#Jed looks like a puppy here omg

[candythemew]

Work in progrreeeessss I am so stupid I love them ur honor

[grigori77]

REASONS TO LOVE Netflix’ The Sandman series

WARNING!!!  If you haven’t watched it (particularly if you haven’t read the graphic novels, although it’s not essential for enjoying it) there are potentially some serious spoilers coming up here, so be warned ...

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Neil Gaiman basically shepherded the whole thing in, so this is VERY MUCH EXACTLY what he always intended a Sandman series to be.  Long may he remain on the show, because this is about as perfect as a TV series can get, especially an adaptation of SUCH A BELOVED PROPERTY as this ...

Tom Sturridge is PEAK casting genius.  Not only is he spectacularly spot-on with Dream’s speech and mannerisms, but he just LOOKS like the character stepped right out of the comic pages.

But I also love how, while the series IS about the Dream King himself, he’s not necessarily the main, DOMINANT character here.  Sure, in the first half of the season (essentially adapting volume one, Preludes & Nocturnes) it’s very much about his imprisonment, escape and the subsequent battle for him to regain his powers and kingdom, but EVEN HERE there are times he’s more like a supporting player in his own story, letting other characters into the spotlight, especially in the second half when the show adapts volume two (The Doll’s House), when it becomes far more about Rose Walker ...

Speaking of which, Rose is FANTASTIC.  Kyo Ra is a sweetheart and her Rose is adorable and lovely and just the purest cinnamon roll and must be protected at all costs.

Matthew the Raven.  OMG Patton Oswalt.  I knew right away he was gonna be great in this but he surapassed all my expectations as one of my very favourite characters.

The relationship between Dream and Lucienne is PERFECT.  She respects her boss immensely but is not prepared to put up with his shit for a MICROSECOND, and if that means letting him dangle to prove a point she’s gonna do it.

So what if John Constantine is genderbent?  Jernna Coleman’s always AWESOME and she just GOT the character.

Episode 6, The Sound of Her Wings.  Sweet mercy that is a PERFECT HOUR of television right there, completely flawless.  In a season that’s already pretty legendary in its faithfulness, this note-perfect transplant of Gaimain’s flawless writing is a solid gold JOY to experience.

Kirby Howell-Baptiste as Death ... OH MY GOD.  My girl was brought to life with flawless perfection, I’m a happy puppy after this.

The Corinthian.  Boyd Holbrook’s another example of perfect casting here, and the rogue nightmare is a PERFECT Big Bad for this first season ...

Lucifer ... yeah, I love Tom Ellis in the show as much as anybody, but Gwendoline Christie is GOLD.  She just GOT the role, clearly.

The duel in hell is AWESOME.  Perfectly done.

Merv Pumpkinhead!  Mark Hammil ladies and gentlemen!  The man can do no wrong.

The Diner Experiment in Episode 5 gave me CHILLS.  That was as close to the perfect nightmare that scenario could have gone, but thankfully without going QUITE as far as it did in the comic.  THAT might have been a bit TOO MUCH.

While we’re there, David Thewlis’ John Burgess is a fantastically complicated and enjoyably HUMAN supervillain, and you’re never quite sure if he’s ENTIRELY WRONG, which worries me greatly.  As it should ...

Also Charles Dance once again proves he’s incapable of delivering a bad performance.

Cain and Abel are a darkly comic delight.

Stephen Fry as Gilbert!  YAY!!  Love that man in everything, he was born to play Fiddler’s Green in human form.

I loved how they got the motley collection of misfits in the Cape Kennedy B&B absolutely right.  Hal, Barbie and Ken, Chantal and Zelda, I love you all, you’re adorable.

Yay!  Martin Tenbones!  Looking forward to seeing him again when they do A Game of You in one of the later seasons.

The “Cereal” Convention.  Haliariously funny in a jet black way guaranteed to get your skin crawling too ...

Desire and Despair.  Sure, they’re only in this a little bit, but like Death I’m looking forward to seeing more of them in the future, they’re both spot-on.

The Gault and the way she protects Jed despite being a nightmare, that’s so wonderful.  I love the idea that a constructed creature can try to be something other than it was intended to be, just like the rest of us.  Gaiman is so spectacularly deep.  And then we get that beautiful payoff at the end of the season where Dream’s learned his lesson and lets her change for the better ...

This whole season is just pitch-perfect in the visual effects and the sound and the music and the design and the wayit’s shot and cut.  It’s a feast for the eyes and I’m glad Netflix were willing to spend the money to let Neil realise his vision without restraint.

Netflix, this is PERFECT.  Give us a full series, let Neil do the entire story through to the end, no matter if it takes more than your holy three seasons to do it.  This is TOO GOOD for you to NOT let him do it ...

[badgirlcovenrep]

omg chenrich prompts? hell yeah!! Okay so how about immediately after the council meeting? Steph taking Alex to the hospital because u KNOW its steph who takes her to get treated

As is expected I got a little carried away 😁

So this is a bit of a mix between chenrich in the hospital and medical grade painkillers Alex lol

Hope you enjoy!

No one could have prepared them for that community meeting. Steph shook all over just to think of Jed luring Alex into the woods. Of him leaving her for dead in some awful mining hole.

It made her so furious. Even hearing him cry, blabbering like a sad shadow of the man she'd known (the man that was all a charismatic lie, showmanship, to hide the disgusting truth) her anger, her hurt was too fresh for the girl to gather any sort of sadness for him.

"I'm sorry, Ryan," Alex repeats, standing at the bar with them.

Ryan is staring, speechless, at his father's crying shadow.

"I'm so sorry-" she tries to take a step forward, but her feet falter, and Alex nearly topples over to the ground, grunting in pain as Steph jumps to hold her elbow and help steady her into the floor once again.

"Fuck, Alex, you need a doctor." Steph insists. But Alex is looking at Ryan with so much concern that she can't get her to move.

"It's not your fault, okay?" Ryan finally speaks, breaking out of whatever haze he'd been in to look back at her, "It's not your fault. I just- need a moment to process all this. Go with Steph, you're hurt."

Alex finally looks at her then, and Steph can feel herself plead with her eyes - because she might not know a lot about these sorts of injuries but she's smart enough to know - just by the way she's swaying back and forth on unsteady feet - they probably have another minute, at most, before Alex collapses.

"You did it." Steph mumbles, voice filling with unbridled pride as well as urgency, touching down Alex's arm to hold her cold hand, "You did it, ok? You can settle down now."

Her brown eyes are hazy, blinking back to Steph with rapidly heavying eyelids.

"Good. That's- That's good." Alex slurs back, the last reminiscent of adrenaline leaking out of her body in a heavy huff, "very, very good-"

Steph barely has a second to process what is happening before Alex's body gives out. By some miracle, she's able to flip her arms around her shoulders just fast enough to stop her from falling to the ground.

****

Pike helps her take Alex to the local hospital before going back to deal with Jed's arrest.

It's a small hospital and probably has about ten rooms, but given that these sorts of things (bad things) rarely ever happen in Haven Springs, they're quickly given a private room, and Alex is just conscient enough (before she passes out from the painkillers) to tell the staff she could stay.

Steph doesn't think she would have left either way. Not without knowing Alex was alright, but it's good to have permission to sit by her as she fluttered in and out of drug-induced, heavy sleep.

The doctor had given her the run-down of the other girl's injuries. Five broken ribs, stage two trauma to the head - probable concussion to be assessed once she was more awake - a punctured lung, internal bleeding all around the ribcage, and a bullet wound to the shoulder.

She was an absolute mess of scars. A walking, breathing miracle.

Steph had heard the doctor talking to the police when she stepped out to get some snacks at the vending machines. "She should be dead." He said, with such conviction and surprise, it made her stomach turn.

Steph felt that she could do nothing but sit by Alex's sleeping form, slowly realizing that she was absolutely screwed. Because she already liked this girl way too much - and God, what a roller-coaster of emotion she'd been put on the last month - but how could she not? When Alex just waltzed into everyone's lives like this determined, selfless little light? When she was so obviously a rare soul, made of so much sweetness, and softness, and strength, Steph doubted she'd ever come across someone like her again?

Looking at the circumstances from the other side now, it seemed as inevitable as any of it.

"I can feel you thinking." Alex's voice startles her out of her thoughts. Steph looks up to meet her tired brown eyes, looking so soft and vulnerable without her glasses and surrounded by clean hospital sheets, "You've been broody lately."

Steph giggles, choking on her own emotion, "Guess I'm still mad about Jed." It's not a lie. She is upset. But there was a lot more than that, more about how her insides swelled with emotion when Alex looked at her - but she leaves it the way it is.

"I forgave him." She shrugs. And Steph knows she did, she was there after all, but that didn't mean the drummer was quite as ready herself.

"Well, I didn't." And maybe that makes her childish - resentful - but she can't take the image of him pointing a gun at Alex out of her head. The image of him pulling the trigger, sending her off to what could very well have been death - "at least you made him cry like a baby."

"Jerk." Alex smiles, eyes squinting back at her in humorous indignation before they slowly turn more vulnerable as she adjusts herself on the mattress, patting the empty space beside her body, "Can you- come lie down with me?"

There's nothing, truly, that Steph would have liked more. She would take any chance of being closer to Alex (and of getting off the uncomfortable hospital chair) but she was also still afraid - still scared something might go wrong and they'd lose her. "Are you sure? You're hurt."

"Please?" Alex pleads, blinking back at her with honest-to-God puppy eyes, even if still a little glassed-over from the amount of Vicodin they were pumping into her veins. For the umpteenth time in the past few days, Steph has even more confirmation that she is screwed.

Because, honestly, there's nothing Alex couldn't get her to do with just a slow blink of her brown eyes.

So she gets up and climbs into bed with her. It's incredibly tight for two people, and they are instantly pressed together as Alex scoots over the pillow so they can look at each other, alone in this hospital room that smelled like industrial-grade detergent.

Alex reaches forward and takes her cheeks between her palms, so very close Steph can't help but catalog all the cuts and bruises covering her face.

"You're so pretty." The girl says, finally, and Steph can hear the tiny slur in her voice. She's probably still drunk on a shit ton of medicine, but it does nothing to stop the drummer from blushing profusely, "you're, really, really pretty. Have I told you that?"

"Hm- yeah you sorta- do that when you're on painkillers." Steph comments, and her eyes can't help but fall to Alex's mouth.

She has a tiny cut on her lower lip, and Steph's fingers itch to touch it. To feel her skin again, like that night on the roof, when she felt so warm and tingly, like a live wire of electricity that could swallow Steph whole. For now, she holds her distance.

"But it's true." Alex pouts, "and you're really hot when you're protective too."

Now that- that was different from anything she'd said before. And when she looks up, the girl realizes Alex's eyes have turned to stare at Steph's lips too.

"Yeah?" She asks, a little too cocky given the situation, but oh well, you can't blame her for the swell of pride that takes over her chest.

"Yeah." Alex teases back, "Thank you. For taking care of me. For being mad at Jed for me- even if you can't do anything about it." Her tone turns sincere, and her eyes flutter everywhere but Steph's face, Alex's dead giveaway that she was trying to hold something back.

"Oh please, I'll rip his mustache off." Steph jokes, because it's her default strategy when she doesn't quite know what to do, "You have lost your right to upstanding citizen facial hair, sir!"

"Fuck, Steph, don't make me laugh." Alex says as a few stolen giggles escape her lips, creating ripples across her shattered chest that made her hiss with pain.

"Shit, I'm sorry." Steph apologizes, and on instinct, she leans closer to run her hands over Alex's arm in reassurance, holding the weight of her body above Alex with her elbow.

From this angle, they were even closer, and Steph was staring at her from above, watching Alex smile at her, head on the pillow and a half-lidded, humorous expression on her face.

"Oh, this is nothing. Just a few cuts compared to my fighting days." She jokes, and Steph's heart is filled with so much concern, so much love for this girl she can't help but fluster with anger.

"Shut up. You're gonna hurt yourself if you don't take it seriously." Steph says, "you're like, seriously hurt, Alex, you could have died."

Steph wants to ask, but Alex's free hand reaches forward and pulls her closer, fist tightening around the collar of her button-up shirt, and suddenly they are so close her hand shakes with the itch to touch her, "See? Protective Steph is so hot."

"I know. I'm sorry." Alex has the decency to look reprimanded, smoothing one hand over Steph's shoulder in a simple act that sends calming waves over Steph's flushed skin, "I'm okay. I promise" she's being sincere, Steph knows she is by the way she frowns slightly in concern. However, there's a quiet, teasing smile spreading across her face.

And Steph honestly used to think she was smooth.

She made girls blush by the minute. Awoke the bisexuality in at least a few of her drunk makeouts on the way from California to here. She used to be a real flirt, ready for anything a pretty girl could throw her way. But sitting here, with her torso half hovering over Alex Chen's body, her tongue feels heavy, and her brain can't conjure a single thing to offer in response.

It's at least a relief that she doesn't say anything, because a second later, Alex is smiling at her with her coy, knowing little smirk, and pulling her in for a kiss.

Steph is far too focused on not crushing her further, very deliberately placing her hands on both sides of her head to better hold her weight, but she still feels the strong, dizzying zap of electricity as Alex's lips touch hers, her lungs filling with liquid, warm waves of emotion.

And maybe, Steph thinks, it'd be fine if she never breathed air again.