#Something about a grumpy old man and a man who is more or less immortal

[z0mbied0gz]

Im Noticing a theme

[prue84]

National Treasure instagram: Knitting

Fandom: BBC’s Merlin (post-canon, modern magic) AU AU: National Treasure Series: National Treasure instagram

Even the Once and Future Kings can be talked into knitting.

———————————————————————————————

With winter looming on England, the Pendragonling needs warm clothes to survive the cold, or so dragonlord Merlin decrees. Through his social, then, he searches for some knitter to travel to New Camelot and knit little Aithusa some wool coats. The challenge is picked up and the willing hero also manages to convince Arthur to give knitting a try. Aithusa is definitely excited to see her dragon papa personally work to make her something.

More about the AU under the cut. (More fanworks from this AU at the links above)

———————————————————————————————

About the AU It's the 21th century and the existence of magic has been widely known since Guinevere, the last queen of Camelot, lifted the ban and had made Merlin her own advisor. With the centuries the myth of the Once and Future King has grown unchecked: Arthur Pendragon belongs to the category of the great people of history who the most have influenced the world, with the only difference that he will one day return. Magic, for a number of circumstances never verified (possibly a mix of abuse and industrialization), seems like having been drained, leaving only the passive one: charms applied to old houses or objects still works, but new charms cannot be cast and are ineffective. Immortality is a rare gift unavailable to most, but few people belonging to the world Before The Drain still live, the oldest of them born in the Late Renaissance age. Merlin, former wizard and oldest man of the world as the only one alive since the Middle Ages, is considered the world's grumpy uncle, that one parent who is a font of knowledge and tells funny stories about an otherwise serious topic like History but isn't willing to sit down and socialize with the youngsters (which means basically anyone, to him). Told to be always traveling, he imparts his knowledge almost exclusively through his blog, "Merlin's Cave". Unknown to all, though, Merlin has also a second identity under which he lives an almost ordinary life: Gaius de Bois, young professor of Medieval History at the University of Avalon, down-to-heart person, a professor much loved by his students, and, especially "nephew" of the Great Merlin. Arthur Pendragon emerges from the secluded Lake of Avalon and his return is made official by Merlin with a post on his Instagram, a photo about the two halves of a broken coin (with Merlin's and Arthur's profile) reunited. Arthur leads a quiet life, residing in Merlin's cottage on the shores of the lake, with his grumpy (not-so) former servant to protect him from meddlers and fanatics. To preserve and allocate the necessary resources to restore a conducive environment for him and his needs of Middle Ages man, he is given the title of National Treasure that grants him a monthly revenue, total coverage of expenditures and funds to restore the castle of Camelot – castle that Merlin has preserved by magically miniaturizing it and placing it in a snow-less globe. Merlin, through his social media and website, shares with the world the chronicles of how his king is adjusting to the modern times. Arthur is initially followed by paps and generally by the curiosity of the people: it's just Merlin's angry presence (and an endless stream of ordinances) that shelters Arthur from the frenzy although soon it becomes an ordinary sight to see the king going around wearing his armor and sunglasses. When Camelot is restored, it gets the status of Principality within the United Kingdom, a kind of enclave named New Camelot on which Arthur is granted absolute power: initially a city-state enclosed within the strong walls of the citadel, it grows when further lands and pastures are assigned to the principality to assure Camelot's self-sufficiency. Life in New Camelot, per Arthur's choice, doesn't reflect the innovations happened after the king's death, and the citadel will become a haven for people who wish to live a simpler life or simply unplug a bit from the modern times. With time Arthur will fully embrace the perks of modernity, thanks to Merlin (and his money) who spoils him, and he'll even get a driving license (against Merlin's will). But that's another story for another time.

———————————————————————————————

Notes This manip was prompted by the picture released by Synnov Karlsen on her Instagram Story when they were in Italy to shoot I Medici back in 2018. A couple of days later, the manip was done. There was some text on the fake Instagram post that wasn't completed but the reason I was stuck was because I couldn't decide which version I liked the best between two backgrounds and few different effects/filters applied.

Released as per my goal to clear out my "held back" shit. I wanted to hold this back further but figured I should post it while it's still winter, given the winter subject.

———————————————————————————————

Tec stuffs (aka Behind The Manip) I recall not being completely satisfied with Aithusa but 1) there's literally two Aithusa pics, so a Merlin manipper must do with what little they've been given and 2) I still haven't learned to apply shadows.

Credits Bradley James in italy from Synnov Karlsen's Instagram Story, 30 October 2018. Il Vittoriale degli Italiani, Stanza del Mappamondo. Picture available at different sites.

———————————————————————————————

Crossposted Livejournal: prue84.livejournal.com/95609.html Dreamwidth: prue84.dreamwidth.org/87048.html Deviantart: deviantart.com/prue84/art/Knitting-instagram-949286264 (instagram post), deviantart.com/prue84/art/Knitting-photo-949286302 (photo)

[birchbow]

Hey birch! Quick ask for your writing on POF. What do you like the most about your Kurloz and Gamzee? If you could pick a few favorite things or traits from the versions of them you created, what do you think those would be? It's ok if you skip, I just got curious. I love your epic clown sagaaa 🥰🥰

!!! :Oc oh huh! My favorite traits are almost always the ones that create friction--some of those are neutral but create drama and some of them are outright negative, lol. Short answer, PoF Gamzee's a reckless coward and PoF Kurloz is incredibly dangerous and proud over top of a deep well of insecurity. Long answer.....under the cut, lol.

The Gamzee I write is, and I say this with authorial love and tbh no moral judgment, kind of a coward. He's not scared of the same stuff as most of us would be, he's good at combat and he likes pain, but also he's hugely, deeply afraid--of lots of stuff, but especially being left behind, and that drives a ton of his characterization.

Being left/abandoned is a pretty returning theme for a reason! From the very first chapter, when Gamzee's internal monologue is basically, "Well, time for the thing that made me happy to Go Away again. Hopefully if I'm good and I wait well enough, it'll eventually come back." He's been captured on his first mission, is his family going to leave him to die? Karkat's cocooning, is he ever coming back? Kurloz is poisoned and the family is turning on him as a suspect, are they done with him forever? He's the lynchpin of the Cult of Flesh's heresy, are his gods going to turn their faces away from him?

And when he feels like he has been abandoned, he goes through cycles of rage and then retreating from the rage, because being angry is holy but being angry is bad and drives people away, but being angry feels right, but-- It drives him to be overly obliging, trying not to drive people away, and it pushes him to be vicious when somebody seems to be interfering with his grasp on the things he values. It makes him a very sweet guy who'd do just about anything for the people he cares about, and it makes him clingy and dependent and blindly devoted, and prone to lashing out when he feels like they don't care about him as much as he cares about them!

I identify with a lot of that as an author, but I also just feel like it dovetails pretty neatly into the scant amounts of canon characterization we get for Gamzee, so I find it very compelling to read/write!

-

As far as Kurloz goes, what I like most about him as a character is probably like...his pride? And (especially because this is a kinky sex fic) the shame that goes along with that.

On a very surface level, the concept of the Grand Highblood as a grumpy, proud old guy who's getting reluctantly dragged in the direction of a still terrible but less hemoist society is very funny to me. Make up a bigoted old man and then force him to knuckle under repeatedly to the people he's bigoted against. But also on a more-plot-less-humor level, a character who's made himself a very strict code of "this is what's expected of me and I will fulfill it no matter what it does to me" is RIPE for drama. Especially when the plot of the story is then giving that character something that suddenly he finds he values at least as much as that code and pride, and making him struggle with that.

The counterpoint to that being; it's fun to set up a character as a proud, badass, dangerous son of a bitch, and then give the POV/the readers a shot straight into the shit that he's hiding behind that "I'm untouchable, don't fuck with me" pride. Sadism, especially as extreme as I've written into Kurloz, can be an intimidating thing! On the surface it's part of the mask, part of the scary persona--but it's really compelling and interesting to me to then sidestep that mask and go into the roiling mess of sexual shame and religious guilt and uncertainty and self-loathing. MAN I love writing the Brother Immortal scenes, you guys.

[shvdowspirit]

Introducing Peter Baek . . . Pitch Black from Rise of the Guardians

GENERAL

full name: peter baek. true name redacted.

aliases: pitch black, the boogeyman, the nightmare king.

nicknames: just don't call him 'pete'.

age: immortal / appears forty-three.

gender: cis male.

species: spirit.

orientation: pansexual, demiromantic.

date of birth: ??? he tells people it's november first.

place of birth: ??? the void.

occupation:  behavioral therapist.

PHYSIQUE

faceclaim:  gong yoo.

eye color:  dark brown, gold when performing stronger magic.

hair color:  black.

height:  6'4"

ABILITIES

fear manipulation: click to learn more.

nightmare manipulation: click to learn more.

shadow + darkness manipulation: click to learn more.

FAMILY

significant other(s): auralia pitchiner † (wife).

children: emily jane pitchiner (daughter).

MUSE INSPIRATION

aleksander morozova / the darkling — shadow and bone.

morpheus / dream of the endless — the sandman.

sebastian michaelis — kuroshitsuji.

yunsu park — olgami.

silco — arcane.

dracula — castlevania.

CHARACTERIZATION

This isn't someone you hope to run into, and certainly not someone you should get to know. Peter loves nothing more than drawing out and manipulating the parts of a person they're most desperate to keep hidden away. He's a creep first and foremost, but has mastered the art of masking his sinister tendencies. Still, there's something distinctly off about him that most subconsciously pick up on. They never quite seem to figure out what it is, however. He's one of Evermore's lucky few (or unlucky, if ignorance truly is bliss) who retained his memories from before arriving in the town, though unlike most others he's not chomping at the bit to leave. Evermore is an intriguing change of pace and chock-full of people on edge. All they need is a little push to begin spiralling.

HEADCANONS

In his previous home (before Evermore) you'll find a vast collection of artifacts that span back centuries. From Medieval brooches to Renaissance boxwood carvings to Victorian hair shrines. Any museum would leap at the chance to get their hands on any number of the artifacts he's amassed.

Dresses sharp and dark. His entire wardrobe is made up almost entirely of black and various shades of gray, occasionally accented with white or gold. Everything is perfectly tailored and has an air of sophistication to it (think dark academia, but a little less cozy).

For all his faults, Peter doesn't often go back on his word or outright lie. He might twist the truth a bit, but he keeps to his promises and has better methods of manipulating someone than lying.

Peter is not a fan of modern technology/not very tech-savvy. As with all immortal beings, he changes with the times, but that doesn't mean he likes said changes. He prefers physical copies of files, has no interest in social media, enjoys the sound of a record over a digital speaker, etc. Think of him as a grumpy old man in this regard.

Greatly enjoys coffee, despite the caffeine not doing much of anything for him. He likes things that taste a little bitter, like dark chocolate or red wine. Anything too sweet feels like his mouth is being coated in sugar.

There are two things that have bothered Peter for quite some time. The first of which is that he has no idea of where he came from. He has no real reason to believe he had a life before the day he opened his eyes to darkness and crawled out of the shadows, but there are traces of something that leave him wondering. Whispers too faint to understand that linger in the back of his mind. The second — a profound loneliness that he cannot rid himself of. A feeling that something is missing.

Hates most holidays (or any type of celebration really), but loves Halloween. The influx of horror films, everyone going around trying to scare each other, all the monstrous decorations, what's not to enjoy? Though he's not a fan of how it's become more treat than trick in the 21st century.

Peter has an interesting voice. For one, he has a British accent he picked a very long time ago and decided to keep. Secondly, when he speaks it doesn't always sound like it's coming out of his mouth. His lips will be moving, but if you closed your eyes you might be tricked into thinking he'd moved behind you. As if there are speakers all around your head or you're listening to him bounce between earbuds. It's something he sometimes does to freak people out a bit, though it can also happen without him quite realizing it.

[somerabbitholes]

hii i want to start reading books thats less based on fandom and relatable characters etcetc and work more as pieces of fiction that aims to tell a story (tell me if im not making sense please), so do you have any recs for that (preferably not a classic with 80 word sentences)

(tell me if what i said doesnt make any sense please I'll try to rephrase it 😭)

hi yes that makes absolute sense, so here is fiction that is about the story, that works on the literary level, and that i love for the writing ─

drive your plow over the bones of the dead by olga tokarczuk — about an old polish woman who spends her time translating william blake and making people’s horoscopes; through her it’s about how we think about nature and animals; also comes with a whodunnit

the waves by virginia woolf — follows six friends through their youth and adulthood; written as monologues from each of their perspectives; really made me feel things and woolf is great at writing so i don’t need to sell that

conversations with friends by sally rooney — so hear me out, because the plot by itself is quite ordinary, but the writing is beautiful and the love i have for this novel comes from the writing which is so full of detail and so great at setting mood; i also really loved normal people and beautiful world, where are you but this one is still a favourite

a man called ove by fredrik backman — about a grumpy old man who has a very tight daily schedule and a very strong set of principles; his life after new neighbours move in across the street and basically upend his life; very wholesome

the hungry tide by amitav ghosh — about a biologist who goes to the sunderbans for research; covers human-animal conflict in the delta; also about the environment and how it offsets life in the delta’s villages

a fine balance by rohinton mistry — set in bombay during the 1975 emergency; about four people who are brought together by the political and social upheavals in the country; very finely written

dark satellites by clemens meyer —  a collection of stories revolving around marginal people set in germany; explores isolation, loneliness, and relationships formed in these conditions of isolation

the lowland by jhumpa lahiri — about two brothers, one of whom is drawn to the naxalite movement, while the other goes on to study and live in the usa; how their lives intertwine through the years

the people in the trees by hanya yanagihara — about this immunologist who discovers a micronesian tribe that is apparently immortal; also about ecological imperialism and the violence of the encounter between the west (in this case) and ‘primitive’ people; very impressive in its depth

broken harbor by tana french — part of the dublin murder squad series; this one is my favourite but you should definitely also read the rest; it’s about a detective investigating a triple murder in a family of four where the father and the two children have been killed and the mother is in a coma; also has a subplot about the detective himself; some great parallels and foreshadowing; ties together all the threads very satisfyingly

i'm going to add a little life here because i think it's an extremely fine work and probably the best novel i've read so far, but you should absolutely check the trigger warnings and the content warnings should you decide to pick it up ─ although the novel is a lot more than its TWs and i would hate for it to be reduced to only these warnings or to absolutely useless analysis like 'too long' or 'misery porn'

the immortalists by chloe benjamin — about four siblings who discover the precise dates of their deaths; takes a look at all their lives one by one; explores fate and destiny and free will; it’s a great quick read

the licanius trilogy by james islington — set twentyish years after a war that wiped out augurs, it follows davian, who is an augur, as he tries to come to terms with his power; begins as a classic chosen one story, but definitely more than that; time travel; very well-thought out and executed plotlines

the lives of others by neel mukherjee — about a family in kolkata that’s coming to terms with changing times in a post-independence india; great if you like generational novels about large families

i hope you find something you like!

[eyesoverinfinity]

Vampire!Ellis au

fanfic 2: turning the tides

____________________________________________________________

"Hello down there!"

"Oh thank god! I thought I was the last women on earth."

"Yeah, I know the feeling."

Francis turned around, surprised. There where other people!

After everything that had happed, he forgot there likely other unlucky bastards who CEDA and the military screwed over.

He walked over to the edge of the rail. There where four people below them.

The first one was a pale, dark haired, grumpy man with a once expensive white suit. He was skinny, muttering under his breath and Francis had add an urge to shoot him where he stood.

The next person was the person he heard. She was dark skinned, with a pink shirt, jeans and earrings (from what he could see being quite high up.). She was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen.

The third person was only a little less pale then the last man, He had a blue hat and jeans, yellow shirt and joy in his step. He was looking up at Zoey like she was an angel.

The last one was a large man with dark skin and what looked to be a sports teacher get up. He looked quite strong, but was noticeably putting his weight more on one side of his body than the other, like what Bill used to do when his leg acted up.

The lost of Bill still stung in Francis's heart, as well as Zoey and Louis's. Zoey had taken a 'look out for your own' mind set and stepped up as leader in Bill's place, Francis almost didn't recognise her.

Louis was still injured and had become really quiet. Francis had joked about hating Louis's good feelings, but god he didn't want him to stop feeling altogether.

The worst part was that they knew Bill was at peace with his fate, he had done this for them. So why did they all feel so empty? At least he was in a better place, but it pained him that he couldn't tell the other two that the afterlife was real.

His old life was a lot more then what his team likely thought it was, that was his intention. He had used to belong to a clan of monster hunters.

Now, monster had become a far too generic term in the modern day. 'Monster' was anything that wasn't 'normal' nowadays, people threw it around everywhere. The only thing about this reckless use that was correct was that a human could be a monster.

A monster was a sentient creature that actively chose to do harm to others, many supernatural creatures where people, just like humans. The only exception that he knew of was vampires.

Vampirism was an interesting curse. You could drink animal blood and you wouldn't suffer for it, you'd even be able to live in human civilisation. But if you wanted the powers and immortality that you see in legends you'd have to kill people.

A lot of people.

But the more powerful you got the more weaknesses began to show.

The problem was the vampires that could recognized as vampires where the ones that were already mass murderers. The biggest problem was that powerful vampires could control those they turned, creating a thrall.

Thralls had no will for the first hundred or so year that they exist and are kept alive by their controller. But once they break free they remember EVERYTHING they were forced to do.

Most turn evil as well, the madness taking the place of the mental cage they were in, some kill their turner, but those who do usually end themselves as well. Thus perpetuating the cycle of evil vampires.

Francis caught himself on this train of thought and stopped, he had to focus on his current situation. Thought he had to admit, any supernatural creature in the county was in just as much trouble as the remaining humans where.

He looked back down, the newcomers were going to restart the generator in order to lower the bridge. As he saw the newcomers leave, he made eye contact with the one in the blue hat and suddenly got a bad feeling. Where his eyes.... Silver?

He tried to shake it off. But something didn't sit right with him.

"Trust your instincts little warrior." His Grandma used to tell him. "Because whether given by God or nature, it's there to keep you alive."

"Zoey..."

"Yeah Francis?"

"Keep an eye on that blue hat guy."

"You mean Ellis? He seems nice, at least next to the asshole in the suit."

"Yeah... There's just something that rubs me the wrong way."

"What, are they a werewolf or something?"

'Unfortunately you may not be far off.' Francis thought to himself.

Despite how often they were compared in media, werewolves were a lot different to vampires. The only real similarity is the fact the state of being was a curse. But werewolves themselves rarely dangerous in civilisations due to have access to food at any time. Nowadays maybe a challenge but he doubted that there if there was a werewolf in that group they'd actually do anything to harm anyone.

"Nah, Werewolves are way hairier." He had to force himself not to cringe at the stereotype. "But... just be careful?" He suggested.

Zoey looked confused, but thankfully nodded and didn't push for details.

He waited on the other side, praying that he was wrong about his hunch and that nothing would happen.

⋆﹥━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━﹤⋆

Ellis had just fucked up. Big time.

Granted at the time he didn't know how badly he fucked up, but he certainly knew that he had. He'd just been so hungry.

After the testing of his powers he had gotten hungrier than he had ever been before, he'd eaten 6 mice now and while it had helped he was still hungry.

He was glad that there was no urge to attack his friends. He didn't know what he'd do with himself if he hurt one of them.

But that relief didn't make him feel full. He was sure that he just needed more mice... right?

They had made it to the other side of the bridge, (he had eaten five more mice along the way), where they had found that the new people on the bridge had lost someone.

He had been so hungry, and the body was already dead right? it didn't need the blood anymore....

Ellis drank the blood from the body. Saying to the universe that he was willing to pay the price so long as his friends didn't get hurt.

The blood tasted of tar and adrenaline. It didn't taste like death, though how he knew that was lost to him. Despite that he felt more powerful as he drank, he was tempted to keep going, but his heart told him he was already pushing it. He took what he needed and stopped.

"I'm sorry for that... rest in peace man."

The body began to twitch.

Ellis got up and backed away as the body began to writhe around, the 10 seconds that it did that for felt like forever. But once it stopped Ellis realised what he'd done.

"Who the hell are you?" asked the reanimated body / new vampire.

'Oh fuck' was all Ellis could think.

⋆﹥━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━﹤⋆

Bill was very confused. He had died, hadn't he?

Yes, he had! He remembered very clearly being beaten to death by three on-fire tanks!

So what gives?

He was looking at this new kid, couldn't of been much older then Zoey. Staring at him and looking like he was about have a panic attack.

"Who the hell are you?" Bill asked, came off a but more blunt than he intended but he wasn't the most charismatic person out there.

"Oh fuck." was all the boy said.

'Not what I asked but ok.' Bill thought to himself.

"Hey Ellis, we're about to start the- OH LORD." A large black man came into the room. He seemed more started then the boy.

"I'm sorry, I'm SO sorry!" The boy, Ellis, began to apologise, but Bill couldn't tell who to.

Bill stood up, his body tried to protest but he was good at ignoring it. Was he... Paler then before?

"O God what have I done, didn't mean to... I"M SO SORRY!"

"BOY WHAT IN THE NAME OF THE LORD I DID YOU DO?!"

The two men where freaking out, when a third came in and joined in as well.

"ELLIS HOW?.... WHY?!?"

"I SWEAR I DIDN"T KNOW I COULD DO THAT, HE WAS ALREADY DEAD SO-"

"SO WHAT? WHAT MADE YOU THINK THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA!?"

A women came in after that, rushing in like she thought the other three where dying. With all the yelling Bill didn't blame her.

She took one look at Bill and realised what was going on. Then shot two shots in the air to get their attention.

'If she isn't the leader she's clearly the brains of the group.' Bill thought to himself.

"Boys, we currently have three people on the bridge who think that you were dying and now we have a reanimated person on our hands. We need to figure out how we're going to break this to them. No apologising,"

The women pointed to Ellis.

"No blaming," She pointed to the man in the suit.

"No freaking out." She pointed to the man in the purple and yellow shirt.

She turned to him.

"Are you ok?"

"I'll live." He said, though that got a guilty look for the boy.

"What just happened?" He asked, "Because last I remember I was being beaten to death by three tanks."

This got looks of shock and respect from the whole group. The boy in the hat stepped forward.

"Ok... Well, ya see." The boy turned into a bat in front of Bill's eyes and then turned back.

"I'm a vampire.... and now you are too?"

Bill was silent. His was trying to comprehend what just happened in front of him, but his brain refused to cooperate. The only thing that came out was:

"heh, wait till Francis hears about this."

Was this a sick joke from the universe? Why did it refuse to let him die? Not that he was complaining, but at this point the lengths the universe had gone to keep him 'alive' was utterly-....

Wait, they were talking about people on the bridge, That was his group! Why where they still here!?

"Wait, is he still up there?!"

"Yeah, Zoey and Louis are too." answered the lady.

Bill headed for the door, he needed to see them. He needed to see them ok. He was blocked by Ellis.

"Hey, hey! I know you want to see your friends. but you can't just-'

"And you think you can stop me?"

"I don't wanna! I just need to figure out how to explian this!'

"Just tell them that you bit me, drank my blood while i was dead and turn me into..." Bill stopped to listen to his own words.

"well shit."

"That's what I was thinking." Ellis said.

"Ok, fine. but once you do I'm leavening."

Ellis nodded and began talking nervously to the others.

Bill hated the fact that he had to stay in the room where he died for ant longer. But he supposed that it was common curtesy to help the person who brought you back to life not get shot.

He just hoped that his team would take his new form well. Francis would be the most difficult but it's not like he'd actually shoot.

Right?

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

To be continued

[theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin]

"I have some problems with [Luke] as a character)" was mentioned in your Reylo response post. Very interested in what your thoughts are on Luke! 👀

Do you want me to get murdered?! Well, if I didn’t get lynched for calling Sirius Black a Stephen King villain I can surely do no worse here.

Let’s do this.

Caveat that, as usual, I am wearing a heretic hat and expect no one to agree with what I’m saying.

Luke Skywalker, much like Harry Potter, is not the character the authors and vast majority of the audience seem to think he is. Luke is seen as the true coming of the Jedi, the light side of the Force incarnate, and someone so innately good he was able to redeem his father, restore peace to the galaxy, and restore the Jedi Order.

I disagree with all of this.

I think this is what Luke thinks he did but the truth is far sadder and, well, in general worse.

First, let’s start off with Luke’s hero’s journey throughout the saga.

Luke starts your ordinary guy, he’s not bad by any means, but he’s not particularly good either. He lives in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, part of a relatively well off family, and set to inherit the world’s most boring business: moisture farming. He has dreams of going out, seeing the world, and becoming a great pilot.

Important to remember but what most people gloss over: Luke starts if not pro-empire then neutral towards it. Luke wants to attend flight school, given his desire for glory and adventure, he probably wants to join the empire’s military. He might not like Storm Troopers all that much but the fire of revolution doesn’t burn in his heart the way it does Leia’s.

Now, personally, I like this about Luke. It makes sense to me. Given where and how Luke grows up, given all he’s ever known, I think this makes perfect sense for his viewpoint. He might get hassled by stormtroopers now and then but the empire really doesn’t interfere with his life except in a) propaganda b) offering an escape from his dull existence. What would someone like Luke know about the Rebel Alliance?

The movie however... sort of goes out of its way not to acknowledge this, and this is where I start having problems with Luke. Luke gets Leia’s message about Obi-Wan Kenobi, sees the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen in his life, and gets to embark on this amazing adventure. The story sort of takes it for granted that he then agrees with old hermit, Obi-Wan, that the empire is evil. This is helped because Luke does too.

In other words, Luke’s opinions are very shallow and lack any introspection. Finding himself in the company of Jedi, smugglers, and hot rebel princesses, Luke suddenly goes, “Ah, yeah, I hate the empire!” We never really see him change his mind by reflecting over what the Death Star means/the destruction of Alderaan, the death of his relatives, or his meeting with Darth Vader. Luke seems to be won over... Honestly, it feels like it’s because the Rebel Alliance let him fly a plane before the Empire did.

Then he blows up the Death Star, is a galactic hero/enemy number one of the empire, and he’s full on board resistance man and the next Jedi.

Which brings us to point number two, Luke legitimately thinks he’s a Jedi.

Obi-Wan gives him half a word of advice for maybe half of a day, watching Luke swing a sword around and get shot at by a robot. Yoda trains Luke in a swamp for, generously, maybe a week or so before Luke ditches him (against his advice even) to go save his friends. Luke has 0 training (beat out only by Rey, who wasn’t trained at all). More, he lives in a world where everything he knows of the Jedi is colored by Palpatine’s propaganda and old legends. The Jedi temples have been ransacked and presumably next to nothing of the Jedi culture remains, I can imagine Palpatine as being nothing but thorough in his elimination of the Jedi religion. The Jedi survived in Obi-Wan, Yoda, and in some sense Anakin Skywalker.

They do not survive in Luke. Luke puts on some quasi-Jedi robes, slashes his sword around a few times to save Leia from Jabba, and he says, “Now I am a Jedi!” Luke is that kid, LARPing, yelling “firebolt, firebolt, firebolt!” Only, that is, if the LARPing consisted of him representing a massacred culture thinking he’s it’s sole legitimate heir. So... Luke is playing Cowboy and Indians, and he’s the Indian.

In my opinion, Vader wasn’t so much redeemed as he always had a very high priority in finding his son and keeping him alive. The obvious way to do this would be to take Luke as an apprentice and, eventually, murder Palpatine. Well, that didn’t pan out, and eventually Anakin chooses murder-suicide to save his son’s life. It’s very touching, I’m not knocking the moment, but I do think a lot of that was Anakin vice the inherent goodness of Luke.

Anyways, Luke and pals save the day, they start a new republic and then they learn life is complicated. The new republic fails within decades, worse, it’s feeble and likely torn apart by civil war, strife, and constant infighting. It is utterly powerless, to the point where the First Order easily rises to replace the Empire and take over its vast resources (with Palpatine building a secret sith army on the side no less). That Leia rather than lead an army through the new republic in the sequels is leading her own private resistance army is very telling.

Fitting in with this, Luke starts a Jedi Academy. The prequels, and yes go ahead and slander them all you like but they’re better than many admit, taught us a few things but one of them is that it is hard to be a Jedi. To walk the path of a Jedi is to open yourself up to great temptation to use the dark side, and the dark side isn’t just some strange quirk or sense of duality, it is the equivalent of selling your soul. It is an unnatural action that leads to unnatural abilities. 

You get a bunch of Force Sensitive kids in a room: you better know what you’re doing.

Luke doesn’t. He collects a handful of the remaining Jedi artifacts that Palpatine somehow didn’t destroy, opens up his Jedi School (even teaching his nephew), and within maybe five years the place is burned to the ground, his students murdered by his nephew, and his nephew runs off to join a Sith Lord who appeared out of nowhere (Luke not realizing that this was just immortal cockroach Palpatine). 

Luke then becomes a grumpy old man who just can’t deal, sits on a rock drinking blue milk, and whines that for how shitty of a teach he was that Obi-Wan guy was worse for messing up with his father. Which, frankly, is very in character for Luke.

Luke has never really failed in his life, or at least, never had to recognize his own failure. So, when he does, he a) doesn’t realize what went wrong b) blames everyone but himself c) sits on a rock and waits to die.

So yeah, that’s Luke for you.

A whiney, shallow, stupid, somewhat narcissistic, hero. I... don’t dislike the concept of his character, played more straight I’d love his character, but I dislike that people talk about him like he’s the most noble creature to ever grace the planet and has this inherent understanding of a murdered people that the murdered people themselves never had. 

(All the Jedi were doing it wrong! Luke made the real Jedi Order! Is something I see a lot and... well... say what you will about their philosophies, but this kid who was not a part of that culture “doing it better”... That’s real problematic folks, real problematic.)

[mindofharry]

here’s some vampire harry!!!!! pls treat him with the love and respect he deserves <3

“Honey, this is just water under the bridge” Your mother, Joanne, reassured you. She placed a rogue piece of hair behind your ear. You were both sitting on your bed, cuddling like you were 10 years old again. Getting fired, from your dream job for no apparent reason at all has basically broken you. Your mother is trying to reassure you, that it was meant to happen - that everything happens for a reason. You just want your job back.

“We’ll start job hunting again, next week. Ok?” Joanne said, you sighed and rolled over on your sighed. Your mum rubbed your back and took all the dirty cups from your room with her as she left your room.

You tried to sleep, to try and forget everything that had just happened that afternoon. But, your mind was occupied and too busy. So you decided you better start looking for some jobs, even interviews. Even though you still live with your mum, you still need money. Not just for yourself, but your mum too. All the money that comes into the house is coming from you and the jobs you have. You were finally comfortable with money, for the first in your life. But the world just really hated you at the moment.

You walk over your desk and sit down, opening up the second hand laptop you bought yourself for christmas. It’s nothing special like a mac, but it does the job. Once you’re logged in, you open google and type in ‘JOBS IN MY AREA’. You didn’t go to college and you barley passed high school, you’ll be lucky if you even get a job at the local book store.

You needed to stop this, punishing yourself. It’s not your fault, you remind yourself.

Nearly falling asleep at your desk, you decided to head to bed. Tomorrow will be better.

**

Tomorrow is not better. It’s worse than yesterday. You couldn’t even bare to open your laptop after being so disappointed last night. And you’re mum kept trying to reassure you, but you felt responsible for this.

Your mum couldn’t work, she’s not well and she’s in denial about it. She goes to AA meetings and talks with therapists, but she just can’t stay sober. You’ve tried to get her into working, but she manages to fuck it up everytime. Your mum is good mother, she took care of you and did the best she could. But sometimes you just wished she’d just stay sober, for even a week. So you could be a normal 19 year old, go out for drinks and hang out with friends. But you know she’s not a normal mum. And that’s something you just have to live with.

“Morning, love” Joanne said sipping on her ‘tea’. You knew it was alcohol so you gave her a pointed look.

She sighed and poured the drink down the sink. “Good, now go brush your teeth and we can talk” you say pulling your hair up. You mother shook her head and sighed. “I’m the mum here, Y/N. Don’t treat me like i’m the teenager” she said and you laughed. Really? This is how today’s going to go? the universe really hates me, you thought.

“You just hid vodka from me mum” you say and she sighed walking over and kissing your temple. “I’m sorry, ok? I’m trying, lovey” she said and you could tell how hard she was trying to keep together. you nodded and smiled, this was going to be a good day. Bite your tongue, Y/N.

“Yeah, i know. Now go get ready, i need help job hunting” you say and she nodded making her way out of the kitchen and up to her room. You sighed and put the kettle on. You walked into the pantry and took the vodka she had opened and poured it down the sink. Let’s see how long it takes her to notice.

You sat down with your cup of tea and one for your mum, opening up the paper and your laptop.

When your mum came back in, she looked a lot nicer and healthier. The shower did her good.

“So i saw someone looking for an assistant on facebook” Your mum said logging into her facebook on your laptop. You smiled to yourself, she really cared about you. “His name is harry i think, something along the lines of needing someone to sort out his schedule which you’re pretty good at” she said showing you the post. A few, actually a lot, of people had already liked the post and there was people sharing their CVs in the comments begging for a chance. You didn’t have the heart to tell your mum that this person wasn’t going to accept you.

“I mean, you can apply for other jobs but i think it’s perfect for you” She said biting her nip nervously. You nodded smiling in reassurance. “Yeah, it’s perfect mum. Thank you, i’ll try and get an interview. I also found a cleaning job too, so that’s good. Both jobs look like they pay well” you say with a shrug.

Joanne nodded and kissed your temple. “You’ll get a job. Don’t worry about it.”

After sending your CV to multiple possible bosses, you shut your laptop and turn your phone off of silent. Job hunting is a pain in the ass and exhausting, all you can do now is make lunch and hope for the best.

**

You were braiding your mothers hair when you got the call. You were both having a girly night as your mum hadn’t drank a sip of alcohol all day, it was definitely something to celebrate.

“Is this Y/N L/N i’m speaking with?” the voice asked, he sounded so bright and chipper. And he was irish too.

“This is her! how can i help you?” you asked and the man cleared his throat and paused for a second. “I’m offering you a job. the job” he said and you almost dropped your phone. You put it on your leg, on speaker so your mum could hear and you could multitask. You brushed the ends of your mum hair and let out a shaky breath.

“Do i need to come in for an interview?”

“Well, me and the boss would like to get to know you, get a feel of how you work on your own and with help. just like a test run, but if i’m being honest the is yours” he said and you could almost cry. “You’re exactly the kind of person Harry, my boss is looking for Y/N” he said.

“I’m niall by the way, i’m harry’s personal assistant” Niall said and you smiled.

“Well, when can i come in?”

After settling some stuff with Niall, who is kind of your boss too you were free to hang up. your mum squealed and pulled you into the tightest hug ever. “I told you, everything happens for a reason! you were exactly who they were looking for, babe” your mother said caressing your cheeks. You kissed her temple and nodded.

“You’re the best, you know that?” You said and your mum shrugged. “Eh, i’m okay” she giggled, you sat back down on the couch.

“Lay down, mum. We’ve got it sorted now”

You were going in to the offices, or as what niall called STYLES x MALIK, harry styles and zayn malik are both the bosses of the fashion company they both created. They have a headquarters in the states, but they’re just starting up a new headquarters in england, as harry and zayn grew up here and would like to see their families a lot more. Niall basically told you their whole life story over the phone, which you were very thankful for. Saves you the googling.

It was a tuesday morning, when you got the go ahead to pop in. Niall said to look nice, but casual. Like you’re going out for a dinner with your partners family. So you pull out your best high waisted flare jeans, an orange stripped shirt and tucked into your jeans. You topped it off with your lucky platforms and some jewellery. You left your hair natural, and the same with your makeup only some lip gloss and mascara.

“You look beautiful, honey”

“Thanks mum” You grinned pulling her into a hug. You placed your bag over your shoulder and took the car keys from the bowl at the front door. “I’ll be back soon, ok? Go for a walk or something” you say squeezing her hand, before leaving.

20 minutes away from you, is a angry, grumpy vampire. Niall was sat in front of harry, with a grin on his face.

“She’s literally perfect harry” Niall try to reason, but harry was having absolutely none of it. He wanted to rip that blonde son of bitch heart out.

“Niall, i didn’t want her though.” Harry said standing up from his desk, opening up a file and pointing at a picture.

“i wanted her”

Harry was pointing at a girl, blonde hair, blue eyes and great blood. He had tasted her before and worked his magic into getting her an interview - of course, she doesn’t remember him though. But this Y/N girl, he didn’t want her and he never agreed to having her come here today.

“You’ll have to fire her or make up some excuse, fuck i need something” Harry mumbled placing a hand over his eyes, Niall walked over to the fridge in the corner of harrys office he opened it up and took out a bag of blood pouring it in to a small glass. He placed it on the table standing in front of a frustrated vampire.

“She’s really good, Harry. You’ll regret it if you don’t let her do the test run” Niall said before walking to the door. “And she’s hot as fuck” he added leaving the room.

Harry hated being the bad guy, usually he’s a nice person. More lively, a bit like niall. A lot more quiet though, he’s pensive and reads people really well, one of his many talents as a vampire.

Harry was born in 1908, to a wealthy family. He had caring parents, a loving sister and good future a head of him. Until he met liam payne, they met in university decided to work together. The next thing you know, liam had his fangs in harrys neck and he was immortal. The first few years were hard, he was wreck less and did everything possible to get even a drop of blood. He met zayn five years after being turned, and he was sort of like the alpha of their ‘pack’ so to speak. He taught harry all he knew about control and using powers to get what you want, but only when you so desperately need it. They met niall in the 70s, he was freshly turned and needed help. They took him under their wings, and here they are today with a fashion company and a load of money in their pockets.

“What’s all the fuss about?” Zayn asked walking into harrys office with a few files in his hands. Harry huffed and sipped on the blood niall had poured for him. “I’m closed” harry said sitting down on his chair, zayn laughed and shook his head. “You have an interview in 5 minutes, get it together styles” Zayn said and dropped the files on his desk.

“Whether we hire or not, be nice. Her file is there, read it, study it. And keep those fangs to yourself” Zayn warned pointing at harry, then walked out of his office. Harry sighed and opened the file, stopping in his tracks when he saw your face.

You’re beautiful, so fucking beautiful.

He could tell the photo was professionally done, and you definitely had gotten someone to take it in a rush. Your CV is also a mess, but harry thinks it’s endearing. God, you’ve hypnotised him already. Harry could feel your aura through a picture, how the fuck was that even possible?

“She’s here” Niall said through the glass door. Harry nodded and cracked his neck, let’s get this over with then.

He could see niall biting his lip as she walked up, he couldn’t keep it in his pants for 2 seconds.

Niall opened the door and harry watched the girl walk in, her flares and platforms got his attention. She’s perfect. For him. Niall was still checking her out, so harry cleared his throat. Niall smirked and shook his head walking out of the office.

“Take a seat” Harry said and you smiled, sitting down. “I just want to say, i’m really grateful for this opportunity” you say, and harry nearly rolled his eyes. She’s too beautiful for a sob story. “I appreciate it” you say, and harry nodded quickly wanting to move away from anything emotional.

“um, so we don’t need you” He lied and you nearly choked on you own spit. Your eyebrows furrowed and you flushed a bit. Harry could see niall shaking his head. Damn you, super human hearing.

“Don’t need me? Niall said that i was just what you were looking for” you say, not angry just confused. Harry was impressed at how well you could keep your feelings in check, but he could feel how agitated you were becoming.

“Well, he’s wrong” Harry said and closed the file. “Have a nice day” He said with a fake smile. You couldn’t believe this. Fuck this.

“Fuck you” You said grabbing your bag and hoisting it up onto your shoulder. “Woah, Woah, what’s going on in here?” Zayn asked his hands in the air.

“Ask him, thanks for nothing” You say moving to walk out of the office. You needed to get out of here. “Just wait” Zayn called out, you stopped and sighed turning around.

“You’ve got the job” zayn said and your eyes widened in shock. “You start this friday, niall will email you detail. Use this week to treat yourself, on me ok?” Zayn said handing you a 50 dollar note. Who are you to deny money? You nodded and smiled at him. “Thank you” you say and he nodded.

“Don’t disappoint me”

**

You got yourself a coffee on the way home, you were a little overwhelmed and you needed to calm down before you went home to your mum. You just hope she didn’t do anything stupid while you were out.

“Mum, i’m home” you called out handing your bag up on the hanger. You got no response, so you looked around the house. Nothing in the kitchen or bathroom. The only places left are her room and living room.

You walked into the living room, to see your mum passed out on the couch a bottle of wine and an empty bottle of vodka on the coffee table. you sighed “Oh, mum” you said tears welling up in your eyes. “Why do you keep doing this” you mumbled picking up the wine and empty bottle, you put them away and cleaned up the cup. After that, you placed a blanket over her.

“You’ll get better soon, mum. I’ll be able to pay for it. We’ll have everything we’ve ever dreamt of and more” You say, kissing her forehead.

The next couple of days, you were nursing your mother back to health and used the 50 dollars your new boss gave you to by some groceries. Your mother really needed some hangover snacks, and she needed a lot of them. Luckily, you’ve been doing this a lot longer than you should’ve.

“Mum, i’m off to work” You said peaking through her door. She wasn’t talking to you at the moment.

“Alright, there’s medicine on the counter downstairs, snacks and stuff too. There’s no alcohol and no money, so don’t even try” You warned closing her door. God, this was so hard. You wondered how long it would take to be fired from this job.

You arrived early at the office, niall greeted you and took you to your own little office. It was nothing huge, but you absolutely adored it.

“Hey, don’t worry about harry” Niall said and you nodded. “I’m not, don’t worry” you reassured him smiling as you put down your diary.

“Good, well i’ll leave you to it” Niall said and you grinned at him.

“Good luck”

“Why?”

“You’ll need it”

[dancingthesambaa]

The Smell of Plum Blossom Tea Ch 9

Summary: Just like a butterfly wing, a single act of kindness can change the course of the future, it certainly did for MK as a black furred monkey put out a hand towards him.

Rating: Teen and up

Chapter 9: Decisions and Hesitations

“You really want to do this, you really want to try and race me?” Mei asks as she sees MK roll up in the restaurant scooter.

“I’m in it to win it!” He cockily said, “and besides I always wanted to try out one of these races, my new powers are gonna seriously help me!”

“So are we!” They see an orange and blue demon with their own car as they posed ontop of it.

“Yin!”

“And Gin!”

“You don’t even know the track!” The pro racer yelled out as she leaned in closer to him.

“I got Monkey King powers! I think I will be fine!”

“It doesn’t work like that!”

Needless to say, both demons were ignored, but the next demon wasn’t as he revved up his engine.

“Quiet peasants! I’m trying to get in the zone!” Red Son called out as he kept his eye on the track in front of him.

“Oh hey Red! I didn’t know you were participating!” MK smiled and gave a wave.

“Well the prize is a worthwhile venture to be acquired,” he huffed out.

“Well I hope you boys will like the taste of my fumes when I leave you both in the dust!” She grinned savagely.

“Please, you will be the one tasting my dust!” The Monkie kid shot back.

“You want to bet on it!”

“Oh yeah! The usual?”

“You know it, you want to join in hot head?” She asked the prince.

“As if I would want to participate in your frivolous competition,” he rolled his eyes.

“Awww, it sounds like you scared,” she began to mock him.

“What!” A burst of flame emerged.

“Chicken! Bawk! Bawk! Bawk!” MK flapped his arms as he did that.

“Red Son is no coward! What is the bet!” He hissed out as steam emitted from his mouth.

“Loser has to treat the other to an all you can eat ice cream!” MK quickly shouted.

“Deal!”

“And it looks like things are heating up down in the tracks!” Yin stated as he and his brothers entered the commenter podium.

“And on a totally unrelated note, we're the new commentators,” Jin added as he grabbed the mic.

“I really shouldn’t be surprised something like this would happen,” MK sighed as he quickly put his seatbelt on.

“And to spice things up we’ve gone ahead and altered the race track!”

“WHAT!” Not only the trio, but every racer shouted out as they saw the now new and updated version of the track on the screen.

“Here’s your start and here’s your finish, get there anyway you like!” Yin said as she pointed to multiple areas.

“Fuck me!” One of the racers screamed out as he slammed his head against the wheel.

“Well there goes all of my plans!” Another angrily said in a red car as she honked her horn violently.

“I’m gonna kill them,” a calm voice said as they gripped the wheel.

“This is fine,” someone’s eye twitches violently, “this is perfectly fine.”

“On your marks!”

“Hold on!” Mei cried out as she tried to figure out if that really just happened.

“Get set!”

“Wait what!?” Red Son blanched as he looked at the commentator sector, more specifically the twin demons, as if he wanted to climb up there and rip both their mouths off.

“Go!” They echoed together as only MK began to drive off as he had no previous experience with racing, so he wasn’t weighed down on the dangers, uncertainties, and screwups that can occur with not having the road memorized.

“See you at the finish line!”

“Oh hell no!” Mei revved her engine and began to chase after him.

“Get back here!” Red Son did the same as he quickly followed and soon enough everyone joined in as well.

“I still can’t believe that they weren’t real,” MK grumbled as he licked his ice cream.

“I still can’t believe the both of you thought it was real,” Mei smirked as she pointed her spoon at them.

“In hindsight, I should have never thought that the peaches of immortality would ever be a prize in a mortal sport,” Red Son grumbled as he bit into his cone. “Every demon, creature, and mortal alike would be flocking at the chance of immortality if it was real.”

“Well jokes on the both of you, cause now I can savor my free delicious goodness,” she held up her cup.

“You don’t have to rub it in,” the boy groaned.

“Yeah, I do. I mean, who was saying that they only needed the great Monkey King powers to win?” She put her finger to her chin, “Oh right! It was you!”

“I said I was sorry.”

“Well since you got me my wonderful prize, your apology has been accepted. Just try not to be dumb next time.”

“All I can do is try!”

“If it wasn’t for you, I would have won!” The flame demon half glared at MK.

“To be fair, how was I supposed to know that I crashed into you when I fell out of the sky!” He threw his hands up. “I was just trying to get ahead!”

“Well now my vehicle is in ruins because of you!”

“You're not the only one, Pigsy is gonna kill me once I get back,” he smacked his head on the table.

“Don’t you have Monkey King powers?” She pointed out.

“Huh?” MK tilted his head as the demon's eyes widened in realization as he smacked his face.

“You could have fixed it!” He roared out.

“Oh right!” He had totally forgotten that he could do that, “I am soo doing that after we eat.”

Red Son grabbed him by his collar and brought him close until they were nose to nose, “I have spent countless months making and fine tuning my car to my tastes and you, noodle boy, have ruined that in less than a second. You will fix my car now.”

“Oor I can do that,” he quickly grabbed his staff and went outside as the two follow.

“Don’t worry,” Mei patted the demon's shoulder, “I know exactly your pain. Love him, but he almost lost a hand after he managed to bust my engine.”

“I said I was sorry!” He called out as both vehicles reverted back to their original state with a few missing pieces here and there.

“Tell that to my motor!”

Red Son inspected his car and nodded his head, “still some parts missing, but an adequate patch up job nonetheless. I will bring it back to its former glory when I bring it back home.”

“Your welcome,” the Monkie kid smiled.

“You're the one who broke it in the first place!”

“Point,” he then walked a little way closer, “soo I guess this means you're gonna head home now.” He said a bit sadly, he liked hanging out with Red, he is one of the few, besides Mei, who can match his level of energy. So it was always a bummer whenever he had to head back to his crummy family, he had heard how parents talked to him and needless to say, he did not like it.

The demon side eyed his friend's words and huffed, “I can do whatever I want, you have no authority over me.” He marched back inside with his head held high.

Both MK and Mei's eyes slightly widened at this, but they both shared grins as they quickly followed him back inside the shop.

“So question, is water wet?” She couldn’t help herself.

“By the-of course it is wet!” He looked so lost at the random question.

“Nope it’s not,” MK stood firm in his belief, he knew what Mei was doing, but he was not about to let this go.

“Of course it is noodle boy! If water makes other materials wet then by default the water is wet!”

“Key word ‘other materials’ the water itself is not wet.”

“That makes no sense, of course it is!”

“It makes perfect sense!”

“Do you have a brain or is it hiding under all that stupidity?!”

“I will not back down from this, water is not wet!”

“In what world!”

Mei happily sat back and enjoyed the chaos she just unfolded.

“Nice job MK,” Monkey King complimented his protege when he saw him master the reverse strike. “You are getting quite the hang of this.”

“Thanks!” He smiled as he swung his staff back to his side.

“You're learning faster than I have ever anticipated, are you learning from another teacher behind my back?” He narrowed his eyes teasingly though it still held a hint of seriousness as he was curious about how he knew some of those moves.

“No!” He immediately said, but he backtracked moments later, “well yeah, but not like that! It’s just that my Dad has been teaching me some fighting moves for the past couple of years.”

“Lighten up,” he jokingly ruffled his head, “I’m just teasing you. Though I seriously have to meet your old man sooner or later, he seems like a pretty cool dude if he’s teaching you all this.”

“Of-,” he cut himself off as he realized what he was about to do. His dear ol Dad, the medicine monkey who has a grumpy temper, the biggest worrier he has ever met, was Macaque, the same monkey who tried to kill the Monkey King and the rest of the gang, albeit under a huge misunderstanding.

He cannot, under any circumstances, be allowed to meet his Dad again.

While he doesn’t think that Monkey King will go off the rails and try to exterminate him on sight, he rather not take the chance either way. But, as much as he hates to admit it, there will always be the possibility that the two will meet sooner or later.

“Maybe later,” he nervously said as he scratched the back of his neck. “But how about teaching me something else, likkke a certain 72 transformation technique.” He really wanted to learn this out of all the moves.

The monkey sage merely quirked his eyebrow at his student's blatant tell, but he let it slide…for now. “Oh ho ho, now why should I teach you that?”

“But why not?”

“But why?” He shot back.

“But, but, but it would be so cool!” It really would be so cool, transforming into all those different kinds of animals, but he does have to admit that he does have a certain animal that he is leaning towards.

“It is definitely a cool move,” he agreed as he balanced on his tail, “but you don’t have to learn that at the moment.”

“Oh come on, when will I be ready,” he huffed out.

“When I say you are,” he poked the middle of his forehead then playfully snagged his violet bandana off his head and began to run away.

“Hey! Give that back!” He began to chase the monkey as they traverse up the mountain.

“Here’s your next lesson,” he tied the bandana to his left arm as he was standing on top of a large boulder. “We will be focusing on your stamina next, you seem to have a lot, but I want to test out how long you can go for.”

“Oh I can go on for a long time!” He cockily stated as he had already climbed up halfway to him, “so you better give me back my bandana when I catch you!”

“Good luck with that,” he shot back with the same arrogance as he hopped over to a tree that was quite a distance away. He silently watched his protege leaped from the rock to the tree closest to it, then he saw him stumble a bit with the different texture as he climbed on, but this is when he became a bit confused as he saw him sit down on one of the tree branches and proceeded to take his shoes and socks off. “What are you doing?” He muttered out.

Then he saw MK begin to climb once more and, he noted, that he actually began to have an easier time with climbing and swinging from tree to tree. “Well, I’ll be.”

It was only when MK got closer did he ask, “so it seems that I have underestimated your climbing skills, is this what your Dad also taught you?”

“Kinda,” he brightly said as he kept on climbing, “I was raised in the Plum Blossom Forest, I might as well have been born in there! I think that I have climbed every tree imaginable that was in that forest.”

“The Plum Blossom Forest,” the Monkey King mused. He knew of it, it had popped up a couple of centuries back, but he really never had a chance to check it out before. “Sounds interesting, I didn’t know humans were living there,” he subtly asked.

“There isn’t,” MK automatically said, not understanding the sage question.

“Oh? Is that so? So you visit often,” he curiously asked as he moved to a different treetop.

“Stop moving! But, no I live there, I thought I already told you that,” MK huffed as he moved over to the next tree.

“No, you said nothing of sorts,” he mocked back, “but if there is no human there, then how about you and your Dad?”

“Well I am the only human, my Dad’s not,” he momentarily stopped mid climb as he just realized what he admitted, but continued to climb. “He’s a demon.”

“A demon, that is something you don’t hear every day,” he teased. He has nothing against interspecies relationships, but he does have to admit that there aren't many couples like that out there. Prejudice is a right bitch at times no matter how much the eras may go past. “Your parents must really have a strong relationship with each other.”

As MK was about to say something an idea began to form in his head as he calmly switched tracks and said, “Nah, it’s just my Dad. He adopted me after he found me in the rain out in the alley after I got lost.” While he doesn’t want the two to meet again, he can admit to himself that there will always be a possibility that it will happen, so why not let the Monkey King see his Macaque in a better light.

His eyes widened as he heard this, but other than that, his entire form stayed the same, “Well that was nice of him,” was all he said.

MK only felt a bit bad about trying to manipulate the great Monkey King, but he kinda doesn’t want his Dad to be turned into utter paste if they ever meet again. So he will use every trick in the book he learns from both him and Mei and makes sure that when this all blows up in his face then at least he will have some resemblance of a bomb shelter to shield them from the blast.

So like he said, he only felt a bit bad.

“Yep! He’s been raising me ever since then!” He cheerily added as he eyed a certain monkey keeping his poor bandana hostage.

Wukong opted to stay quiet at this as he let the rest of the implications fall over him on his student situation. Though he did move back to the mountain once he got too close once again.

“Oh come on!”

“Seriously, why does this Forest even have faeries?!” Red Son yelled out as he finally found his way to the treehouse.

“Hello to you too,” MK grinned as he saw him and Mei walk towards him. “I didn’t know you two were coming together.”

“We weren’t,” Mei grumbled in irritation, “but some faeries decided that this is the time that they wanted to be devious, so I was stuck there for three hours!”

“I was in there for two before I saw biker girl,” the demon added as he stomped over to the tree. “If we didn’t spot each other, I was about to set fire to everything around me just so I can finally come here.”

“Agreed,” she growled out. This wasn’t her first time dealing with those half pint brats and she knows it won’t be her last. “Even Baba was laughing at us.”

“If I didn’t respect her so much I would be furious with her,” Red grumbled. He had met the divine creature on multiple occasions as he has always felt like an ant in her eyes whenever they meet. It was both infuriating and fascinating at the same time.

“At least they didn’t try to make deals with you,” MK tried to look on the bright side, only to get twin glares.

“I know better than to even play nice with a murderous being that is not even the size of my pinky! Mei doesn’t fuck with that kind of trickery, I like my soul thank you very much.”

“The faeries of this forest don’t do deals,” both humans looked at him in confusion, “I know, weird, but apparently Macaque told me some time ago when I first mentioned them that he and the Queen of the colony made a deal that they can stay in his forest as long as they don’t attempt to harm anyone that wanders in.” Now when he first heard this he was more than a little skeptical. Faeries, especially Woodland Faeries, are known for tricking their prey into a deal that usually ends with them losing their soul. Just because they look cute and innocent, doesn’t mean that they aren’t cold, manipulative little bastards stuffed with wiggly cruelty. He should know, he and his family have met with several of their kinds in his travels and even his parents refuse to have anything to do with those cretins.

“But they can still do shit like this,” she pointed out.

“Unfortunately yes,” he grumbled and he couldn’t help but add, “and I would have been able to maneuver my way through this if you didn’t insist on going your own way.”

“Me?” She marched up to him and pointed a finger at his chest, “You were the one getting all high and mighty and strutting around the forest like your hot shit! I was just following you fancy pants.”

“Ridiculous! You were the one saying ‘Don’t worry I know this forest like the back of my hand’ but apparently, you don’t know it as much as you hoped,” he slapped her hand away.

“Guys,” MK tried to butt in, but it was no use as their argument grew louder.

“Oh ho ho! Look who's talking Mr. ‘This is hardly a hassle for someone like me!’ But I guess someone like you ain’t worth the title you own!”

“Mei no,” the boy looked towards her.

“Not. Worth. My. Title?!” His head flickered in fury as steam began to come out.

“Red please,” MK practically was begging at this point.

He almost seemed to listen…almost as he calmly retorted “That says a lot a little coming from you little miss princess.”

“Goddamnit,” he sighed as he quickly stepped back as Mei tackled Red Son as she screamed.

“I am no fucking Princess! I am a goddamn Queen!”

The two began to brawl wildly across the area and the more Mei punched Red in the face and Red kneed her in the stomach, more and more bruises began to form.

“Honestly I’m shocked that this didn’t happen sooner,” he admitted as he sat back and watched their fight.

Then when both Dragon successor and Bull prince managed to throw each other away from one another, one brought out a glowing viridian sword in hand and the other lit up his fist in all its blaze of glory.

“Shit!” MK shouted as he began to sprint towards them with staff in hand.

Mei rushed towards Red Son with frustration in her eyes and he charged her with irritation on his own and just before their attacks hit one another a certain staff blocked their way and the trio attack let out a devastating roar.

BOOOM!

They all were pushed back by a tidal wave of heat and air but managed to stay on their feet.

“Okay I wasn't expecting that!” MK was the first one to say as he got his bearings. “A little boom, yes, but not whatever that was.”

“I hate to admit it, but I agree with you noodle boy,” Red Son said as he lowered his arms and looked down at their crater.

“You’re telling me,” Mei looked impressed by their miniature destruction as she looked around the area, “we managed to cause quite a bit of-FUCK!”

“What?!” Both boys whipped towards Mei, who looked oddly terrified as she pointed towards the tree line. They followed her finger and what they saw made them match her own face as standing at what used to be a beautiful grove of Plum Blossoms, was now a charred pile of ash.

“Nononono!” MK rushed over as he tried to examine the charred ground. “I thought I blocked it!”

“Well I think you redirect it!” Mei said in a panic as well, she knew very well just how much the trees meant to Macaque and now they had all done and fucked them up.

“How?!”

“Magic does strange things,” was all Red Son could mutter as he looked down at his destruction. He has never known why these trees were so important, after all this whole forest has an abundance of these, but during his multiple visits here he has gotten small snippets from both Macaque unruly friends and the creatures that dwell here of how important these trees mean to the Six Eared monkey. So, he tries his best to neither harm nor burn down a tree when he visits, despite not knowing why. Now he has thrown that all in the trash as he sees he has ruined something of importance to him.

“Now is not the time?!” MK panicked screamed as he tried to pick up the ash, but it just fell through his fingers. “This is so bad.”

“Are you guys okay?!” They all stiffen and quickly turn to see both Macaque and Ahmed leap towards them with worry on their faces. The monkey continued, “I heard screaming and an explosion.”

They all rushed in front as they tried, and failed, to cover their mess.

“We’re perfectly fine,” Mei grinned wide, “nothing is wrong.”

“She is correct,” Red Son nervously smiled, “everything is quite fine.”

“Yep,” MK didn’t look his Dad in the eyes, “we didn’t do anything bad.”

Both biker and demon elbowed him.

Ahmed and Macaque both looked at each other questioningly.

“Okay, what are you guys hiding?” He crossed his arms and looked to them, more specifically his son.

MK couldn’t help but look up and saw his Dad questioning look and he caved in faster than a house on fire as he wailed. “I’M SO SORRY!”

Mei and Red Son flinched as well as their shoulders dropped down in shame.

“Hey hey,” the monkey kneeled in front of his son as the lion gave a comforting pat on the other two shoulders. “Whatever happened, I’m sure it’s not too bad.”

“No, we fucked up real bad,” she whimpered out with her head lowered. “I am really sorry.”

“No words of apologies can amount to my failure,” the demon lowered his head as well.

“Seriously what happened?” He tried to ask but got only silence and tears in reply.

Ahmed did a quick scan around and he snorted as he saw what was behind them, “I think they're referring to the charred pile of ash behind them.”

The kids all stiffen as they watched Macaque see their destruction and it was only a moment of tense silence that had passed as they all awaited the inevitable yelling, but it wasn’t the one they were anticipating as he started to chuckle.

“Pffffftt, I’m gonna take a guess and say this was you guy’s creation,” he couldn’t help but smirk.

“Yessss?” She drew out the ‘s’ in confusion, “me and Red got in an argument and, well-”

“We fought and then MK stepped in to stop us, but it made it worse and then that happened,” he waved over their mess. “You don’t look mad?”

“Cause I’m not.”

“Really?!” They all shouted as MK continued, “but you told us just how much these trees meant to you and how you grew them yourself and you're telling us that it’s okay?!”

“Yep,” he popped the ‘p’ as he said that.

“But, but why!?”

“Look kiddos, I know both you and gale watched Ahmed and I fight some time ago right,” he said.

“Yeah?” Both humans agreed.

“So you know that we may have gotten more than a little wild with our fight and some things got utterly wrecked.”

“What’s the point of this?”

“I think what he’s trying to say is that during our fight, we destroyed an abundance of Plum trees,” Ahmed stepped in.

“…you know you did, didn’t you,” Mei mused out.

“Oh,” MK blinked as he did remember the clearing getting trashed to the point where it was almost unrecognizable to its previous state. “I suddenly feel like an idiot.”

“You're not the only one.”

“What fight?” Red curiously asked as Mei gave him a quick rundown.

“It’s the thought that counts starlight,” he smirked as he ruffled his son's hair.

“Sure, but I still feel bad,” he mumbled as he kicked a rock.

“Hmm well how bout this,” he grabbed the trio's attention, “to pay me back, all three of you are gonna plant a plant in that spot.”

“Like another Plum Tree or-” the monkey demon cut her off.

“Any plant you want, heck you can even plant daffodils. Those suckers can grow practically anywhere, but you guys will be the ones to take care of your plant. Deal.”

“Deal,” they all nodded.

“Alright but before we do that,” he brings out some bags and gloves, “how bout we clean up your mess.”

“Okay!/Let's do this!/This area will look even better than before!” MK, Mei, and Red Son all shouted as they grabbed the materials and began to clean up.

“I just noticed,” MK said as he put on his gloves with a mischievous grin, as he looked towards Red, “you said my name!”

He blushed as he remembered, but turned away, “no I didn’t.”

Mei matched her brother's grin, “you totally did!”

“It was the slip of the tongue!”

“Awww, you're finally warming up to us!”

“Shut your lying mouth!”

Both monkey and lion shared an amused look as they watched two humans and a demon, one side playfully argue and the other in complete denial, go at it.

It was not until a few weeks later did the once charred spot began to reform back in its former glory, but instead of Plum blossom saplings in its place there was a patch of Protea seeds grown by a Dragon girl, some Lotus buds planted by a Bull prince, and a section of Magnolia saplings nurtured by a Monkey successor.

“One day, you have to tell me how you make these noodles,” Macaque said as he quietly slurped down the rest of the food.

“Trade secret simian,” Pigsy chuckled as he wiped down his counter. “But I might let my lips loose a little if you tell me how you make your Dim Sum dumplings.”

“That can be arranged,” he grinned as he put down his empty bowl, “so, how have you and Tang been doing?”

The pig demon groaned as he stopped himself from slamming his head on the counter, “did Mei put you up to this?”

“Yep,” he unashamedly said.

“Of course she did,” he grumbled, “well tell her that there is nothing there.”

“But you want something to be there,” he pointed his dark green sparkly nail at him. Breezy got him, Comet, and Spitfire to do some nail time and he can say it didn’t turn out so bad. He knows MK was proudly showing off his violet nails against Mei’s bright green ones, even Red was admiring his own sparkly black ones. He even had his long mane of fur braided by them and it goes to show that you can learn new things about someone, he didn’t know little spitfire could braid hair. Apparently, the little prince said he learned it after Daiyu had dragged him off one day to meet some of her siblings, let it be known that he has a weakness towards wide eyed baby birds.

“No I don’t,” he huffed.

He raised an eyebrow.

Pigsy threw up his hands in defeat, “okay fine! Yes! I do like Tang in more than a friend way, happy now.”

“Ecstatic,” he deadpanned as he took a sip of his drink, “so why haven’t you said anything to him? And don’t give me that BS of not wanting to lose your friendship with him.”

“But it is!” He gripped the counter tight for a moment before exhaling, “look, I’ve been through so many crushes and puppy love throughout my life, hell take Spider Queen for one.”

“I think that was more of a lapse of judgment,” he patted the stool next to him.

“Whatever you call it, but for Tang I…I don’t think I ever fell for someone this hard before,” he sighed as he sat down next to the monkey. “I know it’s not a crush, I’ve known him too long and I know him for too long to be something as simple as a crush.”

“So what is it then?”

“I don’t know,” he moaned out as he covered his face with his hands.

“You do,” Pigsy peeked out from between his fingers as he looked at the monkey. “But you just don’t want to say it out loud.”

“Say what?”

“That you love him,” he bluntly stated.

“I do not-”

“So you don’t love the way he smiles?”

“Wha-no I do, but that doesn’t mean-” Pigsy admitted and tried to deny, but was cut off again.

“You don’t like how he looks into your eyes?”

“…his eyes are pretty, but that still-”

“What about how he talks on and on about all that history?”

“Oh fuck off about that!” He lets off a low growl to him, “the man is passionate about what he loves, and goddamnit it’s amazing watching him go on and on about it because he reveres even the smallest of rumors as a treasure no matter how weird they may be! So you can’t sit here and tell me that someone like him doesn’t ignite a spark within your soul as you look deep within him and can’t help but marvel at just how beautiful he is!”

Macaque raised an eyebrow as he crossed his arms.

Pigsy's whole body stilled as he realized what he said, then he firmly said, “but that doesn’t mean that I love him?”

“Why not?”

“Why not? For fuck sake I have never taken Tang out on a date nor do I even know if he even sees me as anything more than an annoying friend,” he slumped down on the counter.

“You don’t have to be dating to be in love,” Pigsy lifted his head to look at Macaque, but the monkey was steadfastly looking forward. “Love cannot be defined in such a small category, there are so many ways that someone can love another without dating. Sometimes it’s when you laughing along with one of their stupid jokes and you realize that there is something there. Sometimes it is loud and boisterous and even when the other is annoying, you can’t help but still want to stay by their side no matter what. Sometimes it’s the quiet times where you are with them and then it clicks that you want something more, that there is something more. It’s that moment, when you're curled up next to them with the sun high in the sky, you know that you love them.”

There was a silence in the air as both demons knew what was implied, but neither had the guts to say anything.

“Macaque,” the pig demon put a gentle hand on his shoulder.

“Love is not so biased to one category,” the monkey demon continued as if nothing happened, “it cannot be contained in just one. So, I’ll ask again, do you love Tang?”

“…I didn’t even realize when I fell hard until I was listening to him talk about some underwater temple and I just couldn’t stop staring at just how beautiful he was at that moment. He was hella annoyed when he found out I wasn’t even paying to him, but that was then I realized I truly did love him,” Pigsy softly chuckled as he put his hand down.

“You did?” His head shot up at the familiar voice and he turned around to the front of the door to see Sandy, MK, and Mei all surrounding the voice, which made his heart drop as he saw Tang.

“How much did you hear?!”

“Ever since the little crush bit,” Mei smiled widely.

“Mei!”

“We heard it all,” MK joined in.

“MK!”

“It was really sweet Pigsy,” Sandy cooed.

“Sandy!” The pig demon didn’t know who to yell at first and instead turned to the monkey, “Macaque! You knew?!”

“Well I did say I was helping Mei with her plan,” he shrugged with a smirk.

Before Pigsy could lay it on him, he felt a warm hand touch his shoulder and his attention was brought back to a wide eyed historian.

“So is it true?” He asked with something the pig demon didn’t recognize, “did you really mean that?”

It was at that moment when he really wanted to just say it was all one big misunderstanding and maybe, he would be able to salvage the tender relationship he still had with Tang, but when he looked into his eyes he knew that he couldn’t lie to him, not now. “Yeah, I do. I love you and I know this is out of the blue, but I…oh.” He cut himself off as two arms encircled his neck and hugged him as tight as he could. “Uhhhh?”

“We could have been doing this so much sooner,” he heard a small chuckle coming from Tang.

“Done what?” His brain hadn’t had time to properly comprehend what was happening at the moment.

Tang then leaned back to put his own forehead on his head, “I realized I love you a few years back when I saw you cooking dinner back at your apartment, you just looked so content at that moment, just smiling as you sang so badly to that song-”

“Never was a good singer,” he couldn’t help but say as his heart beat faster in his ears.

“ThatI just couldn’t help myself from falling in love with you,” his eyes twinkled.

“You don’t say…” he whispered as he drew the human in closer, “it seems we’re a pair of idiots.”

“You're not wrong there,” Tang agreed as he gave a small kiss on the demon's forehead.

His face blushed a fierce red as he mustered up his own courage and kissed the back of the historian hand that was entwined with his.

Tang's smile also grew brighter as he hauled Pigsy up closer to him and placed a kiss right dab on his lips. It wasn’t until elated cheers that the two released each other from the other lips, though they still didn’t let go of the other as throughout the exchange their arms wrapped around the other.

“Woohoo!” MK cheered as he leaped in the air.

“Freenoddleshipping for the win!” Mei pumped her fist in the air.

“It’s about time,” Macaque smirked as his tail swished behind him.

“I am so happy for you guys!” Sandy wailed as he picked both his friends up in a giant hug.

“Sandy! You're kinda crushing us over here!”

“And there goes my bones.”

“I’m sorry, but I’m just so happy for you guys!!”

“Sandy!”

“Operation Lovebird is a success!” The twenty year old grinned as she lobbed her arm around MK's shoulder. “I told you it would work, we just needed the right guy or the right monkey.”

“None of you knows subtly unless it hits you on the head,” the monkey demon said.

“You're not wrong!”

“Speaking of love,” the ponytailed boy walked up to his Dad, “it seemed that something was going on in that speech of yours?”

“Yeahh,” Mei slid up to him, “it seemed like you were talking about someone? Who is it?”

“It’s no one,” he slightly shook his head as he had a nostalgic look on his face, “just an old flame.”

The two shared a surprised, but curious look.

“Now how bout the three of us say our congratulations to the lovebirds for finally getting their head out of their asses before Sandy cuts off their circulation,” he grinned as he ruffled their heads.

“Yeah!/ I am so gonna hold this over both of their heads for a long time,” both monkey and dragon successor grinned as they followed their Dad. Though that little conversation did not leave their mind in the slightest as it was only shifted to the side for now. If the monkey simply thought that they were gonna let it go like that then he has another thing coming.

‘We’re gonna look into this?’ MK’s eyes said as it sideglanced Mei.

‘Duh, like hell we’re gonna let it go.’ Mei agreed with a slight narrow of her eyes.

They had to develop some kind of method to sneak past Macaque and his six ears, else they would have never been able to catch him by surprise.

He did not like this. This technically doesn’t go against the deal they made with Macaque, but he does not like this in the slightest.

‘Why does he have this? Why couldn’t any other mortal or demon have the skeleton key?’ Red Son silently thought as he snuck into MK’s room. ‘Why does it have to be ones I’m acquainted with?’

His eyes widened as he saw, lying precariously on the nightstand, was the skeleton key. ‘Why did it have to go to MK of all people?! Wait? Why the hell did you leave such a dangerous object out in the open?!’ He wanted to scream the last part out, but he held it in instead as he looked towards the key.

He then reached out to grab it, only to stop and retreat a few steps back then he worked up the courage to go back and grab it only for his hand to stop once more and he let out a frustrated groan as he pulled his hair.

‘Damn it! It’s right there and all I need to do is grab it and get out! But I made a deal with Macaque, but this technically doesn’t go against the deal as I’m not physically attacking him, but this still feels wrong!’ He angrily huffed out as he paced the room in agitation as he tried to work himself back up, but then he deflated as he walked to the window.

‘But I can’t do that to him, to them. I can’t,’ he opened the window with his head lowered as he was about to jump out, but then he froze as a prominent thought drilled out.

‘Mother and Father will be disappointed with me.’

He lowered his foot that was about to go out the window.

‘Mother and Father will be disappointed with me.’

He let go of the hand that was on the window.

‘Mother and Father will be disappointed with me.’

With that he rushed over to the key, quickly snatched it up, and placed it in his pocket as if it burned as he leaped out of the window and leaped from rooftop to rooftop.

‘I’m sorry MK, but I can’t have Father and Mother disappointed with me.’ Was his final thought as he moved further and further away from his friend's apartment.

[drop-of-infinity]

Destiel fic time again, this part is about season 9

Chapter one

Chapter two

Chapter three

Chapter four

Chapter five

<><><><><><><><><>

Chapter 6: season 9

I Think I’m Going To Like It Here

{“Whatever you did, or didn’t do, it doesn’t matter. We’ll work it out. Please, man, I need you here.” Dean’s fear for Sam is all-consuming, almost. Underneath the desperation and worry, there’s a tightness in his chest that’s removed from it. Heartache, he realizes. If only Cas would show up. Where the hell are you?

{“Hello?”

“Dean.” Cas had been human before, but the way it heightened his emotions was still frightening. Hearing Dean’s voice was breathing and drowning and dying, and Cas struggled to keep his mind on that task at hand. He wasn’t sure how long pay phones lasted. His newly necessary heart beat hard enough that he wondered if Dean could hear it on the other end of the line.

I’m No Angel

{“Cas? Cas!” Dean cups his angel’s face, cradling it. Cas is gone. Cas is gone, Dean was too late, and he never got to-to tell him, to hug him, to say sorry. To perform all those little touches he held himself back from on a daily basis. Dean is so consumed by grief, regret, and a bone-deep ache that he barely notices Ezekiel moving towards Cas. And then-suddenly, miraculously-“Dean?” Cas is sitting up, he’s alive, he’s okay. “Hey, hey! ...yeah.” Dean can hear his own voice cracking but he doesn’t care because Cas is alive and he has a second chance. His relief is so strong he momentarily forgets to keep his hands reigned in, and they go straight to Cas, touching, stroking. The feeling that prickles in his fingers where he touches the former angel is addicting, but it brings him back to himself a little, and he forces himself to pull away. He almost doesn’t manage it, but he locks his hands at his sides and orders them to stay there. Cas is okay. He’s okay, and everything else will be too.

{“Dean you know I always appreciate our talks. And our time together.” Cas was finding that he quite liked honesty. Dean hadn’t been complimented nearly enough in his life, and- “listen buddy, um. You can’t stay.” Cas stopped thinking. He stopped breathing too, for a second, until he remembered that he has to now. Can’t stay? So... Sam and Dean didn’t want him now that he was human. Dean really hadn’t cared about him beyond his powers, and now that he was no longer useful to them, he had to go. Just like his first family, heaven. They only cared about Cas as a tool in a machine. He’d thought Dean was different. His chest felt tight and achy, almost shattered. Heartbreak, he thought dimly. That’s why they call it that.

Heaven Can’t Wait

{“Hello to you too, Cas. How are you?”

“I am... busy.” Cas had been worried Dean wouldn’t even pick up, and couldn’t fathom why he was asking about him. He was giving Dean a case, was being useful, because... because why? The voice of Naomi had never really left his head, even though she was dead. It had manifested as... this. Because then maybe he’ll want you again? Face it Castiel, he never cared. He never will. Despite all this, Cas’s heart still soared hearing Dean’s voice. He missed him fiercely. Stupid magnified, unearned human feelings.

{“That sounds like a real case, I should be there.”

“No no no man, that’s not necessary. I got this one covered.” As Dean watched Cas, unseen from behind the Impala, he told himself that he didn’t want Sam there because of Ezekiel. No, it had nothing to do with the way he was hopelessly pining for the fallen angel he was currently gazing at from across the street. Nothing at all. Stop acting like a teenage stalker, he scolded himself. You’re an adult. Just... talk to him.

{“What are you doing here?” Cas stared at Dean, and ignored his heart, which was suddenly yelling at him to throw himself over the counter and... he didn’t even know what. Dean had always been amazing, soul and all, but he had just kicked Cas out of the only home he’d ever hoped to know and yet... still beautiful. Cas gripped the counter tightly. He is... what was the expression? Screwed.

{“It’s different now Dean, everything feels... different.”

“You’re right.”

Cas could get hurt now. He could get killed. He was human, and he wasn’t a hunter, and Dean needed to keep him safe. But also... everything feels different? Did that mean... Dean always assumed angels couldn’t feel or want certain things... but now Cas was... did that mean he could... but even if he did... Dean shut himself down. It didn’t matter if Cas’s emotions were on the same spectrum as his now, they were never going to be on the same end. The dude had a date in a couple hours after all. Still... Dean decided he could at least let himself think it. He tried not to, for the most part, these days it just hurt. “You stay safe. Go on that date, y’know, live a normal life.” “Okay.” “...well?” “I need a ride.” In the end, Dean couldn’t have stopped himself from thinking it. I love you.

{“Alright that’s far enough.” Dean tried to keep the blush off his face. Here was Cas, shirt unbuttoned in his passenger seat, about to go on a date with someone else. Dean could stop him, he was sure of it. He could tell him to come with him to hunt, he could literally just drive away, he could straight up lean over and kiss him. But no. That wasn’t what Cas wanted, and he deserved to be happy more than anyone.

{“I’m sorry I told you to go.” Cas had picked up on something, overnight at the motel they got. Dean still cared about him. He saw it in the way he watched him, in the way he talked. Against all odds, Dean cared about him as a human. But he still couldn’t go back to the bunker. Cas didn’t know what to think, so he just felt.

Road Trip

{“Look at you all suited up and back in the game” “I-I um. I came as soon as soon as you called.” Cas was an angel again, so he didn’t understand why he-why his vessel still got so flustered when Dean complimented him. Was that a normal emotion? There were a million other things he should be worrying about, and he is reminded of a similar situation years ago. Different song, same old dance.

{“You were stupid for the right reasons.” 

“Yeah, like that matters.”

“It does. Sometimes that’s all that matters.” And god, Dean loves this grumpy angel. It hits so suddenly sometimes, it knocks the breath out of him. Suddenly he believes they can get Sam back, because Cas does. Cas isn’t giving up on Dean. He thinks maybe he never will, and that’s enough. That’s everything.

{“So you’re saying we’re both a couple of dumbasses?” 

“I prefer the word trusting. Less dumb, less ass.” Dean cracks a smile, and it’s tiny but it’s like the sunrise. Time seems to stop. The king of hell is in the other room sticking needles into Sam’s head, but Cas still managed to make Dean smile. And there it is, the dizzying, chest tightening head rush that he gets when Dean... well, when Dean does almost anything. It’s not even a surprise when the word pops into his head. It’s been there for a long time, at least since Naomi made him murder Dean over and over, waiting for its chance. Cas doesn’t even know why this is the moment, but he looks at Dean’s shaky grin and beautiful soul and lets it happen. Oh, he thinks. I’m in love with him.

Stairway To Heaven

{“We gave you our trust. Don’t lose it over one man.” Cas looks at Hannah. One of his most valuable soldiers, someone he thought was becoming his friend. He glances at the faces of the other angels, his army. He led and they followed, they had trusted him to get them through this. Then he looked at Dean. His best friend, his family, the love of his long and immortal life. In the end, it wasn’t a difficult decision. “No. I can’t.”

{“You really believe we three will be enough?” 

“We always have been.” For the first time in a long time, Dean finds himself thinking they have a chance. Looking at Cas’s smile-Cas, who just gave up an entire army to save Dean-he knows they’ll be okay.

Do You Believe in Miracles?

{“For what again? Oh that’s right. To save Dean Winchester. That was your goal right? I mean you draped yourself in the flag of heaven but ultimately it was all about saving one human.” Cas glares right back at Metatron. I would do it again, he thinks rebelliously. I would do it all again. Metatron is still talking. “Well guess what? He’s dead too.” Cas feels his heart fall through the floor. Dean can’t be gone, not after everything. He can’t.

{Dean’s eyes are black now, and he couldn’t care less. No more flying for him. The Michael sword has fallen so far.

{Cas has fallen in every way that matters, and he understands it now. He’s not an angel, he’s not human, he’s just himself. And he needs to get Dean back.

As Cas’s grace fades and the mark of Cain on Dean demands blood, they are both consumed by things out of their control. It’s not the first time and it won’t be the last.

[paintedpeeta]

*ahem* *shuffles notes* do we have post war hobbies headcanons?

👁👄👁 are we sitting comfortably? let’s gooo

okay i’ve spoken about this before but katniss everdeen would love to read. give her all the books they weren’t allowed to read before and watch her educate herself on everything they’ve missed out on. she knows little random facts about a whole bunch of topics and proudly tells them to peeta who just 😍 because she’s amazing. she amazes him.

they both love to cook together. can you imagine these two kids who’ve never had the budget or freedom to eat whatever they want suddenly be given both of those things? as well as the support of the other encouraging them to be goofy about it? their kitchen would be so fun and experimental. they both know each other’s comfort foods off by heart and make them for each other when they feel it’s needed, whenever they’re feeling down or maybe they just want to get their own way, and you know, blackmail using a nice soup isn’t really all that harmful.

peeta teaching katniss how to paint! she doesn’t have to be the greatest at it, but it’s something that’s fun for both of them and a good way to chill out. therapeutic paint swirls are good. does using katniss as a canvas count as a hobby? because peeta does that. a lot.

katniss takes up embroidery during a harsh winter to keep her mind occupied as she can’t go hunt, and falls in love with it. she makes pretty things for peeta and even haymitch, and eventually her babies. little grows with flowers and bunnies and rainbows on them 🥺 tiny sunflowers stitched into the cuffs of peeta’s shirts so he can see them while he works in the bakery 🥺 something like “go fuck yourself grumpy old man” for haymitch that he cherishes forever because she gets him 🥺

i’m so soft for the idea of them having a little cozy hideout in the woods, not exactly a house in my mind but more of a little cabin. i suppose building that would count as a hobby. they both put a lot of work into it over several seasons and the end product is their own little hillbilly love shack that they disappear to for days on end for some hillbilly lovin’. [exit, pursued by a gaggle of mellark babies.]

speaking of gaggles, we all know that haymitch’s geese end up being a shared hobby between the three of them because they are evil fat little birds who recquire no less than 3 victors to keep them contained and stop them from reeking havoc on the district.

also don’t really know if this counts as a hobby but i imagine them volunteering at the new version of the community home or orphanage type thing. they become auntie katniss and uncle peeta to hundreds of kids who pass through the system, and she reads them stories while he brings them fresh bread and cookies and you bet he bakes every single kid a birthday cake on their birthday no matter what.

and of course, last but not least they have their memory book. it’s their most important hobby and the book is a real labour of love, some of the pages are tear stained but it’ll make a beautiful hand me down to their children and their children’s children and their children’s children’s children who love to hear stories about great great grandma and grandpa everlark 🥺 who they get to meet because they are immortal and can’t die. i don’t make the rules.

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Psycho Analysis: The Moonchild

(WARNING! This analysis contains SPOILERS!)

I feel like this one was inevitable. As soon as I decided to bust open the doors on literary mediums like books and comics, this guy was always going to loom over me. Well, let’s just bite the bullet and talk about him. 

In the final portion of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Centuries, we are introduced to Oliver Haddo’s ultimate creation… a creation he is incredibly disappointed in. You see, the Antichrist or Moonchild is a whiny, miserable young adult strung out on prescription drugs because he went mad after realizing what he was being manipulated into. He is the subject of derision by all who know him, and is treated like a punching bag by most of the narrative, up to and including God literally telling him he’s a bitch. Our villain here is just a miserable, whiny, kind of misogynistic brat who doesn’t even want to be a villain, and in general is just unpleasant and ineffective save for a school massacre he pulls off.

Oh yeah, and his real name is Harry Potter. Kind of an important detail, that.

Motivation/Goals: So as the antichrist, you’d think Mr. Potter might, you know, maybe want to bring about the end of days and all that. But no! He actually pops pills and isolates himself in Grimmauld Place so that he doesn’t do that! He doesn’t want to be the Antichrist and, really, who would? Most of his screentime is thus spent whining, until he ultimately decides to embrace being the Antichrist because he feels  he has no other choice. We’ll get into all of that in a bit, but honestly, his motivation is extremely weak despite the incredibly graphic setup we’re given to his downward spiral: when he first discovered he was being manipulated by Satanists, he went on a magical school shooting, shown to us in a first-person perspective to emulate the games that were often blamed for real school shootings. We get to see Harry slaughter Ron, Hermione, Snape, Dumbledore, and so on, we get to see what he did to Hogsmeade and the Hogwarts Express, and absolutely none of it is pleasant. 

With setup like that you’d expect maybe a little more intrigue and indecision, maybe some sort of conflict between fate and choice or something beyond Harry sitting around half-naked, high off of antidepressants, being a whiny little bitch, but you might be giving the dude who wrote a porno where the kids from Peter Pan engage in underage incest a bit too much credit. 

Final Fate: So Harry has gone absolutely bonkers and it seems that nothing can possibly stop him; our heroes seem to be written into a corner. So what does Moore do? He has God - who in this universe is Mary Poppins - descend from the heavens and have her say how she protects the imaginations of children and how she just straight up hates Harry. Never mind that Harry is quite literally an abused child who was twisted by the cruel machinations of a body surfing wizard, apparently he’s a child not worth protecting or caring about and is unworthy of sympathy. Anyway, Mary Poppins just turns him into a chalk drawing and that’s the end of that. 

Great writing, Alan Moore, critically acclaimed creator of Watchmen!

Best Scene: Saying Harry here had a ‘best scene’ is seriously pushing it, because literally every moment he’s on the page the comic just beats you over the head with Moore’s biases. I wish I could put the school shooting sequence, because the idea behind it is legitimately intriguing, but the whole sequence is just interwoven with Moore whacking off his hateboner for the series. But on the subject of boners… well, I think there’s only one panel that can truly and adequately sum up this entire character and how much of a miserable failure he is. Those who have followed me for a long time knew this was coming, but for the rest of you, behold - Harry Potter Dick Lightning:

Final Thoughts & Score: Quite frankly, this is the worst thing Alan Moore has ever done.

I’m not even mad as a fan of Harry Potter; Moore was honestly ahead of his time in hating the franchise to this level. The issue I have is that he doesn’t really deconstruct or criticize in any meaningful way, he just is doing edgy “take that” stuff that you’d expect from a chump like Garth Ennis. Like, the concept here is incredibly solid and intriguing - this version of Harry has been groomed from birth by Satanists to become the Antichrist, with all of his adventures fabricated and all of his relationships manufactured to keep him under the illusion he is a hero to mankind. Upon discovering the truth, he snaps, massacres everyone at his school for their role in his manipulations, and went into exile to stave off the apocalypse, although he ultimately and bitterly accepts his role because he feels he was never given a choice… and he wasn’t! He’s an incredibly depressing and miserable deconstruction of the concept of “The Chosen One,” and yet the whole thing falls apart on multiple levels.

The first is that the Harry Potter franchise already deconstructs the concept of “The Chosen One;” the text goes out of its way to point out that Voldemort’s own actions are what is creating a self-fulfilling prophecy by targeting someone with the will and drive to fight back against him. Harry’s not so much chosen by fate so much as forcibly chosen by an evil manipulator… and that’s basically what we have here, but with less substance. Moore doesn’t really comment on anything, instead leading into the second big issue - Harry’s whole role is to be a strawman punching bag villain so that Moore can complain about modern fantasy franchises. Moore seems to view Harry as the epitome of the lazy regurgitation of the same story over and over that modern blockbuster culture so often falls into… except that Harry Potter was an original product developed by one person and had no artificial longevity slapped onto the franchise in the form of unneeded sequels or spinoffs to extend the lifespan of the franchise at the time Moore wrote this. Throw in the fact Moore just in general seems extremely contemptuous of any post-70s pop culture in Centuries and how Harry is ultimately taken down by crusty old characters from older literature really just leads to Moore coming across as a grumpy old man who hates anything new, not helped by his tired criticisms of millennials and their perceived lack of culture. Maybe Moore would have had more of a point if he created this storyline today, but he didn’t. Thus, he has no point and he just looks like a miserable old fart.

Sure, you can argue that maybe Moore’s basic parody of the character by exaggerating his tendencies to their logical extreme and attacking elements of the plot that had been criticized to death by fans to begin with has its place, and perhaps you could even say that the take in the comic is just an extreme take on how Harry acted in the fifth book, what with the lashing out at his friends and his general feeling of a lack of control, and there is some merit to that, or there would be if Moore’s own unrepentant bias didn’t undermine everything. Look, you can hate Harry Potter, but then why slap it into your work? It’s supremely cringey when people insert characters they hate into fanfiction and just completely derail their characters so that they can treat them like garbage with the narrative, and is that not what Moore did here? Is League not just public domain fanfiction? There’s a reason why I coined “Harry Potter Dick Lightning” as a phrase used to showcase a moment where a fanwork’s contempt for a character becomes so extreme that it not only jumps the shark, it rockets over it into the upper atmosphere. Any criticisms or messages Moore is trying to convey is tarnished by his blatant, seething contempt for the character, and that gets in the way of good writing and good storytelling. Having two characters express pity at having to murder an abused child who was warped by Satanists into being a tool of the apocalypse does not make up for how the narrative constantly mocks, belittles, and treats him like garbage to the point he really can’t function as an effective villain that can be taken seriously.

All of this adds up to what I’d argue is the absolute worst villain in all of fiction, bar none. There is just not a single redeeming quality about the Antichrist as a character. None. Nothing. I cannot think of another villain that so completely fails on every single level as this one does. He doesn’t work as an antagonist because most of the bad things he does are offscreen and he doesn’t come into conflict with the heroes until the very end, and most of his screentime features him doing nothing of note. He doesn’t work as a critique, because he is acting as a criticism for things his character never really represented in the first place. He only really functions as the sort of garbage you’d see in My Immortal, where the characters you know and love are turned into evil jerks because the writer hates them - but he even fails at being that, because at least My Immortal is funny about it! 

I am going out on a limb and saying that there cannot possibly be a villain that so utterly fails at everything it sets out to be as hard as Harry does. I don’t even want to try and believe it. And so, without hesitation, I am giving Moore’s shallow Potter parody a 0/10. And I pray to Mary Poppins that this is the only one of those I ever dish out, because I really don’t want to imagine what could possibly be worse than Harry Potter Dick Lightning.

[theradioghost]

hey, can i pester you for some podcast recs? something with a good dose of humour and not too many episodes to catch up on. a sprinkle of queer romance would be a nice bonus. my fave so far is tsco starship iris, and i also loved greater boston, wooden overcoats, the bright sessions and caravan. and thanks always for all your great recs! you’ve brought many hours of joy into my life :)

We Fix Space Junk -- Two intergalactic repairpeople -- a knowledgeable cyborg veteran and a former socialite on the run -- travel the universe meeting people and fixing things at the behest of the terrifying intergalactic corporation they’re trying to work off their debts to. Hilarious British sci-fi sitcom featuring Evil Space Capitalism, many many wonderful AI characters, and an absolutely delightful teenage space wasp-human-cow hybrid princess who is probably off accomplishing her grandiose special destiny somewhere offscreen while the main characters deal with things like their bosses possibly trying to kill them (again).

Death by Dying -- People have a tendency to die in odd ways in the small town of Crestfall, Idaho. Luckily the town also has an Obituary Writer, an eccentric and nameless but impeccably stylish fellow whose closest friend is the Angel of Death, and who has a knack for solving murders even though that’s definitely not his job description. Throw in walrus haikus, extremely rude ravens, Something Mysterious And Malevolent Lurking In The Dark Woods Outside Of Town, disappearing childhood homes, silent nuns, ghost bicycles, and three man-eating cats, and you get something like a delightful cross between Wooden Overcoats and Lemony Snicket. (Also, OW is peak Canonically Bisexual Dumbass.)

Less is Morgue -- Riley is a paranoid, reclusive teenager with a fondness for conspiracy theories who lives in their parents’ basement. They’re also a predatory ghoul who feeds on human flesh. Evelyn is a cheerful, outgoing young woman with questionable tastes in media. She’s also a ghost, ever since she was killed by a falling stage light at a Nickelback concert 16 years ago. And since Riley dug up and ate Evelyn’s corpse, they’re roommates! Will they ever manage to record a coherent episode of their podcast without something going ridiculously wrong and/or Riley eating one of the guests? Probably not!

Victoriocity -- The steampunk buddy-cop comedy-mystery thriller you never knew you needed but definitely do! Featuring Inspector Fleet, a grouchy, extremely driven policeman looking for the murderer of the Empire’s greatest inventor, and Clara Entwhistle, an even more driven and unfailingly upbeat rookie journalist who has just arrived in the island-spanning, bizarre cityscape of alt-history Even Greater London. Come for some of my favorite sarcastic British narration since Adams and Pratchett, stay for characters-are-begrudgingly-forced-to-work-together-until-they-come-to-genuinely-and-deeply-care-about-one-another-as-friends trope. (Also for Tom “Eric Chapman” Crowley as the aforementioned grumpy detective.)

Quid Pro Euro -- From one of the other leads of Wooden Overcoats, this doesn’t have a typical plot as such but has made me laugh so hard I pulled a muscle despite the fact that I know nothing about the EU. Which is what this near-surreal, Look Around You-style comedy is about: Felix Trench’s vision of a simultaneously hilarious and terrifying alternate European Union, seen from the perspective of a serious of educational tapes from the ‘90s predicting what the EU would look like in the 21st century. It’s hard to describe this show in any way that does it justice, but it’s incredibly funny.

Time:Bombs -- A miniseries by the exalted creators of Wolf 359, which (because they are madmen) was written, recorded, and produced in the space of one week. Also, a comedy about an NYC bomb retrieval squad on New Year’s Eve, most of whom are just trying to get through the night while their leader attempts to break a record for most bombs cleared before the calendar ticks over. Chaos and hilarity ensure.

Superstition -- Wisecracking, bi, Jewish, definitely-a-private-eye-just-don’t-check-her-qualifications Jacqueline St. James receives a message from her father, which is weird, because her parents disappeared years ago. Following the trail leads Jack to Superstition, Arizona, a town in the middle of the desert where everyone’s got secrets, assorted ghosts/monsters/cryptids harrass the locals, and the missing persons rate is the highest in the nation. As a protagonist Jack is Looking For Trouble And If She Cannot Find It She Will Create It, so while Superstition isn’t a comedy per se, it’s got a fair share of laughs and is also just so, so excellent in general.

Standard Docking Procedure -- A self-declared hopepunk scifi workplace comedy about the somewhat dysfunctional staff of Pseudopolis Station, effectively a high-tech interstellar truck stop. It’s funny and heartwarming, nothing truly bad happens, and Julia Schifini is there.

Solutions to Problems -- A morally-questionable human named Janet who has defintely never done any illegal time travel and an easygoing, physically indescribably alien who likes to go by Loaf host an intergalactic advice podcast. Are you tired of your species’ insistence on solving everything via ritual combat? Not sure how to talk to your partner about whether body-swapping has a place in your sex life? Dealing with being a superpowered teenager summoned into being by the collective will of an apocalyptic groupthink cult? Janet and Loaf have you covered! Provided that Janet’s on-and-off girlfriend, the AI who supplies the air they breathe, doesn’t kill them all first. Oddly heartfelt comedy in the form of a relationship advice radio show from the Space Future.

Middle:Below -- This show’s tagline is “Remember: bad things WILL happen,” and that is basically a lie. This is actually a short, incredibly heartwarming and frequently funny show about Taylor Quinn, the only human with the ability to pass between the land of the living (aka the Middle) and the land of ghosts (the Below). Meaning, of course, that the dead call on him to fix all their problems, with the help of a girl named Heather, a ghost named Gil, and a cat named Sans. (Also, some of the most comparatively wild live shows I’ve ever heard.)

Inn Between -- Ever wonder what fantasy characters get up to between adventures, during all that time they seem to spend at inns? This show skips all the adventuring, question, and action, instead focusing on the quiet moments between where what is Definitely Not A D&D Party meet and progress from bickering strangers brought together by circumstance to close-knit found family -- all at the inn, of course. (Lots of queer folks in here also, although there’s no romance at least in the first  couple seasons.)

The Godshead Incidental -- A relatively new but very exciting and so far really enjoyable show!! Following a young woman who writes an advice column through her life in a familiar, and yet strange city where anyone might be a minor god -- your editor, your landlord, that weird guy on the street who was shouting about how he’s the God of Memory and you got into a fight with him and now you keep forgetting everything? Also, your apartment is full of pigeons now because you found out the aforementioned landlord is secretly the god of doorknobs and he’s panicking. Good luck! (Starring Ishani Kanetkar, aka Arkady from Starship Iris!)

Gal Pals Present: Overkill -- Madison, a middle schooler at a Girl Scout camp, agrees to play a game with a somewhat tastelessly bright-pink Ouija board. However, Madison doesn’t know that she’s a natural medium, and now sarcastic mid-2000s 19-year-old Aya Velasquez has joined the many ghosts who are for some reason haunting scenic Harding Park. Aya, however, will not rest until she can solve her own murder (and possibly get to know that other ghost girl a bit better, who says romance has to stop when you’re dead?). Absolutely hilarious writing of a narrator who is almost definitely wearing spectral Uggs during the entire show.

Dark Ages -- The Rivercliffe Museum of Mostly Natural History is one of the finest museums anywhere! Or it would be, if anyone ever actually visited it. Or maybe if the staff weren’t a disastrous and dysfunctional collection of criminals, weirdos, wannabe immortals, idiot bisexuals who can’t just admit they like each other, and one extremely uptight elf with no people skills. Also, it would probably help if the legendary and fearsome Dark Lord, finally returned from his millennia of dormancy to complete his prophesied conquest of the world, wasn’t hanging around watching the chaos unfold because they’ve got his crown on display. (Fantasy workplace comedy with a theme song that did not need to go that hard?)

Brimstone Valley Mall -- It’s mid-December 1999, and at one mall in South Central Pennsylvania, a group of demons are going about their evil work -- namely, working at various dinky kiosks and restaurants, hoping of achieving every demon’s dream of getting to work at Hot Topic, trying not to do too much evil because Earth is way more fun than Hell and no one wants to get promoted back home, and preparing for their band's triumphant opening performance at the upcoming Y2K party. Just one problem: their lead singer is missing. Another absolute masterwork from The Whisperforge.

Arden -- 10 years ago, Hollywood starlet Julie Capsom vanished into the woods of northern California, leaving behind a car containing a human torso that may or may not have belonged to one Ralph Montgomery. Now, private eye Brenda Bentley and reporter Bea Casely, both of whom were among the first at the scene and both of whom have their own very strong opinions on the case, are setting out to solve the mystery on their true crime podcast, Arden. Providing, of course, they can stop arguing with each other long enough to solve it. (Or, a not-really-parody-but-definitely-comedy “true crime” podcast where the crime is a retelling of Romeo and Juliet -- and even knowing that, it’s still a genuine mystery with twists and a surprise ending! -- and the hosts are wlw Beatrice and Benedick from Much Ado About Nothing. In other words, it’s perfect. Season 2 is upcoming soon and is adapting Hamlet!!)

Alba Salix/The Axe and Crown -- Another high fantasy workplace sitcom, this one a medical comedy about the titular not-very-personable witch who runs the kingdom’s House of Healing and the various shenanigans she gets into, between her somewhat scatterbrained sister and brother-in-law the king and queen and her assistants, an overly-whimsical fairy and a wannabe monk forced to do community service. The same feed contains The Axe and Crown, a spinoff set in the same world that manages to simultaneously be a sitcom about the staff of a local pub trying to stave off foreclosure and come up with schemes to beat their business rivals, and a heartfelt story about gentrification and recovery starring a gay veteran with PTSD? Which is possibly one of my favorite podcasts? (Also contains one of the most unbelievable crossover cameos possible: Leon Stamatis.)

The Adventures of Sir Rodney the Root -- Also a high fantasy comedy! When a witch transforms heroic Sir Rodney into a small piece of wood, his closest companion Sir Gilbert must set out to cure him by collecting several highly powerful and dangerous relics, accompanied by a snarky dwarfen thief, an imperious princess, a slightly creepy human child raised by fairies, a picky elf sorcerer, a dead unicorn possessed by the ghost of a stoner, and a bard who breaks the fourth wall too much for his own good. So far as I can tell, nobody is straight.

The Amelia Project -- A dark comedy about a secret organization that helps people fake their deaths. Which is honestly a pretty full summary, barring the two important points that 1. this show contains possibly the most continuity-warping crossover event of all time (it’s the center point of this absolutely chaotic diagram), and 2. in one episode Felix Trench plays a character named Bartholomew Fuckface Chucklepants Knucklecracker.

[let-me-write]

The Truth Untold

Find chapter 1 here

Chapter 2: Cirenworth hall

" Hey Min-Min, you're doing a good job !! Keep going !! "

Kit Herondale encouraged his little sister Mina who was chasing Church around their living room with determination. The grouchy cat was trying to evade her advances but to no avail as Mina managed to keep catching his tail.

He was beyond content observing his sister, who was, in fact, the only one who could get away with annoying Church. The immortal feline was affectionate of Mina but couldn't keep up with the toddler's curiosity at times, while nevertheless tolerating her. He would have gladly sat there, soaking in his sister's cute antics and the cat's predicament. But he had an important task for today, something he had been planning for months.

He must start now if he were to get it done before Jem and Tessa returned. He had been practising for this day with the help of his friend Amy, at her family's bakery.

Kit rounded up the ingredients and started mixing them on the kitchen counter. He was not confident because he had gotten it right only once in the past. Regardless, he kept going and placed the set batter into the oven for baking.

He was working on the frosting when Mina came into the kitchen exclaiming " Kittie!! There you are!! What are you doin'? " She hugged his legs tightly and looked up at him.

She had grown from an unassuming baby to this inquisitive toddler right in front of him. It all felt surreal to him even now. He had never imagined that he would have a loving family, much less a baby sister that adored him. Now, she was pulling his pants, awaiting his reply.

He bent down to pick her up and place her on the counter. He told her, " I'm baking a cake for Jem's birthday today "

She piped in " For Bapa? "

Kit nodded and continued " Yes, for Bapa. Do you wanna try the frosting, Min-Min? " He held out the spatula and she took some indulgently in her little fingers and tasted.

Her small face lit up with a satisfied grin as she declared " Gē Ge, you're the best !! ". Kit's heart skipped a beat, as it always did whenever she used the Chinese term for brother when addressing him.

He was pulled from his musing as the oven started beeping. He pulled out the now baked carrot cake.

Yes, Carrot cake, the only cake agreed upon by the senior members of Cirenworth hall.

Tessa hated chocolates - he had shuddered, thinking ' How Blasphemous !!! ', when he had learned about it - and, well, Jem didn't care much for desserts.

Kit moved on to slathering the cream cheese frosting he prepared on his cake and spread it uniformly as Amy had taught him.

Amy had become his only friend at Devon and her being a mundane had helped him reconnect with the contemporary pop culture of the mundane world. They had a good rapport and hung out at least once a week, whenever Kit felt like he had enough training for the week.

The frosting was done and now he was ready to pipe down ' Happy Birthday ' onto it but then he decided ' Why not make it a gift from Mina too? ' Thus, he addressed the wish to ' Bapa '.

By now, Mina was restless and wanted to help too. So, he guided her hand and together, they made a heart on the cake. She looked satisfied and squealed with delight " Bapa will love it !! "

Kit, on his way to secure the cake, assured her " Of course he will Min-Min !! Your hand's made it magical!! "

Now that the hard job was done, he set the table for the cake and anticipated the return of Jem and Tessa. They had gone to the farmer's market nearby, at least that's what Tessa had told him. She had assured him that she would keep Jem away from their home, providing ample time for Kit to prepare the cake.

Of course, Tessa was in on it with Kit, as they often were together in plans that involved surprising and/or anything to do with embarrassing Jem. They were a formidable team when it came to teasing the former silent brother, who was as clueless about modern society as he was oblivious to someone flirting with him.

In the last three years, Kit had succeeded to an extent in introducing him to all the mainstream movies. In fact, it had become a weekend ritual for the family; watching a new movie together, all curled up in their living room.

And those nights would all end with Mina fast asleep in Kit's arms while he explained all the contemporary references in the movie to the rest of the family. He was still not sure Jem understood them fully.

On such occasions, Kit would feel everything around him was a pipe dream that would disappear any moment now. There was no way he had a little sister and parental figures who cared for him as if he was their own.

Kit had wondered at such times...

Aren't they to me what a valuable shelter would be to a nomad and if that shelter was also a palace full of love and miracles? Isn't that not a mirage in the desert for a lost soul like him?

He would then look again at Mina's trusting smile and observe Jem and Tessa's unwavering affection for him. And he would assure himself that of course, this was all undoubtedly real and most importantly were what made him happy at present.

Yes, he was happy, there was no denial in that.

He was as happy now as he could be since his father's death and the events that had followed.

He was grateful for this family that he could call his, for once.

After all, he owed that to Jem and Tessa for their efforts to make him feel included.

Now, Cirenworth held the majority of his pleasant memories as this was the place where he had first met his Min-Min.

Kit had never been more sure of anything than his bond with his little sister. She had come into his life unexpectedly and had become an irreplaceable part with her unconditional fondness for him. He was not sure if he was worthy of it but it warmed his heart now, as he looked at his sister trying to tie a bow on Church's tail.

She was assuring the cat in a calm voice " Don't worry !! This is only for today as it is Bapa's birthday " Church seemed to understand her and gave in to her vanity scheme. She tied a bright red bow to the base of the cat's tail with utmost care.

As she was done, she announced enthusiastically " See, you're the prettiest cat in the whole of Devon now " The feline meowed in response, startling Kit, as he had never seen the perennially grumpy cat do such a normal thing since he had known him.

Kit came to his senses as his cellphone chimed. This was his cue to set up the cake and light the candles. He brought the cake out of the fridge and onto the table and lit the candle.

Mina was hovering near the table when he bent down to pick her up in his arms. He could hear voices now outside the door.

The lights were off in the living room and the narrow rays of the setting sun hit the room as the door opened.

As soon as Jem opened the door, Mina started singing " Happy Birthday Bapa ..." in her lovely voice.

Kit too exclaimed " Happy 154th Jem !! " while switching on the lights.

Jem looked awestruck on witnessing Kit and Mina in front of the cake. He smiled when his gaze fell on Church, seated next to the cake with his prominent bow on display.

Tessa came to stand next to him with a proud grin on her face.

Mina gestured to be let down and ran to hug her father. Jem lowered himself and received her kisses and beamed when she wished him " A very happy birthday Bapa !! "

He picked her up while replying " Thank you my little melon " and moved towards the table.

Kit gestured at the carrot cake on the table and said " Hope you like the cake !! Happy Birthday Old Man !! "

Jem ignored the jibe and looked pleasantly surprised at Kit's creation and enveloped him into a hug along with Mina in his arms. " You never cease to amaze me Christopher " he said as he let Kit go with an adoring pat on his head. Kit couldn't help but feel warm towards the former silent brother.

For someone who had a minimal touch with human emotions for more than a century, Jem was an expert in evoking the right ones in others.

Tessa, who had been clicking a picture of the family embrace on her phone, complained of being left out. She came towards Kit and hugged him lovingly. He had never been hugged in such a way before he had met Tessa, at least not any that he had remembered.

It has always been a surprise for him, how warm and protective the gesture was... he had thought this is what a mother's hug must feel like.

Tessa let go of him and whispered " You did a good job my boy !! " and ruffled his hair affectionately... well she tried to...she could reach only the curls on his forehead. He had grown a lot since he had come here and had finally outgrown Jem last summer.

He replied with mock disappointment, " So, I have failed my Herondale ancestors again !! "

" Not a great job but merely a good job... I hope you change your mind once you taste the cake, for my poor heart's sake "

Tessa shook her head while chuckling and handed the knife on the table to Jem " Here you go love, Let's honour our boy's hardwork with no further delay "

Jem proceeded to blow out the candle on the cake but not before looking at the portrait of his parabatai on the wall.

As he cut the cake, Mina belted out the Happy Birthday song perfectly as Kit had taught her, leading to him joining in too.

Jem picked a small piece of the cake and fed it to his daughter, who gobbled it with satisfaction.

Meanwhile, Kit cut another piece from the cake and tried to feed it awkwardly to Jem who looked at him with a content expression. His eyes widened as he ate the cake. He then proclaimed, " I can't believe that I've been blessed today with such a delectable cake. Here Tessa, have some " He fed some to Tessa who looked admiringly at Kit as she chewed on the carrot cake.

Kit was sure they weren't kidding - as one would know if they knew these two - but he was apprehensive as he tried a piece himself. He gasped out loud at the surprising burst of good flavour in his mouth.

Had he found his calling finally ? All this time training to be a shadowhunter and he could have been a baker !!

Tessa looked at him fondly and turned to Jem and said " Of course, it is tasty. Our Kit does everything with no shortage of love and sincerity. Why would this be different? "

She added, " Why don't we take this celebration outside ? The table's already laid out with the food we have bought "

Kit's family then proceeded towards their greenhouse, inside which laid an ornate wooden table, a reminiscent of the era Tessa and Jem had belonged to. He had learnt that this table used to belong to the Herondales when Tessa had been one herself. Will and Tessa would have dined with their children in this table more than a century ago.

Numerous candles adorned the table, burning brightly and casting the reflections of the trees surrounding the table upon the surrounding walls. Through the roof, Kit noticed that the moon was hiding behind the clouds and that the sky had turned darker.

Mina was chattering excitedly to her Bapa about how she had helped Kit with the cake decoration and how her Gē Ge had encouraged her to decorate Church too.

Kit perked up at that ' Now that was TMI; his involvement in this endeavour '. Jem was a calm person, not easy to upset but Kit suspected even he might not be forgiving of any unfair treatment of his precious cat.

So, Kit tried to divert the topic by pointing at the display on the table " Look at the table Min-Min !! Bapa and Mama have brought your favorite orange chicken. Let's split up the contents shall we? "

There were authentic Chinese foods as well as take-outs on the table. They knew Kit used to enjoy such food back in L.A. and have always bought it for him, whenever possible.

Of course, Tessa would never hesitate to open a portal to L.A., to allow him to re-experience the city he grew up in. The only problem was that Kit didn't want to return there himself, too many memories attached to the place, some more painful than the others.

Now, the sole connection he had with the city was the take-out Jem and Tessa bought for him from time to time. Mina had also taken to his favorite food, choosing to eat them along with him.

They took their places on the table, with Mina next to him. She preferred to be fed by Kit, as her little fingers have not been accustomed to chopsticks yet.

Her parents sat across from them with copious amounts of Xiaolongbao - soup dumplings from Jem's birth place, Shanghai - in front of them.

Kit opened up a box of orange chicken and fed the first piece to Mina. She gobbled it up readily.

Since he had come here, he has come to learn that both Jem and Tessa placed his needs before all else. He had thought then that such priority would not exist once their child was born. He had been wrong. They were never discriminative in their affection and care for him. It was evident from the way they seemed to understand that he was hurt in the past and were careful about bringing up the Blackthorns.

Kit had never expected to experience this kind of comfort and feeling of belongingness. In fact, when he moved in with the Carstairs, he was convinced that he would not be allowed to stay if he couldn't reflect Will Herondale in his actions or behaviors. But of course, he had been wrong in that case too.

Now, he concentrated on finishing up the delicious chicken along with his sister and moved on to the dumplings.

The dinner was a silent affair, after which they all huddled together for their night time ritual of listening to Jem play his violin.

Kit had never before been a big fan of classical music or even literature for that matter; both had changed since he had started residing here. He found Jem's music not only beautiful but oddly comforting in the way it brought vivid and pleasant images to his mind.

There was a sense of safety that came over Kit now as he listened with his eyes closed. Mina's warm little fingers were hanging on to his own as she sat on her mother's lap beside him.

They were all sitting under the newly bloomed autumn cherry tree in a corner of their green house. Jem was standing under the tree while playing his violin. This was a fairly familiar site for the residents except that the pink petals falling around him made Jem look like a Shoujo anime protagonist. He definitely looked the part, with his unusual hair: a silver streak in an otherwise black head.

Kit immediately turned to whisper the same to Tessa, who proceeded to giggle not so discreetly. Of course, she understood anime references now, he had spent his time educating both Tessa and Jem on the finer aspects of contemporary media. He had succeeded spectacularly with Tessa - as she had with making him enjoy reading - to the point of her often engaging in passionate discussions with him.

He added to Tessa " What do you think Lily would call him if she witnessed this ? " By then, Jem had finished his piece and was looking at them curiously.

" Definitely Jemmy Blossom " he quipped. She nodded with a conspiratorial grin " Absolutely and she would add ' which I would love to blend in my Sakura tea ' "

Jem sighed hearing that and Kit observed that he had a slight blush in his cheeks. Both Kit and Tessa have been getting better in teasing the shy, 19th century man, with the help of few pointers from Lily Chen herself, the loyal Brother Zachariah enthusiast.

Jem ignored the comment and asked Tessa if she had any requests. She nodded and asked " Will you play ours, Jem ? " He smiled before starting to play again.

A gorgeous melody started, describing a place filled with joy and contentment and interspersed with equal parts melancholy and longing. It portrayed a love story among three souls that were intertwined forever and a bond that transcended time.

Kit had heard this piece numerous times before and knew of its significance. The impact it had on him now was different though. It evoked memories in him, the very ones he tried hard to suppress every day and a longing for a person dearest to him, whom he doubted he would ever meet again.

He felt particularly emotional today, his longing for his former companion from the Los Angeles Institute intensifying, as if someone had tugged the thread that bound him to Ty.

That seemed absurd...

There was nothing between them now nor was it then, not at least from Ty's side.

He was still feeling miserable with his thoughts when Jem finished. So, he decided to stay out for sometime while the others went inside the house.

Mina mumbled " Good night " to him before laying back her head sleepily on her mother's shoulder. Tessa just smiled at him understandingly while Jem gave him a hug before they left for inside.

Kit ventured into the dark, walking with a purpose, towards the garden surrounding their house. It was as familiar to him as the back of his hand. He had spent hours training in these grounds with Jem. He even knew every rock in the foot path; what with him falling on them several times during running or fighting.

He was heading now towards the wooden swing in the east corner of the property. Jem had told him that the Carstairs who lived here in the past had installed it for their children. It was a beautiful bench swing that faced the neighbouring fields.

Kit loved spending his time here, typically at nights when he could star gaze in the clear, rural sky. No one would disturb him here and it had truly become his own spot. He came here whenever he felt overwhelmed and to ruminate on his thoughts.

Tonight, he was thinking about Ty, as usual, missing him.

He felt guilty... he didn't have any right to miss Ty considering he was the one who had left him.

He looked up at the stars- ' Stars ' was one of Ty's comfort words- and smiled. Wonder if he had any new words now?

Kit had learned to control his thoughts regarding Ty to a great extent in his time here - not without difficulty - restricting them to only the times he spent here on this bench.

This was broken when he had met Julian and Emma, when they had visited here during their travel year. It was difficult for Kit to look at Julian without finding a resemblance to Ty.

Emma had hugged him as soon as she saw him and sought assurance of his well being. They both were warm and friendly during their stay.

Thankfully, they hadn't prod him much about his reason for leaving. Maybe, they had just attributed it to the safety concerns over his faerie heritage.

They didn't mention much about Ty either, except that he was at the Scholomance and often sent them letters and postcards.

Well, except when Emma had encountered him alone in the hallway once and said " You know... Ty would love to hear from you " before she was interrupted by Julian calling her.

He hadn't been able to reply " I am not so sure of that ".

Then, there was that time Livvy had come here and he had learnt about the threat to Ty and had given up his mother's heron pendant for his protection.

He wished that he could learn more about Ty's life but he wasn't sure if he would like to hear about it over being present for it. The thought unnerved him.

In his early days at Cirenworth, he was heartbroken and had dreaded his memories of Ty. Now, he still felt a dull pain in his chest when thinking of him but this was mostly due to a sense of yearning rather than regret and pain.

Gradually, his longing for Ty's companionship came to dominate over his guilt and remorse but that didn't mean he didn't feel them anymore. It was just that as time went, he had learnt to pay attention to the good memories over the painful ones, albeit his frequent lapses.

Jem and Tessa's anecdotes about their past had helped a little. Their recollections were always tinted with a wistful but pleasant lens, even their painful memories.

He wanted to reassess his own memories... But even thinking about disentangling his past, left him feeling as if he was running a marathon and hanging onto a cliff's edge at the same time.

He took a deep breath and tried to locate the Orion's belt in the sky to calm himself.

As he focused his eyes upwards, a sudden bright source approached him from his left. He gasped out loud before realizing that it was a fire message.

' Could it be Jace? '

He liked to keep up with Kit as often as he could.

He waited for the blazing message to land on his hand.

Once it settled, he opened up the folded white paper carefully. He saw that it was addressed to him but not to Kit, to Christopher.

The only person that addressed him that way was Jace.

He sighed while muttering " Of course, who else would send me a message? "

But then he noticed that the handwriting was off.

He examined closely at the " Dear Christopher " and realized with a jolt that this was a familiar handwriting, one that he had witnessed in meticulously taken notes : a neatly written, cursive array of words with peculiarly curved 'r's that he could have recognized anywhere.

A distinct one, that belonged to none other than the boy he had spent the most time with at the Los Angeles Institute.... this was a message from Tiberius Blackthorn.

[charlottedabookworm]

lols, I kno I've sent in a bunch of these, so feel free to opt out if you're not interested. How about a fix-it Doctor Who crossover for FFXV? Teen Noctis and Prompto end up being Companions to The Doctor (I'm partial to 13, 9, and 10 but it's up to you) and somehow, this saves everything.

1) Prompto actually meets the Doctor first, when he’s 10.

(Prompto first meets the Doctor when he’s just a few months old, when a blonde wearing rainbows happens to run past a man carrying a baby in a lab.

The lab blows up.

Surprise)

He’s maybe somewhere he shouldn’t be, camera in hand and glasses perched on his nose, when he walks into the weirdest fight ever.

(That guy was a fish)

And, just as he freezes, thinking he’s about to die, a man in a trench-coat sweeps in - a redhead a half step behind him, already yelling at literally everyone - and breaks it up easily, even if it takes a couple hours. Prompto is amazed.

The red-head - Donna, my name is Donna - sits with him while everyone else argues (occasionally yelling at the trench-coat guy) and walks him home and makes sure he’s got food and that’s he’s okay (and maybe she has some words for his parents who aren’t home again but he mostly ignores that because she’s so cool) and then they sweep out of his life.

(Or not.

The first letter comes days later, dropped in the letterbox with Donna’s signature scrawled on the back and Prompto feels so warm he could burst)

(The letters last for a couple years, telling him about dangerous exciting adventures and her idiot best friend and giving him tips with people and getting things done around the house and… 

and then, one day, suddenly, they stop)

(He’s pretty sure he knows why)

2) Still, for all he’s met the Doctor, Prompto has never really seen the TARDIS.

Which is how he and Noct end up accidentally inside when on the run from a couple kidnappers.

The TARDIS promptly takes off. The bloke in a leather jacket demands to know where they came from. 

Prom and Noct just stare.

(Best. Kidnapping. Ever)

3) So- the thing is.

The TARDIS? Still a little damaged by the Time War. And by ‘a little’, there’s a lot of damage, and a rather large dearth of spare parts.

And Eos? Not easy to get to.

The Doctor has no idea how the TARDIS got through the energy barrier surrounding the planet in the first place but she does not want to go back.

Which- considering that the Prince of Lucis is currently staring at him in horror - is not the best thing.

Noctis looks a lot less worried and a lot more confused when he reassures them that he will be able to get them back, and at the same moment they left, it just might take a while.

Prompto just nods.

(He’s already figured out that this isn’t the Doctor he knew. But Donna had told him a lot about Time Lords and the TARDIS and the Doctor - he’s realised, as he grew up, that maybe she just wanted someone to talk to about it all - and he definitely recognises the name Rose so)

4) Prom is bouncy and Noct is calmer but they both fall in love with the TARDIS so easily and they love the adventure and the travelling and meeting new people and it’s amazing.

Their enthusiasm helps a Doctor who is struggling so much to see any joy in the universe. They bring life to the TARDIS and the sound of their laughter intertwined with Rose’s (and with Jack’s) fills him with something almost like happiness

And the boys- they’ve grown up in the Crown City of a country in a century old war. 

They might be young, might be fairly sheltered from the worst of it, but they’ve spent more than enough time around war veterans

They don’t push, on the days the Doctor can’t handle it, and they distract Rose and it helps

5) Eventually, almost 6 months after they were ‘kidnapped’, the TARDIS is well enough to take them home.

They almost don’t want to leave.

They do anyway.

The Doctor lands exactly where they’d entered, at that exact moment, and they say their goodbyes - get the hugs and the phones in their back pockets and the promises to pop back sometime and they leave with bags that are expanded far beyond what they probably should be (but the Doctor knows things and he will not leave these children with nothing)

Nobody noticed they were gone.

Technically they weren’t.

6) Noctis lays Gladio flat with a move he picked up from an archaeologist he met on one of their trips

Prompto’s flirting now makes people blush like crazy, nobody knows how he’s suddenly so smooth

Jack is proud

7) Nobody understands the sudden banana obsession

8) Prophecies are one thing

Fixed points in time are another

It isn’t hard, to figure out what being The Chosen King means

But 6 months travelling all of time and space makes someone a lot less likely to bow down to fate

(If it’s Fixed, you’ll die anyway, Prompto whispers to him fiercely when it looks like he’s about to give in to it all, but we’re going to make sure you live)

9) The thing is- by the time they hit 20 (or so their birthdays say) they’ve seen more than one peace treaties. The Doctor has a habit of ending wars and, sometimes, he’ll stick around for the treaties and even the parties

So they know what they look like

They also know what a trap looks like

Noctis refuses to leave the Citadel, Prompto by his side

and, well, everybody’s rather thankful later

10) The square gun (totally not stolen from Jack) in Prompto’s hands takes a nice square out of Glauca

Might have taken a lot of tinkering to get around the safeties but totally worth it

11) when a phone box that appears between Aldercapt and his father it doesn’t surprise Noctis

he can’t say the same about the rest of the room

and he might not recognise the face that pokes out of the TARDIS with a grin but he knows the Doctor and the time lord still feels the same 

Prompto waves cheerfully, bouncing on his toes like he hasn’t just taken out Niflheim’s best General in a single shot

Six, Noct loves his best friend

then a woman steps out behind the Doctor and Noctis grins

“River!”

(The archaeologist winks. and promptly threatens the Emperor. very bloodily. the Doctor looks very smitten. and also very confused about how they know each other.

if he wanted to know he shouldn’t have lost him in that jungle, Noctis thinks, still feeling a little spiteful)

12) Everything gets wrapped up pretty quickly after that - at least with the empire

and then the Doctor runs into a man who is almost a fixed point but not (like Jack but artificial, not of time like he is, and oh, oops, do the boys know about Jack? spoiler alert, they do, they aren’t happy but Jack said he’d already punched him so) but this one he can fix

it isn’t hard to just reach out and tweak

there’s a reason his kind were called Time Lords after all

Ardyn disappears, still angry, still vengeful, but mortal

the Doctor leaves not long after

River promises to visit and the boys grin

everyone with any sort of common sense fears everything

13) A few months later, when they call him up again because they need someone to yell at a giant lizard about making people immortal against their will and trying to get teenagers to sacrifice themselves, the Doctor who appears is grey haired and grumpy

Prompto hugs him, just because

The Doctor flails

Bill - who introduces herself while the Doctor is flailing and is around their age - is brilliant and they exchange stories while the Doctor gets all Scottish-Grumpy and Value-of-Life and Oncoming-Storm on Bahamut and the dark-haired evilish one - Missy, Bill calls her - rolls her eyes and Nardole does

-something. He does something. He maybe goes and makes a cuppa tea

It’s great, reminds the boys of exactly what they missed about being 15 and travelling with the Doctor

(for everyone else, it’s a dawning realisation about why Noctis and Prompto are so good at dealing with chaos in general)

and then they totally dart off for another trip, just a short one dad we’ll be back for dinner!

Prompto asks this Doctor, who knows him, who recognises him from both times, about Donna, that night in the console room, and it’s not what he thought - she’s not dead - but she doesn't remember anything and he just

he cries

so does the Doctor

(later, Noctis decides to test if potions could help with the whole, meta crisis thing. because Prompto is sad

they do. because i say so

Donna gives Prompto the best hugs)

[imagesofthegreatgull]

Hybrid Rainbow

Joy has always been a rare and precious commodity. I would argue, though, that in the developed world (Wherever, exactly, that is), it has become somewhat less rare in recent times, as standards of living and education continue to go up. That’s an absurdly privileged thing to say, I realize, but I’m trying to start this thing as evenhandedly as I can. I understand about suffering and poverty; I’m reading A Tree Grows In Brooklyn right now, even! Okay, saying we’re closer now than ever to utopia is going to smack of ignorance no matter how you phrase it, but it also strikes me as undeniably true, in the grand scheme of things. I think most people--aside from the fascists--would refuse a one-way trip in a time machine to any previous era, or at the very least, would recognize that it wouldn’t improve much of anything for them. As unruly as our age is, it’s still probably the best one we’ve gotten thus far, and as the boot-heel of oppression starts to ever so slowly ease up its pressure on the necks of the long-suffering masses, the question has begun to enter into the collective consciousness: what is to be done with joy when it begins to fall, unbidden, into your life with something like abundance? What is to be done if moments of joy no longer must be pried with great effort and sacrifice from the rockface of life, but lie strewn liberally throughout our days, needing only the will and lack of embarrassment to seize them?

Thus far, the latter-day generations have faced up to this problem with decidedly mixed success. The idea that expecting anything other than the very worst leaves one vulnerable to the universe’s cruel whims has been stamped upon the human brain for centuries, and has left many sadly unable to recognize their own privilege (Which, by the way, is a big part of why a whole lotta white folks refuse to admit they have it better than anyone else and continue to dig their heels in against progress because to them it looks like cutting in line). It is still widely accepted that constantly finding joy and peace and purpose in one’s own life is the purview of children and children alone, that it is a naivete to be grown out of. We have the impulse always within us to be hard, to be warlike, to show the world that we’re not weak and frivolous but monsters to be feared, without emotions to be appealed to or ideals to be fallen short of.

Remedying this problem has turned out to be one of the primary functions of counterculture. If it is often unhelpful to simply look at the entire value system of one’s parents and say “Fuck that”, as it tends to foster a rather negative self-definition, still, if part of that value system is a deeply entrenched distrust of happiness, “Fuck that” may be exactly the response called for. The beauty of “Fuck that” is that it leaps past the slow loss of faith in something and arrives immediately at a flat rejection of it, and since much of the history of civilization has been bound up with blind faith in arbitrary and harmful things, the ability and the courage to flatly reject something, to give it no credit for however widely accepted it is but to dismiss it as bullshit from the ground up, is a step forward in human consciousness tantamount to the reinvention of the wheel.

The great irony of the end of the sixties is that all the hippies were miserable for no reason: they won. Rock n’ roll did change the world, it just didn’t immediately transform it on every level into an unrecognizable nirvana. For all the apparent emptiness of its utopian dreams, the basic thrust of the thing worked out just fine: that particular cat will never be put back into its bag, and those ideas are now out in the ether forever, always waiting for someone to find them and be inspired to change their own life and the lives of those around them for the better. The same goes for the punk rock revolution a few years later: they may not have brought the bastards down, but they did successfully bring personal liberation to a lot of people, and poured exactly as much gas on the fires of populism as they intended to. Culture, and in particular art and in particular music, cannot, unassisted, change the world, but it can change your world, and has been changing small worlds all over the frigging place at least since those mop-topped Brits set foot on American shores and probably since Johnny B. Goode learned to play guitar just like a-ringin’ a bell. 

The thread can get lost, however. Culture is always a reflection of the people, and the people still spend a lot of their time bored, frustrated, and terrified of letting on that they have feelings about stuff. Young people especially, formerly the eternal pirate crew waving high the flags of “Liberty” and “Up Yours”, in recent times have often capitulated and resigned themselves to no more than a few stray moments of fun pilfered from the fortresses of the almighty Money Man-Kings, usually in the form of drugs, sex, and reckless self-endangerment. The cost of the hippies and the punks giving up their battles is that the counterculture lost its intellectual leadership, at least until the resurgence in political literacy in the 2010s. In the wasteland following the 70s, there were no John Lennons or Joe Strummers to look to for guidance; even the people who were elected to speak for their generation seemed adamant that there was fuck-all they could really say. Yeah, it’s nice to know that someone else feels stupid and contagious, but that’s not really a direction, is it? The generation-defining message Kurt Cobain and his peers sent out was “We’re all way too fucked up to do anything about anything”, and that introspective moodiness pervaded American underground rock music from the invention of hardcore at least all the way up to the moment Craig Finn watched The Last Waltz with Tad Kubler and said “Why aren’t there bands like this anymore?” and set out with rest of the Steadies in tow to remind everyone that music can save your immortal soul and that hey, that Springsteen guy was really onto something, headband and all, and together they all successfully ushered in the New Uncool and now we’ve got Patrick Stickles wailing that “If the weather’s as bad as the weatherman says, we’re in for a real mean storm!” and Brian Fallon admitting “I always kinda sorta wished I looked like Elvis” and everything’s great, except it’s not, everything’s fucked, but rock n’ roll is here to stay, come inside now it’s okay, and I’ll shake you, ooo-ooo-ooo.

The point of all this is my belief that even with the responsibility rock music has to provide cathartic outlets for dissatisfaction, is has an equal or greater responsibility to provide heroes. I think it’s time we all got over pretending that we’re better than the need for heroes, because we all insist on having them anyway, imperfect roses by any other name, and we’d do a hell of a lot better selecting them if we just admitted what we were after. We don’t just want particularly talented comrades, we want King Arthur, Robin Hood, Superman, Malcolm Reynolds. Damn it all, they don’t need to be perfect, they don’t even need to be all that great really, and yeah, Arthur dies, and Robin never gets Prince John, and Superman can’t save everyone, and the war’s over, we’re all just folk now, and John Lennon beat women and Van Morrison is a grumpy old fart and John Lydon’s a disgrace, but it’s the faith that counts. The faith that there’s something greater than ourselves that some people are more keyed into than others, and that whatever they can relay from that other side is what’ll see us through. All the best prophets are madmen, and madmen aren’t always romantic fools; sometimes they hurt people, or fail at crucial moments due to a compulsion they can’t control. Let he who is without sin etcetera, right? Why not cast aside realism and sincerely believe in something or someone, huh? 

I believe in the Pillows. I don’t know hardly anything about them; my expertise of Japanese culture and history extends to the anime I’ve seen and that “History of Japan” YouTube video that made the rounds a while back. I can’t locate them within the Japanese music scene; all their western influences seem obvious to me, and the rest I know nothing about. They’re the only rock band from their country I’ve listened to any great amount of, I don’t speak the language they mostly sing in, I don’t even know their career very well. The particulars of any experiences they might have had that motivated them to make the art they make are not ones I could possibly share in, so, saying that I “Relate” to their work sounds a little preposterous. They ought to be a novelty to me, a band that clearly likes a lot of the same bands I do despite hailing from a foreign shore, marrying that shared music taste with a cultural identity I have nothing to do with, a small, nice upswing of globalism pleasing to my sense of universalism but not having any kind of quantifiable impact on me.

Yet I, like a good many other westerners, believe in the Pillows. I’m a little buster, and my eyes just watered as I wrote that. In fact, it’s likely because of the barriers of language and culture that exist between us that my belief in the Pillows is so strong. Pete Townshend, someone else I believe in, once opened a show by saying “You are very far away...but we will fucking reach you”, and though the Pillows are both geographically (At the moment) and culturally miles away from me, Lord strike me down if they don’t fucking reach me. They reach me in a way many of their American college rock peers, many of their biggest influences in fact, never have. Dinosaur Jr, Bob Mould, Sonic Youth, the Pixies, Nirvana--all these artists speak directly to the American adolescent experience, but though they have all moved me to one degree or another, none of them have produced a body of work I can so readily see myself in as that of the Pillows. Maybe it is the novelty of it, maybe I’m fooling myself and it is just my sense of universalism carrying me away, but there’s something I hear in the Pillows that I don’t hear in those bands, and though the obvious candidate for that thing would be the foreign tongue the majority of the lyrics are written in, when it comes down to it, I think that thing is joy.

Joy, to me, is the possibility glimpsed by rock n’ roll. Not hedonistic pleasure, not a sadistic glee over the outrage of authority figures, but real, true, open-hearted, “Freude, schöner Götterfunken/Tochter aus Elysium”--type joy. Buddy Holly had joy. The Beatles, The Who, the pre-fall Rod Stewart, they had joy. Springsteen’s got joy to spare. Those people have such profound love for their art and their audience that just the continual recognition of the fact that they have a guitar in their hands and they’re being allowed to play it is enough to make them ecstatic, and whenever they want to actually express something serious they have to get themselves under control to do it. Yet, whether it’s the unfashionability of those utopian dreams, or the simple fact that rock music has become accepted by mainstream culture and is now a commonplace, unremarkable thing, but half the people who have picked up an electric guitar for the past few decades don’t seem all that excited about it. From Kim Gordon snarling about how people go down to the store to buy some more and more and more and more, to Thom Yorke moaning about how he’s let down and hanging around, crushed like a bug in the ground, even up to Courtney Barnett asking how’s that for first impressions, this place seems depressing, it’s not really a given anymore, if it ever was, that people who make rock music are very joyful in what they do. 

Of course, I’m not demanding that our artists be empty-headed fluff-factories; far from it. The Pillows write sad songs and angry songs same as everybody else. But the important thing is this: every song the Pillows play is played with an exuberance and abandon that is immediately striking, regardless of the emotional content of each song. Channelling that kind of revelry into rock music is both to my mind the initial purpose of the genre in the first place and something which has become so rare as to be remarkable. A veneer of detached cool, a howling ferocity, a whimpering woundedness--these have become the hallmarks of American rock music, and they are nowhere to be found in the Pillows.

At the same time, the Pillows are the very antithesis of artlessness. Joy of the caliber they deal in is more commonly found in folky rave-ups, a lack of musicianship giving way to trancelike festivity. But the Pillows are skilled song craftsmen like few others; their sound has evolved throughout the years, but they tend to settle in the neighborhood of power-pop, abounding in glorious hooks and surprising structures. A hundred unnecessary, perfect touches seem to exist in every song; a pause, a solo, a bassline, all deftly elevating the song into a perfect expression of something sublime, something that always--always--takes ahold of the musicians themselves and imbues their performances with power and purpose the likes of which most little busters can only dream of feeling. It should be testament enough to their brilliance that upon first listen to a song I never know what most of the lyrics mean, but whenever I look up a translation, they always turn out to be exactly what I felt they must be; their songs are so musically communicative that they all but lack the need for lyrics. 

This dual nature is why I believe in the Pillows: by so utterly failing to neglect both the highest possibilities of musical composition as an unparalleled tool for capturing emotional nuance and the unrestrained id-like rush that is the province of rock n’ roll, they successfully attain the lofty realm that is--or ought to be--the goal of music in the first place. Never once is there a hint of straying into the realm of primitivism nor into overthought seriousness, and instead they locate themselves somehow exactly center on the scale between punk and prog, lacking the weaknesses and gaining the strengths of both. They make rock whole again by finally disproving the tenet initially laid out by their heroes, your heroes, and mine, The Beatles: the notion that growing up means having less fun. The viscerally exciting early work of The Beatles lacks any of the depth and vision displayed by their later records, but those records are so carefully and expertly crafted that they tend to lose spontaneity, and constantly second-guess themselves where the juvenilia they followed forged unselfconsciously ahead. That legendary career path has laid out a false dichotomy that every proceeding generation of kids with guitars has chosen between, save for the few who could see past it, the ones who heard the wildness in “Revolution” and the wisdom in “Twist and Shout” and realized that they were of a piece, were one and the same, not to be chosen between but embraced fully. Pete Townshend. Bruce Springsteen. Joe Strummer. David Byrne. Paul Westerberg. The Pillows. The real heroes are not those who champion one side or another but fight all their lives for peace between them, knowing that we have not yet begun to imagine what could be accomplished if that were made possible.

Just as they bypass the divide between what Patrick Stickles termed the Apollonian and Dionysian tendencies of rock (I prefer to think of the usual battle as being between the Dionysians and the Athenians, with the true devotees of Apollo being most of those heroes I keep referring to, except Dylan, who might be a Hermesian), so too do the Pillows bypass the Pacific frigging ocean. And the Atlantic, to boot. Their music quotes the Pixies and The Beatles directly, and obviously owes much to Nirvana and all their college rock predecessors who spent the entire 80s desperately stacking themselves until the doomed power trio could finally vault over the wall. Their first record is practically a tribute to XTC. They do speak a lot of English, too. I’m informed that much of western culture is seen as the epitome of coolness in Japan, which might explain their obsession with Baseball, and apparently sprinkling a bit of the Saxon tongue into the mix is far from uncommon in the music scene(s). Regardless, there is something ineffably touching to a distant fan in a foreign land about hearing Sawao Yamanaka spit “No surrender!” or exclaim “Just runner’s high!” It looks from here like a show of mutual effort to understand me as much as I’m trying to understand them. They’re generous enough to have already walked to the middle where they’re asking me to meet them, a middle where it doesn’t matter that I don’t have a suffix attached to my name or that they don’t wear shoes in houses. The invisible continent that all forward-thinking and sensitive people come to long for is where the Pillows are broadcasting from, because they’ve realized that its golden shores and spiraling cities are attainable. They’re attainable with joy, with the fundamentally rebellious act of refusing to let the fascists bring down even your globdamn day, because who the hell gave them that power other than us? I know enough about Japan and America to know that either one accusing the other of being imperialist and socially conservative to a fault is a fucking joke, and to know that we’ve done a lot more wrong to them than they’ll ever do to us and the presence of the Pillows amounts to a “We forgive you”, not an “I’m sorry”. Having watched a decent amount of anime, which is basically the result of Japan’s mind being blown by western media and then proceeding to show their love by often almost inadvertently surpassing their inspirations, I know that the only way to save our respective national souls and everybody else’s too is to put our knuckles down, have Jesus and Buddha shake hands like Kerouac tried to explain that they would anyway, and embrace each other’s dreams and passions and adopt them into our own. 

It takes better people to inhabit that better world, and in case that sounds like fascist talk, I mean we’ve got to do better, not be better. It’s no physical imperfection that holds us back, nor a mental imperfection exactly, as we all have our own neuroses and if we expunge those then we’ll be kissing art and lot of other vital stuff goodbye. No, it’s our discomfort with ourselves, our world, our neighbors, our aliens, that keep us from seeing that crazy sunshine. If we can’t even acknowledge the greatness around us, that surplus of joy I mentioned a while back that we just seem to have no idea what to do with, then we have no hope of ever achieving further greatness, of ever quelling man’s inhumanity to man down to an inevitable fringe rather than the basic order of the world. 

There was always more to do 

Than just eat and work and screw

But now that there’s time at last to do those things, we’re still afraid to, afraid that we’ll come up empty, that the search for fulfillment leads only to disappointment, better to hang back and play it safe, better not to risk becoming one of those people I shake my head at and pity and will secretly envy until I die. It’s a new world, and we must learn to be new people. I believe in the Pillows because I believe they make excellent models for that new kind of person. The way they behave in the studio and on the stage is the way people behave when they’re truly free, and we’ve all been set free already or will be soon, so if we’re going to try and learn what the fuck is next from anyone, I think we might as well learn from the Pillows. At least, that’s one of the places we could get that insight. There’s a lot of art and a lot of philosophy and political theory to sift through to in order to put together a workable 21st century identity, and the Pillows are hardly the only people to have begun making the leap. But because of a silly thing like the size of the earth, the infinitesimal size of the earth even compared to the distance between us and the next rock we’re gonna try and get to, not everybody is getting their particular brand of free thought and action, and I happen to think that’s regrettable, and it’s my will as a free individual to rectify it as much as I can.

Writing about music really is worthless, isn’t it? I haven’t said jackshit about what the Pillows actually do other than to vaguely qualify their genre and temperament, and the only more useless thing I could do than not describing their songs would be to describe their songs. If you don’t hear the bracing weightlessness in “Blues Drive Monster”, or the aching nostalgia in “Patricia”, or the soul-bearing cry in “Hybrid Rainbow” then nothing I could write about those would be more effective than “Little Busters is a really good album.” The better primer might be Happy Bivouac, from a few years later; it has the melancholic rush of “Last Dinosaur”, the ascended teenybopper “Whoa, whoa, yeah” chorus in “Backseat Dog”, and the intro that should make it obvious immediately that you’re listening to one of the best songs ever recorded which opens “Funny Bunny”. Those two, Runners High, and Please, Mr. Lostman are the classic era, selections from the former three immortalized in their biggest claim to western fame, the FLCL soundtrack, a brilliant use of their music that could warrant an equally long piece. Before and after those four are periods of experimentation and discovery equally worth your time, not all of which I’m familiar with yet. See, now I’m just an incomplete Wikipedia article; it’d be equally worthless to expound upon the individual bandmates, on the pure yawp of Yamanaka’s vocals, on the passionate drumming of Yoshiaki Manabe and the supernaturally faultless lead guitar of Shinichiro Sato, or the contribution of founding bassist Kenji Ueda, which was so valued by the others that when he left he was never officially replaced (They’re so sweet). I’m not here to write an advertisement or a press-release, I don’t really even know why I’m here writing this, but I know that I believe in the Pillows, that they’re important, and that people should write about them. I’m being the change I want to see in the world, get it? That’s all we can be asked to do.

It occurs to me that people believed in Harvey Dent too, and that didn’t turn out so well. Hell, let’s leave the comic book pages behind, people believe in Donald Trump, they think he’s a hero, and that’s all going down in flames as I write this. Having heroes can be dangerous, but I still believe it’s not as dangerous as not having heroes. “Lesser of two evils” sounds an awful lot like one of those false dichotomies between fun and intelligence or between misery and foolishness I mentioned earlier, so, let’s call it a qualified good. I’m not much of a responsible world-citizen if my only effort towards bringing the planet together is spinning some sweet Japanese alt-rock tunes and bragging about how open-minded I am, but if I do ever end up doing anyone any good, then I’d consider it paying forward the good done to me by the Pillows, among others. They helped me form my identity as an artist (Read: functional human being) and they made my adolescence a lot easier. Actually, that’s a lie: my adolescence was (And continues to be) pretty easy already, and the Pillows reassured me that I wasn’t avoiding reality by feeling that. While American bands sang about the downsides of being a mallrat or a non-mallrat, the Pillows offered a vision of teenagedome much like my own, one that was grandly romantic, in which suffering wasn’t a cosmic stupidity but a trial with pathos and merit, and joy was not an occasional indulgence but a constant presence, whether it was lived in or lost and needing recovery. 

That’s the old idea of youth, the youth of John Keats, the youth that makes the old miss it, makes it required that we explain to them that it’s still there, it never left, it’s a dream, a momentary affirmation, an attitude, a muttered curse word. So many of my peers, now no longer engaged in a constant race to stay out of the grave as their ancestors were, seemed intent on beating each other into their tombs, as if reaching walking death before their parents was the only way to outgrow them. There’s so much life just lying around and it’s just plain wasteful to let it lie in the sun and rust in the rain. There’s space enough to stretch, to not keep who you are awkwardly curled up inside yourself, to breathe the air and taste the wine and dig the brains of your fellow travelers in this loosely-defined circus. I found that space in the Pillows, having often suspected it was there, and while everyone is going to find that space in their own way--or not, still, tragically not--I have to think that experience was due in part  to some innate and unique quality of the music itself, not just a complimentary sensibility contained within myself. The Pillows are free, and that makes them freeing, it’s easy as that. Their liberation is plain as day; it rings in every chord, every snare-hit, every harmony; it’s up to us ascertain what we can do in our own limited capacity to hoist ourselves up to their level and give some other folks a boost along the way and a hand to grab afterwards. It’s the gift that art gives us, and the Pillows just give it more freely than most is all, which is why I think the suggestion to listen to them is more than just a solid recommendation. Like the insistence on listening to The Beatles, or The Clash, or any of the others, it’s a plea to save your soul, to learn the language of tomorrow and drink the lifeblood of peace and love and piss and vinegar, or else you’ll be lost, lost, lost. 

Can you feel? Can you feel that hybrid rainbow?