#This is basically a whole essay with an introduction and everything oh God | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

ukulelecal · 5 years ago

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The Course of True Love Never Did Run Smooth (Enemies to Lovers!College!Calum)

In which you and Calum really hate each other, but then you really don’t.

Warnings: smut, swearing, drinking, verbal fighting

Pairing: College!Calum x Reader

A/N: I!!! FINALLY!!! FINISHED!!! omg i want to apologize for the ridiculous amount of time that this took me to write, i’m so sorry. but here it is everyone. 19.6k words of calum t hood. i really hope you guys like it and like always, feedback would be great!!! love you pumpkins so very much

Introduction to Shakespeare. Mondays and Wednesdays, 11:45 AM.

The class seemed interesting enough. Just two days a week, didn’t require you to wake up early. Even if it was terrible, you could power through a semester of it. You weren’t worried.

When the first day of class rolled around, you walked into the classroom with curious eyes, taking in the atmosphere, and scoured the desks for a promising seat. You didn’t want to sit in the very back, nor did you want to sit in the front row, so you chose a seat in the middle, close to the door with a good view of the board.

More people filed into the room as you took your laptop out of your backpack, occupying empty seats and chatting among themselves. You subtly examined your new peers as they came in, familiarizing yourself with the faces that you’d be seeing around for the semester. Some of them you would grow to like, you knew, but you also knew there were others that you would inevitably grow a distaste for. And that was all a part of the college experience. Friends and enemies. The professor came into the room as well, an older gentleman that looked friendly enough.

The clock struck 11:45, signalling the start of class.

The professor stood up from his desk, moving to stand in the middle of the classroom.

“Good morning, class! Welcome to Introduction to Shakespeare. My name is Mr. Nolan and I’ll be your professor for the semester.”

Mr. Nolan proceeded to go over the syllabus for the course, expectations, needed materials. Typical things for the first day of class. He then announced that you would go around the room, say your name, major and an interesting fact about yourself. You had to physically restrain yourself from rolling your eyes. Not that you hadn’t expected your first week of the new school year to be filled with cheesy ice breakers and awkward introductions, but you could never bring yourself to enjoy the silly things.

The class each took a turn rattling off their name and whatever fact about themselves popped into their mind first. You only half listened, not exactly caring about Maggie the environmental science major who went backpacking in Nepal over the summer or Alex the finance major who speaks six languages. You did the same when it came to be your turn, letting the basic information about yourself roll off your tongue with ease.

It was finally the last person’s turn to speak, and you nearly breathed a sigh of relief that you’d finally be moving on.

“I’m Calum, I’m an English major. Interesting fact about me is that I’m not interesting.”

Oh God, you thought to yourself. One of those people, who refuse to share just one simple thing about themselves as if everyone isn’t going to forget what you said by tomorrow, or as if they’re some mysterious enigma that leaves people wondering. The only thing you were wondering, was if this Calum boy was really as obnoxious as he was making himself out to be.

Mr. Nolan, not in the mood to argue with him on the first day, thanked the class for sharing and announced that he would now be administering a pretest to check everyone’s knowledge on Shakespeare; not graded, he made sure to specify.

The test wasn’t too difficult, only a few questions on translating old English into modern English, general knowledge about popular Shakespeare books, and the like. 1:00 came around quickly, and your first class of the school year was officially over.

You gathered up your belongings and dropped the test off at Mr. Nolan’s desk on your way out. You had a little bit until your next class started, so you decided to grab a quick bite to eat from the coffee shop on campus on your way. With a bagel in hand, you started off toward your destination.

…

It was Wednesday before you knew it.

The first two days of the school year had gone pretty well. Nothing to complain about, at least not yet. You were hoping for a good year, and things were looking good thus far, but you knew you couldn’t get your hopes up within the first few days of school.

Now it was time to return to Introduction to Shakespeare, and you plopped yourself down in the same seat that you had sat in on the first day, the seat you figured would become your unofficial assigned seat.

When class started, Mr. Nolan announced you would be going over some important background information on the Elizabethan era, William Shakespeare himself, including his early life, early works and other facts, and terminology for his works. You paid close attention and took notes, knowing that understanding this information would likely be helpful in understanding the rest of the curriculum.

At some point, Mr. Nolan asked the class to turn to the people around you and discuss what you learned to make sure everyone understood, asking each other questions if needed. You slowly turned to face the people next to you, not planning on saying anything. The others spoke up, but not about Shakespeare.

“Alpha Sig’s kick off party is on Friday night. You guys coming?” A boy asked. You weren’t exactly friends with him, but you knew about him. Everyone did. His name was Charlie, president of the fraternity in question. You had a few classes together in the past.

“Honestly, Charlie, do you think I’d miss it after all the fun last year?” A girl who you didn’t recognize answered.

The fraternity Alpha Sigma Phi - or Alpha Sig, as everyone called it - was known on campus for throwing the wildest parties, and their beginning of the year party was always said to be the best. You preferred to skip out on them, much to all your friends dismays. They begged and begged you to go every year, but you never gave in. Something about being in a loud, crowded house surrounded by drunk strangers didn’t sound appealing to you. But, skipping out on the fun made you responsible for making sure your sloshed roommates got back to the dorm safely and dealing with their inevitable hangovers in the morning.

Charlie turned to you, shooting you a grin

“How about you, Y/N? Are you coming?”

Hell no, you thought to yourself, but instead you gave the fraternity president a shrug.

“Maybe,” you responded lightly.

“Come on, it’ll be fun!” He pestered, leaning forward for emphasis. “You should at least drop by for a little while. Hood already told me he’s coming again this year, so it should be a good time.”

“Hood?” You asked, eyebrows furrowing slightly. You hadn’t heard of him before.

“Come on, Calum Hood! He’s right over there, the guy on his phone,” the girl announced, cocking her head towards the back corner of the room.

Calum. That was the English major who made the obnoxious “I’m not interesting” comment on the first day, you remembered.

You glanced over in that direction, spotting a head of dark curls tilted downwards towards his phone. The fact that he was going to be there was certainly not helping Charlie’s case of convincing you to go, not after the impression he gave you. Chances of you even seeing him if you were to go were slim, considering the amount of people that would be attending, but you still weren’t exactly looking to put yourself in a position where it was possible that you would encounter him.

“Why is it relevant that he’s going again?” You questioned, curious as to why Charlie felt the need to tell you. Charlie and the girl shared a look, grinning at each other.

“He’s the life of the party, you know,” he answered, returning his gaze back to you.

“No, I don’t know.” You raised an eyebrow at the fraternity president. “What’s so great about him?”

“Seriously? You haven’t heard anything about him at all?”

You shook your head sharply, getting tired of Charlie dodging your questions.

“Beer pong champion. Keg stand record holder. Bringer of weed. He’s basically Alpha Sig’s best friend.”

“He’s not in Alpha Sig?” You furrowed your eyebrows. Guy like that seems to you like a total frat boy. Charlie shook his head.

“Nope. Not in any fraternity. Just a party animal.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever been at any relevant party that he hasn’t been at,” the girl chimed in. “He always goes. I don’t even know how he manages good grades.” You snorted at that.

“How can you be so sure he gets good grades?”

“He does,” Charlie argued, his voice a bit sharp. “He’s a good friend of mine. I know for a fact he can spend all night partying and then spend the whole next day, hungover as hell, writing an essay and get an A on it. He doesn’t strike anyone as the type to be an English major, but he’s really smart, actually.”

You appreciated Charlie defending his friend, but the fact that Calum was smart didn’t impress you in the slightest. He was still obnoxious, and apparently a crazy partygoer. There were more things to consider in a person than just their intelligence, and everything else you knew about him was not appealing to you.

Class came to an end, and you made your way back to the coffee shop for another bagel before your next class. When the class ended, you headed back to your dorm to relax for a bit, possibly take a nap if your roommates were quiet.

When you arrived back, you found that both of your roommates, Mallory and Carmen, were sat on their beds, typing away on their laptops. They both looked up at the sound of the door opening before returning their gazes back to their screens.

“Hey Y/N,” Mallory offered, typing for another moment before closing her laptop and setting it on the bed next to her. “You done with class for the day?”

You nodded, dropping your backpack at the foot of your bed. The room had two sets of bunk beds; four beds in total, despite the fact that there were three of you. You and Mallory both took the bottom bunks, and Carmen slept on the bed right above you. You lowered yourself onto your bed, bending down to take your shoes off.

“So,” Mallory continued, swinging her legs over the side of the bed and resting her elbows on her knees. “You coming with us to Alpha Sig’s party?”

You snorted, shaking your head.

“You know me better than that, Mal.” You paused to toss your shoes to the side. “It’s funny you ask, though. Charlie Romano asked me if I was going during Intro to Shakespeare today.”

You heard Carmen’s laptop snap shut above you, and she climbed down to sit next to you on your bunk.

“Dude, the Alpha Sig president basically invited you to go. How could you not?” Carmen demanded, nudging your shoulder.

“He did not invite me. He simply asked if I was going.”

“Did he try to pester you into going at all?” Mallory questioned, cocking her head to the side. She knew the answer when you stayed silent, and she grinned slowly.

“So what if he did? He probably just wants to get as many people there as possible. He doesn’t actually care if I go or not.”

Carmen sighed, shaking her head.

“You know what? Forget about Charlie. Who cares if he wants you to go or not? Mal and I want you to go, and as your roommates and best friends, we matter more,” she explained, glancing over at Mallory for backup.

“Seriously, Y/N, you’ve never gone. I promise it’s always a good time. And if you’re miserable, we can leave early and come back here and binge Queer Eye.”

You sighed, mulling it over in your head. As much as you didn’t want to go, you knew it wasn’t good to spend your entire college career cooped up in your dorm. How could you say you had the true college experience if you didn’t attend at least one frat party?

Flickering your eyes back and forth between Mallory and Carmen, you sighed again and nodded.

“Fine, fine, I’ll go.”

The two girls cheered, Carmen throwing her arms around you while Mallory ran over from her bed to do the same.

“It’ll be fun, Y/N, we promise.”

…

Friday night rolled around, and you, Carmen and Mallory were in your dorm getting ready for Alpha Sig’s party.

You put the final touches on your makeup and straightened out your skirt, glancing over your appearance in the mirror. You weren’t looking to impress anyone, but still wanted to look good for yourself.

“Ready to go?” Carmen asked, flipping her dark hair over shoulder. You and Mallory both nodded, and the three of you headed out the door of your dorm and made your way to the Alpha Sig frat house.

The party was already in full swing, music blaring, and you could practically feel the ground shake with the beat under your feet. You shared a look with your friends, but the look they gave you back forced you to walk inside the frat house with them.

As soon as you opened the door and looked inside, you wanted to run back to your dorm and get to the binge watching Queer Eye session that Mallory brought up, but the girl grabbed your arm and dragged you further into the crowd. There were familiar faces here and there, but there was also a good majority of strangers you had never seen before, and likely would never see again.

“Want to get a drink?” Mallory yelled over the music, turning her head back to look at you and Carmen. You both nodded; maybe a little alcohol would help you get through this thing. She lead you into the kitchen, where the drinks were and thankfully a bit less crowded than the rest of the house, and you each helped yourselves.

You quickly took a sip of your drink, needing it to take effect as soon as possible. You then followed Mallory and Carmen out of the kitchen and into the crowd, and you made sure to stick close by your friends. You eventually found a space for the three of you to stand and chatted while sipping on your drinks.

“See, this isn’t so bad, is it, Y/N?” Carmen asked, smiling at you from behind her cup. You shrugged.

“We’ve hardly been here ten minutes,” you answered blandly. “I haven’t decided yet.”

Mallory rolled her eyes at that, nudging your shoulder.

“I’m keeping my promise. If you’re miserable, we can leave. But at least try to have fun, okay?” She pleaded, and you glanced down. You hated disappointing your friends. You didn’t want to ruin their fun, part of the reason you didn’t want to come in the first place. So, for their sake, you nodded slowly.

“Alright. Sorry.”

The two brushed it off, and you continued to chat with your friends until you felt a hand come down on your shoulder. You jumped, quickly turning to see who it was. You weren’t sure how to react when you saw Charlie Romano, drunkenly grinning at you.

“I knew you would show up!” He slurred. “Can’t believe this is your first Alpha Sig party!”

“I can’t believe it either,” you grumbled under your breath, far too quiet for him to hear over the loud music. You continued in a voice loud enough for him to hear. “These two convinced me.” You nodded in the direction of Mallory and Carmen. Charlie laughed, right into your ear.

“Good job. She seemed to pretty adamant on not coming.” Charlie suddenly gasped. “Hey, you need to meet Hood! Maybe he’ll convince you to come more often.”

You highly doubted that, and you really did not want to meet this boy. You cringed as Charlie called him over, and the tall boy carelessly pushed his way through the crowds to get to his friend. It was clear he had had a few as well, but based on what you had heard about him, you assumed he could hold his alcohol pretty well.

“Hey, Romano,” he greeted, eyes falling on you and your friends. “You having a foursome?”

You scoffed at the comment, staring at him exasperatedly. Why would he ever say such a thing, jump to that conclusion right away? It was disgusting, and you were about ready to smack him for it.

“Really?” You snapped before Charlie could answer, giving him your best glare. “Why would you say that?”

Calum rolled his eyes, taking a swig of his drink before gazing at you.

“It was a joke, princess.”

“Don’t call me-”

“As I was saying,” Charlie interrupted, putting his hands up. “Y/N here is in our Intro to Shakespeare class, and has never been to an Alpha Sig party. And she said she didn’t know you. Wanted her to meet the Keg King himself for her first time.”

Calum snorted and looked you up and down. You had to physically restrain yourself from kicking his ass right then and there. You were probably overreacting about the whole ordeal, but you weren’t in the best mood from being forced to come to a party and now being forced to talk to the one person you didn’t want to see. Calum had done nothing but make bad impressions of himself and you didn’t want to let him think you were going to tolerate his behavior.

Carmen and Mallory watched from their spots, unsure of their part in the conversation. They did know, however, that they would have to step in if you got too upset with the Keg King.

“Clearly,” he grumbled. “You ever leave your dorm besides to go to class, princess?”

Your mouth dropped open, a cold glare gracing your features. He was just being a jerk at that point, and you felt your distaste for him only grow.

“Excuse me?” You gaped, fully prepared to defend yourself. “I’ll have you know, asshole, I-”

“Whoa, whoa,” Charlie blurted out, drunkenly stepping in between you. “Let’s not get out of hand here.”

“Nothing is out of hand, mate,” Calum said, returning your icy glare. “I think we’re done here.”

With that, he turned on his heel and walked off to rejoin the party, leaving the poor drunk Charlie and your friends confused as to what the hell just happened, and you in a worse mood than before.

Watching Queer Eye in your dorm sounded pretty damn good at that moment.

“Geez, that was hell to watch,” Charlie grumbled under his breath, and you weren’t sure if you were supposed to hear him or not. He looked at you and your friends, giving an awkward nod. “I’ll leave you be.”

He walked away with that, leaving you and your friends alone again. You huffed, turning to the girls who unfortunately had to watch everything unfold with a sour frown.

“What a dick,” you sneered, shaking your head.

Your friends were sympathetic. While they knew Calum more than you, having seen him at the parties they attended without you, they weren’t friends with him, and knew he wasn’t always the most pleasant person to be around.

“As fun as he is, he’s never been the nicest guy,” Mallory sighed, patting you on the arm comfortingly. “Hey, let’s get your mind off of him. Let’s dance!”

You were positive you would need at least two more drinks in you in order to be able to dance, but you followed your friends anyway, still thinking about the bitter encounter and the nerve of Calum to act like that. He acted like a child, purposely trying to push your buttons to get you worked up. You scolded yourself for letting his ridiculous rudeness get to you, wishing you had just brushed it off like it was nothing, but another part of you wished you had given him a piece of your mind. You would have preferred to leave at that point and drown in Netflix, but you remembered your promise to try to have fun, and decided to give it a little longer.

You halfheartedly swung your hips to the beat of the music, far too annoyed and far too sober to let yourself go. You continued with your pathetic excuse for dancing until Mallory grabbed your hands, forcing you to dance with her. A smile spread across your face for the first time that night, and you got a little more into the music as Carmen worked her way into the circle as well.

The thought of the rude English major left your mind momentarily, giggling as you danced with your friends. They were the only ones who could make you have fun even when you were in the worst mood.

You, Mallory and Carmen danced through a few more songs, laughing and singing along until you decided to take a break.

“I’ll go grab drinks. You guys want anything?” You asked, adjusting your top. Mallory declined, so you went to grab drinks for you and Carmen.

You weaved your way through the crowd, trying to make it back to the kitchen, when you felt yourself collide with something and liquid seep into your shirt. You gasped and stumbled backward, cringing at the wetness of your clothes.

Your eyes trailed up to see who was responsible for your soiled outfit, and your eyes narrowed when you saw who it was.

Of course, it had to be Calum.

“What the hell?” You exclaimed, a dirty look easily spreading across your face.

“Why don’t you watch where you’re going?” He sneered, returning the dirty look right back to you. Your head reared back, staring up at him incredulously. You were paying attention. It must have been him.

“You ran into me!”

“Like hell I did!”

“God, how drunk are you?”

“Hardly. I’m not a lightweight, unlike some. How many have you had tonight, princess? One? Two? I think you’re struggling to walk straight already.”

“I’m walking perfectly fine. I’m totally sober.”

“Heading back for more though, I see.” He cocked his head towards the kitchen. “Gotta get yourself ready for your foursome with Romano.”

You scoffed, shaking your head at him. No matter whose fault it was, the least he could do was apologize for getting his drink on you, maybe even offer to get you something to dry off with if he was feeling extra kind, but you obviously couldn’t expect that kind of decency from him. Nor could you expect him to drop the foursome joke.

“Whatever,” you grumbled, turning to leave. You didn’t want to deal with any more of his bullshit, and you had a feeling that he didn’t want to see you either.

Rather than continuing to the kitchen, you made your way back to where Mallory and Carmen waited for you, and their eyebrows furrowed when they saw your wet clothes and angered expression.

“What happened?” Carmen asked, reaching for your arm.

“Calum spilled his drink on me. Didn’t apologize or anything, tried to blame me for it.” The two girls sighed, both of them having been wishing for the night to go a lot better than this. “Can we leave, please?”

Mallory nodded quickly, grabbing your hand. She wasn’t one to back down on a promise, especially when you were so distraught.

“Let’s go.”

The three of you made your way to the door, thankfully avoiding seeing Calum again, and started to head back to your dorm room.

On the way back, you could practically feel the annoyance bubbling within you. You were sure you could have learned to like Calum even after hearing the things you did, but the way he spoke to you changed your mind. He couldn’t even show you the least bit of respect.

Unbeknownst to you, Calum was having similar thoughts about you.

He was leaning against the wall, alone, a very unusual move for him at a party. He was always talking to someone, initiating some kind of chaos, but here he was, doing nothing. All because the girl who had never been to an Alpha Sig party killed his party mood.

“What’s up with you, Hood?” Calum heard a familiar voice ask. He looked up to find Charlie staggering towards him, and he shook his head.

“That fucking girl, man,” he sighed, polishing off the drink in his hand. “You friends with her?”

Charlie shook his head, and Calum scoffed bitterly.

“Don’t see how anyone could be. She’s a pain in the ass.”

“I can’t believe you two got off that badly. It’s like you hated each other before you even met,” said Charlie.

“She got all mad at me for making a joke,” Calum grumbled, shoving a hand into his pocket. “Twice. And got pissed when my drink spilled on her even though she clearly ran into me.”

Charlie stayed quiet for a moment. Frankly, he wasn’t on either of your sides. He thought Calum was being rude to you, but he also thought you could have handled the situation better. He only wished he hadn’t been the one to call Calum over and start the whole thing.

“Just forget about it, man,” he finally answered, clapping Calum on the shoulder. “Now quit being a lame ass and come help me get beer pong set up.”

Calum grinned at that, pushing himself off the wall and following Charlie to where he was inevitably going to beat everyone at the game. Again.

You arrived back at your dorm, and the three of you made quick work of finding pajamas to change into so you could get out of your party clothes and watch Queer Eye. As you pulled on your sleep shorts, you couldn’t help the rant that had been brewing up within you since Calum made the foursome comment, slipping out of your mouth.

“Can you guys believe he said any of that shit?” You huffed, reaching for your baggy t-shirt. “He literally had the nerve to look at us, just standing there, and suggest we were having a foursome with Charlie. Honestly, Charlie Romano of all people. And doesn’t understand why that’s rude to say. Then he has to be all like, ‘do you ever leave your dorm besides for class?’ And the way he looked me up and down before he said that! How disrespectful is that? He has no regard for the feelings of others, clearly. Or manners. Even if I did run into him, which I didn’t, mind you, he could at least apologize, because he still spilled on me no matter who ran into who. And calling me princess?”

“It’d be cute if you were dating,” Carmen mumbled under her breath.

“I mean, yeah, but we’re not.” You sat down on the edge of your bunk. “As if I’d ever date that fuck face anyway.”

Mallory sat down next to you and wrapped her arms around your shoulders comfortingly.

“I know he’s an ass, babe, but you can’t let him get you so down. He’s not worth it.”

“Yeah, girl, just avoid him,” Carmen added, sitting on the other side of you.

“But I have Intro to Shakespeare from him. I have to see him there.”

“Doesn’t mean you have to talk to him,” Carmen suggested. “Don’t even look at him. Don’t give him the time of day.”

You nodded, wrapping an arm around each of your friends and pulling them closer to you.

“I love you guys,” you mumbled, a small grin on your face.

“Love you too, Y/N.”

With that, you grabbed your laptop and opened up Netflix, the three of you cuddling up for some much needed watching of Queer Eye.

…

Monday morning. Time for Intro to Shakespeare.

Carmen and Mallory both had class earlier in the morning, so you had the dorm to yourself for the morning. You got yourself ready for the day and gathered your belongings before you made your way to class.

As you walked, your mind wandered back to the certain English major that you’d be seeing, assuming he showed up. You hoped his intentions would be similar to yours; avoid entirely. If you could go the whole rest of the semester without saying another word to him, you wouldn’t complain. You could only hope and pray that that was possible.

You breezed into the classroom and your eyes couldn’t help but travel to the corner where Calum usually sat. He wasn’t there, at least not yet. You couldn’t help the obnoxiously bitter thought of him possibly being too hungover to show up crossing your mind.

Calum, Charlie and the girl whose name you still didn’t know eventually walked in together, all three pairs of eyes falling on you as they came in. It was clear that they had been talking about you, otherwise they wouldn’t have all looked at you at once, and you had a gut feeling that it was Calum who made you the topic of conversation. If that was true, you were positive he wasn’t saying anything good. He couldn’t be. A part of you wanted to know what they had been saying, but the more logical part of you knew that that would only make things worse for you.

Calum’s eyes narrowed at you for a moment before he sped up and walked to his seat, leaving behind Charlie and the girl. You easily returned the glare, even though he had walked away too fast to see it. He seemed to be on the same page as you in terms of avoiding each other for now, but just seeing him pissed you off. Maybe it was childish of both of you to fall into disliking each other so quickly without really getting to know each other, but there was just something about him that made your blood boil.

One thing you couldn’t deny no matter how awful his personality was, was his good looks. He was hot, and you scolded yourself for thinking so. It was frankly unfortunate that he had to act like such an asshole; it took his attractiveness down quite a few notches.

Charlie and the girl took their seats behind you. You avoided looking at them as they walked by. Neither of them had been rude to you like Calum had, but you knew a conversation with them would inevitably contain Calum as a topic, and you didn’t want to think or talk about him at all. He put you in far too bad of a mood.

You suddenly felt a tap on your shoulder and you sighed, knowing it was Charlie. Deciding to not ignore him, you turned around. The look on his face almost seemed apologetic, as if he was about to deliver you bad news.

“Hey Y/N,” he mumbled, glancing at the girl for a moment before returning his gaze back to you. “Emmy and I just wanted to say sorry. For the party.”

“Yeah,” the girl, who you now knew was named Emmy, piped in. “We feel partially responsible for making you go, and I heard about what happened with you and Cal.”

There was something about how she said “I heard” rather than specifying who told her rubbed you the wrong way. Had it been Charlie? Or Calum himself? Or another partygoer that had witnessed the ordeal? You figured you could trust Charlie enough to tell her the truth about your initial introduction, if he even remembered it, considering how drunk he was. He hadn’t seen the spilled drink occurrence, but you would be shocked if Calum hadn’t told him about it. Likely very shortly after it happened. Likely a dramaticized version that portrayed you as the bad guy, too. You knew you were probably overreacting, but it appeared that when it came to Calum, something was always off with you.

“I didn’t think you guys would butt heads like that so fast. I just feel bad, I guess. Alpha Sig parties are supposed to be fun and your night got spoiled,” Charlie continued. You sighed and shook your head.

“Don’t worry about it, it’s not your fault,” you replied. Your eyes flickered to Calum for a brief moment. “It’s all on him.” Charlie shrugged.

“I guess.”

The urge to ask Charlie and Emmy if Calum had said anything about you to them came back. You knew you would likely end up just being offended, but you struggled to ignore the pure curiosity and need to know every detail.

“Hey, guys, I was-”

“Good morning, class!”

You were interrupted by Mr. Nolan’s voice, and you huffed as you turned back around to face the front. You would just have to wait until after class to ask, unless you managed to convince yourself to not ask at all within the span of one Shakespeare class.

“We’re going to get started on our first novel study of the semester. We’ll be reading A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Has anyone read that before?”

Some hands around the room went up, and you figured most people who had read it were forced to read it in high school English class, while others were inevitably just fans of the classics.

You watched Mr. Nolan’s eyes scan the room, getting an idea of who would have knowledge on the book and who wouldn’t, before proceeding on with the lesson.

The professor seemed to blab on and on about the background of the book and why it’s one of his favorite Shakespeare works. You tuned in on the important details, but decided not to bother with the story of how Mr. Nolan fell in love with Shakespeare’s works when he read the book in high school.

At the end of class, Mr. Nolan announced that there would be a discussion on the book the following week, and encouraged everyone to keep up with the reading in order to be prepared. With that, class ended, and you packed up your belongings.

“Hey, Y/N,” you heard a voice behind you say, and you turned to see Charlie standing there with his backpack slung over one shoulder. “Were you about to ask us something before class started?”

You bit your lip and slowly let it slip out from between your teeth, rethinking your want to know what he said. Frankly, neither decision seemed appealing. You didn’t want to know, but you felt like you needed to. Like it was important somehow.

“No,” you sighed, deciding to spare yourself the hurt. “Nevermind. I’ll see you guys Wednesday.”

…

It was the day of the discussion, and you felt very prepared. You kept up with the reading and annotated closely, and you had plenty of pieces of evidence and arguments ready to share. Mr. Nolan had left the discussion pretty open for students to discuss whatever topics and questions they could come up with, and you had a few things in mind to bring up.

You walked into class to find the desks had already been arranged into a circle for the discussion, and you took a seat that was placed fairly close to where you normally sat. You reached into your backpack for you book and your notes and placed them on your desk.

More people filed into the room and took seats in the circle, conversations ranging from “I’m so fucked, I haven’t read a single page” to “I have more evidence than I know what to do with.”

Charlie, Emmy and Calum eventually sauntered in, thankfully paying no mind to you as they took seats on the opposite side of the circle. The three of them were all laughing at something when Calum’s eyes landed on you, and suddenly nothing was funny anymore. The smile faded from his face and the scowl that he always seemed to wear around you made an appearance.

His situation was similar to yours. The mere thought of you made him want to roll his eyes, and he planned on avoiding you just like you planned on avoiding him.

“Good morning, everyone. We’re going to get right into the discussion today so we can use all of our time.”

Mr. Nolan sat down at his desk and arranged a few things before looking back up at the class.

“Whoever would like to start.”

A girl immediately chimed in, going on about the claim she crafted and the evidence she had to support it. The discussion continued and you piped in when you could.

“What do you think Shakespeare is trying to say about love?” Someone asked, a question for anyone to answer. Calum decided to take that one.

“I think the book is a satire on love,” he said, glancing at his open notebook. “Even if all the characters end up with the person they’re supposed to love, the process of getting to that point is really difficult with so many mishaps, and it makes you think of all that is really worth it for love. It even requires a love potion to make them fall in love with each other, so you can’t really even say that it’s true love if it’s forced. So I think Shakespeare uses the whole bouncing around of love between the characters and the issues that arise when trying to get everyone in the right spot in the novel, which is a comedy, to criticize the notion of love and how difficult it is to achieve.”

You may have planned on avoiding Calum in every way possible, but the overwhelming need to put your two cents in on his comment overpowered your promise to yourself.

“I don’t see it that way.” Calum’s narrowed eyes landed on you, mouth falling open slightly as if he was shocked that you dared contradict him. “I get what you’re saying, but I see it more as a celebration of love rather than a criticism of it. It’s true that getting to the point of everyone being in love with the right person was difficult, but the fact that they ended up with the right person in the end is enough to call it a celebration. They ended up happy in the end, so I would say it’s worth it. There’s three marriages, and Oberon and Titania even reconcile. Love conquers all, really.”

“No. That’s too positive of an outlook, considering it’s Shakespeare. I wouldn’t call spending a whole night trying to force people to love each other worth it. Plus, Demetrius was still under the spell of the love potion by the end of the book. Helena gets her true happy ending since they used to be engaged and she loved him the whole time, but Demetrius was supposed to marry Hermia. He does love Helena in theory, but it’s forced. It’s a spell. I would say Lysander and Hermia are really the only ones who get a happy ending,” Calum argued back. If you wanted a debate, you were going to get a debate. He wasn’t one to back down, and he fully intended on standing his ground.

“The whole theme of the book is ‘the course of true love never did run smooth.’ That-”

“Exactly,” Calum cut you off with a cold glare. A part of you wanted to yell at him for interrupting you, while another part wanted to just throw your book across the room at him. He was right back to exhibiting the same rudeness to you that he had at the party. You huffed and held your tongue, remembering Mr. Nolan was watching. “That quote literally says that love is disastrous. It’s clear that Shakespeare is criticizing love when he says it doesn’t run smooth.”

“That is not what it means!” You snapped, voice a bit louder than you had intended it to be. “It simply means that the journey to get there is rough. It doesn’t say love is disastrous at all. You need to look at how it ended for them. And even if Demetrius was still under the spell, that doesn’t mean it’s not true love. It felt like true love to him.”

The class all looked shocked yet intrigued, unsure if they should step in. Mr. Nolan listened carefully but still prepared to end it if need be. He had seen plenty of arguments break out in his time as a teacher, so he knew when to step in.

“Love should come naturally. People should simply love who they’re meant to love and not have a potion messing with it. It’s not true love even if it feels like it to Demetrius. And his and Helena’s relationship ended, and he loved Hermia. She just couldn’t let him go. He didn’t want to be with her. Not to mention she told Hermia and Lysander’s secret to him.”

Your blood was boiling and you felt like you could argue with him all day. You had to admit he was making some valid points, but you refused to admit defeat. You refused to step down against Calum Hood, of all people. You knew you would never hear the end of it if you let the argument go.

“But Hermia didn’t love Demetrius. She loved Lysander, and Lysander loved her. Hermia and Demetrius were never meant to be. And we don’t know the details of Demetrius and Helena’s past relationship. You don’t know if they were actually meant to be, if they have true love between them.”

“And what do you know about true love, princess?”

Your mouth dropped open, eyes narrowing at him even further. You could cut the tension in the room with a knife. To be rude to you was one thing, but to be rude to you in front of your entire class and teacher was another thing. Before, you had stuck to the term “dislike” when it came to how you felt about him, but now you were quickly slipping into using the term “hate.”

You hated him.

Before you could snap back with a snarky comment, Mr. Nolan spoke up.

“Alright,” he announced, standing up from his desk. “That’s all the time we have for today, ladies and gentlemen. You’re free to go. I’ll see you all next week.”

You glared at Calum for another moment before roughly shoving your things into your backpack. You were pissed. You were pissed that he was such an asshole and you were pissed that he had the nerve to speak to you like that in front of so many people.

You hated him.

And God, he hated you too.

His eyes burned holes into the back of your head as you stormed out of the classroom. You drove him crazy to no end. The fact that you felt the need to start a debate with him even though it clearly wasn’t going to end well made him think you were trying to pick a fight, to push his buttons. And he didn’t have the time or energy for that.

“Hey, Cal-“ Charlie began, only to have his friend cut him off.

“Don’t start, Romano. I’m not in the mood,” Calum grumbled, pushing himself out of his seat and swinging his backpack over his shoulder. He didn’t wait for Charlie and Emmy like he normally would. He took off out of the building towards his car and drove right back to his apartment off campus, blasting the music loud enough to drown out his own thoughts.

He hated you.

…

Mallory and Carmen got another earful about Calum as soon as you entered the dorm room after your argument in class. Being your best friends, they could sense you weren’t in a good mood the second you opened the door. And lately, the main thing putting you in bad moods was Calum.

They started disliking him too based on the stories you told about him, and based on their own experiences with him. It was the same deal with Calum’s friends; he ranted to them about the annoying girl in his Shakespeare class, and they only egged him on by agreeing.

Weeks had passed since the argument, and things had been pretty low key between the two of you. There were often cold glares and a good amount of snarky comments towards each other in class or in passing, but there hadn’t been a big ordeal like the party or the discussion. You wanted to keep it that way.

It was now a Thursday evening, and you were sat in your dorm room with your roommates, each of you busy working on assignments. The only sounds filling the room were that of the clicking of keyboards and the soft piano music that Mallory had turned on for better concentration. Eventually, said girl decided to make conversation.

“You guys know what tomorrow is, right?” Mallory asked, gently closing her laptop.

“Absolutely,” Carmen replied with a smirk. The two girls looked over at you expectantly, and you returned their gazes with furrowed eyebrows.

“No…” you trailed off, feeling lost. They always seemed to be the ones to keep you up to date on important happenings. Carmen scoffed at your lack of knowledge.

“Come on, Alpha Sig is throwing another party!” She informed you, and you rolled your eyes.

“Do you really think I’ll go to another Alpha Sig party after what happened at the last one? And after everything that’s happened since then? No way you’re convincing me to go this time.”

Carmen and Mallory shared a look. They couldn’t expect you to want to go to the party if Calum was inevitably going to be there, but they didn’t want to let one enemy ruin your college party experience. So, they came up with a plan.

“What if-”

“No, Mal. I don’t want to go to any party that Calum is going to be at. I don’t want to see him any more than I’m forced to,” you cut her off, shaking your head as you continued to work on your assignment.

“Please just hear us out, Y/N,” Carmen sighed, climbing down for her bunk above you. “We have a gameplan for you to still have fun at this party with us even though Calum is going to be there.”

It was your turn to sigh, shutting your laptop as your eyes flickered between your friends.

“Fine. What’s the plan?”

“We’re going to help you avoid him. We’ll stick by you the whole time, and keep an eye out for him while we have fun. If we see him, we go to another room. That boy isn’t going to lay eyes on you, let alone talk to you,” Mallory explained from her bunk. She looked at you expectantly.

“Doesn’t really seem like much of a detailed plan,” you mumbled, resting your chin on your hand. You really did appreciate their efforts to get you to have fun, but you weren’t sure a promise to help you avoid Calum was enough to get you to go. Carmen huffed.

“I mean, yeah, but it’s better than nothing, right? I’m sure you had fun at the last party when Calum wasn’t around. If we make sure he’s not around, then you’ll have fun. We promise,” she rambled.

“And it’s the same promise as last time. If you’re miserable, we leave,” Mallory added.

You sighed, looking at the two girls who were both giving you their best puppy dog eyes. You always struggled to say no to those, and you really hated to disappoint them.

“Alright, alright, I’ll go. But if Calum so much as glares at me, we’re out of there.”

…

The next day, as you slipped on a dress, you began to question if going to a party that Calum Hood was going to be at was worth partying with your friends.

You trusted them, and you knew they would follow through with their promise to help you avoid him and leave with you if it turned out to be another disaster. But Calum’s mere presence made your skin crawl, those stupid brown eyes that would kill you if looks could kill.

You straightened out your dress and sighed. As much as you didn’t want to see him, you had to at least try for Carmen and Mallory.

“You guys ready? The party started a little while ago,” Mallory called out, setting down her tube of lipstick and standing up. You resisted the urge to say “as I’ll ever be” and nodded, standing up to head to the Alpha Sig house.

Much like last time, the music was loud and there were people standing outside, already drunk. Not like you expected anything less. The three of you made your way to the door and walked in, and you had to do a double take when you saw the crowd.

The kick off party at the beginning of the year was supposed to be the best, but this seemed to be much more crowded than that had been. You had never heard anything about this party until Carmen and Mallory brought it up. Why was it so crowded? You sighed, glancing over at your friends.

“Stay together, let’s go get drinks,” Carmen called over the music, and you all started to weave your way through the crowd to find the kitchen.

You tried to keep up with them, you really did, but drunk frat boys stumbling through cut you off from them. You cursed under your breath, frantically searching for them but it was to no avail. It was far too crowded to just catch up. You pulled out your phone to text them, only to find you had no service.

“Fuck,” you grumbled, looking up again to see if you could see them. Nowhere in sight.

Calling out to them was pointless; it was too loud for them to hear and you would only make yourself look like an idiot. You huffed, continuing to walk through the crowd towards the kitchen, hoping that they were still heading in that direction.

You froze as soon as you walked into the kitchen.

It wasn’t Carmen and Mallory in there.

It was Calum, making himself a drink.

Just your luck.

Calum saw movement out of the corner of his eye and looked up, rolling his eyes upon seeing you.

“Can’t believe you came,” he commented blandly as he returned his gaze to his drink. “Didn’t think you were capable of leaving your dorm this much.” A smirk spread across his face as he finished making the drink and looked back to you. “Or perhaps you’ve come to apologize for calling me an asshole and running into me at the kickoff party. Or to admit that A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a satire on love.”

You wanted to walk out and ignore him, as much as his comments annoyed you, but you stood your ground. You didn’t want to appear weak in front of him. You scoffed and walked past him to get your own drink. There was a certain tension in the room, one that you felt when you argued in class before. That was always the vibe when you were in the same room; tense.

“Well, I have nothing to apologize for, considering you are an asshole and you’re the one who ran into me. Nor is the book a satire on love. I came to have fun,” you replied coolly, quickly fixing a drink for yourself before looking at Calum with a shrug. “So when you’re ready to apologize, or admit that the book is a celebration of love, come find me. Otherwise, stay away from me.”

With that, you brushed past him and walked out of the kitchen, feeling his eyes like daggers on your back. You could practically feel the tension lift as you got a distance away from him. You weren’t entirely sure what the tension was, but it made you want to scream.

You let out a deep breath as you reached for your phone again. Still no service.

You weren’t going to leave the party just because you lost your friends. You refused to do so. If you couldn’t find Carmen and Mallory, there had to be other people there that you knew. Maybe even Charlie would be cool if you hung around by him, as long as Calum wasn’t with him.

You wandered around the party for a bit, slowly nursing your drink as your eyes scanned the crowd for anyone you knew. Just as you spotted your friend from your freshman year math class, you heard a sickeningly familiar voice call your name.

You weren’t sure why he continued to talk to you. You had avoided each other in past weeks, but now he continued to speak to you. It seemed like he wanted to rile you up, to push your buttons and make you angry by poking fun at you.

Two could play at that game.

“Come to apologize? Or admit defeat?” You sassed as you turned to face the smirking boy, crossing your arms over your chest. A smirk spread across your own face as he rolled his eyes at your reply.

“Came to see if you wanted to play beer pong,” he quipped, then tilted his head to the side. “You do know what that is, don’t you?”

It was your turn to roll your eyes. You stared at him, his eyes boring into yours. You wanted to appear bigger, but those dark eyes of his staring you down made you feel weak. You wanted nothing more than to make a comeback, but not a single word came out of your mouth. It was such a simple little jab, yet all of the sudden you were at a loss for words. Just seconds before you felt like you had the upper hand, but one look into those cold eyes had you reeling. The air was thick with tension that gave you that strange feeling again as he waited for you to respond, and he chuckled darkly when he realized you had nothing.

“Didn’t think so,” was all he muttered, turning on his heel and walking off.

You huffed, fighting the part of you that wanted to follow him and say something, anything, just to get back at him. But you had nothing to say.

You hated it.

You hated him.

There was still no sign of Carmen and Mallory as the night went on, just occasional traces of your other friends. The only person you continuously saw was the one person you didn’t want to see. Calum.

You couldn’t pass by each other without one of you making a jab at the other. Him commenting on how you were alone, you commenting on how many drinks he had consumed. There were times where you were at a loss for words again, but there were also times where you had him tongue tied. Times where you could smirk proudly and all he could do was glare at you, having nothing to say. It was like a battle to outdo each other.

No matter who was on top, you could feel the tension building up between you. Where you couldn’t breathe and you felt like making petty insults wasn’t enough.

Until it burst.

You ran into him for what felt like the millionth time that night, and you had both had just about enough of seeing each other, and neither of you were sure you could take one more obnoxious comment.

“I’m starting to think you’re following me around,” you sneered, fed up. His eyebrows were drawn, eyes narrowed in a menacing squint.

“Really? I was just about to say the same thing to you, princess.”

Princess. That fucking nickname that drove you up the wall. He knew it got under your skin and he used it to his advantage. You took a small step closer to him, face contorted.

“Don’t call me princess,” you hissed, feeling your entire body still with tension.

“What are you gonna do about it?” He spat bitterly in return. He paused a moment before spewing out the next word like acid. “Princess.”

Your mouth twitched. He drove you crazy and you couldn’t even pinpoint how. He made you feel like you were suffocating and you could feel your muscles burn with the tension that hung thick between you two.

He made you so angry yet so speechless.

“You are an asshole,” you snapped, yet your voice was soft. “A fucking asshole.”

He stared at you. You stared at him. You waited for him to bite back with a snide comment but it never came. Instead he surprised you, he surprised you with something that you had never thought about happening.

He grabbed your face and kissed you.

The moment his lips touched yours you felt the fire within you get hotter. It felt as if there was a cup being filled since the moment you met and now it finally spilled over the top.

That first kiss was short yet intoxicating, and you simultaneously pulled away. Both of you were breathless as if you had been at it for hours, chests heaving as your eyes met once again.

You didn’t know what you were feeling. You didn’t know how you were supposed to feel. Calum Hood of all people just kissed you, and you felt a need grow within you that you hadn’t felt before.

His large hands were still holding your face as both of you tried to think of something to say. You were speechless again, but not in the same way you had been before. Instead of being speechless in anger, you were speechless in pure shock.

“What the hell was that?” Was what finally came out of your mouth. Your voice was firm, and your chest continued to heave. He took a deep breath before answering.

“The tension is killing me,” he sighed, shaking his head a bit. You said nothing. You felt the same way and he knew it.

“Do you want this?” Came Calum’s straightforward response to your silence. His eyes were locked on yours, an even darker shade of brown than normal. There was an energy crackling around him that matched yours, desperate and ready to blow.

You knew what he was asking about. The tension that always surrounded you, you knew what is was now, and you couldn’t take another second of it.

Instead of responding verbally, you grabbed the back of his head and smashed his lips back on yours. His lips never left yours as he grabbed your waist and dragged you towards the empty bathroom. He had you pressed up against the door as soon as it was shut, lips moving hungrily against each other.

His knee found its way between your legs as you carded your fingers into his curls. The sounds of your lips smacking together mixed with heavy breathing filled the small space, and you could feel another tension growing that could only be broken by one thing.

You needed him.

You started to buck your hips forward slightly to create some friction, and Calum chuckled against your lips.

“Needy, huh?”

Despite the tension between you, you still hated each other, and that came with the snarky comments that you had been saying before.

If anything, it made you want him more.

“Shut up and fuck me,” you mumbled against his lips, sighing in satisfaction when you felt his hands lift up your dress to bunch at your waist. His lips moved from yours to your neck, making your mouth fall open in pleasure.

“As you wish, princess.”

You didn’t even care to tell him off for the nickname or his patronizing tone. Not when you needed him this bad.

Calum’s hands took purchase on your hips and lead you over to the sink, hoisting you up to sit on the edge. His lips continued to work on your neck as your fingers reached for his jeans, a whimper escaping your lips as he nipped at your skin. As your fingertips gently trailed over his length, you could feel he was already getting hard, and the sensation elicited a groan from his plump lips against your skin.

The sound was like music to your ears, and you didn’t want to wait anymore. You worked the button and zipper of his jeans, pulling them and his boxers down just past his ass. He groaned again at the release, quickly reaching down into his pocket for a condom and slipping it on before moving his hand from your waist to barely ghost over your clothed yet soaked center with his fingers. You gasped, your own hands finding his shoulders.

“You ready for me?” He mused, pushing your panties to the side. He pulled away from your neck, looking at you with lustful eyes. You paused; not in hesitation, because there was no doubt in your mind that you wanted him. You simply had another thought.

“Did you lock the door?”

He groaned, rolling his eyes.

“God, you’re annoying,” he huffed, squeezing your hips. “Are you ready or not?”

You nodded quickly, unsure that you could wait another second.

With that, he slowly pushed himself into you, both of you moaning out at the feeling. You had never thought about having sex with Calum, let alone in the bathroom at a frat party, yet somehow you felt like you had been waiting for this for a long time. Like your mind had been clouded and now you were finally being freed, and it felt so, so good.

Calum started off with a slow pace, letting you get accustomed to him. You appreciated the gesture, but you didn’t need it. You needed him to fuck you good.

“Come on, faster,” you rushed, dropping your head into the crook of his neck. You would have been a little more polite had it been anyone else, but you and Calum weren’t ones for kindness around each other.

He grumbled something incoherent under his breath but obliged to your commands, picking up the speed of his hips. You moaned out, relishing in the feeling.

Neither of you were going to last long, but it didn’t matter. You were chasing release, not prolonging the feeling, no matter how good it was.

His hips continued to snap into yours roughly, the sinful sounds of skin on skin and obscene moans filling your ears. His hand came down to rub your clit, and your hips bucked forward at the feeling.

“I-I’m gonna cum,” you stuttered out, nails digging into his shoulders. You were overwhelmed with pleasure, relying on him to keep yourself upright. His hips went faster at your words and the perfectly painful feeling of your nails in his shoulders. You were both desperate for release, and he was making quick to get you there.

“Me too,” he growled, speeding up his actions on your clit. You clung onto him tighter, his name tumbling from your lips like a prayer. It wasn’t long before your orgasm washed over you, clenching around him as you gasped for air. Calum was close behind, chasing his own release desperately.

“I hate you,” he groaned as he spilled his load into the condom. “God, I fucking hate you.”

He slowed down the movements of his hips as he rode out your orgasms, coming down from your highs.

After you were both able to catch your breath, he slowly pulled out of you and slipped the condom off, tying it off and tossing it into the trash.

You weren’t sure what to do. You just fucked a guy you hated in a bathroom at a party. No one ever taught you what was supposed to come after that. Leave without a word and pretend like it never happened? Talk to each other? Nothing sounded appealing to you. A part of you just wished you could disappear back into the comfort of your dorm and think about what the hell you just did.

You felt like you should regret it, but you didn’t. Not one bit.

You slowly hopped down from the sink and adjusted your clothes back into place. You looked over at Calum, who was just finishing zipping up his pants. He glanced at you only for a moment before looking down, running his hand through his curls you that had messed up with your own fingers. He clearly was at a loss for what to do as well.

“Well, uh...I’ll see you Monday,” he mumbled after a moment, giving you a brief head nod before heading towards the door. As his hand reached for the doorknob, he glanced back at you, as if checking if you were going to follow him.

You didn’t move from your spot in the middle of the bathroom.

He sighed, pulling open the door and walking back into the party. He shut the door behind him, leaving you with your thoughts.

You took a deep breath, stepping towards the mirror to check your appearance. Your lips were a bit swollen from making out, but nothing anyone would notice. You hoped, at least.

You really did just fuck him.

What did that mean for the two of you? You surely didn’t suddenly like him now that you had fucked him, and you were sure he felt the same. But you also didn’t like the idea of having sex and never speaking about it again.

He made your head spin.

You waited another minute before exiting the bathroom, eyes bouncing around the crowd. You wanted to leave, leave and think, but you needed to find your friends first.

“Y/N!”

It was Mallory. Thank God.

“Where the hell have you been? We’ve been looking for you all night!” She exclaimed, looking you up and down. They both looked concerned and confused.

“I’ve been around,” you sighed, cocking your head towards the door. “Can we get out of here?”

“Yeah, yeah, totally,” Carmen mumbled, eyebrows furrowing. She searched your face, trying to read your expression. “You okay?”

“I’ll tell you on the way.”

…

Carmen and Mallory hardly knew what to say to you when you told them what you did.

It was understandable that they were shocked. You fucked the guy that you constantly complained about, the guy that you claimed you hated more than anyone else on the earth. They couldn’t understand your reasoning. Not that you had any sound reasoning for them to understand.

It just felt right. It felt like it was bound to happen.

It was now Monday morning. Intro to Shakespeare. And that meant Calum.

You considered ditching so you wouldn’t have to see him. Missing one day wouldn’t kill your grade, right? But you couldn’t ditch everyday, you would have to show up at some point, and that meant you had to see Calum at some point. He was unavoidable.

You groaned and dragged yourself out of bed to get ready. You couldn’t help the sense of dread that filled you as you got dressed.

You didn’t regret it, but you didn’t want to see him.

When you got to class, you kept your head down as the rest of the students filed in. You pretended to look at your phone, scrolling through Instagram without actually looking at any of the posts in your feed.

Calum looked straight ahead as he walked into the room. He knew you would be sitting in your spot, and he was feeling similarly to you. He didn’t regret it, but he was confused. He still felt hate for you when he thought about you, but did sex have to change anything?

You were thankful when class started. You could focus in on the lesson and not the events of Friday night, or the boy sitting in the corner.

“We’re going to focus a bit on Shakespearean history and certain aspects about the time period, himself, and his life and career. before we move onto our next book,” Mr. Nolan explained. “This will involve a project. You’ll each be assigned a partner, and each partnership will receive a specific topic to research. It can be any medium you feel is best fit for your topic. I will assign you your partners and topics towards the end of class, and you’ll have a few minutes to meet up and talk then.”

You sighed. Assigned partners were never good. You could only hope you got someone who actually did work.

Mr. Nolan then proceeded to go over the possible topics, giving a brief background on each one. The lesson went by fast, and before you knew it, he was reading off the partnerships.

“Y/N Y/L/N and Calum Hood, you will be focusing on Shakespeare’s sonnets. You may choose any specific aspect of the sonnets you would like.”

Your heart stopped.

When Mr. Nolan said he would be assigning partners, the thought of being paired up with Calum hadn’t even crossed your mind.

You could feel his eyes on you, but you didn’t dare look back at him. You were sure he was glaring at you, like he usually was, and you didn’t want to see it.

You didn’t hear any of the rest of the partnerships. All your brain could focus on was the fact that you had to do a project with Calum, and that meant you had to meet up with him outside of class and talk to him and be somewhat close to him.

Sex aside, the thought of that made you want to pull your hair out.

“Go ahead and find your partner. I recommend exchanging phone numbers and working out a time and place to get started, while you’re together. Keep in mind you will not be getting time in class to work on this,” Mr. Nolan announced. With that, people got up and found their partners, but you didn’t move. You stayed right in your seat, staring at a single spot on your desk that suddenly seemed very interesting.

What the hell were you going to do?

You could talk to Mr. Nolan and ask him to give you a new partner. Maybe he would understand if you explained that you and Calum weren’t on good terms. But then again, he saw your argument during the discussion. Had he assigned you to be together on purpose?

Your thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a backpack being roughly dropped on the floor and a body landing in the empty desk next to you.

You didn’t have to look to know who it was.

“Look, I know this sucks and I know things are weird but we have to get over our differences for now and do this project and we have to do it well. I need a good grade.”

You forced yourself to look up at him. His face was firm, yet not hateful. He wasn’t glaring at you like he normally did, nor was there lust clouding his eyes like on Friday night. He simply looked serious, eyebrows just barely drawn together.

“I know. But we have to agree to disagree on things and compromise. If we fight and try to push each other's buttons the whole time, nothing is ever going to get done,” you replied with a blank tone of voice. You tried to keep your expression neutral, and you could only hope that you were succeeding.

“Remember that goes both ways, princess.”

You scoffed, leaning back slightly in your chair. You had just said you shouldn’t push each other’s buttons, yet here he was doing just that.

You could feel that tension you felt before start to slowly arise again, and you forced yourself to ignore it.

Sex didn’t make you not hate each other.

“I know,” you sighed, deciding not to call him out and make a scene in front of the whole class. Again. “And stop with the nickname, it’s annoying.”

Calum rolled his eyes, reaching into the pocket of his joggers and pulling out his phone. He opened it and tapped the screen a few times before holding it out to you.

“Whatever. Just put your number in.”

You grabbed the device from him and punched in your phone number, then handing it back to him. He shoved it back into his pocket before looking at you.

“Want to meet at the twenty-four hour library Thursday night? We can figure out what aspect of sonnets we want to do.”

“Yeah, sure. Eight?”

“Eight sounds good.”

And then, class ended.

…

You thought Carmen and Mallory were going to have a heart attack when you told them you and Calum were partnered on a project and you were now going to meet him at the library to work on it.

“Do you want one of us to come with you? Sit at a table nearby and you know...keep watch,” Mallory suggested, shrugging her shoulders. You sighed and shook your head, slinging your backpack over your shoulders.

“No, you don’t have to do that. Even if we end up arguing, I can handle myself.”

“But you fucked-”

“Don’t worry about that,” you cut off Carmen. “I’m going to try to bring it up to him if I get the chance. See what he says.”

The two girls both sighed, glancing at each other for a moment before looking back at you, heading towards the door.

“Just don’t do anything stupid, okay?”

“I won’t, I promise. I’ll see you guys later.”

“Text when you’re on your way back!”

With that, you shut the door behind you and headed towards the library.

Your mind raced on the way there. You wanted to be optimistic about working with him, but you were finding it hard. You hated him and you had hate sex with him. It made things a little complicated, at least in your mind.

Just as you stepped into the highly air conditioned, empty library, you felt your phone vibrate in your pocket. You pulled it out to see a text from Calum.

Calum: I’m here. Back right corner

You turned in that direction to find Calum sitting at a table far into the corner, looking down at his phone. Of course, he chose the most secluded possible space.

He looked up at the sound of you setting your backpack down on one of the chairs. He sighed and stuck his phone in his pocket.

“So did you have any ideas on what we could research?” He asked quickly.

Not even a greeting. Jumped right into the work. You would have made a comment about him being unfriendly, but you remembered what you told him on Monday. No fighting. No pushing each other’s buttons. You kept it to yourself.

“I don’t know. I have a few ideas,” you sighed as you sat in the chair next to your backpack. “He wrote so many it’s hard to just pick one thing to focus on and do a whole project about.”

“Well, what are the ideas?”

His tone was snarky and you didn’t appreciate it. You told yourself you were going to be patient and start a fight, but him being him, he was quick to get on your nerves. You reminded yourself again of your promise to yourself, and ignored it.

“We could research the theme of love, pretty much all of them have it. Or either the Fair Youth or the Dark Lady.”

Calum hummed, glancing over something that had been scribbled in his notebook.

“The Fair Youth or Dark Lady are good ideas. All mine are kind of obscure, they would be hard to research. Want to combine them, do a bit of both?”

“Yeah, sure.”

That’s one thing you agreed on. Off to a good start, but you weren’t sure how long that would last.

“What do you know about them?”

You both rattled off the basic facts that you had learned before, the theories surrounding them and the supposed relationship between them and the speaker. You both pretty much knew all the same information, so it left a lot to research.

You managed to figure out what else you needed to learn and assign each person what they should do some preliminary research on. You were still yet to argue, and you wanted to keep it that way.

Then, it fell silent as you both typed away on your computers, learning all about the mysterious people in the speaker’s life. You took careful notes on all the information you found and made sure to keep track of the sources you used.

Unfortunately, no fighting didn’t last very long.

You weren’t entirely sure how it started. First he asked what you had found, and you told him. Before you knew it, you were yelling, disrupting the quiet of the library late at night. You quickly forgot what you were fighting about, but the yelling never stopped.

“Fuck you!” You hollered, pointing a stern finger at him. “Fuck you, Calum!”

The tension was back in full force, and you could feel your body practically tremble with it.

The last time you felt it, you had sex, and frankly, it felt relieving.

Maybe you just needed it again.

In the midst of Calum laying down a scathing insult to your intelligence, you suddenly rose from your seat and made his lap your seat. You swung a leg on each side of his hips to straddle him and grabbed his face to kiss him, much like he had done to you at the party. You weren’t thinking but it didn’t feel like you had to. It was always a build up every time you were together, and it was only a matter of time before one of you cracked. Last time it was him, now it was you.

He didn’t question it. He didn’t pull away. His hands flew to your ass and ground you down on him, satisfied groans leaving both of your lips, lost in each others mouths.

All the feelings from the party were coming back to you. Hot, desperate. Knowing it was wrong but feeling so right.

“You okay with this?” Calum asked breathlessly as his fingers frantically worked the button of your jeans. “Doing it here?”

The thought of doing it in public turned you on more than you cared to admit, the thrill of getting caught, but you didn’t say that to him. You only nodded, wishing he would just get your pants off and fuck you already.

“Please,” you whispered, and that was all he needed to hear. He pushed your supplies away and had you bent over the table in seconds, giving you exactly what you both wanted.

…

You didn’t expect him to offer to walk you home, but you couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed when he didn’t. It would have been the gentlemanly thing to do.

After you finished your “shenanigans,” you silently fixed your clothing and awkwardly agreed that that was enough work for the night, leaving the library without another word.

As soon as you arrived back to your dorm, Carmen and Mallory were waiting for you, just as you suspected. They didn’t need to ask how it went when they saw your swollen lips and hair messed up from sex.

“Really? You fucked him again?” Carmen exclaimed, throwing her hands up for emphasis.

“Hello to you, too,” you grumbled, dropping your backpack on the floor.

“Y/N,” Mallory sighed, standing up from her bed. “I thought you were going to talk to him about the sex thing? Not do it again?”

It was your turn to sigh, shrugging your shoulders. They were right. It was stupid of you to fuck a guy you hated and not talk about it. But it didn’t feel like you were doing the wrong. When the tension was so palpable, you couldn’t help it.

“I know, I know. I was going to, really, but then we started arguing again and it just...happened,” you explained, kicking your shoes off.

Carmen and Mallory shared a look. Their time around you and Calum together was limited, but based on what you had told them, they could see what was happening.

“Are you sure you hate each other?” Mallory asked cautiously. You scoffed at that; you figured it was hate that drove the sex.

“Uh, have you met him? How couldn’t I hate him?” You responded. You did hate him, you really did. Maybe fucking him made being around him tolerable.

Maybe fucking him not only relived the tension between you, it also could relieve a little stress in your own lives.

“Just talk to him next time, okay? Or else I’ll do it for you.”

You laughed softly at Carmen’s comment.

“Yeah, I will, I promise.”

You got yourself ready for bed and laid down, mentally planning out how to talk to Calum about the situation.

…

Monday came around, and Carmen and Mallory were sure to remind you a million times that you had to talk to Calum. You worked out just what you were going to say to him. You could only hope that it would come out the way you wanted it to.

You waited until after class to say anything. You purposely packed up slowly, waiting for him to walk by your desk to leave, and then you called his name.

His head turned sharply to you, eyebrows furrowing. He was still getting used to actually talking to you when you weren’t just making jabs at each other. He weaved his way to your desk, standing next to it.

“Yeah?” He inquired, tone almost hesitant.

“We need to talk,” you sighed. “About...what we do.”

He sighed too. He had been meaning to talk to you about it as well, but he wasn’t sure how to bring it up. He knew what he wanted, but he couldn’t tell if you would want the same thing.

He cocked his head towards the door.

“Let’s talk outside.”

You grabbed your backpack and followed him outside of the classroom, getting a distance away from Mr. Nolan’s classroom before leaning against a wall to talk.

“We can’t just keep doing this. We fight and then fuck. We either…” you trailed off, words failing you. There was no subtle or not awkward way to put it. “I don’t want to have sex just when we’re fighting.”

“I know, I agree,” he mumbled, scratching the back of his neck. “Do you want to stop, though?”

You looked away for a moment. Should you stop? Maybe. Did you want to? Not really. As long as you didn’t continue with only fucking in the middle of a fight.

“I mean, we don’t have to. I just don’t want it to be because we hate each other, you know? It’s not right.”

“What are you suggesting, then?” He asked lowly, cocking an eyebrow at you. You huffed, trying desperately to find the words to say without sounding awkward. Your whole plan had completely left your mind, and now you were scrambling.

“I’m suggesting it needs to be more regular. Not just when we’re fighting. We could be like friends with benefits. Except we’re not really friends, I guess. But, you know, stress reliever type of thing.”

Calum stared at you for a moment, thinking about your proposal. He would never say it, but he quite enjoyed the couple times you had been together. Maybe it had been driven by hatred, but it was good. You were good. But he agreed with you that only having sex because you hated each other wasn’t going to work.

“So you’re saying we can hit each other up to have sex when we’re stressed? And we don’t have to be friends?” He asked to clarify. You nodded slowly.

“That works,” he answered, also nodding in confirmation. You let out a breath you didn’t realize you had been holding. It was a pretty fair arrangement, you thought.

“So I’m that good, you can’t get enough, huh?” He teased, a cocky smirk spreading across his face. This arrangement didn’t mean he still couldn't push your buttons. You weren’t friends, like you said. You scoffed, pushing off the wall.

“Shut up, Calum.”

With that, you walked off, and Calum watched you with that smirk ever present on his face.

He wouldn’t admit that he liked having sex with you, but he also wouldn’t admit that you were cute when you were annoyed.

…

As time went on, you frequently texted each other when you were in need of a release. You went to his apartment most times so you could be alone, but he had come to your dorm a few times too when Carmen and Mallory were out and you were sure neither of them would be back for a while. You also managed to finish your project for class, albeit through lots of bickering, and got a good grade on it.

It was good. It was working. You were able to have good sex with no strings attached, and you were both okay with it. You could be stressed over a history assignment and he would eat you like you were his last meal. He could be stressed over the essays he had to write for his various English classes, and he knew he could count on you to give him a nice blowjob.

It was good until things started to change.

It started with Calum. You texted him asking if you could come over, and although that wasn’t an abnormal occurrence, he didn’t feel the same way he normally. Normally he would bite his lip in desire or something along those lines, but that isn’t what happened.

He smiled. A real smile.

Of course, he didn’t say a thing about it to you when you arrived. He simply took you to his bedroom, rid you of your clothes and laid down with his head between your legs like he always did. But after you went home, he couldn’t stop thinking about the little spark of joy he felt when you texted him. That small pang of happiness that struck him when he got to see you again. It was strange, so strange to him, because he never felt like that around you. He was either ignoring you completely, mad at you, or clouded with lust for you.

He was so confused. He had spent all semester hating you, but now he was actually happy to see you, and not about the sex, though he couldn’t exactly complain about that.

He didn’t know what the hell was going on with himself.

Unbeknownst to him, you were starting to have similar thoughts with yourself.

You always responded a little too fast whenever he texted you, and always got ready to meet him a little too quickly. It was as if you were in a rush, and not because you were that excited for the sex. You kind of just wanted to see him. Which was odd, because not too long ago you would have done just about anything to avoid seeing him.

You shared your confusion with Carmen and Mallory as it got worse and things kept changing, and Mallory asked you a similar question to the one she had asked you after you got back from the library.

“Are you sure you hate him?”

“I mean, yeah, I thought so,” you sighed, lifting your hand up and letting it drop back down onto the bed. “It’s not like I’m in love with him or anything, but if I truly hated him I wouldn’t get so eager to see him, right?”

“Right,” Carmen agreed. “So you don’t hate him.”

“But...But like, I do,” you mumbled, eyebrows pinched together. The two girls sighed, and you missed the looks they gave each other.

“No, honey, I don’t think so,” Carmen continued. “I know you probably don’t want to hear this, but I think you might be falling for him.”

“What?” You scoffed, almost laughing at that ridiculous statement. “Absolutely not.”

“Just give it time, see if how you feel keeps changing. As much as you’ve hated him before, things do change. You never know what could end up happening.”

…

“Fuck, Calum, right there, right there.”

He hummed against your core, gently working his tongue on your clit. This wasn’t normal for him. Eating you out was common, but you were both used to it being rough and harsh. This was the total opposite. He was being slow and soft, not roughly pinning your hips to the bed like he usually would. He was feeling soft with you.

“Feel good?” He mumbled, briefly removing his mouth from you before immediately attaching it back on.

“Yes, shit, feels so good.”

You were too overwhelmed with pleasure to even notice the shift in sex. He was a king when it came to him using his mouth on you, so whether it was fast or slow, it always felt amazing.

It wasn’t until you were on your way home that you realized what happened.

Maybe you were overthinking it, but you couldn’t help but feel like it meant something. He was probably just tired and not in the mood to be rough, but what if that wasn’t the case? You hadn’t been able to tell if his feelings about you were also changing, but maybe this meant they were. Maybe he was focused on actually making you feel good rather than just relieving you and getting to your orgasm.

You sighed and pushed the thought to the back of your mind. You didn’t want to get your hopes up.

…

“So you’re saying you actually want to go to the party?” Carmen asked, watching you apply mascara to your lashes.

“Yep,” you replied, twisting the bottle closed. “Math is kicking my ass. I need to get drunk.”

Mallory sighed, shrugging as she got off her bed.

“That’s fair, I guess. But you know who’s probably going to be there, right?” She cautioned, cocking an eyebrow. You almost smiled.

“I know. I don’t care about him tonight. I just want to let loose and have fun with you guys.”

Your friends grinned at that.

After you finished getting ready, you made your way to the party and you were quick to find the kitchen, the three of you getting drinks. That was one of many, for you, at least. You eventually reached the point of a quite a bit past tipsy, and you were having tons of fun.

“I’m going to the bathroom,” you yelled over the music to your friends, who nodded and allowed you to stumble away. Your vision was a bit hazy and your mind was all over the place, but you got pretty close to the bathroom before you felt a hand on your shoulder.

You whipped your head around, and you were met with a guy you had never seen before. Cute, yes, but a stranger, nonetheless.

“Hey there,” he murmured, a smirk growing on his face. “You all alone?”

“Well, my friends are here,” you slurred. “I just gotta pee.”

The guy chuckled, placing a hand on your waist to pull you closer to him. Your face scrunched up at the action, but your drunken mind didn’t think of pushing his hand away.

“Your friends wouldn’t mind if we get out of here, would we?” He cooed. “You look so pretty. Just want to take you home.”

You hummed, sharply shaking your head.

“No can do. I came here to get drunk, not fuck.”

“Who said we were going to fuck?”

His grip on your hip tightened, and you scoffed. Even when hammered, you knew what his intentions were. “Well, what are we going to do, then? Play Bingo?”

He chuckled again, tucking a piece of hair behind your ear. He was being too handsy, and you didn’t like it one bit.

“You’re funny, aren’t you?”

You squirmed, trying to move away from his grasp but you were no match compared to him, especially under the influence.

“Get away.”

“Come on, sweet thing, just relax.”

You figured this encounter was falling on deaf ears, but unbeknownst to you, it didn’t. Calum heard every word.

He didn’t think much of it at first, but when he turned to see what was going on, his fists clenched at his sides. It was clear you were drunk, and it was also clear that this guy planned on using that to his advantage to get you to go home with him.

He didn’t know why he cared so much, if he really hated you, but he found himself ditching his friend who was in the middle of telling a story and storming over to you. It was like he was acting on instinct, and he couldn’t stop himself as he grabbed your arm and pulled you away from the smirking guy. This need to protect you and stand up for you was overwhelming him, leaving him utterly confused but still following through with his actions. He pulled you into his side, wrapping an arm around your shoulders.

“Fuck off, man,” Calum sneered, putting on his best intimidating glare.

You whipped your head up to see who had pulled you away, eyebrows furrowing when you saw who it was. Calum was the last person you expected to come defend you, but you weren’t going to complain. Not when the guy was freaking you out and certainly not when you had been thinking that he didn’t hate you as much as before.

“What’s the problem? Just trying to talk to this pretty girl right here.”

“She clearly doesn’t want to talk to you,” Calum spat. “So fuck off.”

When the guy finally walked away, Calum sighed and started walking too. His arm was still wrapped around your shoulders, making you come with him.

“Where are we going?” You mumbled drunkenly. Your thoughts were muffled, and you could barely comprehend what was going on. All you knew was that Calum got rid of the creep for you.

“To find your friends,” he grumbled, eyes searching the crowd. He soon found Carmen and Mallory, recognizing them from the first Alpha Sig party. He lead you up to them and gently pushed you towards them.

They both looked at him in confusion, mouths slightly agape. Seeing Calum walk you up to them with his arm around you was the last thing they expected to see. They shared a quick look with each other before returning their gazes back to him.

“Some guy was trying to take advantage of her. I got him away,” he told them, not making eye contact with either of them. “Keep an eye on her.”

He huffed and briskly walked away, running a hand through his curls. He didn’t know what was going on. He finds himself smiling when you text him, then goes soft on you during sex, and now has an overwhelming urge to proctect you.

He was supposed to hate you. This wasn’t supposed to happen.

The thought made his heart race, but he was definitely falling for you.

…

The next morning, you woke to a killer headache and a text from Calum.

You picked up your phone and read it with squinted eyes.

Calum: Hey, I don’t know how much you remember from last night, but I just wanted to make sure you were ok.

You didn’t know what to say. You were fine, yes, but was that all you had to say? You felt like there were a million things to say, to tell him, but you couldn’t. You wanted to demand to know what was happening, ask him about his feelings. But you couldn’t.

You: I’m ok

You waited a moment before typing out another text.

You: Thank you for checking in, Calum

You sighed and dropped your phone onto the mattress, running your hands down your face.

Why did things have to get complicated?

It was clear you weren’t the only one feeling something different between you. Calum never would have saved your drunk ass at a party and then texted you the next morning to check on you when you first met. If even if he liked you just as a friend, there was no way he despised you the way he did before.

On your part, the gesture made your heart skip a beat now that you were sober. It was kind of him, and you appreciated that he cared.

“Y/N?” A voice came from the bed across from you. Mallory was sitting up in her bed, looking over at you with furrowed eyebrows. “You good?”

You sighed, staring at her for a moment before answering.

“I think I like him, Mal.”

…

Calum finished into the condom with one last hard thrust, groaning lowly into the crook of our neck. You both laid there for a minute to catch your breath before Calum rolled off of you and got up to throw the condom away. You sighed as you sat up, swinging your legs over the side of the bed and making your way towards your clothes that were strewn on the floor.

Neither of you had had the courage to say anything to each other about your feelings. It almost came out, multiple times, whether over text or in person, but neither of you said a word. It had been building up, but nothing ever happened.

You slipped on your clothes and glanced over at Calum, who was just walking back towards his bed after putting on a pair of sweats.

“See ya Monday,” you mumbled, slowly heading towards the door.

“See ya.”

You never stayed after your times together. It was like an unspoken rule to leave right afterwards. But that rule was created when you hated each other. You certainly didn’t hate him anymore, and you had a good feeling that he didn’t hate you either.

Just as you reached for the doorknob, Calum’s voice stopped you.

“Y/N?”

You turned to look at him, eyebrows raised in expectancy. He looked conflicted, as if he had been debating on saying what he was about to say.

“Why don’t you just stay here tonight, yeah? It’s late, and it’s raining.”

You glanced towards the window, not having noticed the patter of rain until that moment.

You hesitated for only a moment before you replied, trying to calm your racing heart.

“O-Okay. Yeah. Thanks.” You paused, glancing around the room for a second as you thought. Would it be weird if you just got right into his bed? “I can sleep on the couch-”

“Y/N, come on,” Calum sighed, sitting on the edge of the bed and patting the other side. “You can sleep here.”

“Are you sure?” You mumbled, suddenly nervous. You had been in his bed countless times doing things far more intimate than sleeping, but this felt different. He invited you to spend the night at his place, breaking the “leave immediately after” rule.

“Yes, I’m sure. We’ve had sex how many times and you’re afraid to get in my bed?” He teased, but it wasn’t meant to be rude or offend you. He was smiling, not cockily smirking. You couldn’t help but smile too, and you rolled your eyes playfully.

“Shut up, Calum.”

You walked back to the bed and crawled in on the opposite side of him. As soon as you both got settled, the lightheartedness in the room washed away, and you were right back to the awkwardness of before. It took a moment for either of you to say anything.

“Goodnight,” Calum mumbled. You sighed.

“Goodnight.”

And then it was quiet again.

You both laid there for a while, facing away from each other. You couldn’t bring yourself to close your eyes. You were right back to being nervous, right back to being awkward, and not to mention you were fucking freezing. You shivered, curling into the blankets.

“You cold?”

You could hear Calum turn his head to face you, but you didn’t move a muscle.

“A little,” you admitted softly. “I’m fine, though.”

Calum sighed, and you didn’t hear him move. You almost looked back at him, but then you heard him shift around some more and all of the sudden, his front was pressed up against your back and his arms were wrapped around your waist.

You tensed, heart skipping a beat.

You were cuddling.

You mentioned you were a little cold, and now you were cuddling.

A million thoughts swarmed through your mind, and they weren’t negative. You should have been questioning it, but you weren’t. It felt right. You bit back a smile as you relaxed in his arms and let yourself fall asleep.

…

The morning after you spent the night at his place, you left right after you woke up with a short goodbye, not wanting to overstay your welcome. The next time you went to his place, you began to get dressed and leave, not sure if it was a one time thing, but he invited you to stay again. After that, you just assumed you were welcome, and Calum never said otherwise.

Then, one day, he asked you to stay for breakfast. You about died when he asked you and it took him what seemed like forever to work up the courage to do it, but you had a really nice time. It felt like the first time you ever had an actual conversation. You both smiled and laughed, feeling genuinely comfortable around each other.

As you headed home after that, you knew you were in deep shit. You liked him a lot. He wasn’t the cocky asshole you thought he was. He was sweet, funny, and Charlie wasn’t lying when he said Calum was very smart. Not to mention those damn curls made you swoon.

Calum was feeling the same way about you. As he started to succumb to his urges to spend more time with you, not just fuck and go, he realized just how great of a person you were. He noticed things about you that he had never noticed before, like the way your eyes lit up when you laughed and how pretty your smile was. These were all things he never noticed because he couldn’t look past the negative encounters he had with you. But now he saw the real you, and you saw the real him.

Now it was only a matter of admitting it to each other, and that was the hard part.

…

You got a text from Calum on a Saturday morning.

Calum: Want to get lunch today?

A grin spread across your face. He was inviting you to actually hang out, not have sex. It was a first for the two of you.

Sex had been happening a lot less often. It seemed as if it only happened every once in awhile just to keep the relationship that you had going, but now that your feelings for each other were changing, you didn’t want to fuck each other to realize your stress. You wanted more from each other. Instead, you settled for texting each other frequently, making up for time that you weren’t together in person. It started as a bit awkward and forced, asking questions about Intro to Shakespeare assignments and upcoming school events, until you got to really talking. The conversations were still fairly basic, but at least you were getting to know each other. You were moving on from your bitter past.

You typed out a response.

You: Definitely!

You proceeded to make plans, and soon enough, you were on your way to the restaurant you and Calum had decided on.

He was already there when you arrived, waiting for you at the table.

“Hey,” he greeted with a grin as you took the seat across from him.

“Hi,” you answered easily, smiling.

“How are you?” He asked, setting down the menu he had been skimming.

“I’m pretty good. You?”

“Doing good.”

“How’s your essay for Shakespeare coming along?” You asked, uttering thanks to the waiter that set glasses of water on the table for the two of you. Calum chuckled at your question.

“I haven’t started it. Probably won’t until Tuesday.” The essay was due on Wednesday.

Before, you would have thought he was irresponsible, lazy, and not at all ashamed to call him out for it, but now, you found it amusing. He wasn’t a procrastinator because he was lazy or too much of a party animal, he was just that kind of person that could crank out an essay in two hours and get a good grade on it. In your opinion, it was even a little bit charming.

“Of course you haven’t started,” you teased playfully, not meaning it in a menacing way at all. Calum laughed, shrugging his shoulders mockingly.

Eventually, the small talk grew to real conversation, getting into deeper topics, like your plans and dreams for after college and what you thought you wanted to do for a career when you were younger as opposed to what you were aiming for now. Calum talked about how he always loved music, ever since he was little. The soft smile he wore on his face when he talked about it was adorable, but you sensed a hint of melancholy around him.

“So you don’t like music anymore?” You asked curiously, popping a french fry into your mouth. If he was passionate about music, why did he major in English?

“I do. I love music, actually,” Calum sighed. “And I love English too. I guess I just figured I could get more places in life with an English degree rather than a music degree.”

A small frown tugged at your lips. You always heard stories about people who give up what their passionate about because they don’t think it will get them anywhere, or that’s what their parents tell them.

“Oh,” you mumbled with sympathy. “Don’t give up on music if you love it, though. Even if you don’t do it for a living, that doesn’t mean you can’t do it in your free time.”

“Yeah, I’ve still got my bass lying around. Haven’t played in a while.”

“You should pick it up again, then!” You encouraged. “Music makes you happy, yeah? Don’t give it up if it makes you happy.”

Calum smiled, the small crinkles by his eyes making your heart flutter.

“You’re right,” he mumbled softly, and that pretty smile hardly left his face for the rest of the lunch.

When it was time to go, Calum took care of the check despite your protests to pay for your own food, and you were on your way out.

“I can drive you back to campus, if you want,” Calum offered as you walked out of the restaurant, cocking his head towards his car in the parking lot. You had taken an Uber to the restaurant, and you hated to trouble him in taking you all the way back to your residence hall and then going all the way back to his apartment building. But you couldn’t deny that you wanted to spend just a few more minutes with him.

“I mean, if it’s not too much of a bother for you. I can take an Uber-”

“No, it’s no trouble at all. Come on,” he chimed, and you followed him to the sleek black vehicle. He came around to the passenger side and opened the door, gesturing for you to get in. You grinned at him and mumbled a thank you, climbing into the car before he shut the door after you and jogged around to the driver side.

The drive back to campus was short, but it was filled with laughs and singing as Calum turned the radio on and the first song to play was Old Town Road. He glanced over at you as you danced in your seat, a look of fondness taking over his features. He almost grabbed your hand, hell, he almost pulled over so he could kiss you, but he held back. He wanted to wait for a better moment, a better place, to admit his feelings.

Calum pulled up in front of your hall far too soon, and he threw the car into park.

“Thanks for the ride. And lunch,” you expressed gratefully as you unbuckled your seatbelt.

“Of course,” he mumbled, watching you with the same fond smile he had when you were dancing. “This was fun, I’m glad we hung out.”

“Yeah, it was,” you murmured sheepishly. You waited for a moment as if you were expecting him to do something, although you weren’t sure what you expected him to do. You knew what you wanted him to do, of course, and he wanted to do the same thing, but he reminded himself to wait.

“Here, let me walk you up,” he offered, turning off his car. Your heart was pounding as you got into the building and into the elevator. Neither of you said anything, and the air around you was tense, but not the same kind of tension that you had felt before. This tension wasn’t going to lead to sex.

You walked down the hall to your dorm and stopped in front of your door.

“This is me,” you mumbled. Calum nodded, remembering it from the few times he had been there. He then looked at you with a smile.

“Alright, bring it in,” he exclaimed, opening his arms. You felt like your knees were going to give out underneath you as you hugged him, grinning madly into his chest.

It felt better than you cared to admit.

It ended all too soon, and Calum gave your arm a quick pat as he pulled away. You both smiled at each other, and it took a moment for either of you to say anything.

“You know what, Y/N?” He mused, joy hinting his eyes. You tilted your head to the side, waiting for him to continue. “You’re not as awful as I thought you were.”

You laughed at his comment, but your heart still fluttered at the lighthearted comment.

You felt like you were starting over with him. Like you were putting the past behind you and meeting for the first time again. A fresh, new relationship with the real Calum and the real you.

“Thanks, I guess,” you joked. “And you’re not the asshole I thought you were.”

He grinned widely as he stared at you for another moment, and you searched his eyes. You couldn’t tell what it was, but there was something in them that wasn’t always there.

Unbeknownst to you, it was the overwhelming urge to kiss you and admit his feelings to you right then and there. He almost gave in and said “fuck it” to his plan to wait for a better time, but he refrained.

“I’ll see you Monday,” he finally said, and you almost sighed.

“Yeah, see you then.”

With that, he walked back out to his car and drove home, heart hammering in his chest.

Both of you could only hope that that better time and place would come soon.

…

You and Calum started hanging out frequently, whether it be getting lunch at your new favorite place, studying or working on Shakespeare assignments at the library, walking around campus or simply chilling at his apartment or your dorm. You were falling for each other more and more, and you could tell it was only a matter of time until one of you cracked and made a move.

Carmen and Mallory were understandably a bit wary when you first started to hang out with Calum regularly, considering your not so pleasant past, but they eventually came around when you made them realize he was actually a good guy. “If you start dating, we’re coming on a date with you so we can approve,” had been Carmen’s exact words, which got a giggle out of you. And, of course, you still made time for your best friends, which they were thankful for.

Now you were just arriving at Calum’s apartment, and you rapped on the door with your knuckles a few times.

Calum swung the door open with a smile, stepping to the side to let you in.

“Hey,” he greeted, shutting the door behind you.

“Hi.”

You kicked your shoes off and followed him into his living room. You stopped in your tracks when you saw a bass lying on the couch, and a smile started to spread across your face.

“Were you playing?” You asked, gesturing to the instrument.

Calum blushed, picking it up and setting it back in the case that was on the floor.

“Yeah, I was just messing around on it,” he mumbled as he locked up the case. “I was thinking about what you said at lunch that day, and you’re right. I shouldn’t give up on music all together even if I’m not pursuing it.”

The smile on your face was full now, and you walked the rest of the way to where Calum was just standing up from the ground, holding you arms open for a hug.

“That’s awesome, Cal,” you mumbled as he wrapped his arms around you. “I’m so happy for you.”

He smiled into you hair, and he couldn’t help himself as he gently placed a kiss to the top of your head.

“Thank you for making me realize it,” he murmured, pulling away from the hug. You smiled fondly at him in response, and you both plopped yourselves down on the couch. Calum reached for the remote and turned on the television.

“Want to watch that movie we were talking about last night?” He offered, flipping to Netflix after you nodded in approval. You and Calum had spent a whole night scrolling through Netflix and made a list of all the shows and movies you wanted to watch together, and the night prior, you had been texting him about one of the movies on the list.

Calum pressed play on the movie and you both settled in to watch.

Throughout, you found yourself subtly scooting closer to Calum, feeling the need to sit close to him, just to be with him in anyway possible. He surprised you when he slung his arm around your shoulders and pulled you right into his side, heart skipping a beat in your chest. You gently laid your head on his shoulder, snuggling closer to him. You could barely contain your smile.

A while later into the movie, Calum had completely stopped paying attention. He was lost in his thoughts, and his thoughts were all about the beautiful girl cuddled into him. You. He wanted you. He wanted you more than anything, and he was sick of waiting for a perfect moment.

He wanted you to be his.

He abruptly reached for the remote and paused the movie, causing you to look up at him in confusion and concern. You opened your mouth to ask him if everything was okay, but he spoke before you got the chance.

“Y/N, I have to tell you something,” he said slowly, removing his arm from around your shoulders and sitting up off the back of the couch. You followed suit, heart pounding in your chest.

You were silently praying that he was about to do what you thought he was about to do.

“What is it?” You asked, barely above a whisper. You didn’t trust your voice to speak any louder.

He took a deep breath, reaching for your hands that rested in your lap and encasing them in his own calloused ones.

“I know when we first met, we got off on the wrong foot. Like, severely. It’s safe to say we both hated each other, I think. But I realize now that I was blind. My image of you was so clouded by one false impression and I couldn’t look past it. I was an asshole to you. And I was wrong. I want to say sorry for all the shitty things I said to you, for spilling my drink on you at the kick off party, for everything. But now I know you. The real you. And I see how funny, smart and sweet you are, and I admire everything about you. I admire how you stand up for yourself, how you’re not afraid to call people out for their bad behavior. I like you a lot, Y/N. I really, really like you.” He paused, his hand coming up to cup your cheek. “If you feel the same, I want more than anything to put our past behind us, the hatred and the meaningless sex, and be us.” His other hand came up to your other cheek as well. “Will you be my girlfriend?”

Your heart was beating so loud you thought Calum could hear it. You were no doubt smiling ear to ear, hands almost trembling in your lap. His heartfelt speech made you swoon, and you were sure that you had never felt happier than you had in that moment.

“Of course I feel the same, Calum. Yes, holy shit, yes, I want to be us.”

A smile brighter than a big city at night spread across his face, pulling you toward him and pressing his lips to yours. You had kissed him a million times, but this was different. It wasn’t harsh or filled with desire. It was filled with fondness and care. It was soft, sweet. You were kissing out of growing love.

Getting to that point was a rocky road, but you made it. You pushed past your differences and here you were, extremely happy together.

It was hard, but as William Shakespeare once said, “the course of true love never did run smooth.”

TAGS: @seaevans @blahehblah @ihatesatan96 @youngblood199456 @twoamhood @cthoodsthetic @youcanhaveyourspacecowboy @sick-orca @outerspaceisbetterthannothing @maoricth @singt0mecalum @valentinelrh @depressed-teapot @ccnicole02 @bluevxnus @thecurlsofgod @rainingcalum

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rwbyconversations · 6 years ago

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Why Oscar’s writing has been disappointing

Stories rely on their characters. You can tell a grand, sweeping narrative that spans continents and timelines but if you don’t give a rats ass about the people at the center of these events, viewers won’t care. Stories with high kill-counts like Walking Dead, Game of Thrones and Attack on Titan rely on audiences forming an attachment with characters very quickly, so that the possibility of their sudden death is all the more painful for the viewer. Long story short, if you can’t make an audience care about your character, it can be hard to keep them interested.

RWBY has overall done a fantastic job at getting people to fall for its cast; I’m a case in point with how hard I’ll go to bat for Emerald and Mercury. But be it the obvious choices in the main cast, the wide array of villains to obsess over. The fandom even has a few eccentric folk who stan for people not seen in years! (shoutout to CFVY fans, who knew you’d get rewarded over the whole Coco in Chibi thing by getting a book?) But rather unfortunately, while one character has managed to earn a fanbase happy to see them get content, the writing has consistently failed one particular character, through constant refusals to allow them the screentime they deserve and often putting it in the wrong places when they do get morsels of time to shine each year.

Oh no, not you. I’ll get back to you before this hiatus is out.

... actually why are his gloves orange of all colors? And what’s with the banages, is he planning on cosplaying Dazai from Bungou Stray Dogs at an Atlas convention during the off-season?

Yeah, no, I’m talking about Oscar Pine. First introduced in Volume 4, Oscar has now been a part of the main cast for half of the show’s runtime. In that time Oscar has developed psychosis, met a ticket-punching man, got stuck in a house for a month, fought a teleporting staircase man, was involved in a train crash, bought new clothes, and stole military property.

Notice something? Nothing in there mentioned Oscar getting character development. Or rather he does... but it’s always offscreen. Oscar is infuriating in the sense that he has a lot of wasted character potential to be one of the best characters in the show- a simple but efficient design, great voice work from Aaron Dismuke and a charming personality that makes him a likable hero. But in spite of that all, Oscar constantly get the shaft when it comes to his screentime showing him developing from his problems, and each volume so far has had Oscar be faced with a trial that would make for a truly fascinating character arc, only for him to get over it while the camera’s focused elsewhere. And that’s what I’m going to focus on in this essay- I’m going to go over why I think Oscar’s writing has been consistently mishandled, and my hopes for the character in Volume 7.

God damn I don’t like doing this, I want to like the farm boi most of the time

1) Volume 4: All these voices running through my head, I’m on fire, face burning red

Oscar is introduced very early in Volume 4- as in, he’s in the first episode and is the eighth character we see onscreen after the villains. Oscar is in fact, if you don’t count Ruby’s character short, present in Volume 4 before the title characters. His first episode is... a lot of nothing, mostly just Oscar doing some farming. Oscar’s introduction does a good job telling us a bit about his character without him saying much- he’s prone to daydreaming while working on the farm, clearly not enjoying himself and his work. It matches up with what we learn later, that Oscar dreams of becoming a hero. It’s a stock motivation, and a stock background, but a simple and effective way of setting up a hero who desires the chance to prove himself in the wider world. His intro scene is a nice, quiet beat between the dark opening of Evernight and Salem, and the more frantic action of RNJR fighting the Geist. But overall the time the fandom was wondering what was up with Oscar- he wasn’t in the OP and nothing had set him up before now and yet here he was, getting focus before the main girls.

It takes until Oscar’s second appearance, three episodes later in Family, that we get the real reason for his importance- Ozpin’s in his head, but it would take another three episodes, in Punished, for this to be elaborated on in an unintentional Christmas gift from Rooster Teeth; Ozpin’s in his head due to their Auras and souls merging thanks to Ozma’s pact with the Archangel Asshole a few centuries back, and now Oscar is starting to act like an Assassin’s Creed character with all the memories that are in his head that he didn’t create. It’s a cruel irony for Oscar- Ozpin plays on how Oscar wants to be more than just a farmhand to try and get him to go to Mistral, but Oscar’s body language and face make it clear that this wasn’t how he saw himself getting some new life choices. Rather tragically, Oscar finally gets the chance to be part of something bigger but the manner in which it’s offered to him is anathema, as it’s coming from a literal voice in his head who claims to be a dead headmaster, and more importantly, he was never offered a choice- this was thrust upon him, a young 14 year old child who never asked for this burden of responsibility. And the last shot of Oscar in this episode already has him cracking under that burden, stuck on his knees and unsure what to do.

(also btw Oscar’s Aunt tells him to clean his hands but Oscar’s model has gloves on all the time, so... how would he clean his hands? Or does he read books with dirty gloves? Eww)

It’s an interesting place to leave Oscar, at the metaphorical and and spiritual crossroads, and means the viewer wants to see Oscar’s next actions and the deliberation between the easy, boring life he knows or risking everything on a voice in his head telling him to try his chances in the big city. Sounds pretty interesting, right?

Not to the writers, unfortunately. Because when we next check in with Oscar three episodes later during Kuroyuri, Oscar’s already on the road to Mistral with his backpack all ready to go. That deliberation, the consideration, Oscar eventually choosing to trust Ozpin and go along with his plan? All done offscreen. Similarly, Oscar goes from treating Ozpin’s voice as an irritating thing to be annoyed has been chucked out a window- now out on the open road, it doesn’t “feel crazy” anymore. It just feels like such a cheap way to handle Oscar’s writing- rather than show his development naturally, it just fast-forwards until it reaches a point where it skips all that. And unfortunately, this isn’t the first or last time Oscar is victim to the writers fast-forwarding through his development moments. Given how much of Oscar’s arc hinges on this crucial first step, it just seems inane to me that of all of the potential Oscar scenes to cut... him coming around on Ozpin and making the call to leave was what got the cutting room floor. Especially since nothing in his Kuroyuri scene was all that essential for Oscar in contrast, barring setting up the the mystery Hazel and Ozpin’s past.

Oscar doesn’t appear again after his encounter with Hazel until the finale, when during the montage of Ruby’s letter (that consists of half her dialogue this season) we see Oscar on the train to Mistral, which really only caused a problem thanks to all the people who used it to ask why RNJR didn’t take a train. He also appears in the post-credits scene, meeting Qrow at a bar and asking for his cane back, the volume ending on Oscar extending the cane experimentally.

Being blunt, I feel like Oscar should have been cut from Volume 4 and just introduced in Volume 5 with the bar scene. Volume 4 already had to juggle far too much in RWBY and Cinder’s plots, and adding Oscar to the mix unfortunately meant the screentime for some characters had to suffer- especially Yang. His time this season ultimately goes nowhere and only gives him a basic background that most fans would have already guessed from his character design, and the already wobbly Jenga Tower that was Volume 4′s screentime didn’t need more blocks thrown on top. I like a fair few things in Oscar’s arc, but it’s content that ultimately I’d have been fine having left on the cutting room floor. Hell, if nothing else, Oscar’s first scene should have ended with Ozpin’s reappearance, that these are two separate scenes is mind-boggling and left the fans wondering what the hell was Oscar’s purpose for weeks.

Oscar’s debut arc has its ups and downs, much like the volume itself. His intro scene and argument with Ozpin are both well-executed and show the viewer the vocal dynamite of Dismuke’s performance or just set up his base character, but for every good thing to come of Oscar’s arc, it’s fraught with issues- most notably, his scene of choosing to leave his home being omitted and beginning the unfortunate tendency for Oscar to get the short end of the stick when it came to development and agency, which undermine his choice to leave. But overall, Oscar built himself a small but dedicated fanbase with his debut volume, even immediately shooting up to become a potential target for Ruby’s affections in the fandom shipping wars. It was a rocky start, but surely now that Oscar was going to have his plot merged with RNJR, he’d be able to handle his screen-time more effectively, right?

Right?

Volume 5- Two for one on meatsacks

Volume 5 is Oscar’s worst volume so far, being blunt. It’s a lot of people’s worst volumes though (Cinder, Ruby, Weiss, Mercury, Adam, mine) that at least he can share the load. It doesn’t help that he’s not in half the damn thing because his body is being used by Ozpin to regale the audience with expositon that makes them actively yearn for the sweet embrace of death... or just the return of the World of Remnant shorts. Oscar’s first scene in Volume 5 is just a recycling of the Volume 4 post-credits scene, which raises the question of why the scene was used in Volume 4. I don’t think it’s even touched up, they literally just copy-pasted it. Much like his first scene in Volume 4, his intro scene this volume is intercepted by comedy relief- last time it was Jaune’s miserable attempts at being a strategist, this time it’s Drunkle Qrow.

... You know, this scene ages poorly in hindsight given how just one volume later Qrow’s alcoholism is treated with ice-cold severity.

Episode 3 follows up on this and gives us Ozcar’s first major scene of the volume, and unfortunately also sets up their dynamic this volume. Oscar gets some awkwardly charming moments with Ruby but overall the scene is dominated by Ozpin taking over for the first time and explaining his reincarnation powers alongside setitng up RNJR’s plot for the season- “training.” An episode later sees the entirety of this training, with Oscar and Ruby engaging in hand-to-hand combat and Oscar getting a lore dump from Ren (in hindsight this is novel not just because they’re outside during it but Ren’s the one delivering the infodump and not Ozpin). Ozpin barely even factors into the episode barring some fisticuffs and a generic speech at the end. But the scene is overall just pointless to the narrative beyond loosely setting up Jaune’s own Semblance unlocking, and this is the last we hear of RNJR “training” for the upcoming trials at Haven. Hell, even though the story makes a point of noting Oscar still hasn’t unlocked his Semblance, that still hasn’t come up two years later. This scene really only pays off in one immediate way:

This is Ruby’s sole contribution to the Battle of Haven after getting KO’d by Emerald outside of just yelling orders for offscreen fights, and all this helped do was begin to convince people that “MERC’S A BAD FIGHTER WITHOUT EMERALD.”

Lighting the Fire’s training scene is one of Oscar’s only major scenes where he interacts with RNJR to boot for the entirety of Volume 5, and it’s quite sad that nothing really comes of it. It just serves to highlight how little Oscar interacts with the other kids, as most of his dialogue this season is just as Ozcar.

Necessary Sacrifice then, should be great on paper. It’s an entirely Oscar and Ruby scene with Ozpin only chiming in at the end. It has Oscar confronting Ruby and himself on his fears and how Ruby can put up a brace face, and Ruby finally gets to open up a little about losing Penny and Pyrrha at Beacon. But the scene just falls flat on its face and botches the execution. Putting aside Ruby’s own problems in this scene (her speech feels incredibly pre-rehearsed, as if she spent hours practicing it in the mirror to ward off anyone actually prying into her life). Oscar’s anger and fear come out of left field with nothing setting this up in his prior scenes this volume. Ruby needed a scene where she talked about losing Penny and Pyrrha, but it should have been during Volume 4, with Jaune. Having it now with Oscar feels like the writers apologizing for having Ruby get shafted for screenitme during Volume 4... during the volume where she gets shafted by literally everyone else. The scene is frustrating to me, it could and should have been a lot better (musically at least I love the reprises of When It Falls and Lets Just Live), but it just feels like a hasty patch note. Oscar doesn’t really develop from the situation and his fears are just forgotten for the rest of the volume.

Oscar then proceeds to basically sit out Volume 5 barring Chapters 11 and 12. I still don’t get why he wasn’t part of the dinner scene with RWBJNR, since it would have been so very easy for him to be part of the dinner and get the chance to interact with the rest of the kids. Oscar wants to be a hero, so let him... actually interact with heroes his age. Have him brought up to speed on the crazy adventures the team have, let them get to interact with Oscar without having to deal with his backseat driver. You could even make something tragic of the scene where Oscar is forced to go away so Ozpin can take over, and the team’s faces fall flat when Ozpin gets right to talking shop which leads to the YOU TURNED THEM INTO BIRDS exchange. But otherwise, the rest of the House scenes revolve around Ozpin talking. The kids talk past Oscar, and again, you can very easily make something tragic of that as Oscar could grow to resent Ozpin because none of the others see him as himself, just a puppet on strings. But again... Oscar’s just not allowed to develop onscreen in this show.

And perhaps the worst thing about all this is that whenever Ozpin actually is called out on his tactics, one of the most pressings ones in his possession of Oscar,a 14 year old boy, is never used as fuel. Granted, yes, Ozpin has no control over who’s his next host but surely someone, somewhere is going to opine how morally bankrupt it is that Ozpin essentially conscripted a child not even old enough to get a learner’s permit into his eternal shadow war. It’s times like this that my theory that Jaune was going to be Ozpin’s original replacement before the backlash to Jaundice made them backtrack looks more and more possible.

The Haven Battle episodes quickly have Ozpin force control away from Oscar, but it’s not like Oscar did much before then anyway other than serve as the conduit for another lore dump on Hazel’s backstory. He doesn’t try and learn why Leo defected and manages to trounce the headmaster so well one wonders how the hell Leo got put in charge of a combat school. After that, Ozpin takes over (and we admittedly get some of the coolest fighting in the actual Battle of Haven in Ozcar vs Hazel) and Oscar only briefly returns in the last seconds of the finale to drop the sequel hook that they need to get the lamp to Atlas.

Volume 5 is just a bad season for Oscar- this is the one time we don’t get his eternal phantom of offscreen character development because it’s not fair to say Oscar has any development in Volume 5. He’s immediately forced to the back to serve as a projector through which Ozpin can put the audience to sleep, most of his actual scenes are irrelevant or just feel like a waste of time and he basically sits out the entire finale. It’s just infuriatingly incompetent writing- we’ve gone from Oscar being a waste of time in Volume 4 to just being a waste of a character in Volume 5 who barely gets to express himself. Little is done with Oscar that could not be achieved by putting a tape recorder beside a lampshade and calling that Ozpin’s new host. Volume 5′s bad for a lot of characters, but at least most of the rest of the cast had good seasons beforehand to show how well they could be handled or written. Oscar didn’t have that, and while ultimately the blame was placed more on Ozpin for hogging the time, Oscar’s critics began to grow and he was derisively seen as just a plot device to let the writers bring Ozpin back and serve as a mission marker for the heroes. One more bad season for Oscar could spell the end to his character ever having a warm reception among the fans and critics. Drastic action would need to be undertaken in order to regain trust in Oscar.

3) Volume 6- Tossing out the baby with the water

So the big plan to give Oscar some screentime... was basically cut Ozpin out of the story entirely. Oscar is almost entirely himself after the fourth episode, it’s the longest run of episodes with Oscar as himself that we’ve gotten in the show to date and Ozpin doesn’t even surface until the finale. There’s a lovely line of Oscar’s in episode 4 that finally lets him address some of the fears and concerns he should be rightfully worried about- “I’m just going to be another one of his lives, aren’t I?” Oscar’s tone is just so bleak there, it works super well and it was nice to finally see Oscar expressing human emotions. It even my cynical heart hope that Volume 6 would finally see Oscar get the limelight he had been denied for two years running.

But then the ball is just dropped hard. Oscar’s left in a background role for the Brunswick episodes, stuck working on a tire while RWBY encounter the Apathy. What’s already a somewhat rushed resolution to the whole plot of “RWBY express concerns about going onward to Atlas in light of Jinn’s revelations” now leaves Oscar, the guy carrying Ozma’s soul in him, out of the moment. He just gets to be tired and tell Blake to make food if she’s hungry.

Argus at least alludes to putting Oscar in the driver’s seat for his own solo arc where he explores the city alone after Jaune physically assults him (why didn’t anyone stop Jaune from hurting Oscar two people saying Jaune’s name with all the concern of someone stubbing their toe just feels cheap). Even though I was cold on the episode as a whole, Dead End did set up the wonderful idea of an Oscar episode, one where he maybe forces Ozpin to come out so they can talk frankly for the first time in two volumes. Maybe they could even rip off Avatar (some more) and have Oscar meet Ozma himself, using his conversation with the two as his own chance to rally onwards and decide to bring the fight to Salem. It could have been a really sweet moment of him backing Ruby up in her desire to keep going, the two forming a mutual bond of bolstering each other’s hopes as they carry the burden for their team.

But no. Because I can’t have nice things, in an otherwise near-perfect episode where I actually got Mercury and Emerald screentime and the lovely Pyrrha statue scene (which I low-key feel like Oscar should have been a part of but that’s a subject for another day), Oscar just gets over his issues, buys a new outfit and dodges past his problems, getting to develop past them, off-screen, for the third time in a row.

As far as I care, Oscar stole the money for this costume from either Qrow or Jaune and I don’t care if Miles says to my face he earned the money legit, I’m keeping that headcanon. Also, why are his gloves still orange? They don’t fit the rest of his costume.

If there was anything that got cut from Volume 6′s final half, I’d bet money on it being Oscar’s solo arc. Kerry himself has admitted during the RWBY Rewind for the finale that stuff got cut, and it’s very likely (going off comments from Miles that The Lost Fable was a huge resource drain) that this content was going to be part of the entire episode that was cut (Volume 6 initially had 14 episodes but around Christmastime this was remedied down to 13). It’s actually downright insulting and infuriating that Oscar got the shaft again, especially when Volume 6 finally seemed to be addressing the issue of Oscar never getting growth or focus. He was free of Ozpin, and with Ozma’s history revealed it was the perfect time for him to embrace the past forced upon him and resolve to become a hero. But no, the episode count went down so we had to wave goodbye to Oscar’s agency again.

Just think of how beneficial it would be for Oscar to actually confront his sorta-not-really ancestor, who may have had to watch as soul after soul gets consumed for him. Has Ozma ever had someone tell him none of this was his fault? I feel he needs it.

If I was a more suspicious person I’d say it almost feels deliberate, that someone on the writing team doesn’t like Oscar and is purposefully keeping his growth offscreen out of childish spite. But three volumes in a row now, Oscar’s growth has felt artificial and fake, and leaves him feeling like an afterthought. I know it’s not a problem of RWBY not being able to write new characters well, just look at how fleshed out and beloved Maria was after just her debut season. But Oscar just can’t catch a break and it’s frustrating to watch. In a volume that otherwise made huge strides in solving many of the pre-existing issues in Volumes 4 and 5, that 6 still refuses to treat Oscar with anything other than mild apathy is just mind-boggling.

Like, what was even the point of having Jaune say Ozpin was just pretending to be Oscar? To make Jaune look irrational? To plant the red herring in the viewer’s minds? The rest of the volume itself shoots the idea down hard, and it feels like it was going to be used during Oscar’s potential cut scene, but again... it was cut. I can only go off what’s in the volume and unfortunately, Oscar in Volume 6 is only marginally better than he was in past Volumes. Bless his heart, Aaron is trying to save this character but the writing itself is dragging Oscar down every chance it can get.

4) Volume 7- The potential breaking point

Oscar’s character is currently in a make or break spot, and Volume 7 will either finally solve his growth issues or this will be it and his fandom will reach a boiling point. The worst thing is, it’s a very easy solution to fix Oscar.

Just put his character development onscreen.

That’s it, the golden answer to all of Oscar’s problems is to just stop cutting his development and agency short. Oscar has potential to be the most tragic character in RWBY- someone who wanted to be a hero, only for the responsibilities to be forced on him without his consent. He’s someone who the rest of his companions oftentimes don’t see as a person, just a walking telephone to their boss. Imagine how dehumanizing it would be, especially after Qrow’s “Don’t lie to him, we’re better than that” line? Imagine being someone effectively living on borrowed time because sooner or later, your consciousness will be absorbed what makes you you will be but a distant memory? Oscar could easily be a shining example of character growth, he could easily have a great arc of learning to deal with the burdens of Ozma’s struggle, of being the target of Hazel and Salem’s ire when he did nothing to earn it. But it needs to be soon, or all the potential in the world won’t be able to save Oscar.

Perhaps Volume 7 will have a flashback to Oscar in Argus having that confrontation with Ozpin and getting his new outfit. Perhaps Ironwood will be mistrusting of Oscar claiming to be Oz, and Oscar will have to step up and prove he is who he says he is. Qrow never apologized to Oscar for punching him, so an apology would serve both Qrow and Oscar’s arcs as Qrow reignites his spark to fight. A potential confrontation with Salem where Oscar may try something the previous Oz lives didn’t could work wonders for Oscar. Volume 7 could still easily have Oscar get spotlight, but with how many plates the season is already planning to spin (Tyrian and Wattts going to Atlas, Cinder and Neo going after Ruby, Weiss dealing with her family, Ruby learning about the Silver Eyes with Maria, a likely return of Faunus racism for Blake and Yang, Atlas class warfare, the token reminder that Pyrrha died so Jaune, Ren and Nora can be sad, etc.) I’m already accepting that Oscar is the most likely candidate to get the boot again. It’s happened before, and I try to avoid being a sucker who falls for the same thing over and over. Definition of insanity and all that.

5) Conclusion

Oscar is... I hate to say this again, but infuriating to me writing wise. He has so much potential as a character in terms of his growth but despite having had main character status for half the show’s runtime now, it’s hard to really care. Oscar keeps getting the short end of the stick, and if it turns out that the whole reason he got shafted for years was because of M&K’s mystery fetish, I might actually throw a chair out a window.

What makes it worse is that Oscar is not a character with no hopes of being salvaged! There is a very easy way to remedy the problem and it’s just to let him have his time to shine and develop offscreen. Flashbacks covering the lost events such as his leaving his farm or gaining confidence in Argus (or even giving Oscar a character short specifically to address these issues) might be belated and feel like damage control- let’s be fair, after Adam’s short this wouldn’t be the first time they resorted to doing damage control in their shorts- but it would be a step in the right direction and show the team are committed to working to salvage Oscar. But they want to do it, it has to be now. If Oscar leaves Volume 7 suffering from the same problems, he might as well get killed off in Volume 8 because that will be it for his character, no one will defend him and Oscar will fully become the heroic Cinder in that no matter what, you can rest assured they won’t get onscreen development from anything that happens. In the meantime, all I can do is hope that this time, things will work out for the farm boi. There’s a goldmine of a character here guys, someone’s just gotta put the work into finding the first nugget.

In short, Oscar can be a great character, if the writing lets him become it onscreen. But until then, it’s going to be a frankly depressing journey to get there.

Thank you for reading.

#rwby #oscar pine #ozpin #ruby rose #rwde #rwby analysis #ozma #salem #james ironwood #hazel rainart #aaron dismuke #rwby4 #rwby5 #rwby6 #rwby7 #jaune arc #qrow branwen

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kierongillen · 6 years ago

Text

Writer Notes: The Wicked + the Divine: The Funnies

Spoilers, obv.

I suspect this will lean a little shorter than usual, partially because it’s more an editorial, sitting back position than any other issue of WicDiv and partially as DIE is out tomorrow, and there’s a lot of plates I’m keeping spinning.

But let’s see, eh?

Last year, when we did the Christmas Special, doing a comedy special was the other option. We decided to keep that in the can, simply because I was trying to visualise what on earth it would be like. Would I ask people to write stuff? Would I write it all? Could I somehow get The Wicked + the Canine to fill the whole issue? We went for Jamie’s idea (which required less conceptual engineering, so was easy, despite being more actual writing work) and saved this for the end.

Which is nice. End of school party, right?

Jamie/Matt’s Cover: Jamie and I have a piece of performance twitter, where I make puns and he pretends to hate them. Okay, that’s not true at all. He hates them, as is only right, as they are designed to be hated. When we have Skype calls, and Chrissy and I sit beside each other, when I drop a pun, Chrissy makes a face which… well, Jamie’s wants to grab it as a gif. It’s quite the thing.

Anyway – a variety of responses to puns. The pun is, I suspect, the best one I’ve dropped on twitter. One day I’ll write an essay on What I Do With Puns. But not today. It didn’t get a ludicrous number of retweets when I dropped it (and deleted my whole stream, as I do sporadically – don’t worry, I store everything before I do). It had an afterlife though being reblogged on tumblr (I think last time it was about 130k interactions), used in big websites’ pun round-ups, put on T-shirts and straight up stolen and tweeted by other people.

So let’s stick it on a cover, and show the variety of responses to it. Of course, Baph would like it.

I really like what Matt did with the colours here as well.

Margaux Saltel’s cover: Margaux is great. I got to know her distantly when C was editing superfreaks, and actually got a chance to hang properly at this year’s thought bubble. She’s got a real playfulness to her art, which this fascinating design sense. Adorable big dog staring at the reader was the first thing I thought of when planning this issue, really.

IFC

Intro page to explain what’s going on, with pop-comic design by Sergio, headlines courtesy of C. If you haven’t read it, give it a scan, because I big up all our collaborators.

How did we decide how to ask? Far too many options. Our comic friends are very funny. We tended to ask people as it occurred to us, see how many pages they wanted to do, and then work out how many pages we had left

The Wicked + the Canine

I lured Erica into this by basically promising her to draw six pages of as many dogs as she liked. Write for your artist.

The pun was basically to amuse Chrissy, and grew into a story. I thought it could be longer (and it could have) but realised it’s best to cut it short – the backbone of Ananke as trainer, and the dogs as untrainable pups, is basically the core of it. Plus the big kick in seeing everyone done in dog form.

I threw some ideas into the mix of how the dogs could be differentiated (For example, Sakhmet as a cat and Woden as clearly-not-a-puppy in a cone of shame) but really left it to Erica to draw whatever dogs she liked. I actually suggested they all be Labradors, but Erica wanted to stretch and play, and it’s all wonderful. The worry is in terms of race-coding the dogs, which is something we avoided.

I think my favourite is Baphopup.

The white-background and “get in the sack” is a wonderful bit of cartooning. How the lack of background stresses it all.

That it was basically done to make C laugh means that it’s part of a history of my dog based comics, which also includes the Christmas issue of Journey Into Mystery, where Loki has to give away seven hell-hounds. I think Thori is the character I co-created for the Marvel Universe who has had the longest life in terms of being used by other people. Adorable sweary murderous puppies can’t go wrong.

I’m pleased that people seemed to like it. That it’s a six page story where the joke is “Evil old lady doesn’t throw trusting pups in the river” is not exactly family comedy special material. I suspect if you’ve stuck along with WicDiv this far, you know what we’re like.

This is also a story which implicitly spoils the book, in terms of Ananke being a shameless manipulator of the pups. A lot of the stories are similar, which means this is a comic designed for relief of those who came along for all the issues.

The Wicker + the Divine Lizz Lunney is one of my favourite British cartoonists, and whole fierce scowl has petrified me for the decade or so I’ve known her. Lunney hadn’t read much of WicDiv before, so we lobbed her the PDFs, and found something fun to mock in terms of how ludicrously call-back-y we are.

Go support her stuff. She’s great.

The Lost God

Chip’s just a phenomenon, and his rising career across the last decade has been basically the most delightful surprise in the period. Immediately I have to swallow the urge to do the usual “Because he’s rubbish” chip-baiting joke, which says a lot. Chip is so much fun. That he’s both one of Marvel’s biggest, most interesting writers now and half of one of the most popular and definitive indie comics of the period is something else. Like, he’d be a legend if only for his internet jokes. That’s a footnote now. Amazing.

Anyway – we meet the first Kieron and Jamie version. Chip’s one is delightful – the over-tortured pun is on the money, but the real joy is Jamie McKelvie’s Hellboy-esque hyper-developed single arm. Every time I look at that, I laugh. Plus the accent. Marvelous.

“Wossat?! Time paste this nob, innit?” is just poetry.

Gentle Annie Vs The World

Talking about poetry…

Chrissy is WicDiv’s editor and also a poet, and has done some indie comics before – as well as co-editing the anthology Over The Line, which is an introduction to Poetry Comics. This isn’t that. This is her just channelling her loathing of Gentle Annie’s obfuscatory nonsense, and I love it so.

Clayton and Dee step in on the art duties. It was Clayton’s idea to drop in the Scott Pilgrim parody Annie at the top, which is very cute, and implicitly shows the modes he can work on. The realism of each scene, and the sense of place is great. Also, the Banshees poster in the doctor’s office is hilarious.

Making A Difference

This is fun. Romesh is a proper famous comedian, and digs WicDiv, so thought it’d be fun to write for the medium. As his script was coming together, I thought of Julia Madrigal’s Giant Days issue, and realised it’d fit well. She had to do it on her trip to Japan, which involved some hilarious jetlag.

Dee’s doing some powerhouse things here with the purple-white lighting too. That’s hyper-strong.

“Fresh Prince of Baal Air” is a hell of a line, in passing, and I think this may have the prize for the darkest punchline of the whole issue.

5 Things Everyone Who’s Lived With Sakhmet Will Understand

I loved Hamish’ Pantheon, which is a playful but entirely accurate retelling of Egyptian myth. Hamish also won this year’s Russ Manning Promising Newcomer Award, so clearly should be doing something else rather than being talked into playing around with us lot. Thankfully, he didn’t.

I think my favourite moment is Persephone’s glance up as Sakhmet walks across the keyboard.

18 Go Made In Wiltshire

Kitty and Larisa have done a bunch of stuff, but I have to put a special plug for where I first met them – TAYLOR SWIFT GIRL DETECTIVE: SECRETS OF THE STARBUCK LOVERS. It’s illustrated prose, and utterly delightful, so was honoured to have them along.

This is all an accurate and extensive skewering of what we’re doing, with a not-perfect Scooby Doo mash-up. I did try to talk them out of including all the characters, as that’s so much work, but they could not be stopped. This meant that working out speaking orders was the main formal issue to worry about.

Now, there’s lots of mockery of me in this issue, but reducing Laura down to “Everyone is so hot! Let’s make out with them!” was absolutely the I Feel Called Out Right Now moment. She’s more than that, right? Right?

While the “WicDiv is a scooby do plot” complete with “Evil old man reveal” is lots of fun, the bit which makes me laugh every time I flick through is the “I would have got away with it if it wasn’t for you meddling ki—” “Oh, fuck off.” Oh, Lucifer, Never change.

Enquiring Minds Want To Know: What’s Your Guilty Pleasure Song

Cover-artist Margaux joined by the irrepressible Kate Leth. I’m really into how the two play together – Kate wanted to cut things tight, and the “Short moment” illustrated with Margaux’s warmth is fascinating. Like, have the two other Norns ever looked more delighted and engaged than they are at the end of page six?

In terms of Kieron and Jamie baiting, Grumpy Jamie in full Captain Marvel Gear and me trying to write an essay in any given space is fun and mean (which is how we like it). And I’ve just realised that writing more about this script would only be underlining Kate’s point, so I better stop.

Secret Origin

I wrote it, and offered it to Jamie. Really, the point of the specials is to create a space in the schedule so Jamie can get ahead, but he couldn’t resist this one. It’s cathartic closure, at the least.

Choosing the puns was tricky – I realised it had to be a chain, so chose this one which amused Katie West, which was tweeted when visiting them in Edinburgh. So I was in range of punching.

As always, this is Jamie expression masterclass, and a little self-mocking of my tendency to go full clockwork in my story universes is fun. I hope so anyway.

28 pages of comics, which is quite the thing. I don’t suspect we’ll be making much (if any) money from this issue after paying everyone, but that’s fine. It’s a party, innit?

Oh, it was nearly 2000 words. It’s never short, is it? It’s never short.

WicDIv 40 is out tomorrow (December 5th), which starts our final arc, “Okay.” Hope you enjoy it.

Thanks for reading.

#WicDiv #the wicked and the divine #writer notes

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misterghostface · 6 years ago

Text

.Tapes

When Stan starts his second year of college, he instantly hates his new roommate. But will Richie be able to win him over with his cassette tape obsession? Secret Santa for @sadlysaraofthelosers ! Sorry its late honey, merry christmas! @itfandomprompts

Also a massive thank you to @midnightmillie for helping me to edit!

Read on AO3 here! /// Fanfic playlist here!

When Stan had collected his key from the front desk, he’d been prepared for having an unbearable roommate. He didn’t expect them to be friends, necessarily, but in the worst-case scenario he thought that maybe they’d be able to ignore each other. At least long enough to get through the year in one piece. But later, standing in the doorway of what should have been his dorm room, Stan realised how naïve he’d been.

He dropped his bags into the only patch of clear floor space he could see and sighed, wading through the piles of debris to what he thought could be his bed. If there was one thing he couldn’t stand, it was mess. Stan could already imagine how terrible the next year would be if he stayed here. In fact, he didn’t know why he hadn’t applied for a transfer already – surely, he should phone the accommodation liaison while his mysterious roommate was out somewhere else.

He looked across to the messiest side of the room. He wouldn’t be able to transfer without a good reason, he knew from experience, but maybe there was something here that he could use as evidence that they didn’t get along – maybe an anti-gay poster, or a political t-shirt – just something that would prove a ‘clash in values.’

Stan snorted. As though a lack of basic cleanliness wasn’t a big enough thing to clash over.

After making his way to his roommate’s desk, he bent down, to have a look, hand on his knees. When there was nothing incriminating on the top – just a collection of candy wrappers and packets – he pulled out one of the boxes that had been stashed away underneath and opened the lid.

Inside were rows of cassette tapes, some of them of bands Stan didn’t even know you could get on cassette; The Cure, Led Zeppelin, The Ramones, even one called Wolf Alice, a group that Stan was pretty sure had started making music long after tapes had become obsolete. In the next box he found more of the same.

One thing was for sure, his roommate was not only messy but also a complete weirdo. Who would take the effort to transfer music from a CD onto a cassette tape, if they’re not weird?

Suddenly, he felt guilty. His mind was taken back to his school days, when he used to be called a freak for wearing a kippah or for getting stressed out when there was an uneven number of pens in his pocket. Maybe he was being a bit too harsh. It was unlikely, but maybe Stan just had the wrong end of the stick. He hadn’t even seen the guy yet, after all, and what if he was actually alright to talk to?

Stan sighed, swiping his arm across his mattress to brush piles of his roommate’s underwear, comics and pencils to the floor, and began the process of moving in. He’d give it a week. Just a week, he told himself, and if it was absolutely insufferable, he would see about changing rooms.

But it was going to be a long week.

***

“Who the fuck does work on the first day of college?”

Stan rolled his eyes and didn’t reply, focusing on the blinking cursor on his laptop screen. He was quite glad that he already had an assignment, actually, because it gave him a brilliant excuse to ignore his boisterous roommate.

Their first meeting had been awkward at best, his roommate – who had later introduced himself as Richie – barging in to find Stan meticulously dusting his side of the room. He had beamed and ran over, sticking a hand out to be shaken and babbling at decibel levels that could only be described as inhuman. Stan had just ignored him until he went away.

Obviously, Richie was unperturbed, as he was still trying to start a conversation, looking over Stan’s shoulder and asking endless questions (“What does ‘demographic’ mean?”) about his work for Introduction to Business.

He tuned him out, instead focussing on the music coming from the cassette player – ‘Simple Season’ by Hippo Campus – which was actually just calm enough to help him relax.

Richie leaned once more over his shoulder, pointing at the screen. “Wait... there. You’ve written ‘scold’ instead of ‘sold’. Spellcheck won’t pick up on that since it’s a real word.”

“Oh yeah, thanks.” Stan cursed internally as he looked up to where his roommate was pointing. “Don’t you have any work to do?”

Richie smiled infuriatingly and reclined back onto his own bed. “Nope!” He popped the ‘p’. “I don’t have to do anything but relax my fingers, babe.”

“Your fingers?” Stan turned away from his laptop, fighting the blush that threatened to come upon hearing the pet name.

“Oh yeah, I play guitar, didn’t you know?”

Stan shook his head.

“Damn! Well, if you’re a good boy I’ll play for you sometime, I guess.”

“I’ll pass,” he sighed, but Richie ignored him in favour of whistling to the music. After a minute, Stan realised he’d been tapping his own fingers to the beat.

***

Richie was already gone when Stan had woken up on Tuesday, and for some reason he couldn’t help but feel disappointed. That was stupid, of course – seeing Richie was the last thing he wanted. Or at least that’s what he told himself. He got dressed and left with minimal fuss, which last year he would have loved, but now felt was profoundly wrong.

He was sitting in the back row of a lecture theatre, eyes drooping with fatigue and the collar of his shirt digging into his neck, wanting nothing more than to go back to his room and sleep. He had spent most of the night awake, stressing about the paper he had to finish, and about how little he actually wanted to write it. He was confident that he could get a good grade – but God it was so boring.

He slouched down in his seat, far enough that Mr. Sampson couldn’t see him, and laid his head back on the wooden chair back. He closed his eyes and blocked the lecturer’s voice out. He just hoped he didn’t start snoring.

Shoulders loosening, he started to relax as the voices around him became a low monotonous buzz. Perfect bliss. He sighed happily, feeling himself begin to drift off.

The door banged open, shocking him awake and back into an upright position. “Oh sorry!” yelled a very familiar voice over the blasting of a handheld speaker. “Wrong room!”

Everyone turned to stare at Richie, who had begun to leave the room again, exiting to the very apt tune of ‘Talk too Much’ by COIN. Mr Sampson sighed.

“Alright, class dismissed. Go home and get on with your essays while I go and track down Mr. Tozier.”

Stan closed his eyes again in victory, then reached down and hurriedly stuffed his books back into his bag. For once, thank fuck for Richie!

With a newfound spurt of energy, he pulled himself to his feet and forced himself through the crowd that was congregating on the stairs. He pushed the door open with both of his hands – free at last! – and forced himself out into the bright sunlight, taking in a gulp of fresh air and taking off in the direction of the dormitories.

When he hurried past the place where Mr. Sampson was laying into an innocent-faced Richie, he could’ve sworn he saw his roommate wink.

***

With Wednesday came heavy snowfall, and with snowfall came news of lesson cancellations after lesson cancellations. Stan laid on his bed, chin resting on his hand and legs in the air, crossed at the ankle. Richie was sitting cross legged on top of his own duvet. They both stared out the window.

“Do you ever feel sorry for the animals, when it’s like this?” Richie asked.

“I don’t really like to think about it.”

“Well nobody likes to, but I can’t seem to help it sometimes.”

Stan tore his eyes away from the snowy scene in front of him and turned his head to look at Richie. Their eyes met. “Yeah, I get that. I wonder where all of the campus rabbits go when it’s this cold. And how the birds cope with their nests being frozen over.”

“I suppose they’re probably fine,” he replied, shrugging and scratching his face absentmindedly. “I mean, they’ve lived through winters before, right?”

“Yeah, you’re right. What’s got you so concerned about animals all of a sudden?”

“Why, am I not allowed?”

Stan frowned, then shrugged. “Sure, you are, I just didn’t recon you would.”

“We’ve only known each other a few days,” Richie pouted, “I think it's fair to say you don’t know everything about me. I love animals, dude.”

Stan smiled, thinking back to the previous winter spent on his ex-boyfriend Mike’s family farm. “I love them too. Have you ever had to brush snow out of a sheep’s wool? It’s so weird, because on the top it's so cold and wet, but at the same time it’s warm and soft underneath.”

“That sounds nice.”

“Yeah! Not that they’re probably supposed to play outside in it anyway, but it seems impossible to keep them all inside for the whole winter.”

“I can imagine. I used to have a friend that lived on a sheep farm. Haven’t talked to him in a while, actually – maybe I should ask him if I can go and feel some moist wool.” Richie stuck out his tongue. “I wonder what he’d say to that.”

Stan laughed. “Probably nothing good if you phrased it like that. Perhaps I should give Mike a ring, see if we can go visit?”

“Wait,” Richie said, now giving Stan his full attention, “do you mean Mike Hanlon? THE Mike Hanlon? Who I used to go to school with?”

“Well if you went to Derry North, yeah, I suppose you must’ve done." His brow furrowed slightly. “That’s so weird, what a coincidence! I didn’t ever expect to find someone from Derry all the way out here.”

“Why didn’t I see you around school too, then?”

Stan shook his head. “I didn’t go there, I met Mike when we were little, at Boy Scouts.”

“Wait, I remember now – didn’t you two date for a while? He talked about you quite a bit.”

“Yeah, and what about it?” Stan bristled. “You have a problem with that?”

Richie’s eyes widened in surprise. “No, of course not! I was just saying.”

“Oh. Well, good. My past roommates usually tried to switch rooms when they found out I was gay, as if I was going to start spying on them in the shower or something. Which I don’t, by the way.” Stan began to relax again, and laid back down to look at the snow out of the window.

“Shame that. I’ve got a cracking bod. You’d be falling over yourself to ask me out.”

“Richie!”

***

Stan’s breath misted in front of him, yellowed slightly by the artificial light coming through the window. One earbud rested in his ear. He was sat on the low wall just outside of the dormitories, red nose poking out over his tightly wound green scarf.

“What are you doing out here, stranger?”

He turned to see Richie standing in the doorway, hands jammed in his pockets and coat unzipped.

Stan smiled. “I could ask you the same thing.”

“Couldn’t sleep.” Coming to sit down next to him, Richie’s teeth began to chatter.

“Yeah, me neither,” Stan admitted, then tutted; “you’re going to catch your death out here like that.” He reached over and grabbed the zipper on Richie’s jacket, pulling it up to his chin and then pulling up his hood, trying to cover his ears despite his unruly hair getting in the way.

Richie laughed quietly and leaned forward until his forehead was resting on Stan’s shoulder. “You’re like my little husband.”

“Yeah right, I hated you at the start of the week,” Stan protested. Nevertheless, a hand snaked around under Richie’s hood to play with his hair. “You’re a menace.”

Richie nodded. “That I am. But I’m irresistible. Don’t feel too bad about it, everyone gets sucked in eventually. It’s just my miasma.”

“Your miasma?” Stan raised an unseen eyebrow.

“Oh, shut up, you know what I mean,” Richie replied with a smile that was lost in Stan’s shoulder. “Anyway, what are you listening to?” He reached around to grab the earbud that was dangling on Stan’s chest and put it into his ear, then sat up and laughed.

“What! It’s my favourite song!” Stan playfully slapped the back of Richie’s head.

Richie looked at him incredulously. “This? This is your favourite song? Are you being serious?”

“Hey, what’s wrong with Mr Brightside?”

“Nothing, nothing. It’s a good song! I just didn’t expect anyone to call it their favourite. It’s like Bohemian Rhapsody, everyone loves it when it comes on but no one calls it their favourite.”

“It’s my mom’s favourite.”

Richie sighed good-naturedly. “Of course, it is. Someone needs to introduce you people to some new music.”

Richie sat up further, and Stan’s hand fell from his hair. His hand immediately felt the loss, and it took a great deal of willpower not to reach up and pull Richie’s head down onto his chest. He stuffed it into his pocket instead, as though the weird feeling he was getting was lack of warmth and not something else.

Richie patted his pockets until he found the one that he was looking for, then pulled out a cassette player. “Listen to this one instead.”

Rolling his eyes, Stan paused his music and pulled out his earbud, replacing it with the one that Richie was offering him. “Oh wait, I think I know this one. It’s by Rex Orange County, right? Mike used to listen to this all the time.”

“I know,” he laughed, “who do you think got him into it to start with?”

“Well maybe you should get me into some new music, since you’re the expert.”

“You know what? Maybe I should. Perhaps I’ll make you a tape.”

Stan hummed. “Why do you like cassette tapes so much anyway? Why not just put all your music on an iPod, or use CDs?”

“My dad used to buy me tapes when I was a kid, and it just went from there I guess,” Richie shrugged. “You were probably expecting it to be a long story, but that’s all there is to it. I’ve just always associated them with happy times.”

Stan smiled and absentmindedly grabbed Richie’s hand. “Nah, I completely understand. It’s like how I’ve kept the cars I used to play with as a kid.”

“Yeah, I suppose.” Richie laced their fingers tighter and squeezed, looking off into the distance. “You don’t really hate me, do you?”

“What? Hate you? No, of course not.” Stan’s brow furrowed. “I was wary to start with but certainly not now. I quite like you actually.”

“Oh good. I quite like you too.” Richie leaned over to rest on Stan’s shoulder, but at the last moment turned his head to brush a feather-light kiss on the hinge of his jaw.

“Richie?”

He stood. “It’s getting late. Come on inside before you catch a cold.” He pulled Stan to his feet by the hand. “We should talk more in the morning.”

“You’re a funny one, Tozier.”

“Just how you like it.”

As Stan watched Richie’s retreating back, he couldn’t help but agree.

***

The accommodation office – a place in which Stan found himself far more often than any other student – was small, cramped, and deeply weaved with the smells of lavender and biscuits. He looked across the desk at Mrs Flint, a motherly woman with crinkled skin and a kind smile, as she pushed back a grey hair with one of her delicate fingers.

“How are you holding up this year, Stan? I was surprised to have not heard from you yet.” She brought up his file on the computer and tapped a few keys on the keyboard. “If you feel like you and your roommate don’t quite fit, there’s a few other people requesting room changes. I’m sure I can arrange something again.”

Stan smiled and wrapped his fingers around the new cassette tape in his pocket. Richie had given it to him that morning, along with a kiss on the lips and an invitation to dinner. “Not this time, ma’am. I think we’ve finally found a winner. There’s nobody else I’d rather spend my time with at the moment.”

“I’m glad to hear that, but are you sure? Last year you barely lasted a month before asking to be swapped around. What’s different this time?”

“There’s something special about this one. I just know it.” He looked behind Mrs Flint at his new boyfriend, who was pulling faces at him through the glass panel of the door. “He’s absolutely perfect, and I wouldn’t have him any other way.”

#it 2017 #stan uris #richie tozier #stozier #it secret santa #fic #mine #my writing

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survivalgrad-blog · 8 years ago

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Essay Writing Crash Course - Arguments (and Others!)

OK, so you’ve got to write an argument essay on a test. Time is of the essence, and you’re nervous, you haven’t slept, you’re disappointed in the last season of True Detective, yadda yadda. We all have our reasons to feel “off.”

Let’s say you have 30 minutes to write this thing. First off, before you begin writing, read the prompt and take a deep, cleansing breath. Do the 5-2-7 technique and inhale for five seconds, hold for two, and then breathe out for seven. This will allow you to center yourself a bit. If you’re real nerved out and are a fast writer/typist, you may even want to do this twice; the calm you’ll gain will offset the “five minute panic clog” that destroys precious time... and yes, I’ve lost more time than that due to panic in the past.

(I suggest you practice this in non-study situations as well; it’s certainly helped me relax and I am a machine that runs on coffee, fear, and nervous energy!)

Now that you’re feeling a bit more relaxed and on top of things, let’s skip to the meat-of-the-meal and get you on the path to essay supremacy. Here are my tips for outlining and writing a great argument essay in a time crunch. These techniques will also work with other essay types as well. I recommend having good practice essays around to read as well, such as the ones you’d find in this Manhattan Practice book, and also this other one.

Step 1. Outline the whole essay paragraph-by-paragraph.

This is nothing special, but you’ll need an outline that will allow you to map your essay’s terrain. I suggest the standard model:

A. Intro / Precis

B. Argument Point 1

C. Argument Point 2

D. Counterpoint with Rebuttal

E. Summation and Conclusion

I’ve had success with this model for years and years, and I don’t think of myself as a particularly strong writer. I’m sure rhetoric/debate students are sick of it, but it works.

(Note: Some GRE test takers add another “argument point” paragraph; if you have time I suggest doing so on that particular test.)

Step 2. Assign a “point” to each paragraph.

Each paragraph should fulfill an aim. Look back over your outline and define a main point for each paragraph. These points are KEY; if you wrote your essay just using these points in sentence form it should still make sense.

Example prompt: “Some have argued that all zebras are NOT black and white. Write an essay explaining the extent of how much you agree or disagree with this argument. Support your answers.”

Point plan:

1. I disagree on the basis that the argument has major shortcomings.

2. The evidence as presented may be biased.

3. The term “all zebras” is problematic; it’s tough to confirm and non-committal.

4. Although it could be true, the absolutist nature of the argument would mean that it would have to be empirically and irrevocably verified.

5. In light of these points the argument’s over-reaching nature means it does not stand up to scrutiny, and thus I disagree with it.

These points are key. Your job is to take them, build on them cohesively one sentence at a time, test and rebut them in paragraph D, and then hammer your points home at the end. Easier said than done? Yeah, so start writing strong intros and strong conclusions and using them in conversation; these are directly applicable to your essays. Openings and closings are the toughest in my experience, so see step five for some ideas on how I approach them.

Step 3. Pick key terms, phrases, and transitions. Vary them AND stick by them!

The bird is the word and the word is the bird. Expanding your vocabulary enough to support your arguments and to avoid repetition is vital; this is why “meh” writers barely read and why AMAZING writers are voracious bookworms.

Don’t use the same verbs, nouns, and adjectives over and over; switch it up. Find different words for the same thing and reinforce your points to display your language skills. This sounds intense, but if you read enough example essays you’ll start to see established forms and variations reappear all the time, many of which are just glossed up basic sentences.* Hell, I straight out memorized and listed transition terms on my writing sheets for my last essay test and got a perfect score!

Check out this page for transition resources. All of them are worth knowing, no matter where you are in your schooling.

* = (”I ‘descried’ such permutations upon further re-examination.”)

Step 4. Populate the paragraphs.

This is where you get comfy and set up your base. Use your outline, points, and your wording as tent stakes to secure your paragraphs onto the grounds of Camp Cohesive Essay. Aim for at least four sentences in each paragraph and let them flow.

Keep an eye on the clock. You’re going to need to leave yourself time to re-read and correct anything later on. There are various diverging opinions regarding “population” technique; some say to write the first and last paragraphs first and then fill them in, others say to do the first sentence of every paragraph, and some say other approaches work better... but rest assured THE CLOCK IS YOUR FRIEND UNTIL IT’S YOUR ENEMY. Keep breathing, but don’t sleep on it!

Oddly enough, despite this taking up the lion’s share of the writing time you should be moving pretty quickly when you get to step four if you’ve worked with this model a bit. So practice. But remember the goal is to use each one of your points to...

Step 5. Nail the take-off and stick the landing.

You need to start and finish STRONG. To leave a lasting impression, you need to write the strongest possible introduction and conclusion you can to accentuate your points. Writing these is an art unto itself, so drill this when you get the chance. As much as it can be a cess-pool of anger, hatred, and whiny, self-centered annoyance (and yes, this is coming from a guy who dabbles in modern survivalism, where every second person’s opinion may as well be accompanied by “wahhhh me!”), Twitter is really good for this.

Opening Paragraph Example Guide - Acknowledge argument, state your position, explain how you’ll investigate this position in the paper.

Concluding Paragraph Example Guide - Restate points, acknowledge difficult aspects of argument, restate why those are negligible to your conclusion, complete everything with a strong closing sentence.

You can use these over and over again once you find a few you like. Rework them at will to complement your essay. Practice makes perfect.

(Ed. note - Dear Twitter: I await your high-paying job offer.)

Step 6. Take a breath and re-read.

Now that you’ve rocked this thing top-to-bottom, go ahead and do another 5-2-7 breathing pass and then re-read your essay.

Ideally you’ll have time for two passes. If so leave yourself time to read it for comprehension on the first pass and focus on minor issues during the second. Your foremost goal is to make sure your essay can be understood. Aside from ridiculous screw-ups in spelling and the like you should focus on the minute edits at the very last stage and read for comprehension first. Keep it simple and “stupid.” Strive for clarity first!

Assuming you’re not seeing any egregious errors and that your argument makes sense, you can now do your last bit of buff and polish work if there’s time to do so.

Step 7. Make final edits.

This is fairly self-explanatory... but please please please do this WELL before the time limit is up. After that all you have to do is turn it in.

...

I know there’s a weird feeling of paralysis when you first see a prompt and think “OH GOD 30 MINUTES WHAT AM I TO DO!!?”, but with time and practice you’ll feel more secure using this model and you’ll grow more assured of your ability to create cogent arguments in a small amount of time. The end goal is to stop second-guessing yourself and to make good points in a manner that establishes a united body of thought. After you’re there you just put your ideas on paper in a way that reinforces them sequentially. Confidence will come with time and effort.

If everything goes to hell -- or you’re anxiety-ridden test taker -- just make sure you have a great intro and a ripping conclusion. This is why a lot of people suggest writing the intro and conclusion first and then filling the essay up from the “middle out.” (Hi Erlich!)

Hopefully that won’t happen to you... it’s happened to me though, which is why I’m writing this sucker.

I’ve used these steps to make a 6.0 on the GRE essay section two times in the past year. Planned ‘em, wrote, tied my ideas together, read, re-read, corrected errors, turned them in. Again I’m not a great writer by any stretch of the imagination. The secret is drilling, repetition, and familiarity. Figure out your verbs, your alternative words, your analogues, etc. and go to town. You can easily memorize good set phrases so you’ll have strong transitions at the ready, and it’s never going to hurt you to get good at introductions and conclusions.

Educators say if you study hard enough and often enough you’ll eventually find yourself “testing easy.” It sounds like BS but it’s true; trust me. In my case I had test anxiety so great that it brought on regular, crippling panic attacks. But over the course of the past year and a half I managed to cow it enough to get into two top-flight PhD programs and win a doctoral fellowship award. It was just a question of getting acclimatized to the material and practicing A LOT with an approach that worked for me. Not bad for a guy whose last regular job was as a janitor, right?

Believe me: If I can do it, you can do it. Now go show that paper who’s boss.

#GRE #Essays #essay writing #grad school #gradlife #essay #studying #studytips #study #panic #anxiety #PhD #phdlife #test anxiety #breathing #panic attacks

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clairelutra · 8 years ago

Text

a year in review ♥

meme stolen from @isadorator!!! (also she stored all of her fic there and i stg as soon as i can rest i’m diving in ITADAKIMASU ♥)

January

puppeteer chapter 6 (aka that threesome one)

river flows in you

ladrien --- marichat-style

secret valentine --- the introduction

of all the things to start the year with //faceinhands

i think this was the ‘this is really fun but oh my god so exhausting and I HAVE STANDARDS TO LIVE UP TO NOW HE L P’ stage right here, feat. me losing my computer to hardware failure and continuing to attempt writing anyway :’D

(my biggest memory of this time is that i was writing an akumized!marinette fic in a private mobile browser window with gmail, of all places, and accidentally x’d out of the tab and lost like 5 hours of work :’D //never recovered from that whoops ;;;)

February

secret valentine!!!!

aka the month of proving that:

green smoothies really work for brainfuel

i am actually capable of (at least short-term) consistency

ladrien is Some Good Shit

spite really is the best motivator :’D

basically, i started following the ladrien tag and at least once a week someone would come up with a new meta about why Marichat Is Better Than Ladrien (often featuring, Ladrien Is Unhealthy and/or Ladrien Would Crash And Burn Fast, And Here Is Why), and do you know

as a ladrien shipper

how infuriating that was

the last straw was someone insisting that you really just couldn’t slowburn ladrien

and like

bitch?

p l e a s e.

(i fooled you all by acting sweet; this is who i really am :’D)

(i am absolutely the kind of person who would write the longest fic i’ve ever completed simply to slowburn it because someone said that it couldn’t be done :’DDDDDDD)

(fuck you, person whom i can no longer remember. i showed you.

...with this fic that you will never care to read, because i wrote it about your notp long after you’d voiced your thoughts about said notp :’D)

(#hallielogic)

March

no room for jesus

fun with friends and.... that’s about it

(o hai there, impending existential crisis >.>;;;;

it was a month of panic attacks and essays that were probably a lot less shit than my english professor wanted to tell me and do you know how hard that was for someone as anxiety-ridden and a-type as i am

do you)

April

ladrien --- wrong number

ladrien --- swim

ladrien --- hug

fake married au

boku no hero acadamia au

aka, the month where i found out how spiritbreaking it is to:

start to consistently fail to please not one, but two people you admire greatly

one of whom is your teacher and in charge of your grades

whose job it is to judge your writing

which is your Thing

who doesn’t like you, but is too pleasant to let it on to your face

while you’re dealing with abruptly losing the sympathy and patience of the one person you go to for emotional support (explanation: my mom went on hormone treatment and it fucked with her mood b a d)

while dealing with watching both of your parents’ heath deteriorate fast

april was h e l l o n e a r t h

fake married au was an emotional crutch that sort of kept me back from the brink, honestly :’D (look! see! i’m not a waste of existence! people like this thing i made!! see!!!)

(orz)

major, major s/o to @peridipshit and giselle (no tumblr that i know of ;;; ) for counseling me through more than one lunch-table breakdown :’D;;;

(now excuse me while i go find a paper bag ;;; )

May

aka the month of ‘i am too mentally, emotionally, and physically exhausted to do jack shit, someone please put me out of my misery’

also the month bang bang on tumblr hit 1k notes!

June

no room for the devil

hope we don’t get caught kiss

pillow fight!

pillow fight! the second

a time travel snippet

July

get lucky

a bunch of 3 sentence/short fic aus that i’m not gonna link bc #lazy

aka the ‘well i’m not in that hellish situation anymore so i should be able to just bounce right back, right?’ stage followed by the ‘okay okay that didn’t work; let’s start smaller‘ stage

i still plan to finish get lucky someday --- maybe we’ll see how alive i am after spring semester :’D

August

more short au fics

scary sabine au

unnamed ladynoir flirting

abo au

sidekick au piece

genderbent au

pictured: me, pumping my fists and going ‘okay, okay, okayokayokay i can do this’

September

somebody loves you

mlnsfweek (unfinished, dang it)

ladynoir --- reunion

everybody talks

getting better, getting better

everything’s still pretty disconnected and i still couldn’t bring myself to commit to anything that’d take longer than a day, but... improvement (9′-’)9

October

beauxbatons au

enemies phineas and ferb au

stop desire

more break-taking /o/

getting used to writing on my phone to fill the long hours of boredom that had taken my schedule by storm \o\

(also, unseen, i joined the remix challenge and loved and hated it :’D

also also started being almost kindasorta able to take concrit again (after the hell of march/april), and so started working with mirth again for the first time in months ;; ♥ \o/!!)

November

yuri on ice fics~~

soulmate au

make ‘em blush

exorcist au

self-indulgent marichat/ladynoir

yet another enemies au

mari-the-oblivious-lesbian genderbent au

genderbent crack smut

d a n . Adrien ur bobbie s

two important things happened at once in this month:

1) f i n a l l y got a medication that seemed to agree with me??? after literal years of testing???? everything is brighter now holy shit???????

2) rp!!! with!!!!!! mirth!!!!!!!! :DDDDD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

which of the above is to thank for my astonishingly good mood??? i have literally no idea

aaaalso i got to remix bully’s fic in the remix challenge and that was great and fun as heck????? holy shit :D

lowkey dipped into another fandom there for a lil bit, but got too frustrated with the source material and dropped it ;;;

tl;dr: all in all, november was pretty great

December

marichat kissing lessons

do it 2 me

high-class callgirl au

cap-inspired crack

cru-inspired adrinette fluff-crack

moooore enemies au

shake up christmas

gods and godesses au

not pictured: like, almost 20k of rp goodness :D

medication and rp continue to do the trick, i start back in on things i haven’t touched in ages (’i want the k’ memes and get lucky, specifically), and the aus keep coming

signed up for waaaay too much towards the end there and spent like a week on too much stress and f a r too much caffeine, but actually feel well enough these days to start seeking help when i need it?? amazing

idk, mild caffeine od aside, the year ended on a high note

Total Year’s Output: ao3 tells me that it’s 93,383 words, but that not including a bunch of stuff i never bothered to upload there, and/or are still in wip form

Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you’d predicted?

mmmmh, a little less? i was pulling a steady 10k a month towards the end of 2k15, which is when i started writing for real, but understandable, considering the whole mid-year mental breakdown and subsequent recovery :’D

What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January 2016?

aus of any sort! like actual legit ‘let’s fuck shit up’ aus :D i’ve always wanted to, but always thought my tastes ran just too weird to pull any off in any readable, enjoyable format? the exorcist au and the gods and goddesses au are pretty good examples of the aus i come up with when left to my own devices, except that those are on the tame end of ‘weird’ for me :’D

also i’ve relaxed my rigid stance on ‘love square o n l y’ and dipped my toes into poly ships and things like adrialya, which i probably never would’ve done before :’D

What’s your favourite story of the year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you happiest.

HOT MESS

HOT MESS IS MY MOST-ADORED CHILD

i’m still not 100% sure why, except that it’s got all my favorite lines and all my happy excitement and, looking back at it, it’s not phenomenal, b u t

it’s just??? got so much that i l o v e tied up in it

most of my favorite lines and really good memories and a dynamic i love and just.

it makes me so happy to have written it >/////< ♥

in things that i still love upon rereading, secret valentine is pretty up there tbh. somehow in all my stress to get it out and get it out good i... actually managed to hit a pretty sweet dynamic? idk i reread scenes from it sometimes and i still like it ♥

Do you have any fanfic or profic goals for the New Year?

i wanna see where i can go, if anywhere, with get lucky. i wanna see if i can finish it. i wanna know where it goes, goddamnit.

i also want to beat this year’s wordcount, if i can.

and, if i’m well enough in november, maybe take a shot at nanowrimo? //fingers crossed ♥

i’m looking forward to it ♥

#adventures in writing #feat. me having and recovering from am existential crisis or three ;;;#hallie speaks

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tigerlover16-uk · 8 years ago

Text

Dragon Ball GT:My thoughts on the Baby Saga. A sort of review

The Baby Saga is often regarded by a lot of GT's defenders and even it's detractors as perhaps the best Saga in the entire series. Do I agree? Well, I haven't re-watched the Shadow Dragons Saga yet, so I can't give a clear answer yet, but going off of memory and everything I know going forward... I'm willing to say that for now, yeah, I think it probably is GT's best Saga. It's certainly leagues above the previous really boring Saga, I'll tell you that, and even if I haven't re-watched it yet I already know for sure it's better than Super 17 (Oh God, do I really have to watch that?).

But does that mean it's a great Saga, or that it can make the whole series worth watching? TLDR version: No, it's not great. It's very good, but it has it's fair share of issues that drag it down a lot. And it's worth watching on it's own, but it doesn't save what's an all around bad series.

Long version is a lot more complicated. I'm going to be going into a lot of detail about this, so bear with me, this is going to be a long ride.

I'm going to get the positives out of the way first, since the problems and things I'm mixed on are a lot easier to explain and discuss and I don't want to give the impression that I'm just harping on this Saga.

The story here is really good and interesting. While it starts off slow with the Machine Mutants arc, once baby shows up and especially when he arrives on earth, the arc has a lot of really great tension and is easy to get sucked into. There's plenty of interesting twists and turns, the drama ranges from good to great, apart from a few moments. And it's easy to care about the conflict and want to see the characters succeed in the end. The story is mostly very well paced, the villain's plans and execution of them are great, and it has a lot of that epic feeling you'd expect from Z.

The score and animation are both beautiful, and are a big part of making this story an enjoyable and often epic experience. The music for the fights is appropriately epic and tense, and the themes for the more emotional scenes like Pan getting through to Golden Ape Goku and his subsequent transformation into Super Saiyan 4 are just breathtaking. There was definitely some good emotion in this story. And while I felt a few of the fight scenes were too short or anti-climactic (Uub's initial clash with Baby for one) and a few of them cut away from the action or just had the characters talking in between attacks too often, for the most part the action in the saga was intense with some great fight scenes, though I wouldn't count them among the best in the franchise. Also side note, they really spammed the energy blasts too much for my liking.

Oh, and the Super Saiyan 4 transformation. Probably the best and most iconic new element to come out of GT, and for good reason. While I really like Super Saiyan Blue both for continuing the simplicity of the SSJ designs and the mystic blue colouring working well for what's supposed to be Godly Ki, there's no denying that from a visual perspective the Super Saiyan 4 form is just freaking cool. While i personally would have gone for golden fur if I was designing it, the red coat, tail and wild hairdo, along with the animalistic eyes give the form a cool, beastial feel that just REALLY works well. Harkening back to the great ape transformation, it feels much more like what I'd expect a "Super Saiyan" to look like, feeling much more like a proper transformed state than the glowing blond hair and green eyes ever did. The method behind transforming into it was pretty interesting, and the golden Great Ape form (Both of which were really cool too) was a good callback to the filler-only flashback of the original Super Saiyan, showing that the writers were at least trying to make GT feel like a proper continuation of the story. Sad that the show as a whole structurally fails as such, but I have a loooong rant at the end to cover that.

So overall despite everything else I'm going to say here, know that this Saga was an enjoyable experience for what it was and the production values were great, but I'm going to be very frank with the rest of this little essay. Onto the stuff I'm mixed about.

The mini-arc that starts off this saga, despite it's great premise, felt fairly lacking to me. Basically to sum it up, our heroes Goku, Pan, Trunks and Giru pass by a planet which Giru claims to be his homeworld, so the gang decide to stop by so Giru can meet up with his friends and family. However, the place at first seems deserted and really creepy, giving our heroes the impression that something is wrong. it turns out that this planet is where Dr Myuu, the evil scientist we'd been introduced to late in the last saga as an apparent evil mastermind seeking the dragon balls for universal domination is based, along with his army of robot servants, called Machine Mutants (I'm a little unclear about whether they're just robots or if the mutants thing implies they're something along the lines of Androids 17 and 18. Though looking around I think the Machine Mutants name might have just been a dub thing). He orders his most powerful servant, General Rilldo and his squad of elite robots to capture our heroes so he can disect them and research their biology for his own uses, and steal their Dragon Balls. It also turns out Giru is supposedly a traitor working for Rilldo and leads our heroes into a trap, so Goku ends up fighting some robots, then Rilldo shows up and turns Trunks to metal and sending him off to Myuu's lab. Goku fights Rilldo while Pan goes off to find Trunks, some shenanigans as she tries to save the say herself only it doesn't go that well, Goku gets captured too, then right when Dr Myuu is about to dissect them all Giru reveals that he's actually NOT a traitor, frees Goku and Pan, reveals he and Trunks had their own plan to sabotauge Dr Myuu, they fight his ultimate creation Baby who apparently goes down after one combined hit, but he really survives as a bit of goop and hitches a ride with an escaping Dr Myuu, who our heroes fail to stop but decide that since they've defeated his ultimate weapon and pretty much screwed up his operations that he's no threat to the galaxy anymore, so just let him go. But then it turns out Baby was somehow the evil mastermind behind all this and he regenerates and crushes Myuu's head, getting a dragon ball which he uses to lure our heroes into a trap in the next two episodes. And so the Z fighters leave the planet to find the rest of the Dragon Balls, killing off Rilldo in anti-climactic fashion right as they're leaving.

Did you get all that? I know that probably seems like a rushed description that leaves a lot of questions if you haven't watched the episodes, but I've got a LOT of ground to cover and this is just me giving my thoughts on the saga, not a recap, so sue me.

Honestly this arc was just okay. On paper it feels like it should be really interesting, a robot planet and the general story make it seem like this should be a very cool story, but it's execution (Like so much of GT) is a bit lacking. And the biggest problem is partly a holdover from the last Saga, and it can be summed up in one word: Investment.

(Oh yeah, I'm going to be giving some of my thoughts on the previous saga as well in this part and a few others to better explain my thoughts on the Baby Saga as a whole, so please excuse me if at some points it feels like I'm just rambling a lot).

Part of the biggest problem I realized I had with the Black Star Dragon Balls Saga is that I wasn't invested in this cast of characters. After jetisonning the majority of the supporting cast with the end of the second episode, we were left with Goku, Pan and Trunks as the stars of the Saga along with a robot sidekick called Giru, who swallowed the dragon ball radar and thus gained the ability to detect the Dragon Balls himself, so he kinda needs to hang around. Now, choosing to focus on a smaller cast of characters for the first arc wasn't the problem here. The problem is, these particular characters the way they were written... were not an interesting pair.

Goku faired the best of them overall I think, but the gimick of turning him back into a kid and the fact that he acted more like his kid self at certain parts just felt kind of weird and off-putting, especially when I later realized my biggest problem with it was how this development was pretty much the physical embodiment of the structural problem with GT as a sequel series. but again, that's for later. Pan, who I'll cover when I discuss her role in the arc as a whole, was almost completely unbearable for the previous Saga and was similarly annoying in these set of episodes, even though she did have some good moments.

And Trunks? I'm going to be honest, I was never a big fan of kid Trunks in Z. I didn't hate him or find him annoying or anything like some people, I just thought he was kind of okay, not all that interesting on his own. I much preferred Goten. But I'll give him credit, when he had Goten to bounce off of their dynamic could be pretty fun, and his more emotional moments in regards to Vegeta's character development were well done. But in GT? Honestly, I don't know if this was just me personally talking, but Trunks in this show this far was just the definition of meh. He wasn't annoying or unlikeable, he was just a bit bland. He served as an alright straight man and the more mature one of the group (Even if his introduction as trying to shirk his responsibilties as Capsule Corp CEO really don't paint him as such at first glance), but he really wasn't that interesting as a character. Just sort of... there for me. And honestly, looking at him a lot of the time I just kinda wish I was watching Future Trunks instead.

And Giru was... boring. He had no character apart from being the sorta cute robot sidekick that makes annoying noises and gets abused by Pan (Making her oh so much more likeable). Honestly he felt entirely pointless apart from one episode where he was kinda cool, but that was my least favourite episode for other reasons so I never really liked him.

So to sum up, we had one good character who also had a bit of a distracting gimick, one bland character, one terribly written character that feels like depressingly wasted potential, and a worthless character. Yeah, with a cast like this and stories that either felt like a weaker rehash of an older story or just weren't that interesting and with uninspired comedy and action, I was really, really bored by the end of the first Saga of GT. And since I wasn't invested in the characters, that really affected how I felt about the Machine Mutants arc.

On paper I feel this arc should work, because a lot of the writing is good and the action, while not all that great, was a big step up from what had come before. But I couldn't care that much because I didn't care about most of these characters at all. Giru's supposed face turn was the worst of it. The show seems to expect us to feel shocked and betrayed about this revelation, and to feel sorry for Pan and how hurt she was about this turn of events and everything else happening. But the fact is, I wasn't upset. I was apathetic. Why should I care that this boring robot with no interesting characteristics or real purpose other than I assume failed kid appeal might be a traitor? While I think I cared more as a kid, as an adult watching this I was just shrugging my shoulders and saying "Okay, so let's move on to the next part". And any efforts to make me sympathise with Pans feelings fell flat due to her poor characterisation. And while I cared if the characters survived, because I'm a decent human being and I do really love Goku however he's portrayed, I wasn't really on the edge of my seat for a lot of this arc. The action was okay, there were some good moments, when the revelation that Giru wasn't a traitor happened I just shrugged again and watched the rest of the episode mildly interested. If I cared about the characters more, I might have enjoyed this arc a fair bit, but as it was I remember having a constant sense of "Just get to the good parts" throughout most of it and it feels like they didn't really come. Just meh all around.

I think this was also why I thought the Saga really improved the moment we got back to earth. After so many episodes with just these four characters travelling around on a bunch of underwhelming adventures, it was just so darn refreshing to get back to the familiar setting and characters of earth. Not that I don't have my issues with how many of the characters are portrayed, but it was sitll a big improvement.

As for the villains here? Wasted potential. I described this in a previous post, but it bears repeating. General Rilldo was an interesting concept on his own, and honestly I wish he'd been the main villain of his own Saga. He's evil sure, but he actually seems to have a sense of comraderie with his fellow robots, making him perhaps the one good boss villain we've had in a Dragon Ball series, his design while not great was decent and his demeaner and powers made him an intimidating foe and just really cool and dangerous in his own right. He's stronger than Majin Buu, can regenerate as long as he's surrounded by metal to absorb (On a planet that seems entirely made of metal), and can shoot a beam that gives anyone it strikes the Han Solo carbanite treatment, probably the single most op attack outside of Akkuman's power to blow people up by harnessing the evil in their hearts. This guy was awesome and interesting in his own right with plenty of potential for some good development and creative, intense battles. So what does he amount to?

He has one good fight with Goku, then disappears until the episode after the gang already foiled Dr Myuu's plans, wherein he gets beaten by a combined beam attack from Goku, Pan and Trunks. Which not only doesn't make much sense considering his pre-established regenerating ability, but feels increadibly anti-climactic. Oh and also apparently he was being controlled by Baby too, which really seems kind of pointless unless Baby just wanted to try and abosrb some of his power for himself, but it just made me raise my eyebrow and wonder what was the point of that since last we saw of Baby he was fleeing on Myuu's ship and we next see him on that damaged ship the Z Fighters come across. Okay, so how'd he manage to come back and possess Rilldo, and then fly on ahead of the gang to attack that other ship? It was just kind of confusing and pointless.

My problem with Rilldo is basically the same issue I have with characters like Dedoria and Tagoma. He's a really good elite minion character, but we don't see nearly enough of him to make use of his full potential as a villain, and he had a lot of it so it's just disheartening.

Especially when you compare him to Dr Myuu. The guy was boring. Really, really boring. I honestly can't remember much about him at this point apart from the goofy accent Funimation gave him, no idea how he sounds in Japanese. He's underdeveloped and his character just amounts to generic evil scientist guy who's evil, backstabs minions that are no longer of use to him and his overall motivation is that he's power hungry and insane. That's it. There's no depth to this guy, he's like a low budget Dr Gero with a worse design and none of what made Gero interesting in his own right. His introduction sets him up as some sort of mysterious and threatening big bad, but when we actually meet him he just becomes so much less interesting and generic compared to Rilldo. And then he has that breakdown when he finds out Trunks discovered and tampered with Baby, and I think we were supposed to feel sorry for him like Pan did, buuut... I just couldn't.

Maybe part of that was the delivery of his voice actor, which doesn't sell it as all that upsetting, but I had no reason to feel sorry for this creep. Myuu was a bland villain, a horrible person with no redeemable qualities on display and he did nothing to earn my sympathy. I heard someone say this scene made them feel sorry for him because they thought he was just insane, and yeah, I do sympathise with mental illness and all that. But between how he was portrayed both last saga and here, and the general way he behaved before and during his breakdown... no, I don't think this was simple mental illness. I think he was just generically evil mad scientist guy who was just pushed to having a breakdown in that moment because he was horrified his plans for domination and doing horrible things to the people of the universe were foiled and what he believed was his finest work was ruined.

And if he was mentally ill, while I would feel sorry for him, I would feel more offended and disgusted that the writers would include a mentally ill character only to portray them like THIS. Fiction has a long and shameful history of portraying the mentally ill as violent, disgusting criminals that are a danger to those around them, and it's contibuted to society's mistreatment and abuse of the mentally ill. So to have a mentally ill character who's an evil, mass murdering madman who wants to backstab everyone who's loyal to and cares about him, perform twisted experiments on the corpses of his enemies and victims and take over the universe for his own greedy ambitions... no. This is a TERRIBLE use of a mentally ill character if that was the intention. I don't think that was what they were going for, so I didn't feel sorry for him during his breakdown. Like with most of the main cast, I just wasn't invested.

So, with all I've ranted on was this a bad start to the saga? Eh, I thought maybe at first, but like I said, the action's decent and it had at least one good idea. So, I just thought it was a meh start that at least set up the real, more interesting villain.

Mercifully too, because once Baby takes over as the main threat, everything starts to become a million times better. I already did a post a few days ago covering my thoughts on the two episodes after the Machine Mutants mini-arc so go read that for full details, but I'll say that, while a few of Baby's traits make him seem like a rehash of Buu and partly Cell here, that quickly becomes a non issue and they effictively sell how creepy a villain Baby is. WIth his mannerisms and disturbing, The Things-esque power to possess people by turning to goop and sinking into their bodies, it makes the character terrifying and makes him feel unique and different enough from previous villains in his own right. And things get even better when he arrives on earth as Goku and the gang are still off hunting for the Dragon Balls. In three episodes, Baby arrives on Earth, starts gradually possessing the saiyan characters there, before working his way up to Vegeta, the tension rising higher all the while before he takes control of Vegeta, using the saiyan prince as his final host before infecting the entire planet with parasites that put them under his hypnotic control. Making Baby the one villain besides briefly King Piccolo to effectively take over the Earth. Wow. And during that fight we learn his backstory too.

Anyone remember the Tuffles? The race of technologically advanced, humanoid aliens that lived on what became Planet Vegeta before the Saiyans massacred them? Well, before they were all killed in a strike orchestrated by King Vegeta, their greatest scientists pooled their resources and some tuffle dna to create a powerful bio-weapon that they sent into space that would eventually evolve into a powerful, parasitic life-form that would take revenge on the saiyans, destroying them and rebuilding the tuffle race and their empire. Now this backstory is a fantastic concept, and it really helps to tie this saga into the lore of the franchise and create a villain with a fascinating motivation that gives him a really good, logical reason to want to attack the saiyans and do battle with Goku. This great motivation and concept are one of the things that really help sell Baby, which is unfortunate given it kinda reflects what I'm going to say about him in a bit because while it's a great idea, it has a few issues.

For one, the portrayal of the saiyans arriving on planet plant in their pods and King Vegeta being the one to lead the massacre of the Tuffle race doesn't gel at all with the backstory of the saiyans King Kai establishes early on in Z (And it seems to become a tradition in other media involving the Tuffles to make the whole backstory even more convoluted from what I've seen), where King Kai seemed to imply it happened too long ago for King Vegeta to be the one to lead the attack, and definitely before the saiyans made a deal with another race to be able to travel across space. Plus how the original backstory played out, the saiyans were supposedly a race that also inhabited the same planet as the Tuffles, but the two races apparently just stayed seperate from each other and didn't interact much until one day the saiyans randomly attacked, starting a war that ended one night when the full moon transformed all the saiyans into great apes. A pretty good backstory on it's own, and while the idea of the saiyans invading and turning into great apes carries through to GT, literally everything else about the set up is changed.

Now retcons are nothing new, Dragon Ball and Z had plenty of them, but with a few exceptions they all normally fit in really well with the story, served as decent answers to open ended questions and tied up loose ends, or they were at least handled well enough that you could buy the different interpretation. The revisions to the Tuffle backstory here though? Honestly, given that a lot of things in this saga are built on lore established in Z's filler so it's obvious the writers must have watched Z, the retcons to the Tuffle backstory don't make any sense and can't be rectified with Z's interpretation of events. The only explanation that would make any sense about how this could still work if we're taking this as genuinely a follow up to Z is if King Kai was lying and making stuff up in places when he was telling Goku about the saiyans backstory, which yeah King Kai is shown to not be as all-knowing as he tries to pass himself off as, but this makes him look pathetically incompetant and ignorant if that is the case.

If we want to accept this as an alternate universe take (Which GT technically is, but it wasn't meant as such at the time so i won't count it as in how I choose to judge it, which'll factor in to another criticism later) like the movies that don't fit snugly into canon, then fine, the new backstory works on it's own, but for something trying to tie into Z's continuity as a direct sequel... no. Just, no. So while the reasons behind Baby's creation and his subsequent motivations are fantastic, the ham-fisted retooling of the Tuffle backstory hurts the presentation a bit.

Also, while it might have been explained better in the Japanese version, the dub at least does a poor job explaining the part where he ended up in Dr Myuu's lab. Apparently, he created Dr Myuu and programmed him to think he was actually Baby's creator, but he was just using Myuu to help him develop a more powerful form for himself that could stand up to the saiyans. And somehow Dr Myuu found out about the Black star dragon balls, though all that and how Baby knows about earth are poorly explained or not at all (Please tell me the subs do a better job), and, and it's all just pretty convoluted and confusing.

Honestly it felt like the writers had a great idea, but then tried way too hard to make it complex to try and make this backstory seem as "Deep" as possible and be surprising, when really it's a bit head scratching and combined with the aforementioned retcons just makes everything needlessly messy and confusing. Honestly, wouldn't it have made a lot more sense if Dr Myuu was a Tuffle scientist who'd managed to escape the planet before the saiyans massacred his race, and he did create Baby himself partly using his own dna and memories and having events play out largely the same as they ended up doing? As well as turning himself into an android like Dr Gero to extend his life while also creating the Machine Mutants, going insane after finding out the saiyans were killed by Freeza, robbing him of his own revenge so he decided to take over the universe himself to outdo Freeza as compensation? Just saying, it would have made things flow a whole lot more smoothly. As it is, this backstory sounds very great on paper, until you start analysing certain aspects of it and it becomes a real mess.

So yeah, his backstory sounds good at first, but it's a real clunker that could have been ironed out better. But does that stop his take over of the planet and subsequent actions from being creepy, awesome and tense as all heck? Thankfully, no! Just about everything he does in these episodes is great, despite the issues his confrontation with Vegeta was well handled, and then once Goku and friends return to earth only to be confronted by their possessed relatives, it's all really great drama. After managing to possess Trunks and smashing up Giru, robbing Goku and Pan of some of their few remaining allies and backing them right up into a corner, Baby then proceeds to confront Goku in Vegeta's body, dominate him in a fight and then seemingly MURDER Goku, leaving Pan, Mr Satan and Buu in shock and horror as everything goes to heck. And then Baby uses the Black Star Dragon Balls to create his own new version of the Tuffle Planet, where he plans to transfer the enslaved human race to use them to rebuild the Tuffles society and spread his empire throughout the universe, undoing everything our heroes had worked so hard in all the previous episodes to accomplish up to this point and leave us on a cliffhanger where all hope seems officially lost.

That. Was. All. BRILLIANT! While there were a few minor complaints I could lobby at these episodes and that backstory was sloppy as I've explained, it only slightly detracts from what was a very well executed plan that sets Baby up as a powerful, disturbing and fearsome foe and ramps the tension right up to eleven. It was a ton of fun to watch and is some of the best set up to a villain in all of Dragon Ball, and if things continued as great as they did here with Baby then he could have easily been one of the best villains in the series.

Sadly though, this is the point where things start to fall flat. While everything about his introduction and rise to power except the execution of his backstory was almost perfect, everything about Baby as a villain after the main action moves to the Tuffle Planet becomes very... meh.

Honestly I think his set-up set the bar a bit too high on the "Crowning moment of Awesome" stunts meter, and since it was a while before he really got to do anything as close to as awesome as taking over humanity and beating Goku, he would have needed to rely on his personality and mannerisms to sell him as an interesting villain from here out until he became a golden Great Ape. And that's where his shortcomings become clear.

Because while he starts off terrifying and just plain creepy, he's aleady possessed and taken over all of humanity by this point, so his gimick of turning to goop and infecting people stops becoming a factor from then on, taking away the creepy factor somewhat. Kind of like where Cell stopped absorbing people after 18, becoming less creepy and more just smug and in love with himself in his later forms, though still entertaining and threatening. But Unfortunatly, Baby just doesn't have as much of a personality or charm as most of the major DBZ villains to carry him without that creepy factor, so he gradually becomes increasingly less interesting after taking over the world. His personality from this point really does just feel petulant, petty, cruel and a bit whiny at parts. And I don't mean whiny and petulant in the same way as Zamasu, who's demeanor and some of his dialogue would at least make him amusing and the kind of person you took great satisfaction in seeing get their face beaten in, just normal whiny. Overall he justs comes off as "Generic Evil Space Emperor guy #99926547". He's still threatening, but only on the basis of being much more powerful than the good characters, the drama tends to revolve around the other characters like Pan being confronted by her possessed parents, and when characters do confront Baby before Goku achieves SS4, mainly just Uub, the conflicts are very brief and as I'll explain in a bit, the results there are iffy.

The show seems to be wanting to set up some kind of a moral conflict with Baby's takeover of the human race, with Goku confronting him about how the saiyans paid for their evil ways already and the earth didn't deserve to suffer for his petty revenge, and later on Baby saying something along the lines of bringing peace with Goku reprimanding him over how stripping humanity and presumably all other races in the universe Baby wants to control of their free will is not the way to do it. This could have been a fascinating moral debate and really deepen Baby's character if they actually went deeper into this, but it's only brought up in those two instances and nothing ever comes of it, with Baby just quickly dismissing and moving on with what he was doing both times. He ends up coming off like he just wants to take over the universe for the sake of being an evil ruler. And his claims that humanity under his control are now the new race of Tuffles... makes no sense, since genetically they're all still humans. Technically he's still the only being in the universe even close to a real Tuffle since he has Tuffle cells mixed into his DNA, so he just sounds delusional there. If I had been writing this, I would have had Baby assign Bulma and Earth's top scientists to work on a way to clone an entire civilization's worth of new Tuffle's from the Tuffle cells in his DNA, or have the Z Fighters under his control go out to eventually find the earths Dragon Balls to wish the Tuffles back to life himself. His plans for humanity would basically be making them his brainwashed slaves serving the Tuffles, and he would still want to conquer the other races in the universe in the same way. But actually explore the implications of that. Show Baby talking to Bulma and some scientists about his plans for the Tuffles, and have him show genuine joy and happiness over the idea of bringing the Tuffles back. Maybe have him shed a few tears that all his years of waiting and planning are paying off.

Then when Goku comes back and starts to overpower him as an SS4, have Baby break down over this and how he's going to be the saviour of the universe, keeping all races subdued so that all conflicts would cease. Only to have Goku drag him through the coals for his methods and all the moral implications that would arise from his turning all living creatures into his puppets (In this scenario none of the possessed characters would show any personality at all at most times and would basically come off as soulless robots, with only the possessed Z Fighters, Videl, Chichi and Bulma showing any slightly twisted hints of their own personalities just to screw with Pan and Goku). But Baby would refuse to listen, thinking that Goku's just evil and here to take away everything he's worked so hard for like the Saiyans did to his race in general, having a complete mental breakdown as Bulma then transforms him into his Golden Great Ape form, where he really isn't in control at any point. Just imagine the dialogue and emotion we could have gotten out of this scenario? And I came up with this on the spot as I was watching the episode.

I really liked the potential of that conflict, but it just felt like the show only cared about hinting at the possibilities there rather than exploring it, which just leave Baby feeling flat from the second half of the saga onwards.

Also, I didn't like most of his designs. His first two designs were just bleah all around, and Baby-Vegeta was... I don't want to say bad, but something just didn't look right about it to me. I don't know how to describe it, but I guess it just felt a little too try-hard and coming off a bit silly in parts that were meant to make him look cool. The only design I wholesale liked was his Golden Great Ape form, which was where he was at his least interesting as a character since by that point he was mostly just going nuts to the point of gleefully opening fire on his own people (Not that he hadn't endangered them willingly before. So much for wanting to rebuilt his beloved race, which he claimed they were now).

So, overall? Baby was an effective villain, but between the designs, the convoluted nature of his backstory and the poorly done retcons that just seemed to be done in a forced attempt to add weight to his possession of Vegeta as his main host that come to the detriment of the story, and his increasingly less interesting character as the arc goes on, Baby just becomes a big mixed bag of wasted opportunity. Not that I think he was an overall bad villain, he started off fantastic, he was still very threatening and he brought about a lot of great moments (And a bunch of bad ones, but again, be patient) but let's just say Team Four Star's placement of him on their best villains list was pretty fitting. He's not top 10 material in any way. Which is sad, because he felt like he should be right up there with the likes of Freeza and King Piccolo on concept alone. The humour the saga had was very hit or miss. Nothing really struck out to me as pretty funny in the Machine Mutants arc or the episodes immediately after it. Some of the jokes were just outright pacepalm worthy, like the baby deer trying to nurse from Pan, or they were just meh and didn't do much for me. The only times I really laughed were a bunch of the moments with the Kai's (Can always count on Old Kai to be fun), and I guess some antics in that weird parallel dimension with the space beavers (God that sounds silly), but other than that not a lot sticks out to me.

Okay, I've talked about the Machine Mutants arc, Baby and the hit or miss humour. So, I guess it's time to talk about how the supporting cast was used. For the record, this is where things start to get negative. Because almost NONE of the supporting cast I thought were used particularly well. Not that they were all used badly, some were, but with a lot of other characters it just felt like they were just there... because they kinda had to be, more or less.

The only supporting characters that I thought were used well overall were Kibito Kai and Old Kai. The two of them were actually very helpful and crucial to making sure Goku succeeded in saving the day, Kibito rescuing him from Baby's final attack on earth (Even though that led to it's own issues), sneaking into the lookout to get the sacred water and healing the fallen Saiyan characters (Though I'm still a little unsure whether they were supposed to have been killed by Baby's attack and Kibito's using his mystic Kai powers to bring them back, or if Baby's attack simply injured and scattered them and Kibito simply found and healed them. Again, maybe the Japanese version explains things better but if it did, the dub copped out of explaining this clearly). And Old Kai, apart from just being really amusing, actually came up with some clever ideas and plans that helped to win the day. Arguably they were both more helpful in ultimately saving the day than in the Buu Saga where most of their ideas ended up failing, which, yeah, good job GT.

Wish I could say the same for everyone else.

Starting with the ones I'm not angry over, Goten and Gohan got to be in this Saga. Goten was the first person to fight and get possessed by Baby on earth and we see him going on a date. Cool, having a social life and it's following up on his change of interests established at EoZ. A pity then that impressing said girlfriend is just about the only thing about his character that gets explored outside of him trying to help out in the next two sagas, since quite honestly, he feels kind of meh here. Honestly he comes off as kind of flat compared to Z, and his boringly generic design doesn't help. We lost his much more unique and interesting teenaged look for a white shirt and a hairstyle that together just make him look like "Generic anime guy number 90-something". It's boring, and he doesn't really get to do anything except get possessed and transfer power to Goku (Because God forbid he and Trunks were actually allowed to turn into adult Gotenks and actually do something cool and plot relevant in the final act, right?).

It probably doesn't help for me that his scenes with Valese, the only downtime he has for us to explore his life outside of being involved in all the usual saving the world shenanigans apart from episode 2, were... kinda awkward. And that's entirely because of Valese herself. It feels like the writers wanted her to be the cute, really sheltered character that was endearing in how innocent she was, but... they really overdid it. She just came off as so uninformed and stupid that it was a little creepy. I mean, there's being sheltered, and then there's not knowing how to eat ice cream off a cone when you're supposed to be an adult in your early 20's. How stupid and overprotective were her parents, exactly? Kid Goku would have made sense for that joke because he was completely isolated from humanity besides Grandpa Gohan before Bulma crashed into him, but with an adult woman the joke just doesn't work. In fact, it was a little bit disturbing. She was just awkward, and didn't really play well off of Goten.

Back to Goten himself, while I like the guy just fine, he got so little to do and was such a static character that he came off a little boring here, though cool enough when he tried to save the day himself. Just wish his fight with Baby was longer. Gohan also felt a bit flat. He didn't get any noticeable character moments that showed off his personality, and he only got one cool moment where he recognized something was wrong with Goten so got him to somewhere secluded from Chichi, Videl and Bulma to try and sort that out, though it didn't work. Outside of that, just became another brainwashed servant, which was hit or miss in how that was carried out. It was certainly sad to see Pan's reaction to her brainwashed parents wanting to kill her on the Tuffle planet so props to how well that scene played out, and the ambush when Goku and Pan got back started off well, but the fact that Goku in his base form was able to beat Gohan and Goten pretty easily in their super saiyan states not only made that scene feel anti-climactic and made them both look like a bunch of complete wimps. If Goku had gone super saiyan I wouldn't have minded it, but the two of them had earlier managed to curbstomp Vegeta while working together (Even if Baby was in the drivers seat of Gohan's body), so the result is that all three characters look like wimps compared to kid Goku who's body supposedly can't even sustain his full super saiyan 3 power five minutes later. Other than that his only other contribution is also transferring energy to Goku. Honestly for a character who was practically the co-protagonist of the previous series, Gohan's character and role were pretty meh here.

Vegeta has some good scenes near the start, mostly relating to his interactions with his daughter which were excellent. Bulla for everything we see of her seems like she'd be an interesting character. And that bothers me to no end since after teasing us with some good scenes, she disappears after the story moves to the New Tuffle Planet and she does nothing of significance for the rest of the series. Way to throw away all potential for an interesting character and a possible action girl there, GT. Other than those cute moments, Vegeta only gets an okay fight with the possessed Gohan and Goten before becoming Baby's main host. Which, no, I don't consider that a particularly good use of his character since it takes Vegeta as himself out of the story until the very end and he's just any other puppet for Baby, just the one he happens to use for the rest of the saga. And the evil possessed Vegeta concept just screams re-hash of Majin Vegeta, minus the great character development for Vegeta that lead to and how it helped cap off his redemption arc. The attempts to add some sort of a deeper meaning to this by revealing it was Vegeta's father who massacred the Tuffles as I've already explained was ham-fisted and stupid, so no points there. So much for one of the other most important characters from Z. Now he has to wait until near the very end of the final saga to become actually relevant again.

Oh, and Krillin gets some cameos... and they're nothing special, really they just reinforce that he's the butt monkey and imply that 18 has low expectations of her husband, which I didn't like. And yeah, his design is pretty bad here. I'll rant about why I don't like how Krillin's used in the next saga when I get to it. Also, the show really wastes the potential for Marron to develop an actual character, so minus one more point.

Trunks I pretty much already explained my thought on his role at the start of the saga, it was nice to see him making a clever plan with Giru to beat Myuu, but after he gets back to earth he becomes as quickly irrelevant as the other half-saiyan characters. And he's not that interesting of a character here. And if you're wondering, yeah I am glad Giru was kept out of the rest of the saga. No I am not glad he came back, I just hope he's less pointless going forward.

Mr Satan was... basically Mr Satan. He got a few amusing though not laugh-worthy moments being his usual show-boating self, it was clever how he had Buu help him get around Baby's mind controlling parasites, and he got a few good moments here or there being a supportive grandfather to Pan and when he was about to stand up to Golden Great Ape Baby when he thought all the saiyan character were out for the count and Pan and Goku were dead, but honestly he didn't really contibute anything meaningful to the story on his own, so his use here was just kinda meh, though appropriate for his general role in the cast. Oh, and he also got a goodbye scene with Buu... yeah, let's talk about Buu.

I HATE what this Saga did with Buu. First off, despite how he's pretty much positioned to be extremely helpful, being immune to Baby's control and saving Mr Satan from it, he never does anything significant as himself in this saga apart from sneaking Pan and Mr Satan on to Baby's planet. Which, yeah, the writers could have easily come up with another excuse to that. And despite how he's one of the strongest Z Fighters next to Goku, Buu NEVER fights anyone in this Saga. His first role in a story following his redemption, his first real outing to prove himself useful as a hero and a Z Fighter, and Buu doesn't get one action scene. For crying out loud, despite being not very far away he doesn't even fly in to save Pan when Gohan starts trying to choke her to death, when there's literally nothing stopping him and she needed to be saved by Uub showing up from out of nowhere. Which makes Buu look more stupid and incompetent than he really is. And after that, what does his role amount to? He takes a fatal attack meant for Uub, which results in him sacrificing his physical form to merge his power with Uub to give him a power up.

(Takes deep breath and begins to shake with barely suppressed rage. A few minutes later I take another breath and proceed to talk through gritted teeth)

What. The. Heck!

THIS is what they chose to do with this character? No, no. Just. NO. This moment was completely unearned. The writers sacrifised an interesting and fun character, one with tons of potential for interesting development and interactions with the other supporting characters, a character with a range of cool and useful abilities as well as being one of the few supporting characters to almost match Goku and Vegeta and thus be a critical ally in serious fights. The writers discared Buu, who we'd only JUST gotten to see come back from being eaten by his corrupt counterpart and completing his redemption arc, all just for the sake of giving a far more criminally underdeveloped character a power boost. And what does Majuub, the transformation of Uub that we sacrifised a FAR more interesting charater for the sake of achieving, amount to in the Baby Saga and GT as a whole?

ALMOST NOTHING.

Seriously, Majuub gets one fight with Baby that lasts five minutes, then gets turned to chocolate and eaten by Baby taking him out of the story for several episodes, only coming back to serve as a distraction to stop Baby from whiping out Goku when the other saiyan characters are charging him up. That's it. And while his fight was good, it was far too short for something built up in this fashion and comes off as a slap in the face to any fan who cared about Buu and wanted to see Uub actually used to his full potential. Honestly I didn't remember the scene with Uub in Baby's stomach as I was re-watching the saga, so after I watched Majuub get taken out so quickly I was absolutely livid and left with a bitter feeling as I was watching the next few episodes, since it made it feel that Buu's sacrifice was rendered completely irrelevant and pointless. And yeah that little moment helped, but barely, especially when the results for the rest of the series are that it was still a pointless move.

It's a real sore point for me to see interesting characters with potential get killed off. And yes, I know Buu wasn't entirely dead and his consciousness could still communicate with Uub since they were one being now, but let me ask, when does that ever come up again after that concept is introduced? ... Yeah, that's what I thought. Majin Buu sacrificing himself was just so poorly handled. Buu didn't actually get any good moments himself in GT, and the way his merging with Uub was set up felt like the writers throwing in a concept that could have been interesting without doing anything to earn it. Losing Buu as a seperate character honestly just feels like it wasted more story potential than it offered. Let's compare this incident to Piccolo merging with Kami for a second since that's what this idea most resembles, and I'll explain why Kami becoming one with Piccolo actually worked fine. The two characters from the late part of Dragon Ball were established as being two beings that used to be one. Kami had an interesting character and he got some development through his interactions with Goku, and he continued to be a useful supporting character for the early parts of Z right through the Freeza saga.

In the anime he even gets to be a plot relevant character for the Garlic Jr Saga which, controversial as that was and I haven't watched it in years, I do remember that arc giving Kami some good moments. Kami had plenty of moments to shine and screentime relevant to his position in the cast and the series, but there wasn't really anywhere else to go with him as far as developing him as a character was concerned by the Androids Saga. So merging him with Piccolo, effectively removing him from the cast, didn't feel like a waste since it stopped him from gradually fading into irrelevancy as more higher power characters were introduced. With the position of Earth's Guardian long established as being a role passed on throughout the ages, it also provided the opportunity to bring Dende back and develop him some more as Earth's new Guardian, so we lost one character only to have another we'd all grown to like come back in his place. And most fittingly his merging with Piccolo provided adequate closure to his character and brought things full circle for the two of them, since as well as giving Piccolo more power it purged his heart of any remaining darkness, solidifying Piccolo as a truly heroic character if that wasn't already firmly established with his own character development up to this point. Piccolo and Kami merging together was well executed and perfectly timed, so it didn't feel like Kami as a character was being thrown under a bus all of a sudden just for the sake of plot convenience that didn't even solve the issue it was meant to.

But for all the reasons I've already mentioned, Buu's merging with Uub doesn't work anywhere near as well and is just an insulting waste of Buu's own character. And the worst part is... I wouldn't have even minded if, in a theoretically much better version of GT where be served the role of secondary main character like he logically should have, Buu and Uub merging happened much later in the series. After we'd gotten to see Buu interacting more with the supporting cast properly integrating into the group dynamic. After we'd gotten to see him form some kind of friendly, surrogate familial relationship with Pan, who he really should have interacted with on a personal level and had some sort of relationship with since she's his best friend's grandaughter. And have a decent relationship with Uub too, on that note. And of course, after Buu had gotten plenty more development and made more useful contributions to protecting the earth to make it seem like his character and all the possibilities he had weren't being needlessly tossed aside. And more importantly, Majuub should have won the fight against whatever villain the Z Fighters were battling so the results of this incident were satisfying, though still fittingly bitter sweet.

Because Buu's sacrifise could have been a compelling tragedy if it was done at a more fitting time and didn't feel so close to meaningless in the long run. As it is, Buu's character and his sacrifise felt completely misused and infuriating in how they were executed. The best that comes out of it is that the scene where they merge was fairly touching in it's own right and his goodbye to Mr Satan was pretty sad, though personally I thought that even that was too rushed for it's own good.

And that wasn't even the only aggravating waste of a supporting character. Oh strap yourselves in folks, because Piccolo's use in the story felt equally as bad, if not somehow worse.

Now, I'll say this right off the bat. Piccolo is one of my favourite characters in the franchise, so I take what happens here very personally. His role in the story of the Baby Saga is pretty much completely pointless. He shows up in one episode sensing that somethings up, shows up after Gohan gets possessed by Baby to fire his special beam canon at the guy (Missing him by a mile, might I add) and then just gets blasted by Baby. And we don't see him again until the very last episode of the Saga. The audience is left hanging on what the heck really happened to him in that moment for the rest of the story, and it's never properly explained what happened to him and where he's been when he does show up again. So his earlier scene could have been cut entirely and literally would not have made any difference. In fact, it would have made things a lot better since viewers wouldn't have been left confused about what happened to him and left hanging for so long for no real reason. It's practically a big lipped alligator moment.

And then there's what happens in the final episode of the saga when he does show up. He gives Goku some ki to help him teleport himself and a wayward kid off of the doomed planet earth before it explodes... and stays behind on the planet as it explodes. In his last few moments of life, he telepathically contacts Gohan, explains that the Black Star Dragon Balls are connected to him because of his connection to their creator Kami. And he's decided to nobly sacrifice himself so the Black Star Balls will be turned to stone and can't be used to cause any more damage ever again. This scene was emotionally gripping and well executed. Piccolo's moving goodbye speech to Gohan, his heartbroken reaction to the thought of losing his beloved friend and former mentor, and the music accompanying the breathtaking scenery of the dying planet earth around Piccolo all come together to create a powerful, moving death scene.

And the fact that Piccolo's death was done in a way that was so powerful... makes it all the more aggravating for how STUPID and needlessly mean spirited this whole thing was.

Now to properly explain why killing Piccolo off like this makes me want to pull my hair out in a fit of madness, I need to talk about something that I've wanted to get off my chest since I decided I was going to re-watch GT for the fun of it. For anyone who might be reading this who hasn't actually watched GT or needs a reminder, the Black Star Dragon Balls were introduced in the first episode as a set of even more powerful dragon Balls that Kami had created but stored away in the Lookout at an unspecified time in the past. The biggest differences between them and the normal dragon balls, is that the black star dragon balls scatter across the universe when their shenron (Who's design is a lazy recolour of normal shenron, way to be creative) grants a wish... and they set off a timer where the planet they're used on will be destroyed within a year afterwards. I HATE this idea. I hate it so, so much. And 90% of that has to do with the outright HORRIBLE implications it opens up for Kami's character. WHY would Kami create these darn things? I mean, Kami by the time we met him was old, bitter and jaded with humanity, but he wasn't a monster or a creep willing to risk the fate of the planet he'd sworn to protect. There's no logical reason for why Kami would need to create something so dangerous, especially when he'd already produced a perfectly useful and less destructive set of Dragon Balls. We never get any explanation as to why he would make these things, and none of the interpretations one might be able to come up with in pondering this idea paints his character in a very good light.

At best they could have been created as an experiment to see how much more powerful a shenron he could make, with the whole "Destroys the planet it's used on" idea being an unintentional side effect that he only figured out after the fact and so he hid them away, which doesn't ruin his character much but it does turn him into a reckless idiot, especially with what ended up happening. And at worst they make him look like an intentionally reckless creep that was willing to potentially endanger the planet for the sake of an experiment to see if he could really make these things. Like, what if he intended to wish himself to go to a planet that was much better off and more peaceful and leave humanity to rot? Probably isn't what happened, but it's as valid a headcanon as any else, and that's what makes the Black Star Balls existence really disturbing.

Whatever way you look at them, there's not only no reason for them to exist, but any explanation there is harms Kami's character in retrospect. Especially since it means he's now officially the only guardian in Earth's history who's actions directly led to the end of the world, no matter how briefly that lasted. The Black Star Balls are the foundation of the plot for the first half of GT, and that foundation is one of the biggest and most infuriating plot holes in the entire franchise. And it's made even more stupid by the fact that not only did Emperor Pilaf somehow find out about them, but apparently King Kai knows about them too and he was able to do some research into them by the sound of things. Somehow, even if it's not a well known fact, knowledge of these balls DID get out there, even though Kami obviously never gave them to humanity as a gift like the other dragon balls. And no, we don't get an explanation for how Pilaf found out about the or how King Kai knows, so that just adds to the stupidity and raises further questions.

There's also this other plot hole. Why didn't the black star balls disappear when Kami merged with Piccolo? It was a big deal how the original dragon balls turned to stone after the two characters merged, to the point they had to get Dende to recreate them from the old ones, so how come the black star balls were exempt from that? And don't tell me Dende's using the dragon statue to create the new balls reanimated them, because then Dende would have had to be the one to die. The black star dragon balls existence is a stupid contrivance that violates the previous series logic and defiles one of it's most underrated supporting characters all to set off a stupid plot, and the horrible way this was all executed to kill off Piccolo makes his death feel needlessly mean spirited and completely unfair, and the fact it's the only major character death to stick besides Android 16 and also Buu in this series makes it all the more aggravating.

I might not even be so mad about it if the next saga doesn't get Piccolo stranded in Hell where despite Goku hoping he gets back to heaven, we never find out if that's the case. So Piccolo gets to do nothing useful for one saga, and he gets stranded in the deep dark pits of Hell for the rest of the series with no indication he gets the happy ending his character deserves for all the development and experiences he's been through. All for a cheap attempt at "Drama". Screw you GT, way to insult one of the franchises best characters and everyone who was a fan of him!

(Deep breaths)

And, yeah, now it's time for me to talk about Pan, isn't it. Okay, this is another one where I'm going to have to describe my reaction to her right from the beginning. I'm not going to hold any punches on this one, because personally Pan to me was the most disappointing waste of a character in Dragon Ball history.

She gets a pretty decent introduction in the first episode, but then she quickly becomes a whiny, self-centred and pretty selfish, entitled, arrogant brat completely lacking the skills to justify her boasts. She starts off the adventure by sneaking onto the ship and setting it off prematurely, also denying us the chance to see Goten in a leading role for the saga in the process, and in doing so she ends up damaging the ship and causing it to crash on an alien planet, almost getting Goku and Trunks killed and thus dooming the mission and the earth. Then throughout the Saga she proceeds to whine a lot and be a hindrance almost more than she actually meaningfully contributes to conflicts, making her increasingly unlikeable and tiresome as the episodes passed with only a couple good moments here and there. And then the final episode of the Saga became my least favourite episode of the whole show, possibly the whole franchise simply on how badly it FAILED at it's job of making Pan's supposed character arc work and justifying her place on the team.

Oh yeah, Pan has this bit of a character arc where she's fed up of being treated as a little kid and wasn't allowed to go on the mission to gather the dragon balls at first. On paper it's not a bad idea, but if it wasn't executed poorly up to this point, episode 15 killed it completely. Basically after overhearing Goku and Trunks talking about sending her back to earth for her own safety, Pan gets really upset and after the ship is damaged while landing on a desert planet where another black star ball was located, Pan sneaks out to find it herself, almost dying from heat exhaustion and needing to be saved by Giru from a giant worm that would have eaten her. EVERYTHING about this set-up fails. Trunks and Goku's logic is that Pan should be taken back to earth and swapped out for the more powerful and experienced Goten, since she's a lot less strong and experienced and might be in danger if she continues being on the mission. And everything she does here proves them right. In her attempts to prove herself, she stupidly wandered into the scorching hot desert alone and very nearly got killed if not for Giru, and at the end Trunks basically decides to keep her along for the rest of the journey because even though she almost got herself killed, her actions still led them to the dragon balls location so therefore she proved herself useful.

Except no she DIDN'T. Well, okay, she led them to the Dragon Ball, but Trunks and Goku could have found it easily on their own. More easily probably and quickly enough and with proper supplies that they wouldn't have succumb to heat exhaustion first, especially since they would have taken Giru who can track the dragon balls. Pan's stunt didn't actually accomplish anything except nearly get her killed, and it's treated in the episode as proof that she's a capable Z Fighter that deserves to be on this important, world saving mission. When in any logical story it would have been the exact opposite.

That's pretty much how her character arc plays out. She tags along and almost ruins the mission. She whines and complains every time things don't go precisely her way (I lost track of how many times she said "I want to go home"), and any of the helpful things she does could have been done as well or better by another character. Things really would have gone a lot more smoothly with Goten or anyone else tagging along, especially when she's often a hindrance or needs saving. With the dialogue and the way it's set up, it seems the show wants her to be sympathetic and have us want her to prove how great she really is, but her attitude and lack of meaningful contributions outside of a few minor cases completely go against that, and episode 15 especially may be the worst written episode in the series. The only thing it accomplished is giving Giru a good character moment and finally helping move Pan past the point of bullying him a lot, everything else was an unsatisfying mess.

But does she get better in the Baby Saga? Yes... and no. On the bright side, after she gets back to earth and from being confronted by her possessed family onwards the whining and bratty attitude is tones down a great deal and it becomes easier to sympathise with her as so many harsh things happens to her. Especially when she gets a really sweet moment where she sees her grandpa in his Golden Great Ape state and she manages to get through to Goku, which helps him to unlock the Super Saiyan 4 transformation. That entire sequence was beautiful, and it really shows how Pan's character can shine by buckling down on the element that was most interesting and touching about her in EoZ: Her relationship with Goku. Something GT until then hadn't been doing a great job at exploring. The scene of Pan desperately trying to get through to her grandpa and everything that comes out of it was probably my favourite scene in the entire series so far.

But sadly, there's another problem with Pan's character underlying that scene. That moment, outside of maybe a scene or two in the Machine Mutants arc... that moment and her helping to power up SS4 Goku for the final battle are really her only meaningful contributions to anything in the grand scheme of the saga. Even if Pan isn't as unbearably annoying as she was for the rest of the show going forward, the fact remains that Pan, despite being arguably the secondary protagonist considering how much screentime and focus her character got, is pretty weak and doesn't contribute as much to saving the day as she should have. She is strong for crying out loud, from what I recall she easily beat Android 20 in the next Saga, so she's not a complete wimp. But against the major villains she's very unhelpful, like the majority of other characters she gets repetedly sidelined from having meaningful contributions for the stupid idea of "Goku's the main character, so he has to do everything that matters himself" Which is a gross oversimplifications of DB's formula that disregards how the supporting cast was used in DB and Z.

And she NEVER. Goes. Super Saiyan. For God's sakes Toei, it wouldn't have taken much effort to do that, I've been bitter about this all my life.

And the reason I'm so upset about this, the reason I'm hard on how Pan is used in this series... is because I REALLY wanted to love her character. Pan had amazing potential as a character. Her scenes were the best part of the EoZ episodes of Z, every second she was on screen there was pure gold and her character was dripping with potential. Think about it. We have a female saiyan hybrid character, one who's established early on as a prodigy with great power and an adorable, endearing personality. She's the granddaughter of Goku, and she wants to train and get stronger. She would have been an ideal choice as Goku's successor if you think about it.

With her being a main character in GT, we could have had our first female super saiyan. Our first major action girl desides 18 who contributes greatly to the fights against villains and is a well developed character (I don't count Chichi and Videl because Chichi had one fight in Dragon Ball where she didn't land one hit and Videl never reached the level where she would be able to actively contribute much to the conflict in the Buu Saga, even if she was awesome she kinda faded into the background in the second half of it). The franchise has a huge female fan following, and it's a sticking point for many that the Z Fighters are dominated by men with only 18 being on the level where she can actively contribute to the fighting, and even she got a lesser role after becoming a married mother in Buu Saga. Pan's inclusion would have solved this issue very naturally, and she could have been a great, endearing character with some interesting development if the writers just followed what was set up with her in Z and put the right effort into making her interesting and awesome.

And they completely dropped the ball. It's a disappointing waste that makes me really upset. Especially since this portrayal turned her into the franchises version of Scrappy Doo for the next 20 years, with it taking her portrayal in Super to finally help salvage her reputation in the fandom. And you know you did something wrong when a version of a character you use who's a baby manages to be more endearing and popular than how you wrote her.

Pan may be less annoying and has more good moments after the middle of the Baby Saga and onwards, but the rest of how she's portrayed makes her perhaps the worst character in any Dragon Ball series. And she's our second most prominent character. Is it any wonder people hated this show?

And I guess there's only one more character to discuss for this saga, and this is another big one. Uub. Let's be straight here, Uub is TERRIBLY used in this Saga and in GT in general. So, after Z ended with Goku deciding to take on Uub as his successor and training him for FIVE YEARS (Incidentally between that and the ending to the show, it really does push the whole narrative of "Goku's a deadbeat who cares more about training than his family" since they were apparently only at the Lookout which means Goku could have visited his family at any time or vice versa, what the heck?) Uub leaves for home in the first episode, then shows up literally out of nowhere in episode 30 to rescue Pan, in a scene I've already mentioned makes Buu look slow witted and incompetant. We then get a handwave explanation on how Uub managed to avoid getting possessed by Baby's plague, though for the life of me I can't remember now if he explained how he reached the Tuffle planet, and he declares that he's going to avenge Goku and save the earth and it's people from Baby. And then he goes down in barely a minute... wow, great way to bring back a character that was built up as being so very important.

Now I want to say this right now, I like Uub. I think the guy's perfectly fine as a concept, the good re-incarnation of Kid Buu who becomes Goku's protege as a child. I have some issues with how that was executed and how both Goten and Pan were shoved aside for that role when either one of them could have made a more logical choice as Goku's successor, but I was happy to give this kid a chance. Uub could have been very interesting and cool if written well, and I've always wondered how that story would go. But Uub's use here and in the show is pretty pathetic.

I've already gone into how I feel about his becoming Majuub, but even apart from that he gets the short end of the stick. He gets no real personality other than "Noble hero type", we don't learn much of anything about him for the whole show. His re-introduction is kind of cool, but it's so sudden and it took so long for him to come back for a character that was set up to be so much more important than he ultimately was that everything he does in this Saga feels so underwhelming. His first fight with Baby is far too short and anti-climactic, making his training with Goku seem like a waste, and while his second fight as Majuub was good and probably the best individual fight in the whole Saga, it's still much shorter than it feels like it should have been and thus does a disservice to both him and Majin Buu. His only meaningful contribution is to stall Baby at one point, which still doesn't make up for how badly he's used here and in the show as a whole since it's barely anything.

We don't get any significant interaction with Uub and any character here besides Goku and arguably Buu, and if I recall I don't think we get any for the rest of the series too, where he's even less relevant. For how he was set up as a character, GT refuses to use him for anything worthwhile and doesn't even try to explore the concept of Goku being a mentor.

And it was as I was thinking about that halfway through watching the Saga that I made a revelation. I realized then and there why GT failed so badly. Because you see, it's not just the common complaints of "Good ideas, bad execution". It's not even that it wasn't good compared to Z or the original Dragon Ball. It's a greater issue with the show as a whole that Uub is right at the heart of. By it's very nature and conception, GT structurally fails as a proper follow up to the Dragon Ball story.

These days it's regularly agreed that GT and it's story are an alternate timeline in the Dragon Ball franchise. A what-if, non-canon story that doesn't connect to the actual canon of Dragon Ball. So, naturally we should judge it as an alternate universe story that doesn't need to be completely subservient to canon, right?

Wrong.

While it's more specifically a follow up to the anime due to it's use of several anime exclusive elements, back in the day when it was being made and people were watching it as it aired, GT was meant to be an actual follow up and continuation of the story. It aired very soon after the Z anime concluded, and while Toriyama only had minimal involvement in it's conception mostly in designing things, it was specifically back then intended as a proper sequel. So that's how we should judge it. And that's where it screws up the most, because GT's story is not a natural progression. It's taking things backwards.

The story of Dragon Ball always moved forward in one way or another, and so did it's main character. Characters changed, matured. The universe expanded naturally as the threats steadily escalated, and even though Toriyama literally made everything up on the spot, the story flows very naturally step by step, never losing momentum. While his development in Z may have been a bit more subtle compared to in the original Dragon Ball, Goku did naturally grow as a character all throughout, naturally because Dragon Ball was his story and his life, every new saga (Except Garlic Jr, but that's non-canon soooo doesn't really count) being the next step in that. As set up by the ending of Z, Goku's next step after saving the universe from Majin Buu should have naturally been to train his new student to pass on the torch. Bring things full circle, since close to the start of the story he became a pupil to a wise but laid back martial arts master, and now he IS a wise but laid back martial arts master. This was the part of his story where he was still a great powerful hero, but he was getting older so as much as he loves fighting and all that it's time to realize that he's getting old and the world needs a new hero to protect it for when he's gone.

GT should have been about Goku training Uub, as well as possibly other characters like Pan or even Bra, so the new generation could grow strong and carry on in his and the other Z Fighters place when the time came. Goku still would have fought to protect the universe if danger showed up at his door, but the focus would have been as much on Uub taking on the role of Earth's defender and ultimately saving the day when he needed to with Goku's encouragement and support, the same as Goku did with Gohan except here he wouldn't take the torch back when Uub's calling in life turned out to be elsewhere. Which it wouldn't, because he was literally born to be Goku's pupil.

Instead what happened? Uub was shoved aside in the first episode to not be heared from again until just short of halfway through the series, never really amounting to anything. None of the other younger characters do either. And how does the series actually start off? With Goku turning into a kid, and a group of three having to go into space to find some dragon balls. And then later on it turns out they have to fight an evi villain who wants to collect the dragon balls to achieve his goal of universal domination. Yeah, you heard right. It's basically a re-hash of the Pilaf saga, except it's "IN SPACE". They're pretty blatant about it too, since there's two episodes that're essentially a re-hash of the episode introducing Oolong except not as good. So yeah, instead of moving the story forward, we regress the story and the main character back to the very beginning, ditching all the other supporting characters we'd come to love for a while in the process and pretty much dropping what should have actually been the main storyline starting out with no fanfare.

Continuing on from Z, the show is an awkward tonal shift where we go from epic story where Goku saves the entire universe from the biggest baddest villain yet, to goofy stories about a planet where everything is giant sized, Trunks dressing up as an alien bride for some giant fatso, and a bunch of weird guys in spandex who have the power to make people dance by singing really bad songs. Yeah, it's kind of stupid. And then once we get to the Baby Saga things suddenly go back to being much more serious like in Z, as if the writers suddenly realized "Oh crud, this isn't working! We've got to fix this" The tone is just off for a while. And the stories themselves just don't work for what the series should have been like.

The Baby Saga and Shadow Dragon Sagas are often cited as being fantastic concepts for a continuation of Dragon Ball, and that's because they really are. With proper tweaking and if the story followed it's natural progression, they could have worked great in a proper follow up to Z. The Shadow Dragons especially were theoretically the perfect final boss for Dragon Ball, being the corrupt physical embodiments of the Dragon Balls themselves. But not only was their execution poor in places, but as we've established the natural progression of the story was derailed from the get go. Uub should be the secondary main character, the series should be about his journey to becoming earth's new hero ending with Goku's retirement and settling down, or deciding that even if he's old and not the true hero of the story anymore he can still carry on with his love of fighting with whatever time he has left. Uub should have been a greater focus and defeated at least some of the villains, including Omega Shenron with Goku's help perhaps so they both strike the final blow, and probably not have it be a cheap rehash of Buu's defeat.

But no, the story was broken from the start and no-one seemed to realize it along the way and make any effort to re-rail it. Goku barely developed at all, and his being a kid again at the start was the physical representation of the stories regression and desperately clinging to the past to try to appeal to the mindset in Japan that the original series was where Dragon Ball was at it's best and most iconic. And his remaining a kid throughout the series despite it's apparent shift to correct that misstep embodied the wonky tone that made it seem like the series was caught between moving forward or not. He doesn't really grow much as a character from these appearances, stuff just happens to him and he reacts the way you'd expect him to. And Goku does pretty much everything that really matters most himself while every other character gets sidelined 90% of the time. It really took the untrue idea people have of Goku making everyone else irrelevant around him and made it true for this series.

And then there's that ending... look, I know a lot of people really like it and I can see the value in it, and I can understand people loving it and I suppose from one point of view it works... but I don't like it. I have never liked it. I've never been satisfied with it and it makes me happy to know for sure these days that GT is non-canon so I don't have to think about it as how this story ends. I'll get into it when I talk about the Shadow Dragons Saga and go into great detail looking at it from multiple viewpoints, but just know that it kills the series for me.

So, yeah, that's how I feel. GT could have been an amazing series if it took the natural route that Dragon ball should have gone, but the fact that they chose to regress the story in a cheap attempt at pandering and all the other issues I mentioned and more really derail the series beyond repair.

So then why did I say this Saga was good back at the start? For all the reasons I mentioned and the simple fact that, aside from this laundry list of complaints, it was still an overall enjoyable experience with some great moments and ideas. It wasn't great, it could be boring or enfuriating at times and wasn't anything special in the grand scheme of Dragon Ball stories. But for the most part, it was fun. It could have been a fantastic saga with the right tweaking, and while it can't save a broken, bad series like GT, on it's own it could be entertaining and fun for the most part. If you were to watch anything from GT, the Baby Saga is definitely the one you should check out because it is worth watching at least once if you're a Dragon Ball fan. (Though maybe not if Piccolo is your fave).

Overall, I'd give the Baby Saga a B-

I had fun overall, and as much as I don't really see myself re-watching anything from this show again anytime soon, the best parts of this Saga make me really wish I could love the show more and it turned out better. It does prove that the series had value and while I can't say the same for the previous arc, I'm glad I watched it again.

Well, I guess now that I've gotten my thoughts on the Baby Saga out of the way, I guess it's time to re-watch the Super 17 Saga... ugh. Pray for me, people.

#Dragon Ball GT #Dragon Ball GT thoughts #Dragon Ball #dragon ball analysis #The Baby saga #son pan #son goku #Uub #Dragon Ball Super #piccolo #majin buu

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