#and as much as i ship it and make jokes about a triangle hooking up with an old man

[clarisimart]

Stanford Pines - No Children

Don't forget what happened to Icarus

Photophobia warning: Glitching effects / Shaky cam transitions

commission info here

REBLOG OVER LIKES PLEASE

Stills under cut or here

[goldenlikedayl1ght]

bound for n.y.c - g. van fleet

a/n: hi everybody! i’m back with a cool 3.6k fic about the one, the only, greta van fleet! i am seeing them at msg next week and am so excited that i just wanted to write a quick fic. please note that there’s no set ship and that it’s sort of implied that reader is in love with all members of the band and all the band members are into reader and NOT EACHOTHER. except maybe sammy and danny. let me know if y’all want anymore of these types of fic, idk maybe it’ll flop. also this is kind of fast paced and i am very sorry for that warnings: kissing, physical touch, mentions of anxiety and stress, complicated love triangles, food mentions, reader has a stepdad and a good relationship with their mom, reader being from ny, i think reader is fully gender neutral with maybe a few feminine traits but no real descriptors. also reader has tattoos and mentions of a dog that is no longer with us! no use of y/n, one mention of drugs, a bunch of references to sex, and cursing :0 word count: 3.6k summary: as tour manager, it's your job to get the boys to new york city, your home town. just don't fall in love with them, or anything. now playing: runway blues – greta van fleet

Being tour manager for America’s favorite Led Zeplin cover band, or at least, that’s what your judgmental bitch of a landlord called them once, was surprisingly difficult.

You were constantly running around after the four of them, feeling often more like a nanny than a tour manager. Especially at first. You had started meeting with them a few weeks before their World Starcatcher tour had begun, where you wore these professional, stuffy outfits. They had been referred to you by their makeup artist, who you had known from when you were an assistant to the tour manager of Phoebe Bridgers’ 2022 reunion tour.

You had been working for a producer when you got the call. Truthfully, you missed touring. It was a great way to see different parts of the country and the world, and you thrived in the chaotic environment. And you had heard of Greta Van Fleet, mostly from your grandfather, who was a huge classic rock fan, and always exploring new music via his iPad.

But you started out rather cooperating with them, wearing these stuffy outfits—Mostly long button ups and pencil skirts, while the boys showed up in comfortable casual clothes, always joking about you having to loosen up a bit.

And one notoriously hot day in early July, you showed up in shorts and a muscle tee to meet with them to go over the final dates of the tour before you all gave your go ahead to the social media manager.

You didn’t do much talking about the tour that meeting, opting instead to answer questions about your tattoos, your taste in music, your life to this point. And in exchange, they gave you pieces of themselves.

“I’m from New York,” You had answered over some late afternoon drinks. “I haven’t been home since Christmas, So I’m excited to see my family when we’re there.”

Josh’s fingers traced your upper arm, over a tattoo of your long-gone dog. “Will we get to meet this little guy?” He asks.

You only chuckled, “No, this one died while I was in college. Best dog I ever had.” You said solemnly.

And that was it. One comment about your dog and the boys were hooked on you forever. And when the tour started, you only grew closer— Sharing with them parts of your childhood, Jake teaching you the very basics of guitar, Josh taking shots with you before shows, Danny bringing you coffee to cope with those shots the next morning, and Sam holding your hand when he’s anxious, or when you’re anxious—or both.

So, by the time you make it to the boys’ first show at the Garden, you’ve developed a routine.

The bus leaves by seven a.m. from the hotel in D.C. to get to New York by nine, nine-thirty-ish. You’re craving a sausage, egg, and cheese on a bagel from your favorite deli near where your mom lives, about an hour outside of the city.

So, you wake Jake up first, as he takes the longest to really wake up, and you’re sure you’ll have to shake him awake at least twice before he really gets up for the day. Then, you go to make sure Josh is up, and hear his shower going by the time you get to it. Good.

Then, you head to Sam, who is snoring away with Rosie. You almost don’t have the heart to wake him up. Almost. But Rosie senses your presence and stands up in bed, starting to lick his face. He groans, mumbling a soft, “I’m up, Rose, I know.” You feel good when you head over to Danny.

But thankfully, he’s already up. He’s in bed, writing in his notebook when you get there, sipping his coffee and all packed up for the road. His hair is tied up in a bun, and you’re entirely grateful that he’s so good at this whole thing.

Usually, you don’t need to wake each of them up, but every few shows, the five of you, as well as other crew members, indulge in the after party. And last night was your turn to be the D.R.O. Designated responsible one.

Eventually, you get all four of them downstairs and on the bus, no real difficulties. You all climb onto the bus and begin the drive to your home state. And you can hardly take the anticipation. Seeing your family again, visiting your favorite spots, and getting a homecooked meal was keeping you going. You had moved to California for school, before traveling on a few tours, and then settling for about a year in Nashville. But you ached for New York.

While your boys busied themselves with talk, games, and music, you stared out the window, biting your thumb and ignoring the reruns of Daredevil that played on your laptop in front of you. And apparently, you were bouncing your leg intensely, because the only thing that snapped you out of your thoughts was Rosie’s head on your thigh to relax you.

You scratched her head, sighing as you closed your computer, before glancing up to the boys, who had gone suspiciously quiet.

“What?” you asked, giving them a concerned look.

“You know we’ll make it to New York, right?” Sam asked, “You’ll be there soon.” He said, holding your hand, just like he always did when you were anxious.

“I know, I’m just—I miss home. And I love touring, and usually I’m never like this, but when I realized I’d be seeing my mom after months, I just... It made me start focusing a lot more on the fact that I miss it.”

You knew they’d get it. Michigan had been their home for years, and although they loved Nashville just like you did, you knew they left a part of themselves in Frankenmuth, just as you had in New York.

Danny tossed you a blanket, “Get some sleep, Sugar. You’ll need it.” he said softly. You nodded, too anxious and tired to argue any further than that. You cuddled up to Sam, Rosie finding her way in between your legs to further comfort you.

As you drifted off, you thought about your relationship with them. Things like Sam’s holding your hand and cuddling, Danny’s very often kisses to your forehead, Jake’s gentle hugs from behind, and Josh’s well—Josh’s everything, he’s a very affectionate young man—had been, for the most part, strictly platonic. You had thought about it. Kissing one of them, asking to break the professional lines of your relationship, however blurred those had become.

But it was more than that. Over the past few months of knowing them, it had developed from you getting them from place to place, into a softer, more tender relationship. The relationship you had formed with them was something you had been desperately lacking and needing. You had only realized that you missed it when you got it from them.

You were all real true soulmates.

You woke up to the sound of a loud series of honks and yelling from outside the bus. You peeked out of the window to see people screaming at each other, thousands of people making their way to work, and tall skyscrapers overhead.

“Jesus Christ, it smells like someone died!” Jake complained, as the rest of the boys agreed on the smell being horrid. It made you grin. You were home.

You stretched and pulled out your phone, checking the itinerary for the day that you had written out in your note’s app the night before. And you were right on schedule, since you accounted for traffic getting here. It was around noon, so you decided to head over to the hotel to get settled in before the show.

Except when you got there, the lady at the front desk informed you there were no rooms booked under the name you had given them. Which was insane, because you booked a room months ago knowing how expensive and unpredictable the city was.

So here you were, a show that night, with no hotel room, and a group of hungry twenty-something year olds. You were going to scream. And they could see it on you, your muscles tense, as you struggled to not start shaking.

Josh rested a hand on your arm, rubbing his thumb gently against it as he wrapped his other arm around your shoulders. “Deep breathes, Baby. You made that reservation; these guys are just a bunch of fucking fucks.” And it made you laugh, enough to relax you. You took another minute to think, before turning back to the rest of the guys.

“Okay, here’s the plan. We must be at the Garden for soundcheck and costumes, hair, and makeup by five thirty. We’ll go there now, drop off our bags and we can go grab pizza and garlic knots at this spot I know, good and are very cool with service dogs.” You said, unable to think of a scenario where you leave Rosie anywhere except with Sam. “While we’re there, I’ll make a call, since I think I know where we can stay if you guys don’t mind a bit of a drive after the show.” No one objected, they simply got back on the bus as instructed, and headed to enact that plan.

After dropping off your things and making it to the pizza place, you step outside for that call, telling Jake to just order you a soda. The phone rings. Once. Twice. And on the third call, your mom answers, excitedly saying your name.

“Where are you guys? Did you make it to the hotel okay?” she asks, and your face melts at the softness.

“Hey, Mom, we’re in the city, getting some lunch. Listen, the hotel messed up our reservation, and now we’re looking for a new place to stay... I know it’s last minute, but—” And before you can ask it, she cuts you off.

“Well, you five can stay here! We have the guest room, your room and your brother’s room.” She decides. “I’ll cook, do they like sausage and peppers?”

“Mom, you don’t have to, it’s gonna be late when we get in.”

“And you still need to eat. I’ll see you tonight, okay? I love you baby, break a leg tonight.” She advises, even though you aren’t the one preforming.

“Alright, I love you, mom.” You hang up and head back inside, settling into your seat next to Josh, just as the waitress comes back to take your order. “We’ll have a large cheese pizza with half mushrooms, please. And a dozen and a half garlic knots.” You say coolly, not giving the boys a chance at all. You love this restaurant. It’s best you order anyways.

They all stare at you for a few seconds before you smile. “You all get to meet my mom tonight.”

“Don’t you think we should have a couple of dates before we meet your mom?” Danny asks, and it makes you giggle.

“What do you think this is?” You tease.

Lunch goes really well, and after a bit of tourism and some drinks around the city, you make it to Madison Square Garden to get them ready for the show. For a brief few hours, you have a break. Usually, you spend it catching up on some work, having some quiet time, or anything of the sort. But this is their debut at the Madison Square Garden, in your hometown. You feel an obligation to watch the show.

Before the show begins, as Josh and Jake are getting their makeup done, you relax with Sam and Danny on a couch somewhere backstage. When Jake is done, he steals your phone off the table, and holds it up to take a photo of the three of you. Sam and Danny lean in and each kiss one of your cheeks, and it makes you roll your eyes for a second before you smile at the camera, letting them be all lovely dovey and affectionate, like a bunch of freaks. Your freaks.  

When the show starts, you watch from the sidelines, cheering for them and generally enjoying the show, because you just know how important this is for them. And you eat it right up, watching your boys perform at a dream venue for so many artists.

Before they start Highway Tune, Josh starts speaking to the crowd. “This is a very special show for us. Our debut at The Garden. The Garden, how about that?” He hums. “And we’re also playing in our tour manager’s hometown... So, we have some special surprises for you in their honor.” The crowd goes wild, and your face flushes, giggling at the idea of them performing a special show just for you.

The show goes by quicker than you would like it to, because you’re enjoying it too much. And you’re really understanding suddenly why so many people are down bad for them online. They look really fucking good. When they get off stage, you just want to cling onto them or make out with them or worse, and then they go back on for the encore and it leaves you longing, wanting for more.

What the fuck is happening to you?

You get caught up in this feeling to the point where the next hour or two—Waiting for the crowds to clear out, for them to get undressed, for the bus to get there—fly by, and before you know it, you’re in the bus again, heading to your moms. Josh lays his head on your lap, and Sam has found himself cuddled up against you. Danny is leaning against Jake across from you, and Jake is just staring at you. He has a familiar look in his eyes, and you just stare back.

When you make it to your home, while all the houses are dark and quiet, the kitchen and living room light is on when you make it to your home. The bus driver has family in the area, so he’ll stay with them for the night, and pick you up early on Thursday Morning, giving you all a break from the crazy travel days.

Your mom is in the kitchen when you come in, having late night coffee and tea with your stepdad. She hears you come in and gets excited, greeting you all at the door. She pulls you in for a hug and a kiss, holding onto you for a little while, just excited to see you. When she pulls away, she grins at the boys.

“And who are these lovely young men?” she asks, teasingly.

In a deadpan voice, you respond, “The cokehead rockstars I’ve been traveling with. I’m their groupie.” You say, and she scoffs at your sarcasm.

Josh smiles, “That’s us, Baby!” He opens his arms to your mom, and she gladly hugs him as a greeting, despite this being their first meeting. And there it is again, that aching feeling you had, when you watched them perform tonight, the same feeling that followed you home. After hugs and introductions, you’re all at the dinner table, gobbling down the dinner your mom made for you. You can almost cry, enjoying the taste of her cooking after months without it.

And the boys enjoy it too, loving a filling meal after a busy show. When you have all finished eating, you make your way up to your respective rooms. You stick Danny and Sam in the guest room, Jake sleeps in your brother’s room, and Josh in your bed, with you. You could almost die.

You take out your earrings and then you lay down. Your arms are exposed, showing off the tattoos you have once more. Josh sleeps in his boxers and a tee shirt, even though your room is chilly. He lays next to you and begins tracing his fingers over your tattoos.

“What’s this one?” he asks, tracing over a ghost that’s on your forearm, right above your elbow.

“Got it during the final show of Phoebe’s tour. She has a similar one somewhere, and I guess it was my way of commemorating the tour.” You explain. He hums, and moves to a different one, asking you the origin of that one. This goes on for a while, before you kiss his palm and tell him to get some sleep.

He falls asleep quickly, and you just stare at him through the darkness. ‘Are you dreaming of me?’ You want to ask, a hand reaching out to run your hands through those vicious curls. Before you know what, you’re doing, you cuddle up to him, laying your head on his chest. When you feel his arms wrapped around you, you begin to drift off, confident that you did not overstep any boundaries.

When the morning strikes, you get up and realize Josh is still asleep. You wiggle out of his arms and leave the room. You must be lost in thought because you bump flat into someone without even noticing. It’s Danny. His hair is wrapped up in a towel, and he only wears a towel around his waist.  

He reminds you of that one video of Slash from the golden age of Guns N Roses, and it stirs something deep inside of you.

But he just chuckles and kisses your forehead gently. “Hey, sweets.” he says softly, in that raspy morning voice.

“Good morning.” You respond. “Sorry for interrupting.”

“You didn’t interrupt anything; you don’t have to apologize.” He advises. “See you downstairs.” You take a cold shower just to get out of your own head before heading downstairs, where you meet your mom, Jake, Sam, and Danny laughing and eating French toast, as your stepdad cooks in the kitchen.

You love his French toast, but a pang of disappointment hits you as you think about your sausage, egg and cheese on a bagel, with hashbrowns. You quickly eat to dissipate any of those needs. But you’ve been talking about that sandwich for months, so it haunts you.

The rest of the day, you spend pretty much doing nothing. You nap, lounge, and catch up with your mom. It’s the perfect day. Just you, your mom, and your boys. And of course, Rosie. Your mom makes pulled pork sliders for lunch, and you order Chinese food for dinner. Real, good Long Island Chinese food.

And really, the day is over before you really want It to be. Sam asks you to join him on walking Rosie. You happily oblige, planning on taking him to get ice cream along the way. He has his arm wrapped around your shoulders, and you keep your head leant against his shoulder. Rosie trots in front of you happily.

“I could get used to this.” He says suddenly.

“Huh?” It catches you off guard. What does that mean?

“This. The quiet life. Walking my dog in the suburbs...” He says shyly. You get the sense there’s something on the tip of his tongue and you long for him to say it. “I love touring, but these domestic moments... You can’t beat ‘em.” He decides.

You want to kiss him so badly.

Instead, you just hum, and snuggle closer to him, wondering what the hell you’re doing. And that’s a super valid question.

The night goes the same as the last, except you kiss your mom and stepdad goodnight, not wanting them to have to get up in the morning to say goodbye. You suspect your mom will anyways. And she does. As the boys file out of the house, she’s handing them homecooked meals for the road, and you give her one more hug and kiss goodbye, before heading to the bus yourself. The others are on the bus, but Jake stands there, his hands behind his back. You narrow your eyes to him suspiciously.

“You’re an amazing tour manager, you know that?” He says gently.

“Yes, I do. What are you scheming at?” You ask, not totally trusting him.

He just grins as he reveals a brown bag he’s holding, handing it to you. Your confusion only grows as you take the bag and open it only to smell the best thing you have had in months.

A sausage, egg, and cheese on a bagel. With hashbrowns. From your favorite deli.

You almost scream.

“What?!” You gasp, “How did you—”

“I borrowed your mom’s car this morning and got it for you.”

“You didn’t have to do that...”

“Yeah, I did. I meant what I said. You hold us together, and we couldn’t be more grateful. Plus, you’ve been talking about this sandwich for months and—” You don’t let him finish. You kiss him. It’s full of all this pent-up passion you’ve held in, and Jake just wraps his arms around you, deepening the kiss. He wanted this just as much as you did, you realized. Your arms wrapped around his neck as you both lean into the kiss, fully enjoying the moment. Then, he pulls away, saying your name quietly.

You don’t know what to say. Then, the bus honks twice, scaring the shit out of you.

“C’mon you two! We got things to do, you sorry shits!” Josh yells. You can only laugh before you both climb onto the bus. Now, a new lust has overcome you. The lust for the sandwich you hold in your hands.

The lust for the four boys that surround you doesn’t dissipate either.

But as you head for Boston, your boys in tow, your shift as Greta Van Fleet’s tour manager begins once more, and you resume your position easily.

Until Sam kisses your neck. Then you melt again.

[mistydeyes]

hiyaaaa i saw you were doing pairings, and i thought id go for it! i’d like you to ship me with one of our gorgeous cod/mw2 boys 🫶

my name is Aia, and I’m a student!

personality: to start off, i’m very introverted (ITSP). i need a lot of alone time to recharge, but i can manage to be around people even when im drained if i like them enough 😭

i have a tough outer shell - not tough in the way that i’m rude or stuck up, but i never really open up about my feelings, or about anything in general. i don’t like talking about myself much with people i don’t really know, and i’m very independent - id rather be on my own. i only open up with, and wanna be around the very few people that i trust - they get to see my softer, more relaxed and true authentic self. and they also get to see my much more energetic and funny side! it all depends on my mood, but it’s usually a mix of both.

i’m very understanding, and i’m VERY empathetic. i can empathise with pretty much everybody and i’m great at giving advice, or even just listening to people’s struggles if that’s what they want. but i can also be extremely blunt and honest at times since i really hate lying & sugarcoating things.

i’m really confident, yet humble. i’m an extremely secure person, and nobody’s words really get to me 😭 i absolutely do not tolerate disrespect and i will cut somebody off or put them in their place if they’re disrespectful enough. I am really humble, however.

this sounds so conceited, but i’d say that i’m really funny 😭 all of my friends describe me as funny, i’m known as the “funny friend”, and i always make people laugh unintentionally! i also laugh at others jokes a lot - i have a hard time taking many situations seriously because of my fkn clownery 💀

the thing that i don’t like about myself however, is that i can be very airheaded and a little like… gone? like very just… unaware and in my own bubble. sometimes i’m extremely clumsy and foolish n shit 😭 i can also be very stubborn at times.

temperament: i’m pretty sure i’m choleric and melancholic! i don’t know a lot about temperaments and such, but i think i’m those two. mostly choleric tho… i think i’m 60/40.

what type of person i am: i’m pretty sure i’m level headed and adventurous. i’m chill, understanding, confident, kind, passionate, and hardworking! i’m mostly logical, but i can be emotional when needed. i’m also extremely loyal and trustworthy.

hobbies: i have quite a few!

- gym/bodybuilding :p

i absolutely ADORE working out, and it’s my main hobby that i tell people about

- cooking & eating :)

- drawing & painting <3

- gaming!

- boxing c:

appearance:

for my body, i’m 5”2/158cm, and i’m normal weight. i go to the gym a lot, so my build is pretty muscular, but i still look feminine overall. my body is like, balanced, i’d say :) i just have an overall fit look!

my face is kind of hard to describe so bare with me! i’m kurdish, so i have very strong individual features, but theyre all in harmony.

My eyes are big, brown, and round. My nose is hooked. my lips are kind of thin, but not overly thin, and theyre kind of bow-shaped :). my eyebrows are thick and dark. my face shape is oval/upside down triangle! my skintone is like… medium? it’s for fair but not super olive either. my hair is thick and dark brown. it is kind of medium length, a bit below my collarbones, and i like to keep it straight, but it is naturally wavy. i have curtain bangs too :)

that was all!! tysm <333

Kyle "Gaz" Garrick (a/n thank you for submitting! I love the amount of detail you put in this and I hope I did you justice!)

How you met: Civilian As you sat in the relief of the cool fan breeze on your face, you re-wrapped your hand with your light blue handwrap. In recent months, you started to train in the ring more often and you loved the gym you found. The air smelled of sweat and the sound of grunts and punches filled the room but it satisfied your competitive spirit. "Aia, you're up!" your trainer called and you walked to the ring to find your opponent. While he was taller and more muscular than you, his kind smile made you feel a little bad for the ass beating you were about to deliver. You had see him around before but this was the first time you would have a session with him. "Kyle," he said as he approached you and gently shook your hand. "Aia," you exchanged and soon took your stance. It was clear when you started that Kyle was a pressure fighter, bombarding you with a barrage of attacks then retreating out of your reach. While his goal was to exhaust you, you were an out-boxer and focused on anticipating his attacks and returning them with a long range punch. Most out-boxers were taller than you but you were able to methodically plan your attacks and kept Kyle on the offensive. You danced around the ring, making intense eye contact with his dark brown eyes until you finally managed to land a winning punch to his sternum. As he fell, you stood above him in victory. "Good match," you complimented as you held out a hand and helped him up. "That was one hell of a punch," he said as he massaged his chest, "I definitely have to train with you more." "Looking forward to it," you replied and exchanged numbers with your new gym buddy.

A peek into your relationship: When you weren't going to the gym with your boyfriend, you enjoyed a nice night in with a cookbook and drinks. Tonight, you and Kyle were attempting to make creamy garlic chicken pasta, a recipe he had suggested. You danced around the kitchen as Kyle took care of the chicken and you handled the pasta. "Babe, this is a great chicken," you said as you peeked a head around his torso, "some might call it im-peck-able!" Your corny joke was met by a hearty laugh from him as you kissed his cheek. "That was bad," he replied and you rolled your eyes as you finished draining the pasta. "I'm just eggs-centric," you said with a smile and this one was met with groans. As Kyle tossed the pasta, he kept poking fun at your humor. "You know, love, if you just told me one of your jokes I probably would have doubled over laughing," he said and sat down on the couch next to you with two bowls. "True but I would never have found the best gym partner," you countered and he nodded in agreement. As you ate your dinner and exchanged more dad jokes, Kyle was happy that he had found the perfect person to be his best friend and to kick his ass at the gym.

[elephantinparis]

So I finished the season last night and I thought I’d share my immediate thoughts about my two favourite ships – kathony and polin. I read the second book earlier this year to be prepared (joke’s on me lmaoo) This might be an unpopular opinion among book readers but I LOVED IT? Like I had my problems, no show is perfect. I guess this might be in part because while I loved the book so much I didn’t really get attached? And I found some scenes ridiculous or completely stupid. Like Anthony sucking on Kate’s breast to get the venom out(hello that’s not how it works) would have been so cringe to see on screen ajahsha I get them taking a different approach because the author seems to make her couples get together in the same way (forced marriage). In the books the bee was a catalyst for their forced marriage while in the show it was a catalyst for showing both Kate and Anthony that there’s something there! It was the beginning of more than banter between them which I love way more. I wasn’t mad about the slowburn because that’s how it usually is in period dramas the couple gets together at the very end. I do wish we got one more episode to see their actual wedding and domestic stuff but I’m okay without it because I’m always more interested in the journey not the destination. Wasn’t mad about less explicit scenes either but I would have liked them lmao The only thing I disliked was the triangle stuff or rather how dragged out it was. I would have been fine if they called it off after that diner with the grandparents. I liked how they made Edwina feel like a “real girl” (a pinochio reference 😂) in the book she was a pretty ornament there for kathony to interact. What I did love about book Edwina though was how perceptive she was. Show Edwina is blind and i wish they didn’t make her fall for Anthony. She knew in the books they were broke so she had this duty to marry, so I would get her wanting to marry Anthony if she knew they had no money at least. Or they at least could have played it like Edwina fell for his title (she mentions wanting a prince or a duke) sure it would make her a bit more shallow, but it would have fit better. Overall, I loved the story, but wish they moved everything one episode like the wedding could have been episode 5 and the finale could’ve had more kathony. And some Edwina stuff was...a choice. Now as for polin I read their book after season 1 aired and I wasn’t the biggest fan? Probably because I rarely vibe with friends to lovers. But the actors in the show had me hooked idk what it is. And I did enjoy the book for the most part that is why I was incredibly pissed in the finale...they added THE scene if you know you know. I hated it because Penelope had no agency? Like in the book she calls Colin out on his bs she says she never asked him to marry her or told anyone she would like that and show Penelope just runs away crying? Now Colin doesn’t even realise how he fucked up. Like it would have made perfect sense because Penelope just had her world shattered, Eloise knows and hates her basically. Her losing it on Colin would have worked perfectly. Generally for them this season was more of the same...I was hoping for actual development not romantic but FRIENDS development. Like it’s so one sided, it’s just Penelope. I wouldn’t call them friends even, he knows nothing and really isn’t interested in anything about her. She’s his hype woman and that’s how Colin likes it. I loved what Penelope says in the book how he liked her better than most, but he doesn’t care. This season was the definition of that. Before the season aired I heard they might be switching couples for season 3 and polin might be it. Honestly I was so excited but after watching the season I hope not lmao like they need time to grow on their own, Colin needs to start seeing her, Penelope needs to not pine and try to forget him. They need that time jump their story provides. If not 10 years then at least 5. So yeah I was pretty disappointed by what they did with them this season 😔 I hope it changes in season 3&4! Sorry for my rant 😂

[skittlebits]

Safe

Pairing - Natasha Romanoff x Carol Danvers

Words - 1,500

Summary - Natasha gets her first head cold while traveling in space. Carol takes care of her.

Tags - Fluff, Post-Endgame (slight canon-divergence because Nat isn’t dead), mentions of Vormir, mild illness, administering medication, bed sharing

Read on AO3

“I managed to live thirty-nine years on Earth without catching so much as a cold, but I travel to another galaxy one time and I’m down for the count? What the hell, Danvers?”

Natasha sat slumped at the table, her arm propping up her aching head. Several thin swaths of cloth lay crumpled on the table in front of her, sodden with her efforts to stem the flow of mucus from her reddened nose.

Carol stood at the first aid cabinet rummaging through a box of supplies. “You’re talking to a person who has alien blood flowing through her veins. I kind of forgot people even got viruses.”

Natasha tried glaring at Carol but it made her head hurt even more and she winced. “Lucky bitch,” she grumbled.

“Well, I’d take you to Hala and get you hooked up with some alien blood of your own but unfortunately the entire Kree race wants me dead, so,” Carol shrugged. She pulled a canvas bag out of the box and brought it to the table.

“Why can’t I have some of yours then?” Natasha asked, only partly joking. She’d almost be willing to drink a pint of blood right about now if she thought it would ease the pounding pressure in her head. She watched as Carol sat next to her at the table, inspecting the contents of the bag. “I mean, you did go through the trouble to save me on Vormir and all.”

Carol looked up from the bag and shot Natasha a look. “I swear, if you’re about to make fun of me for-“

Natasha straightened up and put a hand up in front of her in a placating gesture, realizing belatedly how flippant that had sounded. “No, I swear, I’m not. I’m sorry, that was rude.” She sighed and winced when the simple act made her eyes water. “I can’t think straight with this sinus pressure and I’m being a bitch and you don’t deserve that.”

Carol looked at her for a moment before returning her attention to the bag.

Pinching the bridge of her nose, Natasha swallowed thickly. She still wasn’t used to navigating this relatively new territory.

“I know how lucky I am, Carol. There will never be a day go by where I’m not profoundly grateful for what you did on Vormir…even if you did almost scare me to death, which, granted, I guess I deserved. So, I’m sorry. I promise the next time I ask you to give me alien healing powers I’ll be a lot more tactful and much less whiny and pitiful.”

Natasha breathed a sigh of relief when she saw Carol smile but was quickly taken over with a series of wet sneezes. She felt one of her ears pop and she felt like she was underwater.

She was going to run out of cloth to blow her nose on at this rate.

Carol finally pulled two small containers out of the medical bag - one containing a liquid and one with pills.

“Okay, I think these are your best opinions for relief until we stop somewhere that has whatever passes for cold and flu medication out in this quadrant of the galaxy we’re in.” She shook the bottle with the pills. “These are anti-inflammatory meds, and this,” she held up the vial of clear liquid, “is a painkiller of some sort.” She looked at the label for a moment and hummed. “Yeah, you definitely won’t feel the pressure in your head on this stuff. We might want to just do a half dose of this one.”

Natasha closed her eyes and sighed. She hated taking any sort of medication. Normally she could put mind over matter but her face felt like it was about to explode and it hurt just to focus her eyes. And maybe it was okay to indulge. She wasn’t in a battle somewhere, she was safe on Carol’s spacecraft.

“Okay, I’ll take both,” she finally decided. Carol handed her the bottle of pills so she could grab a syringe from the bag.

“Want me to give you this one or do you want to do it yourself?” Carol asked, holding up the syringe and vial for Natasha’s inspection.

Natasha fumbled with the pill bottle as she struggled to get the lid off. Her muscles ached with the simple effort. “I think I’m going to need you to do it, Nurse Carol,” she admitted quietly. She swallowed two of the pills and chased them down with the tea she had been nursing.

Carol grinned and got to work on setting up the syringe. “Is Nurse Carol also going to be carrying you to bed so you can rest?” she teased, tugging the shoulder of Natasha’s shirt down to expose her upper arm. Natasha raised her shoulder to help expose enough skin for Carol to get to the muscle. She winced at the injection.

“Is Nurse Carol going to tell another living soul if she does?”

Carol capped the syringe and put the medicines back into the bag. “Of course not, I’m not stupid.”

Natasha smiled even though it made her face hurt. “Then yes please.”

Carol put the bag back into the first aid cabinet and pulled out a small stack of triangle bandages. She placed them on the table near the pile of crumpled, sodden cloth. “We’re on these now for your nose. All the smaller ones have been used up. I’ll cut them into quarters while you rest. When we stop for medicine I’ll look into better options to keep on board,” she said, smiling sheepishly. “I know it’s been almost three months but I still…it’s still so new, having someone with me in a space I’ve spent so long alone in.”

Natasha turned on her stool so she was facing Carol and gave her a tender look. “Hey, this is still new to me as well, so I understand,” she assured her.

Natasha’s eyes welled up suddenly and Carol stepped forward in concern but Natasha looked away and put up a hand to stop Carol from coming any nearer. A moment passed before Natasha was overcome with another sneezing fit and Carol relaxed.

“Sorry, I felt it coming on and didn’t want to sneeze in your face,” Natasha said, sniffling as she wiped her eyes. She reached back toward the table to grab a couple of the drier cloths from the table before lifting her arms to make a grabby hand gesture at Carol. “Please take me to bed before the drugs kick in and I get any more pathetic than I already am,” she begged, tiredly.

Carol laughed and easily scooped Natasha up into her arms. “You’re not pathetic, you’re adorable,” she said, walking past the bathroom and the spare bunk room to the main personal quarters on the ship. She carefully deposited Natasha on the sleeping platform and moved toward the end of the platform to begin unlacing her boots while Natasha arranged the pillows in a pile to help ease the pressure in her head.. Once her boots were off Carol arranged the blankets around Natasha until she was tucked in comfortably.

“M’not adorable,” Natasha grumbled, her eyelids drooping as she watched Carol smiling softly at her.

“You totally are.”

Natasha groaned weakly, “You’re enjoying this too much.”

Carol grinned. “Want me to hold you?”

Natasha nodded her head against the pillows. “Yes please.”

Carol climbed onto the platform beside Natasha and opened her arms. Natasha turned toward her immediately and buried her face in Carol’s chest, her hand resting above her heart. Carol shoved the pillows behind her to keep them both propped up a bit before wrapping her arms around Natasha.

“Better?”

“Mm, I love how you’re always so warm.”

Carol gently ran her fingers through red tresses, soothing. “I’m glad you think I’m hot,” she teased.

“That too,” Natasha murmured, snuggling further into Carol, “M’glad I fell in love with you. Lots of perks.”

Carol fought off a dopey grin and held Natasha a little tighter. “I’m glad you fell in love with me too, otherwise throwing myself off that cliff to get the soul stone wouldn’t have worked and then it just would have been super awkward after.”

Natasha sniffled as she smiled into the soft fabric of Carol’s shirt. “I almost broke my hand slapping you afterward, you idiot. I can’t believe that actually worked though. I guess it was kind of romantic.”

Carol craned her head down to look at Natasha, indignant. “Kind of? Only kind of romantic?”

Natasha hummed dreamily. The painkiller had started to kick in. “You scared the hell out of me, and Clint and that creepy red guy were there.” Carol scoffed. “But you know what I think is really romantic?” Natasha asked softly.

“What’s that, love” Carol asked, running her fingers through Natasha’s hair once more.

“You make m’feel safe… I n’er had tha..before you.”

Carol smiled and kissed the top of Natasha’s head.

“I love you, Tash. Sweet dreams.”

[ordinaryschmuck]

Top 10 Favorite Fictional Couples

Happy Valentines Day, people on the internet who probably won't read this! I'm an Ordinary Schmuck. I write stories and reviews and draw comics and cartoons. And even though I'm a lonely bastard who will absolutely die alone one day, I am also a sucker for romance. If a story decides to include a cute couple in it, then you better believe I'm going to gush over them for an unhealthy amount of time for a man my age. Even more so if they answer the three most essential questions that I think applies to every romantic couple in fiction:

Why do they like each other? (Looks don't count. It can be an option, but it shouldn't be the only option.)

Would it make sense for them to be together? (Like, if this couple would exist in real life, would you expect them to last.)

Do they have chemistry? (This is the most important one as a couple can dominate just by the chemistry alone.)

So today, I am going to rank my top ten favorite couples in fiction, who just so happen to answer most, if not all, of these questions. Now, I could be cute and make a top fourteen list...but not too long ago, I just listed off the twenty best-animated series of the 2010s, so I think it's best if I stick to the basics. Also, I should make a few things clear:

A. These are couples, not ships. The pairing has to have a canon kiss, or at the very least, a canon confession to be on the list. This means sorry, Lumity fans, but Luz and Amity are not going to be on this list...even though they would absolutely be #1 if they could be!

B. The couple has to at least spend an entire episode being together, which means no last-minute hookups because the writers wanted to drag out the romantic tension. (Sorry, Catradora fans)

With that out of the way, let's get started with--

10. Laura Hollis and Carmilla Kernstien from Carmilla (Web Series)

The chemistry between these two is on point. Laura’s and Carmilla's actors Elise Bauman and Natasha Negovanlis are so convincing when acting like a couple that I am honestly shocked to find out they never actually dated. This is good because everything else about Laura and Carmilla's relationship is...kind of the worst. Don't get me wrong, as a couple, these two are fantastic, adorable, well-written, and well-performed. But the writers seem very fond of keeping them bickering and broken up rather than actually having them together. And that is where the issue lies. If the writers committed to Laura and Carmilla being together instead of doing this whole "will they or won't they" crap, on top of them being selfish idiots in season two, then you better believe they would be in the top three, at least. As they are, they at least act adorable enough to make the top ten.

9. Gregg and Angus from Night in the Woods

Ok, I'm gonna level with you: I just wanted to put an mlm relationship on this list, and this was the best I can come up with (I haven't seen Good Omens, nor have I finished Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts yet to see Benson's relationship with Troy. Leave me alone). As a male bisexual, I'm kind of disappointed. I know that male pairings exist in media, but for the life of me, I don't think they are as celebrated as much, or as frequent, as female pairings have been. This is sad because I would honestly love to see how more couples like Gregg and Angus.

These two act so much like a real couple. Gregg and Angus care and support each other so much, yet they still have big arguments as any couple would. They clearly love each other but still have issues they both need to deal with if they want to grow. Plus, I'm just a sucker for opposites attract. And you can't get more opposite than the loud and bombastic Gregg and his quiet and serious boyfriend Angus. There are probably better mlm pairings than these two (And if there are, then let me know. I'd love to check them out), but Gregg and Angus prove that any relationship, no matter the gender, can be the same as any other. Both the wholesomeness and the faults.

8. Peter Parker and Michelle Jones from the Marvel Cinematic Universe

I put these two a little low because we barely see them spend time as a couple. Peter and Michelle got together at the end of Spider-Man: Far From Home, and we only get a glimpse of how their relationship works in the last few minutes. However, I'm willing to argue that they count because they are guaranteed to be a couple in the sequels, and we'll be allowed to see them grow. How often do you get to say that for other fictional couples who get together at the end of a long story? Plus, Peter and Michelle earn extra bonus points for being the best couple in a Spider-Man movie. Michelle is a league's better character than the MJ in the Sam Rami trilogy, and the chemistry is still adorable but not overtly cutesy like it was in The Amazing Spider-Man movies. So even though Peter and Michelle just got together, they show a lot of promise, if you ask me. Their interactions are adorable, you can tell that Michelle likes Peter for Peter, and they are the most accurate depictions of young love you’ll ever see. Just look at that first kiss. It was one filled with inexperience and awkwardness and I just love it! I’m already interested in what these two have to offer and I can’t wait to see what happens next with them.

7. Andy Dwyer and April Ludgate from Parks and Recreation

The best description you'll ever hear about this couple is that they are what happens when a dog and a cat fall in love. Andy is dopey, happy, and loyal to no end. April is intimidating, cynical, and is already plotting your murder as we speak. What I'm saying is that these two shouldn't work...but they do. Somehow, by every leap of logic, Andy and April complete each other. They are both so far gone from reality, yet at the same time, both keep each other grounded in more ways than one. It's a weird paradox that never ceases to amaze, nor does it cease to be adorable. They do go through bullcrap love triangles and a "will they or won't they scenario" in seasons two and three, but once that crap is over, the writers lean into the potential these two have as a great couple. And trust me when I say that it is all lovely to watch.

6. Rapunzel and Eugene from Tangled: The Series

Huh. I guess romance really does exist after Happily Ever After.

Joking aside, I was surprised by how well these two work as a pairing. Usually, when the Disney Prince and Princess get together in the end, there is nothing more to the relationship. And even if their movie gets a spin-off series, the dynamic is as generic and forgettable as it can be. For Rapunzel and Eugene, it is different. Their chemistry is top-notch, their constant love and support for each other are admirable/adorable, and the complete trust they have for one another is absolute perfection. I was already surprised by how good Tangled: The Series was, but the fact that the main couple is somehow better here than they were in their own movie is something I would have never expected.

5. Rigby and Eileen from Regular Show

And seeing how we're talking about surprises, who saw these two being the best couple in the series? With the number of times that the writers focussed on Mordecai's romantic hang-ups and how often Muscle Man and Starla were considered the only canon couple, I was shocked when it turned out Rigby and Eileen have the best loving relationship in Regular Show. Even crazier, their relationship is built entirely in the background of the first six seasons. Since her introduction, Eileen has been head over heels for Rigby since the beginning (for reasons I'll never understand), and Rigby slowly reciprocated. Until the big reveal in the season six finale, there was nothing but implications as they were trying to hide their relationship and not rub how perfect it is in Mordecai's face (no matter how much Rigby wants to). But once we get to see them as an official couple, it all becomes clear why they work so well. Eileen loves Rigby for Rigby, and will always support him, faults and all. Rigby pays it all back in spades, wanting to be a better person, as well as a better boyfriend, for the one person who always believes there was something good inside. Not even his own best friend had that much faith in him. And on top of all of that, they're just cute. They may not have been the central hook in the series, but they are definitely much appreciated.

4. Chris and Elise from Dan Vs./Millie and Moxxie from Helluva Boss

These four are tied because they pretty much have the same dynamic. Chris and Moxxie are these pathetic losers who somehow managed to marry Elise and Millie: Badass assassins who could effortlessly marry any man they want. And what they want are their pathetic losers. It's extra wholesome for Chris and Elise, as Chris really can't do that much right, especially in comparison to the ever-perfect Elise. Yet, she still cares deeply for Chris and will promptly destroy anyone or anything that causes him harm. That being said, while Millie and Moxxie are both equally deadly, there is an odd hilarity to the fact that these literal demons from hell are so gosh darn wholesome. Seriously, their literal job is to kill people who screw over those who went to hell, and I'm always going "D'aww" when M and M always do something cute. Explain that logic to me!

There's nothing more I can say about these four, as they're adorable couples that prove love comes in the most impossible circumstances and the unlikeliest places.

3. Ruby and Sapphire from Steven Universe

I'll always remember that Ruby and Sapphire are the first couple that proved to me that there is nothing wrong with a same-sex pairing, especially in children's media. Before Steven Universe, I wasn't necessarily told that same-sex couples are wrong, but they're not meant for kids. Then I found out that these two girls, on a kids show of all places, we're madly in love and my first response was: "...Huh." And this was before I knew I was bisexual, so I wasn't even that obsessed about it at the time. But the more I saw Ruby and Sapphire, and the more I learned about how starved the LGBTQ+ was for representation, the more I really appreciated them. Ruby and Sapphire never fail to be precious, and the fact that they barely spend any longer than a few minutes apart is downright heartwarming (and incredibly literal if you've seen the show). They also broke a ton of barriers to proper representation. Not only were Ruby and Sapphire one of the first explicit lesbian couples in children's animation, but they're also the first ones to actually get married. Because of such a power move, many networks and shows make it less of a challenge for writers to include more gay characters in their stories. There is still a lot of hard work that those writers face, but it certainly seems it's less of a challenge than it would be before Steven Universe came out (Ha!). Ruby and Saphire are the first fictional gay couple I have been introduced to and have made an incredible impression ever since.

2. Princess Bonnibel Bubblegum and Marcelene Abadeer from Adventure Time

But while it's Ruby and Sapphire that introduced me to the concept of a same-sex couple, it's Princess Bubblegum and Marceline that made me root for one. In (I want to say) 2017, I started rewatching Adventure Time, knowing that queer relationships were indeed a thing. This means that not only did I finally caught the INCREDIBLY noticeable subtext in "What Was Missing," but I was legitimately chanting, "Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!" when I got to the episode "Varmints." And when they finally did kiss in the series finale, I full-on jumped out of my chair and screamed, "YES!" That never happens. Not even for the straight couples that I've obsessed over before this. Either I coo at how adorable they are, or just smile a warm and gentle smile. But letting out a very audible cheer that my college roommates definitely heard? That shows how deeply I cared for these two. And can you really blame me?

Not only is the chemistry on point with Bubblegum and Marceline, but it's interesting getting to see their relationship evolve through the course of the series. They have a dynamic of a couple who broke up on bad terms (long before "Obsidian" confirmed this), and you slowly get to see them reconnect to that spark they lost long ago. Plus, the more you see them interact, the more of their history is revealed, and thus it becomes clear why they fell for each other in the first place. Bubblegum keeps Marceline responsible, while Marceline helps Bubblegum learn how to loosen up. They balance each other nicely, and after some much needed growing up from the both of them, that spark returns. And they're much more of a loving unit than they were years ago. It's incredible to watch, and I would honestly see an entire spin-off series about them. But, as great as Bubblegum and Marceline are, there is a reason they are not my number one.

(There’s no art for this one because they’re characters from a book and I don’t want to steal someone else’s fanart for the sake of my crappy Tumblr post)

1. Percy Jackson/Annabeth Chase from Percy Jackson and the Olympians/Heroes of Olympus

And that reason is that I can't resist the first-ever pairing that I obsessed over. Percy and Annabeth might just be the example I live by for how couples should be written in media. Dynamic wise, of course. In terms of telling a story, their relationship was handled poorly in Percy Jackson and the Olympians. It was filled with agonizing love-triangles, a very long wait, and they were one of those couples who didn't get together until the end of the series. Which is a major no-no, in my opinion. But, when they finally get to be a couple in Heroes of Olympus, it is downright perfection. Percy and Annabeth are what happens if these two badass warrior heroes fell in love. They worry about each other and are willing to die for each other (if need be) but still have an intense amount of faith and trust for one another. The number of times Percy or Annabeth knew they would be alright because they have each other is incredibly high, no matter what series of books they appear in. They work well together, as well as off each other. Percy is this bumbling idiot who wins his battles through a mix of luck and skill, where Annabeth is this intelligent warrior who has trained since the age of seven. They compliment each other perfectly, and their constant playful bickering is always fun. I love these two, I love their love, and they will always be one of my favorite fictional couples in media.

(That is until Luz and Amity from The Owl House become cannon. In which case, you better believe they'll be number one.)

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

And those are my favorite couples. Out of curiosity, what are yours? Or, at least, what are your top five? Don't feel afraid to let me know or even make a list of your own.

Have a happy Valentine's Day, with whoever you want to celebrate it with and however you want to do it.

Now, if you don't excuse me, I have an entire to-do list of s**t I have to do, and I gotta figure out which to work on first.

(Should I review Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles next, or do that scene breakdown for Amphibia? Oh, the possibilities are killing me...)

[lesbianrobin]

have u done an analysis on endgame st ships? a penny for ur thoughts

i have not!! i would like two pennies please. my thoughts are not actually worth that much but i think i deserve them anyway. i’m gonna talk about some stuff that may seem unrelated or only loosely related to the question but i prommy it’s relevant <3 warning this ended up being like a thousand words somehow idk how that happened but i’m putting it under a cut bc i’m nice like that.

so! something that’s kinda unique/interesting to me about stranger things is how all of their ships are so clearly telegraphed and quickly developed. there’s a sense of... impatience, for lack of a better word. on the surface, it appears to be largely an effect of the cinematic style of the show; there’s very little room for questioning who someone’s gonna end up with or for slowly developing a relationship over time when you only get eight episodes every like. twoish years. AND you have about a dozen main characters AND evil government forces AND monsters from another dimension. it’s a lot to juggle!

stranger things has a lot to accomplish in a pretty short amount of time. the timeline of a single season usually spans no more than a week (excluding flashbacks/end-of-season timeskips), and well... nobody wants the important stuff to happen offscreen! i’ll use the stoncy love triangle as an example: jancy was originally intended to get together at the end of s1 after steve’s death, but since they decided to let steve redeem himself and survive, there was just no time to separate stancy and get jancy together without it seeming wayyy too abrupt. since jancy was always their plan, they didn’t want to leave nancy with steve, but they knew they couldn’t just have that boyfriend swap occur offscreen... which is why s2 Had to have a stancy breakup plot in order for the writers to accomplish their goal of getting jancy together.

the main characters in stranger things tend to maintain homeostasis between seasons, their circumstances and relationships rarely changing any more than the audience might have just assumed they would anyway (like lucas and max dancing together + sharing a kiss at the end of s2 and officially dating by the start of s3). steve and nancy are dating at the end of s1, so they must still be dating at the start of s2, and thus we must break them up DURING s2. joyce and hopper are friends with some deeply buried feelings in s2, so they’re friends with Less Buried feelings that must become apparent during s3. excluding the stancy situation (for reasons which i think are obvious but i will talk more about later), momentum is always forwards. mileven, lumax, and jancy argue, but they come back together, presumably more mature and stronger than before. 

all of this is to say that stranger things has thus far been rather dedicated to their starting ships. there isn’t much misdirection; mike’s crush on el is obvious from the start, nancy and jonathan share charged moments even while she is with steve in the beginning, lucas shows interest in max immediately and shares more significant interactions with her than the other boys from early on in s2, and the deep loyalty and care between joyce and hop is always apparent. steve and robin (initially intended to be together romantically) hold hands quite early in s3 and dustin asks steve about whether he likes her. 

the point? stranger things doesn’t dick around when it comes to love! they handle their ships with remarkable efficiency. in each season, it tends to be pretty obvious from the start who’s going to end up with who, and heading into the show’s fourth season, almost everybody is paired off: mike and el, max and lucas, joyce and hop, nancy and jonathan. which leaves us asking... are all of them going to last until the end?

we’ve only had one true breakup on the show so far, and as i’ve said before, the stancy breakup is an anomaly as it was essentially “righting a wrong,” allowing jonathan and nancy to get together as they were intended to do from the start. the only other romantic relationship to end on the show was between joyce and bob, and well... we all know why that ended, and it started/ended within the confines of a single season. 

stranger things tends to treat each season as an extended film, right? they draw inspiration from classic 80′s films, and each subsequent season after s1 is treated as a sequel (they are Literally referred to as stranger things 2 and stranger things 3). when they introduce tension in a season, they’re inclined to resolve that tension by the season’s end so that people leave satisfied, while also providing a plot hook for the next “sequel” for audiences to theorize about. this hook is always part of the grander plot, not a will-they-won’t-they tease or something else of the sort. remember, they could have broken up steve and nancy in s2 and waited to get jancy together in s3, but they didn’t! they wanted to go ahead and resolve the tension! 

while there are narrative and practical incentives that i’ve covered for this impatience/efficiency/[insert better word i can’t think of here], i also think it kinda reveals something about the writers of the show. to some degree, they genuinely care about and want their ships to be together! we’ve watched them introduce new characters just to kill them off a couple of times now, and i think it’s fair to say that the writers might be a bit too attached to the mains to consider killing any of them off (at least prior to the series finale). maybe... this reluctance to kill their darlings extends to ships.

romance isn’t the primary draw of the show, but an indulgence, something that there may not always be time for but that the writers continue to prioritize as much as they can because they enjoy it, or feel that it is important to the overall product. if we accept this idea, that the inclusion of and focus on so many romantic relationships in stranger things is (to some degree) indicative of the writers’ own desires, then it might inform our speculation regarding endgame ships.

i’m not here to like... really actually assert that i know what’ll be endgame, because i don’t really know jack shit. however, i do think that the writers are pretty invested in all of the current canon st ships (and yes, i am including jopper in that, as their romantic development was explicit in s3). i also think that the writers like catering to fans, leaning into popular jokes (steve “the hair” harrington) and devoting more and more time to the ships fans obsess over (particularly mileven). 

with this all in mind... i really think that most if not all of the current canon ships will be endgame. 

i think that barring any extreme circumstances (i.e. a character Actually dying instead of just fake dying) jopper will be endgame. they’re the only ones that the writers have had the restraint to actually do a slow burn with, and i really can’t see them devoting so much to developing their dynamic just to say it was all for nothing in the end. 

i’m less confident on the others. there are some signs in canon that the remaining couples have some serious problems and may not last, but these issues are often dismissed, played for comedy or brushed over within the text itself, and many of the details within the text contradicting this dismissal are often so small that it’s unclear whether they’re intentional or not. while breaking up mileven might make perfect sense for a fan who reads into subtext and pays attention to unusual acting choices and subtle parallels, it would be a pretty risky move on the surface level. allowing these ships to remain canon for awhile and garner large fanbases only to break them up later would require both a willingness to actively contradict the desires of their audience as well as a certain degree of restraint in their romantic storytelling, which runs counter to the impression i personally have of the st writers (this is, of course, my own personal opinion).

there’s a good chance that at least one of the current canon ships will break up by the end, if only because i think that it would be a little boring if every relationship stayed the same for almost the entirety of the show’s run, and the stranger writers like to keep things new and exciting. perhaps long distance will kill jancy or mileven, or lucas and max will go off again and never come back on, but either way i wouldn’t be surprised if we got a breakup in s4. even with that, though, i think it’s somewhat likely that a current couple may break up in s4 and get back together for the series finale, just for the sake of a little suspense. overall, though, i feel like our current canon ships are going to be more or less the same at the end of the show.

that’s about it. i suppose i didn’t really... answer the question you asked skdndsdkjc i feel like you probably just wanted to know like if i’m a byler endgame truther (which i am not but i could happily be proven wrong). thank you for asking, though! i hope this made at least a little bit of sense.

[throwingideasatthewall]

Star Wars   Episode 4;

    Destroy malevolence

Didn’t we just do that?

I’m assuming this is going to be focusing on the     aftermath of the        destruction       of  the        malevolence

And the preceding unraveling of       general grievous’s      net work

 [And several        acquaintances         probably          trying           to    break    him  out,]

Anyway...

On with          It!

       Quote;

  “A Plan is only as good         as those          who see it out,”

   Odd                 I’ve      Stopped      giving much stock        into the    quotes

 Consider ing     the last one     had a relatively good      one

 And     Is on the    lower     end    of     my     expectations

 My criticism       of this       Is a       Short    Plans can be good         But   People flawed

  The   narrator   sounds     a    bit    more   enthusiastic

 Weirdly      drawn     out      pause

But      it   does     get     the      point   across

 Allows   enough     time

“ Grievous          in       retreat,”              Honestly           Is        this       where       we’re      going        to       start

    Like       no      disrespect-         (I have the       patience)    But are we honestly going to spend the whole entire time watching Obi-Wan fuck up catching Grievous?

 That would work       with the theme         of       Jedi Masters

They make it seem a lot less   stupid

[Recap

 Also        I really like the movement on the     ship

Much     more     real istic 

       Continuing to          Hold on it       not so much

  This is like         someone     continuously          kicking        someone         when they’re         already         down

Or like a fire

 After a while      it just gets sort of    boring

 Or worrying

 And you realize they could  just     take them   into custody

 Or that the fire is starting to     envelope   nearby    forest     With       everyone      having         a bucket of     water

Obi wan, why

 Do     you   torment    so?

He can’t even   die

If so;      He’d     be dead

 I love how       Plo Koon       and       him       are          just    watching      the      shit     show      like            “Bitch”

   You know they could both take         him

  But are just that dedicated to being   sandry old man

“Commander, how much damage to the      enemy ship?”

 Have they suffered    enough?

  Also, geez dude’s been demoted it to       commander

    I mean I know he’s just       Comms Guy              But geez.         (He probably       deserved it)

Oh no,        Random     dude          On          The       ground

    Why?

 “ She’s lost primary       shields and stabilizers,”

   So shooting at it is doing      minimal damage

             “ It can take all the fire               our cannons                  can manage,”

           Okay,                    time to get you two                down there

           “ we must     summon            reinforcements,”

     Plo is slowly becoming that we          “need reinforcements”            guy

      Like          he can’t do anything           by himself

       (Except           for last           episode)

     “ That’s why          I’m here        Master Plo,”

  That’s not the right       tone

   And.....          I was kind of hoping we’d get a        Master Plo and        Obi-Wan episode

   This time       around

   Never mind the fact that         Anakin can’t take on grievous

   “ what are you able to contact              Master               (Liam Niara)                   (That’s how voice text spells it)                (I have no idea)

        “ Yes, master,”

       That’s better

    “She’s busy with a bunch of separatist         reinforcement’s nearby,”

   Bit too much     eye movement       but otherwise      good

  “ she won’t       be able to give us support till she’s turn        ing them away,”

Meanwhile         you’ve already pretty much      kill ed         him

    Guess            just         play        poker?

   Then        we’ll  have to do with what we have

   Oh now with the teenager around you’re so brave

  How’s        that going to help?

Burning

On fire

Really, no   mercy

Poor     droid     jerking   around

Ex     ploding

Perfect balance of kar       mic   pay       back

“We’ve      lost      our    primary       weapon,”

  Shit     just     continues    to                get       worse      and      worse

General     grievous      is        just              there        with his hands       in his head

Not        looking       too    great

“ The hyper drive is dis   -abled,”

It’s been disabled since last episode but good     repeating

Good      to         re-iterate

“Argh,”

“ General       general,”

   The     forward   engines        are     shutting     down

“ im   poss     ible,”

Dude,     look         around

That’s   pretty        -         heavy         denial

You     should     just     sur       -render

More Sho              -oting

 This        is       going         to         be        a         sl   -ow       ep      i      sode

Ahsoka       Managing       systems

   A not    bad role       for her

 Certain-

“ Admiral            Status-        Re        port,”

    Shit’s         fucked        once        again

    They’re           hyperdrive         must        be       damaged

    What          you         didn’t         figure          out           the           first          time          will        Obi          won         must’ve         checked

   Compulsively             For the         170th time           in the last           hour

     “This            our          chance”

It wasn’t a few seconds ago?

     “all         ships        target       the      bridge     maximum         fire        power,”

   Dude,        what       do       you      think      that’ll        do

 Grievous         is      made          out        of      pure        titanium

   It’s       like..          a      slightly         long       fall           for      him..

 Generals..     really     don’t    wanna     deal     with   Grievous’s      shit     today

Episode is     22:40      Long       Left

 All     they’re     doing       is     shooting    at     him

Grievous     Called      Dooku

“Dad      I       crashed       the     car,”

Sustained     advanced   damage

 “ I know,”

Just     dead   panned

“ I have     arranged         a       trap,”

Oohh!     Interesting

  But     Also        completely        bullshit

   Guess       this            is           his       punishment

  Being       used        as        bait

  “To     give     you      an     advantage    over       the   Jedi,”

 “ I   assure   you,”

 Please       no

You’re not compound     your failure     this day,”

 Ah, there’s       the chewing out     I was looking for

 Perfect

Continue

 “ war       ship        to       fall,”

 Oh so it wasn’t going to be a - get them sent to prison- thing

 So     how are you planning to       unfuck                 the situation

Cause      this looks pretty bad

  They will never catch me or this ship

             Bless him               he’s trying

              The expression just says                 ‘I have no idea               how’

           Like              He            knows           what’s          expected            of          him          but         has         no          idea

    How?!

   Heading       towards          you         is          a        very      important      galactic        senat        or,”

   In the middle of a       war zone

Seriously       not        a     good       time      for         a   photo     op

 “ With      her         as        a      hostage,”

  “call       off       the      attack,”

  Ok no one is calling off an      attack this important      for        a   senator

  Nor     should      be    letting      her        get    captured         ....

 *Bowing    down*

*Assumed authority*

 Blue

 It   looks   remarkably    better     this     episode             👍     Also        of        course        it’s      Padme        Amidala     Couldn’t        be        any      of      the    4000     other    senators       we     know     nothing      about              

   Really           getting       into         the      love     triangle      stuff      right        away,           aren’t         we?

  Like       why   couldn’t      we     slow     burn        it

 (I   know    she    was       in    the   movie)     But

  I     wouldn’t         mind    “Are   you       sure   the     infor   mation      from     the     chan cellor     Palpatine       is   reliable?”

Fore     shadowing!

Good    job     authors       you       get      a   cookie

“ it was secretly given to him         by the leader of the     Bank-he Clan,        himself!”

 Okay        Amidala’s          tone      kinda      works

 Could      use       a       little       more   monotone     but      it   works

   I gave Anakin like      three   tries       so       I’m     not   gonna       be    too     harsh

There        is       still       time      for      the     minimal     improve      ment        it      needs

“ if they       leave     the   separatist     alliance     it     will    go     along      way       to   shortening   this   war,”

Er-     Okay      it   makes   sense   for     her   character

 She’s sup   posed      to be   around      the same       age      as   Anakin

“Beep,       Beep,”

 “ We’re     approaching       the     system       now,”

  “Oh     shit,”

Crud

 “ my   goodness,”

  Best      Droid

 “This        isn’t        right,”

   Then        Move!

   That’s          a       droid     warship

    “We’re          in         the       middle          of          a       battle!”

   Hey,        that’s          a        smart      character

   Hyper drive out of there

  “ we’re scanning         a small ship off         our bow,”

     Get out of        there   “ Good,”

 Yeah, how are you going to get     her?

 Seeing as how  like a million warships are belting     your bow?

  I know those must be like       raindrops to him

But     come on

Don’t      go    into    the    burn     -ing      wreckage

   And       towards      enemy        fire

 Then   again     she     was     probably    heading     towards      the     Jedi        ship

   So     (as       a   civilian)       that       makes          sense

   “Master          I’m        picking           up            a         signal          near           the         enemy        vessel,”

   Tone

    Enemy     reinforcements

   That’s-            A         Good          Call

Respectively

 “ it looks like-”

 “A Naboo ship”

  “Gunners        stand         day,”

     Hey      everyone’s     competent         today!

      (Not          that         there’s           anything         wrong          with          enablers           being           stupid)

       This          just           requires          more          brain       power

   “ what          in      Blazers        are       they      doing      out     here?”

   A valid     response

  But      weren’t       they         the       ones        that        pledged        transport        ships?

  Like      oh      yeah      stupid going out into a war zone

   But     not      completely      out of the question

 “ Ahsoka      contact         that ship,”

  Bit      too      much      energy

    But       still         resp        ect           able

     Literally          coming        from        fiery        hell

     Identify        yourself

  “Padme       what        are       you       doing      out     here,”

  Cringe

   That line sounds like boomer.        What boomers think high school      jocks sound like

   And we’re like  no

  “ I       was       sent      on         a    special    mission,”

  Good      job     Writers

  The        ‘Bang he         Klan        Wanted        to negotiate        a treaty

   Good      reason

   “Get       out        of      there,”

  Too        Force        ful

   Better        Idea;        Have     Obi-Wan         try         to         calmly      explain         the         situation            to           her

      Possibly       distracting          her for        general       grievous           to       kidnap

   “ Activate              the         tractor         beam,”

     Damn        we’re       going        back         to  old old sci        Fi- with tractor beams and       shit

     I was expecting like a hook and chain,     a harpoon

   Was not expecting   that

     That        made        me         laugh

   WTF

   Tell      them        some     nonsense        is        going         on!

   “i’m     afraid       it’s        much     worse      than      that,”    Gunners          Do        Something?!

   it’s a beam; it can be broken

  “ Padme what’s happening?”

  A go- decent response

   “ i’m         being         pulled         inside        the      droid      cruiser        by        a      tractor      beam,”

   Good     Commun        ication

  Whelp,        Done

   So       at      22: 40           Rest       of        the     episode         is   hostage     situ      ation?

Inter      es    ting

 Much      Better      Than         Just      Shooting        at        it       for        an      hour

    “I will not be made a separatist bargaining      chip,”

    Initiative

    Though           Less          Emo        -tion

    Should           be       recited        like       something       she       had        to      read        off        a   paper

Guessing I’m not Padme I’m Padme’s    handmaiden  thing only works     once

Continue       your    attack

 You     must   continue-

I hope     she get some   actual action

Nothing too intense       because she’s still a kid

But like a surprise attack on     General grievous

Destroy     this   monstrous   ship

That’s kind     of      like-

How-

I saw the next frame

Wtf-

WTF

  HIS FACE JUST-

CON-torts

    You are not Romeo and Juliet   movie

    You are two kids reinacting Romeo and Juliet              clumsy

   Get it right

  “Admiral,     order      our   ships     to   stop     firing,”

 No   one’s   gonna    stop     this

 No   one‘s   gonna   comment...

Okay....

Obi-Wan      And        Plo   Koon          are        just     gone

  Left      when      Anakin      started       acting    unchild like

   Never     mind      still       there

 Nothing   suspicious      *Rubs    beard*

 Whelp

   It     does      not     look       safe       out     there      my     lady

  Screw      with      the     tractor      beam      and       leave

  No      one    can     stop   you

Droid     Related

 “I      see     now   this   whole   thing   was     a   trap,”

The     Bang’he       Clan     Works      With           The-

    I       can’t     even     make     that         joke   because       the   bang’he      clan      are   working      with       the     separatists

  Good    writers       you       out     joked      me

“ we   walked    right    into     it,”

 Pressing     buttons       isn’t   going       to   help   lady

Sir  the     republic   cruisers     have     halted    their   attack

Bit   too   much   emotion      for     a     droid     but    it   works

“Jedi     are     so   predictable,”

  Hit       him       with          a      gun

   Get        the      repair       team      up     here

  “ i’m     going     down      to       the   main   hanger,”

The arm motion was a little weird...     for ‘I’m going down to the main     hanger’

 Street    Railways?

Are we   getting *tour    the inside of the    ship??

Nice

This     ship   must     be   returned      to   Count     Dooku     intact

Nice   little   interaction

Rail      ways

There’s     no   room     for   failure

Hard       Moral

One      on   fast   speed    ing   train

Moves       over       to   another   pad

   Don’t     think     that’s   gonna   help

“Come        on     I’ve   over       loaded     the   power     system,”

 THAT’S        actually      really      clever

   Good          job     whoever        gave         that        order

    General      grievous        goes          boom

    Fighter        door       opens

    Find            a       Fighter

    And        fly        out

   * Anakin        walks          away*

       You know this would be a good idea if Obi-Wan had ordered him to do so when feeling the emotion of ‘love’, miscommunicating the concept of love, and didn’t realize that’s what he was doing -  what clues him      in

“ where do you think you’re going,”

 “ someone’s got to save     her,”

    Still too much emotion

   “I thought you might say     that,”

     Did you give him that, did you give him an        order relevant to that?

     There he goes   again

     Yeah           Someone        should         really        check         up        on       that

     Or       get    Obi-Wan         to        lay off           the       suicidal      orders

  “Craving     adventures        and     excitement,”

     No,      orders

   “ You        get         used           to         it”

Could      be     just       a     response

  But     too     much    reaction        And      Person         ality

   Oh,          Shit’s        On          Fire

   “Come on 3PO hurry,”

     Flaming wreck lady

    “not sure this is such a good       idea,”

   Neither     is       being       held      captive

   You’re made of like solid gold

 Timing

  [also the announce in the background        like a train station - just cracks me up]

  Time to get blown up

   “ Mind the gap”

   “Mind the gap”

      Haha

     You        two       come       with       me

 Command

That droid’s-

 No, wait-         It’s Amidala

   And C3PO

  He’s trying to      help

   Looks       Inside

  Beeping

   Timer

   Look     like        the   engine-         Are           Set           To -

    Timing

   “Destroy          themselves,”

     He        really        needed        them         to        say           that

   Get      out       of      my     way

 “Ow,”          You        don’t      want          to       die

   That’s         just           rude

    So         is     death

   You    should       get       out        of        there

    He’s        going               to       come         back        around

   Geez

   Fire squad         is a train         wreck

    They’re          Trying

      Crud      if this gets back to      Skywalker          and        he      thinks       she’s      dead

  After        That     Speech

  Who knows what toxic morals of love         Obi-Wan taught him         could activate

  This could       become     a train      wreck

 Ahhh!

 It got      worse

Seriously       who made the droids that have to        with      stand       high    water pressure          Light weights

   Oof

  Even high water pressure        cannot kill him

  Even running away      cannot save him

 Wonder     what that attack       would’ve done

 Sound the alarm

 “We have stowaways,”

   Or...

   She was never on that   ship

   Seriously      no one besides the republic      saw her 

I’d go with “she isn’t on board,”

   Run

Back     to the        republic ships

   Who are doing       nothing         while grievous rebuilds

    Like,         The medical station is   right there

    You might want to get back       on moving     them

Just Saying

  “ i’ve trusted you already formulated a brilliant   plan to     rescue     the      Senator,”

 “ as a matter of fact     I have,”

 Umm,

Weird        How to     Code     that

“ what do you have a Plan B               Every     good plan has a back up,”

  Stop        forcing his    dependence on you

 “ I don’t   have a back up   yet,”

  Too     much    emotion

 Really

 Questioning

Not really   helping his   self-esteem

Really “ we’ll sneak behind them and dock at the emergency air     lock,”

   So I’m guessing this is going to set up     Padme     going       there

“ That’s       your        plan?”         Discouraging

“Fly     land,”

That’s literally what all maneuvers     rely on

Also     it       sounds       like   something     out      of       a     fairy     book

  Which        might        explain      Anakin      toxic      behavior

  “ Walk        in         the        door,”

 “Basically,”

    Too      much       emotion

  “Oh     Brilliant,”

  Dick

 Firey       Wreck

 “ Might I suggest we keep     moving?”

   Bit       Loud         There            It

   “ I think        I hear      battle droids   approaching,”

  Talking         is      not     helping

 “But      we also need to contact         the fleet,”

     Getting out is the prerogative

      They don’t know where you are

       And you can’t stay in a constant       location

       If I can just keep this        com panel working

     Ahhh!

Well     just      disappeared

 “The Damage to the hyper drive       was not as bad as        we first        thought,”

   How?!

  It’s been     damaged     for about    two episodes

 Also, Good for    Her

“ We’ll be able to get underway again shortly,”

  With this   mess of a ship

   Hyperdrive would send half of it flying

   It’s barely holding together by a      string

   You’re     screwed

 I must inform count     Dooku

 Seems     oddly    suspic.

Continue the search

 Find the     stowaway 

  How does    that change anything      in Amidala’s eyes

 Getting     to know the boss     isn’t worth it

Just be more careful

  Roger, roger

  Commander

 Intimidating

  *Spark*

  Oh        She       Was          In          A        Cabinet

   Thought         she       made           it        in

  C3PO        Looks      creepy       in      one     frame

   Shit’s        Constantly          on         fire

    “If they spot us        we’ll be pulverized,”

     With what guns??

     You’ve been doing all the hitting           this entire time

     They’ve been sitting         Geese

     “They’re            too           busy repairing the ship,”

       Thank you

       [also Obi-Wan              complainers rules]

       “ They             don’t                   have              time                to             notice              us,”

         Cocky

        Subtlety               has            never            been             one              of             your            strong             points             Anakin

Neither        Yours            Person           who           orders            him!

“ Everything       I     know       I      learned     from        you     master,”

  Point       Yes      Attitude?     No

   Oh       if      only      that      was      true

  Should            Be

   Might         be          a              side           jab              at           how           he          took          orders           from            the        Chancellor

     There          we          go

     Only      Obi-Wan        was          worried

  “Didn’t         You         Hear       It,”

    Your        circuits          are       loose

    Or       maybe       you’ve       lost       your   hearing

From        the   impact

 “ No      one’s        crazy      enough           to        do         that,”

    Cut

  “Anakin”

   Perfect

 “You’re        Crazy,”

   You   groomed      him      this      way

“ spinning           is          not       flying”

    “But          it’s          a      good      trick,”

   Too     much   emotion

   Do      not     want       to       be        spotted

   Good       job

   You’re      standing        more        in              the       doorway         than         he          is

    “I knew it it’s them,”

     That droid       is just having a day

      Aww              But his        friend came down           to check           with him

    That’s adorable

    Oh no

   They’re backing off       peacefully

 ASSHOLES!

Obi-wan     specifically

   You stay here           R2

  Again     why did you bring him

  Another        bold strategy by -

     Say Skywalker

     ‘Skywalker’

      Ordered

     “I presume,”

    No, Obi-Wan’s 

 When it’s not Palpatine’s

    “That’s my master”

           Children               don’t                show          preference                  for            handlers

      “ once they rescue the Senator we will need to reinforcement to finish off the enemy

    Sounds nonsense           but OK

          Dude             really              Likes         enforcement’s                 “ i’m on my way,”

       “Master Plo”

  “ We’re receiving a transmission,”

    Padme

Weird distance to start a conversation at

Running for some reason

 “ Master          we found the     senator,”

   Good

“ We’re patching       Her through,”

 Helpful...?

  What       is       it       with    Skywalker      and   becoming         a     Barking        over-   animated     Puppet      Every      time     senator       Amidala      gets     involved            ?

“Anakin       where       are       you,”

   Better;        where        are      your    coordinates

    “ On       lower      levels,”

   Better       but      where

   “I don’t          know,”

    Give a better location

     For how long

     Problem with this whole plan

      Give Landmarks

      Get to the     rendezvous point

     “Obi won and I are on board too,”

     Better; get to the ship on level ____ on your ___ side                 Optional; Closest landmark ____

             We’ll meet you   there

           What what are you doing?

           Not the best point to      argue

       Ahsoka, how can we get to the senator

     Better how can we both get to the escape pad?

    In case   we both get separated

    Taking longer to coordinate       that complicated-

    How long till they get separated?

    Center of the ship

Half way between the two of you

 Neither      Ahsoka gave neither

   Bad instructions

“ we’re on our way

    To a very unspecified point on not   specified level at a not specified   time

Let     the hijinks   commence

 “ Did                    you hear that                                    Padme?”

You’re on the same com

 “ i’ll be there,”

   Some-how

The question    to my answer was       22:40

  When do the Hijinks begin?

   Let’s             See

Marching      Intimidated 

  “we just detected        An unauthorized communication          Coming from within the        ship,”

    Shouldn’t he be making a phone      call?

  “ what did it           say?”

  Interesting

Well      we don’t know

 That’s how encoding works

 We didn’t catch it in   time

 Off

 Droid     winces

Monitor     all internal     communications

Like they’ll do it again

I want   that senator    on this bridge

Good   luck with that

You haven’t   even   saw her

Rail-ways

Nice

Busy

Should be a cakewalk

Is Not a cakewalk

All the way up there

“I do not see her,”

 Yeah, that’s the problem-

 She’s here master

I sent it

Or you got the wrong port

(So you heard her voice     so she’s clearly somewhere on this ship)

 He’s probably late again

But we do have company of another sort

Oh        She has a gun

  And somehow none of that hits     her

   And of course that gets the attention

    I’m honestly glad they didn’t go with miscommunication          Causes        fake stand up         scenario

      Even if this is         faux       Romeo and Juliet

     Good job

    Lots of       jumping

    Look     Jedi

    Good job         nice guy

    No wait         That one       guy had     common sense

   “I knew that was a bad idea,”

    Mercy

    That you didn’t show on the other      guys

    Who       were far more hesitant

     And you took out that    one guy

    Who didn’t do   anything

     Just wasn’t as  vocal

     Dicks

    Jump The peashooter      isn’t doing the job?

   Jump

 He tried

  Power      Thrust

  Ana       kin

“ There.      they          are!”

    Bull         shit

  No way     

he saw those guys

 On all those     Packages

 Also       ‘the i knew     It was      a bad     Idea     Guy       Got     New     Friends

“Fire!”

Fuck

The   bridge     is     out

“Jump     to me,”

 Try       it   with     a     little    bit     more         disinterest

“ I’ll use the force”

Even she realizes it’s not that     intense

  “ You have to trust me,”

    Good Luck

  OMG

 It looks like     she just      falls

Also Obi-wan’s in the back   like     it’s none of my business

Like dude came on a rescue mission      And     has become completely useless     never helped   once     Complained  the whole way   there

Manages

“Got you,”

“ NICE    CATCH,”     Obi  -Wan from the sidelines

    10/10        Hilarious

“ I’ll fetch the droid,”

   What??

       No

This          isn’t                   cute

     Disgusting

“Oh the things you do to get me alone,”

   KIDS don’t-

    Ack-

Please      no     more     smoopy-

nope

I’m     putting   it in     the    “bad”    corner      Till       it   stops   trying     to     ship   children

  Bad    Movie

 That’s          Not     Cute

Obi-wan             Sucks

   Can’t      even      levitate        A       Droid

  “Stop         me       please”

    Poor        Droid

    Blast          You’re            Weak

     “ That’s           not           good”

         Yeah             you’re               weak

          “Anakin               I got            separated                from                your                  droid,”                  Thank                   God

                 I’ll                   take                  care                    of                      it

             Better                             “ We’ll                   meet                      you                      back                        at                     the                    Twilight”?

                 “ I                overheard                 grievous,”

            Annnnnd

     “ They’re hyper-drive             is nearly fixed,”

       Soooo, He better get you back to the      ship so we can start blasting it with Cannon balls again?

“ i’m already headed in that direction,”

  Soooooo, don’t do it, Obi-wan?

  Or have Anakin and take the extremely important senator       And come back for you later?

  “ i’ll make sure the   hyperdrive stays off line,”

  By shooting it with more cannon-balls?

Ha ha Ha ha ha

  We’ll see about that

 What?!        Person who can do nothing!

 Like seriously if they just go back to the ship-

  That Jedi

“I’m getting you out of here,”

  Good decisions

 “I need you to help me find 3PO,”

 How?

“ I know I know     he does,”

 Padme’s        expression

“And       i’ll be there     soon,”

  That’s        almost       adorable

       Oh          like          that

‘Someone stop this contraption,”

Careful        Words

  Yeet

There        We          Go

  Into      those      boxes

“ I       suppose             I did ask for that,”

Ha-he

   That got a small giggle   out of me

 Stomping

  Bait

Murderous        Intent

 Get        Fucked        Obi   Wan

Really    rolling out all the stops

Hahaha

 “ Hello there,”

 [Took a pause.   a long break]

  General Kenobi

“ kill him,”

Straight.       To.     The.       Point.

More in line with the characterization we’ve seen up so far, not that much for conversation

Dude’s       just rolling

 There        went the others

 Bowling    pins            they          are

Oh     grievous   has     a     gun

And   hiding behind the enemy

Thought     he sent     both those     guys flying

Apparently     I was wrong

Must’ve        Been        a       Third

 Ha

Didn’t     Work

Yeet

That    poor      Droid...

 Spark*

  That        was        impressive

    Nah      he        ran      around      things

It really set up your forces for a     brawl among       them selves

“Argh,”

Dude,   how   insecure

“ Guard         the         hyperdrive,”

Oh     yeah       he      did      shit        to         it

  Also   sending     basic       level      mooks        to     deal     with        it

Shooting         Things

 Again       how      did   Anakin         and   Padme     end      up     in      the    situation?

 They      were      at      the     train    station      last

  Now         they’re         at??

 And       have      agroed         every       enemy

  Who      should       be     focusing       on    Obi-Wan   because 

  That        was        their     last        order

   Grievous      has      just         completely       ignored       Anakin

 Hiding

 You          aggroed              Them!

  Why      are        you      calling       Obi -Wan

“Come in     Obi-wan,” 

 Get     her     to       the shuttle

“ i’m afraid     grievous     is onto     us,”

“We      noticed,”

 Hey   you guys Aggroed those guys completely on your own     don’t blame Grievous   for this

“Ack,”

Those      are      Tanks

 You’re  peashooter     isn’t going       to       do       much

 Also,          Anakin      shouldn’t     be     able       to      take     them   either

This           should       be        a     properly     terrifying     moment

“ We’ll           meet      you     back        on       the     twilight,”

Good     plan

“Obi-   Wan!”

Writers      don’t     screw       this        up

 “Come     In,”

 His   communicuff     clearly    got   damaged

What’s      wrong?!

 They’re       jamming      all     communication

No again   it’s far more likely that his       communicuff        Got     Damaged     (Especially   with      Grievous      listening        in,”

Not everything is     jammed communi         cations               Yeet, yeet         Yeet

That     should    not     work Those        are     tanks

Anakin   is        a     lightweight

His skill set is     unspecified

But     he shouldn’t  be able to cut more than     butter with that knife

Light wieght     clankers     should   pose    a   challenge

Due   to   the   amount   of   energy

  “That    might      buy         us      some         time

   Unlikely

   I       suppose         you        have          a        plan      Yeah,          Get           to            the         escape         pad

     Follow            Me

    ...To          the          escape           pod

      C3PO             I do believe           I’m lost

       Seriously            you           haven’t           found              this             guy

       Enemy          Territory

       And           all            alone

       You’re         a           service            droid

         Probably             wouldn’t              notice              anything

             “Ah,”

             Dude, they’d probably just adopt       you into the clan

            “ I surrender,”

               Again I really want to see the C3PO and battle droids     conversation

               (When not aware of the other side)

 It’s      a projector...          R2 D2

    “ you are a sight for    old eyes,”

      A nice   interaction

“ Master     Anakin         sent       you          to       find        me,”

  “ what        kept           you        then?”

     He      does         have         a       point

    Dude     got   thrown      off      the     train    about      an     hour     ago

R2′s      just been messing with him

“ follow me,”

“ The general        is demanding     a        status report,”

Oh some driod on droid    interactions    (without   the    general)

 Nice

Is    the    hyperdrive   re-paired         Yet

  From     there?

“ i’ll     give     him     the   good   news,”

This   isn’t   the       escape     pad

Did   you   take   a   wrong    detour?

Also    no   one   guarding   the   super   important    one   panel   repair

Just       Light weight    clankers

   Also that’s not   good news

  (Especially considering       it’s one panel)

   Surprised     this goes      so well

Also;      now     there’s      tanks

  Surprised you think that peashooter can do anything   ma’am

   Like seriously   should’ve grabbed a bigger gun

  The   droids     have     some

  And      you can’t tell me       there       hasn’t been artillery     laying around    this     entire       time

   Yeet

  That almost-      Turned into murder                 This is why not going to the escape pods      immediately    was       a      bad      idea

  Again          this       should        be         a      stressful        fight

But turning your child soldier       Into an all powerful      can never lose       child soldier

 Is bullshit       movie

 Opened   Door

  “Ever since I’ve known you       you’ve been playing       with droids,”

  Ack

 “I used to put them together,”

  Alright...

 Now I only take them   apart      Child soldiering...

  It sucks

So,    where do we start

GETTING TO THE ESCAPE PAD!

Obi-Wan      supposed to be here                               any minute!

With whole lot of     bullshit!

   Move!

First we need to get one of these     droids so they don’t know we were here

No destroy the thing and     go

They’ll figure it out in like   five seconds

When they go to start the thing     up!

Running is a good   option

“I’m gonna     hot wire   this ship,”

How does       this make       anything            better?

 He’s already down   and       in kicking position

  Everyone’s waiting for Amidala

 You’re not helping, good sir!

  (In fact I’m pretty sure   you’d have to fix something       To make     it go,”

Secondly,      This is a     HUGE    -ass ship

As a reason it has an   electrical team

Squeezing two little   wires

Isn’t going to do       much

It requires continuous effort   to different parts of the ship       To make a dent

And I truly doubt     such   a large ship is going to have such a     non-complicated        Start-up     compared   to hotwiring     a car

Point being;     this shouldn’t work

Give      Grievous      a little surprise

Again    if it’s anything less     Then a      bomb

 Dude isn’t   gonna have   much             trouble

And    this      is       a         waste       of      time

I’ll guess     I’ll clean up the droids   then

LITERally im   possible

That’s     a      tank!

 You   carry   light     weaponry!

Back     to    the   fleet

Plo           Koon         Is       doing     nothing

Having     tea   and   cookies   with     Ahsoka

Our     ships   are       in     attack     position

So...    nothings   changed

“Master     Skywalker,”

  No      one        else      either

   “No,”

Deadpanned

 “ The      droids        are     jamming      our     transmissions,”

(More   likely   reason     for     that      on       a       -damaged     ship)

But      Ergh-

“We need to give him more     time,”

 Opinion!

“ i’m sure we can,”

I’ve been sitting on my ass-         

  [Plo’s            Head        Moves     -Railway]

   We’re         back         here      again?

   Obi-Wan         should         be         at        the     station        by         now

    Everything         is       behind        him

   Yeet

   Yeet

Make it to the   Coms   center

Break      Some      Shit

Oof     Those       Poor     Droids            Good      Pa     rell       els

  Splat!

 Obi won    looking   back-and-forth

 Obi-Wan       you       are        a      Jedi     master       this      shouldn’t       be     hard

  Run

Tum   ble

I was fully planning on   him   stacking it

Roof

Also, Obiwan

  Stop fecking         Around

  Get to the   place

  Woof

How

Did you   end up   falling over?

Ironically Obi-Wan    shows    less    emotion    than     Anakin

* Slashing      the       train*

 Okay...     what     did     I   do

Snarky        little     shit

 Could        be     snarkier

 “That         oughta    do it,”

Ana     -kin      Doing      Obi-wan’s          Job

 Also   Oh     shit      is he       plugging           in       the            location         of         that       supposed          fight           with           master-

How’s the house cleaning going-

 Im-

 That dude made out of     -metal

  He is     FIVE    times     your   bodyweight!

 HOW?

 Done?

 You     MOVED         a     Tank??

HOW-

 That’s-

What       ever

 * Guys       coming            in*

    Oh   yeah       that’s         a       door

       I         guess       repairs         are       finished

Or       they went       on      lunch       break

   Prepared        to charge        up the hyperdrive

     Right on it

“Roger, Roger,”           -famous last words

   Sparking

 Driving

  Are we      seriously      waiting     on   these   two

“Are      you   quite   sure   the   ship       is       in   that   direction?

He’s   basically   a   GPS

That     way    looks   potentially   dangerous

All   of    them   do

 “Haz       ardous,”

 Better   Example     beeping   irritatedly

“I know       the whole     place      is    dangerous,”

  Thank you   R2-     D2

“ I   suggest   we       stay   here   and    let   master   Anakin   find   us,”

Bad     idea

A better idea than anyone in the ‘let’s meet up in an undisclosed location’ came up with

Good idea

3PO

Fecking   Irony

“Don’t    just   stand   there,”

See?

“Let’s      get    back     to    the   ship,”

Irony

Power          up   the   engines     R2

You know   Obi-Wan’s     likely going to screw up your shit   right

*obi-Wan     comes     around     the   corner,*

Dude you have shit to     screw up    

Did you forget?

There shouldn’t be an     escape pod   for you

What

Hold the   ship

No, you didn’t do     anything...

Then again he could just     cannonball   it

How’s that- 

Okay     Very light   bullshit

“ i’ll   contact    the     fleet,”

It’s   the   most   you’ve     done   this   entire   time

Focus      On         The     chair

Do        cking      Clamp

There     We       Go

 Off        We     Go

 It’s       still   Burning

Grievous        Off

Why?

He doesn’t know   

Obi-Wan’s off   the ship

Last   saw   him   on   the     train...

(Not     followed    up     on   directly)

Flighters,   Where        I thought they all got     destroyed?!

All batteries   open fire

Again     Plo Koon does not give a shit       who dies

(Until sitting on his ass gets        too   boring)

Also    this isn’t his fleet

They shouldn’t listen to   him

(Especially after he got his last one   killed)

More       Shooting at the   burning     wreck

Turb      ulence

And     Obi-Wan   still    didn’t   do        his     job

Guns

You can       shoot back   at any time

“ I wa-”

Obi-wan      being   completely       useless

Anakin       having       too     much     emotion

“I   got      it,”

Shoo   ting     stuff

Somehow       doesn’t    go   down   immediately

Hit

“ She     seems     to know   her way   around,”

Gross

Hit     Something

The      Hyper       Drive

-repaired

Also   Obi-Wan   didn’t   fuck   up   shit 

Dis     appointed

Also   it   certainly    as   frick   isn’t   now

After   they’ve   been   shooting

Should we retreat     to   friendly    space?

If You can make there it with it in     one piece      (Which    was    the   qualifications)

Engage     the   hyperdrive

With   me   not   on  it

“Secret base      sector four,”

Interesting

“Prepare-”

Enthus iastic

“Yes,      Sir,”

Fighters      still   chasing

Intense

“Nice   Shoot,”

 Gross

“Beginners     luck,”

 Beeping

“Pardin-”

“Hyperdrive   is   activating,”

Obi-Wan

“ Oh-shit     Caught in a   lie.”

“-what”

-They’re getting hit with cannonballs     Anakin what did you do   ?!

(What Did      I    order you    to do?)

Coordinates    are   locked

“Hyperdrives     engaging,”

  Shit’s     about       to    go-

Ar-

Sp-       arking

Glitzy     display         Base

“ I think   there’s     a   problem,”

“General     I think     there’s a problem with the   hyperdrive,”

Yeah       The ship got refired     upon     it’s probably       re broken

Seriously

“ I thought     the hyperdrive     was fixed,”

And then it got shot again...

The navigate computer is heading a straight into the   moon

What        ??

Fools       reset the           Navi         computer

“Quick,”

Tech    Support

Dooku

Worst         time      to     call

(Don’t       think     it     could’ve       gone       more       sideways)

Also good job         Anakin         You crash landed them       on a planet         with significantly larger surface area       and resources     that they       can             use      to         re-build

 Aka              you made things harder      than they needed to      be

  Obi-Wan,        what are you     ordering       this kid

Narrowed eyes

-No     reset       it

“General,”

 Harsh

But I’m interested         in where this is going

Since        Grievous           has          had           a lot of       shit thrown at him

Doesn’t matter     which side of      enablers         he still enabling

 But          I suppose        over involved         positivity            Would be            kind of a nice      change          for         him

 Over         over involved           negativity

 Speeds         off

“Trans         -mission         Has          been          cut,”

  Intentionally

* also      smart        droid

“ We’re     Gonna         die

[Explosion]

 How?!

Whelp       Obi-Wan has to have a sit down talk with Anakin.    about the ‘ Drive the         ship into the moon,’ order

Also I realized      (thanks to Obi-Wan)     they know nothing about what just     happened         Grievous           either             decided         to        just       end          it 

or they’re all dead

Obi-Wan

 Dick move

“ I imagine        you had           something       to do       with that,”

WTF- orders

“ all part of       the plan,”

Obi-Wan schooled       Anakin in      extraterrestrial terrorism

Cheering     at least the ion cannon     isn’t coming back

Nice shot

           ...So Destroy Malevolence

               I have to say      I really like this episode

 Despite the plot      stretched thin

        There was a noticeable increase in the quality of       animation

        The child characters were     good 

The other characters were a lot more consistent  And a lot       smarter                               

[kellyvela]

i love the deranged dany/jon shippers trying to position themselves as some kind of authority on what grrm would and wouldnt do and insist that grrm would! never! hook jon up with his cousin when he actually intended to do that with jon and arya (in a love triangle with tyrion).

Hello Anon, 

Are you serious? There are people who believe GRRM would never hook up cousins?? And the same people ship aunt and nephew??? 

GRRM has no problem at all with incest, in ASOIAF we have siblings incest in Jaime and Cersei; and father daughters incest with Craster an his daughters. And we also have all the Targaryens ffs. 

He also has no problem with cousins getting involved in marriage alliances and romance, no matter if they aren’t Targaryens.  About cousins, we have Tywin and Joanna Lannister, and Rickard and Lyarra Stark. And about uncles and nieces, we have Jonnel and Sansa Stark, and the frustrated union of Cregan and Alys Karstark.  All these unions weren’t considered incest tho…

But GRRM does have a problem with “outlines”.  Let’s talk about “outlines” then:

FEBRUARY 2015

A reddit user spotted a tweet from UK bookseller Waterstones which contained three photos of a 1993 letter GRRM wrote outlining the entire ASOIAF series.

The tweet has since been deleted, but not before the images made it to the internet.

Here is the reddit post.

And here is an article with the three photos of the letter and the transcription.

As you said, GRRM “originally” planned for a Stark cousins romance between Jon Snow and Arya Stark: 

Jon Snow, the bastard, will remain in the far north. He will mature into a ranger of great daring, and ultimately will succeed his uncle as the commander of the Night’s Watch. When Winterfell burns, Catelyn Stark will be forced to flee north with her son Bran and her daughter Arya. Wounded by Lannister riders, they will seek refuge at the Wall, but the men of the Night’s Watch give up their families when they take the black, and Jon and Benjen will not be able to help, to Jon’s anguish. It will lead to a bitter estrangement between Jon and Bran. Arya will be more forgiving … until she realizes, with terror, that she has fallen in love with Jon, who is not only her half-brother but a man of the Night’s Watch, sworn to celibacy. Their passion will continue to torment Jon and Arya throughout the trilogy, until the secret of Jon’s true parentage is finally revealed in the last book.

And a love triangle with Tyrion Lannister: 

Tyrion Lannister will continue to travel, to plot, and to play the game of thrones, finally removing his nephew Joffrey in disgust at the boy king’s brutality. Jaime Lannister will follow Joffrey on the throne of the Seven Kingdoms, by the simple expedient of killing everyone ahead of him in the line of succession and blaming his brother Tyrion for the murders. Exiled, Tyrion will change sides, making common cause with the surviving Starks to bring his brother down, and falling helplessly in love with Arya Stark while he’s at it. His passion is, alas, unreciprocated, but no less intense for that, and it will lead to a deadly rivalry between Tyrion and Jon Snow.

So yeah, GRRM planned for a pseudo incest romance between two major characters of the same House, and a love triangle with a main character of a rival House.  

MAY 2016 - BALTICON 

A bit more than a year after that tweet from Waterstones, GRRM attended the The Maryland Regional Science Fiction and Fantasy Convention - BALTICON. There he was questioned by fans about the Jon and Arya romance:

After the Coffee Talk just outside the room:

My Con Friend asked about Arya and Jon again. This time GRRM gave some very pointed replies:

GRRM finished (in the hallway now) by saying that he “wished some past things weren’t such strong foreshadowing,” and that he, “wished some new things had stronger foreshadowing then.”

Friend: Ok, if you foreshadowed something in the first book, like, really cleverly hidden, would you then follow through on that hint? For sure?.. 

GRRM: “Well, this goes with what I said before, the story changes and expands as I write. I wish I was able to go back and make revised drafts, but that’s not going to happen.”

Here is a transcript of the outline discussion and Jon/Arya portion of the coffee talk:

[question about Jon/Arya]

GRRM: “Alright, you’ve thought about this more than I have. I mean it’s simple, Jon is very fond of Arya. They were the two odd birds in the Stark family nest, here. They didn’t quite fit in with the others, they look like each other, they both had the brown hair, you know, as opposed to the auburn hair of Sansa and Bran and Rickon and Robb. So there was always that closeness between them. And, you know, Arya didn’t mind that Jon was a bastard, and Jon didn’t mind that Arya was a tomboy, so there is that closeness there.”

[question about Jon comparing his lover to his sister]

GRRM: “If he did it, uhm… I began writing these books in 1991, and, uhm, I worked on it in 91 and then I got a tv play, so I put it aside to really work on ‘Doorways’ tv pilot and did a tv show in 92-93. In 94 I returned to it [the books] and worked on it. You know, up till then, in my career as a writer, I’d always written the entire book before I opted for sale. That’s unusual. Most writers do chapters and an outline. They write a few chapters, they outline the rest of the book, give that to the publisher and the publisher says ‘oh okay, I’ll take that’.

“As some of you may have noticed, those who have been paying very, very carefully attention, I’m not good with deadlines. And, uh, and I’m not good with outlines, either. I always hated outlines. So with Fevre Dream and with Armageddon Rag and with Dying of the Light and all my novels, I wrote the entire book. I didn’t do chapters and outline. I sat down, I wrote a whole book, and I sent it to my agent and said ‘Look, here’s a whole book, and it’s finished’. That way I ran into no deadline, it was finished before it even went on the market. And it worked well for me. And my initial thought was to do this the same way, but what happened, you know, was in 1994, uhm, when I returned to it and I’m working on it and I’m very enthused about it and I say ‘I really wanna write these Game of Thrones books as the next part’. But I was still in Hollywood and I’d just lost all this groundwork on ‘Doorways’, I was still in… The studios and networks still wanna work with me, so I’m getting other offers, like ‘We want you to write this movie’, ‘we want you to do another tv pilot’. And, you know, I took a couple of them and was ‘Oh god, I gotta have to put the book away again’. Cause I have no deadline [for the book]. You know, when you think Hollywood, they will give you a deadline, you know, they say ‘here, son, write this movie, we want it in three months’.

“So, I said ‘look, if I wanna get back to being a novelist, I’m gonna have to sell this even though it’s not finished’. So I had my 200 pages of Game of Thrones at that point, but they wanted outline. I said ‘I don’t do outlines. I don’t know what’s gonna happen, I figure it out as I go. And that’s how I always did it.’ No, we had to have an outline. So I wrote two pages, a two-page thing about what I thought would happen. It’ll be a trilogy, it’ll be three books, Game of Thrones, the Dance with Dragons, and Winds of Winter. Those were the three window titles. And, uh, it’ll be three books and this’ll happen, and this’ll happen, and this’ll happen. And I was making up shit.

“And I had thought that those two pages were long forgotten, because, of course, the books did sell. They sold in the United States and in Great Britain, both. They sold for enough money that I didn’t have to take any more Hollywood games. So I was able to say ‘no’ around. I had a few less [?] to wind up in in 94 and 95. Once I had, I said ‘no, I don’t want any more movies or tv shows, I’m going to write these books now’. And I started writing the books. And in the process, I pretty much disregarded the outline. The characters took me off in entirely different directions. So, for 20 years I had forgotten that that two-page thing even existed. And then someone in my British publisher, HarperCollins, they got a new office building, uh, brand new offices, and new conference rooms, big conference rooms that they decorated with books and stuff like that. And they named the conference rooms after the writers, so one of the conference rooms [?], and they put up these plastic display cases, including the outline. The two-page outline, yes. [?], they didn’t ask my permission, they just put it up. And in that two-page outline, Jon and Arya become a romantic item.”

“You know, I don’t think it’s a reference for that [for romance]. It’s a reference to a certain physical type, and  a certain indication of what Jon finds admirable. It’s like someone who reminds you of, you know… Other people might be put off by this, you know, hair that looks like small rodents have been living in there. It doesn’t put him off because he is used to that.””

[someone says they have 5 minutes left]

“You know, I was pretty pissed that that outline got out there. It should not have happened. Outlines and letters like that are meant only for the eyes of the editor. They shouldn’t go on public display. And, uh, they also [?] my papers on [?], all my papers and correspondence. You know, I’ve been sending that stuff there for years, and it’d be, you know, available for future scholars or whatever, just like the papers of many other writers. Somehow, in the back of my head I was like ‘yeah, 20 years after I’m dead some scholar will go in and find them’. They’re going in right now!”   ”

[question if he is still going with the 1991 ending]

“Yes, I mean, I did partly joke when I said I don’t know where I was going. I know the broad strokes, and I’ve known the broad strokes since 1991. I know who’s going to be on the Iron Throne. I know who’s gonna win some of the battles, I know the major characters, who’s gonna die and how they’re gonna die, and who’s gonna get married and all that. The major characters. Of course along the way I made up a lot of minor characters, you know, I, uhm…Did I know in 1991 how Bronn, what was gonna happen to Bronn? No, I didn’t even know there’d be a guy named Bronn. I was inventing him along the way when I was writing, ‘Okay, he gets kidnapped. Let’s see, there are a couple sellswords there, their names are Fred and Bronn’.“It was actually Bronn and Chiggen, and then one of them dies, I flipped a coin ‘okay, who dies? Chiggen dies, cause his name is stupid. Bronn is a better name, so I’ll keep Bronn’. And then Bronn became quite an interesting character and plenty of these characters take on minds of their own. They push to the front till you [?] speech and you think of a cool line and you give it to Bronn because he’s trying to talk, and now Bronn is somebody who says something cool. [?]. That’s how characters grow on you.“So a lot of the minor characters I’m still discovering along the way. But the mains-”

[question if he knows Arya’s and Jon’s fates]

“Tyrion, Arya, Jon, Sansa, you know, all of the Stark kids, and the major Lannisters, yeah.”

This report appears in the following sources:

fattest leech of ice and fire blog [Source 1] 

asoiaf.westeros.org [Source 2]  

westeros.org [Source 3]

As you can see Anon, according GRRM the “original outline” was “a two-page thing about what [he] thought would happen”… “And [he] was making up shit.”  

He also said that: “[he] pretty much disregarded the outline. The characters took [him] off in entirely different directions. So, for 20 years [he] had forgotten that that two-page thing even existed”.

But then he clarified that: 

“I did partly joke when I said I don’t know where I was going. I know the broad strokes, and I’ve known the broad strokes since 1991. I know who’s going to be on the Iron Throne. I know who’s gonna win some of the battles, I know the major characters, who’s gonna die and how they’re gonna die, and who’s gonna get married and all that. The major characters”.

From all this information, I think that the romance between Jon and Arya was discarded: 

[He] “wished some past things weren’t such strong foreshadowing,” and that he, “wished some new things had stronger foreshadowing then.”

The story changes and expands as I write. I wish I was able to go back and make revised drafts, but that’s not going to happen.”

But the romance between two major characters of the same House (Stark cousins) is still there.

But a romance between two major characters of the same House could also happen between aunt and nephew, and if we follow the Show, this was the new route GRRM took.  

We just have to wait to certainly know if GRRM will give us the Stark cousins romance that was promised or if he has already changed his original plan.  

[zayadriancas]

Bughead, Veggie, Kevin/Moose, Clannah, Justin/Jessica, Tony/Caleb, Jaitlin, Janny, Spemma, Jellie, Imogeli, Cake, Frankston, Zasha, Mola, Shiny, Shawngela, Rucas, Charlie/Riley, Drianca & Zaya

Thank you! :)

Bughead: They’re definitely one of my favorite Riverdale Ships. I love how supportive they are of each other and I think they have the strongest connection on the show. I think Season 4 has made me love them even more. The writers I think write this ship the best because they just keep getting better. I just wish Jughead would come back to Riverdale because the Stomewall story is getting kind of boring IMO and it’s done more harm for him than good, but I’m glad him and Betty haven’t been affected by the distance. In fact I think they’ve gotten stronger. Not much else to say lol other than they’re super adorable and I love them :)

Veggie: They had great chemistry and I didn’t mind it as a temporary thing, but it was clear Veronica wasn’t as invested in the relationship. If both of them had been fine with just friends with benefits it would have been fine but it was clear Reggie wanted more than that. It sucks that it seemed to ruin their friendship since the one scene they’ve had this season was Veronica questioning Reggie on doing something (I don’t remember what exactly) in the episode we find out about his abuse. Oh they had a scene with Archie and Munroe too but they don’t really seem to be friends anymore and that’s a shame but maybe that will change.

Kevin/Moose: This was my favorite Kevin pairing and it sucks that it ended as soon as they got closer, like all of Kevin’s relationships. I didn’t like the Kevin kind of making him feel bad about not being out of the closet but i know he just felt like Moose wasn’t serious about him, he wasn’t trying to be pushy or hurtful. Anyway I wish that Moose went back to Riverdale instead of the other school, at least he had friends there that could have supported him and he wouldn’t be made to feel like he had to leave.

Clannah: I really only liked them in season 1. They had a couple cute scenes in season 2 but mostly the writing for them was really bad in s2 and I saw you said the same thing in your answer and I agree about Clay putting her on a pedestal and then acting irrationally when she didn’t live up to his “perfect” image of her. It’s what made me dislike Clay in season 2. Guys like Zach and Justin definitely were flawed but they didn’t hold Hannah to that ridiculous standard or judge her. I do sympathize with Clay having a hard time coping with her death but that still didn’t excuse his behavior.

Justin/Jessica: I feel guilty for shipping them for obvious reasons and they’re definitely problematic but it’s clear that they love each other and Justin never wanted to hurt her. He handled things awfully but it wasn’t because he was evil like Bryce. He did deserve consequences and I wouldn’t have blamed Jessica if she never forgave him but she did and since then he’s made her happy. Honestly it’s mostly season 3 that I ship them, but I didn’t dislike them before that even though I definitely acknowledged that Justin fucked up.

Tony/Caleb: They’re super cute. I don’t have many strong feelings but I’m glad Tony found someone that makes him happy and has been a good support system for him.

Jaitlin: I LOVE THEM. I really need to rewatch DJH and DH. They’re super sweet and I will never forgive the writers for what they did to them. Well actually I blame Kevin Smith more because apparently he got to help write that episode and he had a crush on Stacie, so. Anyway, I definitely believe Joey and Caitlin belonged together. They had so much history and they made each other so happy. I don’t have much else to say but they deserved their happy ending.

Janny: I really like them together. I do think they could have had better build up/development but they worked despite their differences and Jay definitely treated Manny the best out of all her boyfriends. I liked the softer side she brought out in Jay. I’m glad they were endgame :)

Spemma: Lol what’s funny is they actually could have worked if they had build up. Not as a marriage unless they had been a thing since the beginning but as a couple they wouldn’t have been terrible if it wasn’t so random and rushed. At least it’s confirmed that it was a mistake and I believe they were only still married in NC as a joke to piss us off. But yeah it was nice that they made each other happy and like if they had just hooked up in the movie as a rebound for Spinner and maybe had a friends with benefits type thing that would have made sense. Or if they started dating in season 7 or 8 and were endgame but NOT married then fine. But I’ve literally never seen a much more rushed couple on the show and that’s saying something.

Jellie: I’m assuming this is Jimmy/Ellie. They were cute but I wasn’t the biggest fan of Jimmy and I didn’t like that Ellie was rude to Hazel especially since she didn’t even like Jimmy back. I would have much rather had them get together instead of Jesse/Ellie(the inferior Jellie lol), and rather them instead of Jimash getting together again, but I didn’t really care about them either way.

Imogeli: They had great chemistry and I liked their friendship, but Eli treated Imogen awfully in the first half of season 11 and during their short lived relationship in the second half and I’m glad they realized they were better as friends. I still like them better than Eclare though lol.

Cake: They’re really cute, I didn’t ship them but I had no problem with their relationship, especially after rewatches because I didn’t really like the way Clare was written the first time I watched s11. I hate that the writers hard on for Eclare fucked up this relationship. Even though I didn’t ship them at least they were healthy and happy and Jake was actually a good guy. If they had just broken up then fine it happens but their parents clearly only got married so they couldn’t get back together, so they could go back to Eclare and nothing will convince me otherwise.

Frankston: They were really cute in season 13, but Winston became such a asshole in season 14, first with being the blackmailer (sure he said it was doing it to help Frankie but it just made things worse) and then cheating on her, and with her best friend of all people, and had no intention of telling her and made Lola feel like it was her fault. And then basically calling Frankie crazy for not trusting him right away. The Logan thing I can understand being upset but not only did Frankie not actually cheat but she was actually honest about it. But Winston said what she did was “worse”. Fuck him, it’s not like she planned on falling for Logan who just used her, she was genuinely just trying to be a good friend at first. So yeah I’m glad Frankie didn’t take him back in Next Class, he may have been nicer but she still deserves better.

Zasha: I really like them. I’m glad Zoe found someone who loves her for who she is and has her as a first choice. They’re super sweet and adorable and I’m glad they were endgame. I still wish Gracevas could have happened instead, but at least Zoe was able to find someone after that mess of a storyline.

Mola: I really like them. The only thing I don’t like is Miles cheating on Tristan, and Miles telling her to take the bus was really harsh. And not seeing him reach out after he found out she had an abortion was fucked. I don’t think he meant to hurt her though and he did apologize for how everything happened. But other than that I think Miles and Lola were actually a good match. It was just bad timing. I wish they could have at least talked once in season 4.

Shiny: I really love them. They’re super sweet and adorable together and I’m glad they were written much better in season 4 because I was disappointed how they were written in season 3. I didn’t really expect them to have sex but Tiny was super sweet. I’m glad they were endgame, sadly they probably wouldn’t have been if the show had continued, I guess that’s one good thing about it lol :P

Shawngela: They were adorable! I don’t have many thoughts (I need to rewatch BMW too lol) but I definitely think they were a great match and it’s sad they didn’t get a happy ending, I definitely think they deserved it. One thing I didn’t like though is how they repeatedly compared their relationship to Cory and Topanga, like they were their own relationship they didn’t need to be like anyone else. But other than that I did like them a lot together.

Rucas: They were my favorite GMW ship, they were super adorable and I’m mad the writers neglected their relationship when they finally got together. They wasted so much time on the “triangle” with Maya that was stupid and pointless. Like as much as I loved Rucas the show shouldn’t have revolved around all that, like BMW had two major relationships(3 if you count Cory/Eric’s parents) with a few minor ones here and there that never meant anything, and none of them ever had love triangles (except Cory/Lauren/Topanga but that lasted like 3 episodes and wasn’t dragged on for half a season). I get GMW was geared to a younger audience but it still wasn’t necessary. But I still do like Rucas and still think they’re sweet even though I don’t care about the show anymore.

Charlie/Riley: Weird. Pointless. Unnecessary. Like they are so irrelevant I literally do not even have any other way to describe them lmao.

Drianca: 😍😍😍. My 2nd favorite ship of all time! My babies!!!! I love their build up, their chemistry, how much they love and care about each other and the lengths they went to protect each other ❤️❤️❤️ Drew helped Bianca get her life back on track and was there for her when she had no one. They were always super happy together and SCREW THE WRITERS FOR BREAKING THEM UP. I get people move on and that long distance sometimes puts those things in perspective, but they were doing just fine!!!! Like maybe Alicia couldn’t come back to the show but they were doing long distance just fine. Maybe if they didn’t stretch the seniors year out for 80 years they could have graduated in s13 and they could have been endgame. But nooo they just had to give Drew unnecessary relationships that just dragged down his character!!!! Like Clew was fine but they didn’t even happen for real and then Drew got screwed over by her mistaking the baby as his and ugh!!!! Anyway, I love Drianca so much, everything about them is amazing and they were made for each other ❤️❤️❤️ and they’re back together now the writers can’t do shit about that :)

Zaya: MY BABIES😍😍😍 my first favorite ship of all time! Their build up was AMAZING AND WORTH THE WAIT👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 They have amazing chemistry, a beautiful friendship, they clearly love each other to pieces, they never gave up on each other even when they were with other people, and that gross NC storyline only happened because the writers hated Zig for whatever reason. That never would have happened otherwise!! Zaya is just, beautiful. Season 14 was amazing because of them. Season 4/18 did a great job bringing them back together. I’m sad they didn’t kiss but oh well, WE GOT PROM ZAYA AND CUDDLY ZAYA AND THEY SAID THEY ALWAYS PICTURED GOING TO PROM TOGETHER LIKE 😍😍😍. So yeah fuck the haters ZAYA IS BEAUTIFUL ZAYA IS AMAZING AND ZAYA IS ENDGAME!!!!!

[rhiezus]

Reputation As Our Ships

Ready For It?

For starters, this album takes a heavy road into Julie and Valak’s relationship that came out of the blue between us one night, exactly like they are. However, I had to admit the first time I was listening to this song I thought about Zeev and Eleanor, but well, I might just have been crazy or a little right, who knows? Anyways is totally Julie and Valak, even the music video, there is something about the song... The strong bass and stuff, it’s uGH tHEm!

“ I, I, I see how this is gon' go Touch me and you'll never be alone I-Island breeze and lights down low No one has to know [...]”

The “no one has to know” part. Also this description from genius:  “Touch me, and you’ll never be alone” might be in reference to the trappings of Taylor’s fame; the paparazzi follow her everywhere, so they would inevitably follow her boyfriend, too. Talk about dispatch, am I right?

“In the middle of the night, in my dreams You should see the things we do, baby In the middle of the night in my dreams I know I'm gonna be with you, so I take my time”

I love how genius mention that she talks about sex for the most part of this song, which recalls the fact that Julie and Valak relationship was built through her losing her virginity with him. The part when she sings “let the games begin”, it was like Julie knew it was a whole puzzle but she did it anyway because she was looking for an excuse not expecting that Valak would become much more than it one day. Also, the “i know im gonna be with you, so i take my time”, is truly the feeling which leads them to get marry, they just knew they would be together, so why waste time?

End Game

Who we kidding? We all know this is Linlin and Mingyu, again it has something to do with the vibe of the song too. Like there is she singing and then a bunch of rappers... UgH! Please ONG concerts give a collab May-b rapping line feat Xiulin with this song so I can die happy. aNYwAYs, my mind was also associating this song to Nayoung and Keun, am I crazy? Maybe? No? It’s lyrics time to tell that.

“We do the most, I'm in the Ghost like I'm whippin’ a boat I got a reputation, girl that don't precede me (Yeah) I'm one call away whenever you need me (Yeah) I'm in a G5 (Yeah), come to the A-Side (Yeah)”

The “one call away” kind of guy from Samara.

“I don’t wanna hurt you, I just wanna be Drinking on a beach with you all over me I know what they all say (I know what they all say) But I ain't tryna play”

Literally dying from the “beach” part because both Mingyu and Keun are from Jeju.

“Even when we’d argue, we'd not do it for long And you understand the good and bad end up in the song For all your beautiful traits, and the way you do it with ease For all my flaws, paranoia, and insecurities”

Oh my god, this song just couldn’t get any worse... “end up in the song”.

I Did Something Bad

Okay, hold up. This is Chihye. I could say Julie too because all of the drama, but honestly, is Chihye she has her fair load of bad stuff she did and I don’t see her as the type who regrets any of it, so this title is hers.

“They say I did something bad Then why's it feel so good? They say I did something bad But why's it feel so good? Most fun I ever had And I'd do it over and over and over again if I could It just felt so good, good”

Literally, no remorse and it can sound bad to think of my character that way but honestly, she is just messed up in the head, so... Whatever.

“This is how the world works You gotta leave before you get left”

I mean... Shut up.

Don’t Blame Me

Haha, this one is for you Hansol and Chan-u. I just couldn’t think of anyone else though, it has something to do with the vibe of the song again... I mean, these two have a little trouble in the head mostly *read chihye hansol’s mom above rs* and well, dead parents... So, just a little bit of affection is enough to crack their heads, so, this is to those dark times.

“Don't blame me, love made me crazy If it doesn't, you ain't doin' it right Lord, save me, my drug is my baby I'll be usin' for the rest of my life”

Am I right? Wait up there is more:

“And baby, for you, I would fall from grace Just to touch your face If you walk away, I'd beg you on my knees to stay”

Okay, genius doesn’t say anything about this but since they both gay I’m taking the hint that “beg you on my knees” could be a reference to oral sex, k? Leave me alone to think about it.

“I get so high, oh! Every time you're, every time you're lovin' me You're lovin' me Trip of my life, oh! [...]”

The “so high”, oh jesus. Also the part when she says “I once was poison ivy, but now I'm your daisy” sounds so much like a Hansol lyrics because he is always talking about flowers and relationships *see fresh roses*.

Delicate

Okay, hear me out... I never in a million years expected this ship that just came to my mind, like never and I listened to this song like a dozen times (actually 29 according to lastfm, but before i had a lastfm i would listen in youtube so... a dozen), but I just thought that the vibe and the lyrics... Sounds so much like Jinah and Bokyum. And what is shooking is that it’s also another total random ship... Ruy and Hai. Listen up:

“This ain't for the best My reputation's never been worse, so You must like me for me… We can't make Any promises now, can we, babe? But you can make me a drink”

First, for Jinah is totally about her reputation of being a prostitute ha, it’s like, she never really had a real relationship for real before Bokyum and she takes her time with her feelings after Jeju. And in the other hand, Ruy is just madly in love with Hai but he can’t bear to say it because it will scare him away so... Both delicate.

“Dive bar on the East Side, where you at? Phone lights up my nightstand in the black Come here, you can meet me in the back Dark jeans and your Nikes, look at you”

Starting with Jinah and Bokyum, in my mind when they first hooked up in Jeju they went to this lowkey bar by a corner next to the beach... And that’s when it all happened. But for the most part, this is straight-up Ruy and Hai’s relationship so it’s even sad to read it twice, jeez.

“Sometimes I wonder when you sleep Are you ever dreaming of me? Sometimes when I look into your eyes I pretend you're mine, all the damn time 'Cause I like you”

Yeah, this part is just straight up Ruy to Hai.

“Is it cool that I said all that? Is it chill that you're in my head? 'Cause I know that it's delicate (Delicate) (Yeah, I want you)”

Last one, read the genius: Taylor uses repetition and questions throughout the chorus to show how anxious she is at the beginning of this relationship. Getting romantically involved with someone can be tough because sometimes one may not know where the other stands, hence why Taylor describes this phase as “delicate.” So yeah.

Look What You Made Me Do

I can’t think of anyone else for this song other then Haneul, but as a joke not like a literal disses to someone other than herself, you know? Because no one of my characters literally changed so much because of something someone did to them, other than, well Chihye and Haneul... What a weird flex. But Haneul was more like “wide awake” than actual bad like Chihye, so it’s hard to tell. Yeah, I don’t know, don’t really have anything else for this song.

"I'm sorry, the old Taylor can't come to the phone right now "Why? Oh, 'cause she's dead!" (Oh)

This is just definitely Haneul, because: I needed to grow up in many ways. I needed to make boundaries, to figure out what was mine and what was the public’s. That old version of me that shares unfailingly and unblinkingly with a world that is probably not fit to be shared with? I think that’s gone. But it was definitely just, like, a fun moment in the studio with me and Jack [Antonoff] where I wanted to play on the idea of a phone call.

So It Goes...

I don’t really like this song, so whatever. Can’t think of anyone for it.

Gorgeous

I just can’t this is literally the song that made Jinhyung and Kyungri, I die every time because there isn’t a lyric from this that is just not them.

“You should take it as a compliment That I got drunk and made fun of the way you talk You should think about the consequence Of your magnetic field being a little too strong”

I’m going to take reference from your own “type of girlfriend: Kyungri”, she literally takes pride into making fun of Jinhyung and it’s a good thing it means she is into him in a way she can’t explain. That’s literally how they happened.

“You make me so happy it turns back to sad There's nothing I hate more than what I can't have And you are so gorgeous it makes me so mad”

I listened to this song like thousand times just because of them at the time, which is funny ‘cause know sometimes we forgot who birthed the relationships for the new romantics... It’s only a few months old but whenever I think of them there is this sweet nostalgia, it’s really funny.

Getaway Car

This song is for both cheaters: Chihye and Julie. They are very much referenced in this album, but it’s not my fault Taylor Swift did a whole album about such screwed up love. This song became one of my favorites once I realized it’s about a love triangle, where is trying to get away from her past relationship to be with the guy she actually likes without cheating on him but inevitably doing it. Does it ring a bell yet?

“It was the best of times, the worst of crimes I struck a match and blew your mind But I didn't mean it And you didn’t see it [...] I wanted to leave him I needed a reason”

Talking about Chihye and Lian, all the time she was with Pyongho it was just because he was doing her a favor and she wanted someone to want her back. But when Lian came back, it was useless so she was just ready to leave everything behind and run away with him like it was meant to be. In the hand, Julie really cherished Kaili but her mind was somewhere else: her career and the fact that it wasn’t gonna last anyway, so she just needed a solid reason to leave him.

“It was the great escape, the prison break The light of freedom on my face But you weren't thinkin’ And I was just drinkin’ Well, he was runnin' after us, I was screamin’, "Go, go, go!" But with three of us, honey, it's a sideshow And a circus ain't a love story And now we're both sorry”

It’s funny because for me it begins talking about Chihye, Lian and Pyongho and ends up in Julie, Valak and Kaili.

“Until I switched to the other side To the other si-i-i-i-ide It's no surprise I turned you in (Oh-oh) 'Cause us traitors never win I'm in a getaway car I left you in a motel bar Put the money in a bag and I stole the keys That was the last time you ever saw me”

Now, this is just about Chihye to Lian when she finds out she pregnant of Pyongho, “us traitors never win”. So yeah, I really love this song because of it’s whole metaphor.

King Of My Heart

I had this idea that this song was Zeev and Eleanor, and don’t get me wrong it still is but right now it’s also Chang and Yehjin, a little bit. Seriously, I just know Eleanor calls Zeev things like “king of my heart” and she is totally into Taylor Swift, she is american and is from New Mexico, she might even listen to Taylor’s country albums.

“I'm perfectly fine, I live on my own I made up my mind, I'm better off bein' alone We met a few weeks ago Now you try on callin' me "Baby" like tryin' on clothes”

C’mon? I mean, it was totally like that how the chat went and their whole relationship... But this first part just also reminded me of Yehjin about Chang too, I don’t know, fight me.

“Salute to me, I'm your American queen And you move to me like I'm a Motown beat And we rule the kingdom inside my room 'Cause all the boys and their expensive cars With their Range Rovers and their Jaguars Never took me quite where you do”

IM YOUR AMERICAN QUEEN. Literally Eleanor, the fact that they had sex in like their second date and also how she never really had a boyfriend like Zeev before, who just drives her crazy by being so himself. And Yehjin mentioning she prefers Chang’s bike than the rich boys range rovers, haha.

“Late in the night, the city's asleep Your love is a secret I'm hoping, dreaming, dying to keep Change my priorities The taste of your lips is my idea of luxury”

About Zeev being famous and Eleanor actually being into it because she literally just wants him to herself, “change my priorities”. And Yehjin, keeping a secret about Chang to her parents for I don’t even know how long...

Dancing With Our Hands Tied

Weird flex, okay? But my mind associated this first with Clay and Allen... Then it totally went to Linlin and Mingyu, I don’t know, something to do with the vibe. Oh, and Julie and Valak too, again, sorry.

"I, I loved you in secret First sight, yeah, we love without reason [...] My, my love had been frozen Deep blue, but you painted me golden”

It was the “love in secret” that connected these three couples in my mind, see? Here is genius about dancing with our hands tied: To have one’s hands tied is to have no control of a situation. While dancing is supposed to be a liberating form of self-expression, as well as a fun activity for friends and couples, here it represents the inability to keep their relationship away from the public eye. Taylor and her partner had their hands tied in that their relationship would eventually go public.

“And darling, you had turned my bed into a sacred oasis People started talking, putting us through our paces I knew there was no one in the world who could take it I had a bad feeling”

It’s weird because even if those three couples dated in secret, each one had a different way of coming out to the public. First, we have Clay and Allen that were “dating” in and off on the internet, until Allen moved and they actually went out but still people only found out when Clay left May-b, before I guess there was just rumors of Clay being gay or stuff like that. But Clay never really talked about relationships before leaving May-b and writing his own stuff, being his own artist. Linlin and Mingyu were this rollercoaster relationship that most people didn’t know of right at the beginning, and when they did there was always this vibe that it wasn’t going to last. And with Julie and Valak we know really well how this went, although both didn’t care much about it after it happened because it just weirdly made them be even more together.

Dress

Haha, who this? I mean it, seriously. It’s Hana and Mark, finally, one song of this album hits its peak by being theirs. But, not so fast I thought about Danbi and Daehyun too just right now. Let’s take a ride.

“All of this silence and patience, pining and anticipation My hands are shaking from holding back from you All of this silence and patience, pining and desperately waiting”

Both Hana and Danbi had big crushes from the start, both were stupid enough not to admit.

“Say my name and everything just stops I don't want you like a best friend Only bought this dress so you could take it off Carve your name into my bedpost”

Both are really furry in bed, both would totally buy a dress just to be taken off (Hana actually did and said it so). Also, both got in deep love really fast, Danbi and Daehyun even got married to prove their love, even if was later a mistake, but they meant every feeling they had. Hana, on the other hand, doesn’t ever regret how fast things happened with Mark, it was exactly how it was supposed to be.

“And I woke up just in time Now I wake up by your side My one and only, my lifeline I woke up just in time Now I wake up by your side My hands shake, I can't explain this”

Exactly what I said before *see above*.

This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

Another diss from Haneul. I’m kidding, ha. Also, this is Julie, 7sins and the whole drama. Also, Nayoung to the old crew with the nameless that she used to hang out with *see I Forgot That You Existed*.

Call It What You Want

Here is to another song of Eleanor and Zeev, a classic, one of the songs of them that are simply just them which makes me listen like a dozen times... However, just right now I thought about Minhye and Jukan too, it’s the vibe, listen:

“My baby's fit like a daydream Walking with his head down I'm the one he's walking to So call it what you want, yeah Call it what you want to My baby's fly like a jet stream High above the whole scene Loves me like I'm brand new ”

It’s so sweet, it’s like these two dorks really don’t care about Eleanor’s and Minhye’s screwed up past with love, you know? “loves me like i’m brand new”.

“And I know I make the same mistakes every time Bridges burn, I never learn At least I did one thing right I did one thing right I'm laughing with my lover, makin' forts under covers Trust him like a brother Yeah, you know I did one thing right Starry eyes sparkin' up my darkest night”

These two also really don’t care about the whole “keep a secret” kind of relationship, they respect their lovers because they made them better people. So they just do everything in their power to protect them just the same, even if it sounds cheesy and stupid of them, they just don’t care.

“I want to wear his initial on a chain 'round my neck Chain 'round my neck Not because he owns me But 'cause he really knows me Which is more than they can say, I I recall late November Holding my breath, slowly, I said "You don't need to save me But would you run away with me?" Yes”

This is also one of my favorite songs of this album, mainly because of this part. Like I said, both Eleanor and Minhye were screwed up’s, but with Zeev and Jukan they became better people not only to themselves but for them too... Like, for the future, you know?

Wait up, I just saw Nayoung and Keun in this song too. I hate myself.

New Year’s Day

Finally, the last one, this album is so long. This is Araki and Kayn, lol. And... Anna and Kuen. Because: The closing track on reputation uses a New Year’s party as a metaphor to discuss holding on to people and memories from both good and bad times. Taylor recognizes that when the ‘parties’ in her life are over and the ‘new year’ begins, such memories are all she will have left to hold on to and learn from. She relates a lasting love to someone who shares a midnight kiss with you on New Year’s, but who still stays with you the next morning for the aftermath of the party and begins the new year together with you.

“Don’t read the last page But I stay when you're lost, and I'm scared And you’re turning away I want your midnights But I'll be cleaning up bottles with you on New Year's Day”

This is too sad, wait. But yeah, I can see both these ships.

“You squeeze my hand three times in the back of the taxi I can tell that it's gonna be a long road I'll be there if you're the toast of the town, babe Or if you strike out and you're crawling home”

According to genius, squeezing someone’s hand three times means you love them or at least its like a “take care. You see, both ships here have a thing for leaving. I don’t know which road will Araki and Kayn take but this song reminds me of their relationship a lot, you know the whole after party thing? And to Anna and Kuen who had shared a long list of back and forth but that eventually got together for good after they realized they couldn’t be strangers to one another, which takes me to:

“Please don't ever become a stranger Whose laugh I could recognize anywhere Please don't ever become a stranger Whose laugh I could recognize anywhere”

So yeah, that’s the best way to end this album. With something good to think about.

[mtvswatches]

Wynonna Earp 1x06 Constant Cravings

Spoilers disclaimer (please read before sending messages or writing comments.)

Stray thoughts

1) Dolls training with Wynonna is Buffy/Giles 2.0. But less father-daughtery and more UST. Also, I love that she’s a huge dork.

2) 😊

DOLLS: Good job.

WYNONNA: You think I don't listen, but I do.

DOLLS: Yeah, you've limbered up.

So, they’ve been going at it, it wasn’t a one-time thing! But it’s definitely a secret thing, and well, you know, in the words of the Admiral Moneybags Logan Echolls…

3) I’m sorry, dude, but you hear growling noises and you stop to take and look and say “hello” instead of running? You had it coming.

4) Don’t you dare mess with my Doc, Bobo!

Did the Stone Witch really skip town or is he covering for her?

Also, do ALL the characters in this show have UST or is it just me?

5) I knew he was going to get this dude for laughing at Doc’s joke.

Stone Witch is the reason Bobo has these powers, right?

6) Doc does not disappoint, apparently…

7) That is a loner…

Blacksmith is not fucking around. And she’s hot af.

8) Oooh, and she has some type of psychic abilities! I like that! I thought Dolls was just in pain because Wynonna had whupped his ass, but apparently, there’s something else going on?

9) I like her more and more with each episode.

10) Why is Waverly still dating Champ? The sex can’t be that good!

CHAMP: How can somebody so pretty be so smart, huh?

WAVERLY: Because they're not mutually exclusive.

The worst thing is he actually believes he’s giving her a compliment.

11) This has to mean something, right?

12) I legit laughed out loud at her reaction! She shoved Waverly to the ground!

13) Oh, Wynonna, I also fell for it…

So, I was mistaken, they clearly haven’t been forking like rabbits, they hadn’t even seen each other since they had crazy hot, toe-curling, out-of-body, back-into-body, angels-singing-Hallelujah sex. But Wyonna clearly wants a second round, and I can’t blame her.

Did I tell you that I ship them. SO. HARD?

14) Wait, is Dolls going through some type of withdrawals? Is that why his hands were shaking?

15) Doc knows something’s up with Dolls…

Or he wants to fork Dolls, it could go either way.

16) Yeah… this doesn’t look like the “totally organic operation” Waverly described…

17) Yeah, Wynonna is not really a long-term planning gal…

I get it, but I think this type of reckless decisions is going to come back and bite her in the ass.

18) Doc’s trying to go undercover, but let’s be real, everyone’s going to recognize that beautiful bearded face of his…

19) “You ain’t so hot, you know”

20) Cannibal revenants. Cool. Because they really needed to be even more disgusting.

21) Ay, Dolls keeps staring at Wynonna and they keep having these SEXUAL TENSION moments and on the one hand, I’m like, NOPE because DOC, but on the other hand, Dolls and Wynonna could be potentially very interesting together and they definitely have chemistry, but on the third hand, I don’t trust any show to do love triangles well? So yeah, I’m super torn about this whole thing!

22) That’s what happens when you question Doc’s hotness, okay?

23) I feel Waverly is always going to be the MVP because she’s so darn smart and resourceful, and I’m here for it.

24) WTF was going on here! Is this some sort of Normal Bates situation?

25) If you needed any further evidence that Champ is an idiot…

We could open a little bar down in, um, Buenos Aires.

(I live in Buenos Aires province, and everyone wants to leave…)

26) WTF UNCLE CURTIS!

What sort of parting gift is this?!

27) Keeper of the Bones? What does that mean?

Waverly, darling, you are now the Keeper of the Bones. Guard this and tell no one but the Blacksmith. You're the only one I can trust. Love, Uncle Curtis. All I know is that Waverly has probably become 100% more valuable. And a much bigger target for the revenants, considering what happened to Uncle Curtis, the last Keeper of the Bones…

28) Classy.

At least it helped Waverly break things off with him, so there’s that.

29) So, Hetty is a revenant…

And the matriarch of the family is the cannibal who probably had her children getting her meals.

There’s something else I got from this conversation, though. Hetty seemed to be sincerely sorry for tricking Wynonna and for helping Olive get her Happy Meal with legs. It’s a small moment, but it continues to build on the theme of the previous episode, in which Wynonna started to learn that she can’t see all revenants under the same light. Not all revenants are completely evil, it seems. Some of them show remorse, and some of them even try to lead normal lives. I really dig this.

30) So they need to do some kind of ritual to make her the Keeper?

31) Wait! That’s the skull of the Stone Witch’s son? That means it’s one of the missing parts of the two skeletons she and Bobo have been trying to put back together right? Waverly is in fucking danger, isn’t she? Yep, she just said it herself.

32) “I got a hollow place in my belly that needs to be fed.”

33) See? It’s not all black and white when it comes to revenants…

HETTY: I just got caught in the crossfire and became this. I didn't choose it and it's not fair.

WYNONNA: Believe me, I get that.

HETTY: I just want to live like a girl. Buy lip-gloss, wear flirty skirts 

34) Oddly enough, I relate to this lady on a spiritual level. Well, minus the cannibalism.

35) She said Dolls is spoiled! What does that mean??? It’s the drugs that he’s been taking, right? But why? Why does he need them?

36) Oh, wtf, Hetty, you were one of the seven?

I had my suspicions once it was revealed her mom used to dress her as a boy, right down to the tattoo on the neck. But I was hoping she wasn’t one of them. She wanted a normal life, and I guess she was willing to do whatever it took to get it.

37) Yeah, this does not bode well for Wynonna...

38) !!!!!!!!

39) What the actual fuck is he on?

I wonder if this storyline will be something like Riley and the Initiative. Is he on drugs to be more efficient, stronger, more powerful? Has the government got him hooked on this thing?

More importantly, this addiction makes me wonder if he is someone who can be trusted. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Wynonna sincerely confessed she trusted him when she was talking to Doc right before we saw him do this. I don’t know what his motives are to be here, you know? Like, is he really trying to exterminate the revenants or is he after them for something else?

I can’t wait to find out!

40)  Hope you enjoyed my recap, and, as usual, if you’ve got this far, thank you for reading! If you enjoy my recaps and my blog, please consider supporting it on ko-fi.Thanks!

[nautilusopus]

Serious non-troll: What if you like the cop-outs and the scrambled bullshit plots and the nonsense towers of half-constructed ideas? I agree that for example Nomura is a goddamn crazy person but I find his convulsions fascinating and want to see more of them.

i mean, you’re entirely within your rights to do that. it’s just frustrating that there’s visibly no effort put into any of it, and he’s just writing for the sake of what makes the trailer look good, and that’s been 100% to the detriment of the story ever since he’s started doing it

i’m not even inherently opposed to ridiculous convoluted bullshit. i’m one of those pretentious fuckheads that unironically likes End of Evangelion and thinks it made perfect sense, obviously, duh, with all its absolute nonsense of adam and lilith and rei being a god-analogue from absorbing both the white and black seeds and allowing shinji to dictate the ultimate outcome of third impact in the culmination of a couple of really fucking long and extremely obtuse character arcs. i mean, hell, i’m 38 chapters into a fic that is running off nothing but weird high-concept ideas of how reality and parallel universes work and abstract metaphor andsleep deprivation. in any other circumstances, i’m fine with convoluted batshit nonsense.

i think the best way to explain the heart of the issue is to look at what happened to the matrix trilogy. or actually wait this is tumblr, everyone’s in high school and would’ve been foetuses or something when Revolutions came out. homestuck, then. we’ll look at homestuck. 

okay so homestuck. remember when that was as big as it was? initially, the big stumbling block was the slow pace of act 1 where john just kind of fucks around throwing glass at clown dolls for a while and if you weren’t into that kind of humour that was where the comic immediately lost you, but what ultimately got the ball rolling was [S] WV: Ascend. the general metric back then was if you weren’t hooked by that one, you wouldn’t like homestuck at all, and for many people that was the point of no return. the reason WV: Ascend was as big of a deal as it was is that we’ve been seeing a bunch of disconnected nonsense happening all over the place, and this is the first time we see our first major time loop actually closed, with the promise of a few more being set up. all that supposed joke nonsense we’d been watching the whole time? it actually mattered, surprise! from there, the narrative spends a lot of time introducing a lot of new concepts – we have captchaloguing and paradox slime, and time travel, and doomed timelines, and exiles and future versions of planets from a parallel universe the metanarrative being perpetuated by the author being diagetic and fuck knows what other things i’m forgetting about. and then, to throw you for a loop twelve whole other characters show up on top of that. so then the narrative needs to spend time establishing who these people are and what their relevance to the story is – which it does, by having them be active participants in the first arc as things go on. this ultimately culminates in [S] Cascade, where we see all these different concepts eventually tie into one another because they were deliberately set up to, and it’s at that point that you figure, well shit we’ve hit a point where all the time travel stuff has finally come to a head. and with it, you’d expect it to also bring all the character stuff to a head too, but instead hussie has an entire extra act to go so we can’t have that resolve yet. 

so in the meantime, here are 20-ish whole other characters doing some other things. but we don’t have time to establish what’s effectively the silmarillion by now, so we have to speed past it, meaning we aren’t given a chance to care about these new people. but we can’t have a chance to care about them either, because we still have to tie all this into 5 whole previous acts that are meant to feed into this. at this point, homestuck is visibly collapsing under its own weight. character arcs are forced to fart around in circles because the status quo can’t change because we still need to make it to endgame with these character dynamics more or less intact. but that’s boring to read so we’ll do this entire “what if” thing and then retcon it all out of existence, and then have the fact that you can retcon things suddenly become vital to the resolution of the coming in place of anything we’ve already established previously – not the time travel, not the parallel universe with the trolls, not even the whole thing with the Scratch leading to the alpha kids being here in the first place – when the mechanic was only introduced in the first place to sloppily patch a story together that had long since devolved into infodumps that served to paint hussie further and further into a corner as he was forced to define his lore to get the plot to keep moving forward despite the fact that the narrative wasn’t focusing properly on the people that could make that happen anymore because the story had since switched focus from those people almost entirely. 

and in the meantime the damn thing got eaten up by filler, and suddenly characters from that filler are showing up like they were totally relevant to the main story the whole time even though literally nothing they did in their own subplot had any direct bearing on the story at large, unlike the initial 12 trolls. why yes, Alternate Universe Calliope was a completely necessary addition to the story! didn’t you see our important sidestory thing where they do Stuff, and then her showing up in the climax to resolve some other things that are sorta disconnected from the main plot anyway?

not to mention the shipping. nothing ruins a story faster than throwing in a love triangle or eight, and then immediately invalidating all the character growth that happened on top of that anyway by having it literally never happen. not that it would’ve mattered anyway, because remember, we never actually got to have any of this really developed to begin with. 

by the time we hit end of act 6, there’s been so many new concepts haphazardly stapled onto the story and so many threads brought up and discarded entirely when we already established back with [S] Cascade that the story works best when they actually do this and it is doable, that it stops being merely complicated and off the wall, and starts being spread too thin, incomprehensible, and ultimately no longer part of a whole narrative deliberately comprised of interlocking storylines. shit’s just kinda happening at you, and rather than getting to see parts of a text interacting as a result of them coming from somewhere for the express purpose of then going to somewhere, you’re just being asked to accept that, yup, that’s a thing that’s going on right now. neato. sure is some stuff happening and whatnot. and in the end, for all that posturing, it didn’t even do anything. in pre-cascade homestuck that wouldn’t have even been a full flash. a bunch of nonsense happens, and then They Fightan Good, and then it’s over and there’s not a single time paradox or meta-interaction to be found. none of the stuff they built up to over all these years mattered, and neither did any of the stuff they just threw in, either. 

i’m sure you see what i’m getting at with this. 

(also he treats the women in his stories like shit and quite frankly i’m sick of it and even more sick that people keep giving him a pass for it because it’s practically reached parody levels at this point , so there’s that)

i have no problem with convoluted twisty bullshit in and of itself. but it has to accomplish something aside from just existing, and nomura doesn’t do that. by his own admission, kingdom hearts wasn’t planned, and it shows really badly. characters and entire story mechanics and plot lines are introduced solely for the sake of introducing them. they don’t go anywhere or build to anything, because they can’t, because fuck we have to stall for kh3 shhhh just keep adding more soras and hopefully no one will notice. i think the last time any of this actually mattered was kh2, and even that had a lot of the issues i’ve mentioned here. as a result of all of this, the character arcs suffer a lot, and you’re left with nothing but a big ball of plot twists that goes nowhere, and a bunch of characters that only somewhat have anything to do with any of it. 

i don’t feel like it’s overly nitpicky to find this kinda gross and seriously insulting of the audience’s intelligence. it’s just lazy time-stalling. i get that people sometimes really don’t care about stuff like narrative and character development and are just here to see riku punching mike wazowski in the teeth or whatever, but i think it’s disingenuous to pretend that these aren’t nonetheless important parts of a game’s construction – especially a studio that used to openly pride itself on selling games with a focus on story. 

and the genuinely frustrating part is, no one cares. people are gushing all over everything square puts out because it’s square, so they know they don’t have to put effort into their stories. i’m well aware i’m in the minority for saying that these games are bad. but i also thought we were done with treating, “it’s just a video game, bro! why do you care so much about the story having quality as a narrative? this isn’t an english class!” as a valid rebuttal. 

maybe i should’ve used the matrix trilogy instead. most people hate movies 2 and 3 for the weird “YOU’VE ALREADY MADE THE CHOICE/EVERYTHING THAT HAS A BEGINNING HAS AN END NEO” shit and the bonkers christ-allegory ending. i hate it because neo is about as interesting as the rock that cracked goofy’s skull open.

[marionthegeek]

Can We Talk About Pavi? Heck, Can We Just Talk About Ravi?

Because he needs to be a better man if he wants this to work out.

Ok, I know what you’re thinking.  She’s a big-time RaviOli shipper, of course, she doesn’t like Pavi.  But just hear me out a minute, okay?  Because I want to like Pavi.  I really wish I could. 

I adore both Peyton and Ravi.  I want them to be happy.  I just have serious concerns about how Ravi (and to a much lesser extent, Peyton) views romantic relationships.  Ravi’s so bad at it I don’t even want him with Liv until he gets his shit together.  And you know I ship it...hard.   This essay is not about one ship vs. another.  This essay is about how Ravi needs to grow as a character.

Ravi tries very hard to impress Peyton.  That, in and of itself, isn’t so bad.  But he treats their relationship (and Peyton) like a prize to be won.  Like an end goal.  Not like the beginning of a partnership or the start of a life together.  She deserves better than that.  They both do.

I’m not saying they couldn’t get there.  And if they do, I will at least be reasonably happy with the narrative.  I could be happy for them and happy with Liv and Ravi as the best of platonic friends.

Ravi, even in season 1, has one real flaw.  He likes to impress pretty girls.  And yes, it’s with the goal of dating them.  But he’ll talk himself into a corner to achieve goal one.  He never thinks very far beyond what he wants to get out of it.  See episode 1x2, where he lets a woman believe he’s a detective so he can chat her up.

Ravi is gorgeous and tall and smart.  More than that, he’s funny and charming and a genuinely nice guy.  In a show full of morally grey characters, Ravi is as close as we get to a perfectly good “good guy”.  He’s forthright and loyal to his friends.  He takes his Hippocratic Oath very seriously.  He has a noble goal of finding a cure and saving the world.  He’ll even put his life on the line to save one of the “bad guys”.  And at first, his one real flaw is a “blink and you’ll miss it” thing.

When he’s first asking Liv to find out if Peyton’s dating anyone, he expresses interest in dating her.  But, he has her best friend right there.  Someone who he’s very close to.  And he asks absolutely nothing about Peyton except if she’s dating anyone.  She’s a goal.  A thing he wants.  He doesn’t ask Liv what Peyton likes to do or what her dreams are.  He doesn’t even ask what kind of flowers she’d like or what her favorite color is.  My point is, he takes very little interest in Peyton beyond her being a sexual object.  A goal.

Once they have a few dates, he does try to tailor them more to her interests.  Visiting the sites where Vertigo was filmed would probably have made Peyton happy.  But it is still very much framed in the narrative as Ravi trying to impress her.  And then Peyton leaves.  And Ravi is more upset for Liv than he is for himself.  Because he knows Liv has far more emotional attachment to Peyton than he does.  Which strikes me as a little off, given how fast he formed emotional bonds with Liv and Major...  It tells me Ravi views friendship and romance very very differently.

Now, let’s talk about Steph.  Because Ravi’s epic f***-ups of season 3 were very well foreshadowed in season 2.

He meets a girl at a club the one time in his life that he’s high.  But she’s cute and willing to sleep with him, so he decides to keep seeing her.  They start seeing a lot of each other.  She’s clearly into it.  Into Ravi.  And we see from the way he talks about her with Lv and Clive (and later Peyton and Major) that he’s just not that into her.  But he keeps dating her.  Because she’s cute and willing to sleep with him.  She starts to assume a real relationship is possible here.  And he panics.

Meanwhile, he’s enjoying the fact that his hot ex, Peyton, is staying with him.  First of all, I’d like to point out that Steph is a class act.  She wasn’t bothered by Peyton staying there.  And when he tries to whine to Peyton about Steph becoming clingy, Peyton shuts him down masterfully.

Now, Steph and Ravi didn’t have much in common.  And her sweet but misguided attempt to remind him of home is played for laughs.  And their break-up was inevitable.  But he treated her poorly.  He let her believe there was relationship potential when there wasn’t because he likes getting laid on the regular.  He knew weeks before he broke up with her that they at least needed to have a conversation about what they wanted.  He put it off because she might take sex off the table.  And even when he absolutely knew he was going to break up with her... he slept with her.  He waited until the morning after.  Dick move, Ravi.

The audience wasn’t emotionally invested in Steph.  And Ravi is such a wonderful person otherwise.  And Steph was played for laughs.  But Ravi’s pattern of bad behavior is there if you look.

And hours... just hours... after he ended things with Steph, he tries to kiss Peyton.  The woman who wants to be his friend and hang out.  He goes in for the kiss without even thinking about it.  And she calls him on it.  Thank goodness.  But he also doesn’t pick up on the fact that she needed a friend because he’s too disappointed that she isn’t sexually interested in him.  She’s visibly upset and he retreats to his room because of the failed kiss, even though she clearly wants to still hang out.

When he finally does realize Peyton is having problems a couple of episodes later, we start down the saga of Ravi being hungover all the time trying to impress Peyton who can drink him under the table.  The sad part here is this was the best time between them.  They were talking.  They were being friends.  And Ravi was showing real concern for Peyton as a person, not just a potential lay.

Another window into Ravi’s dating habits is given in season 2.  Darcy, the barista at Positivity Coffee from episode 2x14.  Ravi thinks she’s the “city’s foxiest cashier.”  And later in the episode, he tries to flirt with her.  It falls completely flat.  She’s never seen Star Wars and she likes transgressive rhymes.  It’s played for laughs, and it is funny.  But it also shows that Ravi knew nothing about this girl.  He’s been making eyes at her for (at least) months, but all he knows is she’s cute to look at.  Ravi’s priorities about the women he views as potential romantic partners are very one dimensional.

The end of season 2 sees Peyton and Ravi getting back together after Ravi jokes about “Nice guys finishing last.”  Let’s pause for a moment at this point in the timeline to talk about this for a second.  Ravi is a genuinely nice man.  He’s a great friend.  But in many ways, his dating life verges on him being a Nice Guy™️.  Now, it’s definitely on the cusp.  It’s one of the things that makes the writing in this show great.  Ravi is shown to be a genuinely nice friend to Liv, a woman that at least in earlier seasons he cannot be sexually interested in without becoming undead.  So, we know he can have a successful friendship with a woman.  But Ravi doesn’t really have any other female friends.  If you discounted his friendship with Liv, every other attractive woman --of the right age, who is available-- he’s encountered in the show has been a potential bang.

Now, I think Ravi fights these tendencies.  He’s not blowing up at women who reject him.  He’s the least violent person in the show.  A true passivist.  And he means his apologies when his romantic overtures fall flat.  But it’s not hard to imagine Ravi as someone who would describe himself as “in the friendzone”.

So, Peyton and Ravi are back together.  And then Ravi finds out she once slept with Blaine.  He freaks out.  Even he knows it’s irrational.  But it still happens.  Peyton is kidnapped and Blaine saves the day.  And yes, Peyton is grateful to Blaine for saving her life.  But as far as she was concerned, she was still dating Ravi.  But he ghosts her for a week after she’s just had the most traumatic experience of her life.  Because he can’t get right with the fact that one of her past sexual partners was Blaine.  And Ravi tries to figure out why he can’t put it behind him and comes to the conclusion that it must be that he’s in love with Peyton.  Which he blurts out at an extremely inopportune moment.

Of course, Peyton didn’t know what to think of that.  Who would?  He’s been ghosting her and treating her poorly for something she can’t go back and change.  When she slept with Blaine, she didn’t know who he was.  She didn’t know the horrible things he’d done.  But Ravi was still holding it against her.  I’ll give Ravi credit for knowing it’s his own stupid macho problem and not hers.  But he handles it terribly.  Peyton was 100% in the right when she told him off in her office.

Then there’s Katty.  He’s just blurted out that he’s in love with Peyton.  But he’s pretty damn sure he’s blown that up completely.  So he accepts Katty’s offer of a hook up the very same day.  And then kisses Peyton when she shows up with Katty still in the next room.  Not good.

I saw a lot of upset in the fandom about this incident.  Much was said of it being out of character for Ravi to screw up so badly.  But the foreshadowing is all there.  The pattern of behavior is there.  I wouldn’t even call what Peyton, Ravi, and Blaine had a “love triangle”.  Ravi screwed up his chance with her.  Blaine was Peyton moving on.

Then it comes out that Blaine was lying and Peyton is now single again.  Ravi, in episode 3x9, is straight up obnoxious to her while the group is playing D&D.  He’s making her uncomfortable and he doesn’t seem to notice.

Now, let’s talk about Rachel.  Because when Ravi thinks with his penis instead of his brain he gets stupid.  He didn’t know very much about this woman, but on the off chance it’ll get him laid, he tells her all about zombies.  She turns out to be a reporter, and Liv ends up on the front page of the Alt-weekly.  He’s put himself at risk as the doctor who is working on the cure, and he’s put his very best friend at risk because she’s now Seattle’s only recognizable zombie.  Good job, there.

Which brings us to season 4.  Everyone seems to be getting along.  Our core group of Liv, Ravi, Peyton, Clive, and Major have wildly different experiences in New Seattle.  But they’re all friends.  Ravi and Peyton seem to be getting along well, even though she’s dating other people.

One day, Peyton drops by the morgue.  She’s having a rough week and she wants a win.  She needs to find this dog. (Now don’t get me started on the fact that they live in a walled city and could probably have shown a picture of the dog on the news.  It’s not like he could have gone far.)  Ravi points out that the guy she asks Liv to eat is a heroin addict.  All three of them agree this is a terrible idea.  Liv does not eat the brain.

Then Ravi realizes it’s his (zombie) time of the month.  And in his apparently never-ending quest to impress Peyton (Major even calls him on it), Ravi decides to do the stupidest possible thing.  Even he knows it’s a terrible idea.  That’s why he stopped Liv from doing it.  When it works and actually gets him the attention he wants from Peyton, no one looks more surprised than Ravi.

Well, now Ravi’s won the affection of the woman of his dreams.  Now what?  That remains to be seen.  Is he going to grow into this relationship and be the kind of partner Peyton deserves?  I don’t know.  I’m watching with interest to find out.  I’d like to see him develop a friendship with her like he has with Liv.  Something that could be a real foundation for something more.  And if that happens, I’ll root for them.  I’m already rooting for Ravi.  For his character arc and his growth.  And Peyton deserves much more than to be his learning experience.  Whether she finds that “something more” with him or in herself in her own arc remains to be seen.

Characters need flaws.  Otherwise, they’re boring and come off sanctimonious.  Ravi is an excellent character.  He balances being a compassionate, compelling man, with having flaws that stem, in part, from social awkwardness and a lack of relationship experience.  And I think, for the most part, he’s actively trying to get better. Ravi’s incredibly likable, and even loveable, both to the other characters and to the audience.  But he still has some growing up to do.

[apicturewithasmile]

LOST rewatch (season 1):

[follow the entire rewatch-tag here]

episodes 1 and 2 – Pilot:

Jack’s Angel Hair Pasta speech is making my eyes roll so far back up my head that it hurts

Kate speaks the first “we have to go back (for him)” around minute 39 of ep1

I forgot how incredibly sexy Naveen Andrews is

John Locke doesn’t speak his first line until minute 23 of ep2 when he explains Backgammon to Walt – his iconic Orange Smile scene and the Sitting In The Rain On The Beach scene actually both happen before he gets to speak

episode 3 – Tabula Rasa:

Oh, it’s the first “previously on LOST”

the sheer loathsomeness of that fucking US marshal… ugh

Michael: “I will get your dog back as soon as it stops raining.” – rain: *stops*

Wash Away playing in the final scene

that last shot that made John look like he was gonna be some mysterious villain character when actually he’s just the jungle philosopher who talks to the island

episode 4 – Walkabout:

yaaay, the first boar action

I can’t believe they waited until the airplane food was all eaten up before they thought about finding food on the island

that asshole from the office who’s bullying John makes me so angry

“don’t tell me what I can’t do” makes its first appearance at minute 21 and is quickly followed a mere minute later by the second appearance

totally forgot that John is actually the first one to see Smokey – and that early on in the show?!

Uuuuuuh first time we see ghost!Christian Shephard

Do we really think John killed that boar on his own or did Smokey help him?

episode 5 – White Rabbit:

there’s so many times they say “the others” before there’s even any sign of The Others™ I’m starting to wonder whether it’s intentional

the best thing about Jack-centric episodes is Christian Shephard (I got it hard for daddy Shephard okay!??!?!)

do Australians really sound like that or did they mainly cast American actors for the scenes that take place in Sydney?

aaaaand there they are, the Jears (Jack tears)

episode 6 – House of the Rising Sun:

god I love Sun and Jin, I hate how underrated all of their flashbacks are

bless the bad CGI bees

look! it’s Mother’s first appearance

episode 7 – The Moth:

ugh it’s a Charlie episode -.-‘

headcanon: Jacob made that cave collapse because he wanted to get rid of Charlie

John believing and being proud in Charlie makes this episode worthwhile for me

episode 8 – Confidence Man:

Kate is actually carrying a… bundle??? of bananas over her shoulder. What’s mote #jungle aesthetic?

John you manipulative bastard, I love you!!!! I can’t wait for Not Henry Gale to join you into an endless manipulation play-off

I honestly can’t remember whether or not Sawyer and Sayid will ever work out their issues in the later seasons and actually get a somewhat friendship?! I don’t remember any bro-scenes between them which is a shame tbh.

Boone: “She’s my sister!” – god how did I think it was totally reasonable to turn this into an incetuous romance?!

episode 9 – Solitary:

Yaaaaaaaaaasssss it’s Sayid’s first episode which also means: DANIELLE ROUSSEAU!!!

I am a big Shannon/Sayid shipper but I can really understand the folks who ship Kate with Sayid. It would have been soooo much better than the love triangle of hell.

And I hate that Sayid doesn’t speak Arabic in his flashbacks. I get, Naveen Andrews doesn’t speak it but… they made Daniel Dae Kim speak Korean even tho he couldn’t?!?! It’s a bit of inconsistency that annoys the crap out of me.

I’m moaning a lot considering this is my fav show… there’s just… a couple of things about season 1 that always been bothering me.

OH MY GOD IT’S CREEPY ETHAN!!!

Danielle looks so fucking good and so does Sayid fnfsdkgnjkngjdfh my bi senses are tingling.

episode 10 – Raised By Another:

Claire’s nightmare is super fucking disturbing

Her ex is literally the most annoying fuckboy and I have absolutely forgotten about him for a good reason. What an asshole.

Kate’s been wearing the same green short for at least the past 3 episodes… which… I get because clothing is limited on the island but it reminds me of the Simpsons’ wardrobe

The fact Creepy Ethan™ is there after Claire wakes up the second time saying she’s been attacked should have been the biggest #clue.

Hurley getting the flight manifest from Sawyer by just… talking to him… my aesthetic!

The “Ethan is creepy”-reveal is soooooo well done gjfsngkngdg

episode 11 – All The Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues:

More Terry O’Quinn close ups please!!!

I love that John is “of course Kate is coming along” and just hands her a knife whereas Jack is always like “no, don’t come along, this is #dangerous” – like… by now we should all know there’s no stopping Kate!

John predicting the rain is one of my fav scenes.

Wooooow they discovered the hatch THAT early in the season?!??!

episode 12 – Whatever The Case May Be:

Sawyer really shouldn’t go swimming in sweet water with his wounded arm.

I love Rose :’)

okay this episode was kinda underwhelming but that might be because I remembered what was in the case

episode 13 – Hearts and Minds:

I do not remember this episode title AT ALL so I have no idea what to expect

Aaaaaah I think it’s the Shannon and Boone incest episode which explains why I have forgotten about it – one of the most unnecessary plots in the history of LOST ever

How is Boone still friends with Locke after this whole bondage mess? Nevermind, John could do anything to me and I’d still follow him to the end of the world.

“PEE ON IT!”

episode 14 – Special:

I hate that Michael’s ex took his son away from him. She shouldn’t have put him in that position. I hate her.

What is it with Michael and car accidents?

and now she’s clearing her bad conscience with money. I HATE HER!

And now Charlie’s reading Claire’s diary – I hate him, too!

Aaaand here comes the bad CGI polar bear

Every time John Locke smiles an angel gets its wings.

Claire is already back?!?!?!?

episode 15 – Homecoming:

Wait…. Is this already when they kill Creepy Ethan? If so then I really liked this episode. Probably the only moment I truly liked Charlie.

The Scott/Steve-joke never gets old.

I love that Sawyer organised a gun for Kate. If I absolutely had to ship any combination of the love triangle of hell it’d be Kate and Sawyer… but only because Juliet isn’t in the picture yet.

episode 16 – Outlaws:

Oh it’s the Sawyer versus boar episode, I love that one!

Sayid you sassy fucker, I love you!!!

I love that they made the “I never…” scene so long.

“You’re not alone – don’t pretend to be!” is exactly what I needed to hear right now, thanks Sayid!

episode 17 - …In Translation:

How are Sun and Jin both so incredibly beautiful? Newsflash: I’m bisexual!

Hurley, my lovely empathetic sunshine!

Is it just me or is Michael’s first raft bigger than the second version?

John back at it again with the jungle philosophy.

“WE ARE NOT THE ONLY PEOPLE AN THIS ISLAND AND WE ALL KNOW IT!!!!” you go John, tell them!!!

Aaaah Jin’s father aka the only good father in the entire show!

episode 18 – Numbers:

FINALLY!!!

John building the cradle with Claire for the baby is breaking my heart. Jungle grandpa Locke <3

I’d love for the monster to have been a “pissed off giraffe”

DANIELLE IS SO FUCKING BEAUTIFUL

episode 19 – Deus Ex Machina:

Awwww I forgot that John worked in a toy shop – that’s so cute

Damn he looks so much better without hair than he does with it

Anthony fucking Cooper you disgusting weasel of a human being

I just remembered that the “Deus” that’s in the “Machina” is Desmond Hume, my Scottish puppy – can’t wait for him to be there doing his thing

God that moment with the light is sooooo good! That’s when I was #hooked the first time I watched the show.

And I just remembered: that’s John saving Desmond’s life there and Desmond saving John’s life and rgkdabgdlkgndg

episode 20 – Do No Harm:

Jack doesn’t deserve this wonderful wife…. And I really don’t like the whole “fixing things” trope that surrounds his character.

Oh riiiiiight, Claire’s having the baby while Boone dies. I totally forgot about that. I love it!

Sun is soooo strong in this episode, I love her!

Jack: “Don’t tell me what I can’t do!” – I think this is the first time someone other than John said it.

god it’s so fucking tragic with everyone looking at the baby while Shannon gets told the news her brother died. it’s too much for my tiny heart

episode 21 – The Greater Good:

John it ain’t really helping that you still drowned in Boone’s blood, my guy, my buddy, my pal.

Sayid saying “I know when I’m being lied to.” is kinda foreshadowing the whole Henry Gale affaire because he was the only one who wouldn’t take any of Ben’s shit for even a second.

Sayid: “You’ve never fired a gun before!” – Shannon: *fires gun*

episode 22 – Born To Run:

judging by the title of this it’s gonna be a Kate episode

ah yes…. The horrible blond wig. I mean…. How bad must a wig be to see it’s a wig from behind?!??!?!

episodes 23-25 – Exodus:

jhbdfajksfg it’s Ana Lucia, bless her, my lovely angry smol child

it was absolutely not necessary to show Sawyer with his shirt off but I ain’t complaining

anyways… when will I ever have enough time and money to go to Hawaii?

That Walt/Shannon/Vincent-moment breaks my heart big time.

The Black Rock being an old ass ship was one of the biggest plot twists the first time I watched.

The parts of Arzt flesh raining down on our guys was really more realism than needed

IT’S SMOKEY!!!! Yaaaasssss!

Has there ever been a better finale for the first season of a show ever?

[iheartdirt]

Dig Your Own Grave and Then Bury the Hatchet [5/6]

Dig Your Own Grave and Then Bury the Hatchet [5/6]

Fandom: Invader Zim

Pairing/Characters: ZaDr

Rating: M

Word Count: ~9,700

Notes: thx to my bffz5ever Mrs. mrsbigfoot.tumblr.com for beta-ing this for me. I bought the rights to invader zim for sixty-eight cents on ebay

Summary:  Alternatively Titled: In Which Zim and Dib Makeout and it Upsets the Balance of the Entire Universe

Read it at AO3 or under the cut

“Stop messing with it,” Zim snaps without looking up. A long arm reaches out and over Zim from his PAK, holding a little curved laptop in its robot claw. Screens and graphs and letters flash by rapid-fire, which Dib can see reflected in reverse on Zim’s eyes. When the light hits them just right, Zim’s eyes look like wide mirrors. It’s creepy.

“You can’t even see me,” Dib says, but drops his hand. The mark immediately starts to itch.

“Zim sees all,” Zim says ominously. His eyes flash white as the computer screen loads- something.

“How come you don’t have a tattoo?” Dib asks. It can sense people talking about it, apparently, because the triangle starts to itch. Lightly, Dib scratches at it. He’s too afraid of it still to touch it any rougher. Lately he’s even tried to keep his shirt collars away from it if possible.

“What are you talking about?” Zim asks, distractedly waving him off. “Of course I do.”

“Oh,” Dib says. Goes back to tracing his finger along the raised outline of it. “Can I see?”

Now Zim does look up from the laptop. The top half of his eyes are focused on him, the bottom half the bright blue of the computer screen. Eyelids droop in irritation, making his whole eye seem blue and depthless.

“I will allow you a gracious view at my incredible neck if it’ll shut you up.”

The high pink collar strains against starched fabric as Zim tries to pull it all the way to his clavicle. But right there, in an exact mirror of Dib’s, is a little black triangle.

Seeing it on Zim affects him a lot more than he thought it would. A rush of absurd fondness runs through him. And desire. It’s like looking at the thing makes the bond snap in place again, trying to drive them back together to consummate it better than they did at the party.

God that seems like a hundred years ago.

Zim lets go of his collar and it snaps back into place. The fondness goes away, but, uncomfortably, the desire doesn’t.

“So, this bond. It is gonna affect how we-” Dib clears his throat. “It is gonna make me not hate you?”

With a sigh, Zim retracts his robot arm back into his PAK. He gives Dib an odd look.

“The only physical aspect is the mark. My translator comes up with ‘bond,’ although perhaps a closer approximation would be what you humans call 'marriage,’” Zim says.

Dib’s stomach hits his feet.

“Right,” he says. So it’s all on him to package up those weird horny fond feelings and bury them way, way deep down where no one can find them.

Except in the morning. And at night. But those kisses don’t count if Dib doesn’t think about them hard enough. Denial is more than just a river in Egypt if Dib makes himself a happy little home in it.

-

The following weeks haven’t brought better results for anyone on the brainwashing commercial front. It’s lunchtime on the fourth week or so of his time here (a lingering Earth anxiety, Dib thinks, that he feels the need to try to track the weeks he’s been gone) and he’s starving because control base has been forcing them to skip breakfasts to catch up on the schedule. Zim had been grumpy all morning from skipping breakfast, which ticks Dib off because he’s almost absolutely sure Zim doesn’t even need to eat.

Irritably, Dib prods his salad with his fork. Delegates a couple wilted looking plants to the upper right of the plate, and scoops grape tomatoes into a little colony, but doesn’t take a bite. Despite how hungry he is. It’s always been difficult for him to eat when he’s upset. Just another way Zim is ruining his day, he guesses. Shouldn’t be surprised at this point.

Earlier in the weeks the studio had given up on the luxury of one continuous shot. Having finished all the other sections to almost-satisfaction, though, they had spent a better part of the morning working on the kiss, of all things. Which, control insists, is incredibly important to get down properly. Dib thinks they’re lying, or that he died in space and he’s in Hell for his early-morning-late-night sins. The disgusting xenophilic ones. Actually, the amount of times he’s awkwardly shoved his face onto Zim’s tense, angry one is starting to turn him off to then too. Dib’s actually pretty sure he never wants to kiss anyone again ever. He just can’t figure out how to relax as soon as the camera comes on. Even when he thinks back to their alone-kisses, he just gets too embarrassed and overwhelmed with the feeling that he’s doing something wrong. Like, morally.

It occurs to him kind of belatedly that he could think of someone else. Some hot human girl, or boy, since that’s apparently what he’s doing lately, that he wouldn’t mind kissing in front of people.

It’s depressing to think that he wants to do that even less, though.  

Dib spears a grape tomato with his fork. Someone’s gonna figure out they’re not actually together, eventually. Alright, yes, the triangle-shaped mark probably means they’re together—somehow. But not like that. Or, he guesses, only sort of like that. Sometimes He blushes at his salad.

“It’s not like that,” Dib tells himself.

“Being crazy again, sad little Dib?” Zim asks, gnawing loudly on an aluminum foil back. The bag is already open. Saliva drips from the corner of his mouth.

Dib buries his head in his hands. God, please don’t let it be like that.

He remembers their “homework,” though. (Which is hilarious. Dib would have graduated high school by now. College letters would already be in the mail, and Dib would be packing for dorm life.) Try to practice affection in public, they said. If you do it out there, we don’t have to waste film on it in here.

Dib sighs into his hands, and lets one fall next to him, keeping his head resting on the other. Calling upon some deep well of courage and strength, he lets his pinky finger lead his hand in a hesitant scoot across the table until it rests on top of Zim's— hand? Claw?

Of course, Zim conspicuously and instantly stops trying to eat the chip bag. He shoots a look at Dib, which is even more conspicuous and Dib thinks again to himself that there’s no way he could— that there’s no way they’re like that. Zim is too much of an idiot. Squeezing his hand tighter, Dib gives a significant look to their lunch mates as if to say don’t tip them off, you stupid lizard. Zim nods sagely, but moves his hand so that Dib is gripping his wrist instead. Dib rolls his eyes. Whatever.

“Hey,” someone says to him “are you listening to me, lovebird, or what?”

“Huh?” Oh jeez, is someone talking to him?

“We were talking about that new eyeball eating squid the armada has-,” Steven says, exasperated.

“Allegedly has,” Hegh interrupts.

Steven rolls his eyes. “Anyways, then you started mumbling to yourself and stared off into space for a bit.”

“Ha Ha,” Dib says, uncomfortably. “Sorry.”

Steven smiles knowingly at them. Blinks his eyes a couple times. “You don’t have to be embarrassed to hold hands around us, guys,”

Zim’s clicks a bright plastic smile on and Dib almost laughs at it. Gums are showing that smile is so wide.  

“We just love to, eh,” Zim says “squeeze our love-tubes into-augh,”

The smell of burnt flesh rises before Dib sees the smoke. Zim hisses between his teeth, and yanks his hand back, and Dib loses sight of him for a split second in the haze.

When he can see, he sees a thin dark line wrapped around a wrist that Zim cradles to his chest.

“Curse you! Your filthy human sweat has poisoned my soft, advanced skin.”

Dib’s ears redden. “If your skin is so advanced, how did I burn it then, huh?”

“Be quiet!” Zim says, and makes a half-aborted little stomp on the ground. “There is no glue aboard this cursed ship.”

Dib’s stomach churns. This is it, he thinks. This is the moment where everyone’s gonna realize that they aren’t—you know—and that they’re stupid space bond is a stupid space-hate bond and he doesn’t like Zim at all—except for the alone-kisses which don’t count— and Zim’s thin, burnt bracelet is just glaring, smoking proof that they couldn’t get away with it.

“It’s adorable,” Hegh says, throwing his arms wide and narrowly avoiding hitting Boch in the face.

“I promise I didn’t—wait, what?”

Hegh laughs. “So nervous about husband in public, you sweat poison from your hand-skin.”

The rest of the table laughs and chatters in agreement. Dib breathes in deep, he didn’t know he was holding his breath, and is finally able to look away from Zim’s wrist. He looks up at Zim and, expecting him to still be pissy, is surprised when Zim looks almost contemplative. His eyes focus on Dib’s and holds them for one beat, then two, and then he purses his lips and shrugs. Lets his hand fall into his lap.

“I guess it could be called 'adorable’.” Zim motions one gloved hand with another. “It seems we will just have to get the Earth boy a pair of gloves. Or me some glue.”

Is Zim seriously the one recovering them from this? Dib feels still in shock from their close call. He looks at Zim’s face, and then his eyes drop down to Zim’s mouth which is still bunched up to one side. He could do it now, he thinks. With everyone at the table laughing at them and encouraging them and Zim agreeing that he’s—adorable?

Someone at the table tells a joke, because Hegh laughs uproariously and breaks the spell. Dib looks away. The moment between them is gone.

Once the table calms down, though, Dib scoots a little closer to Zim and resolves his unfortunate lingering mushy feelings by hooking his foot around Zim’s ankle. This time, neither of them flinch at the contact and Dib has to hide a smile.

Three notes sound, two up, one down, to signify the end of lunch.

“Oh, Dib,” says Steven as Dib unhooks his ankle from around Zim’s. “Can I talk to you, actually?” His gaze sweeps slowly over to Zim and he rephrases, pointing between Dib and himself. “mano a mano?”

Dib gives Zim a sidelong glance, and Zim raises his eyebrows. Or, well, the skin where his eyebrows should be. In a weird eyebrow-like skin formation. How many face muscles must an irken have to move their face like that? (File that for later, Dib.)

Dib shrugs. “Sure.”

Zim pulls a face at him, and Dib knows he’s going to have to deal with that later. Unfortunate mushy feelings gone.

“What is it you have to say to the salad boy that you cannot say to me?” Zim asks.

“Leave off, Zim,” Dib says, pulling a face back at him. “Why does it matter?”

Zim looks at Dib, and then back at Steven, and then back at Dib again before scoffing dramatically and turning on his heel.

Whatever. Let Zim be a drama queen if he wants. Just because Zim’s been inspiring frequent gross soft feelings doesn’t mean Dib’s going to change his life to revolve around what Zim wants. Stupid Zim. Not that Dib cares. Dib doesn’t care about anything Zims doing, obviously.

Steven grabs his shoulder interrupts Dib’s completely-fair fuming.

“Don’t worry about it, man,” he says. “I’ve got a surprise for you that’s gonna knock off your socks.”

Immediately, Dib perks up. “Oh?”

“Can you meet me right here in, like, two hours?” Dib notices that Steven is almost vibrating with excitement. Whatever surprise it is he has planned, Dib one-hundred-percent wants to be a part of it. Especially if it’s going to annoy Zim more. Obviously, not that he cares what Zim feels about stuff. It’s just an added bonus.

Dib quickly confirms their plans, and starts off for the bedroom with a light step.

Until he basically bodies a crouching Zim right as he turns around the corner.

“Oh my God, Zim, what is wrong with you?”

“Me?” Zim asks. “What is wrong with me?”

“Yes, what’s-”

“Me?” Zim asks, louder. “What is wrong with me?”

“Yes, that’s what-”

“Me?” Zim asks, flailing now, “What’s wrong with-”

“Oh my God, Zim, shut up,” Dib says, pushing Zim’s shoulders a little. “I think you’re just jealous because people actually like me here, unlike you.”

“Me?” Zim yells. “Jealous?”

“That’s right, I-”

“Me?” Zim yells louder. “Jealous?”

Okay, no actually, he’s done with this.

“Me?” Zim raises his arms in the air dramatically and pounds on hallway wall next to him with his tiny fists. “Jealous?”

People are starting to stop and stare at them openly. Blood rushes to Dib’s face.

“Zim, if you’d just shut up for a second!”

“I’ll kill you, dirt stench.” Zim says suddenly, withdrawing his arms into himself and eyeing him balefully. “I’ll have your blood on my hands.”

And, really, that’s the final straw. How many times do they have to go around in circles like this? Why does it always half to be one step forward and three steps back? The kissing, the talking, the arguments. Any feelings Dib had about Zim vanished. None of it ever matters because they both pretend it’s never happening anyways. It’s like he’s two different people, and Zims two different people, and Dib hates all four of them.

And, God, Dib’s tired of it.

Which is the best explanation for why he’s able to tug Zims chin between the cup of his hand and kiss him so hard his lips feel like they’re gonna bruise.

It doesn’t feel good at all, actually. It feels like they’re fighting, but it at least feels like winning the fight. Zim splutters against his mouth and strains hard against his hand but Dib has some unknown hand strength that keeps him in place. Or maybe Zims not struggling all that hard. Another layer of stupidity.

There’s a pregnant pause, and then Dib lets him go. Zim stumbles backwards with the force of wrenching his face away. They stare at each other for a moment. Zim’s mouth halfway in a snarl, eyes intent and focused, Dib panting and tired.

And then Zim hightails it.

And Dib turns around and doesn’t watch him go.

-

He’s five minutes early to his meeting with Steven. Honestly, for the last two hours, all Dib’s done is powerwalk angrily down the hallways around the meeting place and avoid talking to anyone, so he’s proud of himself for being only five minutes early.

When he sees Steven around the corner, Dib raises his hand to greet him and is quickly shut down by Steven bringing his finger to his lips in the universal sign for “shut the fuck up.”

Dib lets his hand fall. Okay, so it’s a super-secret mission. Maybe control is assigning him some other work, since Zim is so useless and stupid at everything. That’s probably it.

Steven motions with his hand for Dib to follow, and Dib does, keeping a couple yards behind him at all time just in case. Basic spy knowledge says never let the enemy know you’re involved. Or something.

They walk down to a hallway that only has one door at the very far end of it. Dib has never seen a hallway end, in a door or otherwise, and he tries to fit it into the map of the place he has in his head. (Another Earth anxiety, probably, Dib thinks. The need for things to be contained and finite, even in space.)

At the end of the hallway, Steven soundlessly waves the door open, and long row of mops lines the small room, side by side.

“I knew it! I knew it,” Dib shouts, and then covers his mouth to smother his volume. That doesn’t keep him from continuing to talk through his fingers though. “The mops have been the real secret weapon the whole time. They contain microorganisms on the fabric heads capable of creating temporal doom.”

“No,” Steven says slowly after a moment. “The mops are for cleaning.”

Steven places a hand on Dib’s shoulder, and motions again with the other hand. The far back wall of the mop-closet moves out, spins around, and then tilts upwards like a garage door opening.

“The guns are for temporal doom.”

And revealed on the other side is a massive room, walls stocked toe to tip with hundreds upon hundreds of weapons. Huge canon-guns the size of three Dib’s lie closer to the top, and a thousand tiny handguns on the bottom. Like a library, rows of wheeled ladders are scattered every hundred meters or so.

“You were telling me a couple weeks ago how you wish you could be more involved, and I didn’t get you that,” Steven says, hand squeezing Dib’s shoulder “But I did get you clearance to look at this neat weapons to maybe cheer you up. Shooting things always cheers me up.”

“Oh, man!” Dib says, taking off into the room. “Is that one over there a laser gun?”

Upon closer inspection, it is a laser gun. With like, three different dials and triggers despite being the size of the average human handgun. Does it shoot a continues stream of laser, or is it like short bullets? He could never tell with Zim’s guns because he was such a shitty inaccurate shooter anyways.

“Oh, man!” Dib says again, for like, the twentieth time. “Does this one have an auto-coolant re-firing system? I haven’t even seen these on paper.”

Steven smiles at him. “Yeah, my dude. We have them in the laser hand-canons too.”

“Wow!” Dib says. “Can I shoot this one?” Dib points to another gun, further up, about the size of an overweight toddler.

“Uh, sure. As long as you don’t shoot at the other guns, I guess.” Steven shrugs.

Carefully, Dib lifts the much heavier than it originally looked gun off of the wall. It’s the size of a toddler but the weight of ten toddlers. It comes away with a little click, and he drops it on the floor. Dib shoots an alarmed Steven a meek smile and hoists the much, much heavier than he maybe should be lifting gun up on his shoulder. The sharp dig of it into his neck meat where he has to place it is decidedly not comfy. But Dib can barely feel it because he’s holding a giant laser gun. How does he shoot it?

“This button?” Dib asks out loud and then presses a button like a trigger near where his hand is naturally resting. It kickbacks immediately, throwing Dib back a couple feet. The gun slides off his shoulder backwards and Dib falls to his knees with it. There’s a loud sucking noise, and a steady beam of light erupts out of the gun for a split second.

The beam, oddly, doesn’t throw Dib back again, and he’s able to watch as the beam cuts a hole out of the ceiling in a perfect, burning circle.

“Wow!” Dib says again. He relaxes his arm and tilts the gun over to get the weight off his shoulder.

“Like a duck to water.” Steven says politely, because it’s absolutely not true.

“What?” Dib turns around, tilting the gun precariously. “Oh. Thanks.”

Steven picks the gun up, and it looks light as anything on Steven’ shoulder. Dib’s jealous.

"Sure,” Steven says, mounting the cannon back in the cannon-shaped-hole where it should be. “You’re really not that bad for a first-timer, especially off a planet without laser-weapon technology. Makes me wish we could actually join the foot-soldiers.”

“Hey,” Dib asks, just realizing “How come you’re so much better at talking Human than everyone else?”

Steven grabs a ladder around a rung and begins to walk it further down the aisle. “Don’t you know? Plookesians visit Earth all the time. I could probably even speak it decently without my translator.” He taps on the little Bluetooth-shaped device on his glass dome.

The new hole in the ceiling allows Dib to see a little square foot of space into the room above as they pass under it with the ladder. It looks to be a supply room in similar shape as this one, also fully stocked with weaponry. Isn’t everyone else issued a gun, no matter what they do? Dib thinks back to breakfast, and he definitely remembers seeing people with guns to their holsters. People that he’s pretty sure aren’t ground soldiers. It’s possible that big weapons like this are only handed out right before battle, or on special missions, but what about smaller guns. Shouldn’t he have one for like, safety?

Dib knows it doesn’t really make sense. He just really wants to have a laser gun.

Dib finds his mouth speaking before his brain can catch up.

“What if we join the foot-soldiers anyways?”

Steven shoots him a puzzled look. “What do you mean?”

But Dib’s voice is running ahead of him. Mouth moving before he really even realizes what he’s saying. “We could sneak in. You could get us disguisers. Those holographic kind. You can get us those, right? We can use those holographic disguisers, and sneak onto a mission. Who wouldn’t overlook two soldiers in a mess of like, what, ten thousand?”

Steven stares at Dib with saucer-round eyes. Again, Dib recalls that he doesn’t actually know what Steven does here. Maybe he’s already a soldier.

“I-I don’t know about that, Dib,” he says. “We could die. Worse, we could get ourselves fired.”

Those are sure some priorities.

“We could really do something to help the revolution. Isn’t that what matters most anyways, helping the effort?” Dib asks.  

Steven doesn’t look convinced, but he also hasn’t said no. He hesitates, running his hand over the wood grain of the ladder. He traces his finger over the rung, thinking it over. Dib sees his window disappearing. He’s already committed himself to this plan. There’s no way he can make it happen without Steven’s access to clearance on things like the weapons room, and hopefully disguisers. If he can’t convince Steven to do this for him, he’ll never get another chance at all.

Dib smiles at Steven winningly. “There’s no other friend I’d rather come with me than you,” he says, putting an upwards tilt in tone on the last word to make it seem like a reminder.

Still not looking over at him, Steven fights a smile and Dib does an internal fist pump of success.

“Yeah,” he says softly, and then louder “Yeah, okay. There’s a group heading out in a half-sol. I can get disguisers before then.”

“That’s a lot sooner than I was expecting,” Dib admits “but I’m still totally down.”

In the corner of the weapons room, they spend the next several hours working out the details of their plan.

-

When Dib comes back to their room, Zim is loudly fake snoring. Dib knows its fake, less because he’s still pretty sure Irkens don’t sleep and more because Zim is just actually saying the word “snore” out loud several times a minute.

“C’mon, Zim, I know you’re not sleeping,” Dib says.

“Snore,” says Zim.

Dib rolls his eyes and climbs halfway up the ladder to the top bunk. Once he’s high enough to see Zim, he rests his head on the side of it. Zim’s back is to him, but he can see his body twitch with his ‘snoring.’

Dib doesn’t feel like what he did was wrong— after all it was Zim who antagonized him, as per usual— but he does want this fight to end. Picking his battles is the best thing when it comes to Zim, and with the actual battle imminent, this isn’t the one he wants to pick. The volume of Zim’s snores turns up a notch.

Better just tackle it head on. "Sorry about that kiss thing.”

Zim shuts up and turns over to meet his eyes. “I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Dib rolls his eyes. “Sure, yeah, okay.” They sit in silence for a moment, and Dib stares aggressively at a spot on the bedsheets. “I don’t want to kiss you in front of people without like, your permission, I guess.”

For a second, Zim squints his eyes at Dib. And then he closes his eyes and turns back over.

“You have indefinite permission, or whatever.”

“Oh,” Dib says. His face heats up. This was much different than how he pictured this conversation going. “Okay.”

Not knowing what else to say, he spends a couple more minutes staring at Zim, watching the slowing rise and fall of his chest now that he’s stopped “snoring” and still wondering if Irkens really sleep?

Zim’s chest rises and he thinks about what he said, and the unfortunate mushy feelings he had, and the maybe-sort-of-like-that. Scrounges up his courage and thinks that he used to have more courage than this when he was a kid.

Dib takes a couple more steps up leans over Zim to kiss him halfway on the mouth. Like, spider-man style. Which is super cool and sexy. A sharp intake betrays Zim’s pretend sleep, but Dib ignores it so he can duck his head around the ladder and jump off.

Before he can realize his mistake, he heads straight for the door and Zim “wakes up” and asks him “Where do you think you’re going?”

“Uh,” Dib says, intelligently. “I have to pee?”

Zim cranes his neck around and narrows his eyes at him and Dib can feel himself starting to sweat under his collar. Why is he always so sweaty? Finally, Zim scoffs.

“Humans are so gross. I take it back, Earth-Beast, I don’t want your face anywhere near mine.”

Again, Dib rolls his eyes. “Whatever, space lizard,” Dib says. And “Don’t wait up for me.”

The door closing muffles the latter half of Zim’s “I won’t.”

-

They had agreed to meet again in the weapons locker (Steven assured him the foot-soldiers wouldn’t be in this locker tonight, as it was technically the “back-up” locker.)

In Steven’s hand, Dib saw, were two different Bluetooth headpiece shaped objects. They must be the disguisers. Dib reaches out for one, and Steven shows him how to fasten it to his ear.  

“One tap on it to turn it on,” Steven says, demonstrating. It flickers, and then instead of a Plooknesian stood a short vortian, with circular curled horns and an overbite.

“Two taps to turn it back off.” Taps twice, and then Steven is back.

Dib taps the earpiece and, for lack of a mirror, looks at his hands, which are now green and stubby.

“Am I Irken?” Dib asks, twisting his arms out in front of him to get a look at his new skin.

“Yeah,” Steven says, tapping himself back vortian. “I thought it would be funny.”

A weird nauseous wave hits Dib when he goes to scratch his face, sees three fingers and feels five. Nervously, he agrees. Funny.

Both disguised and armed, they leave the locker, but pause at the end of the hallway. They wait, tense, listening. Apparently, Steven hears something because he herds them down the hallway right and end up behind a group of soldiers. An irken and two more species Dib doesn’t recognize.

Dib and Steven quickly fall into step behind them.

“Hey,” one of the aliens says, after a couple moments, jerking its hand towards Dib. “Were those guys here with us the whole time?”

"Oh. Yeah,” asks another.

Dib starts to panic. “Uh, yes?” he asks

The first alien hums, and scratches his chin. “Well, alright,” he says.

 They follow the group into a room massive like Dib’s never seen. Can this really still be on the ship? It stretches infinitely in all directions, dotted in a crisscross pattern with even-still large black spaceships. Each ship can probably eat ten of Zim’s ship, easy. For breakfast. One side of each ship has a gaping maw which soldiers pour into like krill into a whale’s mouth. A huge loading dock. Dib and Steven, side by side, follow their group into one of the rushing currents of aliens marching into one ship’s mouth. The incline into the ship is steep, but surprisingly grippy for a metal surface. At the lip, though, Steven is pulled in a different direction from Dib to be strapped into the nearest available seating. Dib is ushered to the opposite side of the ship to strap himself in.

“We seem to have more soldiers than we were planning for,” says a uniformed vortian standing near him, scratching between his horns with a pen and looking perplexed at a clipboard. Dib throws Steven a sly wink, which Steven doesn’t get because he’s too far away to have heard the comment. Steven winks at him back anyways. Good friend.

For a reason Dib doesn’t know, they wait in the ships for a while. Every second makes Dib feels more anxious that they’re about to be caught before they can even fly off. Aliens around the ship are chatting in a low buzz, though, which reassures Dib that maybe the waiting is normal. No one’s looking his way, so Dib tries to keep his head down.

What looks to be the same vortian from earlier marches stiffy to the lip of the ship’s opening. It’s sans clipboard this time though, and reaches to adjust the collar of its uniform. Dib stifles a laugh at the resemblance to Zim. He’s so for sure gonna tell him about this when he gets back. If Zim ever stops being mad at him for this.

Eh, he’ll get over it. If they’re lucky, no one will even notice. Or they’ll be super famous and everyone will give them awards for how good they shoot.

The vortian clears its throat, and Dib sneaks Steven another look. Now he’s looking back at Dib queasily. Leave it to Steven to try and ruin his plans at the last second. Bad friend. Well, it’s too late, Steven. Still, Dib sends him a thumbs up, and is a little mollified to get Stevens weak return thumbs up.

The ship’s ramp starts to rise silently until it reaches the top of the opening and fastens itself into place with a rather jarring creaking noise. Wind blows past him and his ears pop as the airlock engages. Dib feels a little thrill through him. He did it. Well, they did it. Mostly with Dib’s motivation, without which they never would have even halfway made it. So mostly Dib did it.

The vortian clears its throat again, and the chatter in the room dies down this time.

“Why do we resist?” the vortian asks in the nasally voice typical to the species. It’s little head bobs as it surveys the room, but his voice sound strong and sure. “For those in the Resisty, we do not resist for power, or for monies. We do not resist, in the Resisty, for personal gain.”

That’s right, Dib thinks. We exist to kick entire alien butt. And get cool space medals like the scene in Star Wars. Steven is definitely Han though. Except Dib’s not gonna lose a hand.

It pauses, eyes resting in the middle of the room. “Does anyone know why we resist?”

The room is silent. Dib assumes this is a rhetorical question, of which the answer to is kicking entire alien butt and all that other stuff.

“We resist for love.”

Oh, wait. Oh, God, no. Please don’t let this be about what he thinks this is about. Underneath the hologram, Dib’s cheeks redden.

“As long as love can be found in the most selfish of races, and the most savage of planets, then we will resist,” the vortian continues. Its gaze seems to drift to Dib like a honing missile. Dib stares resolutely at the floor.

This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to him. When Tak said she was basing the recruitment theme around their “relationship,” or unfortunate lack therof, Dib hadn’t pictured it all weird and gross and stuff. Sure there’s selling love as an angle, but this is just stupid. All these aliens on this ship, and millions more, have seen him rubbery-mouth kiss Zim, and they just die over it?

Blushing furiously, Dib ignores a now-grinning Steven and stares hard at a chip in the floor tile. Stupid Steven. Just two seconds ago he was gonna barf it all over the floor ‘cause he’s scared of death or whatever and now everything’s comedy hour at the chuckle hut. Dib tries very very hard to block out the rest of the vortian’s speech. Very unfortunately, he hears his and Zim’s name several times. Sometimes even right next to each other. When the room erupts into cheers, Dib tunes back in and is relieved to find that the speech is over. Chancing a look at Steven, Dib finds he’s still grinning at him. Dib pretends he can’t see him.  

Almost right after the speech ends there’s a sickening lurch which sends Dib’s stomach into his ears. The ship quickly gets its balance, though and glides smoothly off. Windows line the walls like teeth, and through them Dib watches spacetime smooth out to a faded grey as they reach max velocity. Just like in Star Wars. Neat. There’s a gentle buzzing from the turbine Dib’s closest to, but otherwise the ship is silent. Friends and coworkers that were talking earlier are quiet, as if the vacuum of space sucked up the noise. As if the heaviness of the air dampened everyone’s high spirits. In the silence, oxygen masks are handed out to creatures who need them. Keeping his face down, Dib snatches one and pulls it over his face.

For a second, Dib feels a genuine lick of fear in the raw pit of his stomach. It kinda feels like his heart and his lungs and his spleen got put into a blender and dumped back into him. And also like he’s about to go to war and die.  

He thinks of Zim, back in their room, chest rising slowly and then falling like a tick-tick-tick, pretending to be asleep. Or maybe actually sleeping. He still doesn’t know. Waiting for him to come back from the bathroom when he won’t. And he feels- weird. Guilty? Why should he feel guilty? For saving the entire universe? And kicking massive alien butt?

He remembers flying through a different spaceship with Zim. Pointing at planets and stars and eating shitty granola bars on the floor. Looking at all of space fly by in a dull grey with a thousand different species feels lonelier, somehow.

Another lurch forward as they stop, and Dib’s spleen presses uncomfortably into the seatbelt. He doesn’t wanna be that guy who vomits on the ship before the mission. Plus he’s sure the guy who vomits is probably likely to be asked for I.D., and Dib doesn’t think they’ll get lucky twice if pressed.

After a couple seconds, the seatbelt gives way, like a themepark ride, and Dib stumbles forward a bit getting out of his seat. The wide door opens, and, unhitching his blaster from his belt, Dib jogs out with the crowd.

At first Dib doesn’t really understand where they are. It looks like a really old shopping mall. But like, huge. When Dib looks up, it resembles more a city bank in amount of floors than a mall. But the walls are decorated with little storefronts, giving off the general appearance of a termite hive. Along the general walkway are scattered waiting benches and fake plants. Dib notices stupidly that the plants don’t have any dust on them, despite the mall looking abandoned for at least decades.

The group moves forward in a unit that Dib tries to stay at the back of. If he stays at the back, they might not notice an extra person moving not quite along like the rest of them. The whole place is still. Even the leaves on the plastic bushes don’t seem to be swaying. Their steps sound so loud to Dib. Like little bombshells erupting in a uniform march. A glowing bit of neon sign pokes around the corner indicating the food court. Huh. Who would have turned the neon on? Who’s paying the bill for that electricity for the-

And then- Noise. A thousand life-size explosions in his ear. The lights are bright, bright, bright all of a sudden and he hears a gentle whine, like a mosquito. Pressure is on his eardrum. The mosquito is trying to bury itself in his ear and it hurts so badly. There’s an ambush happening from above. An ambush they didn’t anticipate. He hears someone shouting in his ear to move from underwater but he can’t figure out where and in which direction. He tries to follow someone, hide where they hide, but they get lost in the crowd almost instantly underfoot. Everyone is scrambling. He steps on something soft that crunches.

Dib mind clears for just long enough to understand that someone is shooting at him. The thrill of death tickles him and makes him duck low below everyone. He runs as fast as he can in one direction, hoping not to get stepped on, hoping he wouldn’t get caught by a stray bullet. Someone ahead of Dib falls and kicks him in the face on the upswing, smashing his glasses and digging the frame into his cheekbone. It doesn’t hurt, but Dib feels that his cheek is wet with- probably blood. His face feels prickly and numb.

Getting finally to a place where the crowd is thinner, Dib takes a run for it and hauls ass to a bench that he ducks behind.

Sitting down, Dib realizes that his mask is fogging up over his eyes with moist breath in a slowly inching-out circle, and now he can’t see out of the eye that has a glasses lens left. He knows he needs to control his breath, stop hyperventilating, but now he can’t see and the noise sounds closer, like it’s coming for him. If he could only stop hyperventilating.

He hears something that sounds like words out of the rising wall of screams and gunshots.

“Hey,” it says. “Dib, hey!”

Dib uses his cheek to wipe away some of the condensation on his mask, too scared to move his arms. Blood follows it, but it cleans off enough of a portion so he can see. He sees, twenty yards or so away, behind another bench, Steven. Oh, thank God. Somebody, anybody is alive. And here with him.

Dib motions with his hand that Steven should come over here to him. There’s safety in numbers, right? If Steven will just come over here, everything will be alright. Maybe he and Steven can stand back to back so Dib can block out this horrible growing feeling that’s been crawling up his spine that someone is right there, right there behind him. Steven doesn’t answer him. Dib motions harder, waving over to himself as frantically as he can. His mask isn’t gonna be clear for long. A gunshot flies down a few feet behind Dib, who feels the sharp whine in his molars more than hears it. It generates a loud explosion that sends concrete up in huge screaming chunks and rams Dib’s knee into his mouth. Dribbling out blood, Dib looks up to see Steven frantically shaking his head at him. Can’t he see that if he’d just get over there that everything would be alright? Dib swallows. There feels like there’s so much vomit in his stomach his organs are liquefying and melting in it. Into some sort of gross organ soup. A sharp pain hits Dib in the gut, like a stitch. Or maybe even an organ broth.

Steven shoots him a conflicted look, but, crouching onto the balls of his feet, makes a mad dash for Dib’s bench. He passes a pile of upturned stone and then a body, propped up against the stone walls by the force of the bullets before Dib sees a little red mark following behind him, like a baby duckling. Fear is choking him and when he screams nothing comes out. The bullet makes a visible screaming line through the top of Steven’s tank to the bottom. Cracks spiderweb through the holes in his tank, almost in slow motion, and the force of the liquid pressing on the glass cracks it into a thousand pieces. Shattered glass barely skitters across Dib’s feet. Steven ragdolls to the floor, his body suddenly dried up and noodle-like. Almost comically, he deflates, leaving a pastelike substance in a Steven-shape. Dib vomits up a thimble-full of stomach bile and then finds he has no more in his stomach and retches dryly.

A force knocks him to the ground and something else cracks- not his glasses this time- and pain blossoms on the side of his head so painful he retches again. Reaches up to feel it, out of habit, and comes away not only with blood but grasping a half a little bluetooth shaped plastic chip. The Disguiser. The green skin on his hand flickers once, and then fades to normal. God, oh fuck, no. He can’t die here. He’s gotta hide. Gotta find a way to hide his face, but his face just hurts so god damn bad. He heaves himself forward with one arm, not really knowing where he’s going, but knowing he needs to move. Sleepy, really sleepy, but you’re not supposed to sleep if you have a concussion? Right?

Someone’s saying his name but it sounds from far away, like someone’s shouting at him through a tunnel. The world kind of feels like it looks through a tunnel too, you know?

His last thought is on a little chest rising very slowly and falling with a tick-tick-tick.

-

And he’s back at it again in a tiny concrete box. Honestly, he thought he’d improved at least a little bit.

The box begins emanating a tinny voice. The intercom system, Dib realizes.

“Hello, prisoner! It seems that you’ve woken up.” A pause. “Good for you.” The voice is incredibly nasally, even through the shitty speakers. And also incredibly familiar.

A different voice speaks, deeper and equally familiar. “You’ve been imprisoned on the bestest ship to ever get all conquer-y up in here: The Massive!” This voice is somehow, even worse.

“Really? ‘Get all conquer-y?’” Dib asks.

Dib rolls over onto his side and grips his head. It feels like it’s splitting into three even pieces. All of his muscles ache because he’s been sent to space hell to be tortured by the recorded voices of Statler and Waldorf after a rhinoplasty for all of eternity.

“Congratulations for rotting on the best ship ever made!”

A ding finalizes the message and Dib is so, so grateful.

The Massive. Doesn’t he know that name? But, ugh, his face feels like someone’s pushing a needle through his left eye. Isn’t The Massive that big Empire ship? Dib feels a pang through his gut that has nothing to do with his injuries. A real soldier would know this.

A real soldier wouldn’t have got caught in the first place.

A real soldier wouldn’t have gotten his friend killed.

Dib bites his lip hard and forces himself to focus on where he’s heard of ‘The Massive.’ You can’t change the past.

The walls ding again to indicate a message and Dib calculates how long it would take to kill himself by smashing his head into the side wall.

This voice is different. “You’ve been chosen by the almighty Tallest as a special interest prisoner. Confetti,” it says.

“Did you just,” Dib forces out through ground teeth “Say the word confetti out loud.”

“The all-knowing Tallest have left you a prerecorded message.”

Lovely.

“Sorry we can’t meet you in person, Dib.” The nasally voice is back and no, oh no, that’s where he’s heard it before. Through brief interactions when Zim had called them. And hadn’t they video-chatted once, when he was like, twelve?

The Tallest snickers. Dib remembers that too, that they— snicker a lot.

“Yeah!” The other Tallest says “We don’t want to catch any of your ugly Earth diseases.”  

The first one again. “Good one. Ugly diseases, can you imagine?”

They both laugh.

“Since you and your defective are so fond of television broadcasts, we’ve decided to send him a little broadcast of our own.”

“Tell him what it is. Oh, no, let me tell him what it is,” one of them pleads.

“We’re going to air your execution live to the entire universe!” The voice says this so loudly the speakers go out for a moment.

“Oh, Red, you’re no fun,” interrupts the other one.

The one who’s apparently ‘Red’ says “Well, maybe if you hadn’t messed up the first recording-”

The audio ends with a chime.

For the first time, Dib thinks to himself that this time he’s really done one doodle that can’t be un-did.

Even though he spends the night unable to sleep for the rotten pit of guilt and fear in the bottom of his organs, the night is the quickest night he’d ever spent. Just as he had started to steel himself for the possibility that he would die here, two irkens, bigger and beefier than he’s seen two irkens, corral him out of his cage and into another room with long tridents. The spears zap with electricity, and Dib tries to stay far ahead of them. They giggle amongst themselves, a poke to Dib in the back with sharp jabs whenever the laughter dies out, and then they explode into giggles again. Just like the stupid Tallest.

It takes several moments of giggling and cackling before Dib realizes that they’re not speaking in English at all. Or, laughing in English rather. In fact, they aren’t laughing at all. Dib sees that neither of them are wearing translators. This is what the Irken language must sound like raw. Like— giggling. Is it because Irkens have no reason for translators? Why would a genocidal species need to be able to understand anyone else? Or is it just to spite him? Try to psyche him out to feel lonelier, more confused?

Dib grunts at a sharp poking pain in his back and the laughter reaches a fever pitch. A headache starts to bloom behind Dib’s right eye, and he actually smiles wryly, remembering all the times Zim caused that same headache.

The thought causes his stomach to sink. He remembers the last time they talked. You have indefinite permission. A rising feeling in his throat, like he might vomit.

A third irken enters the room. Tall, and green eyed, only a few shades darker than his skin. He looks like he was molded out of one piece of clay, two shiny moving lumps of skin to designate sight. It puts Dib’s stomach into his lungs, somewhere below the vomit and the stomach bile eating away at him. For whatever reason, he feels like he’s looking at a walking irken corpse when he sees the green-eyed one. The cadaver grabs his arm, giggling at him, and injects him with a syringe drawn out of his jacket. It spreads a numbness up Dibs’s arm, and up into his chest and Dib thinks for a terrible moment oh, god, they just euthanized me. This is it. Pain follows the numbness. Worse than when he got that tetanus shot in the tenth grade because Zim nicked him with a rusty blade. The pain holds his chest, like a python squeezing, and then gently burns away.

The irkens face each other and laugh, full bellied. By all three of them, Dib is ushered through a maze of more rooms. This place seems almost the opposite of the endless hallways of the Resisty. Like a honeycomb of tiny rooms nestled right against each other.

He’s led into a room that looks different from the others in that it seems to be carved out of one continuous block of stone. The wall is smoothed up top like a cave and— oh, okay, Dib thinks as he sees a barred drawbridge at the end of it, it is a cave.

There is a low hum in the background that seems echo-y through the cave. One of the irkens chuckles darkly and stabs him hard in the back, sending his sprawling forward onto the rock. His muscles twitch painfully, contracting from the electricity. Looking up behind him, Dib sees the door has been closed and he’s left alone.

With nowhere else to go, Dib drags himself to the barred drawbridge. Through the bars, Dib sees what seems to be a huge Roman Colosseum. Except, not Roman at all, because it turns out the low hum was millions upon millions of little green irkens screaming. Large television screens, must be miles wide, float among the crowd showing close-up clips of irkens screaming, eating, or laughing. Above him is a bright orange sky, casting a dirty glow on the world. Like a night-mare realm.

Straight across from him was a barred drawbridge identical to his, a thousand times bigger in size. As soon as he notices it, his drawbridge begins to retract and Dib understands. They weren’t going to kill him outright. They’re going to make a show out of him first, watching him run for his life. Steadying himself on the wall, Dib stands himself up and limps into the Colosseum.

Well, fuck then. It’s time to give them a show.  

Something charges out of the other drawbridge to the screams of the crowd.

The first thing that Dib notices about the monster is that it’s pink. Like really, really pink. Why is everything irkens own always pink? It’s also low to the ground and on all fours, so Dib’s mind immediately goes to dog. Dogs are good at running, and also hunting. What are dogs bad at? Nothing. Dib’s going to die. A large snout sniffs the air. Nuzzled at the base of the nose are two indented slits. Those are probably its eyes? It’s blind, then, Dib realizes. Patches of fur cling to its skin, but otherwise it seems to just be one giant flesh monster with no eyes.

Dib feels a moment of hope. If it’s blind, maybe he has a chance to outwit it. But why would they give him a monster he could outwit? What’s the point of trying to kill him if they’re going to give him a way out? If Zim can figure out where he’s gone—or if he cares—he may only have to outwit it for a bit before he figures out the Tallests’ games.

Apparently having found a smell that it liked, the creature rears back on its hind legs, showing a rope-scarred belly. The sound that comes out of its mouth sounds like nails on a chalkboard, and leaves Dib’s ears ringing. The noise of the crowd dulls. Dib notices a flash of something white in the dead center of its mouth that he doesn’t think are teeth. Too far in the center, almost at the back of its throat. Most of its teeth seem to be overhanging its lip like an overbite-underbite sort of deal. It opens its mouth again to scream, and there, at the very back of its throat, are two wildly spinning volley-ball sized eyeballs.

Ah. Eye-eating squid monster. At least part of the rumor was correct. There are eyes inside of its mouth.  

One huge volleyball stops, pupil arrested on Dib. A beat, and then the other eye stops on Dib, and the monster is looking right at him. It’s then that Dib decides to vomit, and the monster’s cry is overwhelmed by the audience’s disgusted reaction. Now it smells awful, like the inside of his stupid rotten stomach, and he vomits again. Non-audience noise erupts from the far side of the stadium, and Dib doesn’t even bother to look up. He just runs. The shoes they put him in are wet with his vomit, and he almost slips before catching himself. He stays along the far edge of the colosseum to try to put as much distance as he can between him the monster. It’s turn speed is slow, Dib notices, like an alligator. Whenever he changes direction, he gains precious meters on it, but there’s no way he can outrun it when it has him dead on.

As quickly as the creature got itself reorientated, Dib switches himself in another direction, alluding it along the curve of the wall in a zig zag motion. A stitch starts to form in Dibs side. Weeks of life in zero g have seriously impacted his muscle density, as well as just being out of shape. There are serious downsides to a life where he isn’t physically fighting Zim anymore. Dib can’t do this avoiding game for long, and he suspects The Talllest will put something to his disadvantage soon if they get bored.

Dib turns another corner, and his feet get caught up under him. This time he stumbles, and the mistake costs him most of his lead. The ground starts to pitch and shake under him the closer the monster gets, and now Dib’s worried he’s going to fall again, this time directly underneath the monster’s huge foot. Clenching his eyes shut, Dib falls flat forward instead, hoping to roll himself under the worst of the creature’s attack.

The right foot narrowly misses Dibs stomach, as far as Dib can tell from the noise, but does graze his shoulder. Something snaps- so loudly he thinks it’s in his skull until pain paralyzes him from shoulder to elbow. His clavicle must have broken. That’s the only way to explain how much pain he’s in. There’s someone screaming really loudly right next to him, but Dib can’t see who it is because everything looks so dark suddenly. He thinks that he should scream because he heard it helps fight pain. He’s already screaming, though. He’s been screaming.  

Something else is screaming too. The monster. Dib has to move or do something right now because in seconds he’s going to be dead. Fear jolts into his muscle like an electric shock, and he flings himself up and goes sprinting in a direction. A direction he hopes the monster isn’t in. The ground shakes again, but the creature’s scream doesn’t accompany it. Is he still screaming? Dib keeps running, his breath burns his throat as he swallows air hard. Each gulp feels like a pound of sand. Another shake, and a blue light, like real lightening and he’s thrown to the ground like it’s moved sideways to meet him. On his back, Dib sees the heavens crack open like an egg, revealing space to him as its split yoke.

People were on the field now. We’re people supposed to be on the field? He wonders if it’s because he’s dead now, and he gets to see the last seconds before they scrape his body off the concrete. The pain had spread in a slow burn up most the base of his head, and he can feel his pulse there. It’s like his whole skin pulses with it. And with every beat of it comes with a strong throb of pain. Did he already say that? Loud sounds. The sound of guns going off. Everything is much darker than before. It this hell? Dib glances behind him and sees a group of identical blue clothed toys on strings shooting at pink, entrapping it in a cage of blue light.

Someone grabs him. Another blue clothed alien. It takes off its head- a helmet, and green is below it. Green like Zim. Strong arms around his waist, and he’s hauled upwards. A part of his chest feels like it crunches, and he screams again.  

His heart physically hurts, like it pulled itself up through the layers of bone and flesh to deliver its pulse right into the first layer of skin.

But the ground beneath him is suddenly cool, and the crunch in his chest lessens when he’s let go. The noise here is quieter, which is nice. He stops screaming. A voice he recognizes-Zim. Why would Zim be in hell with him? Did Zim die too? Zim comes near and grabs his shirt. It peels away from his skin which feels so good and so cool. And while Zim’s vice like grip on his chest hurts like a motherfucker, it also feels like a lifeline pumping directly into his veins. But the bond doesn’t have any physical affect? That’s right, he likes Zim. Zim is hissing something at him (hissing, not giggling) and Dib spends his energy to crack his eyes open and see Zim’s bleary green head.

Dib’s head lolls to the side, because it’s so heavy.

“I missed you,” he says inanely.

The hissing stops and Zim huffs at him. A little puff of breath on his face. Feels two hands cradle his head, and then none-too-gently pull forward.

“If you,” Zim says, slowly and carefully, and Dib can see him now that he’s up close. Dib thinks he might be crying, because his face is wet. Embarrassing. He hopes it’s blood. “ever scare me like that again, I will make your skin into beef jerky and I will eat it. And it will taste good. So good.”

And before Dib can say anything, Zim is kissing him. Which is great because it means he’s definitely not dead. And because his mouth is soft and warm and very nice. Zim’s hand is clutching desperately at him, but his mouth is paper-light, like he’s afraid Dib’s about to fall apart. Which he probably is. Regardless, Dib lifts a hand to Zim’s face, tilts him to the side and presses closer. He kisses him again, and again, and again until he hears someone say “please tell me you’re getting this on camera.”