#Rest well Emily pike

[sillyguyz4ever]

as a native person tw: disembodyment

Hearing bout emily pike makes me cry sm

She was only 14

What ik police killed her and disembodied her corpse

THE FACT THERES PPL OUT THERE (ahem trumpet supporters) WHO R OK WITH DAT CRAP

SHE WAS 14 YRS OLD FOURTEEN ONE FOUR

Ik imma to be both native American and European and not look native it still makes me upset how evil sum1 can be to see a sweet girl and think of doin dat

WHAT THE HECK!?

[whimpity-whumpity]

List of my characters because even i forget sometimes and i do not expect yall to remember them when i dont even post abt them much. Will be updated as i remember more of them because there are quite literally hundreds rattling around up there.

Whumpees

Caleb (he/him, immortal, does not have a good time)

Sorin (he/him) (knockoff spiderman)

Lace (lab whumpee) (she/her) (also mind controlled via SCIENCE)

Tango (lab whumpee) (she/her)

Delta(lab whumpee) (she/her)

Yankee(lab whumpee) (she/her)

Charlie(lab whumpee) (she/her)

Lars (gladiator) (anxious big man) (he/him)

Elipso (satyr, emergency food) (they/them)

Emily (she/her)

Quinn (they/she)

Jakob (poor baby i hurt him so bad) (it/its but in a dehumanizing way, then he/him later) (he just wants to play his songs)

Donny "Trix" Riggs (he/him)

Ryder (any pronouns but I only use they/them because they'll stop letting me write them if i don't) (betrayed villain my beloved)

Amy (she/her)(???) (villain whumpee)

Bucky Ark Patton (he/him) (he works for Waylan!) (yes his initials are BAP.)

Whumpers

Arcturus (he/him) (utter asshole)

Esyn aka Emily (she/her) (shy but later also asshole because of how my power system works :<)

Sorin (really a sweetheart) (he/him) (he just wants someone to cuddle and is all kinds of fucked up)

Arson aka Gwid (alien) (they/them) (their culture has very very normalized violence and like. slave gladiators. its not great. they did not mean to come to earth. they hate it here.)

Riclle (vampire, the oldest) (he/him) ("gender? i'm fucking thirsty, fuck gender") (creepy whumper)

Tobias (vampire) (he/him) (pretends to be a creepy whumper, is just trying to protect his little brother)

Phil (he's a surprise tool that will help us later) (reference) (vampire) (he/him) (idk he might get deleted, i made him for a rp and he never really came back)

Sir Nicholas the 23rd (he/him) (PROFESSIONAL asshole. asshole EXTRORDINAIRE. i hate him so so much.)

Lukas (reluctant) (he/him) (crime family go brr) (he just wants to sell glowy clothes)

Harlow (doesn't like its job but gets paid well) (he/it) (only has this job to provide for his son)

Waylan (he/him) ("gender? is that uh, one of them new medicines?") (have you noticed i like giving assholes kids? have you?) (you will.) (her name is ronnie and i love her sm. baby. she kicks off his redemption arc.) (waylan 🤝 sorin fucked up childhoods)

Bucky (he/him) (hes literally that one stereotypical henchman i love him) (also hes trans)

Hadrian "Pike" whatever the fuck surname. (he/him) (basically he gets hired to kidnap people and keep them out of the way and or kill them)

Jude (he/they) (basically a supervillain) (feral) (but also wildly cheerful) (would just strap somebody down and sit on their lap and wait for the knife to wake them up) (giggles like a child while torturing people)

Caretakers

Quinn (they/she)

Sami (she/her) (Waylan's cousin, but she and the rest of the family think he's dead)

Karma (she/it) (hero) (bloodbender equivalent) (starts up a recovery center later <3) (also very much enjoys watching people in pain) (it hates that about herself)

Maewyn (vampire) she/her (successor to Riclle) (can't turn people)

Tobias (kind of) (vampire) he/him (he tries)

Donny (AU of Riggs) he/him (works in a temple of Melu!)

Ophi? Maybe? If she cooperates? (she/her) (Jakob's youngest sister)

Bucky!!! Ark!!! Patton!!!!! (literally he does anything his Boss tells him to hes so fucking blorbo rn)

Divines

Kypripos (Chaos and all not written below; Lord of Lost Things, Sky-Painter, and prankster. Father of Fathers, the First, etc.) doesn't really care about gender, goes by he/him through most of the story because their vessel is male.

Estor (Domain: History) he/him

Tai (Domain: War, grief, poets, and strategy) he/him

Rask (Elder Child of the Depths) xe/xem/xeir

Melu (Domain: Illness and Health, often credited with making ALL life) I've been referring to Melu with feminine pronouns till now but Melu just said no so I'm gonna just not until Melu finds some that vibe right.

Saras (Child of the Depths) Saras also sees no need for pronouns. Saras speaks in third person.

Ponma (Domain: Drama, acting, lies) (Dead) Whatever the role demands: he, she, they, xe, it, she delights in wrapping new roles around himself like a new cloak.

Rust (Child of Ponma, once known as Vera) they/them (clown)

Ent (Embodiment of "Chaos comes for all in the end") (Dead) he/they (never STARTED fights but would finish them) (same with pranks)

Misief (Domain: General mischief, pranks, laughter) (Dead) it/its (always started the fight/pranks)

Cosmo (Domain: All the things of the sky)(Dead) she/it (the token serious child)

Arcturus (Domain: magic) (dead-ish) he/him

Esyn (Domain: magic) she/her

Mara (Domain: destruction and rebirth) Similar attitude to Ponma, but less about new roles and more about destruction not needing a gender

Madac ("Sea-mother") she/they

Seli (Parent of selkies) ????

Spiren (Death) Spiren is older than the concept of eyes, Spiren doesnt give a shit. Uses "Father" in refrence to Bilen, Hen, and Renwick, though.

Bilen (Soul-chaser, "The Bear") she/her

Hen ("The Hare", Guide of Violent Ends) he/him

Renwick ("The Rabbit", Singer of Lives) (they/them)

Dara (Domain: Song) he/they

Julokal (Domain: Honorable Combat) she/her

Discord for more about them

[eternally-writing]

just a dream | kth.

Pairing: Taehyung x reader

Genre: fluff, angst

Theme: dream fic

rating: PG -13

Warnings: none 

Word count: 1.1k

banner by me!

--♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡--

Taehyung feels like he is in heaven. Your figure draped around his, soundly asleep in one of his tshirts, a soft smile painting your face (and by proxy, his) - that was all he ever wanted in life.The sound of the wind blowing outside his window complimented the sound of your soft snores (he used to tease you for them, but in all honesty he loves them). He couldn’t stop himself from running his fingers through your hair, twirling it around his fingers mindlessly. 

There was no denying how completely in love with you Taehyung is. He loved everything about you: your stunning smile that lights up an entire room, the way you always care for others, your silly dance moves, your terrible cooking skills, Taehyung loved all of it. 

“Good morning my love” said Taehyung as he kissed you on the forehead. 

As your eyes fluttered open, out came your signature smile. God, Taehyung loved that smile. You puckered your lips, your signal to Taehyung that you wanted your good morning kiss. Not even morning breath could stop the two of you from loving each other, springing into a soft flutter of kisses. 

Taehyung could’ve stayed with you in his arms forever, no desire to even move a muscle and get out of bed. But as you whined beside him about how your teeth felt yucky, he finally let you out of his hold and took his chance to scamper away to the kitchen to make some morning coffee. He’ll never forget the way you like it - Pike Place, one cream, one sugar. He was happy to use his latte foam art skills from that random barista course he took to put a heart on the top of your coffee.

“Hey Tae” you called out from the bedroom “can we just stay in bed all day?” 

“We have to take Tannie for a walk, but other than that, 100% yes baby.” 

As if on cue from hearing his name from Taehyung’s lips, Yeontan scampered into the bedroom, taking his rightful place in the middle of your bed (you and Taehyung may spoil him a little too much and let him get away with whatever he wants). He let out a small mewl to alert you both of his presence, you giving him head ruffles while you laid in bed.

When Taehyung re-entered your bedroom, coffee mugs in hand, he took a moment to admire the two loves of his life cuddled up in bed. Everything was truly perfect. After plopping dramatically back into the bed and spilling a little bit of coffee on the white sheets in the process, he was happy to spend mornings like this with you. He enjoyed the peaceful silence between you two. With the connection you two shared, you didn’t even need words to show the love you had for each other.

Soon enough, Yeontan pawing at your back door for long enough forced you both out of your beds and out the door (dressed in couple’s outfits at Taehyung’s request, of course). Taehyung felt like he was living the perfect life with his perfect little family. Your shared home was just off the edge of Taehyung’s hometown in Daegu, which gave him the chance to relive his favorite memories whenever he went on a walk. Even the weather felt perfect today - sunny with a little cloudy overcast, Taehyung’s favorite.

He couldn’t stop the smile that graced his face as he walked by his elementary school. He could still feel the way you pinched his bread-like cheeks (perfectly plump at his grandmother’s wishes) on the playground. He didn’t know it then, but you would come to be one of the most important people in his life.

Then he passed by the local ice cream shop, the site of your first kiss together and your many many late night ice cream runs. When he feels you tug on him to go into the store, how could he resist replaying those memories? A birthday cake scoop for you and a chocolate chip cookie dough scoop for him (and how could he forget some vanilla for Tannie as well). Was the order that the workers had pretty much memorized due to your frequent visits. 

“You have a beautiful family, sir.” Said the teenage worker behind the ice cream counter.

Taehyung looked back at the perfect picture of you and Tannie together, trying to take a silly selfie on your phone. 

“Yeah, I really do.”

Taehyung giggled as he photobombed your most recent selfie, giving you a cute pair of bunny ears and also planting a kiss on your cheek.

As Taehyung went to sit beside you, he reached your ice cream out to you, waiting for you to take it. Instead, the ice cream that was supposed to be in your hands was now spilt all over the ground. Panic started rising in Taehyung’s chest - why couldn’t he touch you? Why couldn’t he feel you? 

“Y/N, can you hear me? Please- Please, baby, come back to me” 

You started fading away right in front of his eyes. It was like there was an invisible wall between the two of you, stopping Taehyung from reaching you. He watched the necklace he gave you disappear off you, then the rest of your following suit.

“Don’t go baby. No, I can’t - I can’t do this without you.”

All of a sudden, Taehyung sat up in his bed, gasping. His fingers desperately grasped the empty sheets as he tried to find your body beside him. Instead, the bed was cold beside him, your imprint not even found in the sheets. 

The truth was that you’d been gone a long time, months now, actually. And it was all just a dream.

He missed you, he missed you so much. He could barely remember how you’d even broken up and ended up moving half the world away from him. His subconscious was even trying to reunite you in his dreams to try and numb his pain. He couldn’t help but imagine what you were up to now - did you dream of him too? Yeontan broke him from his thoughts as he quickly scampered up from the foot of his bed to his chest, trying to provide any comfort he could to his heartbroken owner. At least part of his dream was still with him.

All Taehyung wanted to do was go back to sleep. After all, he’s happiest with you - even when you’re only present in his dreams.

--♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡--

Hope you enjoyed reading this! - Emily

[winterscaptain]

short notice.

Aaron Hotchner x Gender Neutral Reader a joyful future fic

a/n: thanks to @joanofarkansass for this little idea!! i was able to throw this together as kind of a surprise treat before i went to sleep tonight. i hope you all enjoy!

words: .9k warnings: none!

summary: “’welcome to the wonderful world of jealousy,’ he thought. ‘For the price of admission, you get a splitting headache, a nearly irresistible urge to commit murder, and an inferiority complex. yippee.’” ― j.r. ward, dark lover. au!november 2010

masterlist | a joyful future masterlist | ajf faq | requests closed!

“Sorry to call all of you in on such short notice.” JJ tosses a file to you as you walk in. “We’ve got a last-minute request from the brass and we’re expected in Vermont within the next two hours.”

You sit with a sigh and start flipping through as the rest of the team files in. 

“You look nice,” Derek remarks. You almost have the good sense to feel offended by his surprise. 

“I had a date.”

Penelope drops her file. “Kevin and I were supposed to have our Firefly marathon tonight, but I guess it’ll have to wait. I can’t believe another serial killer ruined our night off.”

Your mouth screws up, a little rueful, but before you can reply - 

“A serial killer is about to ruin a lot more than our nights if we don’t get started.” Hotch steps in and sits beside you, looking up at the screen. He’s also out of his normal garb - wearing a polo shirt and jeans with a pair of sneakers. 

It’s not like you haven’t seen him in stuff like this before, but it’s still a little silly to see him dressed so casually in the office. 

After a moment of silence, he prompts, “JJ?”

“Yes, sir.” 

JJ starts the briefing, but you’re having some trouble focusing. It’s clear Hotch’s mind is somewhere else and his fidgeting draws your attention more than once. 

About halfway through, you catch Emily as she nudges Dave’s shoulder, pulling his attention to Aaron. They both squint in your general direction for a moment before little smirks appear on their faces. 

With that in mind, you bump Hotch with your elbow. “You okay?”

“Fine.”

Doesn’t sound fine. 

“You sure? Is Jack okay?” 

He doesn’t look at you as he replies, still curt. “Yeah. He’s good. I’m fine. Just tired.” 

Small alarm bells go off in your head. It seems Haley installed them upon her death. For now, though, you ignore them and let it go. 

He’ll get over it, whatever it is. 

+++

“I hope you have a change of clothes,” Hotch says, passing you on the jet. 

You glance up at him, trying not to feel too put off by the rebuke in his tone. “Of course.”

He takes a seat on the far side of the plane - much farther away from you than normal. Emily, uncharacteristically, plops down beside you with a little snort. 

“He’s about as subtle as a gun, don’t you think?” 

Your brow pinches. “What?” 

“Could he be more obvious?” 

Taking a minute to look over at Hotch again, you turn back to Emily. “Apparently?” 

“He’s jealous. I think he heard you had a date.” 

Why would he be jealous? 

The furrow between your brows only deepens. Jealous doesn’t seem to be in Hotch’s vocabulary - Aaron is, well, seemingly too much of a man for that. Jealousy seems childish, immature, even. Two things he decidedly isn’t. 

You take the bait. “What do you mean?” 

Emily snorts again. “You’re kidding, right? You look good -” 

“Thanks.” 

“Sure. You look good and it’s not for him and I think,” she sticks her tongue firmly in her cheek, “he’s a little huffy about it.” 

You heave a sigh and stuck your nose in the case file. “Has anyone ever told you you’re absolutely ridiculous?” 

“Pfft. Yeah. Rossi. All the time.” 

+++

“Doin’ alright, Aaron?” 

The man in question hardly looks up from his reading. “Hm?” 

Dave settles in beside him and watches you chat with Emily, eye-rolls in no short supply. “Oh, I only ask because you seem a little tense.” 

“Do I?” 

Dave goes on to point out how nice you look this evening and, “It’s a shame we had to interrupt everyone’s evening - I’m sure the person on the other end of that date,” he gestures to you again, “is none too happy - but of course, that’s exactly what you want -” 

“What?” 

That caught Aaron’s attention. 

Dave holds back a smirk. “You’re jealous, Aaron. Just admit it. This lack of self-awareness is unbecoming.” 

Hotch only rolls his eyes and burrows back into his work, only a little frustrated Dave was able to get after him so easily. “I don’t know what you're talking about.” 

“Alright,” Dave says, as if he doesn’t believe him at all (he doesn’t). “Up to you, but if I were you, I’d start getting a little more honest with yourself. Clearly, you don’t have forever.” 

Aaron grits his teeth but doesn’t reply. 

Why add fuel to the fire? 

He’s right. 

Shut up. 

+++

You change into your work clothes about a half-hour before final descent - just a regular pair of rip-stop pants and a tee-shirt - and step out of the bathroom. If you chose to acknowledge the tension between you and Aaron, you’d admit your strut was a bit of a punishment. 

That said, you’re not necessarily in the business of facing your feelings. Thus, your manner of walking is just a means to an end, as it usually is. 

When you sit back down, you glance over and try not to feel too much joy at the slight pull of disappointment around Aaron’s lips at seeing your wardrobe change. 

Maybe I did look good. 

And maybe it was a gift JJ called you in, after all. 

Not that you’d admit it, of course. The last thing you’d do is get dressed up for Aaron Hotchner, of all people. 

Yeah, like that’ll happen. 

Okay, even that is a little bit of a stretch for your self-denial. You shake it off, turning back to the police reports in your lap. 

Definitely a stretch. 

+++

tagging: @arganfics @quillvine @stxrryspencer @hurricanejjareau @ughitsbaby @rousethemouse @criminalsmarts @genevievedarcygranger @ssaic-jareau @davidrossi-ismydad @angelsbabey @hotchsflower @hotchslatte @risenfox @mrs-dr-reid @captain-christopher-pike @dwellingsofrosie @pan-pride-12 @sunshine-em @word-scribbless @jdougl-love @dreila03 @forgottenword @aaronhotchnerr @ssa-morgan @sana-li @tegggeeee @abschaffer2 @ssacandice-ray @ellyhotchner @lotties-journey-abroad @mrs-joel-pimentel-23-25 @mooneylupinblack @ssareidbby @bwbatta @wakatoshislover @capricorngf @missdowntonabbey @averyhotchner @mandylove1000 @qvid-pro-qvo @jeor @spencers-hoodrat @popped-weasels @evee87 @nuvoleincielo @this-broken-band-girl @reidtomestyles @hotch-meeeeeuppppp @winqhster @the-falling-in-the-danger @iconicc @mangoberry43 @andreasworlsboring101 @mac99martin @itsalwaysb33nyou @baumarvel @kerrswriting @messyhairday-me @ssworldofsw  @deagibs @crazyshannonigans @moonshinerbynight @jhiddles03 @teamhappyme @mendesmelodies @starsandasteroids @unicorn-bitch @ambicaos @bispences @thebivirgin

[creativeashproductions]

Lost Time II // Luke Patterson

Summary: Weeks after discovering his greatest joy Luke visits his former girlfriend to make up for the lost time. Unable to do it alone his band gives their support to find her and stand by his side as he faces his greatest regret.

Warning: Talk of death, allusion to homophobic parents, teen pregnancy and angst

Words: 3.1k

The book Midnight Club by Christopher Pike came out in 1994 but to fit this fic the book came out in 1993. Also, Alex’s last name will be Mitchell in this.

*For the sake of the story the time frame has been altered, it takes place in the mid-2000s. Also! I tried to make the reader as generalized as I could to make sure that everyone can relate. The reader is Alex’s sister, for inclusion that can be biological, adopted, half or stepsiblings. I want to make sure all people can be the reader.

A/N: Jesus I love Ben with my entire heart and I am a cruel person to have ripped Luke and Ben from each other before they had a chance. Enjoy!

Part One

Masterlist

Los Angeles, 1993

A sunny summer day spent outside reading a new book that had come out recently nestled in your hands under the large tree. The tree that had many tire swings before your parents caved to get a swing set. Now the tree was a companion on lovely days providing shade under the hot sun.

Alex was at band practice with the rest of Sunset Curve in the garage, or studio as Luke deemed it. More often than not, you would be in the studio watching them rehearse, but things changed, things had gotten more serious with Luke in the past six or so months. Plus, Bobby seriously was someone you wanted the least amount of time spent with.

“Hey.” Luke sighed, dropped on the faded blanket you had settled on. Raising one finger, you finished the page before placing the bookmark in.

“Hi.” You grinned leaning in as he pressed a kiss to your soft lips, “Used my Chapstick again?”

Luke hid his face in the crook of your neck, “I’m addicted to it, or it’s just your lips.”

He snuck another kiss before nudging you to adjust lay against his chest between his legs, a familiar position. One where you could read a book, and he could wrap his one arm around you while he wrote in his songbook with the other. God, you loved the boy with your entire heart.

“How’s the book?”

“It’s okay.”

“What’s it about?” Luke asked, wrapping his arms around your midsection.

“Five terminally ill teens living in a hospice tell scary stories every night. They all made a pact together that whoever died first would have to try to contact the others.” You sighed, dropping the book beside you to rest your arms on his.

“Sounds depressing.” Luke hummed, pressing a kiss to your neck, “I can think of more exciting things to do.”

“Over my dead body.” Alex snickered walking passed the young couple on his walk to the house. Reggie following after him with a laugh of his own; it was still odd to see Luke so loved up.

“I was talking about going to a concert!” Luke called out as his friends entered the Mitchell house, leaving the couple alone.

“You totally were not.” You spoke already knowing the answer as Luke nodded his head, “It’s a shock he lets us be alone.”

Turning to face Luke, you couldn’t help the blush that grew from the soft look in his eyes that you had only noticed after he asked you out. The boy had had a crush for a long time even if it was awkward given the previous thing he had with Alex.

“He’ll have to get used to it.”

“So, have you gotten a gig at The Orpheum yet?” You asked, shifting again to nestle against his side content to spend the time there in the backyard.

“Nah, we booked some smaller venues, but we’ll get there. I know it.” Luke was completely confident that one day he would be playing in the most popular venues. The other thing he was confident was his relationship.

“Where will I be?” You spoke looking at the recently turned sixteen-year-old boy who had quickly become the most important thing in your life. Never expected to fall in love with Alex’s ex-fling.

“Cheering us on. Have to have my number one supporter and wife because she’s been there since the dream began. The dream just expanded?”

 “Wife?” You breathed.

“I’m not dating you just to date. I’m dating you because when I dream of my future, you are right there next to me.” Luke admitted caressing your cheek the pad of his thumb, “Wherever in the world, we find ourselves I want you there.”

“What about kids?”

“We’ll have as many as you want. Or however many we are lucky to have.” Luke breathed growing more excited as he finally revealed his ideas and firm belief, “Of course I want to be married first. After The Orpheum I want the next thing to focus one hundred percent on is a wedding that you deserve and-“

“Ask me.”

“What?”

“Ask me.” You raised to your knees cradling his face in your hands, “That’s what I dream of too. Having a career but something that lets me travel with the love of my life and my chosen family.”

“It’s not how I want…I want it to be special and romantic because you deserve it.” Luke adamantly spoke, pressing his hands on yours still resting on his face.

“Luke. I love you. Just sitting here like we are is special and romantic.”

“Will you marry me?” Luke whispered, leaning to press his forehead on yours. The orange beanie tickling your skin.

“Yes. As soon as I turn eighteen.” You didn’t care if you had two more years to wait. As long as Luke was by your side, you didn’t care about how you got married just as long as you married him.

Los Angeles, 2004

There are times that Reggie knows that the last thing people need is his goofy personality and jokes. When Luke returned from wherever he had gone, it was evident that something had drastically changed since the last time they had seen him.

“Luke?” Reggie gently spoke hesitantly moving to the boy curled on the couch, sobbing into his hands. Reggie had never seen Luke like this before, not even when it cemented that they had died and Luke’s future with Y/N shattered in a moment.

“Reg-“ Alex poofed in next going stock still at the distraught teenager. His eyes widened as he quickly made his way to Luke, “What’s wrong?”

“I-I saw Y/N.” Luke choked out, shaking his head, “I knew it would hurt, but it felt like I died again. Like I literally watched my hopes and dream just shatter before me.”

 Alex was quiet taking in that Luke had seen Y/N. Alex missed his sister with everything in him, but Luke had plans.

“How is she?” Alex whispered, grabbing the hands of one of his best friends in the entire world. The one guy he had wholly trusted with his sister’s heart.

“She looks so good. God, it’s been nine years for her but only a few weeks for me. She’s more beautiful than I remember.” Luke breathed, raising teary eyes to meet Alex and Reggie’s concerned expressions, “I also saw Ben.”

“She got married?” Alex questioned surprised, “Please tell me it isn’t Bobby. I don’t think I could stomach that.”

“His name isn’t Ben and he probably tried after deciding on a respectable time for it to be okay-“

“Reggie.” Alex hissed motioning him to stop talking while Luke knew that Bobby had had feelings for you, he didn’t think he would try anything.

“I don’t think she’s married, but Ben is definitely a big part of what I missed out on.” Luke sighed, picking at a loose thread on his jeans, “I’m sure you know that in the three years, I was actually alive and with her that things happened.”

“Things like…?” Alex trailed off having a feeling he wouldn’t want to know about whatever Luke was hesitant to announce.

“Um…well we were, I am in love.” Luke grimaced at how odd it was to word his feelings for a girl he had died while planning a future, “in relationships you show affection in particular-“

“Okay as you struggle to finish that I will.” Reggie spoke, turning to Alex, “Luke and Y/N as a couple were having sex.”

Alex’s eyes went wide at the blunt statement that he never wanted to hear again in his life because you were his sister! He didn’t need to even think of anything to do other than the kissing he sometimes walked in on. He knew already but didn’t want to know either.

“I died, leaving Y/N pregnant! Which I didn’t know about.” Luke shouted poofing to the other side of the garage when he saw Alex’s fist start to clench. He poofed to the loft when Alex appeared to his last place, “C’mon man!”

“You knocked my sister up!”

Reggie’s mouth dropped at the physical aggression that Alex was showing because Alex was more peaceful and non-violent.

“I didn’t know! He’s eight!” Luke yelped when Alex grabbed him in a headlock, “Dude! I didn’t know! We were gonna get married when she turned eighteen! I love her, man!”

Reggie pulled Alex away from the lead guitarist before a fight happened, and even though part of Reggie wanted to see Alex fight…he wanted Luke here as well.

Alex was quiet, “What does he look like?”

Despite the agony of not being there for his son Luke launched into a description of the little boy.

With a white lie out of Julie’s mouth, she had gotten the address from Emily and Mitch for Luke and Alex. The address led to a small house with pretty flowers and a bike in the front yard; the place where Luke’s son had been growing up in since he was two years old.

Julie’s fist raised, knocking on the white door listening as footsteps sounded on the other side of the door. The door opened, revealing a little boy with startling green eyes that he inherited from his father.

“Benjamin Lucas!” You huffed turning the corner with a frown, “You may be eight, but you are still not allowed to open the door alone!”

The little boy slouched at the greeting before his eyes met three boys behind the Peurto Rican pretty girl.

“Oh my god. He looks just like you!” Alex hissed to Luke unable to remove his gaze from his…his nephew. His attention pulled to the woman his sister had grown to be.

“Julie, right?” You spoke gently tugging Ben closer to you, “Can I help you?”

“Yeah.” Julie nodded, mumbled a thank you as you welcomed the girl into the small home you had made. It was small but perfect, “Did he get stitches?”

“Oh yeah! I guess you were there when he got hurt.” You nodded, moving a book from the couch for Julie to sit down. Your attention was on Ben as he went to the corner to play with toys, “He did. He’s kinda like my brother and his dad in that way.”

 “Oh, god.” The overly familiar voice snapped your attention.

Sitting on either side of Julie were exact replicas of three boys that tragically died back in 1995, everyone froze. Even Ben looked up from the tension.

“Mama?” Ben asked, furrowing his brow.

“It’s okay Ben. Can you go to your room?” You asked, staring pale at the two people that you hadn’t noticed before. They hadn’t been visible to you at the time until they sat beside Julie. The scampering of feet and the gentle closing a door left you alone with four people.

“She can see us.”

Mutely you nodded at Alex’s statement slouching into the couch in shock, “What is happening?”

“I found a CD in my garage, and I played it. Out of nowhere, Luke, Reggie and Alex literally appeared in the room. They’re ghosts.” Julie spoke softly, “I’m not sure how I can see them, but I can.”

“Wow.” You breathed leaning back into the couch, unable to tear your gaze from the three boys, “Let me guess. Your first order of business was haunting the hell out of Bobby?”

Bobby, Trevor as the world knew, had lived up to your predictions of him being a lowlife rat boy. If you didn’t have Ben, you would have gone after him, but you couldn’t risk what little you had at the time.

“He stole our songs,” Luke grumbled crossing his arms so like you remember from years ago. He was still the passionate, caring musician you fell in love with so quickly.

 “I know. I tried everything but with Ben…it was too hard, but hey he’s gotten little success from his new stuff. Guess he didn’t think of how stealing songs wouldn’t pan out.” You shrugged, twisting a ring on your finger that Luke gave you a few weeks after the spontaneous proposal.

“So Ben?” Alex questioned, leaning forward to rest his arms on his knees with great interest in the new topic.

The tsunami of happiness broke through the heavy fog of sadness when your favourite subject came around. Talking about Ben could go on for years you swore with the amount of love for him.

“His name is Benjamin Lucas Patterson. He’s eight years old and obsessed with music, they say playing classical music helps with mental intelligence. Still, he wouldn’t settle unless I played rock.” You laughed glancing over your shoulder at the closed door, “He adores Bear in the Big Blue House and Dragon Tales. Not fond of Barney or Sesame Street but he’ll still watch it.”

The guys ate it up listening to every detail of a little boy they missed even if they only recently learnt about him. Reggie was silent listening to your stories of the young boy.

“His prized possession…come with me.” You gestured turning to head to the bedroom, “I didn’t ask for a lot of baby stuff, just the essentials and anything someone could make. Sunset Curve. You guys were significant to us, so I wanted Ben to have that.”

Ben was settled playing with the cars by his toy chest barely glancing as four people came together. Julie decided to stay in the living room. With a hand, you grabbed the blanket Ben absolutely always needed. It was a homemade blanket made entirely out of clothing—one of Reggie’s flannels, a few shirts from concerts with Luke and clothing that Alex loved.

“Y/N,” Alex spoke, brushing his fingers over the worn material touched at the action of doing something so little yet powerful.

 “I’m going, to be frank. After you died and I went to your fun-“ the word choked you as if you were back in 1995 sitting beside your mother wearing that black dress; a dress you burnt in the bathroom tub, “Mom found the test in my room. Rookie mistake. They weren’t thrilled about the baby and who the father was.”

“They kicked you out?”

“And Luke’s parents immediately welcomed me into their home. I owe them a lot, and Emily made this for Ben, she may not have approved of the band, but she knew it was important, so she wanted Ben to have a piece of his father’s greatest joy.”

“Mama? Can we have burgers tonight?” Ben asked quietly from his toys, “Can they stay for supper?”

Ben was shy with new people, but once he got to know someone, he was just like Luke with his bubbly and passionate personality. He was the spitting image of Luke with his hair and eye colour, but he got your nose and skin colour.

“If they want to.” You smiled, reaching over to pull the eight-year-old into your arms only wanting him to never grow up.

Alex, needing a break from the grief, wandered to a picture hanging on the wall that was a shadow box with his very first drum sticks. Underneath was Reggie’s old necklace that had to be replaced. Lastly underneath was the very first pick Luke used for the first song the band had performed.

“I’m Ben.” The boy spoke, meeting the eyes of the newcomers, “You’re the band that passed away, right?”

“Yeah. This may be confusing but Ben this is Alex, Reggie and Luke.” You replied, brushing his bangs away from his eyes. Ben returned to his quiet nature before looking at your eyes.

“That’s my family, right?”

In perfect sync, Alex and Luke started silently crying at the little boy’s words wishing that that night had never happened. It seemed at the time the right way to start the new chapter with one last street dog.

 “Yeah, baby.” You cleared your throat nodding along to the innocent words your son spoke before he was wandering out of the room, “One hour of cartoons young man.”

“I’m gonna go.” Reggie spoke gesturing after the boy, “I wanna watch Cartoons.”

Reggie poofed out of the room following the little boy out of the room, leaving three sad people. The room was heavy in loss, so sad it could choke a person.

“Does Mom and Dad have anything to do with him?” Alex asked as the boys covered their grief by wandering around the bedroom. Taking in the pictures of Ben from throughout the eight years, some with you or with his paternal grandparents. Few had Alex and your parents.

“They moved a few months after you died.” You admitted, “After the way they reacted to Ben I didn’t want him in that environment. We get Christmas cards and calls on his birthday, but I don’t have the time to travel.”

Alex nodded vividly remembering the way they reacted after he had told his parents that he didn’t like girls. It was challenging since Dad was always excited for the family name to be passed down, he didn’t see that the name could continue no matter who Alex loved. Mom was more open but stepped in line with her husband instead of her hurting son.

“I’m sorry.” Luke blurted stepping closer to you, allowing you to see the ocean of tears and pain swimming in his tortured gaze, “I shouldn’t have gotten that street dog. I should have stayed with you, you weren’t feeling good.”

“Things happen for a reason, Luke.” You sadly reminded the boy, “I wish it didn’t happen, but it did, and I’ve learned to live with that. Ben has a wonderful family and a good life.”

“He knows about us too,” Luke spoke, thinking back to barely half an hour ago when Ben acted as if he knew Luke all his life. God, Luke wished he could have seen everything.

“I have videos of Ben if you want to see them.” You offered the boy, “There’s a television in the den where Ben has his baby book, and the home videos if you want. You can stay in there all you want.”

Luke nodded, playing with his fingers, “I’d love that.”

“If you want to be alone, I can take Ben for ice cream. You can have the whole house to watch alone.” You graciously offered the boy you would always love and believed before that you would see him in decades after your own death.

Luke silently nodded following as you took him to the den where it had a child-sized guitar and floor to ceiling bookshelves. A television was tucked in the corner with a video camera stored on a shelf with a VHS player. In a sealed container, the home videos were kept safe along with the baby books.

“I’ll be back in a few hours. It’s nice to see you, Luke. Really.” You told the now younger boy keeping his eyes on the opened bucket. A bucket that held all the firsts he had missed out on a little boy he had loved since first seeing him in his family home weeks ago.

Tag List Underneath (PLEASE SEND AN INBOX TO BE ADDED!)

@safehavenmuse @siennanoelle01 @whiterose291 @mell-bell @blackhood5sos @ficrecsideblog @ifilwtmfc @deadpoolgirl23 @crappy-unicorn @sunsetcurve-h @elioelioeli0 @lovesanimals @popcrone818 @lolychu @deepsleepnat @tenaciousperfectionunknown @aunicornmademedoit @just-a-writer-here @simp4reggie @parkeret @faithiebrock01 @overlyhypedup @differentsoulrascalsalad @aesthetic-lyss @versaceapa @carleywhittaker @lostgirl219 @itsalexx21 @elllaoo4 @merxxleighann @mediocremunge @fantomlovesjuke4ever @dpaccione @oswin05 @kaylinfayezink @aberette13 @faithie-brock-gillespie01 @eharvey0218 @overlyhypedup @benstormy @auriandthepussicats @sarcasticsagittarius1998 @whothefuckstolemykeds​ @kcd15 @siriuswvrld @princessvader15 @xoxbloodreinaxox @heimdoodle @joshy-obx @lovesanimals @oopsiedoopsie23 @am3l1a-24 @flying-solo-without-you @jaskiers-sweetkiss @lostrandomfangirln @must-be-a-weasley-92 @jatp-holland @ilikealotofpeople-younotsomuch @dxlanhxlland @dasexydevitt13 @ifilwtmfc @arianagrandes-things @kinda-really-lost​ @marinettepotterandplagg​​ @ssprayberrythings​​ @morgandamrose @thedarkqueenofavalon​ @zukoshonourr​ @crybabyddl @spooky-season-bitch​

[twdmusicboxmystery]

FTWD 6x08: First Analysis

Okay, let’s talk about this episode. 1) It SUCKED. 2) It also SUCKED. Anyone want to take a stab at what I’ll list for #3?

Why? Character death.

I’ll put all spoilers beneath the READ MORE. If this makes you at all worried about Beth’s return, read what I’ve written below. It will make you feel better.

***As always, spoilers abound for 6x08 below. Don’t read until you’ve watched!***

Okay, so I’m sure you already figured this out, but John is probably my favorite character currently on FEAR, so I’m super-bummed that they decided to kill him off. And I totally didn’t see it coming. The screeners talked about something big happening in Fear, but I didn’t think it would be this. Yeah. SUCKS.

But let’s discuss, shall we?

Because there was and still is a lot of Beth symbolism around John, I know that’s going to unsettle people. I don’t want this to come across as me being worried in any way, but I’ve already gotten quite a few Asks and messages, so clearly others in the fandom are worried that because John dies here, it might mean Beth really did die, too.

Let me assure you, there’s nothing further from the truth. 

I’d like you to keep the following 6 points:

1.       It’s all about the attitude of the character in that moment. (A.k.a. the symbolism can change.)

2.       His death will spur on the current storyline and affect other characters.

3.       There is plenty of precedent for killing off true love couples. Unfortunately.

4.       This was a replay of Grady.

5.       John does not = Beth in this season. Morgan does.

6.       Major clarity on the Door symbol, and that’s freaking huge!

It’s all about the character’s attitude in the moment.

This is something I’ve addressed before when looking at the dialogue various characters have before their deaths. In most cases, they accept their deaths or become negative in some way. And that’s not to say that they all want to die or try to commit suicide. For example, Dale. He didn’t want to die and he wasn’t suicidal. But before his death, he said he no longer wanted to live in a world where they killed Randal. That’s basically, through symbolic dialogue, announcing his own death.

Another good example is Glenn. There was tons of Beth symbolism and even a lot of her dialogue around Glenn in S6, just before his death fake out. Now, clearly he didn’t want to die in 7x01, and he didn’t really say anything to that effect. But the point is, the hopeful, Beth symbols around him wasn’t present in 6x16/7x01 as it was in 6x03. So, the symbolism around a character can change if their attitude has changed and their heading toward their own death.

Do you see what I mean? While there has been lots of Beth symbolism around John and June in the past, in this episode and even a few previous to this, he became very hopeless and dark. You could say he parallels to S2 Beth who also tried to commit suicide. Not to S4/S5 Beth who was hopeful and determined to live.

Throughout the episode, Morgan gives John tons of chances to change his mind, and he refuses.

One more example and I’ll move on. Heath and Tara.

I’ll admit this symbolism is a little confusing, and I had to think through it several times to square it in my head. In 7x06, Tara fell off a bridge into a river, and washed up in a new community. She lived. Here, John falls off a bridge into a river and washes up in front of his own cabin. But he dies.

We’ve always attributed the Tara symbolism to Beth, yet John died here. But Tara DID live, so which is it?

Again, it just depends on the attitude. Before Tara went off the bridge, we saw her being positive and hopeful, while Heath was being super negative and hopeless. Tara lived. She found herself in captivity, but eventually escaped and made it home. Heath didn’t die in that case, but disappeared into the CRM. The point is, something bad happened to him because he was being negative and hopeless. And to this day, he’s never made it home. See what I mean? So, it’s all about where the character’s head is at. Unfortunately, John had given up.

And the other confusing thing is that he seems to get his hope back right at the end. The last thing we see him say is “It’s not too late.” But I think the idea is that it’s just too little too late at that point. If you follow the sequence of events back, it’s clear that if he hadn’t gone back to the cabin and tried to kill himself, he wouldn’t have been on that bridge and Lizzie—I mean Dakota—wouldn’t have killed him. So his death was the result of his own actions.

His death will spur on the current storyline and affect other characters.

This is something the showrunners really emphasize on TTD. And I won’t say I’m a fan of it, but we do have a precedent for it in the show. Glenn’s death kicked off AOW. Jesus’s death happened at the start of the Whisper War. The death of the pike victims spurred Carol to let Negan out to kill Alpha. So, while I wish they’d used someone other than John for this (cuz I heart him), this is something we’ve seen in other story lines before.

Will it happen with Beth? Well, I don’t think Beth will die at the beginning of the CRM war, if that’s what anyone is thinking. But I think someone will. I’ll talk more about this below, but for now, know that there probably will be a sacrifice of some kind. I actually kind of wonder if it will be Eugene. Only because of the Sampson template. I’ve said before that I think, like Sampson, he might do something to save TF, kill their enemies, and give them a fighting chance. But that remains to be seen, of course.

There’s even a line in this episode where John says, “this river has a way of bringing people back to life.” Clearly, that doesn’t apply to him. But I think it applies to the rest of his group who will “come alive” and finally fight off Virginia’s evil yoke.

There is plenty of precedent for killing off true love couples. Unfortunately.

Another reason I know this makes people nervous is because this is a true love couple with major symbolic ties to Bethyl. I get it. But actually, we’ve seen similar things with lots of other Bethyl proxy couples.

The one that first comes to mind is Sasha and Abraham. They had TONS of Bethyl parallels. They did get together and get some time together, though not much. Then Abe was killed off, and Sasha followed him a season later.

There’s also David and Betsy from S6. Admittedly, there were SUPER minor characters, but still.

The other big one is Glaggie. I’m not saying there were tons of Bethyl parallels there, except in the fact that they’re both soulmate couples and both have death fake outs. But the point is, TWD hasn’t exactly shied away from killing off soulmate couples.

So what does that mean for Beth and Daryl?

I’m really not trying to scare or depress anyone. I’m not saying they’re going to kill off either Beth or Daryl after she returns. My point is that pointing at John and June as a soulmate couple and trying to extend this death to Beth and Daryl doesn’t really work. This is just another beloved character fatality, and TWD has given us a LOT of those.

So might they kill Beth or Daryl down the line? I mean, anything’s possible, but I really doubt it. I’ve said this before, but they wouldn’t do all this epic foreshadowing just to pull a Morales, or make them “just another” tragic couple.

Plus, it’s Daryl. His romance was always meant to be epic and I really think they’ll both be standing at the end of the series (including the spinoff) whenever that is. So, it’s not something I worry about.

This was a replay of Grady.

I’ll go into this more tomorrow in my Details post, but there are specific things here that make it clear to me that this is something of a replay of Grady. For today, just look at it this way: we have someone falling off a bridge (Daryl and Carol did so in 5x06) and someone being shot (John and Beth). Walkers are also involved in a big way. The difference is that John dies while we think Beth lived. And we can be confident in that because, as I explained above, her attitude was exactly the opposite of John’s.

John does not = Beth in this season. Morgan does.

Keep in mind that, as I said above, John because S2 Beth here. He sort of retrogressed into hopelessness, and that’s why he died.

If anyone is a Beth proxy in this season of Fear, it’s Morgan. He’s sort of “come back from the dead,” reinvented himself, is searching for his lost love (Grace) who happens to be pregnant (child/baby symbolism) and in this episode, John even calls him a ghost.

I’m just saying.

Major clarity on the Door symbol, and that’s freaking huge!

Okay, this is the big one for me, and about the only real silver lining of this episode. This is something we’ve been stumped over for a LONG time. Specifically, since they were filming S5.

Review: while filming the lost ‘white cabin�� scenes we know Emily was in for S5, and which we still haven’t seen yet, Steven Yeun posted this.

It’s a picture from inside that white cabin, and he captioned it with, “Open the door!” but then deleted it. We never understood exactly what that meant. I think most people assumed it was a tease about what might be or what might have happened in that cabin.

But this episode with John is called “The Door.”

They have this whole theme in the episode about how John wants to close himself in his cabin and commit suicide. So, closing the door = death. Opening the door = life. 

My fellow theorists and I have been talking a lot about the cabin symbol as a tomb, since 10x18. We think Leah’s entire cabin represents a tomb. Which not only shows that she might be dead/a hallucination, but it represents Daryl being emotionally dead. Closing himself off to the living and indulging things that aren’t even real.

We’ve seen other examples of this theme as well. In S4, Carol and Ty tried to stay in the little cabin, rather than moving forward to find the others, and it resulted in death (Lizzie killing Mica).

Also in S4, Sasha tried to stop rather than pushing forward. It probably would have resulted in her death. Thankfully, she came around, and that led to her not only living, but reuniting with Tyreese.

@wdway also pointed out that we just recently saw Lucille this. She entombed herself in the basement, shutting the door and leaving a note. And while she was dying of cancer anyway, she didn’t wait for cancer to kill her. She took her own life. So she entombed herself and chose death.

John wanted to do the same thing in this episode. He didn’t get a chance to, but as I discussed above, that’s why he died.

But do you see why this is so significant. Steven posting the cabin with the “open the door!” caption is his way of showing that something about the cabin in how Beth lived.

Opening the door = life.

So while I kind of hated this episode and am super bummed about John, it does shed some light on a lot of the symbolism.

Tomorrow, I’ll talk more about the episode details.

Thoughts?

[oh-great-authoress]

Tag Game!!!!!

Thank you, @the-coruscanti-blogger, for tagging me!

Okay, here we go!!

Name: Nadia of oh-great-authoress!

Gender: Female.

Star Sign: Like @the-coruscanti-blogger said, this is technically against my religion, but I do know that I am a Virgo.

Height: Over 5 feet, I can’t remember the exact number.

Sexuality: Straight.

Favorite Book: Uhh, difficult question. How about top three?

“The Lord of the Rings” by J. R. R. Tolkien (In my opinion it counts as one book. Yes, I know I’m technically cheating.)

“Washington's Spies: The Story of America's First Spy Ring” by Alexander Rose (They even made a tv series based on the events in this book called Turn: Washington’s Spies!) [Yes, I am a history nerd. :)]

“Niamh and the Hermit” by Emily C. A. Snyder (This book is a hidden treasure. It’s an adventure/epic quest/love story that is just… *chef’s kiss* perfection. It’s along the lines of LotR, so if you like that, you’ll probably love this.)

Current Time: Uhh, unholily late, or unholily early, depending on your outlook.

Average Amount of Sleep: Outside of quarantine, it varies from 8+ to 0, depending on the day.

Dogs or Cats: Both. Both is good.

# of Blankets You Sleep With: One thick one in colder weather, and two thin ones in warmer weather. I know it’s weird I use more when it’s warm, but it works for me.

Dream Job: World Domination. Hahaha, I’m joking. Or am I?…

Favorite Animal: Foxes. Look at the YouTube channel SaveAFox. You’ll thank me later. Go.

Blog Established: January of 2020!

# of Followers: As of when I post this, 31!

Reason for URL: I hang around music nerds, and I am a bit… okay, I’m a music nerd. It’s a sort of oblique reference to a Gilbert and Sullivan song called “Minerva! Oh, Hear Me!” It’s a warping of one of the lyrics, which says, “Oh, goddess wise” I couldn’t remember the actual lyric, (I forgot google existed) and in my memory, I changed it to “Oh, great goddess”, which sounded right. Again, I forgot google existed. And I have a dramatic streak a mile wide. (Or a couple of miles wide, depends on who you ask) In addition, I like to write, a lot, (I also hate it a lot sometimes) so that turned into @oh-great-authoress!

Something I’m Grateful For: My faith, my amazing and wonderful parents, my grandparents, my and my family’s health and life, my friends irl and on tumblr, sunrises, music, my interests and fandoms, tumblr, and all the amazing people I’ve met here.

Followers I’m Tagging: @megsann13, @batmantaking-hobbits2gallifrey, @ruinofsilver, @fromsolowithlove, @rainmakesyouwhole, @demichrising, @cptdorkery, @lynntheninja, @loveandmusic67, @magic-and-the-macabre, and @lenacs!

Questions I’m Adding (Feel free to ignore my added questions)

Favorite Pairings

Favorite Season

Favorite Color(s)

Favorite Actresses and Actors

My Answers to My Own Questions

Question 1.

Favorite Pairings

Reylo — Ben Solo/Rey — Star Wars (I don’t need to say any more about this.)

Gingerflower — Armitage Hux/Rose Tico — Star Wars (Okay, guys, guys, guys, hear me out, okay? Please don’t come @ me. I got sucked into this via Reylo Modern AU fanfics, and I went down a rabbit hole. From there, I read some canon-divergent fic, and it got me thinking. I mean TRoS didn’t even obliquely mention Finn/Rose, so, I thought, why the kriff not. Why shouldn’t Rose “Save What We Love” Tico get a romance/definitively happy ending via fanfic. We already had one Enemies-to Lovers pairing in the Sequel Trilogy, what’s one more? And when you add in Hux’s “I’m the Spy!”? This kinda writes itself. Resistance Spy-Master Rose Tico? Why not. Plus, that deleted scene from TLJ did kind of open this whole thing up.)

Farawyn — Faramir/Eowyn — LotR (If you haven’t read the books or watched the Extended Editions of the films, Faramir and Eowyn end up together, which is why they’re standing next to each other in the Theatrical Edition of RotK, at the end. In the books, they have practically an entire chapter dedicated to them and their romance. And boy, does Faramir have game.)

Fitzwilliam Darcy/Elizabeth Bennet — Pride & Prejudice (I also don’t need to say any more about this.)

Col. Brandon/Marianne Dashwood — Sense & Sensibility (Watch the 1995 adaptation and tell me this is not pairing gold.)

Mary/Matthew — Downton Abbey (Yes, the Season 3 finale broke my heart, thank you.)

Dramione — Draco Malfoy/Hermione Granger — Harry Potter (Again, please don’t come @ me, this pairing is basically Reylo in a Harry Potter AU.)

Bathena — Bobby Nash/Athena Grant — 911 (Yes, I do watch this. I actually didn’t see this coming. My Mom saw it coming before I did. But once it happened, I was like, oh yeah, this is my jam.)

Ventrobi — Obi-Wan Kenobi/Asajj Ventress — Star Wars (Okay, yes, I am a sucker for Enemies-to Lovers, okay? And this is Enemies-to-Lovers gold, alright?

Christopher Pike/Number One (Una) — Star Trek (Got into this ship via fanfic, but Discovery/Short Treks well and truly cemented this for me.)

Question 2.

Favorite Season

Fall. Without question. The weather becomes temperate, and in early fall you still get the pretty flowers of summer, but with cooler weather, and in full-out-fall, you get to wear pretty sweaters and boots and scarves, and you get the trees changing color.

Question 3.

Favorite Color(s)

Pink

Teal

Green

Blue

Purple

Question 4.

Favorite Actresses and Actors

Adam Driver (Guys. Come on.)

Daisy Ridley (Guys. Come on.)

Domnhall Gleeson (I liked him even before he was General Hux, guys, he was great in a movie called “About Time” and “Goodbye Christopher Robin”.)

Kelly Marie Tran (She was amazing as Rose, I still feel bad she didn’t get more screen time, especially after what happened to her after TLJ.)

Ewan McGregor (Um, he’s Obi-Flipping-Wan Kenobi.)

Letitia Wright (She was great as Shuri in “Black Panther”.)

Danai Gurira (She was Awesome as General Okoye in “Black Panther. Note the capital A.)

Colin Firth (P&P ‘95 and The King’s Speech. That’s all I have to say.)

Alan Rickman (S&S ‘95 + Harry Potter + Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Amazing performances. I mean, truly amazing. Nuanced, and just plain hilarious in the case of Robin Hood. His performance as Col. Brandon just pulls at the heartstrings with every single expression in his eyes, and no matter how you feel about Severus Snape, you cannot deny that Alan, God rest his soul, played him brilliantly.)

Hayden Christensen (He was The Chosen One.)

Bruce Greenwood (His portrayal of Captain Pike in Star Trek: 2009 was the reason I wrote and actually finished a fic.)

Anson Mount (His portrayal of Captain Pike in Star Trek: Discovery was the reason I wrote and actually finished more fic.)

And that’s it! I hope I have not ticked off anyone. If I have, I apologize for the ticking off, but not my opinions. I hope you can respect them, or at least ignore them.

Stay Well, People!

[xanketori]

Hi! 3, 6, 18, 31, 46, 48, 50 for oc's from andy-tommy, pine and mints, rian and boss but if you don't mind, please also add those from your other stories! I'll just reread your answers once I get to know them ☺️

Heyo Dim! :D Thanks for the asks! That’s,,,a lot :O This will get long though so buckle up! I refrained from answering with every other oc out there though, and only did the ones that automatically popped into my head :3

3. which ocs can, and do, go days without sleeping?

Andy/Tommy:

Andy’s a freaking tank. He either sleeps days on end or doesn’t sleep days on end. Tom, John, Laura, and Dalton do go days without sleeping, but only out of necessity.

Pineandmints:

Nicholas. The lad needs a healthy lifestyle ;-;

Rian:

Alex, because she gets caught up on work and whatever invention she’s working on at the moment. Rian does follow in her footsteps. Vanessa despairs at the two of them.

Boss:

Both the Boss and the Paramedic (plus her detective sibling) don’t sleep much. Boss stays awake out of necessity, always looking out for her gang. Paramedic,,,,is a paramedic. That’s her profession. She keeps odd hours. Her detective sibling can get.....obsessive with work and forget to sleep too.

Other stories:

Lucian, Seth, Tyson, Anton, Derek, and Chase for different reasons. Lucian can work without much sleep; he thinks sleep is a bit of a waste of time. Tyson and Anton are a bit similar, often working long hours without sleep. Seth has insomnia and doesn’t sleep much in general. Derek and Chase,,,,stay up late playing games.

This gets long, so the rest below:

6. which ocs eat consistent meals? which ocs just eat whenever they feel like it?

Andy/Tommy:

Tom, John, Laura, and Dalton. Andy, if left to his own devices, will eat whenever he feels like it. For this reason, he is often not left to his own devices. 

Pineandmints:

Both Nat and Nicky will forget to eat ;-; Nat keeps to more consistent meals cuz he lives with his family still, and they will force him to sit at the table with them.

Rian:

Vanessa and Rian eat consistent meals; for Rian, it was ingrained into her by Vanessa. Alex: what are meals???

Boss:

Boss keeps to consistent meals cuz she knows the importance of food. Paramedic will forget, and often won’t have time due to work.

Other stories:

The warrior types will eat consistent meals, cuz they know the importance of keeping up their strengths: Tyson, Shim, Amy, Lake,  Rowan, Ashley,  Thor twins, Tinsan, Tanesh, Hayko, Thoff, Thes, Hisaki, Gedon, Arrin/Liden, Hansin, Luke, Charles, Leo, Will, James, Bryce II, Janis, Wolf, Fang, Pike, Stanley, Flint, Ethan, Henry, Emily, Evan, Stefan, Silas, Waldus, Tenkis, Yarrus, Datris

The cooks will also eat consistent meals: Vincent, Bryce I, Sarren

The Good Kids who eat consistent meals cuz they are good kids: Eden, Lance, Kasper, Benjamin, Samuel, Ba/Ne, Alkaline, London, Mecko, Halim, Tali, Inden, Vennus

These kids get too caught up in work/games and forget to eat: Derek, Matthew R, Anton, Chase, Christopher LL, JP, Xan, Laser, Zap

The one who won’t eat consistent meals because he makes sure everyone else is fed properly first: Thief

18. which ocs will bend the rules as much as possible without breaking them? which do it to get what they want, and which do it just for spite?

Andy/Tommy:

Andy and Tom. They are a disaster duo. Andy does it to get what he wants, and Tom will do it just for spite. But also because he thinks it’s funny.

Pineandmints:

Neither. They are both good kids.

Rian:

All of them. More so Vanessa. Alex and Rian are more likely to just break the rules. They’ll do it to get what they want.

Boss:

Boss, for sure. She’ll do it to get what she want and out of spite. But also will break the rules anyway. She’s a criminal :)

Other stories:

THE TROUBLEMAKING TRIO! It’s what they live for! They bend the rules so much but never break them so their parents can’t even punish them cuz they never do anything actually wrong. That’s Samuel, Benjamin, and Christopher LL.

The Thief also skirts this line. He does it to make fun of the cops but also to get what he wants. But he’ll still commit minor crimes.

31. which ocs want to travel? which ocs are content staying at home?

Andy/Tommy:

All of them are content staying at home. They do plenty of travelling in their profession.

Pineandmints:

Both want to travel.

Rian:

Hm. Vanessa and Rian want to travel. Alex is more keen on staying at home.

Boss:

Paramedic wants to travel, but Boss likes staying at home.

Other stories:

Lance wants to travel! Eden is more of, stay at home and curl up in bed type.

46. which ocs will absolutely only use one cup/mug for a certain drink? 

Andy/Tommy:

Tom, out of spite. John: I will throw something at you, Tommy, I swear.

All others:

Hm. None...? Maybe Derek. He probably has specific cups/glasses for certain alcoholic drinks :/

 48. which ocs need caffeine in the morning? 

Andy/Tommy:

John. He doesn’t get paid enough to deal with his younger brother. Also Dalton, for the same reason. And Laura, for the same reason.

Tom is oddly bright and chipper in the morning. Very annoying.

Pineandmints:

Nathaniel. Usually tea.

Rian:

All three. Alex and Rian can be real grumpy without caffeine.

Boss:

Paramedic.

Other stories:

Amy and Shim (Vincent knows this well). Seth and Lucian also. Hunter, because Chase can be a pain. Colin probably drinks coffee too.

 50. which ocs speak fluent sarcasm?

Andy/Tommy:

Not too sure. Tom maybe?

Pineandmints:

None. They’re good kids who don’t know what sarcasm is ;-;

Rian:

Rian lolol. She probably gets that from Vanessa. Alex is more straightforward and honest with her thoughts.

Boss:

Paramedic and Boss.

Other stories:

I imagine Lucian. Also Samuel and Christopher LL (Benjamin is too much of a good kid ;-;). Lance, likely. The Thief. Hayko and Hisaki, likely. Maybe Thes and Thoff too? They grew up together, so the four of them likely just rubbed off on each other. Amy. She also makes scathing remarks, of which Vincent is often the target of ;-;

[aion-rsa]

The Mandalorian Season 2 Trailer Breakdown and Analysis

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The Mandalorian season 2 will send Mando and Baby Yoda to new places across the galaxy and to new dangers, as the bounty hunter with a heart of gold searches for the Child’s home. As teased in the season’s first trailer ahead of the Oct. 30 premiere, the journey won’t be easy. Mando (Pedro Pascal) won’t only have to contend with other bounty hunters trying to get the jump on him but also the brutal Empire, which is still on the hunt for the Child. And unbeknownst to our hero, the cruel Moff Gideon (Giancarlo Esposito) survived his encounter with the Mandalorian and is out for blood, the power Darksaber in hand.

There’s plenty going on in this trailer, between firefights, duels, and even a few X-wing scenes (!), so I’m breaking the video below to see what secrets are hiding in plain sight. Hopefully, we’ll learn a few new things about season 2 along the way. Hit me in the comments or on Twitter if you’ve caught something I’ve missed!

Before I get started, here’s the trailer again:

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Okay, here’s what I’ve found so far:

The trailer opens with Mando and Baby Yoda flying the Razor Crest towards a terrestrial moon I can’t quite recognize, although the way it’s introduced into the shot reminds me how the Millenium Falcon flew around the gas giant of Yavin to reveal the much smaller Yavin IV hiding just behind it. It’s a nice little callback.

Of course, the biggest detail here is that the Razor Crest has clearly taken some damage before this scene, as you can see from the sparking engine and the way the ship can’t seem to fly in a straight line towards its destination. The cargo door is also hanging open, unable to close. The ship clearly ran into some trouble.

As you’ll see throughout the rest of the trailer, the Razor Crest will at the very least pick up some New Republic pursuers this season, and the Empire isn’t too far behind either. Expect a few dog fights.

We then see Mando and the Child walking across the surface of what looks like a settlement in the desert. Are the heroes back on Tatooine? Or are they on one of the other dry planets introduced in the first season, like Arvala-7 and Nevarro? Tatootine seems most likely since Star Wars can’t help itself. Either way, the trailer delivers the Western vibes right away, as the gunslinger and his ward arrive in this desert town. Trouble will definitely follow.

“Show me the one whose safety deemed such destruction,” says the Armorer (Emily Swallow) during this shot. “You must reunite it with its own kind.”

These lines are of course a callback to the end of the first season when the Armorer sent Mando on his way to find the Child’s home.

Clear skies. The desert. A Tusken Raider riding a bantha. This is definitely Tatooine. Is Mando on his way back to see mechanic Peli Motto (Amy Sedaris) after another run-in with some enemy ships?

It’s on Tatooine where Mando will likely meet Timothy Olyphant’s Cobb Vanth, a former slave who found Boba Fett’s old armor and made himself sheriff of a settlement called Freetown in the Aftermath books by Chuck Wendig. This character’s arrival may have actually been teased in the first season’s fifth episode. In finale scene of the episode, we see and hear as a mysterious stranger with spurs on his boots finds the body of Fennec Shand, the assassin played by Ming-Na Wen. At first, most fans speculated that this was Boba Fett but since Olyphant’s Vanth casting came to light, the sheriff seems more likely.

All that said, Temuera Morrison has been cast to play Boba Fett in the series as well, although reports suggest the character only plays a small role on the show. Maybe even just a brief cameo. A showdown between Mando, Cobb, and Boba Fett sure would be an interesting half-hour of television, though. Either way, this series is poised to confirm that Boba Fett survived the sarlacc pit from Return of the Jedi.

Mando and Baby Yoda’s search take them to an ice planet at some point. There are plenty of ice planets in the Star Wars galaxy, so I’m not sure which this is. The very first episode of the series followed the Mandalorian as he visited the ice planet of Maldo Kreis to collect a bounty. It’s possible he’s back on Maldo Kreis for season 2.

The next shot shows Mando kneeling next to the Child, some kind of ship or vehicle wreckage in the background. I’m not sure what kind of vessel this is, but it almost looks Clone Wars era to me. What do you think?

As Mando walks through what looks like an outpost full of aliens from all over the galaxy, we hear the Armorer telling the bounty hunter about “an order of sorcerers called Jedi” who she believes might know more about the origins of the Child. It’s possible that Baby Yoda is even one of these “sorcerers.” (We know of course that the Child is indeed strong in the Force and would make an excellent Jedi.)

Just as the Armorer mentions these sorcerers, we see a cloaked figure watching Mando and the Child from the shadows. While some thought this might be Rosario Dawson’s Ahsoka Tano, who is also making her live-action debut on the show, this is actually a mystery character played by none other than WWE superstar Sasha Banks. The trailer strongly teases that Banks’ character is either a Jedi or a dark sider. This seems like a bit of misdirection to me, but it’s clear that Banks is at the very least some sort of spy watching Mando’s moves.

We then see Mando and Baby Yoda riding on a boat across foggy waters to parts unknown, which its very cool in itself since we don’t really see much sea travel in Star Wars unless it’s on Naboo. Why can’t Mando get to wherever he’s going on the Razor Crest, though?

Remember those New Republic pursuers I mentioned earlier? A little more than midway through the trailer, the Razor Crest is met by two X-wings who lock S-foils in attack position after Mando undoubtedly fails to comply with their orders. A very cool chase sequence through a cloudy sky ensues that I can’t wait to watch more of.

Mando’s allies, Greef Karga (Carl Weathers) and Cara Dune (Gina Carano), are back for season 2. Judging from the destruction in the background and the terrain, it looks like Mando will reunite with his friends on Nevarro some time after their fight with the Empire last season.

The Empire is back too, of course. We see troopers and pilots rushing into battle on speeder bikes and the Outland TIE fighters first introduced in season 1. Judging from the volcanic terrain in these scenes, it looks like this scuffle with the Empire also takes place on Nevarro.

This looks like it’s going to be an awesome fight sequence, with Mando jetpacking off a cliff to meet the Imperial scum. Is Moff Gideon waiting for him?

I can’t tell what’s happening here except that Mando has trapped someone, hanging them from a street post. The graffiti all over the walls makes me think this is back on Mos Eisley, which was heavily vandalized after Imperial forces were slaughtered there. You all remember the stormtrooper helmets on pikes, right?

A couple of quick cuts of Mando and Baby Yoda walking through an ice cave and what looks like the Razor Crest falling through a planet’s atmosphere follow. Then we get the most interesting scene of the entire trailer, as Mando and the Child walk into a room where two Gamorreans are duking it out inside a ring! The Star Wars Wrestling Federation is a thing and it includes weapons and is probably to the death. I now want to watch a whole show about a Gamorrean heavyweight making his way through the seedy world of whatever sport this is.

Unsurprisingly, Mando and the Child run into some trouble during the fight, as a group of criminals turn their blasters on them. The one-eyed alien doing the talking is an Abyssin, a species first introduced in the cantina scene in A New Hope.

Baby Yoda hilariously takes cover as Mando activates his whistling birds, the tiny guided projectiles that make quick work of these bozos. By the time Mando takes down that Zabrack guard (!), it looks like the bounty hunter is the last man standing.

“This is the way.”

More on The Mandalorian season 2 as we learn it!

The post The Mandalorian Season 2 Trailer Breakdown and Analysis appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[brightbeautifulthings]

My Decade in Books

@aliteraryprincess, thank you for tagging me, sweets!  💛

The rules: respond to the prompt “my decade in books” however you want, & then tag some ppl! I chose a book or series to define each year of the decade, some w/a little description. You can do that, or make up your own response

Oof. This is hard for me because I'm superbad at years/numbers or remembering when things happened, and I don't have a clear picture until I started blogging, but I'll give it a try! I'm also linking my lists of best books of the year from 2016 on.

2010 - It's hard to remember this far back. I think I was pretty obsessed with Chuck Palahniuk, which I fortunately grew out of, and I was probably re-reading a lot of my high school favorites like Christopher Pike and Laurell K. Hamilton. Most memorable: I remember reading Into the Wild at the job I had at the time and liking it well enough.

2011 - I think this was before school got too intense, and I still enjoyed reading. 😂 I remember taking a really fun summer class in children's lit where we got to read The Hunger Games, Percy Jackson, and Francesca Lia Block. Most memorable: reading Weetzie Bat at the bottom of my stairs (the lowest point in my apartment) during a tornado warning.

2012 - In my last year of undergraduate studies, I was reading a lot of pre-WWII American fiction like Sinclair Lewis and John Steinbeck, and a lot of contemporary American fiction like Karen Russell, Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, etc. It pretty much set the tone for the rest of my academic career. Most memorable: reading "All That" by David Foster Wallace and falling absolutely in love with his writer voice.

2013 - I had a bit of break between degrees here, so I used it to binge a lot of the things I had been missing (the new Thirst series by Christopher Pike, The Mortal Instruments by Cassandra Clare), along with probably a lot of Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter. Most memorable: ruining a copy of The Whores on the Hill on a trip and somehow ending up with two more copies.

2014 - I was in graduate school for this year (and a bit of some others, but years/semesters do not line up well) so I was reading almost everything David Foster Wallace ever wrote, plus quite a bit of theory, memoirs, and Holocaust fiction. Most memorable: pounding Infinite Jest in a month, and guiltily reading The White Rabbit Chronicles when I was supposed to be doing other things.

2015 - This wasn't a great year. I had a hideous modernism class in which I hated almost everything I had to read (James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, T.S. Eliot), and a superhard Marlowe/Shakespeare class that covered a LOT of ground: all the major Marlowe plays, plus a bunch of Shakespeare histories. Most memorable: reading Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany and being like wtf on every single page.

2016 - This was my first year of blogging! Can you believe it's been this long? This was a golden year of reading for me. Once I was out of school, I had time to catch up on everything I'd missed, and there were so many amazing things! I fell in love with The Raven Cycle, Six of Crows, Graceling, ACOTAR, and everything Rainbow Rowell I could get my hands on. Most memorable: all of those things, since I'm still in love with them.

2017 - This was my second year of blogging, and I fell in love with Nora Sakavic, Seanan McGuire/Mira Grant, and Laini Taylor. I also read a lot of horror, even more than my usual (The Girl With All the Gifts and Newsflesh standing out among them), and I finally read through all the Percy Jackson books for the first time. Most memorable: Wayward Children and All for the Game -- I'm still obsessed!

2018 - In my third year of blogging, I continued my Riordan binge with The Heroes of Olympus and started a year-long read of Les Mis, which worked so well I'll probably be picking a daunting classic like that every year. I had the opportunity to read so many underrated and small press authors that year (The Art of Escaping by Erin Callahan, Imaginary Girls by Nova Ren Suma, The Dark Beneath The Ice by Amelinda Bérubé). Most memorable: Into The Drowning Deep by Mira Grant, If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio, and My Best Friend’s Exorcism by Grady Hendrix.

2019 - This was probably my worst reading year since I started blogging. I read 145 books (amazing!), but so many of them were three-star and forgettable, including my daunting classic, The Count of Monte Cristo. However, I absolutely crushed my YA backlist doing the Bingo challenge at Forgotten YA Gems, and it was a great year for YA publishing, since 8/15 of my favorite books of the year were actually released that year (Call Down the Hawk by Maggie Stiefvater and Wayward Son by Rainbow Rowell among them). Most memorable: In An Absent Dream by Seanan McGuire, The Naturals by Jennifer Lynn Barnes, and The Bone Houses by Emily Lloyd-Jones.

Tagging: @northernbookworm, @zynita, @anassarhenisch, @existential-celestial, @maddie-mux, @infinitebookwrms, @lornaslibrary, @sylvanshiner, @cleo-queen-of-pirates, @paper-stardust, @sleepy-being, @3ammuses, @iridescentetherealdragon

[emperorsfoot]

I had hoped to finish in the chapter, but it was already running too long and there’s still so much that needs to get done, so I have to break it up. But the end is nye! (Of this installment of the series. The series itself is barely just begun.)

Adora and her party arrive in the Crimson Wastes. 

Catra and Hordak face off. 

We get another flashback and Hordak sees Hode one last time (you won’t like it), and Hordak also meets another very important person in the Master of the Universe canon. 

Adora’s party reaches Mara’s ship just as Catra is coming out from her fight with Hordak and... Entrapta does not react well...

...

It was evening by the time they reached the mainland. The Glow Moon dipping down low over the waters behind them.

Everyone was ready to get of the overcrowded ship. They didn’t even wait for Sea Hawk to tie off the boat. The moment the Dragon’s Daughter Five pulled close enough to the dock for her passengers to jump off, they did.

With everyone already disembarked, the pirate stopped mid-knot and re-cast off instead. “Whelp, guess Micah and I will just be off the Brightmoon then.”

The long lost King looked impatient and excited. He wanted to get home to his daughter.

For half a second, Sea Hawk looked like he was about to offer to go with Adora and Bow. But Micah flashed him a look that made the sailor pause. The King wanted to get home, and it wasn’t like Sea Hawk would be particularly useful in a dessert where there was no ocean, or on a ship that did not sail on seas. Besides, there were so many going already. Adora, Bow, Entrapta, Entrapta’s strange Hordak-clone baby, Scorpia, and all of their animal/robot companions; Swift Wind, Emily, and Imp. The combination of powers and talents wasn’t quite as balanced as the Princess Alliance team, but there was enough raw power and competence there to make up for it –also, She-Ra.

So, Sea Hawk concluded he was not needed. He would take Micah home, as was the original plan.

Adora and her party pressed on to the Crimson Waists, traveling across the landscape in the dark as the Glow Moon dipped lower behind them and night gathered. The bioluminescent glow of Dak’s eyes grew brighter as the evening grew darker.

It was full-dark by the time they reached the desert’s edge, and a little bit longer after that before they reached the cantina when Adora and Bow first met Huntara.

To spite the late hour, the bar was still crowded and roaring with noise. A few patrons looked up with the party entered, but they recognized Adora, Bow, and Scorpia, and very quickly went back to their drinks. Nobody wanted to get on the wrong side of any of them.

Adora marched right up to the bartender. “Has Catra been back here?”

“The small angry cat-girl I came with last time.” Scorpia clarified when the bartender looked momentarily confused.

There was another moment’s pause as the woman managed to process what these two frantic outsiders were trying to ask her. “Everyone in the Crimson Waste knows who Boss Catra is.” She informed Scorpia. “She passed through here earlier in the month.”

“Was she heading to Mara’s ship!?” Adora pressed.

“I don’t know what that is.” The bartender admitted. “Now, either buy a drink, tell me what happened to Huntara, or get out.”

While this conversation was going on, Dak had been eyes some of the drinks the patrons already had. They all smelled so interesting, and the people drinking them seemed to be enjoying themselves. “Can I try one of the ones with the froth on top?”

“No.” Both Scorpia and Bow choired with one voice.

“You’re too young for beer.” Scorpia informed them.

“I tried wine for the first time a couple weeks ago.” Bow added. “Wine is supposed to be one of the better tasting alcoholic drinks ‘cause it’s made from fruit. It still tasted bad. Trust me, kiddo, you don’t want to drink alcohol.”

Imp gave a squawk of agreement. Wine and other alcoholic beverages were for older Horde clones whom were non-hybrids and knew their limits. The little deamon helped Bow and Scorpia usher the child outside. They waited with Swift Wind and Emily for Adora. She finally came out, having to drag Entrapta by the elbow.

“…but I just thought she should know the alcohol percentages she was advertising were inaccurate.” The scientist was saying. “Watering down the drinks is fine, and probably healthier for her patrons in the long run, but that alters the ratios within the drink. She’s displaying inaccurate data!”

“We’re going to see a First Ones ship.” Adora reminded her. “Won’t that be much more interesting than watered down beer?”

That was the whole reason Entrapta came with them to the Crimson Waste after all.

They pressed on.

They reached Mara’s ship just as the Glow Moon was peeking out over the horizon. They traveled until the end of the night.

…

“Hey, Hordak.”

He was prepared for her return, but it still made his skin crawl when she said that.

He was standing. At a military rest. Arms clasped behind his back. A pose he assumed often, so it did not seem out of the ordinary now. There was no reason for Catra to assume he might be hiding makeshift weapons behind his back.

“It’s moonrise outside.” She announced. “End of the night, your time’s up.”

That statement required no response. Hordak did not give one, and Catra was not interested in one.

“Have you managed to retrieve the rest of the other She-Ra’s message?” Catra asked this already knowing the answer. If he couldn’t do it in a month, there was no reason to think he could magically pull out results in twenty-four hours. He hadn’t done it. Which meant that Hordak spent this time doing something else. Catra was many things, but foolish was not one of them. She was expecting some kind of a double cross.

“I have not.” Hordak stated flatly.

Loath though he was to admit it –even to himself- Hordak could be foolish from time to time. He was a fool to let Entrapta get so close, he was a fool to trust the natives of this world –even as nothing more than subordinates, and he was a fool to underestimate Catra. He would not make that last mistake twice. The Force Captain had proven herself equal parts capable, devious, and wildly intelligent more than once. Hordak knew, that she would know, that he had done something else with the time she gave him and expect a retaliation of some kind. His fingers curled around the bat-wing shaped throwing rangs held behind his back.

It had been years since he practiced with them, and these weren’t even real rangs. The shape was the same, so their aerodynamics should be similar. But the weight and balance was different. His throws might still be off. But they were the only weapons he had since there were no spears or pikes on this ship, and an arm-mounted canon was not something easily cobbled together from alien parts.

Hordak straightened. “So, what shall it be then?” He asked. “A public execution in front of the rabble you’ve collected into a following here in the Wastes? Or just a private killing? Quick and simple.”

Catra snorted at the sheer casualness he took to the idea of his immanent death –not that she was yet sure if death was the punishment she wanted for Hordak. At the moment, some kind of discipline for failure was necessary –just like he did to her when their roles were reversed- but said disciplinary action need not be as final as a death sentence.

“You’re in a hurry.” She commented with a bit of a chuckle. “What, is there someone you need to meet on the other side?”

Opening his mouth, Hordak was about to respond that there was no one –dead or alive- that he particularly cared to see again. Except, the image of Entrapta flash through his mind. While he did not believe she was dead, he did still very much want to see her again. For revenge, obviously. And if he were rendered too infirm by whatever Catra did to him to exact said revenge, then at the very least, to demand an explanation for her betrayal. So, there was someone –alive, not dead- that he cared very much to see again.

Right on the heels of the image of Entrapta, was the memory of Hode. Dark cape sweeping in dramatic folds, hood pulled up over his head, partially turned so that all Hordak could see was the lower half of the older clone’s face. ‘Yes, Zero-Zero-Three, I am.’ Hode’s retreating back after he demoted and abandoned him on a random world within a larger Empire. That was the last time Hordak ever saw his mentor. He never got the chance to ask the old man ‘why?’ either. To demand an explanation from him.

In a glittering moment of horrifying clarity, Hordak realized, there was someone on the other side he wanted to meet again. Almost as much as he wanted to meet Entrapta again.

And for the same reason, too.

Why? Why did you do that to me!? I thought I was special to you!

Hordak stood there. Frozen.

Catra raised an eyebrow at him. Tilting her head to the side, her lips stretched into a taunting smile. “Aw… did I hit a nerve? Is there someone you wanna see on the other side? Some little Horde Mommy you never met, or maby Daddy that never loved you.”

“Horde clones have no parents.” Hordak informed her, suddenly being reminded that he never actually took the time to read her in on Horde Prime or what he was actually trying to do with the portal. She thought he was trying to reconnect with his separated unit and bring more Horde forces to Etheria. Catra didn’t realize that, originally, Hordak just wanted to go home. She didn’t know his history like Entrapta did. She didn’t know he was a clone, and she certainly didn’t know about Emperor Prime.

Her expression turned suddenly sharp. “Neither do Etherian Horde soldiers.”

Neither of them had moved, but Hordak felt a shift in the mood of the room. Like he was suddenly no longer standing on stable ground. One misstep and he would fall at her mercy.

“Spare me your ‘oh woe is me’ speech, Force Captain.” He began. “Civilian casualties happen in war just as often as soldier deaths. Do not try and lay your anonymous parents’ lives at my feet, as your precious Adora tried to. I have never known any of the parents of the orphans raised in the Fright Zone.” He left out the part that he never cared either, that was definitely a misstep. “You may direct your complaints for your troubled childhood to Shadow Weaver.”

Her hands balled into fists at her sides. She thought this was just gonna be a little light intimidation and a reminder of who was in charge of this new power dynamic of thiers. But he pushed both the Adora button, and the Shadow Weaver button at the same time. He shouldn’t have done that. Catra’s eyes went wide as her pupils went smalls. Glaring up at him. How dare he try and tell her who she should and should not be upset at for her bad life. Everyone in her life contributed to her suffering. Not just Adora leaving her, and Shadow Weaver using and manipulating her. Scorpia siding with Entrapta over her. Entrapta changing sides again and refusing got open the portal. Kyle for his constant incompetence, and Lonnie and Rogelio for always covering for him. And Hordak, for just existing in the first place. For bringing the Horde to Etheria. For creating the world she lived in. The world that shaped her and made her what she was. Most of all Hordak.

How dare he.

“You’re right.” She informed him. Voice calm and even. Deceptively so. On the inside, Catra was anything but calm. “You probably didn’t know my parents. You probably never even saw their faces, never mind learned their names. You weren’t the one who orphaned me, or brought me to the Fright Zone to be raised. You probably don’t even care.”

He didn’t.

She reached a hand up. Instinctively Hordak shied away, stepping back from the touch. Catra’s claws traced the outline of the crystal on his exo-suit without actually touching it. She couldn’t read the First Ones letters that were inscribed on it, but she understood its significance. Entrapta loved her first Ones tech. She would not give it away to just anyone.

“But there is a person on Etheria you do care about.” She announced.

Shifting the rangs he still held behind his back, Hordak freed one of his hands to place it protectively over the crystal. “You are mistaken Force Captain. Princess Entrapta was a useful tool at one time. Since her betrayal, my only desire for her, is to see that she is adequately punished.”

Catra laughed at that. A mirthless, rueful laugh. One full of malice and scorn. “Wow, you really are so gullible.”

“What?” He blinked glowing ruby eyes at her, not understanding.

She grinned a wicked grin at him, a smile without humor. “I told you Entrapta betrayed you, and you believed me. You didn’t even question it.”

“What!?” His glowing eyes went wide at that statement.

“I guess you must not think much of her.” Continued Catra, crossing her arms over her chest. The action was casual. As if this were just an easy conversation between friends. Her tone was matter-of-fact when she spoke. “To just accept that she would stab you in the back, after all those months you spent holed-up in the Sanctum together. I guess you two weren’t all that close after all, and this new armor doesn’t really mean anything either. It’s only Entrapta’s precious First Ones tech she had us drag all the way from her mines in Dryl.”

Hand still resting on the crystal, Hordak’s fingers clenched, his talons scraping the hard shell of the exo-suit. “What- what are you saying?” His hands were shaking. Not just the one over the crystal, the one behind his back too. It threatened to drop the makeshift rangs we was holding. “If Entrapta did not betray me, then how did the Princesses get in?” He shook his head. “It does not make sense!”

Catra laughed again. “You may direct your complaints for Princesses in the Fright Zone to Shadow Weaver.” She flashed sharp feline teeth. “She and Sparkled teamed up, made each other stronger somehow –more powerful- that was how the Princesses got in.”

All this time… he’d been hating her… for something she didn’t do.

But…?

“If Entrapta was innocent in this, then where was she?” Hordak demanded. “Where is she now? Where is Entrapta!?”

Before he was even aware that he was moving, Hordak surged forward to try and grab Catra. The hand that had been covering the crystal reaching out, fingers spread, talons extended. He snarled a wordless snarl.

Catra seemed unconcerned. She jumped into the air, doing an unnecessary summersault mid-air, and landing on the console behind Hordak.

“Probably dead by now.” Admitted the cat-girl, there was the slightest hint of regret in her voice. Entrapta had been very useful to her in the beginning. But while there was regret, Catra did not betray even a hint of remorse. She felt no guilt for what she did. Entrapta always frustrated her to her wits’ end. They were not friends. That was fine. Catra didn’t need friends. “I sent her to Beast Island.”

“You- What-!?”

Hordak’s vision blanked for a half a moment. His breathing hard, as if he’d just run the endurance course, but all he’d done was stand there talking to Catra. His nasal cavity flared as his senses sharpened, narrowing in on Catra. His hindbrain no longer reading her as ‘subordinate’ or ‘ally’ and seeing only ‘enemy’. He experienced a feeling Hordak previously only thought could be felt in the thick of battle, when the air was filled with the sound of screams and the spray of shit and blood.

The killing edge.

In the space of a second. With only a single statement, Catra had driven him to the killing edge.

He wasn’t even aware he’d thrown the rangs in his hand until Catra was jumping off the console to dodge them. The wing shaped blades impaled themselves in the crystal keys of the panel, causing the machine to spark and wine in protest.

The already dimly lit bridge of the First Ones ship blinked warning lights before going even darker.

His eyes glowed even bright in the darkness. Two smoldering coals of crimson, searching the shadows, seeking the enemy he needed to destroy.

He sniffed the air, primal instincts buried by programming pushing their way to the surface.

But Catra could also see in the dark, and her primal instincts had never been suppressed or buried like his. With a deep and throaty growl, she pounced on the taller being. Claws slashing at his face and his throat. Blood trickled from the gashes in his face and trickled into his eyes.

The clone struggled to shake her off him. His own talons finding her sides where her kidneys should be. But Catra was wearing a Horde issued unitard, over thick fur. While his sharp talons did succeed in breaking the fabric, and cutting through the fur, he only succeeded in making shallow, superficial scratches on the skin underneath. Curling his hand into a fist, the clone punched the spot instead. Hitting Catra hard in the side, just above her kidney.

Gasping, one arm curling around her mid-section, Catra half-jumped, half-fell off of the alien. She got her feet under her quickly. Turning to face her opponent.

In all her years with the Evil Horde –in all her life- Catra had never seen Lord Hordak look so… wild.

Eyes that always did glow an unnerving shade of red were wide, and blazing brighter. So bright, that they cast a hellish red shine on the dark purple blood that dripped from his face and neck. He was breathing hard, filling the otherwise quiet bridge with the sound of deep panting. He snarled a wordless snarl of his own, showing sharp teeth and even sharper fangs that were as red as his eyes. Thick saliva mingled with his own purple blood dripped from his mouth.

“Catra…!” She more felt, rather than heard her name escape that monstrous, dripping, red hole of a mouth.

Unconsciously, Catra took a step back. He looked almost mindless.

“You took her from me…” He growled. Voice, barely above a whisper. Issuing from the depths of that red throat and drifting through the dark between them. “She was my- my…” He struggled with the vocabulary. None of the 47 languages he was programmed with in the crèche included a term that felt appropriate. “She was mine!”

But he wasn’t completely mindless. Obviously. Just, half-insane with rage –and other emotions he never received any programming in how to process.

“She was going to shut down the portal!” Catra shouted back, trying to regain some measure of control of the situation. “She might not have betrayed you yet, but she was going to!”

Surging forward with only talons and teeth, Hordak closed the space between them. He had been warrior trained since before he gained conscious thought. Programmed with all the knowledge and information a being needed to be an expert in hand-to-hand combat. Then given the physical conditioning and training a being needed to execute that knowledge.

But in his enraged, almost feral state, all that knowledge and training went out the airlock. The clone over extended himself. Stance too wide and unbalanced, arms outstretched too far, movements slowed by the pull of his own body.

Catra was able to dodge him easily.

Hordak stumbled and almost fell. Having to brace his hands against the bridge’s command console to keep from falling. Purple blood dripped on the crystal keys, but he ignored it. His defect prevented him from healing. The cuts would never close. Even if he did manage to defeat Catra now, he would still die. If not from blood loss, then from infection of the open wounds.

Eyes shifting to the rangs that were still impaled in the console, Hordak pulled one out. Taking more time and care when he threw it this time.

His aim was still bad, but it connected with it’s target this time. Sort of.

He had been aiming for Catra’s head, right between her eyes. The blade just barely nicked her ear and a few strands of coarse brown hair.

With a snarl, Catra put one hand to her hear. It came away with blood. He might not have done much damage, but he did open a wound.

The scent of fresh blood –that was not his own- bolstered his confidence. Took him back to the days when he was a competent soldier. When he could run through a battle field, vault across buildings, take out three opponents in close quarters by himself, and still complete the mission. The scent of blood, and adrenaline, and anxiety. The scent of prey. His hindbrain readjusting his mental balance to better stand on the killing edge.

“Setting off the portal destroyed my Sanctum!” He shouted. “Destroyed the empire I built here! The only one who betrayed me is you!”

That statement cut Catra deeper than she thought it would. Deeper than the mention of Shadow Weaver, or even Adora. ‘The problem is you!’

Now it was Catra’s turn to go almost half-mad with rage. How dare he!? He didn’t know her. Or her life. Or what she’d been through. What his empire put her through. What he put her through. He did not get to call her traitor! He did not get to say she was the problem!

Jumping high in the air, Catra leapt over Hordak’s head to land on the console. She plucked the second rang from between the crystal keys and stabbed it into the back of his exo-suit, getting the wing-shaped blade in the joint between two armored plates. Right where his arm met the shoulder.

The whole limb sparked. Sending pins and needles pain through out that whole side of Hordak’s body. He snarled at the sensation. The first rational fear crawling into his brain since Catra confessed his- his Lab Partner had been sent to Beast Island. He was weak without this armor –armor that Entrapta made for him- and Catra knew that. She knew how to kill him, and she very well could.

Trying to move his arm, Hordak was horrified to realize that the armor had locked up on that side. He could not move the arm. Just the tips of his fingers a little bit. He stared at Catra. His instincts for self-preservation overriding his rage at the loss of Entrapta. His hindbrain giving way to rational thought. Hordak stepped back from the killing edge.

Catra did not hesitate. Taking advantage of his fear, and the hesitation that came from it, she jumped on the alien clone again. This time, instead of madly clawing at where his skin was exposed, she had a target and a purpose. She had already ripped his heart out metaphorically, it was time to rip his heart out literally.

Or, at least, literally-adjacent.

She closed her hand over the pink First Ones crystal on his collar. Hand etched with a word neither of them can read, and placed there by Entrapta. It wasn’t just the power source for his exo-suit. It meant something to her. It meant something about them.

Getting her claws in the seem between crystal and setting, Catra pulled hard and- -ripped it out.

The setting sparked.

The whole suit sparked.

Even Catra felt a little jolt of electricity when she ripped out the power crystal.

They both fell to the ground. Catra holding the gem, Hordak sparking and twitching –almost like he were having a seizure.

Catra blinked, staring at him. Watching his body shake and seize. Only looking away when the armor finally shut down and locked up.

She looked at the crystal in her hand. She knew it was the power source for his armor. She knew Entrapta built the armor for Hordak and that it was glitch and didn’t always work right. Hell. Just a bit of sand in it made the thing go into a tizzy. She also knew that Hordak was a lot frailer and weaker than he let on. She knew he visited the First Ones’ med bay regularly and had wide marks and discolorations all over his body. He was sick. Somehow.

But, she didn’t think just shutting down his armor would defeat him.

So easily.

Adora wasn’t even this easy to beat.

Pushing herself to her feet, Catra prodded at Hordak’s prone body with her toe. He groaned, but did not move. He was alive, just not conscious. Kicking him, maybe a bit harder than was necessary, Catra rolled his body over. His eyes were closed, lips slightly parted, breathing uneven and labored. The scratches she dealt to his face and neck were deep and still bleeding. The neck wound in particular was almost a fountain. Spurting fresh bursts of dark purple blood out in time to the uneven beating of his heart.

Hordak wasn’t dead yet, but he would be dead soon. He would bleed out on the floor.

Catra stood there, staring at him. One arm curved back around her mid-section where he had punched her in the kidney earlier in the fight. She was at a bit of a loss as to what to do. She won. But there was no satisfaction in it.

There was no satisfaction in any victory.

She didn’t feel happy.

She just felt… tired.

Not knowing what else to do, still holding the First One’s crystal in her hand, Catra exited the ship’s bridge.

She would deal with Hordak’s body later.

…

To the vast majority of races in the known universe, it was called ‘Horde World’, but to the Horde themselves, the clone troopers, their commanders, their Captains, the cabinet Lords, and –of course, Horde Prime himself, it was Capital Core. The center of the Empire. The seat from which the Emperor ruled, and the birthing place for his brood of clone soldiers.

A gas giant orbiting a single yellow star. There was no terrestrial surface on Capital Core. The cities and settlements, more importantly, the cloning crèches floated on the layers of the planets gasses. The largest of which was Kurgrad, what could be considered the ‘capital city’ of Capital Core –although, Horde Prime did not rule from it. He ruled from his flagship, the Velvet Glove.

Docking with Kurgrad –or any of the floating settlements of Capital Core- was an experience unto itself. It wasn’t like two ships docking in space. In a zero-gravity environment, without outside forces pulling upon the ships, without particles or corrosive gasses threatening the integrity of the clamps and locks. In space, all anyone had to worry around was maneuvering and making sure not to collide.

But in addition to being a gas giant and having a strong pull that fought with capital ships’ propulsion, the atmospheric layers of Capital Core were also highly acidic and corrosive. The Horde employed various static fields and distortion fields to keep the corrosion at bay. But those fields had to be lowered to allow clamps to lock into place so that ships could dock and an airlock could be established. Docking in Capital Core was an adrenaline pumping ballet of split-second timing between pilot and docking bay engineer.

Once the Leather Vest did dock, however, one could disembark same as any other time a capital ship connected with another vessel.

Zero-Zero-Three stepped off the ship and navigated his way through the narrow corridors of Kurgrad towards the central hub.

The central hub was a wide, circular chamber. With a dome celling of laminated transparasteel and glass so that if one looked up, they could see the ‘sky’ of Capital Core. During cycles of clear weather, the view was that of stars, or maybe some of the planets many moons. On cycles of poor weather, the view would be clouded by swirls and trails of yellow, orange, and cream.

Today seemed to be a cycle of bad weather, Zero-Zero-Three noted. The view outside the dome was a deep caramel orange with a dark streak of scarlet and crimson cutting through on a south-westerly path –a direction the winds did not usually travel.

So preoccupied was Zero-Zero-Three at studying the sky, that he almost didn’t notice the Display.

The central hub was also were Horde Prime staged his examples of what happened to those who betrayed the Empire. Nothing squashed dissent faster than gruesome Displays. Usually, the bodies erected in the center of the hub were those of aliens. Scientists that tended the cloning crèches, engineers that maintained the static fields, mechanics that serviced the ships, and any other variety of imperial subject that served in a menial labor job. Every now and again, one of them would grow malcontent and have to be put down. Their body then put up on Display as a warning to any others who might try and use their job to sabotage Horde Prime’s mighty Empire.

Today, however, the Display was not an alien.

Zero-Zero-Three stared at the body. Not quite sure what he was supposed to think.

Tall, like himself. With long legs, a narrow waist and wide ribcage. Hands that ended in talons just like his own. A pike was driven up their cloaca, the point of it coming up out of the stump where their head used to be. Even without the head, Zero-Zero-Three would recognize the body. It was his own body –minus the discoloration caused by his defects, of course. It was a clone body.

The traitor on display was a Horde clone.

He stood there, staring at the body of one of his brothers. Faceless, numberless, anonymous. And tried to imagine why and how a Horde clone could ever even think to betray their Brother. Zero-Zero-Three didn’t think it was possible. Horde Prime was the Empire, to betray the Empire was to betray Horde Prime and vice-versa. What defect in programing could lead to such… heresy –for lack of a better word.

Zero-Zero-Three stood there for so long, in fact, that Red Hord had to pull him by the arm. “C’mon, let’s get some gray rations.”

He allowed the other clone to pull him through the hub to the canteen district. A corridor lined with kiosks and stalls dispensing food. Alien dishes for those that lived in Capital Core to serve the Empire. Creatures that took advantage of the fact that it was the Core of the Empire, and bartered for foodstuffs from cargo freighters. Grilled vegetables, freeze-dried meats, powdered grains, and boiled roots. Red Hord pulled Zero-Zero-Three past all of this, uninterested. Horde clones had no taste for non-processed foods and preferred the flavorless ration bars provided to them by the Imperial canteen.

The Imperial canteen was decidedly absent of alien dinners. Anyone who was eating from the Imperial canteen was a clone.

The moment their brothers noted that it was a cabinet Lord striding through, they immediately moved out of the way, some of them even humbling themselves with a polite bow. Zero-Zero-Three used to do the same thing until just recently. Until just recently, he was the same as all their other brothers. But this was not an entirely new experience for him. In fact, walking with Red Hord and watching their other brothers bow out of the way, reminded Zero-Zero-Three of his time serving under Lord Hode and the comparison suddenly made him miss the old clone.

Clones died all the time. In droves. The loss of a brother should not have been a big deal for him. Zero-Zero-Three should have felt nothing. But, when he was reminded of Hode, he felt an uncomfortable sensation of… something missing. Something that he’d assumed would always be there and took for granted but was now inexplicably gone. Zero-Zero-Three didn’t know what word to call this feeling. The appropriate vocabulary hadn’t been programmed into him for this kind of sensation. None of the 47 languages the clones of Horde Prime were programmed with seemed to include something to describe what he felt. ‘Loss’ didn’t quite seem to cover it. ‘Bereft’ maybe, but it still felt off.

Then movement out the corner of his eye caught his attention and Zero-Zero-Three looked up, forgetting thoughts of his incomplete language programming.

He looked up, eyes scanning the corridor they’d just stepped through, sure he must have been mistaken. Sure his defects were manifesting again and his eyes were playing tricks on him.

A figure weaving between the aliens of the canteen district. A figure wearing a dark cape and a hood. The hood throwing their face into shadow so that no expression –or even identity- could be seen.

Without even making the conscious decision to, Zero-Zero-Three left Red Hord’s side to follow the hooded figure. It couldn’t be. Academically, Zero-Zero-Three knew he must have been mistaken. But his feet still led him to follow.

Red Hord looked up when the younger clone dashed away, sprinting after someone in the crowd. Maybe it was true what he’d heard about his brother. The man was not smart. Red Hord took a bite of gray ration bar and watched Zero-Zero-Three sprint through the crowd, terrifying every alien he passed, and irritating every clone brother.

Zero-Zero-Three followed that dark cloak to an almost deserted part of the station. Pipes and boiler tanks, rust and steam. Dim lights, low hanging cables, poor visibility.

“Wait!” Zero-Zero-Three was almost on top of the hooded figure by the time he realized that, no, this was not Hode.

The figure paused, finally turning around.

He still couldn’t see their face, but they were much too short to be a clone of Horde Prime. All of Zero-Zero-Three’s brothers were the same height. His height. But this hooded figure only came up to about the clone’s collarbone. Too short to be Hode.

Their face was hidden, but the cape parted enough for Zero-Zero-Three to catch a glimpse of the body underneath it.

Steel toed boots with mean-looking horns that might have been decorative, except they could do some serious damage if a being were kicked with them. Metal grieves that went up to the knee, but no combat stockings or other such armor. Bare skin exposed to the air, blue, but not clone blue. Horde clones’ skin was more of a gray-blue, while this was closer to azure or jewel-blue. An alien blue. A leather, studded, and armored loincloth hung from narrow hips. The chest was just as bare and exposed as the thighs. Displaying more azure blue skin, pulled tight over toned and sculpted muscles. Hard abdominals and chiseled pectorals. A pair of crossed belts, like bandoliers, but without weapons crossed over that impossibly muscular chest, with a motif of bones for decoration.

That was all Zero-Zero-Three could see. Everything else was concealed by the hood and cape.

This wasn’t Hode.

But it was an alien that was standing in what definitely looked like what should be a restricted area of Kurgrad.

“Who are you?” Demanded the clone.

The hooded figure did not answer immediately. The head tilted up, the folds of the hood pulling back just enough to expose a square, bone colored chin.

Then Zero-Zero-Three heard a familiar squawk and all thoughts of the mysterious alien he mistook for Hode vanished from his mind.

Hode’s deamon fluttered down from the pipes and cabling above their heads. The tiny android landed on the hooded figure’s shoulder. If Hode’s deamon trusted this alien then perhaps they were not an intruder. The alien nodded at the deamon, as if telling him ‘it’s okay, go ahead’, before the android flapped its wings again and fluttered over to Zero-Zero-Three. Unconsciously, the clone reached a talon up to scratch under the deamon’s chin as if it were an organic being.

“Hode wished him to be given to you.” Said the hooded figure. Voice high in pitch, almost screechy, and very very nasal. The voice did not entirely seem to fit the body it issued from.

Zero-Zero-Three looked back at the alien. “You knew Lord Hode?”

“Intimately.” Confessed the figure.

But Zero-Zero-Three had never heard his Lord mention any alien allies he might have. Certainly none that he would know intimately enough to entrust his deamon to. Unless…

Unless this hooded figure who would not show their face was lying. Red Hord did say that Hode’s deamon disappeared upon Hode’s death. What if Hode did not entrust his deamon to this alien, what if he stole it from the Empire. Lord Hode did store countless files of information inside the small android. Even added extra memory to him to accommodate it all.

But the deamon did not seem like a hostage being released.

In any event, Lord Hode’s deamon had been found. Even if Zero-Zero-Three wasn’t already about to be promoted to the cabinet, this would be a feat worthy or earning favor from the Emperor. “Horde Prime will be relieved you’ve been found.”

At that statement, the deamon did look concerned. He gave a squawk of disagreement and hopped off Zero-Zero-Three’s shoulder to flutter back to the hooded alien.

The alien only sighed. The sound issuing from the shadows of the hood carrying nothing but disappointment, and for some reason, Zero-Zero-Three was reminded of Hode’s ear-droop when he asked the younger clone ‘what is the Empire’.

“Hode was right, you are a slow learner.” He said. “Imp will stay with me until you’re ready for him.”

“Imp?” Echoed the clone. Androids can’t choose their own names.

“When you’re ready, come to Eternia.” Continued the hooded figure. “Imp will be waiting for you on Snake Mountain.”

…

A strand of course, messy brown hair had fallen over the front of Catra’s headdress and she had to brush it out of the way with a sigh. Her heart was still pounding and her side still hurt from her fight with Hordak. But she won. She was still Boss Catra of the Crimson Wastes. She was still on top.

Now she just had to figure out what she was going to do now.

The previous She-Ra’s mysterious First Ones weapon was a bust. With Hordak gone, and Entrapta probably already dead on Beast Island, the only other people on Etheria capable of working with First Ones tech were with the Rebellion. They wouldn’t help her. Not even if she asked nicely. So, what was she going to do now…? What came next? What did she… want…?

What was that running across the sand towards the ship?

“Catra~a!” Adora came from out of literally nowhere! “For the Honor of Grayskull!”

And punched her in the face with a golden, glowing fist.

But Adora wasn’t alone. Fast behind her were Bow and Scorpia. So, she decided the betray Catra after what happened in Entrapta’s old lab. Fine. That was fine. Catra didn’t need Scorpia. Just like she didn’t need Shadow Weaver, or Hordak. She didn’t need Adora either. Catra didn’t need anyone!

Entrapta’s bot, Emily, came up next, being helped up the dune by Adora’s talking horse. Of course, the robot would side with the Princesses after what she did to the tech Princess. Emily probably wanted revenge for what was done to her creator.

Behind Emily was some kind of creature. Catra had to rub her eyes. There must be sand in them or something. Or maybe She-Ra’s punch gave her a concussion. It looked like Hordak. A child-Hordak, running up to her. Imp flapping next to them. But that couldn’t be right. Hordak was dead –or, would be dead very soon, she had no idea how long it took a creature like him to bleed out- and Hordak had no children of his own before they left the Fright Zone. What was this thing?

All thoughts of the mysterious and inexplicable child-Hordak went out of Catra’s head, however, when she saw the final member of their part run up. “Entrapta!? But- you’re dead-!”

“Catra! Hey!” Entrapta paused, unsure how she was supposed to act now. She thought Catra was her best friend. According to her Interpersonal Relationship Algorithm, Catra was her best friend. But then, Catra tazed her in the back and shipped her to Beast Island, so… maybe the data was wrong. Entrapta didn’t know what to do. “Did you come to see the First Ones ship too?”

Frozen for a moment, Catra just stared at the other woman. If she had arrived just a little bit sooner, just a little bit, that whole fight with Hordak could have been avoided. She would have had two frustrating nerd to fix her ship for her and it probably would have gotten done in a day with Entrapta. Now… with Entrapta’s precious ‘lab partner’ bleeding out and probably already dead by now, there was no way the tech Princess was going to help her.

That didn’t even cover all the others that came with her. All of whom looked like they were out for Catra’s blood –Adora included.

Catra locked eyes with Adora –with She-ra. She hated that glowing aura, that long golden hair, that all white uniform that never seemed to get dirty no matter what kind of fight she was in. Princess. Ugh! Catra hated it. If Adora had never become She-Ra, none of this would have ever happened! Catra felt more than heard a hiss escape her throat. How dare Adora do this to her!

Her hands balled into fists at her sides and the Frist Ones crystal she ripped out of Hordak’s armor slipped from her fingers.

Entrapta was the only one to notice it when it fell in the sand.

“What’s that?” Before anyone else could move, she had slithered over with her hair and scooped the item up out of the sand.

Then she froze.

Recognizing it instantly.

“This- this is-“ A tendril of hair slithered up to try and lower her welding mask over her face, but it was trembling and did not connect. Her mask stayed up, allowing everyone to see her expression as her brain tried desperately to process information and emotions she did not know how to process. “I gave this to Hordak.”

But Scorpia told her he died.

If Hordak died in the Fright Zone, what was his crystal doing here?

She looked up at the scorpion woman. “Where’s Hordak?”

“I’m Hordak.” Dak tried to remind her.

But she wasn’t listening to them. Her gaze shifted from Scorpia to Catra. Eyes wide, but pupils small, brows down at a sharp angle. Her hair lashed out, intertwining around Catra’s body. Holding the other woman immobile and lifting her up off the sand. Entrapta slammed the younger woman against the exterior plating of the First Ones ship. “Where’s Hordak!?”

Catra groaned, gritting her teeth. She’d never seen Entrapta act this way before and she had no idea what to do. How did one talk one’s way out of being strangled by the magical hair of a Princess that couldn’t tell the difference between a forbidden Sanctum belonging to an evil overlord, and fun workplace where she hung out with a gloomy goth cyborg?

“Pro-probably dead by now.” Catra managed to squeeze out, Entrapta’s hair really was holding her tightly. Like, really tightly. Like, getting hard to breath, shadows behind the eyes, tightly.

“But he was alive!” Entrapta pressed. She needed accurate data. She needed to know. People had a tendency to make vague statements and just assume that she would understand. She did not understand. She was missing whatever it was that everyone else had that allowed them to understand and communicate with each other. She needed explicitly clear statements. “How recently was he alive?”

Catra gasped for air. Entrapta was holding her so tight. It was supposed to be morning. The Glow Moon was high in the sky. Why was everything so dark?

“Entrapta!” That was Adora’s voice. Why did Adora sound so far away? Why did Adora sound scared?

“Entrapta, let her go! Please!” That was Scorpia.

Why did all of them sound so far away?

Then the pressure constricting her was gone and Catra fell to the sand.

Gasping.

She lay on her back, breathing hard. Filling her lungs with oxygen as long snake-like bruises formed on her skin where Entrapta’s hair had constricted her. Her vision began to clear and she was inexplicably reminded of the way Hordak had choked her by sucking all the oxygen out of the room. Entrapta almost killed her, she realized. Catra didn’t think Entrapta could be capable of something like that. She was a Princess, after all.

She and Hordak were suited for each other.

Catra laid in the warm sand. She was alive. But still so inexplicably tired.

“Inside.” She finally answered. “Hordak’s bleeding out inside.”

Catra’s eyes were already closed, she passed out before Entrapta had time to jerk her way out of Scorpia’s arms and dash inside the ship.

As Catra said, he was inside. A long, thin body playing prone on the floor. A wide pool of dark purple blood had pooled around his head and shoulders, leaking from deep gashes in his neck. Catra must have cut his species’ equivalent of the jugular vein with her claws.

Putting most of her weight on her hair, not caring that she got the sensitive strands soaked in blood, Entrapta hovered over him. She hesitated for a moment. But, it was Hordak, her Lab Partner. Her… she didn’t know the appropriate term. Scorpia was her Best Friend, but the way she felt about Hordak… he was also very special to her, just in a different way. He was her ‘Extra Friend’? She shook her head. Terminology and classifications could come later, she had to assess his condition right now.

Setting her misgivings aside, Entrapta peeled one of her gloves off.

She pressed two fingers to the side of his neck that was not open and leaking vital fluids.

At first, she thought Catra was right. That she was too late. That he had bled out. That Hordak was dead.

But just as she was about to pull her hand away, she felt the slightest of pulses. One small ‘ba…bump’. It was faint. Perhaps just the last impotent beat. It wasn’t like there was much left in him to pump. But it gave Entrapta hope. If she could just get some fresh blood in him from a compatible donor…

“Mother…?”

Entrapta looked up.

Dak, the clone she made of Hordak, had followed her into the ship.

[thegloriouscollectorlady]

Daryl’s role as a father figure

I haven’t done a lot of posting recently because I haven’t had much to say throughout the season. I really really enjoyed season 9 and overall thought Angela Kang did a great job but I haven’t had much to comment on. It wasn’t until after the season 9 finale that some really important themes jumped out at me and in recognizing them I wanted to share my thoughts. I am going to put them under a read more because like usual this got a bit long. 

               So first I am going to take this way back to when Angela Kang wrote Still in season 4. That was the first episode where we saw Daryl really open up to someone about what his past was like. About how he grew up and more importantly about how that made him feel. Daryl shared small pieces and hints of his story before that but not in a way that indicated how it made him feel. It was more so the audience could begin to piece together what his life looked like before. In Still we begin to understand how those formative life experiences made Daryl feel about himself and the world around him. The most important aspect of this arc which continues into season 5 is that because of these experiences Daryl does not see himself as a worthy person. He has not been loved enough to have the confidence to believe he is a good person. Now the audience knows that everyone around Daryl sees him as someone who is strong and capable but Daryl doesn’t see himself that way which is why I believe Daryl bonds so deeply with Beth. In multiple ways Beth tells Daryl over and over and over again that he’s a good person. She literally says as much at the funeral home during Alone and Daryl finally feels something he’s never felt before and that’s acceptance and love and in feeling those things from someone who Daryl perceives as a good person he is finally able to believe them about himself. This is a huge emotional leap for Daryl and one he does not maintain but it’s hugely important because it cements Daryl’s bond to Beth.

So the question that arose from Daryl’s time with Beth was what did this relationship mean to them and what was its context within the story itself. Now the writers left this ambiguous and to this day its never been clarified by those who are actually part of the show. The actors Emily and Norman hinted at a possible romance and didn’t deny that it would be possible. But with no actual clarification from anyone officially connected to the show a certain portion of the viewing audience felt very strongly that Beth and Daryl’s relationship was a familial one of either an older brother and younger sister or of a father and surrogate daughter. I personally don’t feel it’s either of those and but the older brother younger sister thing bothers me the least because it implies there wasn’t a huge age gap because there isn’t typically between siblings and in reality Beth and Daryl were not related in any way. So even if Daryl had initially approached their relationship that way things can change and personally I didn’t see Daryl’s responses to Beth in Alone as brother sister and I think they actually mirror a relationship we’ve seen this season and the show which was most certainly a romantic relationship. But one thing we absolutely have learned from season 9 is that Daryl’s relationship with Beth was not in fact that of a surrogate father and daughter.

So how to do we know this? Well that would be from the narrative itself which clearly indicated this season that Daryl would become a first time father this season. Aaron talks to Daryl about it early in season 9 (that one day he will know what it’s like) and then confirms later in the season that Daryl has indeed taken on the role of a father figure. All indications from the writers are that this is a first in Daryl’s life and not a role he has taken on before. Then of course we actually have the relationship that the writers are presenting to us for Daryl. . . where Daryl is the surrogate father figure to. . . a teenage girl. In  watching 9X16’s The Storm we actually see Daryl in his role as a surrogate father figure to a teenage girl and what that looks like for Daryl. We can ascertain from the passage of time that Daryl has been in this role for at least a short time. As long as he was with Beth we can assume. Oddly enough Daryl’s father daughter relationship with Lydia is pretty typical. He brings her food, protects her, defends her, and overall looks out for her well being. But in no way does it mirror Daryl’s relationship with Beth during season 4 and especially during Alone. I doubt for example that we will see Daryl drinking moonshine with Lydia, that he will bridal carry her, that he will seek out reasons to touch her including holding her hand (Daryl’s scene with Lydia at Henry’s pike was a mirror of the graveyard scene with Beth during Alone) and placing his hand on the small of her back, or that Daryl will gaze longingly at Lydia while she is engaged in activities that she enjoys such as when Daryl watched Beth play at the funeral home. I would also expect that we won’t see similar conversations to what occurred between Beth and Daryl during Alone. Two jump out at me as very important. The first is when Beth implies to Daryl that he is a good person.  This conversation happens when Daryl observes that someone has been keeping the food stock from collecting dust and the implication is that the person might come back. So Daryl tells Beth that they will only take what they need and leave the rest (in case the person returns) and Beth observes see I knew there were still good people implying that Daryl is one of those good people.  He then gets all shy and bashful and in order to lighten the moment he scoops jelly out the jar with his fingers causing Beth to joke that his actions are gross. Beth’s observations please but also embarrass Daryl and he isn’t ready to talk about them. Contrast that moment to the second important conversation that Daryl has with Beth where he is also eating jelly but in a different manner. In the second conversation right before Beth is taken Daryl is eating jelly out of a jar with a spoon indicating subtly that he is ready to talk to her about good people. Very seriously Daryl tells Beth that he now believes in good people and when she asks why he implies that it is because of her leading to the very emotionally charged “oh” moment where Beth possibly gets a hint to how much she’s been able to influence Daryl and how much she’s begun to mean to him. The nonverbal cues in this moment are intense as Daryl who doesn’t make it a habit to maintain eye contact with folks because of his vulnerabilities makes prolonged and significant eye contact with Beth in possibly one of his most emotionally vulnerable moments on the show. He is literally baring his soul to her and he looks her in the eyes while doing so. It’s an intense moment for Daryl and it shows a deep level of trust between Beth and Daryl that indicates an equal give and take relationship.

So by listening to what the writers are saying within the narrative and by observing how the characters interact we can ascertain that Daryl’s relationship with Lydia is his first foray into a surrogate father role. Daryl’s relationship with Lydia on screen is nothing like his relationship with Beth but there was a relationship on the show this season that I believe was actually an intended mirror of Beth and Daryl’s relationship and it explains a lot about the onscreen narrative choices that were made even down to some of the dialogue in the finale such as the moment Daryl asks C@rol who she sees when she looks at him. So to hash this out a bit when examining Beth and Daryl we have a dark haired, emotionally closed off, pessimistic, abuse survivor paired with a blonde haired, optimistic, thoughtful and emotionally available individual who was raised in a loving household by available parents. Now who does this dynamic remind you of from this season? If you guessed Lydia and Henry you would be right. The writers even drove this point home by paralleling Henry so strongly with Beth at the beginning of the season and using those moments to remind Daryl of Beth through Henry. Now of course Lydia and Henry got their own story but within that story Henry paralleled Beth and Daryl parallels Lydia. The descriptions of the characters are the same Lydia is a dark haired, emotionally closed off, abuse survivor (childhood abuse survivor exactly as Daryl is) and Henry is a blonde haired optimistic individual who comes from a secure and safe home with loving parents (Ezekiel and C@rol). I would just like to take a moment to point out how far in advance the writers were planning this dynamic before I continue. Way back in season 5 when Daryl is searching for Beth he picked up a book in the shelter that C@rol took him too. It was on surviving childhood abuse and at the time it seemed that Daryl picked up that book for himself especially in light of his conversations with Beth but it would appear now that instead that book was most likely foreshadowing Daryl’s arc with Lydia. Which means that the writers have been planning this particular part in the story for quite a long time. We often see this with TWD. There are hints in the story that don’t come into play until seasons and seasons later indicating that the writers have a very long term plan for characters and they take their time setting those arcs into motion.

But I digress from my original point which is that the writers purposefully set up an arc where Daryl is parenting a young woman who is a parallel to himself right down to her relationship with Henry/Beth.  We even saw in 9X16 a parallel to Daryl in 5x10’s Them with Lydia wandering away from the group multiple times to try to harm herself and just like with Daryl in Them it was C@rol that followed Lydia away from the group. Just like in Them it’s C@rol that reaches out and touches Lydia in a way that matters. For Daryl she gave him Beth’s knife and told him he needed to let himself feel his pain and with Lydia she tells her she is strong. She provides the thing they both most need to hear in their grief. I also think the awkward bit of dialogue that viewers struggled with when Daryl asked C@rol who she saw when she looked at him was about this. C@rol says first that when she looks at Lydia all she sees is Henry meaning she is only focused on her own grief and not on this young woman for who she is. Daryl then says who do you see when you look at me and C@rol says that of course she sees him. But I think that moment when C@rol follows Lydia to that barn is when she really sees her for the first time and I think what she sees breaks her heart. I think she sees in Lydia an echo of Daryl that tugs at her heartstrings in a way she can’t deny because C@rol knows what losing Beth did to Daryl and she on some level I think recognized that Lydia is suffering the same way and she truly saw her as her own person for the first time. It’s a very powerful but very subtly done sequence of events that only comes together in hindsight.

I think the finale also pointed out another really important piece of Daryl’s story that I think has been largely overlooked and it’s the idea of home. Throughout this arc Henry is wearing a compass shirt and Angela did an amazing job of pulling together the theme of compasses and home and what it means this season. In the episode where Negan escapes he takes Judith’s compass and leaves the ASZ but by the end of the episode he realizes that ASZ is now home and he returns. This theme goes all the way back to Carl telling Judith when she was a baby that if she ever gets lost to follow the north star home. It also ties into Ezekiel’s speech at the end of the episode where he talks about a house not being a home (callback to 4 Walls and a Roof) and that home is where your heart is. Where the people you love are. Henry was wearing a compass shirt because he became Lydia’s north star and he guided her to a place where she felt safe and where she thought she might have a home. Without him she is completely lost and she says as much during 9X16 when she is talking about not fitting in anywhere and no one wanting her around. But this theme is larger than even Lydia and it goes all the way back to season 4 with Beth and Daryl. At the end of Alone Daryl tells Beth he wants to try staying at the funeral home. He wants to make it a home because that is where Beth is even if no one else from TF is there. Fast forward through all of seasons five, six, seven, eight, and nine and notice one thing. Daryl has no home. He never fits into the ASZ when they first arrive, he bounces from community to community during the war with Negan, afterwards he’s at the Sanctuary for Rick, and then in the woods looking for Rick, and then this season Ezekiel offers to Daryl that he can stay at the Kingdom if he wishes (before Henry’s death). This all indicates that Daryl has not had a home since losing the prison and since losing Beth who like Henry is a north star. Beth is Daryl’s north star and without her he is as lost and aimless as Lydia is without Henry.  So it fits writing wise for the writers to pair Lydia and Daryl because these two characters have traveled on parallel arcs to this point. All the set up between Beth and Daryl back in season 4 and 5 plays into the Henry and Lydia arc this season and also points to where the story might go from here.

So after the season finale there was a moment where it hit me that the writers had set up a very deliberate paralleling of arcs and in doing so had defined very clearly some things about relationships that up until this point had been ambiguous and the way they did so was very subtle unless you look at the story in its entirety. I think what they set up has some really interesting implications for Daryl’s arc moving forward and what it means and also for C@rol’s arc and where that is going. I also think that the seeds of where Daryl and Lydia’s arc is headed were planted in the finale and I also think those are very interesting. I have some ideas about where the direction of the story is headed and I will post them in a separate post because this one is long enough and I have a feeling that one will be quite long as well. I also have another really interesting idea I want to look at that came to me watching the finale and I can’t wait to hash that out because it has to do with character deaths on the show and how they are used and it has some really interesting implications for what happened in season 5 and how that might affect Daryl in the coming season.

[smokeybrand]

The Cream Always Rises to the Top

Another year has passed and it has been an interesting one for cinema. A lot of films released this past twelve months and a few of them were really good. Even more were complete dog sh*t. I saw a ton of movies this year, mostly from the comfort of my couch because everyone was doing day-and-day releases. I appreciated that. What i didn’t appreciated was how many of these thing were absolute dog sh*t. I think I've seen more films in a year, this year, than any other year of my life, and the vast majority were f*cking bad, man. Still, there were a few gems and i wanted to highlight some of my favorites. That said, this is kind of an incomplete list. I didn't get to the theater as much as  I would have wanted because of said plague so I missed films that I know would have made this list. Ghostbusters: Afterlife and The Tragedy of MacBeth are honorary entrants. I'll see those two in about a week so, even though they came out this year, I feel like I should at leas mention them here because it would feel wrong putting them on next year's list.

10. I Care A Lot

Oh, Rosamund Pike. I wish you were in more great sh*t like this. I Care A Lot feels like this year’s Promising Young Woman. It’s nowhere near as good as that but it’s got it’s own lane and drives it like a pro. I really enjoyed this little sociopath character study, even though the ending was kind of a cop-out, and wanted to lay in that world for a little longer than what we wee permitted. This was the first movie i had seen on Netflix that didn’t feel like a “Netflix” movie, a trend that would continue through out the year.

9. Jungle Cruise

Listen, Jungle Cruise is cute and made it on this list strictly because i have a crush on Emily Blunt. That’s basically it You’ve seen this movie before, a number of times. Its basically Indiana Jones meets Jack Sparrow That’s it. That’s the movie. It’s overly long and completely wastes a hilariously bad tanned Paul Giamatti but it’s a fun watched overall. Plus, the Rock is in it and it’s the closest thing to a proper Pirates entry we’re ever going to get on account of the Mouse House’s very public divorce from Johnny Depp. I miss Jack Sparrow...

8. Godzilla vs. Kong

Look, this is a bad movie. It’s arguably the worst of the Monsterverse entries. That said, it’s f*cking Godzilla, has Goji absolutely embarrassing King Monkee in every scene they share, and one of the dopest f*cking MechGojis I've ever seen, is the ultimate antagonist. How could this thing not make my list? Again, it’s a terrible f*cking movie and i can’t, in good conscious, recommend this thing for anyone outside of fans or those who are high but i still loved every second of this brain-dead, cartoonish, monster mash!

7. The Harder They Fall

If you would have told me that a proper Western would make my year end list, I'd have called you a lie but here we are. The Harder They fall would have got me on board with the strength of the cast, alone, but the fact it’s really we ll shot, has great pacing, and is chock full of black people, really sold me on this flick. This i how you do diversity and visibility in Hollywood. You trust the process and let the creatives, create. You don’t need to force sh*t or ideals or politics or whatever else. Just make good films and the rest will line it where it needs to. The Harder They Fall is a bloody fantastic film and should be seen by everyone.

6. Fear Street

I grew up in the Nineties so R.L. Stine was a big deal for me. His Goosebumps series was an integral part of my grammar school days. When I got to junior high, I fell off. It's interesting because the Fear Street series was created specifically for people around my age and I just passed on it. Fast for wad a few decades and I am kind of kicking myself for it. These three films are so f*cking good! I was surprised by how well put together this trilogy turned out because Netflix is notorious for skimping on budgets but, in grand horror fashion, the production made it work. Watching these films was like watching the best of those old Eighties Slashers and you know how much I love my slashers. Plus, it's always dope seeing Sadie Sink and Gillian Jacobs getting work.

5. Free Guy

Free Guy is kind of a miracle in the current Hollywood climate. An original IP with next to no stars and based on the general culture of gaming? Yeah, how does this get made? But to take is a step further, how did it get made so well? Free Guy is f*cking awesome! It’s funny, smart, and has more heart than any film I've seen all year. This thing is everything and if you’ve passed on it for some reason, fix that sh*t right now. Free Guy is outstanding and deserves all of the eyes on it.

4. Last Night in Soho

I put Fear Street on this list because I love Slashers. A cursory glance at this look with give you no doubt I love my horror. One of my favorite horror sub-genres is Giallo. I love that sh*t. There is just this campy, colorful surreal, absurdist feel to those films. This year, we got two; Malignant and Last Night in Soho. One of those was arguably the worst film I'd seen all year ad the other is Soho. I loved this movie. It was everything Malignant wanted to be, some of the strongest work I've seen Edgar Wright produce, and stars Thomasin Mckenzie. I've been a fan of Thomasin since she stole every seen in Jojo Rabbit and wanted more work for her. Fortunately, she chose wisely scratched that Giallo itch I've had for decades.

3. Dune

This one as a surprise. I mean, i knew I'd like it. I like Dune. I like the old Eighties version. I like Denis Villeneuve. I like Rebecca Ferguson. I like Jason Mamoa. This thing was tailor-made for me. What surprised me was how much i liked this thing. It’s an exceptional, detailed, beautiful, film that is everything a theater experience should be. Which is a damn shame because i had to watch the f*cker in my house on HBO max because i was not chancing the theater in the middle of a goddamn pandemic. Even so, i was captivated by what Villeneuve put together and pray we get part two. I need that sh*t!

2. Spider-Man: No Way Home

Of course i f*cking loved this movie. Of course this made my list. Of course it was gong to be near the top. No Way Home is one of the best MCU films released to date. It’s top three for me, after Infinity War and Winter Soldier, respectively, and definitely lives up to the hype. This flick is the first movie to  make a billion in about two years so, yeah, people loved it. Dope movie is dope and deserves all that shine. Why isn’t it number one? I really wanted it to take that top spot but there is another film that just took my breath away this year. As much as i love Pete and anticipated his third outing in the MCU, there was one more film that i wanted to see even more and that one got my top spot.

1. The Green Knight

This is a perfect film for me. Everything about it, is just brilliant. It’s gorgeous, beautifully acted, brilliantly paces, and deftly performed. I love seeing Dev Patel doing his kind sh*t again and the effects were just glory incarnate. This was my A24 entry from, like, two years ago and it just kept getting pushed. It finally released this year and it was everything to me. The Green Knight is a whole f*cking masterpiece in almost every way and i was absolutely stunned when i first saw it. There was no way this thing couldn’t be number one on my list, even in the year the second best, live action, Spider-Man movie released. The Green Knight is just that good.

Honorable Mentions: Zola, Willy's Wonderland, A Quiet Place part II, Judas and the Black Messiah, Coming 2 America, Raya and the Last Dragon, Plan B, Cruella, Till Death, Black Widow, Pig, The Suicide squad, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, In the Heights

[winterscaptain]

gifts and notices.

Aaron Hotchner x Gender Neutral Reader 

a/n: i’ve been working on this one for a while! it takes place right after mistletoe, in au!january 2012!

words: 900 warnings: none!

summary: the bracelet invites questions about ‘mr. not your boyfriend.’ if they only knew. 

masterlist | a joyful future masterlist | requests closed!

“Is that new, or have I just never seen it before?” Dave asks, pointing at your wrist. Your Christmas present from Aaron glimmers in the reading light from the plane, and you make no attempt to hide it. 

“It’s new,” you say, nonchalantly. 

Emily turns around and peers over Dave’s seat. “Where’d you get it?”

You try not to look at Aaron, keeping your gaze trained on your tablet. “It was a Christmas present.” 

JJ bumps your shoulder, teasing. “Between the sleep deprivation and the new bracelet, it looks like Mr. Not My Boyfriend is getting pretty serious.”

With an eye roll, you lightly shove at her with an elbow. “You know I’m only tired because I’m moving. I’m allowed to be tired and also have friends that aren’t you.”

JJ snorts and Emily perks up. “Oh yeah! When can we come over and see your new place?”

“Tell me, Em. When was the last time we had a day off that wasn’t used exclusively for catching up on sleep?”

You’ve already been to my new apartment, but that’s beside the point. 

Aaron’s little smile escapes everyone’s notice, and you almost hate him for leaving you out to dry like this. In fairness, it’s not like he can say anything - if he did, it would nullify the terms of your bet. 

You’re sure he’ll win anyways - Dave knows Aaron too well for his own good, Emily has the advantage of implicitly knowing everything, Penelope meddles, and Derek is far too observant. You hope the six months will fly by, but that hope is hollow at the very least. 

+++

Of course it’s one of the rare occasions Aaron lets you drive that JJ decides to pester you about your bracelet from the back seat while he sits shotgun, unfairly smug. 

“So is it actually from that guy you’re seeing?” She leans forward, resting her elbows on the center console. 

“I plead the fifth.”

She huffs a laugh. “So that’s a yes. Alright, where’d he get it?”

You keep your tone even, arrhythmically tapping your fingers on the steering wheel. “He got it traveling overseas.” 

“Ah. A traveler. I see.” Her face pinches up as she thinks. “What does he do?”

Shaking your head, you glance at her in the rearview mirror. “Nope. Nice try.” 

“Really? You’re really not going to tell me anything about him? Why?”

You sigh, and try not to look at Aaron. “You guys are really important to me, and I want to take time to share this with you in the right way. It’s still new and I just...don’t want y’all to lose your shit or anything. It’s also nice to have some things separate, you know? You did the same thing with Will, if I recall correctly.” 

JJ laughs. “I guess that’s true. Will we like him?”

“I think so.”

+++

Emily catches up to Aaron on the way back to the SUV from the crime scene. You’re hanging back with Dave on the way back to the other car, while Derek and Spencer wait for you at the precinct, throwing darts at a geographic profile. 

“Hey, Hotch.”

He glances at her as he walks, granting permission for her question. 

“How do you feel about…” she glances over her shoulder at you, “the new guy? I know you two are…” she struggles for a word, “close.” 

Aaron’s lips quirk up in a knowing half-smile. “I’m always happy when the people in my life are properly taken care of.” 

Emily leaps a little at the implication. “So you’ve met him?” 

He tells her that, of course, nobody deserves you, but from what you’ve told him, he’s a good man.

“That’s good to hear.” It doesn’t sound all that good to hear. “You also didn’t answer my question.” 

“Didn’t I?”

+++

Fingers grab hold of your wrist. They belong to Dave, who’s now examining your bracelet in the light from the plane window. 

“What is with you all and this bracelet?” You laugh. 

He doesn’t answer you. “Is this Turkish silver?” 

“Yes,” you answer, amused. “It is.” 

“Is your gentleman particularly wealthy?” He’s peering at you over his nose, and you laugh. 

“Not particularly, but well-off enough, yeah.” 

Dave hums once, staccato and suggestive. “Must be. That silver doesn’t run any less than four figures. Good on him.” He pulls you close and presses a kiss to the side of your head. You’re stiffer than you should be, the knowledge of how much Aaron actually spent sinking into your chest. “You deserve to be spoiled.” 

When he releases you and you return to your tablets, it takes everything you have not to twist around in your seat to look at Aaron, reviewing files in the corner. You know he heard the whole thing. For someone who’s constantly at risk of losing his hearing, he’s like a hawk. 

You get your chance when you all deplane back in Quantico. He steps up beside you, grabbing his bag from one of the seats. 

“You didn’t spend that much, did you?” You keep your voice low, your lips barely moving as you pack your things. 

He shrugs. “Maybe I did. Maybe I didn’t.” He reaches across you for his tablet, and you lean back to give him some space. “Nevertheless,” he says, his voice low, “you’re more than worth it.” 

Your face heats when he winks at you and you’re suddenly very anxious to get home.  

+++

tagging: @arganfics @quillvine @stxrryspencer @agenthotchner @wandaswitxh @hurricanejjareau @fics-ilike @ange-must-die @ughitsbaby @rousethemouse @criminalsmarts @shrimpyblog @genevievedarcygranger @ssaic-jareau @good-heavens-chris-evans @davidrossi-ismydad @angelsbabey @gublergirls @writefasttalkevenfaster @venusbarnes @hotchsflower @micaiahmoonheart @ogmilkis @marvels-agents100 @hotchslatte @risenfox @mrs-dr-reid @captain-christopher-pike @joemazzello-imagines @pinkdiamond1016 @pan-pride-12 @hotchlinebling @lee-rin-ah @sunshine-em @word-scribbless @jdougl-love @sageellsworth05 @nohalohoseok @giveusbackourbucky @writerxinthedark @bauslut @yourlovelynewsbian @dreila03 @forgottenword @aaronhotchnerr @ssa-morgan @a-dorky-book-keeper @hotchnersgoddess @buckybau @sana-li @tegggeeee @abschaffer2 @ssacandice-ray @dontkissthewriter @ellyhotchner @lotties-journey-abroad @mrs-joel-pimentel-23-25 @laneygthememequeen @ahopelessromantic @violentvulgarvolatile @andreasworlsboring101 @mooneylupinblack @ssareidbby @violet-amxthyst @bwbatta @roses-and-grasses @lcvischmitt @capricorngf @missdowntonabbey @averyhotchner @mandylove1000 @garcia-reid-lovechild  @cevanswhre @colbyskoalas  @qvid-pro-qvo @jeor @spencers-hoodrat @infinity1321 @zizzlekwum @katiejuliana @popped-weasels @evee87 @nuvoleincielo @this-broken-band-girl @reidtomestyles @hotch-meeeeeuppppp 

[fiendish-insanity-in-the-written]

[txt Old lady] What? It is yours now, so I made sure it stays dedicated to you. Besides, Pike assured me that is the right way to mark a gift. I trust him.

[txt Old lady] ...ok maybe I shouldn’t have written my name on it but..

[txt Old lady] Ahhh you can’t escape my charm sweetheart 😏 😏

[txt Old lady] I am your savage 😇

[txt Old lady] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ua2k52n_Bvw

[txt Old lady] I’ve put a speeellll on youuuu, and now yourrr mineeee 😈

[txt Old lady] Ok I promise I will get the engagement ring fair and square

[txt Old lady] OH WAIT, SHIT, HOLD THAT THOUGHT, did that Gogh guy wear any rings?

[txt Old lady] Remember Tig? The morgue groper? Ok....well, he had this idea , we can dig the dude up, find the ring. Do you want the Gag ring?

[txt Old lady] GOGH ring*** fucking autocorrect....

[txt Old lady] Hay..we are not thieves. We are business men, on a market of certain color. Maybe it is not all white but eh....not even black...a grey? Just...tell your brother to shove it

[txt Alice to Clare] Yo...there is a dude under your window, I think he wants you to come out

[txt Alice] Go around him.

[txt Alice to Clare] Should I tell him to leave?

[txt Alice] NO!! WHATEVER YOU DO, DON’T TELL HIM TO LEAVE!!!

[txt Alice to Clare] Why? 🤨

[txt Alice] ....bcs’ he will just take a seat then

[txt Alice to Clare] dafak

[txt Alice] Just go around him Alice for fuck sake. I changed the locks so he can’t get in, because of that exact reason. I would tell him ‘leave’ and he would just fucking take a seat on my sofa and continue his thing

[txt Alice to Clare] Call the police?

[txt Alice] ....he is the fucking police

[txt Alice to Clare] just come out, the poor dude is kneeling

*Clare finally opens the first msg and voice mail*

[voice mail to Oscar] “Get your ass up! You are putting on a show for the whole damn neighborhood! Say a fucking dog one more time and I will put a cap up your ass! Your spare gun is still here, and you know damn well I WILL AND KNOW how to use it! Spoil  me with what, will you borrow a necklace? Besides, you know damn well I ain’t into that barbie shit! If you knew better, at least a book is what...”

*record reaches limit*

[txt Oscar] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwaSTUCyn-U Bitch and proud! 🤟 🤟 🤟

*sees Em’s msg*

[txt Jace] WHO SNITCHED? YOU SNITCHED!

[txt Clare] I WISH SOMEONE SNITCHED TO ME. ok maybe not, good thig I came on the end

[txt Old lady] Sweetheart, you know how I feel about secrets....

[txt Old Lady] Well if I was her I would do the same, who the fuck would be proud of the fact of being with that asshole

[txt Old Lady] I just don’t see that working out** ......autocorrect?....

[txt Oscar] Yes, I changed the name. And I will change it again to ‘ACAB’ if you don’t get the fuck away from my damn window!!

[txt Oscar] Oh yeah, and one more thing.

[txt Oscar] Remember how I told you to try get some vacation time in August?

[txt Oscar] Supposed to be seven days and hiking, BECAUSE I ACTUALLY LISTENED TO WHAT YOU LIKE,  to Caminito del Rey. THAT IS CALLED ‘SPOILING’

[txt Oscar] Happy ‘never gonna happen 10 moths of relationship’ asshole

[txt Oscar] Guess who will go instead? I am giving this to Jace and Em.

[txt Oscar] Who knows, maybe they-

*sees the rest of his msgs about looking for a place together*

*deletes last msg*

*writes a fake msg*

[txt Oscar] The number is no longer in service. Please check the number.

*3 missed calls from Clare to Alice*

[txt Alice] PICK THE FUCK UP

[txt Alice] I think i screwed up....pick up ., I think I screwed up big time I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO

*calls Emily, hangs up after two rings*

[txt Alice] HELP ME

[txt Alice to Clare] Why is this not surprising me..what did you do?

[txt Alice] He asked me to move in with him,.....

[txt Alice to Clare] And you said..?

[txt Alice] *sends screenshot of writing a fake msg of number being out of service *

[txt Alice to Clare] Ok, If you have two degrees, I am Jesus. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?

[txt Alice] I am going to pretend I am not home

[txt Alice to Clare] DUDE HE SAW YOU IN THERE, ARE YOU HIGH, DRUNK OR STUPID!!?OR ALL THE ABOVE!?!

[txt Alice] The number is no longer in service. Please check the number.

[txt Alice to Clare] CLARE STOP BEI-

*blocks Alice*

[txt Moron in law] You really think I give a shit about you snitching to your cop buddies? I am going to break your bones with your own baton and send you back to your station with my damn name carved on you fucking forehead.

[txt Moron in law] I told you to stay the fuck away from Clare

[txt Moron in law] You think I will sit back while you do this to her? If I knew she made such a shitty decision I would prevent this shit from happening at the start

[txt Moron in law] Fill your own Missing person report so Em does not have to bother, because you are history mate for hurting Clare

[txt Old lady] Yeah love, I don’t think Clare is coming. You can thank you brother for that.

[txt Jace] I need you to stop the shit with Oscar rn

[txt Jace] For good.

[txt Clare] CLARE WHATEVER HE SAID TO YOU, DO NOT BELIEVE IT

[txt Jace] FOR GOOD JACE.

[txt Emily] It is not true, mistake in the system. See you at dinner tomorrow

[txt Oscar] I got hacked. I have no idea what happened.

*remembers voice msgs she sent*

[txt Oscar] ...I am sorry. 🥺 🥺 🥺 🥺 

[txt Oscar] Teddy bear, please come up 🥺 🥺 🥺  I’ll be good

[txt Oscar] I will make you something to eat, I practiced 🥺 🥺 ❤ ❤ ❤ 

*changes the name back*

[txt King of ❤ ] .......are we really going to look for a place?...

[txt King of ❤ ] ..are you sure you want that? I can wait for the dog..

*unblocks Alice*

[txt Alice] I WANT TO LIVE WITH HIM SO DAMN MUCH BUT I DON’T KNOW HOW TO SAY IT, I DON’T WANT TO FREAK HIM OUT

[txt Alice to Clare] You blocked me

[txt Alice] ...i am sorry

[txt Alice to Clare] WAIT,HOLD UP, DID YOU JUST SAID " IM SORRY???"

*Alice darts to the Window,yelling to Oscar : *

"WHATEVER YOU ARE DOING,IT IS WORKING, GOD BLESS YOU , PLEASE DON'T GIVE UP ON HER,PLEASE! CLARE SAID SHE IS SORRY!!"

[txt Alice] SHUT UP OMFGGGGG ILL KILL YOU STFUUUUUU ALICE!!!!!

[txt King of ❤ ] I want to live with you, my king of ❤ .

[txt King of ❤ ] But no, you can’t tell that to Jace on the dinner tomorrow. It is their anniversary and I KNOW you just want to do it to piss him off beyond repair. It is their day, you can’t do that baby

@writingxthexsilence​

@claredeadbydaylight (because when I saw this I couldn’t help myself)

[txt Clare] I know Jace probably isn’t a reader like you, but I think I found a place he could get into.

[txt Clare]

[txt Clare] 🤣🤣🤣🤣

[hope-for-olicity]

My Fan Expo 2017 Experience

Such a crazy couple of days!! FAN EXPO WAS AMAZING!!

Thanks to my experience in HVFF Nashville, I felt more prepared than ever to take it on and take it on I did!

Click under the cut if you want to read about my experiences!

SATURDAY

I arrived Saturday morning and immediately got in line to get Tom Cavanagh’s autograph, I’ve been a fan since Ed so I was BEYOND EXCITED. I got even more excited when I realized Tom’s table was right next Stephen Amell’s table. Sad/not sad, Tom was an hour late and Stephen Amell was right on time. I had no choice but to stand and look at Stephen Amell for an hour – it was pretty tough to take. As I had gotten Stephen’s autograph in Nashville, I was skipping this time but I had hope to get a glimpse and what a prolonged glimpse I had!!

 The only slightly negative – was I talked to the people in line with me and once I said I was a HUGE Felicity Smoak fan – one of the guys proceeded to tell me for several minutes how awful she was using the examples of the break up, Helix and others. It was funny because when he finally stopped trashing her, I think he expected me to fight. I simply said you are welcome to your opinion, I like her enough for the both of us. Think I disappointed him – oh well.

  When Tom arrived, I was super nervous to meet him so I said the first thing that popped in my head – I’ve been a fan since Ed. And he joked – since 1942 then. I also told him I watch The Flash because of him. And he asked if I liked The Flash, I explained that I started out by watching Arrow and Felicity Smoak is my favourite character. And he jumped in trying to sell his show, she was just filming our show this week, she is amazing, truly one of those amazing people in the world – all these truly lovely things about Emily Bett Rickards – it was delightful!

I then met up with @almondblossomme and her family who had been getting Stephen Amell’s autograph, they moved onto David Ramsey’s line and I followed. They had an amazing family experience with David and I got to take photos – so got to be close to him again. David got everyone to sing Happy Birthday to @almondblossomme’s son! It was AMAZING! What a wonderful man!

After this we all went down to catch Tom Cavanagh’s panel. The man is truly a class act. Said lovely things about his co-workers and talked seriously about his work as an actor. Also interesting insight into his directing The Flash. He also spoke kindly of his time on Ed and Scrubs. I left feeling more enchanted with him than I was before and I was already a big fan. 

Spent the rest of Saturday wandering and checking things out. Great Day!

 SUNDAY

I got up extra early today to get in and rush to the Stephen Amell panel line up. It worked I was like 10 people back in line waiting to get in. I chatted with some cool people in line. I didn’t talk to her but the woman behind me was dressed up as Laurel Lance as the black canary and she, looked A LOT like Katie Cassidy – kind of freaked me out.

 I ended up 7 seats from the front, dead centre – Stephen Amell was RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME!!!! SQUEE!!!

Stephen was awesome – I know there have already been posts about this so I won’t say much. But I really liked how kind he was to all the people asking questions. I’m also really glad after his story about the well-fed artist comment, that he was such a supportive wife now. I really do wish him all the happy. I’m happier knowing that people like him exist in my world. I also just saw his video about having such a wonderful time in Toronto – I’m so happy for him.

 The second panel I attended today was Bob Morley or Bellamy Blake from The 100. So glad I knew he was Australian before I walked in the room! He was gracious and lovely and answered all the questions well. He gave a good explanation for why Bellamy supported Pike against the Grounders in Season 3 that had slipped my mind. He said that Bellamy had risked his life entering Mount Weather to save the Grounders so they could help fight and get Sky Crew out…and the Grounders deserted them. So that was just another reason for Bellamy not to trust the Grounders….something to think about. He will have a beard in the new season. He watches iZombie. Best of all he’s just like me – supposed to wear glasses all the time, does not, goes around blind, as he does not want to wear contacts – I feel we may be kindred spirits.

After this panel, I had time to kill – lots of wandering around before getting in line for my final panel David Ramsey – and boy that was worth the wait! David Ramsey is amazing – I know we all know that – but it MUST be said again! He opened by confirming Diggle does not die, everyone cheered, when that stopped he said but if you liked Felicity… The room went silent. He was joking – have to say my heart was in my throat. As we are so cute (his audience) he struggles to lie. This is where it gets slightly spoilery so skip the italicized part if you don’t want any spoilers but these are mild:

 Apparently, as we have already heard Diggle will be having a rough year. He’s be dealing with a lot. Now that Oliver has become a fully-fledged hero, yoda Diggle is not really needed anymore, usually this is the point where they kill this character – David Ramsey has been promised that Diggle will not die. So since he is not dying, they had to change his characters. So his issues will lead to struggles with Oliver and Lyla. ARGUS will be big this year. He also mentioned he will be wearing the Green Arrow suit and Spartan will have a new suit, still military inspired. He also said he loves the idea of Felicity and Curtis being behind the computers in the lair while the rest of the team fights bad guys. He mentioned Smoak Enterprises as being where Felicity and Curtis work. Both Ramsey and Amell talked about each character having their own bad guy this year instead of one big bad – in fact Oliver and the Arrow would have separate bad guys.

 Non-spoilery, he told his version of the story Stephen had told the morning about the two of them meeting for the first time.  They both told of David Ramsey asking Stephen Amell during pilot season, are you good? Leaning in closer – are you good? He also answered that he became so buff after seeing Amell shirtless in Season 1 and being impressed – but knowing he was supposed to be this guy’s bodyguard he needed to step up his game. Also look for David’s own represent campaign coming soon about a cause that is super important to him.

I’m sure there is more but these were the highlights. Thanks so much for spending Saturday with me @almondblossomme!! So so glad you came!!! I’m only disappointed I didn’t get to meet more people from the fandom - next time!

@mel-loves-all @oliverfel4 @wherethereissmoak @tdgal1 @vaelisamaza @memcjo @eloquence-of-felicities @canadianbeauty2