#alas I was never meant for comedy

[dreamcubed]

the archer | lorenzo berkshire x reader

song; the archer [taylor swift] pairing; lorenzo berkshire x fem!non-slytherin!reader genre; s2l, comedy, fluff word count; 5,8k timeline; half-blood prince warnings; swearing, alcohol, drunkenness, suggestive comments, blood and injury (bc of his cat) summary; lorenzo's cat hates everybody but you

masterlist

"who could ever leave me, darling? but who could stay?"

——————————————

Lorenzo Berkshire had no idea why his cat was such a hateful being, but she had always been that way, ever since she was a kitten. He would have understood if she had been a rescue from the streets or something, but, alas, she wasn't. She had always been feisty, and only docile with him, which was why his aunt (who owned the mother) had just sent her his way. Not that he minded, he often joked how his cat, who he had fondly named Midnight, was just like him: very selective with who he let close to him.

He had brought her with him to Hogwarts, naturally, and she had secluded herself exclusively within his dorm room— she hated being at the castle, but he knew that she would hate being at home without him even more. And, when he had graduated into sixth year, he had been blessed with his own dorm room, allowing her to finally settle down.

Only, the current problem was that she was missing. Lorenzo had returned from Saturday breakfast in hopes of a bit of downtime with his feline friend, but he instead found a frown forming on his face as he frantically searched his entire bedroom and then down the corridors and all the other Slytherin dormitories. She was definitely gone, he realised, beginning to feel an itching sense of worry as he loved that cat more than anything. Why would she have left? Did the privacy of a solitary bedroom meant she finally felt comfortable enough to explore the rest of the castle? He didn't know, and it didn't matter, he just knew that he had to find her.

"Have you seen Midnight?" he asked, hurrying up to Mattheo in the common room.

"No."

"She's missing."

"She's a cat, she's probably just wandering," his friend shrugged, "They do that, y'know."

"Not Midnight," he ran his hand through his hair, "Never Midnight."

Mattheo observed his friend carefully, "Relax, mate, she'll come back."

"I can't relax," he cursed under his breath, "I'm going to look for her."

What if she attacked someone who tried to pet her? Dumbledore might ban Midnight from the castle and send her home. Or, even worse, she would get put down. He couldn't bear that thought, but after searching all the rooms down in the dungeons, he quickly realised that he had no idea where to look from there.

***

Meanwhile, you had been enjoying a perfectly pleasant afternoon in the courtyard with a book, the last rays of Summer shining down on you before the chilliness of Autumn struck. You went to turn the page, when you noticed a commotion going on across the expanse of flagstones. With furrowed eyebrows, you let curiosity get the better of you and shut your book.

Upon arriving at the scene, you quickly realised that the centre of attention was a pitch-black cat who was hissing ferociously. Some second year boys were tormenting the poor thing who was clearly terrified— reaching their hands out to get a reaction, and then pulling away before it could swipe them with its claws.

"What are you doing?" you asked disapprovingly, normally willing to let younger years have their mischievous fun, but not at the expense of a poor innocent animal.

"It attacked Gareth out of nowhere," one of the boys gestured towards his friend, who was nursing a bleeding arm, "We're just getting our revenge."

You shook your head, "I can't allow that, I'm afraid, it's obviously terrified."

Crouching down, you placed your book on the floor and delicately held a hand out a safe distance from the cat. You made cooing noises to attract it over, hoping that it wouldn't see you as a threat.

"I wouldn't do that," the boy who had been scratched said, "A seventh year girl tried already, and now she's in the hospital wing."

"I'm not scared of a little blood," you replied, before saying to the cat, "I'm not gonna hurt you, baby, I'll get you away from these scary boys, yeah?"

Maybe it sensed your gentle nature, or maybe you simply seemed like the lesser evil next to the boys, but it ceased its hissing and started cautiously padding towards you. Eventually, its soft face rubbed against your palm, and you began soft pets until you could feel purring.

"There we are, you're safe," you murmured, delicately positioning yourself to pick it up, hoping it wouldn't freak out too much. Thankfully, it didn't, and settled into one of your arms as you picked up your book and stood up. "Your owner is probably looking for you."

A soft mewl came in response. You decided that it would be easier for the owner to find their cat if you stayed in the same place, so you returned to your reading spot and sat the cat down on your lap. It curled up instantly, closing its eyes as it entered a light slumber, while you reopened your book and continued where you left off.

***

Rumours spread like wildfire within the walls of Hogwarts, so it wasn't long before Lorenzo heard that a girl had been attacked so badly by a cat that she had ended up in the hospital wing. He immediately sprinted in that direction, ignoring scoldings from teachers and prefects, until he burst into the polished white room.

"Whatever do you think you're doing, young man?" Madam Pomfrey snapped.

"The girl. Cat attack," he panted out, "Where is she?"

The nurse pointed towards the end bed of the ward, "Just there— although I must ask you to-"

Lorenzo didn't listen to the rest of her words, running over to the girl's bed. She had a bandage on her cheek and right arm, and she didn't seem all that pleased.

"What colour was the cat?" he asked quickly.

The girl frowned, "I'm guessing that beast is yours then."

He nodded.

She rolled her eyes, "Black. You ought to get it put down."

Lorenzo let out a sound that bordered on a growl.

"It scratched me so deep it hit an important artery. There was blood everywhere— my favourite shirt is ruined."

"I don't care," he bit off, "Where did it happen?"

She scowled at him, "The courtyard. Go deal with it before someone else gets hurt."

He didn't even give her a response before he was running off again, praying to all the Hogwarts founders that Midnight was still in the courtyard and completely unharmed.

***

Approximately twenty minutes had passed by with the adorable feline curled up in your lap when the sound of a door bursting open echoed throughout the courtyard. You watched as an angry Lorenzo Berkshire, a Slytherin boy in your year, made a beeline towards the group of second year boys that were still gathered. He must have seen the blood on one of the boys' arms, because he went to him first. You observed curiously as Berkshire spoke angrily, and then the evidently now scared boy pointed in your direction.

Berkshire looked over, and then his eyes locked on to yours. He was storming over to you with a fury that could destroy nations.

You raised an eyebrow at him, "Can I help you?"

He didn't reply, the anger not leaving his face, but he seemed to be contemplating something.

"Hello? Berkshire?"

"That can't be her," you heard him mutter. At the sound of his voice, the cat perked up, and instantly meowed at him. "It is you," he said disbelievingly.

"Your cat, I presume?"

"Uh, yeah," he said, holding out his hand to beckon it over.

"What's its name?" you realised that this was the first conversation that you were having with the boy despite sharing classes for over five years.

"Midnight," he said, his voice sounding oddly strained, "She's called Midnight."

You smiled, scratching her neck in a way that made her mewl. "It's very fitting."

Lorenzo stared at you interacting with his cat, having never before seen Midnight so friendly with anyone except him. "She hates people," he said without thinking.

You hummed, "Yeah, I heard about the girl in the hospital wing."

He grimaced.

"She's quite sweet with me though."

"I've never seen her like that with anyone but me."

"Guess I'm special," you beamed, continuing to stroke Midnight.

"Uh, can I have her back now?" he asked, seeming almost unsure of himself. While Lorenzo was generally considered one of the nicer Slytherin boys, he still held himself with a terrifying confidence, and didn't have a completely scot-free track record either— refer to his behaviour when it comes to his cat going missing. However, now, stood before you as said cat had elected you as the second likeable person she had met, the confidence had been knocked out of him.

"Oh, of course," you said easily, picking Midnight up and handing her over. "Bye, cutie," you cooed, as the black cat reluctantly accepted her fate in Lorenzo's arms.

"Thanks," he said stiffly, turning on his heel and walking away. You couldn't help but watch his behaviour with an air of amusement.

***

"Fuckin' Azkaban," Lorenzo cursed, so loudly that Mattheo popped his head through the door.

"What are you shouting about?"

"Midnight's missing. Again."

Mattheo chuckled, "Maybe that girl who took a liking to your cat took her."

Lorenzo looked at him disbelievingly, "I highly doubt that. L/N isn't the type to sneak into another house."

With a shrug, his friend fully entered the room. "I'd say maybe don't freak out as much this time. We lost a lot of points for you being a dick to that girl in the hospital."

Lorenzo scowled, "You're one to talk. You've lost ten times as many points as me."

"Do you want to go look for her? It's almost curfew."

"I have to. Can't have another hospital case."

"Put a tracking charm on her when you find her."

Lorenzo agreed that it was a good idea.

***

Whenever there was a cacophony of meows coming from outside a common room door, it was customary to open it. Often times a cat would be returning to its owner, and it wouldn't do to leave it stranded out there. Today was no exception.

You were, as usual, curled up on a sofa doing some homework when you heard faint meows from the other side. Perking your head up, you watched as the boy nearest to the door went to open it, letting in a black cat. It didn't seem like anything strange: you knew a couple black cats who belonged to your house members. Only, they were sweet and friendly, and you watched as the cat tried to scratch the poor boy. Thankfully, he dodged it, and you quickly ran over as you suspected whose cat it might be.

Immediately, it meowed softly at you and went to rub against your legs— and that's when you knew that it was definitely Midnight.

"Get your cat under control," the boy said.

"Oh, she's not mi-" but he had already walked away.

With a sigh, you picked up the feline and moved back to the sofa, knowing that it was just past curfew so you couldn't return her right at that second. Unless she elected to leave herself, she would have to stay with you for the night. Not that you were complaining, but you could only imagine how worried Lorenzo must be. Those thoughts quickly slipped away, however, when she curled up in your lap and began purring.

***

Walking down the darkened corridor with nothing but his wand as light, Lorenzo found his feet leading in one particular direction. He had already checked the Great Hall, and the kitchens, and peeked out the window into the courtyard, but to no avail. Only one more idea of where she might have wandered off to lingered in his mind: he knew what house you were in, and that was where he was headed. He just hoped to Salazar that he wouldn't run into a professor.

"Mr Berkshire."

Fuck.

"Yes, professor?" he said slowly, turning around to face Professor Snape.

"It's past curfew."

"I know, professor."

"How disappointing to see one of my own Slytherins disregarding the rules of Hogwarts."

"It's my cat," he said, hoping Snape would show some amount of heart, "She's missing."

Snape quirked an eyebrow, "Cats are prone to wandering. This is hardly a cause for concern."

"Yes, but not Midnight."

"Regardless of the nature of your cat, do you really think you will find her considering the size of this castle?"

Lorenzo said nothing.

"I understand she was responsible for the attack the other day. However, that is hardly a risk as it is night time, when students should be in bed," he drawled the last part, his arms firmly crossed.

"Yes, professor."

"Five points from Slytherin." Lorenzo knew the punishment would have been harsher if he wasn't of the house he was.

"I know where she is, though."

"How is she considered missing, then?"

Lorenzo didn't have an answer for that.

"If you know where she is, you will have no trouble finding her in the morning. I will escort you back to the dungeons."

The boy let out a sigh.

***

Having not slept a wink that night, Lorenzo was up bright and early just after sunrise, ready to resume his journey to your house. He walked up to where he had heard that the door was— having never seen it in person— and thought about how he was going to enter. To his luck, it swung open, to reveal a prefect from your house. She immediately gave him a sceptical look.

"What do you want, Berkshire?"

"I need to see L/N."

"At this hour?" she sighed.

"She has my cat. I think."

"The black one?"

He nodded.

"Okay, fine— you can go in," she said, stepping out the way, "But don't tell anyone I let you in."

"Of course, thank you."

Mattheo had always told him that she was one of the softer prefects, having had a lot of experience with them on his late night antics.

He entered the common room to find that it was empty, and he didn't waste anytime heading up the girls' dormitory stairs. Thankfully, the layout was quite simple: each year had their own floor, and it went upwards chronologically. The first few floors had rooms that were shared, but when he reached the sixth floor, he found a number of doors that seemed to align with the number of sixth year girls in your house.

Only, which one was yours? He couldn't very well walk in on an unsuspecting sleeping girl: Salazar knows how she would react.

So, he decided to knock on the first door, waiting patiently as he heard a groggy, "What?" in response. He felt a little bad for waking someone up, but Midnight was more important to him than anything.

"Uh, which room is L/N's?"

"Berkshire?" the voice replied. He was surprised at how calm she seemed to be taking the news that a Slytherin boy had invaded the girls' dormitories.

"Uh, yes."

"Last room on the left. Your cat is fine."

He concluded that you must be friends with her, and informed her that the cat you were in possession of belonged to him.

"Thank you," he said, adding a, "Sorry for waking you," to which he heard no response.

Choosing to leave her be, he made his way to your room and once again knocked. Only, this time, he didn't get a response. He knocked again, and he still received no human response, but he did hear a familiar meow sound out. Praying that you would forgive him, he opened the door and peeked in carefully, to see that you were curled up within your pillows with Midnight lying down beside your head.

He entered the room fully and quietly closed the door behind him. His cat meowed again, louder this time, which caused you to stir in your sleep. When your eyes finally peeled open and caught sight of Lorenzo through your blurry vision, you jumped out of bed.

"What the fuck are you doing here?" you whisper-yelled.

"My cat," he said simply.

"Is perfectly safe and healthy as you can see— that's no reason to break into girls' dormitories!"

Once again, Lorenzo found himself speechless. All you were wearing was a skimpy pair of shorts and a cropped top which had your nipples peeking through. Not much was left to the imagination.

"Berkshire! What if I'd been naked?"

That's when a smirk crept on to his face, as he felt his usual level of confidence oozing through his veins. "What if, hm?"

"Keep it in your pants," you grumbled, grabbing a jumper from the floor and pulling it over your head. You tried to ignore the way his gaze made you feel.

He shrugged, changing the subject, "I had to make sure Midnight was safe."

"Well, you clearly knew where she was."

He couldn't argue that point, causing an awkward silence to fall upon the room. Awkward until he involuntarily let out a yawn.

"That's what you get for being up so early," you mumbled, climbing back into your bed and under the sheets. Midnight immediately began cosying up to you.

"I couldn't sleep."

You regarded him carefully: it was strange to see a Slytherin boy so evidently worried about another living being.

"Here she is, then," you said, gesturing towards the feline, "Take her and go sleep before people see you were here."

"Embarrassed of me?" he chuckled, moving to pick up Midnight.

"I'd rather not get called a slut," you snapped.

He didn't reply to that comment, wrapping his hands around his cat who did not take kindly to the action: not that she tried to scratch him or anything, but she immediately wriggled out of his arms to return to you.

"Midnight, you're my cat, you can't stay here," he grumbled, trying to pick her up again. You watched the scene play out through half-shut eyes, feeling quite amused by the whole ordeal.

Once again, she escaped his grasp.

"This is unbelievable."

"What? Unbelievable that she likes me so much?" you chuckled sleepily.

Lorenzo scowled, "I'm not leaving until she comes with me."

You sighed, realising that you may not be able to escape any slut rumours at this rate. "Fine. But I'm going back to sleep."

Lorenzo watched as your breathing became slower and more laboured, unable to process the absurdity of the situation that he was in. However, he could process how peaceful and adorable you looked while sleeping, all while his furry feline cuddled up next to you with deep purrs. Eventually, he felt his lack of sleep catch up to him, his body finally allowing itself to relax now that he knew Midnight was definitely safe and sound. He sat down on your bed, reaching his hand out to stroke his cat. She mewled at the action, making him feel relieved that she hadn't started to hate him all of a sudden.

"Am I not enough for you, hm?" he murmured softly, sitting up against the headboard. His head began to lull back as he felt sleep overcome him.

***

You woke up properly at around nine o'clock, safe in the knowledge that you didn't have a lesson until eleven that day. With a soft yawn and a stretch of your limbs, you only remembered the events of earlier when you rolled over to see a sleeping Lorenzo slouched against your headboard, and Midnight sprawled across his lap.

Merlin, your usually mundane and repetitive life had really taken a turn. Unfortunately, despite the insanity of everything he had done, you didn't have the heart to wake him. You couldn't help but think that you would have done the same if Midnight was your cat. Plus, Lorenzo was very physically attractive— you knew that, everyone knew that. Yet, it was your bed that he was asleep on.

Sighing, you sat up, reaching over to scratch Midnight's head affectionally, causing her to wake up and start stretching. The action made Lorenzo stir in his sleep, and once his cat let out a soft mewl, he finally woke up fully. Immediately, you quirked an eyebrow at him, and he looked like a deer caught in headlights.

"Comfortable?"

He grumbled, "No."

You chuckled softly, "Your friends will be wondering where you are."

The proximity between the two of you was quite close: you were sat cross-legged with a mere inch between your limbs. It didn't feel strange, though, in fact it felt quite natural.

"Anyway," you tried to ignore the closeness, "As much as this has been fun, you can't come in here every time Midnight does."

"Why not?"

"I told you earlier. I don't need people making assumptions about me."

His eyes met yours, and you felt your stomach flip. "What if we made the assumptions true?"

You froze, then relaxed, "You don't mean that."

He shrugged.

***

Despite your hopes and dreams, people saw Lorenzo Berkshire leaving your dormitory, and the rumours spread throughout Hogwarts at a rapid speed. And, of course, as he was one of the Slytherin boys who were notorious for sleeping around— albeit less so than the others— you had been dubbed as his next conquest. It was a nuisance, but you weren't insecure, and knew that it would pass before long.

"If you didn't fuck, why was he in your dorm?" Iris, your friend from another house, asked. You were sat at a table in the library together, doing homework. Well, you were doing homework, Iris was borderline interrogating you instead.

"I had his cat," you replied simply.

"You stole his cat?"

You rolled your eyes, "No, Iris, his cat came to me."

"Isn't his cat the really vicious one who hates everyone?"

You hummed absent-mindedly, running your finger down the contents page of a book you were using for your essay.

"Why did it go to you then?"

"She likes me," you murmured, finding the page that you wanted and turning to it.

"That doesn't explain why he was in your dorm so long though."

"No, it doesn't."

Iris huffed, clearly irritated that you were giving her little to no information. You loved her dearly, but she was a bit of a gossip. Suddenly, she gasped. "Are you courting?"

"Who even uses that word anymore?" you scrunched up your nose, "And, no, we're not." Although, you couldn't help but think back to his suggestive comments.

"I don't believe you."

"Believe what you want to believe."

"You're no fun," she pouted.

"Meow."

You looked down to your side in surprise, to see that the familiar black feline was stood by your chair with her tail raised indignantly. "Speak of the devil," you muttered, leaning down to pick her up.

"Midnight!" you heard a yell as the library doors swung upon. You watched as Lorenzo was quickly shushed by the librarian. He apologised to her whilst scanning the room, soon spotting you with his cat sat on your lap. He hurried over.

"You need to stop freaking out whenever she goes wandering," you chastised when he was within a few feet of your table.

He scoffed, "You try not to freak out when you have an incredibly hostile cat who could be banned from Hogwarts."

"I think I do, in a way," you raised Midnight up into the air above you, examining her carefully.

"She's still my cat."

"Relax," you said, "I was just joking."

He glared at you, but there was no real threat in it.

"At least this means you get to see me so much," you grinned cheekily, making him shake his head with a sigh.

"How unfortunate for me."

"Wow, that hurts, Lorenzo." Since when did you feel like you could call him by his first name?"

"Well, Y/N, sorry for not enjoying running like a madman after my little terror."

"Then start thinking of it as running like a madman straight towards me."

He seemed surprised at that comment, and went silent for a few moments. These few moments were when Iris decided to cut in, having been observing silently until then.

"Seems like flirting to me."

You scowled at her.

"I'm just saying, would it not make sense to date the one other person who your cat likes?" she said this more towards Lorenzo than you.

He stared blankly at your friend, a finger on his right hand twitching ever so slightly. You didn't know what to make of that reaction, but decided that you wanted to learn more about what Lorenzo's body language said.

"Can I have my cat back?" he finally spoke.

"Can I please just keep her for a little bit?" you pleaded, "I can't have a cat because my mum's allergic."

Lorenzo surveyed you carefully: your half-hearted attempt at puppy dog eyes and the way Midnight nuzzled her head into your chest. He felt a pang of jealousy: strange and twisting. Weirdly, he didn't think he felt that envious of his cat's affections for you, so he didn't know why he felt jealous. A flashback of the skimpy pyjamas you had been wearing the other night crossed through his mind.

Shit.

"Yeah, uh, sure," he said all too quickly, "Only an hour though."

You hadn't expected him to agree so easily. Nonetheless, you beamed, and said, "Thank you, Enzo."

Enzo. He only let his friends use that nickname. Scratch that: he generally only tolerated when his friends used that nickname. But from you, it sounded sweet, and soft. He knew that he was a more civil and selfless person than the rest of the Slytherin boys, but he doubted many people would go as far as to say his name with such gentleness.

Gulping, he turned and walked away without another word.

***

A little over an hour later, you found Lorenzo in the Great Hall with his friends. They appeared to be enjoying a late lunch, as the tables were sparsely populated and only a few dishes remained. Just the sight of food made your stomach grumble, so you made your way over to him with Midnight curled up in your arms.

"Hello," you smiled, standing next to Lorenzo.

"Hi," he replied, before cooing at his cat who mewled happily.

Your stomach grumbled again, louder this time, and you shrugged sheepishly. "Haven't eaten yet."

"Then eat," Mattheo Riddle said from across the table, gesturing to the food.

You handed the cat over to her owner, and questioned, "Here?" You had never sat at the Slytherin table before.

Riddle shrugged, "Why not?"

You couldn't argue with that, and took a seat beside Lorenzo, dishing food on to your plate in a hurry.

"Where's Arachwood?" Enzo asked, referring to Iris.

"Got distracted by the boy she likes."

"Who does she like?" Riddle asked, clearly a lover of gossip and rumours— much like Iris.

You quirked an eyebrow, "Why should I divulge my friend's secrets?"

"She doesn't seem to have much regard for yours," Lorenzo piped in.

"Yeah, she does run her mouth a bit, but she's my friend," you scooped a large mouthful on to your fork, "I just take care not to tell her my most personal secrets." You then finally allowed yourself to taste the mouth-watering nourishment.

"So? Who does she like?" Riddle asked.

You stared at him incredulously as your mouth was full.

"I think the bigger question is who does L/N like," Theodore Nott added, smirking as he watched the eyes of you and Enzo widen.

Swallowing your food, you turned the topic back to Iris, "She likes Boot."

"Terry Boot?" Riddle clarified, and you nodded.

"I'm only saying that because she makes no effort to keep it private."

"But what about you?" Nott pushed again.

You paused, as in truth, you hadn't really fancied anyone for a while— that was, until, you remembered how gorgeous Lorenzo had looked sleeping on your bed. You felt your face burn.

"No one," you murmured, but your tone was anything but believable. You scooped more food into your mouth so you couldn't answer any further questions, but none were asked.

"We're having a party tonight," Riddle said, "You should come."

You were unable to reply as you chewed.

"It's really just Slytherins," he continued, "But we're all allowed a plus one. You can be Enzo's."

Cautiously, you looked at Lorenzo to gauge his reaction to that suggestion, but he didn't seem to have one as he mindlessly stroked Midnight.

"Yeah, if you want," he said, clearing his throat.

Finally, you swallowed, "That sounds fun. Should I bring alcohol?"

"I would recommend it," Riddle replied.

You were a mix of nervous and excited.

***

When you arrived at the Slytherin dungeons that evening, you were greeted by two fourth years at the door who seemed to be taking the job of security guard very seriously.

"Name?" one of them asked.

"Y/N L/N."

"And who are you here with?"

"Lorenzo Berkshire."

One of them wandered off into the party as the other turned to you, "We just have to validate this. Standard procedure."

You suppressed a giggle.

Not too long later, the other fourth year returned with Lorenzo by his side. With a nod to his friend, you were beckoned in and went over to Enzo.

"Very formal," you finally let out the giggle as the two of you began walking into the main party.

He shrugged, "Riddle insists on it. Salazar knows why."

You gazed around the Slytherin common room, taking in the green and black decor that you had never had the chance to lay eyes on before. There was music playing quite loudly, but you hadn't been able to hear it from outside— likely thanks to a sound-proofing charm.

"Have you started drinking yet?" he asked you.

"I had one while I was getting ready, you?"

"I've had a couple," he shrugged, stopping in his tracks for a few moments to properly look at you, "You look very pretty."

A blush crept on to your cheeks, "Thank you."

You could have sworn a small smirk graced his lips.

"L/N! You made it," the booming voice of Riddle thundered from nearby, and you turned to see him approaching with a bottle in his hand.

"Yeah," you chuckled, "Don't know how I'm gonna make it back without getting caught though."

"Just stay in Enzo's room," he said, clearly already too drunk to think over his words.

Before you could respond to his statement, he had spotted someone else and hurried over to them.

"You can if you want," Lorenzo said quietly, "I've crashed your room before."

You chuckled at the strangely fond memory, "Scared the shit out of me."

He grimaced, "Sorry about that."

"It's okay, just give me a little more warning next time."

"Next time?" he repeated, a suggestive lilt to his tone.

"Where's Midnight?" you changed the subject.

"Up in my room, probably."

You hummed, "Right, I need to get more alcohol in me." And with that comment, you wandered off, not wanting Lorenzo to feel like you were following him around like a lost puppy— despite how much you had realised you wanted to be around him. It was a strange realisation: it was the first time a crush had snuck up on you rather than you more or less picking someone you found attractive to fancy.

And with that thought lingering, you poured yourself a shot, downed it, and then made a mixed drink to join the party with.

***

The increasing amount of alcohol danced through your bloodstream as the night went on and you found yourself dancing with some Slytherin girls, and having a full blown debate with a Ravenclaw guy who was there with his Slytherin girlfriend. You were having a lot of fun, but you found your drunken self wanting to go search for Lorenzo. So, you did just that, scanning the large room for any sight of him. Finally, your eyes locked on to the familiar tuft of brown hair sat on a sofa, with his friends all sat around him.

You walked over, somewhat clumsily, and immediately beamed widely, "Hi, Enzo," you said.

His gaze flicked to you and a small smile crept on to his face, "How are you doing?"

"I missed you," you said without thinking, sitting down next to him and bringing your legs up on to the sofa to curl into his side. His arm was spread out, resting behind you on the back of the settee.

"Did you?" he chuckled, taking a sip of his drink, which he held in his other hand.

You nodded, "Did you miss me? Wait, don't answer that."

His lips stretched into a full grin, "I might have missed you."

You narrowed your eyes at him, "Don't play with my feelings, Berkshire. I know you're not as much of a player as the others, but I'm still suspicious."

"Never," he said, leaning closer to you so he could say in a husky quiet voice, "Call me Berkshire."

You raised an eyebrow, "Don't think I won't leave if you show signs of leading me on." How had this turned into a full blown confession? Wasn't it a bit premature for that?

"Who could ever leave me, darling?" The alcohol had clearly inflated his already radiant confidence.

"But who could stay?" you whispered in his ear, before stumbling to your feet, only to feel his hand grasp around your wrist. You turned back, to see that he was looking at you with his mouth folded in a thin line.

"You could," he eventually muttered, "Midnight would miss you too much."

"Just Midnight?" you teased, finding that your drunkenness was filling you with reckless abandon.

He sighed, "I would, too."

You grinned, sitting back down next to him.

"Do you want to go to Hogsmeade next weekend?" he asked.

"I thought you'd never ask."

And, when you woke up the next morning cuddled up with Lorenzo and Midnight in his bed, you smiled despite your pounding headache— and slight urge to throw up. Scratch that: huge urge to throw up. But when you stumbled to the bathroom, waking up Lorenzo in the process, he followed you and held back your hair, talking you through it.

It was peculiar, really, how everything was still so new, but you didn't feel the least bit embarrassed about him seeing you in such an ugly state.

—————————————————

masterlist

written; 26/04/2024 —> 09/05/2024 published; 12/05/2024 edited; —/—/——

[senblades]

Do u have any persona head-canons? Ships and/or characters

hmm.... I... kind of do? I do, in the sense that there are certain things that I enjoy reading and writing, but I'm not gonna throw a fit if someone thinks differently, and it's never a dealbreaker to me if fics don't have them. It's just sort of an "oh! this fic/art has this?! neat!"

In saying that, I suppose I'll write some of my favourite headcanon-ish things that are definitely Not Canon in the slightest, but I really enjoy throwing around for fun:

Futago siblings! Angst potential. And comedy potential. They're just a really good dynamic lmao

I care less about KenGoro siblings, but the concept is still super interesting! It's more the brotherly dynamic I enjoy than any potential angst from them being actual half-siblings (I've said it before, but throwing Futaba into the mix as well is incredibly funny)

Wakaba's questionable experiments; I like this for a lot of reasons- there are so many different ways it can be interpreted, but I personally enjoy writing it in a way (how to phrase this?) where it's less "making Goro more sympathetic because oops human experimentation" and more as a "Oh, Wakaba was morally grey, how does that affect the story/her character at large," and "How bitter can I make Goro because of this?" HAHA the whole 'making him more sympathetic' thing kind of evens out if I also make him worse while I'm at it lmao /lh

uhh moving into more Meta discussion territory, but:

Ren isn't bitter about the interrogation room betrayal because it was part of the game that he made the active choice to keep playing. It's a nod of respect between him and Akechi, since both of them are refusing to bend their ideals, and are accepting what that means (like, look at Justice rank 7 (and at how he smirks after the plan works lmao that boy was so confident he'd win))

follow up to that, accepting Maruki's deal on 2/2, conversely, is a betrayal in a much more significant way. Because Ren and Akechi were once again refusing to bend their ideals throughout January, until Ren folds on 2/2. it's like, they were unapologetically themselves in November, which meant they were enemies. Then, they continued to be themselves in January, which meant they were allies. So, Ren fucking that up is not exactly great teammate ettiquite.

moving out of the realm of Meta discussions because that's less headcanon territory-

ummm headcanon that Ren is really just as unhinged as Akechi, but he's excellent at hiding it around people that Aren't Akechi. Comedy ensues.

Sumire and Kasumi started out in dance before transferring to rythym gymnastics

Ren also used to do dance

uhhh these probably weren't the answers you were looking for anon I apologise HAHA- I really don't tend to have headcanons in the way of like "I 100% think this thing about a character without any textual evidence and I'll fight people about it". I guess the last three kind of count, but even then I like. don't really care lmao

I'm probably missing stuff because I just don't think about it a lot, but alas

ty for the ask anon <3 <3 I'm sure i'll think of something 20 minutes after I post this and be like "fuck. I should have written that" HAHA

[barren-heart]

What We do in the Shadows is going to break the fourth wall in a major way in S6. Here’s why.

I know I’ve been super annoying about this, but I’m literally convinced a real world episode is going to happen in season 6 of WWDITS.

Commonly referred to as “The French Mistake” Episode in reference to Supernatural’s The French Mistake which was itself a reference to Blazing Saddles which broke the fourth wall and (decades old spoiler alert) was discovered to be filmed on a film set.

The real-world episode is a trope in television where a character or characters discover for some reason that they are on a film set (either being transported by magic or maybe in a dream).

Sitcom Growing Pains (1985-1992) and sci-fi show Eerie, Indiana (1991-1992) are two of these early examples of where characters enter a tv set version of their lives, for different reasons.

Growing Pains, in sitcom fashion, was to teach a moral lesson.

Eerie, for its spooky episodes, was to showcase how supernatural and mysterious the town was.

And of course, Supernatural, known for its specific monster-of-the week style episodes, does so for its meta-commentary on the show.

Now why would WWDITS do one of these style episodes?

Well, it’s a comedy for one. Putting your characters in situations that are “out of the norm” helps make the conflicts more hilarious. It’s a fish-out-of-water situation.

The show is also meta as fuck. Maybe not in the same way as Supernatural did, but there are fourth wall breaking moments. Especially related to the documentary itself.

Unlike those other shows, WWDITS characters are meant to be on camera. This show is aware of its cameras at all times. The characters are constantly filmed and understand they are being filmed.

And my last reason, which I believe is the biggest reason, is for Guillermo’s character development.

Since they are constantly filmed, a lot of Nandor and Guillermo’s relationship has not been able to progress as much as it can. Nandor, like the other vampires, obviously doesn’t care about the cameras. Nudity and sex on camera doesn’t bother them. They arn’t holding much back. (Although you could argue Nandor might be holding back some feelings, as well).

Guillermo is definitely holding back. The most private character in front of the cameras. He is the most aware. And because he is aware, he never lets all of himself be revealed.

This is something that would help him if he wasn’t being filmed anymore. Taking the documentary element away and confronting the actors, producers, and potentially even Paul Simms himself, could change Guillermo at his core.

This would make himself more comfortable being his true self in front of the cameras, especially when it comes to his feelings about Nandor which he has consistently denied to the audience and other characters, even when it’s pretty obvious.

Now, could the other characters benefit from meeting the other actors and film crew? Yes. Nandor would certainly be a good character for this. Meeting Harvey could potentially break Nandor’s brain. Something I would love to see.

And Colin would be downright hilarious in this setting.

But, tbh, I think this episode would have Nandor and Guillermo confront their feelings, as we (the audience)would then see the motivations behind the characters. The notes in the script that we don’t get to see. Paul Simms referencing Nandermo ala Supernatural’s Fan Fiction.

It’s the perfect setting for a one-off comedy episode but also great for fan service…and the perfect set up for Nandermo to begin.

[kashilascorner]

New entry for @queer-ragnelle May Day Parade!

Prompt: May 10-16 Month of May {Free Space/Flower Festival}

Behold --my attept at a comedy! You can read it here if you prefer. This is probably the last short story I write for this challenge. Enjoy ^^

He was meant to be someone's uncle, maybe. Definitely not someone's father at any rate. As the hot midday sun shone above his head, Sir Bors wondered what it was about him that he had ended up surrounded by kids. No, not kids. Kids were cute, with their chubby cheeks and their untamed opinions. What he had attracted was far worse: teenagers.

It was a beautiful day in mid-May. Flowers were blooming, birds were singing, horses were happy, and he was not being paid enough for this job. Actually, he was not being paid at all! In fact, by not being in his lands, he was losing money by the minute –but alas, he was not good at accounting anyways, that was work for his brother and his sister-in-law. It's not that Bors didn't like the lads, but he was beginning to understand Sir Kay's irritation towards the world at large given how much he dealt with youngsters all day, every day.

Galahad was a quiet boy. He thought of him as good nephew although he was a second cousin. That was good, with that he could deal. Perceval, on the other hand talked too much. He talked all the time. But there was someone who talked even more: his sister Dindrane. Good lord how much she spoke! Why was she even there in the first place? he wondered. And then there was the elephant inside the room. An enormous elephant all the way from India that definitely had no business in Britain’s forests: Elyan. His son. His actual, real, blood-of-his-blood son. Bors had never had much of an idea of how he should speak to him, so at some point he had decided to talk to him as a fellow comrade. It was his brother's advice: become friends with the lad, he said, get him to trust you, he said, all will be fine and follow the natural course, he said. Well, probably not the best idea to take advice from a man who had not yet been a father and had lost his own at a tender age. But alas, he didn't have much better opinions to go by. Who else was he going to ask for fatherly advice? Arthur? Lancelot? So Bors took the advice at face value. If Elyan had been a child maybe he could have worked out something, but no, of course none of the Lord's designs could ever be that easy. He was (almost) fully grown by the time they met. He even had a shadow of a shadow of something that kind of resembled a beard.

Elyan seemed content enough by the treatment, Bors thought with some relief. A good lad he was. His mother had made a good job, Bors nodded to himself, she should be proud. But Galahad visibly cringed every time they interacted. This angered Bors. Was he doing it so wrong? He felt very judged, negatively, by Galahad's gaze. And who was Galahad, of all people, to judge? And why did Bors even care about his opinion? Bors thought of himself as a competent enough father, even if not a good one. Sure, he had not provided for his son, but only because he didn't know he existed at all! Come think of it, maybe only God was a good enough Father, and still his main fathering method was throwing His children into the world without warning and with only thin skin as their protection. Not even scales or a thick poisonous tooth or two to defend themselves. Bors did better than that: he’d given his lad an armor, and a seat in the most prestigious knight order of the age. So, actually, he had done fairly well by comparison, had he not? Even if the reasoning was a bit sacrilegious in nature.

“Say, Uncle,” spoke Dindrane. Bors, at the head of the party, had to fight his innermost demons not to roll his eyes and let out a long, long sigh. Her excessive familiarity annoyed him. Lads he could deal with, but how in Heaven was one even supposed to deal with a fifteen-year-old girl? “Who would win a fist fight, Sir Gawain or Sir Lancelot?”

“Obviously Gawain!” retorted young Melehan, with a tone that informed Bors the kids had been, no doubt, arguing about this one thing all morning. Obviously Melehan was going to defend his uncle. Bors had not intended to travel with a band of teenagers, but least of all had he planned to borrow Sir Mordred's eldest son, a boy of twelve, as a squire while they went to meet with the rest of the knights. How much he missed his loyal Achilles! Should have never knighted him, honestly, but it was too late to regret it now. Bors had never realized how hard it was to get a good squire until he lost a great one –which Melehan, certainly, was not.

“They would never fist fight in the first place.” Bors said, trying to sound very grave. “And knights don't fist fight.”

“But if they did,” insisted Dindrane, Elyan and Perceval in unison.

“He's going to say Lancelot, he's not impartial.”" complained Melehan, very softly for them to pay attention.

“Obviously Lancelot would win if he ever happened to lower himself to such standards,” commented Galahad, who, even by his standards had been astonishingly quiet.

“Are we talking midday or night fight?” Asked Perceval all of a sudden, like he had just realized it was an absolutely crucial difference.

“Gawain at midday, definitely,” said Elyan, trying to sound very serious (or had his voice really become this deep?) “But at night...”

“Still Gawain!” insisted Melehan.

“No way, not at night.” Galahad scoffed.

“Oh, so you admit he would lose in the morning?” Melehan smiled. Bors turned slightly to look at the little blond boy. Damn, did the boy look like his father.

“Knights don't fist fight.” Insisted Bors.

“I know you have fist flighted,”" said Perceval, cryptically, disconcerting Bors and forcing him to turn his body on his horse to look at him, like an owl turning its head.

“When?”

“You have a brother, sir Bors,” said Perceval, “and brothers fist fight all the time.” he added, in unison with Dindrane, like it was an obvious fact everyone knew. What kind of relationships did the offspring of Pellinore have? Bors thought with horror for a moment, what horrors went behind those walls--then he thought of how Lamorak had turned out. Ah, it made sense.

“We could say that sometimes it can happen, yes,” he conceded. "But I never in my life fist fought Lionel." He had, indeed, fist fought Lionel and broken his lip in the process multiple times, but no reason for the youngsters to know that. It seems like they had enough examples about it not to need any more.

“My cousins and I once had a very big fight, I don't see how it would not be the same between brothers.” Melehan commented.

“And who won?”

“Florence.”

“Ah.” Bors nodded. The boy was a marvel. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree –especially if the tree is Gawain. Right before breaking a smile, he remembered he was trying to give a good example. “Well, you should try to avoid those things. One day you will be knighted, so you keep your hands to yourself and use your sword and your lance honorably, as it is meant to be.”

“Ha! Tell that to the boys, I will throw punches my whole life.” Dindrane laughed, tilting her chin up petulantly. Galahad all of a sudden seemed very uncomfortable. He had grown in a monastery, had he not? He probably never saw a woman talk so shamelessly. Had he ever even seen a girl his own age at all? Probably not. Women could be terrifying, Bors had to give him that. And Dindrane, it seemed, was at least half savage. Melehan had made the horse trot a little faster so now he was on Bors' left side, blushing, instead of nearer Dindrane where he had been riding all morning. He blushed a lot when it came to Dindrane, Bors realized. Maybe he didn't like her? Only the Lord could tell, these youngsters were a mystery.

Bors stole a glance from Elyan, on his right side. Come think of it, perhaps they shouldn't be knighting boys this young. Then he thought of how Perceval was a good two years older than his Elyan and still had much less common sense, so maybe it didn't have anything to do with age after all. Bors smiled at his son, and got his horse a little closer to his. Elyan smiled back, shyly, but pulled out his chest in a show of being a great horseman.

“Who do you think won when they fought, my Lord the King or the Seneschal?” asked Perceval, breaking the silence.

“The King,” said Dindrane and Elyan.

“The Seneschal,” replied Melehan, Galahad and Bors. The lads stared at Bors, and Dindrane smirked maliciously. They had trapped him.

“So who would win, Uncle, Sir Lancelot or Sir Gawain?”

“Who would, who would?” all of them asked.

There was no escape. Bors took a deep breath.

At least this would only go on for a couple more days, then they would meet with Gawain and Lancelot's parties, switch members and begin the quest proper.

But as things were going, he wondered: was the Grail and its promise of divine redemption even worth this much effort? Maybe he should turn back to tournaments and rescuing ladies. It was certainly a more reasonable line of work.

[teeth-cable]

You know if Vivziepop wanted Helluva to transition from comedy to drama there was an easy ways to do its without jumping the shark.

The imps are hired killers payed by sinners who have done terrible shit.

Don't expect me to believe I.M.P. hasn't killed innocent people because you really think that awful people only have grudges against awful people.

Like Murder Family would be a great set up for this eventually coming up because Moxxie can't justify killing innocent people. Like all the clients have been evil so he can sleep at night but if there's a target who has done nothing wrong is Moxxie gonna be able to cross that line? Like this is prime conflict potential within I.M.P.

Maybe as the series progresses the main I.M.P. plot the imps get hired to kill for pettier and more petty shit. Hell have Stolas send them on missions like it was set up in the pilot if you want to justify him being here more and not take a left turn in the plot. Maybe have characters comment on how ridiculous the reason for revenge is.

Then imagine one day if the client is an abuser who was killed by their victim in self defense. As the episode goes on we see hints and clues to what went down. Maybe Moxxie and Loona (if she is there) start putting the pieces together. While Blitzo who doesn't give a shit about the target ignores them or doesn't notice. Millie has a healthier life overall so she might interpret the target and client doing typical stuff she sees in Wrath or both evil.

Then when Moxxie or Loona finds the target and learns the truth... There's a few ways for it to play out.

1. The target is let go

2. They hesitate and either Millie or Blitzo take the target out.

Either way it devolves into an argument about morality and i don't expect Moxxie or Loona to fully reveal backstories especially since Millie doesn't know what went down in Moxxie's life but i would think they would hint at it. Maybe Loona could elude to it:

"Blitzo, do you remember when you took me in. The shithole I grew up in! Did you think for a moment I was never hurt? You want to do the dirty work of someone like those assholes?"

Moxxie would probably just stare at Millie intensely.

Like showing a conflict of morals is such a good way to develop your characters and see what lines they will or won't cross and the characters are literally assassins yet that only comes up once and meant nothing because Martha is evil.

If the characters are morally grey, deep and complex like Vivziepop claims yet she does nothing to have the characters morals challenged. Like Moxxie having issues was portrayed as him being in the wrong and a joke. The closest we get to that genuine conflict is Harvest Moon festival where you legitimately can't tell if Blitzo is tempted to let Stolas die and join Striker. Like Striker has legitimate decent points to bring up that are hard to argue against. We know Blitzo isn't a person who believes murder is wrong so that concept wouldn't be the source of conflict. The source is even though he does dislike Stolas at the point and wants to be unshackled and free is he willing to let him live despite that?

We also see that Striker's words did have an impact on Blitzo despite the choice to go against him being made. That's good shit. Like does this mean Blitzo could've easily chosen to let Stolas die then?

Like that's a very complex bucket of worms to address but alas Striker's character seems like it is going to slowly degrade as the show goes on just to dump that bucket of worms in the ocean because if Striker is going to be retconned as a selfish bigot that ruins the moral ambiguity of this scene. Like you can have evil characters tempt characters in media, common trope and all. But usually the audience knows they are evil or its a plot twist. Usually with known evil characters its temptation mainly when you know the protagonist is going to stay on the side of good. However if the audience knows but the protagonist doesn't/plot twist that nobody knows its usually manipulation because if the protagonist chooses their morals then that's gonna out the villain as one.

Morally grey antagonists like Striker are usually 50/50 in what choice the character chooses because grey villains always have somewhat of a point that makes them gray after all. Now im not invalidating manipulation as a valid tactic in storytelling by villains, if its written well it can show power not by might but with words and add a pinch of tragedy or saying morally grey ones cant manipulate but Im just using broad strokes to paint how if Striker gets retconned it takes away from Blitzos decision. It makes it less of a hard choice if Striker is just going to be made into what Vivziepop is intending based off twitter likes.

Like the framing ruins Blitzo being morally grey if Striker is a generic asshole. Instead Blitzo will fall into more of an almost manipulated hero. Which makes him more innocent in the matter.

Then we have Millie. Lets be honest Millie has two traits which is cheerful/sweet and good at killing and everything plot relevant to her is tied to Moxxie.

Like she killed people in her neighborhood. Like Millie legitimately wants to kill people and is disappointed when she's not allowed to.

Like if she's so nonchalant with murder why not have that be tested then? Like what's her line she wont cross in killing or how does her being a serial killer with no remorse who takes pleasure in it effect her life.

Like Millie unlike the rest of the cast has a decent life

Like if she's ignorant to peoples issues because of her blessed life like a lot of people are when they don't research other peoples experiences (this is proven by the amitheasshole subreddit) co-opt that into her murder sprees. Like would Millie not care if the target was an orphan? Would Millie kill a child? If so how does her lack of morals effect her relationships with others or viewpoint of the world.

Like we know from the Alastor comic despite him being a mass murderer he doesn't kill the weak and will go out of his way to protect them, that's moral grayness.

Like the only moral grayness with Millie is her being a killer but... Everyone in Helluva is... Shes not unique in that regard and is often praised for her bloodlust.

But her being so wrathful makes me question why Moxxie even married her because their morals are clearly different. Like Moxxie was traumatized by his time in the mafia and killed a man at like 5 and immediately learned his father killed his mother in the same way. Why would Moxxie want to fuck someone who realistically if Helluva took place irl would trigger him.

Honestly I question why Moxxie is in I.M.P. but that's a different discussion.

Millie and Moxxie having different morals could work if you address it because rn its a huge ass elephant. Like im supposed to buy that these two are a couple who are madly in love and have no issues at all when one of them was traumatized by murder and the other doesn't care to turn the ocean red???

Like if Millie had other traits or we knew her killing morals then I could buy them actually marrying the other.

Just the lack of morals ambiguity is fucking nuts in a show about assassins.

Out of all the rewrites I have read for Helluva Boss, this one is my favorite so far. The main series drama being the moral ambiguity of assassinates makes so much sense. Not only does it relate to the premise of a work class comedy that Viv advertised but also there is a lot more you can work with for drama.

I alway had a few problems with Stotliz becoming the main drama of the show. First, as the series continued it became more about Stotliz and less about the imps and their job, the very thing Viv promised and advertised the show will be. Second Blitzo and Stolas are only affected by their relationship. Moxxie and Millie aren't affected and Octavia and Stella just get repeated plot lines. Nothing new happens and it's strange because Stolas has so much power in Hell that when he screws up, it should have big consequences. There should be new arcs about Octavia being resentful towards Stolas instead of only running away and forgiving him, Stella using her status and power to smear Stolas's reputation, and the M&M should actually be worried about Stotliz because their jobs are made possible by the relationship so if Blitzo and Stolas have a falling out and they can't use the grimore anymore, they will be out of a job. Relating to this, how come the stress of the relationship and breakup hasn't change Blitzo? He has trauma and PTSD towards relationships because all of his pervious ones failed terribly. When he broke up with Stolas, shouldn't he have become more distance towards imps because he got hurt again and doesn't want to risk the same fate with the only friends he has left? Maybe he becomes more creepy and invasive about the M&M because he's so desperately want to feel intimacy and wants to know what they're doing right and what he's doing wrong, there needs to be some kind of change in his character and relationships to show how the breakup impacted him. Third, Stolas is just a pointless character to have in the main cast. He doesn't relate to the majority of the IMP crew, his arc about being a gay man stuck in an abusive relationship doesn't relate to the show being a work place comedy about assassins, and his only plot importance is giving the imps the Grimore. Stolas could have just been a side character who has three minutes of screentime in every Ep to establish his relationship with Blitzo and his purpose or just be a guy we only know though Blitzo's dialogue, there is no reason for him to have such a big role in the context of Helluva Boss being a show about imps assassinations. Maybe Stotliz could be a running side-plot throughout the show and it comes full-circle when Stolas orders the IMPs to kill Stella but there is no reason for Stotliz to become the main focus on the show especially when it doesn't related imps or assassination.

This rewrite explores the idea of morals and ethics better and fleshes out and fits the characters' theme better. Moxxie is a great example of this, he doesn't want to kill innocent people and so far all the people he has kill, he assumes were or learned are assholes but what will he do when he realize he was send to kill a harmless person? I'm curious how this new conflict will affect Loona because most of the time she never goes on missions to assassinate and she pretends to not care about other people. Also how will this contradict her relationship with Blitzo? Will Blitzo still kill the person despite Loona saying how wrong it is, he doesn't want to hurt her but at the same time, it's their job to kill people and he just doesn't care about the person they kill. After he kills the person, how will Loona react? Same thing with M&M, maybe Moxxie married Millie because he thought she was a sweet girl with a brute side but he realizes from their job that Millie is a bloodlust person who loves killing and doesn't care about the ethics and morals. This causes a strife in their relationship just like with Blitzo and Loona and now it becomes a "Us vs Them" situation where Moxxie and Loona become closer and trying to convince them to only kill terrible people but Blitzo and Mille doesn't care but they're not being mean because they're assholes but because in Hell it's difficult for imps to be respected and if killing both terrible and innocent people can give the imps and their job respect then they will continued to kill. Honestly this drama just works better because now everyone in the main cast is affected and we get to learn about their relationships and how people's backstories affect their world views.

[strugglingatart]

Jr Year ep 1

This is me live blogging bc I need to get thoughts out also would love fandom friends full spoilers bellow the cut just so no one accidentally reads anything they don't want to this will be long

Immediate chaos with unexplicable bits and Emily's insane bevarage choices WE ARE BACK BABY (also the holding hands bc the table is smaller was TOO cute)

My dad got a job in Cleavland lmao Lou... but also I wonder why they moved Fabian dear are you ok (emotionally I mean) also what do you mean you don't know... as usual I would like to see behind the scenes and know everything please

I know we technically saw them in the trailer but THE PROJECTIONSSSS

I expected the night yorb to be resolved quickly but a full battle scene w/ minis? shook and the hangvan is precious tbh and two minis omg

Gorgug is more artificer him being more tinkery is so huge to me idk why I just love my soft boi and his tools

Ally is me and I am Ally when the see the boggy mini

oh we "missed" a lot, I wonder how much talking about the 4 months they did or if a session 0 was part of that downtime decisions but lmao to Fabian fully flirting w/ the mirror

I'm sure all their knew stuff is like class features and mechanics but I know nothing about DnD so I'm just here on the vibes

I wish my sadness and life crisises got me jacked like Kristen, truly nothing would make me happier but I am too lazy alas

yes Riz, I love a good gadget

Not Fabian straight up failing and an acrobatica check as well? oh the irony (also Ally's face is ME, and Siobhan w/ perfect commentary, and the indignation at the die)

I truly hope they had more time and/or more people in the art team than usual bc so many minis!

Murph and Emily w/ silvery barbs is so cutee

was Kristen's dex not a -3? how did it get WORSE??? i don't know this game (also like Kristen baby pls most ppl get more dex by working out)

why was the whole squeem bit both peak comedy and drama at the same time

When they said silly they MEANT it

also gotta love Murph being teachers pet

the yorbie dying on his turn and Brenan just monotoning it was peak everything also the npc stuff happens i guess

getting an email from school and instantly going oh I hate everything cannot deal is relatable as hell into university tbh

Kristen please Cassandra is actually a cool god

The box of doom and murph's little beans!

Was this an unwinable fight??? IS THE NIGHT YORB HERE FOR THE WHOLE THING? Legit never thought that was gonna be the thing.... oh THIS is what EMily talked about, this deal with whoever is why we still have Fig I can't believe we have to wait a week to get to know moreeee, watching live is a torture

[kumeko]

A/N: For the Hilibrew café zine! I wanted to play with some otome tropes and also some fun comedy tropes (a bit of an homage to Clue and its ilk). I’ve come to the devastating realization despite loving Xiao and Zhongli, I don’t actually write either of them that much. I really need to correct that in the future. Kinda wish I could have made each scene a bit more flirty, but alas. Next time.

…

…

…

…

Lumine collapsed on her brother’s soft bed, her hair splaying on the yellow comforter below her. Aether flopped down beside her, his long braid unravelling slightly and strands of his hair mixing with hers. It was strange to think that after they’d finished Teyvat University, they’d both move out, that one day she’d come home and her brother wouldn’t be around for her to complain to.

Then again, considering their debts and their pay, they’d probably live together till they’re sixty. Lumine sighed. Another reason her job was probably not worth it. “Today was exhausting.”

“Mine too,” Aether groaned, raising a hand to cover his eyes. “Why are the people here so weird?”

“I don’t know,” Lumine answered honestly. They were both working at different places, Aether at Liyue Eats, her at Mondstadt Café. Between the two of them, she’d hoped one of them hit the jackpot, but it seemed they’d both just picked the worst places to work instead.

The only question was which place was rock bottom. She glanced at her brother slyly. “I bet my day was worse.”

Aether burst into laughter, turning his head slightly towards her. “Why are you competitive about everything?”

“Comes with the territory of being the big sister.” Lumine shrugged.

“I’m pretty sure I’m the big brother.” Aether rolled his eyes. Their parents had never confirmed either way. “Alright, I give. Let’s see who had the worst day. What happened?”

Lumine grinned. “Well…”

-x-

The Drunkard

The café door opened, a bell chimed, and Lumine looked up from the latte she’d just finished making. A familiar man dressed in green strolled in confidently, as though he owned the place. His body swayed slightly with each step. “Lumine!” Noticing her, he waved.

Lumine frowned, setting down the cup to the side. Her coworker Amber could take it later; right now, she had to deal with this old drunkard. “Jean said not to come here drunk, Venti.”

“Jean says a lot of things. She’s a worrier.” Venti smiled innocently as he approached the bar. “And I’m not drunk.”

She wrinkled her nose as the scent of dandelion wine hit her. “You’re as drunk as a skunk. If you’re going to lie, put some effort into it.”

He swayed slightly. “Well…”

Lumine poked him, irritated. “You just walked here from Angel’s Share.”

“Alright, alright, you got me.” Venti held his hands up in mock surrender. “But come on, do you really want to see me walking the streets like this? Anything could happen.”

“It’s the middle of the day and fresh air is good for you,” Lumine replied tartly, hand on her hip.

���Please?” Venti pleaded, his eyes big and teary. She’d heard other people compare the man to an angel. Looks-wise, she had to agree, though she was certain his personality was closer to the devil’s. “I just need a moment to get my bearings.”

Despite her better judgement, Lumine caved. “Fine. But just for a little.”

“Scout’s honour, just for a little.” Venti grinned as he clambered onto a bar stool. “Could I get an espresso—”

“No mora, no food.” Lumine held out her hand. “I’ve already bent one rule, I’m not breaking another.”

“Some rules are meant to be broken,” Venti cajoled.

This time, she held her ground. “Not this one. How did you run this place before Jean?”

“Well, there’s a reason I’m the ex-owner.” Venti patted his pockets. “I know I have a coin in here somewhere.”

“Did you spend it all on wine?” Lumine asked, watching him expectantly.

Venti shook his head, still pulling out his pockets. “No, I dipped before Diluc could ask for the bill. I can give it to him next time.”

Privately, she had no idea how Venti even got into Angel’s Share, considering there was literally a poster telling him to keep out. If only she worked there, though. Then she could have asked for Venti’s driver’s licence and seen his age. The man in front of her looked like he was her age, maybe younger, but considering how Jean talked…he had to be like fifty.

Even with all of that baby skin.

“Oh! Found it!” Venti grinned as he pulled out a five-dollar bill. “Told you I was good for it.”

-x-

The Spy

Lumine placed a mug in front of the café’s regular, Kaeya. “Here’s your venti dark roast with almond milk and an espresso shot.” She paused. “Why do you order a different drink every time?”

“To keep things fresh,” Kaeya purred, tearing his eyes away from the window for a moment to wink at her. With his eyepatch, he had a roguish look that she couldn’t deny was handsome. “And to keep you on your toes.”

“I’m on my feet enough without your help.” Lumine followed his stare as he looked out the window once more. There, across the street, was Angel’s Share. The bar run by the infamously cranky Diluc. Kaeya had sat in this window seat so often, his name might as well be carved into the table. “Are you still spying on him?” She pursed her lips. “Is he a friend?”

“It’s not spying,” Kaeya replied smoothly, with the tone of an expert bullshitter. “It’s information gathering.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s still illegal.” Lumine stared at the bar. From here, they could make out Diluc and his fiery red hair as he moved across the bar. “Is he an ex-flame?”

Kaeya merely smiled mysteriously. “What do you think he’s brewing right now? He’s mixed together three different bottles.”

In all honesty, Lumine would rather solve the puzzle in front of her instead of the mystery across the street. She had been serving Kaeya for months and had no idea what his favourite drink was (he ordered randomly off the menu, as though testing out every combination), why he sat here or what his job had to be if he was sitting here all day like this. “I don’t know. Poison because he’s a murderer and you’re here to catch him in the act?”

“He’d be a terrible murderer if that were the case. And he’d be out of business if he killed all of his customers.” Kaeya rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I think it’s a new drink.”

Despite herself, Lumine watched Diluc move. The glass in his hand held a reddish drink with a hint of blue. “The Russian ex-mobster is making a fruit cocktail.”

“Oh, that’s an idea.” Kaeya nodded. “Maybe a seasonal drink since it’s summer.”

Twenty minutes later, Lumine hummed as she returned to the server bar. A second later, she stamped her foot—once again, Kaeya had tricked her.

She was never going to figure out why he was here.

-x-

The Flirt

“Hi, princess!”

Lumine stiffened as a familiar voice pierced the room. Slowly, she turned around from the espresso maker. Standing right behind her, confirming her fears, was a grinning redhead. Childe. He waved merrily.

She crossed her arms and glared. “Do you ever work?”

“You wound me.” Childe did not sound the least bit hurt. He chuckled. “Of course I work, otherwise I’d be here 24/7.”

Lumine shuddered. That would be a nightmare. It was hard enough to work with everyone as it was, without him following her the entire time. “Let’s pretend I believe you. You do know you work at a café, right?”

“Right,” he agreed easily, nodding.

“Can’t you just drink there?” Lumine gestured around her café. “Why come all the way out here?”

“There’s no law saying I can’t come, right?” Childe grinned, slipping onto a stool. He propped his chin on his palm, his elbow resting table. “Besides, I’d miss seeing you if I went anywhere else.”

“Liar,” Lumine sneered. One of the better aspects to having a twin in another café is that she had access to double the rumour mill. “You go to Liyue Eats all the time.”

“Sometimes—why, jealous?” Childe cooed, not taking her line of questioning seriously in the least.

Ignore it, Lumine reminded herself. “You’ve been to every café and bakery in the city,” she ground out. “Multiple times. Are you stealing recipes for Snezhnaya Delicacies?”

“Oh, princess, how could you accuse me of something like that?” Childe covered his mouth, appalled. She wondered how long he had practiced that line. If he even needed to practice or did lies flow out of him like air? “I would never.”

“Really.” Lumine cocked her head. “Then it was just a coincidence that Snezhnaya now sells spark candies that feel like static electricity? Right after you visited Inazuma Tea Shop?”

“Pure coincidence,” he swore sincerely. “I can’t believe you’d think like that.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I promise.” He crossed a hand on his chest and raised his other one. “Scout’s honour.”

For a second, she almost believed him, but then the doubt rushed back. Raising a brow, she asked, “Were you ever a scout?”

“Nope.” He chuckled, throwing his hands in the air. “But it’s the thought that counts, right?”

“That’s not what that means…” Lumine groaned, rubbing her forehead. If she kept this up, she’d have a headache. It was better to just deal with him directly instead of playing his game. Resting her hands on the counter, she asked, “What do you want?”

“Your smile,” he flirted with a disarming smirk. “Oh, and a frappe.”

-x-

“And then Bennett broke every plate. I don’t know where Klee kept those fireworks, I thought I’d checked every pocket.” Lumine groaned. “My fingers still feel like they’re burned.”

“Ouch. I know we’re not one to talk, with our parents giving us free reign since we were like, eight, but Klee’s mom might be a little too ‘free’.” Aether reached down and squeezed her hand. “Sorry about your day.”

“It’s ok. I think my skin’s getting tougher from all that.” She smiled. Honestly, for all her complaints, she did like working at the café. It was never a dull day and even at its worst, well, she had her brother to complain to. All she needed was to let it out and she was right as rain. “So, how was yours?”

“Well, I,” Aether drawled dramatically, she could almost hear the drumroll in his head, “fought a sea god.”

“A what?” Immediately, Lumine sat up.

“I’m joking. Kind of.” Aether laughed, reaching up to pull her back down. “So, remember how I told you about our boss, Zhongli?”

“The cute one that has fluff for brains?” Lumine asked, already picturing the tall man constantly in a suit.

“Yeah.” Aether snickered at the description. “Anyways, so he just came in this morning and grabbed Keqing by the shoulders. He told her, extremely seriously, ‘You must defeat a sea god’. And you know how he looks and sounds! It’s impossible to tell when he’s joking.”

“He needs to smile more, that’d probably help.” Lumine poked him. “And?”

“Keqing just replied bluntly, ‘It’s just an octopus.’.” Aether guffawed. “Her face was so blank! Apparently this happens like, once a week.”

Lumine stared at her brother incredulously. “An octopus runs around in your café once a week?”

“Yeah, apparently it’s like a pet or something?” Aether shrugged. “Come on, our café has a funeral parlor in the back. That is like the least strange part of it.”

“True.” Lumine relaxed, letting it go. “Proceed.”

Aether grinned. “Right, so then…”

[thefandomcassandra]

I am once again making fanart for my own au, hallowed be thy unknown, in which Nick dies during his trial and Maya is left with only a ghost to help her after her sister dies.

The first was meant to be a scene in the trial where Maya finally gets Redd White but I never actually had the full "OBJECTION!" moment, yknow? It came out different but the art actually motivated me to write so win-win, yknow? I might actually color this one and use it as like...a banner for the fic or smthn idk lmao.

The second was a scene from chapter 3, after Maya, Phoenix, and Gumshoe leave Bluecorp. Gummy feels really goddamn bad he let Redd White backhand her TWICE so like...yeah. Considering the whole stuff with Badd and Faraday and Kay, the man has seen his share of kids getting the rough end of it, yknow? I liked being able to give Maya someone living to rely on. Plus I love Gummy and Maya as a duo coz like...they're the ones the game tends to dumb down for comedy. I want their existence to be meaningful, yknow?

Idk pls read my fic. I'm working on Case 2: Tokusatsu Haunting right now lmao. I'm not fond of PLAYING Turnabout Samurai but I think the story of it is fascinating. It shares the better end of the Third Case Syndrome stick (god the investigation portion sucks shit and drags and is confusing) with Turnabout Serenade. Alas...

[Image ID: Two pencil sketch fanart of Ace Attorney. The first is of Maya Fey calling "OBJECTION!" with the ghost of college-aged Phoenix Wright mirroring her pose behind her. The second is of a tired Maya looking away as Gumshoe (only his hand) applies a large bandage to one of her injured cheeks. He is saying "This isn't the first time I've seen things like this." /end ID.]

[squarebracket-trickster]

new here but am wondering what your current WIP is about? if you don't feel comfortable I understand!! love your blog btw <3

Omg thank you so much!!

My main WIP right now is WIPVII (placeholder name until I am forced to actually name it).

It is a lower YA (for 13-15 year olds) low/no magic fantasy (takes place in a different world) with a romance subplot.

It's a (high/late) medieval western European-inspired setting, specifically the year 1333 CE in southern England - I try to be somewhat historically accurate because it makes the setting feel a little fresher than leaning on the medieval European stereotypes common to a lot of fantasy. But alas, there is only so much research I am willing to do (and I did take some liberties because, dammit I wanted a masquerade ball).

The WIP draws inspiration from Shakespeare comedies (Cymbeline, Twelfth Night, The Tempest etc), Alfred Tennyson poems (in particular "The Splendour Falls"), the Robin Hood myth, and fairy tales and medieval epics in general.

[More below the cut]

The blurb:

Two kingdoms long at war have laid down their arms at last, but peace hinges on treaty that can only be sealed by the marriage of the eldest son of the King of Dian to the eldest daughter of the King of Cithidy. But Isolda de Angenet, the princess of Cithidy, has gone missing and she does not want to be found. In disguise as a peasant boy, Isolde (known as Aldus) accidentally falls in with a ragtag group of bandits - and Henry, a knight with a mysterious past - who have been sent to find the missing princess and deliver her to the outlaw lord Hob. But there is some larger scheme afoot here. Once more, a Cithian army marches reluctantly toward Dian and Isolde fears the only way to stop it is to return to her old life and join the husband she has never met in Dian. Isolde has forsworn this marriage but unless she can find another way, she fears she will have to choose between her own freedom and peace. In the meantime, Henry is hiding something and Isolde will find out the truth, hopefully before Henry finds out who she really is.

Some other things about this WIP:

The name: WIPVII is just WIP + the roman numeral for 7 (VII). I refuse to properly name this WIP until I am forced to, so WIPVII is a placeholder name. I have a lot of WIPs so I number them from oldest to newest to keep track of them (this has nothing to do with the order I choose to work on them). This also means, when a WIP doesn't have a name yet, I have a convenient placeholder name ready to go! WIPVII is 7 because it is the 7th WIP I thought up.

Status: I am currently 60% of the way through my 3rd draft.

Word count: draft 2 was 77k and I am expecting draft 3 to be similar (around 82k because I added some description and worldbuilding and the prose is more flowery). I am aiming for 80k, give or take 5k.

WIPVII is meant to be a standalone.

--

The was inspired by the premise:

A princess runs away from an arranged marriage and ends up falling in love with the person she was supposed to marry (neither of them know who the other really is).

-- this is technically a spoiler, but they way the story is written I think most readers will guess the twist looong before it comes. And honestly, I think the story is a lot more fun if you figure it out well in advance. I am a sucker for dramatic irony.

[rains-inky-mind]

15 Questions But Make It Unhinged™️

Tagged by @sleepyowlwrites, Sleepy friend. Noticing that my unhinged, you actually meant we get to skip question number four. There's only 14 questions lol.

1. Are you named after anyone?

No, sadly. Would've been cool to be named after my dad, cause then I would've been "the third", but I'm a female so that was a no-go. Sadly.

Instead my name literally means "Laurel tree Ash tree Laurel field"...so that's...nature-y. (Also why I clung to the nickname my father gave me.)

2. When was the last time you cried?

This evening. My husband put on Up and before it even started I told him I was going cry. I lost it when Ellie was painting the nursery, then when she was in the doctors office, because who wouldn't?? I did laugh at the cloud babies though, because wth??

3. Do you have kids?

Serious for a second. I have two angel babies that I lost to miscarriage.

I also have a healthy, happy, overactive toddler. She's perfect, but in the way that she'll drive you crazy and you never get to sit down.

4. Sports?

I played Soccer as a child. I hated it and had horrid anxiety. My team literally nicknamed me "Bellyache". Like, that's what my team trophy said. Needless to say I quit after one season.

The only sport I'm into these days is seeing how late I can stay up before my eyes physically won't stay open.

5. What's the first thing you notice about people?

Vibes. It's all vibes. Especially being into weird stuff and weird aesthetics and being neurodivergent—if we don't vibe, we don't interact.

6. What's your eyecolor?

My eye colour depends on my mood, my outfit, the weather, etc. They're mostly blue, but can be grey or green as well. Depends on various factors.

Not my eyes, but a cool thing about my husband's eyes, they're the most awesome eyes I've ever seen. They are blue/green and have a yellow ring around the inner part of his eye. It's really cool and super pretty. His eyes also turn green when he lies, so that's dope.

7. Scary Movies or Happy Endings?

I love 80s Horror movies. They make the best comedies. I can't watch scary horror movies though. I enjoy them in the moment, but they give me severe anxiety that builds up and causes non-verbal panic attacks in the middle of the night. So that's not fun.

I also don't really care about happy endings. Yeah, they're nice and most of the time they tie everything up neatly with a bow—but I like endings that you don't see coming from a mile away. I like twist endings. I like when the guy doesn't get the girl. I like when the goal MC has been chasing for the whole movie isn't realized and there's heartbreak.

8. Any special talents?

None that really come to mind. Unless being clumsy is a talent? Falling up the stairs. Tripping over flat surfaces. Pushing doors that say "pull" and vice-versa.

No, wait, I do have one special talent. I'm too short to drive most cars comfortably. Most of my husband's trucks (he's owned three, I think, since we started dating until now) I haven't been able to drive. Even my own car, it's comfortable, I can reach the pedals, but the dash is kinda tall (there's a hump on the driver's side) that I sometimes struggle to see things too close infront of me.

9. Where were you born?

In the same hospital that my husband would be born in a month later. One of many, many hospitals in my large city.

10. What are your hobbies?

Writing, reading, crocheting, drawing, making graphics—we could be here all night. Pretty much whatever my special interest is at the moment defines what my hobbies are at a given time.

11. Do you have pets?

I do not.

I would love to have a cat. A soft little mew mew to creep around and claw up the furniture. I'd name it something like Poe or Cherrio or Midnight. But alas, I'm allergic.

I would also love to have a dog, but I'd want a specially trained one for my various health issues. It would also have to do well with kids. As much as I'd like one, I can't afford one and I think I'm allergic to dogs as well. I'm a woman of many allergies.

12. How tall are you?

Well this one depends on who you ask. Since I was twelve years old ever doctor that I go to tells me something different, but always within the range of 5'1"—5'2" with the outlier being the very strange doctor who informed me I was 5'3", which I know is wrong. I like to just go with 5'1". I'm short and I enjoy it. I wouldn't wish to be tall.

It does have its disadvantages though, especially around my husband's family. Their heights range from 6' to 6'6" and his grandfather was 7'. Plus he's one of seven brothers. My short self gets lost in the crowd of tall ass guys.

13. Favourite subject in school?

MATH. I freakin' loved math. Since I was a kid it's always been my favourite subject. One of my friends as an adult teased me, telling me that only autistic people favored math and numbers—the joke being that I found out I was autistic a few months later.

14. Dream job?

I would love be the the Old Lady Who Lived in the Shoe™️. Joking, joking. I would love to own my own bakery. To make fresh cakes and cookies and breads daily. If my body wasn't so run down at the old age of 23, I may shoot for it one day—But even as it stands now, to make one batch of cupcakes takes me most of the day and I can't move the next day. Tis life's cruel joke.

Tagging: @lyra-brie @another-white-hole @delilahsdaydream @epnona-the-wisp

[crowdvscritic]

round up // APRIL 23

A selection of words capturing my April pop culture experiences:

Museum

Podcast

Amy Sherman-Palladino

Muppets

Vampire

Nike

American Girl dolls

Read on for everything that brought me joy this month!

April Crowd-Pleasers

1. Renfield (2023)

Did I write a review of Renfield, an ode to the two Nic(k)s, or analysis of the Great Resignation? Yes, yes, and yes. Read whatever, in fact, I wrote at ZekeFilm. Crowd: 8.5/10 // Critic: 7/10

2. SNL Round Up

Whether they’re spoofing my childhood toys, my young adulthood wedding commitments, or my love for the Jonas Brothers, the crew in Studio 8H has been keeping me laughing this Spring.

“Southwest Airlines Announcement” (4811 with Michael B. Jordan) 

“The Big Hollywood Quiz” (4812 with Pedro Pascal) - A great example of how no one watches the same things anymore

“Waking Up” (4812)

“Protective Mom” (4812)

“Lisa From Temecula” (4812)

“American Girl Café” (4814 with Travis Kelce)

“Bridesmaid Cult Documentary” (4816 with Quinta Brunson) - I feel seen

"Weekend Update: Co-Worker Who's Extremely Busy Doing Seemingly Nothing on Returning to the Office” (4817 with Molly Shannon) - I feel attacked

“Sally O'Malley: Jonas Brothers” (4817)

“American Girl Doll Movie Trailer” (4818 with Ana de Armas)

3. Descanso Gardens

Because I can’t resist a botanical garden! Gardens are becoming a go-to attraction for me on vacations, and the Descanso Gardens in Los Angeles did not disappoint. The day we went was not too crowded but was impressive enough to earn a huge crowd—a hidden gem for LA tourists!

4. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel Panel at PaleyFest

The gardens were lovely, but there were two other attractions that were the real reason for my visit to Los Angeles. The first was PaleyFest to see Amy Sherman-Palladino, Daniel Palladino, and the cast of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel! Just before the fifth and final season started on Amazon Prime, we heard Alex Borstein and Rachel Brosnahan share their mourning process for the show’s ending, Caroline Aaron and Michael Zegen reflect on what these roles have meant to them, and Tony Shalhoub crack up the crowd. (And who knew I would be so starstruck by him? When he came on stage I wanted to scream, “YOU WERE SO GOOD IN GALAXY QUEST!”) Check out SO IT’S A SHOW’s Instagram for more highlights from when my podcast co-host Kyla and I visited the Dolby Theatre (home of the Oscars!).

4. John Mulaney: Baby J (2023)

A full year ago I saw John Mulaney on his From Scratch tour, and now you can enjoy the set at home. His joke about not being interested in science “from magnets to ducks” did not make the cut (and alas now I can’t remember the setup for that punchline), but the other 90% of a show that made me laugh so hard I cried is preserved forever.

5. The Muppets. (2015-16)

Why did this gem only last 16 episodes? In this one-season single-cam sitcom, the Muppets are working on Late Night with Miss Piggy, a setting that could’ve produced comedy gold for years. With the frazzled Kermit producing, the Electric Mayhem as the in-studio band, and celebrity guests through the felt nose, I’m glad I checked out these 16 eps even though they ended on a cliffhanger. If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like for Miss Piggy to date Josh Groban or to hold grudges against every blonde actress in Hollywood, you won’t want to miss it either.

7. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. (2023)

Special in the way that the best coming-of-age movies are. I suspect Margaret’s insecurities about boys, bras, and besties will feel relatable to Gens Z and Alpha if for no other reason than this movie’s depiction felt scarily accurate to my own experience in the mid-2000s. I promise I will never start a review with the story of my first period ever again! At least, probably—at the rate we're going, it will never be apropos again. Read the full review at ZekeFilm. Crowd: 9/10 // Critic: 9/10

April Critic Picks

1. AIR (2023)

Is it controversial to say Matt and Ben’s collabs only get better? If we're playing Greatest/Best/Favorite, this might be my new ranking:

Greatest: Good Will Hunting

Best: The Last Duel

Favorite: AIR

Read my full review for ZekeFilm. Crowd: 9.5/10 // Critic: 9/10

2. The Academy Museum

The other reason I went out to Los Angeles: After years of pandemic-caused delays, I finally made it to the Academy Museum! Six floors of movie and Oscars history and memorabilia? You know I’m in my happy place, but casual movie fans will find something for them, too. Some of my favorite exhibits included the several-stories high Mount Rushmore backdrop used in North by Northwest, the gallery that used The Godfather to show each element of filmmaking, and the pianos from Casablanca. Fanny’s (named for Barbra Streisand’s character in Funny Girl) serves exceptional museum food, and I learned about deep cut filmmakers and movements I was only vaguely familiar with before I went. I’d give the Academy a gold statue for museum execution if I could!

3. Good Reads

A miscellaneous round up of good stuff I’ve read lately…

Final thoughts on 2022 Awards Season:

“How Avatar: The Way of Water Can Make $2 Billion and Still Feel Irrelevant,” Vox.com (2023)

“How Did We Let the Golden Globes Back In?” LATimes.com (2022)

Unexpected responses to Cocaine Bear:

“An Attempt to Define the ‘Good for Her’ Cinematic Universe,” Vulture.com (2023)

“The Case for Cocaine Bears,” Slate.com (2023)

Glitches in the Sports Industry Matrix:

“America’s Bad Bet on Expanding Legal Sports Gambling,” Vox.com (2023)

“Will Damar Hamlin’s Injury Change the NFL? Why a Safer Game Could Turn Away Fans,” LATimes.com (2023)

Watching trends that need to be fixed:

“Mumbling Actors, Bad Speakers or Lazy Listeners? Why Everyone is Watching TV With Subtitles On,” TheGuardian.com (2023)

“Television Is Going Exactly the Wrong Direction. I Know the Solution.” Slate.com (2023)

Explorations of our malaise at work:

“How to Care Less About Work,” TheAtlantic.com (2021)

“The Age of the Crisis of Work,” Harpers.org (2023)

All the ways—okay, just some of the way—social media is on the struggle bus right now:

“Why Every App Now Feels Like TikTok, but Worse,” NYMag.com (2023)

“How Elon Musk Turned the Blue Check Mark Into a Scarlet Letter,” Slate.com (2023)

“Commentary: If Twitter Finally Dies, Where Do We Find the Smart People?” LATimes.com (2023)

And even more miscellaneous good reads: 

“You’ll Feel Better if You Go Outside,” NewYorker.com (2021)

“The Oral History of Helm’s Deep,” Inverse.com (2022)

“I’ve Had It With Stunt Ice Cream Flavors,” Eater.com (2023)

“Clothes Make the Con Man,” NYTimes.com (2023)

“Hailey Bieber, Selena Gomez, and the Easter Egg-ification of the Hollywood Feud,” Vox.com (2023)

“Why Are TV Writers So Miserable?” NewYorker.com (2023)

4. Current Exhibits at the St. Louis Art Museum

My membership to the SLAM always pays off. In April I indulged in two special exhibits:

The Age of Armor, which showcases the history of armor and battle gear with an emphasis on suits of armor. The galleries did a great job explaining how the armor functioned and provided model pieces to try yourself, but you know my favorite part was the Black Panther and Star Wars costumes at the end!

Monet/Mitchell: Painting the French Landscape compares the work of Claude Monet and American expat Joan Mitchell, and it brought me back to my magical trip to Giverny last summer! 

5. The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939)

Sumptous costumes and sets, Bette Davis doing the most acting, and Errol Flynn at his handsomest. This Queen Elizabeth I costume drama from Michael Curtiz is maximalist in aesthetic and romantic at its heart. Crowd: 7/10 // Critic: 9/10

6. Under the Umbrella: A Little Women Podcast (2023-)

Little Women superfans unite! Kate and Kelsey (friends and both teachers) are analyzing the book and film versions from every angle, and if you love the March sisters, Louisa May Alcott, or Greta Gerwig, they are going to be your new best friends. 

7. Just Like Us: The Tabloids That Changed America (2022)

Last spring the Ringer Dish podcast did a deep dive into the ‘00s tabloids and their obsession with Brangelina, Bennifer, and ‘90s child stars gone wild—so basically everything I obsessed over in middle school. Bottom line: They probably didn’t make our world better, but those mags (and emerging online blogs and reality TV) sure tapped into parts of our brains that made them addictive. This eight-episode series challenges any assumption we have about about celebrity gossip being harmless—or frivolous.

Until May’s Round Up…

In spite of the current state of things, I’m still tweeting in denial as @tblake24. Come join me until this platform burns to the ground!

If you want real-time updates on what I’m watching and loving, you can also find me as @tblake24 on Letterboxd. 

Photo credits: Good Reads, Under the Umbrella, Just Like Us. Descanso Gardens, PaleyFest, Academy Museum, and SLAM my own. All other IMDb.com. 

[dustfiremediafanatic]

Trophy Campaign Update:

Today the Forge had another episode of Trophy, with Danny as GM. Joining us again as players were Steve, Johnny, Justin and Nick! Since this is a Patreon only show when released as podcast, I won't go into specifics but I would like to talk about the experience I have when I join in the Livestream.

First of all, anyone can join the stream chat. Though it's a Patreon only show later, it's free for everybody to drop by on Twitch to take a look! I'll add their usual link to the bottom of the post.

A Dustfire Media Livestream is an absolute riot of a time. Watching people make their jokes live helps add a feeling of realism and inclusivity, like what I'd imagine going to a live comedy show would be like. They're hilarious above table and in character these players know how to be diverse with who they represent, and yet still so very them.

What makes the Patreon episode streams that bit more special is most likely the Devil's Bargain mechanic. Usually, like with the streams for The Professionals (as far as I know, I'm dead to the world when those streams are live because it's 1-3am in my time zone), the GM can present a consequence that must be accepted by the player if a player wants an extra dice. A trade off of sorts to help progress the game with certain actions. If they don't accept, they don't get a bonus dice to the roll.

With the Trophy streams however, a Devil's Bargain is open to ANYONE to suggest - other players, or chat. So we the viewers get to add in our own potential consequences to the plot. This makes for some hilarious twists and turns, trust me.

Another thing in particular I enjoy specifically is talking with chat about the characters and story events themselves. If (SOMEHOW) you're not a Patreon, then there's likely someone in chat more than happy to give you a quick summary of what you've missed so you can join in like the rest of us. Or even if you just have internet connection issues! (Like me! Lagged pretty bad so a pal in chat helpfully posted the important points I'd missed in the 20 seconds of buffering I experienced).

I also find I learn new words, or even new ways to say certain words thanks to differences in upbringing/accent. Like the word Cuirass (Sorry Justin calling you out here for this particular one since it stuck out to me!) Justin was pronouncing it as "Coo-rass", whereas I've always thought it was pronounced "Cure-ass". I've not really heard the word spoken before however so now I'm curious! Is it just a Justin thing, or is that really how you're meant to say it?

I might have digressed a bit there, but the Dustfire never fails to deliver on great cliffhangers and full-depth stories leaving people eager to know what's happening next. Whether it's a one shot base being worked on and brought to life, or a completely new story created with a rulebook of any game, I'm yet to be dissatisfied with any of their content. Not kidding, it's all amazing!! Doesn't matter who is running the game either, all of them tell incredible stories.

Final note, and weirdly enough the reason I started typing this post; one major change between this session of Trophy and the last is that last session the game was Trophy Dark, whilst this one upgraded/morphed into Trophy Gold. The story is still the same (well, as much as we can tell for it!) And the Dustfire guys have assured us everything will make more sense in the end - alas it's only one episode a month!

Maybe if we get more Patreon participants they can stream it more... Come be a White Lotus Agent with me! More agents against the forces of evil is always a wonderful time ♡

I hope you enjoy your time with them as much as I do. Please find a link to both their Twitch page, and their website below (bonus - they've got merch too!)

[yue-muffin]

i just binge watched the blood of youth over like five days. this is literally the first cdrama i've finished since...sleuth of the ming dynasty?? i think?? i never finish cdramas. i came super close with a few of the dmbj dramas but the damn long list of episodes usually does me in. i just can't concentrate on one show for that long.

so, the blood of youth was really just that good! also it had a good ending that didn't end in tragedy (i shall not point fingers but...i do read the endings to many dramas bc i am not investing 30+ episodes of my time only for the ending to absolutely gut me unexpectedly).

the pacing was definitely a little rocky at points, the romance meant absolutely nothing to me (except for two side couples), it was absolutely hilarious and really did its comedy well, and i love the main characters. and many of the side characters. just wish we got to see some of the other supporting characters more, but since the last arc was mainly in the imperial city, alas, we barely got to see some of them.

i also love xiao se's absolute i'm-done-with-this attitude. my inner self is how he looks all the time. just a very tired man who's got a lot of plans simmering in that head of his, of which he's not sharing.

i also love lei wujie unexpectedly, kinda sad he got sidelined a bit at the end. didn't really expect to like him! but he reminds me of guo jing from condor heroes who i love. (side note: i'm pretty sure guo jing and hua rong are the only het couple in cdramas i've ever actually loved together and actively enjoyed their romance story from beginning to end)

however, lei wujie's relationship with ye ruoyi definitely has similar vibes with none of the heart. they're cute, but i'm not feeling anything from it. i definitely enjoyed ye ruoyi plotting with xiao se together better than their canon relationships, lol, though i appreciate how she thinks they're too much alike and doesn't like him that way, and vice versa. male-female friendships are something we don't get enough of. much better than tossing in weird love triangles all over the place.

anyways, i really love this drama, didn't expect that at all! the first half is the strongest, the latter half is interesting (I do like the scheming plots and power struggles), but they didn't do as good a job keeping the rest of the cast relevant. certain side characters just fade in and out as needed.

but again: i love the ending is just...the friends gallivanting off to adventure together! i'm not even particularly bothered by wu xin derping off and not joining them yet. he's not that kind of guy. he comes and goes as he pleases, and gets a kick out of coming to save the day. he'll probably pop up when they least expect it and finally get to make that poem of his a reality.

(last note: i see those parallels with mysterious lotus casebook and i'd love to see a crossover of the two one day...ah if i ever steel my heart to watch it all the way through, i might write that myself...)

[andrewuttaro]

The Coming Schism of the American Catholic Traditionalist

Introduction

There are some things in life that are so context specific that they are nearly rendered incomprehensible to the average person. My mother is a nurse and of the many medical conditions I have had explained to me over the years the one that always eludes my understanding is the hernia. How are the organs pushing outward? What causes that? How can one do that to themselves doing basic lifts? Would not all organs be pushing against weak spots in the muscles then?

Though I have never had one somehow I know what hernias are like on a visceral level. They’re common enough that I have met people suffering from them and heard all about the effects of having one. I have empathized to the point of getting those ghost pains and its one of those injuries that also happens to be ripe for comedy unfortunately, at least when I was a child.

Religious folks like me often use signs and symbols to describe spiritual realities. In the Catholic tradition the Body of Christ is often invoked as a very tangible, bodily metaphor for the whole community of the Church. The ongoing Great Schism between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches is sometimes referred to as the separation of two lungs: we speak of ecumenical pursuits as reuniting the two so the whole Christian body can breathe as one again.

But alas, great diversity is possible within one body. We have so many different cells working together to do so many different functions. We have so many different systems of cells working together to create higher functions more basic forms of life could never muster. The religious parallel I am going for here is the numerous rites. Though most Catholics are part of the Latin Rite there are dozens of others who have different liturgical practices and subtle pastoral differences all within the body of Christ we call the Church in communion with Rome.

To consider a Church community as a body is to rethink how to handle its issues. Why is Church attendance shrinking? Why does a body atrophy? Why is there disagreement in leadership? Why is the body suffering a mental burden? Don’t worry, this clunky metaphor is only for the introduction. Religion, for the sake of this article my Catholic religion, also has such scenarios. Catholic Traditionalism might be considered the more fundamentalist viewpoint in my faith. It is a phenomenon that is indisputably and enormously context specific. As in, it is so very Catholic that a great many people who are casually Catholic or not Catholic at all will have never heard of these issues.

Catholic traditionalism, like fundamentalism across the religious world, behaves in ways that often seem counter to the right functioning of the whole body. I am not so naïve as to wonder why people choose simplicity, but I am obsessive enough to want to see such a way of thinking through in a fair way. I hold no resentment for my coreligionists of a traditionalist bent, in fact I even respect there beliefs in a few idiosyncratic ways. Beyond the people who really enjoy the old Latin Mass it may be hard to even imagine who these people are. That is why we will start with the basics before we venture into the storm on the horizon. Get comfortable in your seat, we’re going for a deep dive.

To be clear, since the title of this article is meant to be provocative, the narrative this article builds up to at the end is a worst case scenario. For reasons we will get to, formal schism is not an easy or particularly worthwhile pursuit. However, I would be foolish not to present it as a possibility given the subject matter we are looking at here.

Back then and right now

In the world of Protestant Christianity there is a vast diversity of liturgy (ritualism) and theology (philosophy of who God is). The easiest comparable there are fundamentalists. As is true beyond the world of religion, when you break down leadership structures into ever more independent parts the sacrifice paid for that independence becomes increasingly clear: dissension. I will spare you enduring a Catholic trying to discuss the problems of the vast array of Protestant denominations but do remember that this habit of dissension is true among those of us who submit to the Pope in Rome as well. Catholic Traditionalists may be thought of as the Evangelical Fundamentalists of the Catholic world.

In spite of what some triumphalists will try to tell you, there has always been dissent and disagreement within the Catholic Church. The difference is that the center with which the dissenter disagrees is a human being with a face in the person of the Pope. In spite of that fact, the Church, at least in substance, changes on a timescale of centuries even though stylistically there is a constant evolution.

That allows the sacred deposit of faith, the substantial, dogmatic, eternal and unchangeable things, like belief in Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, to persist unscathed. The heresies that contended with those life-giving treasures have largely been dealt with more than a millennia ago. The last millennia plus of Church history has been more or less re-litigations of long-resolved debates wrapped in the pastoral concerns of the day… well that and ultimately political issues that are so culturally embedded that it’s not really for the Vatican to untangle them. In a way, that is where our story begins.

One of the first things you notice about a Catholic traditionalist, “Trads” as the internet slang goes, is that terminology even devout believers don’t use anymore is employed: a la heresy. Heresy is a very specific term in the Catholic Church. Heresy is not apostacy which is leaving the faith. Heresy is contesting something essential about the faith in a way that goes beyond oneself to affect others. Heresy generally only refers to dogmatic stuff: the deposit of faith I mentioned earlier. Heresy is also fundamentally a social act. You need a group of supporters to be credibly accused of it, generally supporters who are themselves real-life theologians. It is actually very difficult to commit heresy in any meaningful way.

Unless you are charged with it while spreading the Gospel as a member of the clergy or religious life… well then accusing you of heresy is like accusing the family dog of tax evasion: yes I suppose they aren’t paying their taxes right but… uh… that’s not a responsibility of theirs.

Nonetheless heresy is a charge leveled at just about anyone who disagrees with the traditionalist. Accusations of heresy and false teaching are commonplace among all fundamentalist movements in the religious world. When one claims the need to go to back to basics, for a whole religious body not just themselves on a personal spiritual level, they are making an assertion that is, by definition a negative point: something is wrong with how things are now so let’s go back to an imagined version of the past when things were better.

Pope Francis is somewhat straight forward on these things: “Many call themselves traditional. No, they are not traditional, they are people looking to the past, going backward, without roots; and looking backward is a sin.”1

Practically speaking if the average person has ever encountered a Catholic traditionalist here in the United States their traditionalism will present itself in the form of a fondness for the Pre-Vatican II Latin Mass. There is a great generational divide here. In most places in the English speaking world the Latin Mass disappeared from wide usage at some point in the 1970s.2 People generally enjoyed hearing the Mass in their own language even if it did not succeed in deepening their faith. That reform to the vernacular caused the Church to grow dramatically in Africa, South America, and the greater Global South3, but in much of the English speaking world it was a net break even on the Church attendance front.

Stateside, the 1980s and 1990s saw Church attendance begin its long descent that continues to the present day, in line with general Church disaffiliation across all Christian denominations (excluding nondenominationalists and Evangelicals) in the US4. By the time Pope Francis is elected in 2013 most of the interest in the Latin Mass isn’t coming from the boomer generation that remembered the old ways; rather it was millennials who found something beguiling and old fashioned in it. This group is small but very vocal as this generally goes in the age of everyone-gets-a-bullhorn social media.

In 2007, then Pope Benedict XVI made the old Latin Mass more accessible to everyday lay Catholics5. By 2021, his successor reversed those reforms because a culture so toxic and separatist had grown up around the Latin Mass that it had to be curbed6. Turns out liturgical preferences were a superficial part of the traditionalist movement that now expressed itself in combative attitudes toward Rome, and pretty much all the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. This vocal minority was taking over Catholic spaces on the internet and, through a growing minority of traditionalist clergy, even taking over parishes here and there.

From the who-could-do-what at Mass to how we Catholics present ourselves in the public square, from moral theology to political ideology, the traditionalist movement wanted to turn back the clock on everything. The movement now wanted the Pre-Vatican II Church back to some degree. But why?

Rads and Glads!

Let me take a step back for a moment. It is not a problem if you like your smells and bells. There is a certain ritualism to Catholic faith that you don’t need to be a traditionalist to appreciate. I would even go as far to say that traditionalists have a point when they say most modern Catholics have a lack of reverence that doesn’t necessarily help the inner, spiritual life. There is something lost spiritually when we cannot respect something beyond our comprehension. We ritualize the things we love most in life and certainly our deeply held religious convictions fit the bill. Lack of reverence, I would contend, is a deeper cultural issue to attend to in other ways but I digress.

Moreover, Traditionalists, particularly of the younger sort, are overwhelmingly adult converts or those who have newly rediscovered their faith after being away from it a while. The passion of a convert is something spiritual masters the world over have commented on for good and bad reasons. It is good to care so much about this new faith you’ve taken on; its not so good when that fervor becomes condemnation and judgement upon all who have not also made your particular decision, including those within the Church itself who aren’t as interested in the smells and bells or classical theology of it all. I think the more self-aware Catholic Traditionalists will admit this if you really press them on it… well a certain variety at least.

I have a friend who is a convert to the faith as an adult in the last four years. My buddy has described that over-zealous time post-conversion and how he came out of it in a constructive way. He had to be corrected by a Priest who made sure his fervor found healthier expressions and the deeper levels of conversion where you are converted evermore by a Christ whose very being is love. To sermonize for a moment: when you really know the God who is love, the Prince of Peace Jesus Christ, condemnation becomes the rarest approach on your mind.

My friend embraces this title of traditionalist with a qualifier: glad-trad or glad traditionalist. Yes, the slang goes deeper. Even within Catholic traditionalism there is a sense of difference. While we may be talking about an overall group of people that probably number less than a couple million worldwide, the differences with the subgroups are not terribly subtle and actually tell you a lot about who wants what in this movement… at least among the younger generations.

As you might be able to guess about a glad-trad: they aren’t big on the confrontations with their coreligionists. They love the faith with a vigor that truly does seek to welcome people in. Unlike any other greeter in Church smiling as they hand you the hymnal, a glad-trad may also remind you to genuflect before the tabernacle or wear more reverential clothing. Fair to say among most traditionalist women there is a movement back to veiling in Church. That is the gaudy head covering that was heavily worn in the pre-Vatican II world but yes, you guessed it, is catching on again among the younger ranks of the traditionalist movement.

Unlike the other subgroup we’ll be talking about, most glad-trads will not descent from Church teaching much, if at all. As you might have gathered from the Pope Francis quote earlier and his suppression of the Latin Mass in 2021, the current Pope is not all that popular among traditionalists, but glad-trads are the ones least likely to openly voice that descent or even possess it at all given their excited ascent to some of the Church’s most obscure and least popular teachings, like that on the use of artificial birth control. Non-clergy Catholic voices against widely used artificial birth control for example are almost exclusively traditionalists, as your average Lay Catholic, to be quite frank, generally uses it if they need it.

If it has not become clear to you yet there is a very chronically online undertone to all this. Most Catholics in this country realize the parts of their faith that are least popular with the general public will probably not be the tip of the needle for outreach to that same general public. Brought up in the savagely vulgar world of internet forums focused on religion, a lot of traditionalists, even of the glad variety, seem to insist on reversing the order: put the unappealing appearances of the faith at the forefront. Why not? Are you ashamed of Christ?

Again, glad-trads aren’t prone to the confrontation of it so they might have an enlightening conversation with you about the dynamics of how we are to practically spread the faith in the world today. That gentle nature is not the case with the other subgroup among Catholic Traditionalists: the radicals, Rad-Trads if you will.

Dissent versus Sedevacantism

Radical traditionalists, unlike their glad-trad counterparts, dissent from official Church teaching as a point of pride. This has some nefarious outcomes, but we will go there next. For now understand that the radical designation is there because they do not care for the niceties and formalities that they believe have shepherded the Church into misguided teachings if not fully-heretical dogmas that offend Jesus Christ himself.

While you may readily find the sins of misogyny, racism, and antisemitism among glad-trads, they would generally apologize and seek reconciliation for it like any reasonable person found guilty of such things. The radicals, oh no, they flip it back on the one pointing out the sin. The world outside the Church walls has nothing to teach the radical. Holiness is only found where dogma explicitly says so and that is in the sacraments… which you need to receive in this specific way. The plank is always in the other’s eye to use a biblical analogy.

Radical Traditionalists, more than any other group within Western Catholicism, particularly in the English speaking world, are most willing to embrace schism... other than of course those who have actually gone into schism. Let’s stop on that word for a moment here. I stopped on heresy earlier because its an overused term that most people, including cradle Catholics, don’t generally understand. The same is true for schism.

Here I am using the word in a clickbait title, I better clarify it. Schism, like heresy, has to be a movement. Any layperson can erroneous comprehend something and its somewhat irrelevant until that misconception spreads: either way it doesn’t mean he’s in schism. Schism is a formal choice. Moreover, schism, like heresy, normally includes a clerical element.

When a Kansas man named David Allen Bawden declared himself the true Pope after a thrift store conclave involving his parents, himself, and three others in 1990 what followed was more of an interesting oddity than a serious schism. Pope Michael, as he declared his papal name, was the child of a real schism, the Society of St. Pius X, which was the Church of his parents through which he was educated. Their leader, French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, broke with Rome (a way of saying you reject the authority of the Pope) in the 1970s claiming that the Second Vatican Council had surrendered the Church to the ever-changing contemporary heresy of modernism. That is another overused term you will here Trads throw around. My apologies, I simply do not have enough time to go down that rabbit hole.

The Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) is also a story for another day. However, for the sake of comprehension it is important to understand that this group and its leader broke away after being denied the Pope’s ascent to their openly rebellious congregation of priests and bishops7. The paper trail and the all-important formal breach of apostolic authority is all there. We Catholics treasure our formal connection to the Apostles via this continuous chain of priestly consecration that goes all the way back to them historically. We call this apostolic succession. When that chain is broken by schism, all liturgical and theological authority of the schismatics is lost, even if they were high-placed Priests and Bishops. SSPX is just the most modern example of this.

That is a schism. Schism is not Pope Michael (not seriously at least), schism is not that Priest that Tom the Trad doesn’t like because he is too nice to gay people, schism is not your cousin insisting Pope Francis isn’t validly-elected because Pope Benedict XVI lived almost ten years after his resignation, and schism certainly isn’t the official magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church promulgated in the form of the Second Vatican Council and every Pope since then. That last thing is called Sedevacantism. That is probably another term you want to know.

For Rad-Trads, their annoyance with Pope Francis will often lead them to Sedevacantism. This is a broad group across the Catholic world who believes, for a variety of different reasons, that there is currently no validly elected Pope. The latin root of the term literally means “the seat is vacant”. This belief has a lot of different variations as to the when and how but the why is always that the Church has fallen away from more perfect beliefs it had in the past and its because it lacks proper leadership. In the Catholic world there are about five or six of these kind of groups who one could clearly call Catholic in origin, SSPX is one of them.

Radical Traditionalist Catholics dissent wherever something isn’t neatly defined in Vatican-approved documents, the Catechism, or the bible. When it comes to all three of those sources the older is the better because the radicals talk themselves into and out of schism depending on how they feel about what is going on in Rome and or their national capital. A papal document from the sixteenth century is just holier to them than anything that could have possibly been written closer to the present day. It’s the fundamentalist way far beyond the auspices of the Catholic Church.

Dissent, for many radical traditionalists, is the name of the game if they can envision themselves as more holy than their target up to and especially contemporary Popes. Dissent is just the disagreement of it all. On the one hand most people dissent from their religious group’s teachings in some way. Why are you dissenting? If everyone dissents from the ideal explicit in moral teachings anyway then why should any dissent be concerning to us? On the other hand it’s all about intent, right?

Good Catholics dissent all the time. It’s different for radical traditionalists. They generally dissent without the honesty of admitting to it: “Our dissent is toward the truth! Your dissent is to justify your sin!” Radical Traditionalists will tie themselves up in knots that eventually force them to reject the legitimacy of the Pope. Dissent is one thing if you are respecting the norms of a system set out to accomplish a shared end worth pursuing: we Catholics believe Jesus set up the system so that respectful dissent really means something to us. Dissent is a whole other thing if it doesn’t have that ultimate unity in mind.

The next logical step is Sedevacantism and that is why SSPX has seen the internet, and the generations who grew up on it, swell its ranks anew. Chances are there is an SSPX-run chapel in the City closest to you. Those places, steeped in the smells and bells ritualism of a Pre-Vatican II Catholicism, feel just foreign enough to be exciting. This is where the radicals recruit the glad-trads… well there and on Reddit but I think that’s a given when you talk about any movement amongst people under 50.

Now this might all sound rather benign to you. If you’ve read this far you’re either my mother, my wife, or someone who thinks this might be somewhat relevant to contemporary life beyond the auspices of the Catholic faithful proper. Thank you all, you deserve a reward: How does this affect the bigger picture?

The goals of radicals indeed threads into something much larger going on in the United States of America and that is what we have to talk about beyond all these definitions and funny church-isms. The present, chosen obstacle of this movement is Pope Francis and that is where you have to start to understand the radical traditionalist endgame which dovetails into the broader story of the United States today.

Resistance to Pope Francis

Pope Francis has ignited something in the Catholic world. He has ignited a rethinking about the faith that ultimately seeks to push the Church into the back-half of implementation of the Second Vatican Council. In Church history we say every such Council takes a century to implement. Seriously, when you consider theological and liturgical developments ultimately it takes three or four generations to really get the Church onboard with its own program.

This unhappy truth of Catholicism is true for the clergy as well: it moves slow even in regard to its own official teachings! The opposition to Pope Francis’ program is led by clerics: egotistical but ultimately tone deaf Priests, and opportunistic but ultimately foolish Bishops.

Pope Francis’ most basic development is the look to the peripheries. Who is on the outside looking into our Church? Who is not listened to and what are we missing for ignoring them? He means this in every way: the poor, the oppressed, the outcast, all the groups his namesake, Saint Francis, would draw our attention to. That is a profoundly Christian message: you can almost hear a sermon of Jesus between the lines of a lot of the teaching Pope Francis does. But that outsiders-first messages is not easy for the comfortably centered if you will, and that is where the resistance originates. That unfortunately often means Bishops and Priests.

Pope Francis directs us outward and the reactionaries against him direct us back inward as a religious group. A common denominator of Pope Francis’ critics is that they enjoy a far more self-referential Church: one that cares more for protecting the treasures within than sharing those treasures in innovative ways with those without. That is where traditionalism, particularly since the reign of Pope Francis began, make their bread and butter.

But don’t let the cuteness of that analogy fool you: they’re making poison. The endgame is either reconquest or schism. Everyone involved in this drama knows the deposit of faith is not at stake. The Traditionalists need to turn something like sexual ethics into a matter of salvation when it obviously isn’t because their project is fundamentally about conformity to an older way of doing things. This is poisonous to the Church because, laugh as you might at this suggestion, we are to believe the Holy Spirit guides the Church forward into newness and continued conversion.

In other words, if you spend all day looking in the mirror you probably don’t know where to begin forging your way toward the horizon. Slow as its progress maybe the Church’s mission is oriented toward the progress that is the conversion of souls and building the Kingdom of God. In that worldview it has to be the Holy Spirit leading. Mere power dynamics, the realm of fundamentalists and traditionalists the world over, is often beside the point for the Holy Spirit. But this is the space the reactionary Priests and Bishops who shepherd the Traditionalist movement in this country along traffic in.

Reconquest is the easy answer for traditionalists. It is less messy to just wait for another conclave then take on the Pope directly. The age of antipopes is long past and anything approaching that would simply be so tacky as to be self-defeating in the modern world. Since the Protestant Reformation schism has had a hard backstop for Catholics who might seriously contemplate it. The only thing you can claim that might separate you from simply being called a Protestant is that apostolic succession we mentioned earlier. And Catholic schismatics do not want to be called Protestants!

That’s how SSPX clings to whatever vainglorious legitimacy they think they have. That’s why the Old Catholics (AKA the Church of Utrecht who rejected the First Vatican Council in the nineteenth century) still exist. That chain of ordination is our hardwire connection to the apostles, the ethernet cable to the Protestant World’s over-the-air Wi-Fi if you will. That Apostolic Succession is one of the first things Matin Luther and the other Protestant Reformers rejected. Catholic breakaway movements always refuse to cross that Rubicon. It is a matter of validity of the Sacraments for us.

You may have noticed Pope Francis has been Pope for more than a decade now. The reconquest strategy is taking longer than the radicals wanted. Schism, in spite of all these aforementioned difficulties, is becoming more palatable. To be clear I am mainly talking about traditionalist-leaning Bishops now. They are the movers and shakers of the movement with real ecclesial (Church political) power slow rolling orders from Rome in their locality or making the local seminary all that more traditional as to pump out more traditionalist priests.

In the early days of this papacy it was just snide comments in the media: “the pope is confusing Catholics with this way of saying things.” This was the strategy with Amoris Latitia7. That was an apostolic exhortation Pope Francis published in 2015 that committed the great sin of extending rhetorical olive branches to irregular families, specifically divorced and remarried people. The Traditionalists went a step further from there.

The next step was accusation. Now the comments were: “This is a bridge too far, your holiness.” The big example here to the general public is Laudato Si8 which was the Pope’s encyclical letter on the environment and environmental justice. It went against the grain of the conservatism traditionalists naturally embraced in the English speaking world. I would direct your attention to the more sinister example in 2017 when the Amazonian Synod, a gathering of lay and clerical Catholics from the Amazon region of South America at the Vatican, led to accusations of papal idol worship that were more than a little racist. As part of a liturgy during the synod an image of the Virgin Mary as a pregnant Amazonian woman was the centerpiece. This and Amazonian dance was too much for the radical traditionalists who threw the Marian imagery into the Tiber River.

The third, penultimate step arrived the following year when a number of Bishops, who still have not retracted9, accused Pope Francis of mishandling abuse claims as a front for calling for his resignation. Make no mistake this was an attempt to get attention outside Catholic echo chambers mentioning the abuse crisis, specifically in regard to the former Cardinal and infamous abuser Theodore McCarrick. That not to mention the Dubia, as it was called, hardly looked to hide its homophobia when it spoke of the Pope playing kindly with a much rumored gay lobby hidden deep within the Vatican. It was a radical traditionalists fantasy come alive.

Pope Francis has dealt with the abuse crisis better than any of his predecessors, so he waited out the more flatly spurious and confrontational allegations. Theodore McCarrick was already becoming the first Cardinal to be removed from such a post in modern times due to his long history of sexual abuse. He was stripped of his priesthood and handed over to secular authorities. The leading Dubia Bishops were gradually rotated to lesser roles out of the spotlight of ecclesial prominence. The most notable of whom was Archbishop Carlo Mario Vigano who had been the highest ranking Vatican representative to the United States as Apostolic Nuncio to our country.

Vigano is now hardly a serious churchman. He writes a periodic screed he circulates to the most traditionalist publications rife with conspiracy theories and heinously bigoted language throughout. While most traditionalists do not look at the man with reverence, his Dubia and the stunts he pulled against Pope Francis in the months and years immediately afterwards provided a blueprint for the radical traditionalist movement who now see the fourth and final step before schism coming together: rallying the resources to step into the breach and say no to the program of the Pope. This now requires a specifically American Endgame.

The American Endgame

The Catholic Church in the United States of America is an odd cultural thing when taken as a whole. Always the gritty, overwhelmingly Protestant frontier of the Church, the faith in this country has a chip on its shoulder. Following such a thoroughly European version of Christianity came with a cost once upon a time in this country. Churches were burned and clergy murdered in the early republic whenever the tide of nativism rolled in.

With waves of Irish and Italian immigrants the bigotry directed at them was not so much their ethnic background as much as their religious background. They joined a stateside Church that was always trying to prove it was Catholic enough in a country that hated it, in a broader world Catholicism that saw it as provincial: a bunch of rural bumpkins who Rome needed to babysit. The anti-Catholic mobs infamously chased the first Papal legate from the country in the late 1850s. Though less violent, after the Civil War this history of distrust persisted into the twentieth century: How do you trust those who answer to another head of state overseas in the Pope? They must be infiltrators!

That anti-Catholicism may have died in the Second World War. It may have died with President John F. Kennedy. As American as apple pie, many historians of American religion say the nation softened its view of Catholicism after seeing that family in the White House. Kennedy famously had to deal with his religious beliefs on the campaign trail, there were still many Americans who simply could not trust a Catholic with the Presidency10.

American Catholicism more closely aligned with politically liberal American values back then. After Kennedy, and particularly after Roe V. Wade legalized abortion in 1973, the stateside Catholic Church was swept up in the rise of the “moral majority” and the broader American conservative movement which pitted American Christianity against all the forces of racial, sexual, and economic progress. This was to the ultimate determent of all the Christian groups involved. By the 1990s all of the mainline Protestant denominations were seeing their congregations shrink and even though those losses have been much slower for Catholics the effects are clearly impacting them as well.

President Ronald Reagan normalized diplomatic relations with the Vatican in 1984, a move which American conservatives a few decades earlier would have cried to the heavens was foreign domination. It was a convenient alliance to have a moral authority like Rome in the fold in the eyes of the Reaganites. Of course it was another piece on the Chess Board of the Cold War: President Reagan loved having such a vigorous anti-communist in his camp in the form of Pope St. John Paul II. Nonetheless the American Catholic Church still felt it had something to prove to Rome. That proverbial chip on the shoulder was now a certain kind of piety: “Look how devout we can be among so many Protestants!”

In a post-Trump, or rather the Post-Roe world I should say, the old fashion anti-Catholicism maybe making a comeback. Put bluntly, the political alliance that captured half of all American Catholics in the moral majority via abortion, no longer needs them. Old insults are back again. Radical right wingers like Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green feel comfortable saying the Catholic Church is run by the devil: rhetoric that most people my age, most people my parents age for that matter, have never heard from government officials in their lifetime. Against this backdrop its important to understand another angle on American Catholicism as it exists today… and it is oh so American: money.

While the global Catholic Church has grown most in the developing world, the “Global South” if you will, since the Second Vatican Council, the most sizable monetary donations to the Vatican have in that same time span begun coming from the United States. This country isn’t a Catholic powerhouse in any of the meaningful metrics of sacramental engagement or vocations to the Priesthood, but it is the greatest source of financial stability for the Church11. As the economy has begun to hollow out the middle class by attrition those donations are increasingly coming from a class of wealthy American Catholics. US Bishops who are all too ready to appease this donor class.

As you may have gathered from the discussion on resistance to Pope Francis, he’s not really a rich man’s Pope, quite the opposite in fact. Traditionalists of both varieties have discovered that if you pay a theologian enough they’ll say just about whatever you want them to. If you’ve never heard of the NAPA Institute then consider yourself blessed. This group invites all kinds of Bishops and Catholic influencers from across the nation to their California conferences detailing how some creative theologizing can actually show being super-wealthy is good and just. These are the hotbeds of resistance to Pope Francis in the American Church.

And so elite, wealthy Catholic donors will bankroll a large Church restoration in a Diocese to get on the local Bishop’s good side and then wine and dine him to curry favor. You guessed it, these wealthy lay Catholics are often ultra-conservatives interested in an increasingly right wing battery of politicians and ideologues. Traditionalists, particularly the radical variety, have taken note of this apparatus and employed it to their use. The same Catholic voices, clergy and lay, who you may find at a NAPA Institute Conference or lecturing in the traditionalist hotbed that is Steubenville, Ohio, pick and choose culture warriors to elevate within the radical echo chamber.

Once great celebrity-teaching priest turned media-focused Bishop Robert Barron makes more content looking to excuse the misdeeds of more hateful voices on the political right like Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro than he does teach the faith these days. Whoever can be an ally in the ideological battle is someone worth bringing in no matter how unsavory they are to the outsider groups Christianity historically centered. They will mask it in the guise of good-old Christian compassion but there is an agenda there when you pay Jordan Peterson to talk about his rabid transphobia rather than an actual bishop talk about actual Catholic teaching.

These wallet-smart traditionalist-aligned voices know what they are doing. When Pope Francis or one of his proxies say something vaguely progressive one of these types will not even attempt a good faith reading of what’s been said: they go right to scoring political points with their increasingly traditionalist base. Meanwhile traditionalist Bishops churn out young traditionalist Priests from their seminaries and suddenly you see how organized this movement is becoming. I have personally discovered you run about a 50/50 chance of a Priest under the age of 40 having some traditionalist leanings.

You don’t need to read too deep between the lines to see where this is going: schism. But not just schism, January 6th style schism: the kind that wants an outright regime change governmentally to supplant a perceived cultural high tide radical traditionalists see as objectively evil. They have an all-too-willing ally in an increasingly insurrectionist conservative movement in this country. Sure, a lot of the traditionalism in the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church has roots in France (a la SSPX) and that more European Sedevacantism that hates the Second Vatican Council; but they also know their deck of cards is stronger if they can claim a position of power financially over Rome via Washington DC.

Sure, these folks would prefer undermining a Conclave to get a Pope more sympathetic to their cause. Reconquest is the easier option. But the United States of America is a place uniquely positioned for schism in the Catholic world: the financial weight is the leverage over Rome and that old, pious chip on the shoulder to prove their Catholicism is so easily misdirected against a Pope who conservatives find too progressive for such a powerful religious voice in the world. The schism endgame will quite possibly come to a head before this year, 2023, comes to an end, with an outside chance next year is the zero hour. Why is that the case?

Synod and Schism

Pope Francis’ legacy project is the Synod on Synodality. The Second Vatican Council saw liturgical atrophy in the centuries long gaps between Councils and thought “why not have an ongoing synod of Bishops”? The Synod deals with superficial modernization and liturgical update issues on a regular basis. The Council imagined it as a much more revelatory institution, but the Popes who came along immediately after the Council were not ready for all that. Remember what I said about a century to implement?

This Synod on Synodality, which is what you’re thinking: a meeting on what these synods should be doing. And it has been very ambitious to this point. Pope Francis declared it a three year project of listening sessions starting at the Parish/Diocesan level, up to the National/Regional level, up to the continental level, and finally, this Fall, all the way up to the Vatican. These listening sessions have centered all the issues you might otherwise think the Church won’t touch: women’s role in the Church, marriage, the LGBTQ+ community, and a liberalizing of who can vote in these Vatican Synods along the way.

The issues highlighted at the lower levels will be brought before a synod that isn’t all Bishops for the first time in history. The voting members will include a battery of laypeople and a large portion of women. Over two Vatican gatherings, one this October and the next in October 2024, this discerning body will discuss where the Church has room to grow on the issues the whole body of world Catholicism wants to go forward on. Ultimately the decision to do anything with the final recommendations rests with Pope Francis but its hard to imagine he puts his papacy and the Church through such an extensive process for nothing.

Certainly for Catholic Traditionalists, namely the radical variety, this is the inflection point of their growing opposition to this Pope. As the German Bishops in their Synodal assembly proclaimed recommendations rife with progressive dreams for the Church, the radicals here stateside hollered that those Germans were entering into schism at the top of their lungs. Ironically Germany is second only to the United States in financial sums given to the Vatican11.

Radical Traditionalists are preparing themselves for what they will proclaim the last straw with Pope Francis. How the machinery of the schism will look is the only question remaining. So, without any further ado, lets do some imagining for a moment. One could imagine a radical scenario going something like this…

After the first session of the Vatican-level Synod ends the first wave of official recommendations hit the airwaves. While nothing is finalized yet pending the second gathering a year on, it is clear at least two issues will be dealt with in the eventual final recommendations to the Pope: the revival of the female deaconate, and the blessing of same-sex unions under a rite yet to be promulgated. While left-wing political groups across the world rush to misunderstand the latter, calling it “separate but equal”, the traditionalist community is convinced the Church is preparing to go directly against the words of Jesus in scripture.

All Souls Day, November 2nd, 2023: in the early afternoon a traditionalist blog passes a manifesto to the New York Times. While editors initially see it as another fringe group’s laundry list of complaints what they find at the end astonishes them. Signatories on the document include two Archbishops of major cities: Allen Vigneron of Detroit and, even more shockingly, a Cardinal in Timothy Dolan of New York. In their rush to confirm the news it leaks and becomes the top story on the evening news. The document these Bishops signed onto is unique in American history and exceptionally rare in the long history of the Catholic Church: it is a declaration of formal schism.

Among a pedantic treatise on liturgical and moral theology, the signatories declare themselves sedevacantists. They decide that Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation was not valid and therefore he was Pope until his death at the end of 2022. They will convene a conclave, on U.S. soil, to elect a true successor of St. Peter. The signatories are all American clergy and wealthy donors so as the news ripples around the world the event is simply dubbed: the “American Schism” by the media. The Vatican issues no response for weeks before a Christmas season audience with the Pope leads to a question Francis must answer: “Who must your flock listen to?”

Pope Francis, resistant to the language of condemnation his whole papacy, extolls the reporters gathered to truly pursue the reasons at the heart of the matter for the American Bishops in schism. With that he acknowledges schism has occurred. When further pressed for comment on who Catholics should look to for leadership the roman pontiff responds simply to “look to Peter and the Apostles for authority if that is what you seek.” Behind closed doors Francis is holding back his own bureaucracy, the Curia, from unleashing a hailstorm of excommunication on the five American Bishops and the Cardinal preparing for Conclave across the Atlantic. Pope Francis fears legitimizing the renegade Bishops. It is a dangerous gamble that he posits time will break down the group of potential antipopes.

On the other side of the Atlantic there is disappointment among traditionalists. The glad-trads were hesitant to embrace the clear schism at first but now, six weeks on the ones who tested the waters feel burnt by a lack of movement toward opening the conclave. Some are spooked now that the Pope has spoken on it.

The radical traditionalists are increasingly frustrated too. The clerical leadership of the schism, in consultation with their deep-pocketed funders have delayed the promised conclave in the hopes of attracting a larger, more diverse college of voters. While a handful of traditionalist circles across the English and French speaking worlds have signed oaths of coherence to the “Congregation of Pope St. John Paul II” (CPSJ) those lay groups and their clergy were not as deep or diverse a pool as they had hoped.

American Catholics, even of a conservative strain, overwhelmingly flee the Churches turning to the schism and the vanishingly few Bishops come to join the movement from overseas are eccentric to the point the American rebel prelates feel uncomfortable welcoming them into the CPSJ College of electing Bishops. Their electing college is also looking for a venue grand enough for the occasion. All the Bishops involved in the schism, per canon law, forfeited shepherding of their diocese when they signed on to the formal act of schism. Their Dioceses don’t want them. As New Year 2024 comes and goes they settle on the oversized private chapel of one of their wealthy donors on Long Island. The American Schism jumps back into the headlines.

There is really only one candidate for the first anti-papacy in six centuries: the magnanimous former Cardinal Timothy Dolan who already holds a leadership role amongst his fellow schismatics though he is a close second in age seniority to the Archbishop of Detroit. His weekly YouTube addresses are the biggest thing unifying the movement. With them Dolan has gone on a speaking tour to whoever will take him. He is practically already the movement’s leader with his lively missionary tour.

In four months he has failed to stir up a mass conversion to the CPSJ and it visibly wears on him. His conscience grows heavier as the snow melts and the Spring arrives. Easter comes and goes without any word on a Conclave and Dolan begins to disappear from public appearances beyond the weekly updates. With the second and final part of the Vatican Finale of the Synod on Synodality looming in the autumn Dolan is finally forced by his fellow CPSJ prelates to put the date on the calendar: the Solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul on June 29th.

International Press arrives on Long Island for the day the conclave is to open. Intrepid observers trying to explain the event to their viewers posit the conclave could not take more than a day or two considering the tiny six man College of electing Bishops. The TV cameras exaggerate the popularity of the event as radical traditionalists, desperate for their new leader to be formally christened flood the island. Former Cardinal Dolan is visibly unhappy, if not sick looking, as he enters the chapel and seals it shut, locking away the outside world. They provided for the spectacle nonetheless: a chimney fitted with white or black smoke sits on the railing of a second floor balcony overlooking the vast lawn of the elite venue. Delighted by the attention, the affluent lay devotee of the CPSJ hosting also becomes upset at the press for trampling his lawn.

When Dolan disappears from the Conclave early the next day the cracks begin to show. A disgraced former Nuncio appears among the crowd outside: Cardinal Carlo Maria Vigano becomes the man of the hour demanding entry to the conclave professing their same Sedevacantism and vigor for a purer Catholicism. After a vainglorious debate inside the Chapel they agree to welcome him in. The conclave is back to six electors, but it quickly becomes a circus.

Leaks abundant make it out to the gathered world press and it becomes clear there is a deadlock. Vigano came in expecting to be made Antipope, Vigneron thinks its owed to him. The electors are split 3-3. Every media outlet in the free world knows it. And now, with the pompous, self-obsessed nature of the radical traditionalist movement exposed for the world to see, the Holy Father releases his excommunications from Rome. The Press contingent diminishes by the following morning. The crowd declines to a few dozen zealots by that evening as the ninth ballot yields no victor and the smoke billows black yet again.

The sun rises on a conclave no longer surrounded by throngs of potential adherents. While the Chapel’s wealthy owner breathes a sigh of relief that his lawn wasn’t as damaged as he had feared, he now peers in on a completely irrelevant group of self-important churchmen conducting an exercise in futility against a Pope more universally adored than ever before.

Conclusion

Forgive the creative license. Schism is a hard and ugly thing to do in the Catholic tradition, at least in the way that the radical traditionalist in this country would prefer. Here I painted an example of what I think is the most extreme outcome. A formal declaration of schism is unlikely as even those who break with Rome will generally do so trying to provide condescending correction instead of forming their own authority. However, the historical narrative around schism in the Catholic world offers some interesting pointers.

Throughout the history of the Church there have been high profile breaks with Rome in the nations with the most numerous and affluent adherents. You might be able to recall the Avignon Papacy that brought about the Western Schism for almost ninety years in France12. What you may not have known is that French Catholicism had always been so independent from Rome that Gallican Catholicism as it was called, persisted well up into the era of the French Revolution. Napoleon tried to hijack this before he outright banned the Church. France saw itself as the epicenter of European Catholicism and had the financial sway to capture the papacy itself for a time. Does that sound familiar?

The modern day papacy will not easily be captured, literally or figuratively. Since the Avignon Papacy the Cardinals electing new Popes have avoided electing anyone from a nation they see as a dominant world power. That is not to mention that the French have still not seen another Pope hail from their homeland since that captured papacy. The conditions are only moderately different in the United States for a schism that similarly taps into an independence driven religious culture with well-monied interests behind the scenes.

There is nowhere on earth where the culture of a place does not affect the religion of the place. The rebellious Protestant spirit of America long ago infected the Catholicism on our shores. Humility and meekness are not virtues here, not in any public displays of faith I’ve seen recently. While the Bishops here have historically counteracted this cultural inclination in their flocks, this was always for the purpose of proving themselves to Rome. With the increasingly traditionally-minded Bishops of the US now seeing Rome as a progressive influence counteracting the conservative cultural touchstones they treasure at home; the tension pushes them toward some level of independence from Rome.

One peak example of this is the Eucharistic Revival. The US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) initiated this effort fully knowing that Rome was going in the direction of this massive Synod on Synodality. The Eucharistic Revival is focused on making Catholics believe in the Real Presence in the Eucharist again, an issue that largely draws the energies of the clergy and laypeople inward, while the Synod on Synodality is fundamentally about encountering varied opinions and living in the tension of disagreement long enough to see where the Spirit calls us: a fundamentally outward-looking endeavor.

The two Catholic measures don’t need to be oppositional, in fact I think they would feed into each other in a less politically divided American moment, but the USCCB knew what the Pope was up to. They also scheduled the major events of the Eucharistic Revival to correspond with the 2024 Presidential Election cycle including the big finale convention within weeks of each major American political party’s nominating convention13. It’s not an accident. That is significant because more than a few US Bishops have openly discussed denying President Biden, a devout Catholic in his own right, communion for his support of abortion rights. Opposition to their own coreligionist seeking reelection will not be far from the lips of those more traditionalist voices at that final revival gathering in Indianapolis next summer.

It is also worth mentioning that the USCCB has not used similarly strong rhetoric against Catholic politicians who are great supporters of more right-wing policy areas that go against Church teaching such as the Death Penalty. They have only discussed communion denial in regard to several pro-abortion politicians in Washington DC; however when you map political allegiances onto Catholicism in America you see those toward the left wing more supportive of the Pope and traditionalists congregating around stateside rightwing forces in greater opposition to the Pope’s program.

One defiant traditionalist Bishop in Tyler, Texas, Joseph Strickland, even went as far as to say he does not support the “Pope’s program of undermining the deposit of faith”. In the Catholic Church those are fighting words. Even a radical traditionalist like Bishop Strickland would not first choose schism over simply waiting out a Pope he does not like, but the aforementioned two-act finale of the Synod on Synodality poses a properly regal climax point.

The fact of the matter is that Pope Francis, like almost every Pope in recent centuries, has and will not change anything of substance in the Catholic faith, only the style with which it is presented. The sea change occurring in Catholicism now, far greater than American preoccupations, is this kind of changes envisioned more than fifty years ago at the Second Vatican Council. Those ultimately stylistic changes, which may well include elevating women to greater leadership positions and working for greater inclusion of sexual minorities in the life of the Church, are not the apocalypse of Roman Catholicism the traditionalists would have you believe. The Church has to look forward to move in that direction, looking backward won’t bring anyone back to Church.

As with every deeply-held conviction in life it helps to consider why you believe the things you do. It is also clarifying, even edifying, to question why anyone would have you make an enemy of someone seeking to teach in good faith; especially when that functionally means asking you to think of yourself as more Catholic than the Pope. At the end of the day schism is medieval and counterproductive to the modern mind, even contemporary Catholics, so if it does come it will likely only mortally wound the radical traditionalist cause. A hernia, rather than a true fatal ailment for the Catholic Church in America.

Footnotes

https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2022/july/documents/20220729-voloritorno-canada.html

https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2021/07/16/latin-mass-pope-francis-restrict-summorum-pontificium-benedict-241060

https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2013/02/13/the-global-catholic-population/

https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/religious-landscape-study/compare/attendance-at-religious-services/by/state/

https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/motu_proprio/documents/hf_ben-xvi_motu-proprio_20070707_summorum-pontificum.html

https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/motu_proprio/documents/20210716-motu-proprio-traditionis-custodes.html

https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20160319_amoris-laetitia.html

https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html

https://wherepeteris.com/put-the-dubia-in-the-dustbin/

https://www.history.com/news/jfk-catholic-president

https://cruxnow.com/analysis/2016/07/american-money-flowing-vatican-packs-greater-moral-punch

https://www.britannica.com/event/Avignon-papacy

https://www.eucharisticrevival.org/

[madscientist008]

My thoughts on Alibaba: Ek Andaz Andekha Chapter 2 wrapping up

Hello, tumblr fam! I’m sure you all have heard the news that one of my favorite shows, Alibaba: Ek Andaz Andekha Chapter 2, is going off air soon. I’m feeling sad and disappointed, and I wanted to share my thoughts with you.

First of all, I want to say that I loved the show and its cast. Abhishek Nigam and Manul Chudasama did a fabulous job as Alibaba and Princess Mariam. They had amazing chemistry and brought life to their characters. I also enjoyed watching Sumedh Mudgalkar and Srishti Jain as the new additions to the show. They added more spice and drama to the story.

The show was a fantasy-based show with stunning sets, costumes, and action sequences. It was a refreshing change from the usual daily soaps. It had a unique storyline that was inspired by the Arabian Nights tales. It had romance, comedy, adventure, mystery, and magic. It was a complete entertainer.

But sadly, the show did not get the appreciation and ratings it deserved. According to Manul Chudasama, who played Princess Mariam, the show wrapped up due to low TRP. She said that if only the viewers watched the show on TV instead of online platforms, the show would have sustained. She also said that she can never take Tunisha Sharma’s place, who played Princess Mariam in the first chapter of the show before her tragic death.

I agree with Manul. I think the show was underrated and under-promoted. It did not get enough attention and support from the channel and the audience. It was overshadowed by other shows that had more popularity and fan following. It was also affected by the controversies surrounding Tunisha Sharma’s suicide and Sheezan Khan’s arrest. These factors might have led to the show’s premature end.

I wish the show had continued for longer and given a proper conclusion. I feel like there was so much more potential and scope for the show to explore. I wanted to see more of Alibaba and Mariam’s love story, their adventures in Kabul, their encounters with Simsim and Ammi Jaan, and their fight against evil forces. I wanted to see how they would overcome all the challenges and obstacles in their way.

But alas, it was not meant to be. The show is ending soon, and I’m going to miss it a lot. I’m going to miss all the characters, their dialogues, their expressions, their scenes, their chemistry, their humor, their emotions, their actions, their everything. I’m going to miss being a part of their magical world.

I want to thank the makers, the actors, the crew, and everyone involved in making this show for giving us such a wonderful experience. I want to thank them for their hard work, dedication, passion, creativity, and talent. I want to thank them for making us laugh, cry, smile, dream, and feel with them.

I also want to thank all the fans and supporters of the show for loving it and appreciating it. I want to thank them for watching it regularly on TV or online platforms. I want to thank them for making edits, videos, memes, fanfics, fanarts, blogs, posts, comments, hashtags, trends, etc. about the show. I want to thank them for being a part of this amazing fandom.

I hope we get to see more of these actors in future projects. I hope they get more opportunities and recognition for their talent. I hope they keep entertaining us with their amazing performances.

And I hope we get to see more shows like Alibaba: Ek Andaz Andekha Chapter 2 in future. Shows that are different from the mainstream ones. Shows that are innovative and creative. Shows that are fun and engaging.

Until then,

Keep smiling,

Keep dreaming,

Keep loving,

Keep supporting,

And keep watching Alibaba: Ek Andaz Andekha Chapter 2 till it lasts!

[thewatercolours]

I love how you've turned this into an encapsulation of Guybrush's emotional arc over the course of the whole story so far! It's really neat that you expanded it not by adding extra dialogue or happenings, but just by deep-diving into his unspoken thoughts. (I mean, this IS the game where Guybrush's default walk animation is him scowling intently at the ground as he walks with purpose. Without a doubt, he's got a lot on his mind.

Going up the hill for the umpteenth time - alas, you are a point and click protagonist.

Yay, Guybrush warmed up to the "Pirate I Was Meant to Be" song. Face it, Guy, it's a lot better than your singing auditions were. Now we just need to get him doing the dance.

I like how you evoke the tranquility of this nighttime hilltop.

Yes, Guybrush, you probably should feel a bit disgusted with the time you literally fried the skin off a sunbather's back so you could peel it off and use it as a map.

There's a really nice sincerity to this scene which makes it a little more human and grounded than it can be in game, while also nodding here and there to the comedy.

Also - given that I was reading some of your earlier prose today, can I say yet again it's so cool to see your progress as a writer? You were good back then too, but there's a greater facility with words, and even what I might call a greater confidence with them, maybe?

I like the contrast between the old ring and the new. It's not just cursed vs. uncursed. One was just some ring he happened to find in a treasure trove a short time before. Not much thought put into it besides, "Oh hey, a ring! Perfect!" But this new ring represents so much more - every danger he's faced, every hard task he saw through to the end, every hope against hope. This new ring says a lot more about his love for her. This ring is from his new era, where he's no longer letting his pride come between him and Elaine - it's all love that went into this ring.

You find just the right words to bring the actions to life - I don't think anyone could describe the punch more accurately with such visual words.

He's so tentative approaching her, testing the waters. He wants so much to hug her, to be really renunited after his captivity. That morning in Puerto Pollo was so brief, it hardly counted. But he doesn't know if she's still furious with him, if she'll forgive him. But she silently does. She hugs him back. It's really sweet.

Oh no. Swords. Never a full moment in the Caribbean!

I really enjoyed this! Thank you for taking the time to write it up - it was really well done!

Prompt 1 from @thewatercolours

"Expand the scene from CMI where Guybrush successfully brings Elaine back from statuehood."

---

Guybrush huffed as he climbed for what felt like the umpteenth time up to the secluded hilltop that overlooked Blood Island. 

Under different circumstances (though he’d be a liar if he didn’t admit to it then and now), he rather loved the view. It was… oddly serene in comparison to how his adventure began on that beat up old bumper car with hazy distant memories of how he got in there in the first place and sailing through a relentless storm to only crash spectacularly into the coast line. 

And sure, the Barber Quartet (arguably trio, he thought) were more than understanding since even they couldn’t see just how close the shoreline was, they weren’t entirely easy to handle either what with their singing that got the map inevitably stolen (though, again, they did pick up their slack and helped him retrieve it… and the song was admittedly catchy as he found himself humming it from time to time).  

Yet this view? Quiet in the eye of the storm was how he would best describe it.

But it would be better to share it with someone, he thought. Someone who could enjoy the tranquility and bliss after the blitz of adventure. And that someone was currently stuck in an uncomfortable golden pose with a balled up fist ready to strike the poor schmuck who put them into said predicament.

Normally, Guybrush would deflect and try his hardest to wiggle his way out of an accusation (even if he was The Culprit), but this time… yeah, there was no wiggling. He warranted it after using a cursed ring from his cursed nemesis’s cursed treasure hold.

In hindsight, that was a dumb move. Even Guybrush could admit to that now when he had a moment to think properly. And he was going to do everything he could to apologize… it was the least he could do right after undoing the curse which was also the very least he could do.

Digging into his pocket, Guybrush pulled out the hand cream and diamond ring. The length he went through to procure these was… extenuating, yet a small part of him felt a bit of pride that he managed to do all of this, for the most part, on his own. He gathered the crew, he managed to find a ship (though occasionally he’d find a feather or two in his pockets), he found the map (which… he wasn’t proud of now that he thought about it and was more disgusted), outwitted some bandits and managed to beat death not once, but twice (if beating death was just knocking himself out with a cold medicine). 

Sure, he did feel bad in regards to throwing dairy to a lactose intolerant deity, something that he didn’t know was a thing and learned that lesson the hard way, he didn’t feel great at forgetting to tell the Whelshman how the compass was doomed to eventually fail, and he did feel bad taking the golden wedding band from a spector who was dealt a poor hand in suitor. 

But he did reunite her with a long lost love… that had to have counted for something, right?

That was what he was doing; reuniting with his own lost love.

He squirted a bit from the lotion to the golden hand, having tried earlier when he reunited with the statue to pry the cursed jewelry off her hand but found it practically impossible, and started to gently fiddle with the ring. To Guybrush’s relief, it began to move, each twist letting it get more and more loose. With a solid pluck, he held the cursed ring in his hand. It would have been in his best interest (and Elaine’s) to throw it off of this very cliff, let it shatter for all he cares, though he was nearly certain diamond don’t shatter.

Instead, to his shock, the ring exploded in his hand - diamond and band and all. 

Guybrush blinked in confusion for a moment but he wasn’t about to question it, it was one less quest related necessity on his already comically long itinerary. He chucked the hand lotion to the side, no longer feeling a need to carry it (though making a note to bring it back to Haggis), and held the uncursed ring in his hand.

It was a lot of work, and at times it was frustrating depending on the people he was dealing with… but there was a small feeling in his chest as he watched the moonlight glint softly against the diamond. Unlike LeChuck’s ring in the hold that he just picked up along the way, this one he worked tirelessly for. He poured everything he could into the search to practically make this ring (even if it was just reuniting the jewel and the wedding band). 

This ring is special, he thought. It’s special because of the lengths he went through for Elaine.

Although there was a massive gap in his memory between seeing her peeved expression on Dinky Island as he dangled over the pit for his life and then her sadden look when he drifted between her and the roaring battle in Puerto Pollo… he could recall her sharply. 

He recalled his drive to get away from where he was just to see her and say he was sorry.

He recalled his thoughts at perhaps never seeing her again and feeling that ache.

He recalled how seeing Elaine gasping his name at the fort brought such intense warmth that it was practically overwhelming his heart.

He didn’t recall much of his time captive, but he knew without a shadow of a doubt that he was meant to be by her side. He wanted his hand in her’s. She was, for lack of a better word, his home.

And seeing the balled up fist? Yeah, he flubbed at saying his expression of gratitude with a stupid cursed ring.

Guybrush could only hope that when he breaks this curse, with this gesture and frantic explanation, he will be able to get his point across.

Taking a breath, and giving a silent prayer to whatever deity there was out there whether it was the spirits or a lactose intolerant god, Guybrush slipped the ring onto Elaine’s finger, watching as the diamond gleamed and sparkled before a bright and blinding light flashed before his eyes. He had no choice but to cover his eyes, shielding himself from whatever was happening (though he did want to see it). When the lights faded away, he lowered his arms and saw Elaine taking in a deep breath, her brows still very much furrowed with anger and her fist still tightly balled.

He had less of a split second to speak up, to try and stop the war path that was her fist as he opened his mouth to call her name, to try and calm her.

Her fist was faster than his words as he saw stars before his eyes after her right hook made a loud cracking connection to his jaw. Slack jawed into a stupor from the hit, his body spun from the collision and collapsed hard against the rock behind him, feeling the wind get knocked out of him as he rubbed the sore spot.

Yup. He deserved that. He wished he could say he didn’t, but he knew he did. 

As the stars faded and the sense of dread started to creep into his chest, Guybrush rubbed his jaw, knowing fully well a bruise was forming, and looked at Elaine who didn’t look as angry anymore… but definitely confused. Terribly confused. Which made sense since last time she had consciousness, it was a bright morning on Puerto Pollo and now she’s in the moonlit night of Blood Island. 

So now, she wasn’t just confused. She was also still, rightfully, angry at him from both Big Whoop and now the diamond ring.

Lowering his hand from his jaw, he took a breath. “Elaine? Are you alright?”

“Guybrush?” She asked. “Where… where are we?”

He could sympathize with the confusion. But unlike himself, he could give a clear answer to her predicament. 

“You’re okay.” Guybrush reassured before he began to explain. “We’re on Blood Island. LeChuck’s ring had a terrible curse on it, b-but I put everything right!”

He quickly continued before she could stop him. Not that she would, he knew that expression of hers meant she wanted the full context, but more for himself… to get the words out. Guybrush stood up and slowly walked over, testing how she felt with him stepping closer. 

“You’re safe and everything’s gonna be fine… just…” He gently put a hand on her shoulder, seeing Elaine looking at him, not with anger or total confusion, but processing his words. Those green eyes of hers having that familiar calculating look of trying to understand. 

Yet that ache in his chest, one that had wiggled and lingered even when consciousness returned to him in that open sea got louder and louder. That sense of home and warmth was overwhelming… he knew he was pressing his luck, knew it could easily reward him with either another shove or a punch. But he couldn’t stop himself. He held Elaine into a hug, a gesture to reassure her, but it felt like it was more for himself, like his very soul wanted– needed this after so long.

He braced himself for Elaine to fight back, ready to let go at a moment’s notice… but was surprised when he felt arms wrap around him. It was laughable how her arms were able to wrap around him nearly entirely, but he didn’t care. She was safe and in his arms and he was going to keep doing right… he wanted to say it but instead saw a series of swords surrounding them.

Swords he recognized belonged to a certain undead pirate’s horde.

He sighed in slight annoyance. “...fine.”