot.

That chest is still a mystery, and I suspect it’ll be coming up very soon because Steven brought attention to it in late season 4. They started teasing the concept of Steven’s gem being removed in late season 3, and that came to fruition in CYM so... I think we’re coming up on some big answers soon.

At least Garnet and Peridot will be poofed.

Perhaps more characters will be, as well.

Basically, I have a feeling that the really wild visors these two got in CYM were more designed exclusively with that episode in mind, as momentous as it was. They were fun visors, meant to represent everyone’s unity as a Crystal Gem at that moment. I predict that future regenerations of these two will have mostly similar outfits, but with toned down visors.

We see multiple new Gem locations.

Self explanatory, really. I’ll be surprised if we don’t.

By the end of the movie, Steven finally goes through a well-deserved growth spurt and looks his age again. (Like an actual 14 1/2 year old.)

This whole show is about his coming of age. We’ve seen his emotional coming of age. We’re yet to witness his physical coming of age. Like buddy, you still look like an eight year old. XD

And logistically, when it comes to CN advertisement... featuring such a significant character design change (if it ever does happen) within a Big Event TV Movie as opposed to a regular episode would be a wise move. That way, more people are likely to watch it and know what’s going on later when they see that Steven Universe’s title character looks quite different now.

Steven and Co. use his leg ship to travel through space at some point.

The kid has his own spaceship now. The whole galaxy is now his oyster! We’re finally putting the Universe into Steven Universe! I do hope that’s a plot point they utilize well...

The Diamonds feature, and we get a glimpse into how Homeworld is faring post CYM.

Could be part of inciting incidents. Perhaps the villain is someone resisting changes there on Homeworld.

The plot is no longer restricted to just Steven’s perspective.

Rebecca Sugar said in the last episode of the SU podcast that the show, as it continues from here, would be quite different from s1-5, because the story s1-5 was telling is done. That story is, of course, Steven’s coming of age. We saw everything from his point of view, because it was his story.

Thus, I’m predicting that from here on out, it’s not just his story... it’s the Crystal Gems’ story. Perhaps there will even be episodes in the far off future that don’t involve Steven at all- focusing on other Gems or humans instead.

BUT as far as the movie is concerned... 

Normally in s1-5 every scene had to be either: something Steven personally experienced himself or within a fusion, a story that a character was telling to Steven, or some interaction Steven overhears/eavesdrops on. I think it’s likely that this rule will be lifted from here on out. Which means, we could see a conversation between, say, Garnet and Pearl that Steven is nowhere around to see. Sky’s the limits.

And some absolute spitballing that really doesn’t have much “evidence” or plausibility on happening, but that I’d think would be pretty cool anyways:

We see Rose’s last moments/Steven’s birth.

If they were ever to flashback to this, now would be the time.

Could be an interesting way to quickly establish Steven’s hybrid nature for any new viewers.

Another human/Gem hybrid exists.

And Steven meets them and takes them under his wing.

This could perhaps be linked to his physical coming of age. Perhaps the thought of this new responsibility... of watching over/helping show the ropes to someone... is what moves him to finally grow up. Shifts his mentality a little older.

[beckytailweaver]

Avatar: The Last Airbender (fic stuff)

Since I’m trying to work on something (ANYTHING!) and I seem to be in an Avatar mood of late, I’ll throw this up here.

These are fics, potential fics, and mostly-concrete ideas that have existed in the back of my closet for a very long time, since the good old days of watching ATLA when it was shiny and new and cool. Most of them are also so old that LOK didn’t exist yet or was in its infancy.

Note: These are mostly gen fic. If pairings come up they are not the central goal of the piece; they will be mainly canon as it existed at the time the fic was outlined. Treat them like the scenery (no ship war drama allowed in my workroom, that’s what stopped me participating in the fandom years ago).

I’d kinda like to put some feelers out and see what folks think would be most interesting to work on.

Read on:

The End of the Circle Post-canon continuation, my oldest ATLA fic, conceived and outlined before comics or LOK existed. Does some headcanon worldbuilding based on what was available at the time of the original series. Dragons and spirits and legends coming to life, oh my!

Status: outlined, some scenes written, firm endpoint, world built.

Summary: Roku warned Aang that he could not die in the Avatar State, or the cycle would end. Azula’s lightning killed Aang in the Avatar State. To their good fortune, Katara’s spirit water was able to bring Aang back to life, but there are Consequences—for the Avatar and for the world.

Wild Fire Canon AU/semi-rewrite. Also born before LOK was a thing so Druk doesn’t exist. It borrows some concepts from the idea of Toph and her badgermole family. It breaks some TLA canon around the edges but it’s all in good fun.

Status: outlined, many scenes, ending fully plotted.

Summary: The young Fire Prince was burned and disowned by the Fire Lord, cast away and abandoned on the hostile shores of the Earth Kingdom before his kindly uncle could aid him. Disfigured, angry, and lost, young Zuko finds solace in the wilderness when he is taken in by a most unusual protector: A dragon.

Phoenix Legacy Not-a-time-travel “time travel” fic. It was born after seeing Season 1 of Avatar LOK and...kinda liking it but not? (I mostly lost interest in LOK after S1.) And wanting to add some more classic feel to the season. No information from subsequent seasons was used to outline it (thus there is no Druk) but recently I have gone back and “fixed” Zuko’s daughter (giving her the correct name and appearance), and added her nameless daughter (Iroh II’s sister) for lulz. Basically a rewrite of LOK Season 1 with a TLA character along for the ride to shake everything up, because at the time I was disappointed that there was only Katara and no other Gaang members out there kicking the new Avatar into shape.

Status: outlined, a few scenes written, ending plotted; not to be a rehash.

Summary: A phoenix cannot die by fire—it can only be reborn. When Ozai claimed the title of Phoenix King, he had no idea what sort of spirit he might be invoking. When he lost his ancestor’s war and his crown, the spirit’s blessings were unknowingly conferred upon his heir: The hapless Fire Lord Zuko, determined to bring his nation to peace. Seventy years later, there’s a tragic explosion in a tea shop in Republic City, and exiled traitor Fire Prince Zuko wakes up to an unfamiliar world full of unfamiliar faces. The last thing he remembers is an Agni Kai under a Comet, catching lightning to protect a friend.

The Prince’s Prisoner Another ficling born before the comics or LOK were really a big deal and/or I didn’t know about them. Basically during TLA S1, rather than fleeing Prince Zuko’s clutches, Aang decides to remain his prisoner. The original reasoning for this was a kind of modified Peggy Sue: Aang effed up his final battle with Ozai for reasons, his soul is sorta sent back in time to do-over from his iceberg wakeup. The problem is that this is not a perfect process and he doesn’t actually remember everything, only some very important faces, feelings, and concepts. The idea of Zuko as a dear friend/teacher/trusted person is one of these things. Thus, in defiance of all visible logic, Aang trusts S1!Zuko with his life and keeps his promise to go with him. In spite of his Water Tribe friends continuously trying to rescue him, Zhao continuously trying to capture him, and Zuko himself continuously trying to avoid being befriended by his ticket home. (”I’m your prisoner, not anyone else’s.”)  Intended to be a funny and heartwarming friendship/journey story taking a different angle at the series.

Status: tentatively outlined with very few scenes skeleton’d out, season 1 definite, endpoint undecided but can continue throughout the series. The premise mechanic is a bit flimsy; it’s less concrete since it’s supposed to be fluff, angst, and friendship.

dragon!Zuko AU fic Everybody has to write one of these, it’s like a law. Here’s mine: Ozai’s cruelty during the Agni Kai with his young son invoked the wrath of Agni, bringing down a magic from a time before memory and no one knows if it’s a blessing or a curse. When Zuko’s face burned, the fire didn’t stop there, and when the flames went out a young dragon was left on the floor of the arena. Uncle Iroh came to his rescue before the rest of Court could gather their wits, and then had to get him on a boat and out of the Fire Nation before Ozai could decide whether to make him into a pet or a trophy. Part 1: Rather than going on a mission to hunt the Avatar, Zuko and Iroh are on a road trip to keep Zuko alive and secret from the world (Ozai wants to usurp his brother’s title of Dragon). Iroh and his crew end up raising this stubborn angsty dragon prince; since he can’t turn back into a human he has to come to terms with being a dragon most of the time (which can’t talk), and he can often be Very Dramatic about it. Part 2: Years later, there’s rumors of the Avatar’s return and Zuko (who has sort of learned to take a human shape again) sees an opportunity to spare his own life and go home by offering his father a bigger prize than a dragon’s head...

Status: very general outline, some scenes conceived and a general plot/endpoint. Part 1 is in the 3 years pre-canon, Part 2 is during canon, including the grumpy dragon hiding out in Ba Sing Se.

Years Gone/Avatar kids AU S1/pre-canon rewrite. Some whim of fate cracks open Aang’s iceberg three years early (a storm, a passing boat, pure chance?) and he tumbles out into the world in the same year that Prince Zuko was banished. Despite befriending some Water Tribe children who would love to go adventuring with him, he’s got to get home to the Southern Air Temple and that’s where he runs into young, angry, raw-wounded Prince Zuko on his first visit. The tiny chase ensues up and down the entire temple. Aang will of course be friendly but escape. And this begins a probably-ill-advised adventure with a lot of kids who are entirely too young to be camping across the world on a bison (but it’s exciting!), chased by another kid entirely too young to be leading a manhunt. The Comet is three years away so there’s plenty of time for adults to tear their hair out over this. Zuko is a tiny ball of determination, rage, and tears. Aang feels bad for him and tries to make with the befriending even as he’s dodging the fire tantrums. Occasionally during adventures Zuko just gets scooped along for the ride in Appa’s saddle, no one’s sure how these weird truces get called, but Iroh sips tea and directs the crew on a new heading and they’ll pick up their prince at the bison’s next stopover most likely after the kid pendulums back the other way and remembers he’s trying to nab the Avatar again. So Zuko spends 50% of the time yelling and chasing the Avatar and 50% of the time sitting in Appa’s saddle learning tentative smiles and being offered berries and seal jerky, all the way from the South Pole to the North. (It’s slightly terrifying to realize that Aang and Zuko are currently the oldest kids in the party and are actually in charge of this terribly irresponsible expedition.)

Status: general outline, a couple of scenes written, particular S1 plot points, no endpoint yet. Possible bonus content: Toph and/or Suki come along for the ride because why not.

The Blacksmith of Ba Sing Se This is a very old Lu Ten Lives! story. Lu Ten always knew Uncle Ozai envied him, but secure in his position he didn’t really care about it until he took an arrow in the back during the final battle of the Siege of Ba Sing Se. With unknown assassins among his own ranks and no safe place to retreat in the melee, the wounded prince decides to fake his own death by hiding in the rubble, and then swapping clothes with a slain Earth Kingdom soldier half crushed in the ruin. At first, it’s only to get to safety until he can get to the bottom of this. But Lu Ten is picked up by the EK medic teams after the surprising withdrawal of the Fire Nation troops, and ends up spirited away into the heart of Ba Sing Se—where he discovers that it’s hard to escape. He also discovers a whole new world, and a whole new perspective, and, keeping out of the authorities’ notice, eventually manages to make a life for himself as Chang the Blacksmith, a humble craftsman with a wife and kids. This...is much nicer than war, death, and Court politics. Years later: refugee Zuko walking home from his job at Pao Family Tea Shop runs across a little boy crying over his broken toy in the dusty street...

Status: nebulous outline with a few particular sketched scenes. Takes place mostly in Ba Sing Se, outcome indeterminate. It could be mixed with the Lineages concept from below.

Lineages / not Ozai’s kid AU Not really a concrete plot so much as a campy idea from long before the Avatar comics blundered through Ursa’s backstory. There was a phase in the fandom (I think the Search comics drew off of that) where it was popular to imagine almost anyone else than Ozai as Zuko’s Secret Real Dad (the boy deserves a better father) and Iroh was often selected as primary candidate. (I know, Iroh is already the real dad and stepped into Ozai’s cold empty shoes like a pro.) Me, deciding that I had to be different, decided to offer up Lu Ten on that altar. Justifications: Iroh and Ozai looked to have a pretty extreme age difference and there was no solid age for Lu Ten at the time of his death, but his picture looks mature enough. Deals with family secrets and the political issues of muddying the lines of inheritance in the middle of a war. Also takes a crack at Ursa having a clever hand with Azulon’s last will and testament on Ozai’s behalf, with provisos.

Status: nothing really more than a vague concept without enough plot to stand on its own. Without a viable framework, it could work better/well folded into The Blacksmith story, above.

I’m open to opinions and/or asks about these. Trying to get a spark going! (I need to be working in a fandom, ANY fandom at this point! ^_^;; )