#and oh the rogue's sort of daughter showed up

[sguidwards-bestfriend]

So apparently pitchpearl is a thing, I've been on tumblr for a while and if you know any history then you understand why selfcest doesn't surprise me in the slightest

Anyway...

dpxdc Misunderstanding that becomes reality fic: 1.5k

part 1

Warning: I plan on a very melancholic ending, its a good ending but also kinda sad

...

When Danny moved to Gotham, he really had thought he wouldn't continue his hero work in this dimension.

But there was a little girl in the street that almost got hurt during a rogue attack.

But some kind of gas went off at the cafe he worked at and it's not like he really needs to breath and there were so many people.

But his University, Gotham U, was in a lock down from a random winter storm that definitely wasn't natural.

So he did what he could when he saw it and kept off of the news when he was doing class work, letting the other "vigilantes" pick up where he couldn't.

However, after a few more months of class, work, and being a vigilante (the news station that first showed him used the correct name!!), he was right back where he had been in Amity before he'd managed to close the portal.

Exhausted and failing at everything other than hero work.

The year after he had graduated high school he stayed in Amity and was able to make amends with the ghosts, being the crown prince definitely helped. He thought the ghost attacks stopping would have lessened his pa- Jack and Maddie trying to catch one. In reality they only became more and more frantic to catch the last ghost, "Mini Phantom".

Revealing he had a daughter, that that daughter was half ghost, hadn't gone well in the slightest.

The one shot Maddie managed to hit had almost destabilized her. He had grabbed her and ran into the portal. He wasn't sure how he'd done it, but in a fit of blinding rage he had destroyed both sides of the doorway to the Ghost Zone.

Frost bite had managed to get her to retract into her core. She'd need some time before she'd have a physical form again, and she'd need Danny to keep her stable for some time, but she would make it. She'd be fine in the end.

It felt weird to have two cores in his chest, but other than needing to take ecto shots it wasn't a huge change.

The last time he'd been to frostbite Ellie's core had some sort of shake to it. It could have been nothing, but a halfa was rare enough. A halfa making a never-born hadn't even been thought of. Add on, that that never-born could possibly be born a halfa was... concerning.

So here he was, in an entirely new dimension, nervously chewing on the end of his stylus, waiting to hear back from Frostbite. His study sessions lately kept being interrupted by thoughts of her. If she really was okay.

Then there was an earth shattering BOOM, that shook his entire building.

As he floated upwards and through the wall he caught a glimpse of something he had never seen before in his afterlife.

A daemon. An actual daemon with red skin and horns and a flaming tail crawling out of the ruble that used to be his front door.

Danny could sense immediately that the being wasn't from the ghost zone, but it held just as much power as one of the stronger ghost.

He transformed and landed in front of the being, "Hey! That was my front door! What gives, Rudolf?"

The daemon shook the dust off his head and looked at Phantom, then at his chest, and back at him. "I do not fight those that carry child."

"Oh... uh." He was not expecting that. "Are you okay?"

It was the daemons turn to look perplexed. "I am fighting a hellblazer, he owes me something. Refuses to pay."

"That's annoying." He looked around to see some guy in a trench coat at the end of the street. The yet to settle dust cloud making it hard to figure out any other features. "I can help if you-"

At that a massive blast of magic hit him and the daemon, sending them careening farther down the street.

Danny's vision went double and he thought he was going to throw up. All he could focus on at first was the pain as he tried to stand on wobbly legs, then it was the emptiness in his chest.

Ellie.

He closed his eyes and dropped back to the floor. He focused on her core. He found it quickly, checking it over, turning it every which way incessantly until he heard someone groan in front of him.

When he opened his eyes he was looking at two much smaller daemons, one a bright red, the other a darker wine red, sitting in a massive indent in the road. One he very luckily was on the very outskirts of.

The two immediately started to bicker, swatting at each other, but not actually fighting.

He heard footsteps on the wreckage behind him, some magic words were said and the daemons' were hand cuffed and poofed out of sight.

"Hey kid, you okay?" Trench coat asked him, not bothering to give him his hand.

"No thanks to you, you ass."

"I just saved your life." He said with a blank expression.

"The daemon wouldn't have done anything to me. Unlike you, they have a moral code."

Trench coat huffed, that seemed to ruffle his feathers. "And what would those morals be exactly?"

"They pay their debts, for one. And two, they don't magically attack people carrying children." Danny stood up and wavered. Trench coat grabbed his arm to steady him.

He stared at Danny for a few more seconds, "You're not human." It wasn't a question. He sucked in a breath, "You're not fully human."

"Ding, ding, ding." Danny tried to shake of the hellblazer's grip. "Let go of me."

"I know where to get medical attention for non humans. You need to be looked over." He said, starting the motion to make a portal.

"Nuh, uh. No. I'm fine." Danny said, patting the hand still wrapped around his arm. Trenchcoat let go and shoved him lightly, Danny felt the world twist around him as the pavement came up to meet his face.

Before he hit the ground he stopped in mid air, not by his own volition, and was gently propped back up.

"That blast spell is designed to not affect humans. You shouldn't have felt more than a breeze." Trenchcoat went back to opening up a portal, it glowed an eerie red. "Come on, well check the little one too."

Danny let himself get pulled through the red portal, it quickly closed behind them.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

His head was pounding.

"wha/t- morals- exactly?"

Talking.

"debts- two- atta/ckp/eo-ple- children."

Two voices. Two people.

"not human."

He feels empty.

"Letg/oof me."

He's hurt. His other half is hurt.

"You need to be looked over."

He opened his eyes, a man was holding his other half. His other half and his daughter.

"Nuh, uh. No. I'm fine." His other half swatted at the man.

The man pushed his other half to the ground.

He tried to reach out but his hand was barely a shimmering outline.

His other half didn't hit the ground.

There was ringing in his ears. The man would pay.

"Come on,- the little one too."

The man pulled his other half through a portal.

A sickly looking portal. A bloody color.

He floated up. Sped to the closing portal.

It closed too fast.

He wasn't fast enough.

...

It took Phantom 20 minutes to get his thoughts in order and another 10 before the ringing in his ears stopped.

He had been split in two before, but the ghost "dream catcher" the ecto-scientists made years ago had split his ghost half and his human half entirely. This was different.

He still felt a bit of his humanness. Transforming would suck though, he felt too low on ecto to do that.

His other half was in his human form when he looked. He still had Ellie nestled up against his core. But his core looked off. Although the silhouette was of a full sphere, he couldn't help shaking the thought that he saw some parts missing.

When Danny had been split before only his ghost had kept the core, it was what nearly killed them both. What made them promise to never split again.

Maybe if they both had bits of a core they'd be fine until they could reunite.

He tried to focus on his core but it made his head pound.

He'd have to hope his other half could manage as he tried to organize a rescue mission.

Although he'd managed to get a message from the Ghost Zone to Sam and Tucker, he wouldn't be able to get one dirrectly to their dimension.

He knew even trying to make a portal with his ecto as low as it was wasn't a good idea. And would be a waste of the ecto shots he had just chugged.

There was really only one hope of help he had left, one he really didn't want to ask.

A new friend he had made at the cafe.

Tim Drake-Wayne, son of Brucie Wayne. The very same Brucie Wayne that was definitely funding Batman's weird night life.

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

Wow this got away from me, honestly was planning on like 500 words. I want to continue this, but if anyone wants to pick it up and play around please feel free to add stuff in the reblogs! I adore reading peoples additions to posts

(As always please please please help me writing tags i never knwo what to do with them, the lack of structure here compared to ao3 confuses me)

[oodlyenough]

dw 2x07 wish world

i am really enjoying this season of doctor who and i'm sad it's going to be a billion years until we get another one.

spoilers for wish world!

great vibes this ep lol, the spooky stepford wives oppressive atmosphere under a sort of dot-and-bubble fake friendliness. i really liked how they peeled the layers back as it went on, the sexism homophobia ableism etc all funnelling back to conrad's ~ideal world~. the "doctor who" books looking like hp covers...

i don't know if this theme is fully coalesced yet but i like that we see doubt as a powerful force both for bad and good -- in conrad's first ep he was sowing doubt and conspiracy theories (derogatory) but in this ep the doubt is the regular people discovering and unravelling the lies of their weird fascist dystopia. (ofc i guess the rani's plan involved wanting everyone doubting for uhhh spacey magic reasons, but i don't think that really lessens scenes like belinda screaming in the forest or ruby with shirley's friends.)

mel!! i've been trying to avoid spoilers and stuff so she was a pleasant surprise.

the rogue cameo was nice lol, i didn't expect to see him again. i have to admit their one-episode romance leaves me underwhelmed the way all one-episode doctor romances do so the "love" line felt unearned to me but like. sure whatever. it's cool that the doctor's gay romance helped him see the truth of the explicitly homophobic fake world.

i don't really know anything about classic rani lol so i have no opinion on her characterization here vs that but i find her entertaining here. i also think the bigeneration giving two different versions of her at once playing off each other is a fun approach too. (i know there was a twelve-era ep with multiple masters but i never watched bc i had lost interest by that point lol)

poppy being a major character and possibly his actual daughter?? LMAOOO??? rtd said you WILL acknowledge space babies whether you like it or not 🔫. as a space babies hater myself i have to respect the hustle

OMEGA? lmao another classic who concept i only know from fandom osmosis. deeply funny how much these two seasons have been unearthing this ancient lore. heard everyone whining about the 60th being "only" new who and said "oh yeah watch this"

the belinda and john smith fake happy heterosexual marriage killed me lol, kept thinking about how many fics would be written with that setting back in my day. the human nature AUs...

anyway i'm excited for the finale, although historically RTD (and doctor who in general) is really good at setting up a fun penultimate ep and then... not so good at tying it all together. fingers crossed. i think it's cool how s1 and s2 really do function like two halves of a whole, that's a sort of consistency in storytelling between seasons i had underestimated how much the show sorely needed. i hope if the rumours are true about getting 3&4 commissioned together they're able to do the same.

[tobiasdrake]

hearing you call live-action sonic surprisingly conservative in your post about media moving forward felt like being shot in the heart

i mean, sonic as a character is pretty leftist. his whole deal is being free and setting people free,

beating up enemies in the game is literally breaking the shell that the animals are stuck in

Eggman was an analogy for pollution, with him destroying the environment for personal gain, and later being more of a fascist dictator

and his thing is always turning people into products, into literal machines he can control to do his labor and fight his wars, which would be every capitalist’s dream.

and so i never put the pieces together when it comes to the movie being conservative.

damn.

ouch.

could you elaborate more on it? idk, the conversation hurts but i’d like to know what your thoughts are on live-action sonic specifically

Oh, sure. We can talk about the surprisingly conservative themes and ideas of the live-action Sonic the Hedgehog films. With the caveat that this is old-school traditional conservatism, not modern nakedly fascistic conservatism. The Sonic movies are conservative in a Home Improvement sort of way, not a Lady Ballers sort of way.

What it amounts to is that Paramount approached the films not with intent to make a Sonic the Hedgehog movie but with intent to make a "relatable" story for an audience that also has Sonic the Hedgehog in it.

Have you ever seen 2019's Godzilla: King of the Monsters? A film which centers a broken family trying to connect with each other, while also there's a disaster movie happening around them? Like. Godzilla and Mothra and Ghidorah is all stuff that's happening, but what really matters here is whether this daughter can forgive her mother.

It's the of writing a low-stakes personal drama and then stapling the film premise to it. The kind of move that makes sense with something like The Day After Tomorrow where the premise is just "It got fucking cold" so the movie kinda needs something with some actual characters that it can be about.

But when it's an adaptation, it shows low confidence in the IP itself to carry a film. It says, "I don't think a Sonic movie would work, so instead I'm going to just make a movie and have Sonic in it."

And the a movie that they made centers some conservative values. But, like, old-school conservative values, not the hyper-fascistic transphobia and white supremacy and stuff you see around today. Things that were considered commonly recognized conservative values in the 80's and 90's, when white people were still supposed to believe that racism was over and all that jazz.

For one, Tom is a cop. Which is a wild choice for a film coming out at the height of BLM and ACAB. The film, as well as its subsequent sequels and spinoffs, play Tom's policing very sympathetically. A major theme of the first film is that Officer Wachowski is a vital and valuable part of his community.

There is no ambiguity; The cops are the good guys here. They're kind of wacky but we're meant to love both of them, Tom and Wade. They are, however, contrasted by the wickedness of the Feds.

Eggman, in the film, is reimagined from an industrialist to a federal agent. He represents the long arm of Big Government overreach coming for the sleepy town of Green Hill. Which is then further represented by G.U.N., who oppose Eggman once he goes rogue but are still the enemy nonetheless.

Even the Knux series still manages to be about fighting the Feds. The federal government has been the antagonist for 3 out of 3 entries thus far, when Eggman himself has only been the antagonist for 2.

The films leave the environmentalism of the original behind, instead centering family values. Rather than setting out to rescue woodland creatures from industry, Sonic has heart-to-heart chats with Tom about growing up and finding his calling. Knux isn't the guardian of Angel Island, but Sonic's adopted brother. Maddie can ground him for inappropriate behavior.

The first film also features the popular old-school conservative theme of Rural America vs. Urban America. Tom is a small-town cop who yearns for the glamour of the big city. He thinks his calling is there. But, over the course of the film, he learns to appreciate the value of small-town living and his importance to his community, and sets aside his foolish dreams of urbanity.

"I wanted to run away to the city but then learned that my Real 'Murica small hometown is where I truly belong" is probably the single most popular conservative story in decades of film and television.

It's worth noting that the film does feature an interracial marriage, which is something I hear brought up a lot as a way of saying "Actually it's not conservative because...."

But for as much credit as Maddie might warrant... There is the issue of Rachel. A character who exists primarily in the film to be a Sassy Black Woman who reacts with furious histrionics towards Tom for no apparent reason. She just. Hates him. From the bottom of her soul, despises "Relatable Cop Boy".

Like. So far as the film's concerned, it needs no explanation. Her relationship with Tom is just an eyeroll, sly glance at the camera, and "In-laws, amirite?" The second film at least gives her more to do, but the first concludes her subplot by having them tie her up and steal her car.

Like. That's it. That is what she amounts to. Maddie's sister yells sassily until she passes out and then the payoff is that they steal her car and leave her tied to a chair as... I guess her karmic retribution for being so sassy and mean to Tom? It's hard to really say whether this is mean-spirited because we do not know what her beef is. The film doesn't think we need to know. "In-laws are crazy, amirite!?"

When you set aside the cool action scenes of Sonic punching robots and look at what the films center as their emotional heart? You get a story about a small-town cop learning to appreciate his rural roots and build a family with his wife despite her unreasonably psychotic relatives, while the wicked federal government attempts to destroy their home, town, family, and way of life.

[starwarsmum]

Day 6 of Jasonette July: Payphone

@maribat-calendar-events

Link to AO3

“Thank you uncle Jay!” Lian cheered through the video call, grinning widely. Roy looked happier too, his eyes soft as they looked at his daughter. “When can she do the lesson? Can we do it today, Daddy?” 

“I don’t think she’s free, sweetheart,” Roy said with a laugh. “But maybe next week? How long did you say she was staying, Jason?” 

“She didn’t say, but I think she’s stickin’ around for a little while,” he said with an involuntary smile. “But if you can’t make it to whatever time she can do, I don’t mind keepin’ Lian company.” 

“Oh, I’m sure,” Roy said with a knowing smirk. Jason scowled at him but Lian was so excited that he couldn’t maintain it. “But I think I’ll be there anyway. I mean, I did only get to talk to her for a couple of minutes…” 

“Back off, Roy,” Jason grumbled, baring his teeth when Lian jumped down to go get something of hers. 

“Why, something going on between you two? Because you’re acting awfully cranky for someone who’s getting-” 

“Here, look at the book Daddy got me!” Lian said, interrupting Roy and waving a book of knitting patterns at Jason. “It has such pretty things to make!” 

The rest of the video call was spent ‘ooh’ing and ‘aah’ing at the pictures Lian showed the pair, neither wanting to continue their conversation with little ears around. When Jason eventually hung up he had a date to give to Marinette that they could all four get together for Lian’s first lesson. He didn’t anticipate getting a message back saying that she couldn’t wait but she had to deal with an unwanted visitor first so she would call him later. 

Maybe he would just swing by her apartment and see what was going on…

_ _ _

Marinette’s week was going badly. She hadn’t been able to find much to do with her time other than knitting hats, scarves, and gloves and now Adrien had called to say he had landed in Gotham and wanted to talk to her. It was the most stressful thing that had happened to her since leaving Paris, including facing off against a Rogue villain. 

She refused to give him Gina’s apartment address, instead asking him to meet her somewhere public for a conversation she knew neither of them was going to enjoy. She certainly hadn’t enjoyed their last one, where he had explained that she was overreacting to his inattentiveness and told her that things would work out fine. 

So when Jason messaged her to hammer out dates to get together with Lian and Roy, she was a little preoccupied. But she tried not to show it, sending him a message back calmly explaining that she was busy and would catch up with him later. 

Seeing Adrien walk into the cafe was an experience she could have lived without. Her heart kicked up and her stomach dropped at the easy smile he gave her. Like nothing had changed and he was there for one of their infrequent coffee dates. It made her instantly mad and ready to lash out.

“Marinette! God, it’s so good to see you again,” he said, leaning down to kiss her on the cheek. She didn’t move to return the gesture, scowl forming automatically. “Your parents said you weren’t doing the round the world trip anymore and I wanted to see when you were coming home.” 

“It’s not that I’m not doing it at all, it’s just not happening right now,” she retorted immediately, looking away from him to sip her coffee. “Nonna said she’d probably be back in the next month or two and we could pick up the trip then if I’m still in Gotham. Which I plan to be, so it’s just postponed for now.” 

“Mari…you can’t just hang out in the crime capital of the world. You’re making us worry for no good reason and we still haven’t sorted out the whole mess from before you left.” 

“Sorted out?” she asked incredulously. “There’s nothing to sort out, Adrien. You weren’t treating me right and I broke up with you. The end. There’s not really a whole lot to talk about at this point. Obviously you’re still welcome to befriend my parents but us? That ship has sailed.” 

“Don’t be silly, we’re a team! Meant to be together, M’Lady, and we were living our happily ever after when-” 

“Adrien, happy ever after is a fairytale. It’s bullshit. If you love someone and want it to last, you have to work for it.” 

“Bugaboo, we were working for it,” Adrien protested.

“You were ignoring me,” she screamed, anger that she could no longer keep contained bubbling over. “And, duh, you didn't even notice! I shouldn’t have had to leave the country to get some attention, Adrien. But you’ve never been good at listening to me and I don’t know how to make you!” 

“Marinette, how can you say that? We’re perfect for each other and-” 

“Adrien, we barely saw each other,” she shouted, trying again to pull her wrist out of his hand. “Let go of me, we have nothing else to talk about and-” 

“I’m not letting you go until we work this out!” he shouted back. Marinette wasn’t sure what she would have done if things had continued escalating, but she found that his hand on her wrist was no longer a problem. In fact, it looked like Adrien wasn’t a problem because Adrien was pushed back from her, his own hand caught in someone else’s. 

“The lady said let go, asshole,” Jason growled, twisting Adrien’s hand until he gave a hiss of pain. “You should learn to listen when a lady speaks, especially if you want her to listen to you. You okay, Pix?” 

“I’m fine,” she said slightly breathlessly. She bit her lip and looked away from where Adrien was looking at her pleadingly. “Jason, it’s fine, let him go. He was just going, right Adrien?” 

“M’Lady, I can’t just-” 

“Buddy, get a clue and take a hike. You need to get outta here before I forget that I’m reformed,” Jason snarled at him. Adrien looked like he was going to fight but Marinette spoke up softly again. 

“Adrien, it’s over. Whatever you came here to say, consider the message received. But just because you want it to work out doesn’t mean it gets to. So goodbye and I’ll see you around whenever I come back to Paris.” 

Jason continued to glare at the blond until he finally huffed and walked off, muttering to himself. He disappeared from sight and Marinette gave a sigh and ran her fingers through her hair. He looked at her questioningly but she simply looked chagrined. Probably from all the people whispering in the cafe at the argument that had just happened, and he felt bad that she’d gone through that. 

“Thanks for helping,” Marinette said quietly, leaning her head against his arm. “I shouldn’t have answered his texts when he came looking for me, it was stupid.” 

“Lesson learned, I guess,” he said, sitting down in the abandoned seat and leaning back as he looked at her. “If he gives you any more trouble, let me know. I’ll come and set him straight.” 

“So you can threaten him? Yeah, I think I’ll pass,” she snorted, shoving him lightly. He felt a warm glow in his gut at how easily she relaxed with him that he tried to squash ruthlessly. She was clearly just getting over a break up and didn’t need someone else to rebound with. 

“The offer’ll be open to ya,” was all he said. “Can I give you a ride home? Wouldn’t wanna give him the chance to corner you again.” 

“I’m actually going to get some food,” she said, and he felt the dismissal cut deep even though he’d already told himself he couldn’t hit on her. He was so busy kicking himself he almost missed what she said next. “Do you know any decent pizza places around here?” 

“Nowhere you can dine in,” he said, hope blossoming again. “But there’re a couple of good takeout pizza places near my place. If you wanted, we can order in and you can make sure I don’t go off and kill him.” 

The laugh she gave was more than enough to settle the part of him that actually did want to hunt that guy down and make sure he didn’t bother Marinette again.

_ _ _ 

“Okay, so he just forgot to come to your birthday meal?” Jason asked incredulously. They’d long since finished the pizza and he’d cracked out a range of spirits since she still seemed a little on edge. 

“He totally forgot my birthday, period. And then when I called him-” 

“No, no more, I don’t think I can hear any more of this,” he said, laughing at the way her nose was wrinkling. She joined in, her giggles making her bend towards him as she gasped for air. She tipped so far forward she fell over and he had to catch her by her shoulders before her face hit the floor. “Maybe I should cut you off, you look a little-” 

“Who made you boring?” she demanded, not moving away from him as she glared at him. She swiped at the bottle sitting behind him but he kept a firm hold on her and it only served to bring her face closer to his. “You have really pretty eyes.” 

Jason didn’t know what to say to that, the alcohol in his system making him feel stupid. And when her eyes flickered to his lips, it just felt natural to close the space between them. Her eyes fluttered closed as their lips met and he drew her further into his lap so he could kiss her properly. 

He remembered, belatedly, that he was supposed to not be kissing her, that he was supposed to just be being friendly because she was just out of what seemed to have been a fairly serious, long term relationship. But when he reluctantly tried to pull away, she pulled him back in and kissed him more fiercely. His heart hammered in his ribs as she swept her tongue across his lower lip, demanding entry that he happily granted. 

She tasted like his favourite pizza, vodka, coke, and something beneath all that, and if he hadn’t already been fairly drunk he was pretty sure he would have been just from the taste of her. It was intoxicating and he growled into her mouth as he pushed her back onto the floor, their lips staying joined the whole way down. 

He got carried away, the kisses becoming more searching as his hands roamed down her sides. When she gasped, he pulled away so that he could press kisses down her throat and she moaned when his hand slipped under her shirt as he bit down where her shoulder met her neck. 

“Wanna take this somewhere more comfortable?” he said in a low voice. She whimpered a yes and he lifted her up so he could carry her to his bedroom, her legs wrapped around his waist as their lips joined once more.

[kimberlyannharts]

So I may have been slightly hyped for this book the past few months

For the three of you who haven't heard about this, MMPR: The Return is a story set in the future of an alternate universe of the MMPRs; one where Jason, Zack, and Trini didn't give up their powers upon the eve of the Peace Conference, and thus the team stayed together even after high school. But fast forward twenty-two years later, and the team has broken up due to some sort of tragedy - we know from the Re-Imagine prologue in the 30 Year Anniversary book, Zordon and Alpha were destroyed by Zedd and Rita. But other stuff seems to have happened too. What is that stuff? I guess we're about to find out!

Oh, and I should mention this was written by the original Pink Ranger herself, Amy Jo Johnson. (and her partner, Matt Hotson.) That might be important to know.

It's Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Return #1!

= Three pages in and Jason's already getting his ass kicked. You're forty-five years old, man, you should be at the club

= I know this was debated a bit when the book was announced - how it would line up with Thuy and JDF's passings, especially after coming off the heels of Once and Always, where the focal point was Trini's daughter taking up her powers after Trini's death. (For what it's worth, this book was first conceived pre-pandemic, long before OaA. Making comics takes a long time.) And while Tommy is still a bit up in the air (despite what we'll see in a few pages) Trini does seem to have definitively passed due to illness.

While I definitely get the frustration of Thuy's passing essentially sealing Trini's fate - especially in a comic book, where you don't have to worry about actor restrictions - I'm a little more generous towards it here because Amy and Thuy were close friends and she actually dealt with her death personally compared to how the OaA writers, well......didn't. And this issue is clearly paralleling Kimberly's motivations and feelings to Amy's real-life ones, so this just feels like another part of that.

(Also to contrast OaA's handling of Trini - a) her passing here isn't caused by a graphic onscreen explosion, proving the whole "well they HAD to show it onscreen for more impact!!!" was bullshit b) her friends AND THE WIDER COMMUNITY are actually grieving and talking about her impact on everyone as well as using the non-actor-restriction to SHOW it and c) The book actually gives her a JOB. TWO jobs!!!!!!! Yeah OaA why the fuck did you send ZACK to Congress WHEN IT CLEARLY SHOULD HAVE BEEN TRINI

also I like her middle-aged design. prettyyyyyy)

= onto lighter topics HEYYYY IT'S THESE GUYS!! Bulk and Skull are married and you just can't see the ring through Bulk's gloves, it's real and true

= speaking of which this whole flashback is adorable and nostalgic but I want to point out some background details

= Ernie is just trying to run a fucking business here

= go white boy go

= ZACK/KIM HAS FINALLY COME BACK TO ME MY FUCKING BELOVEDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!! God, when WAS the last time they actually talked one-on-one in the main series

= FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

= so along with some other stuff I'm definitely taking this as foreshadowing that Trini wasn't cut off from Kim like the boys were. That's the power of WOMEN (and also if we get Aunt Trini flashbacks with Olivia I'll fucking CRYYYYYY)

= Absolutely obsessed with Billy's face here

= D:

= So besides the Trini stuff I want to the keep the Once and Always comparisons to a minimum but it's very funny how both storylines involve Billy using a company as a front for his embezzlement schemes. At least his telecom company PROBABLY isn't war profiteering

= also Alpha's rose <3

= so anyway Jason's gone rogue and was pretending he's the main character until he suddenly went missing, as shown in the first few pages. And Billy and Zack want to become Rangers again to try and find him.

= but the thing is guys, Kim has won the idgaf war. She's depressed, she's traumatized, she spent twenty-two years raising a child with Tommy's genes all by herself, she's tired. She does NOT want to be wrapped up in Jason's midlife crisis drama

= Zack getting so mad and wanting to risk it all for Jason hell yeah those are my Jason/Zack crumbs

= Mysterious shadowy figure watching the old people drama from a distance, you are just like me fr

= OLIVIA THAT'S FUCKING OLIVIAAAAAAAAAAAA and she already sounds so CUTE. If you go back to the diner scene you can see the phone constantly buzzing until Kim finally puts it away. She's like mom. mom. mom. MOM

= also just because the tragic Tomberly family storyline already makes me want to kms do you think that ring is kind of small and plain because Tommy and Kim were so young when they got married and it's all Tommy could afford. And Kim still wears it to this day. I want to die

= It's already been confirmed that Selena is indeed referring to Sylvia here, so I won't talk about that. What I DO want to talk about is Kim's casual momwear. Those sweatpants!!!!!!!!!!

= It would be really funny if Kim just. immediately slammed the door shut

[layce2015]

Supernatural (Dean Winchester x Female!Reader)

A Very Supernatural Christmas

Masterlist

"Um, my daughter and I were in our beds. Mike was downstairs decorating the tree. I heard a thump on the roof and then I heard Mike scream, and now I'm talking to the FBI." The woman said as I stand in front of her.

"And you didn't see any of it?" I asked her. "No, he was…he was just gone." She said, devastated. "The doors were locked? There was no forced entry?" I asked. "That's right." She said.

"Does anybody else have a key?" I asked, curiously. "My parents." She replied. "Where do they live?" I asked. "Florida." She replied as Sam and Dean walk out of the house. "Thanks for letting me have a look around, Mrs. Walsh. I think we, uh, got just about everything we need." Sam said as he and Dean walk up to me.

"We're all set." Dean whispers to me and I nod at him before I turn to Mrs Walsh. "We'll be in touch." I said to her and she nods. The boys and I walk down the steps before Mrs Walsh turns to us. "Agents…" she calls out and we turn around. "The police said my husband might have been kidnapped." She said, worried. "Could be." Dean said.

"Then why haven't the kidnappers called? O-or – or demanded a ransom? It's three days till Christmas. What am I supposed to tell our daughter?" She asked us and the three of us give her a sympathetic look. "We're very sorry." Sam said and we walked away and Mrs Walsh turns to go inside.

"Find anything?" I asked the boys and Sam sighs. "Stocking, mistletoe…this." He said and he gives me something out of his pocket. "A tooth? Where was this?" I asked as I examine the tooth. "In the chimney." Dean replied. "Chimney? No way a man fits up a chimney. It's too narrow." I said. "No way he fits up in one piece." Sam said. "Alright, so, if dad went up the chimney—" I said and Dean talks over me. "We need to find out what dragged him up there."

Sam and I were searching the internet for information about demons when the door opens and Dean walks inside, carrying a brown paper bag. "So, was I right? Is it the serial-killing chimney sweep?" Dean asked us. "Yep. It's, uh, it's actually Dick Van Dyke." Sam said, jokingly, and Dean looks at him, confused. "Who?" He asked, confused. "Mary Poppins." I said.

"Who's that?" Dean asked and I scoff in surprise. "Oh come on— never mind." Sam said as he waves his hand. "Okay, after this, we are having a Disney movie marathon." I said. "Oh God, kill me now." Dean groans and Sam and I chuckle at this. "Hey, don't knock it til you try it, Dean." I said and Dean rolls his eyes.

"Anyway....It turns out that Walsh is the second guy in town grabbed out of his house this month." Dean said. "Oh yeah?" Sam and I said, in unison. "Yeah." He replied.

"The other guy get dragged up the chimney, too?" Sam asked him. "Don't know. Witnesses said they heard a thump on the roof." Dean said as he shrugs. "So, what the hell do you guys think we're dealing with?" He asked. "Actually, we have an idea." I said. "Yeah?" Dean asked. "Uh, it's gonna sound crazy." Sam said.

"What could you two possibly say that sounds crazy to me?" Dean asked and Sam and I exchange a look.

"You wanna tell him?" Sam asked me. "I'll let you do the honors." I said, smiling, and he rolls his eyes then looks up at Dean. "Um…evil Santa." He said as he smiles. Dean pauses and then nods. "Yeah, that's crazy." He said. "Yeah…I mean, we're just saying that there's some version of the anti-Claus in every culture." I said and I show Dean some evil Santa pictures. "You got Belsnickel, Krampus, Black Peter." I listed off as Dean takes the pictures from me. 

"Whatever you want to call it, there's all sorts of lore." I said. "Saying what?" Dean asked. "Saying back in the day, Santa's brother went rogue and now he shows up around Christmas time, but instead of bringing presents, he punishes the wicked." Sam explains. "By hauling their ass up chimneys?" Dean asked, confused. "For starters, yeah." I said, nodding.

"So, this is your theory, huh? Santa's shady brother?" Dean asked us. "Well, we're just saying that's what the lore says." Sam said. "Santa doesn't have a brother. There is no Santa." Dean said. "Yeah, I know. You're the one who told me that in the first place, remember." Sam said as he looks at Dean, who looks down, then sighs. I could feel some tension between them again. 

"Yeah, you know what, (y/n) and I could be wrong." Sam said. "Maybe, maybe not." Dean said. "What?" I asked him, confused. "I did a little digging. Turns out both victims visited the Same place before they got snatched." Dean replied. "Where?" Sam asked him.

Later, we come up to a Santa's Village where Christmas music plays, children were playing, and people wearing Christmas costumes walking around, obviously looking like they weren't having a good time. "It does kind of lend credence to the theory, don't it?" Dean asked us. "Yeah, but anti-Claus? Couldn't be." I said. "It's a Christmas miracle." Dean exclaims as we walk in to the village.

Then Dean turns to us. "Hey, speaking of, we should have one this year." He said. "Have one what?" Sam asked him. "A Christmas." Dean said and Sam scoffs at this while I give a slight nod. "Not a bad idea." I said, shrugging. "No, thanks." Sam said. "No, we'll get a tree, a little Boston market, just like when we were little." Dean said.

"Dean, those weren't exactly Hallmark memories for me, you know." Sam said as we stop and he turns to his brother. "What are you talking about? We had some great Christmases." Dean said. "Whose childhood are you talking about?" Sam asked him, annoyed. "Oh, come on, Sam. I think it would be nice little break. We could head back to my safehouse and I could cook up a good meal." I said. 

"You know how to cook?" Dean asked me. "Yeah...dad taught me how when he wasn't out killing monsters and demons." I replied and Dean makes a surprised face at me. "What do you say, Sammy?" I asked as I turn to him. "No, just…no." Sam said, shaking his head and we look at him, surprised. "All right, Grinch." Dean said and he and I walk away, while Sam stands still.

After paying for our entrance, we head back over to Sam, who was still standing there. "You'd think with the 10 bucks it costs to get into this place, Santa could scrounge up a little snow." Dean said as we come up to him. Sam jumps a bit then looks over at us. "What?" He asked and Dean glances at him then shakes his head. 

"Nothing. What are we looking for, again?" Dean asked. "Um…lore says that the anti-Claus will walk with a limp and smell like sweets." Sam explains as he looks around. "Great. So we're looking for a pimp Santa. Why the sweets?" Dean asked. "Think about it, Dean. If you smell like candy, the kids will come closer, you know?" I said and Dean scoffed. "That's creepy." He mutters and Sam and I chuckled.

"How does this thing know who's been naughty and who's been nice?" Dean asked. "Don't know." Sam and I said as we see a man wearing a Santa Claus costume sitting outside a small barn then a woman and boy walk up to him.

"So, Ronny, come sit on Santa's knee." The guy said and the boy sits on his lap. "Ah, there you go. You been a good boy this year?" Santa asked. "Yeah." The boy replied. "Good. Santa's got a special gift for you." Santa said as the boys and I look at Santa and the boy. "Maybe we do." Dean mutters as Ronny's mother takes his arm and leads him away from the Santa. "Come on, honey, let's go." She said as they leave.

Then a woman in an elf costume walks up to us. "Welcome to Santa's court. Can I escort your child to Santa?" She asked as she looks between me and Dean. "Uh…" Sam mutters then Dean speaks up. "No. No. Uh, but actually my brother here…it's been a lifelong dream of his." Dean said, smiling, and the woman looks at Sam like he's a freak.

"Uh, sorry. No kids over…12." She said and Sam shakes his head. "No, he's just kidding." Sam said and I speak up. "Yeah, we're just here to meet up with my sister and niece, who should be around here somewhere." I explained. "Oh, okay." The woman said and she walks away.

"Check it out." Dean said and we watch the Santa leave his chair. As he walks, he has a bad limp. "Are you guys seeing this?" Dean asked. "A lot of people walk with limps, right?" I said and the Santa walks past us and I smelled something kind've sweet. 

"Tell me you guys didn't smell that. That was candy, guys." Dean said to us. "That was ripple, I think. Had to be." Sam said. "Maybe." I said, shrugging. "We're willing to take that chance?" Dean asked us and we exchange a look.

Inside the Impala, we were sitting and spying on a simple house that is decorated with Christmas lights. "What time is it?" Dean asked. "Same as the last time you asked. Here.." Sam said as he hands Dean a thermos. "Caffeinate." He said and Dean takes the thermos from Sam and tries to pours coffee into the cup, but the thermos is empty. "Wonderful." He grumbles then suddenly he scoffs. 

"Hey, Sam." He said. "Yeah?" Sam asked. "Why are you the boy that hates Christmas?" Dean asked him. "Dean—" Sam groans. "I mean, I admit it. You know, we had a few bumpy holidays when we were kids." Dean said and Sam looks over at him.

"Bumpy?" Sam said. "That was then. We'll do it right this year. I mean, even (y/n) has offered to cook." Dean said. "Look, Dean. If you and (y/n) want to have Christmas, knock yourselves out. Just don't involve me." Sam said and Dean and I look at Sam in disbelief. "Oh c'mon, Sam! I'm not that bad at cooking. Plus it won't be a complete Christmas without you." I said but he shakes his head and I let out a sigh as we go back to watch the house

Santa looks outside from his window, then closes his curtains. "What's up with Saint Nicotine?" Dean asked just as we hear a woman's voice shout. "Oh, my God!"

We jump out of the car and run to the house with our guns drawn. Dean looks inside the window of the front door. "Huh." Sam mutters and I look over at him. "What?" I asked him. "Nothing. It's just that, uh…well, you know, Mr. Gung Ho Christmas might have to blow away Santa." Sam said and Dean and I shrug before Dean opens the door.

The guy stands up, holding a bottle of whiskey, then turns to us in shock and surprise. The boys and J quickly hide our guns. "What the hell are you doing here?" Santa asked us as I look around and realized the guy is only watching TV. I look at the boys, who shrug. Then Dean starts to sing Silent Night, pretty badly. He looks over at us and Sam and I join in and Santa begins to smile and laugh and join in the singing until the boys and I leave.

"That was awkward." I muttered. "Yeah..." Sam said as we head back into the car.

"So, that's how your son described the attack? Santa took daddy up the chimney?" I questioned Mrs Caldwell. There was another kidnapping and this time a kid had witnessed this. "That's what he says, yes." Mrs Caldwell said. "And where were you?" I asked her as the boys were looking around the house for clues. "I was asleep and all of a sudden…I was being dragged out of bed, screaming." She replied as the boys come stand next to me.

"Did you see the attacker?" I asked and she shakes her head. "It was dark, and he hit me. He knocked me out." She replied. "I'm sorry. I know this is hard." I said then Sam speaks up. "Yeah…um, Mrs. Caldwell, where did you get that wreath above the fireplace?" He asked and Dean and I look around at the wreath. "Excuse me?" She said, confused, as Dean and I look at Sam, waiting for an answer. "Just curious, you know." He said.

Later, we walked out of the house and Dean looks at his brother. "Wreaths, huh? Sure you didn't want to ask her about her shoes? I saw some nice handbags in the foyer." He said, jokingly. "We've seen that wreath before, Dean." Sam said. "Where?" Dean and I asked.

"The Walshes'. Yesterday." Sam replied. "I know. I was just testing you." Dean said and I look over at him with a raised eyebrow. "Uh-huh. Sure you were." I said as we drive away in the Impala.

"Yeah, all right. Well, keep looking, would you? Thanks, Bobby." Sam said then he hangs up while Dean and I were sitting nearby at our motel roo. "Well…we're not dealing with the anti-Claus." Sam said. "What did Bobby say?" Dean asked. "Uh, that we're morons." Sam said. "Well that's nothing new." I said, shrugging.

"He also said that it was probably meadowsweet in those wreaths." Sam said as he goes to look at his laptop. "Wow! Amazing." Dean said, with sarcasm. "What the hell is meadowsweet?" I asked Sam. "It's pretty rare and it's probably the most powerful plant in pagan lore." Sam explained.

"Pagan lore?" Dean asked. "Yeah. See, they used meadowsweet for human sacrifices. It was kind of like a…Chum for their gods. Gods were drawn to it and they'd stop by and snack on whatever was the nearest human." Sam said.

"Why would somebody be using that for Christmas wreaths?" I asked, confused. "It's not as crazy as it sound, (y/n). I mean, pretty much every Christmas tradition is pagan." Sam said. "Christmas is Jesus' birthday." Dean said, firmly. "No, Jesus' birthday was probably in the fall. It was actually the winter solstice festival that was co-opted by the church and renamed Christmas. But I mean, the Yule log, the tree, even Santa's red suit – that's all remnants of pagan worship." Sam said.

"How do you know that? What are you gonna tell me next? Easter bunny's Jewish?" Dean asked but Sam says nothing. "So you think we're gonna dealing with a pagan God?" I asked Sam. "Yeah, probably Hold Nickar, God of the winter solstice." He said.

"And all these Martha Stewart wannabes, buying these fancy wreaths…" Dean said and Sam nods. "Yeah, it's pretty much like putting a neon sign on your front door saying Come kill us." Sam explained. "Great." Dean and I muttered, sarcastically, as Sam reads an article on the laptop.

"Huh… When you sacrifice to Hold Nickar, guess what he gives you in return." Sam said. "Lap dances, hopefully." Dean said and I punched his arm. "Mild weather." Sam said to Dean, who runs the spot I punched on his arm. Then I look out the window. "Like no snow in the middle of December in the middle of Michigan." I pointed out. "For instance." Sam said, nodding.

"Do we know how to kill it yet?" Dean asked. "No, Bobby's working on that right now. We got to figure out where they're selling those wreaths." Sam said. "You think they're selling them on purpose? Feeding the victims to this thing?" I asked and Sam exhales. "Let's find out."

"Help you, three?" The shopkeeper asked as we made our way into a shop. "Uh, hope so. Uh, we were playing Jenga over at the Walshes' the other night, and, uh…well, she hasn't shut up since about this Christmas wreath, and..." Dean said then he turns to me. "I don't know, you tell him." Dean said as I glanced at him. "Sure. It was yummy." I said.

"I sell a lot of wreaths, guys." The shopkeeper said. "Right, right, but – but you see, this one would have been really special. It had, uh, it had, uh, green leaves, um, white buds on it. It might have been made of, uh…meadowsweet?" I said and the shopkeeper gives me a look.

"Well, aren't you a fussy one?" He asked and Dean smiles and places his arm around my waist. "She is…" he laughs and I shrug as I give a fake smile. "Anyway, I know the one you're talking about. I'm all out." The man said. "Huh. Seems like this meadowsweet stuff's pretty rare and expensive. Why make wreaths out of it?" Dean asked the man. "Beats me. I didn't make them." The shopkeeper said.

"Who did?" I asked him. "Madge Carrigan, a local lady. She said the wreaths were so special, she gave them to me for free." The man said. "She didn't charge you?" Sam asked. "Nope." He said. "Did you sell them for free?" Dean asked. "Hell no. It's Christmas. People pay a buttload for this crap." The shopkeeper said and I give a sarcastic smile. "That's the spirit." I said, sarcastically.

Back at the hotel, Dean opens the door and turns on the light, Sam and I follow him in. "How much do you think a meadowsweet wreath would cost?" Dean asked. "A couple hundred dollars, at least." Sam replied. "This lady's giving them away for free? What do you think about that?" I asked them. "Well, sounds pretty suspicious." Sam said as we take off our jackets and sit on the edge of our beds.

"Remember that wreath Dad brought home that one year?" Dean asked Sam. "You mean the one he stole from, like, a liquor store?" Sam asked, annoyed. "Yeah, it was a bunch of empty beer cans. That thing was great. I bet if I looked around hard enough, I could probably find one just like it." Dean said.

"All right. Dude…What's going on with you?" Sam asked. "What?" Dean asked, confused. "I mean, since when are you Bing Crosby all of a sudden? Why do you want Christmas so bad?" Sam asked Dean. "Why are you so against it? I mean, were your childhood memories that traumatic?" Dean asked. "No, that has nothing to do with it." Sam said.

"Then what?" Dean asked. "I-I mean, I-I just…I don't get it. You haven't talked about Christmas in years." Sam said. "Well, yeah. This is my last year." Dean said and Sam and I look at him and I give a look of sympathy to him.

"I know…That's why I can't." Sam said and I look over at him. "What do you mean?" Dean asked him. "I mean I can't just sit around, drinking eggnog, pretending everything's okay, when I know next Christmas you'll be dead." Sam said, a hint of sadness in his voice, and Dean nods. "I just can't." Sam said, again, and Dean nods, realizing the sadness in Sam's voice. 

The three of us sit there in silence.

"This is where Mrs. Wreath lives, huh? Can't you just feel the evil pagan vibe?" Dean asked, sarcastically, as the three of us walked up to this white house that had a bunch of Christmas decorations. "Oh yeah. Feel that evil energy." I said as we get to the front door. Dean knocks on the door and an older woman greets us.

"Yes?" She greets. "Please tell me you're the Madge Carrigan who makes the meadowsweet wreaths." Dean said, questioning. "Why, yes I am." She said, cheerfully. "Ha! Bingo." Dean said, excitedly. "Yeah? Uh, well, we were just admiring your wreaths in Mr. Sylar's place the other day." I said to her.

"You were? Well, isn't that meadowsweet just the finest-smelling thing you ever smelled?" Madge asked. 

"It is, it sure is. But the problem is, is that all you wreaths had sold out before we got the chance to buy one." I said, trying my best to look a bit sad. "Oh, fudge!" Madge exclaimed, with a sort've over-the-top expression. "You wouldn't have another one that we could buy from you, would you?" Sam asked her. "Oh, no, I'm afraid those were the only ones I had for this season." Madge said, frowning.

"Aww…" I said, disappointed. "Tell me something, why did you decide to make them out of meadowsweet?" Dean asked her when an older man, which had to be Mr Carrigan, comes down the staircase from inside the house. "Why, the smell, of course! I don't think I've ever smelled anything finer." Madge said, smiling. "Yeah…um, you mentioned that." I said as Mr Carrigan comes up next to Madge. 

"What's going on, honey?" He asked his wife. "Well, just some nice youngins asking about my wreaths, dear." Madge replied. "Oh, the wreaths are fine. Fine wreaths. Oh, care for some peanut brittle?" He asked, offering us peanut brittle. Dean and I reach out to take some, but Sam slaps our arms away. "We're okay." Sam said.

That night, back at the motel, Dean and I were sharpening a couple of wooden stakes, five other wooden stakes were on the bed and floor near us, while Sam uses the laptop. "I knew it!" Sam exclaims after he claps. "Something was way off with those two." He said and Dean and I look over at him. 

"What'd you find?" Dean asked him. "The Carrigans lived in Seattle, last year, where two abductions took place right around Christmas. They moved here in January. All that Christmas crap in their house – that wasn't boughs of holly. It was vervain and mint." Sam said. "Pagan stuff?" I asked. "Serious pagan stuff." Sam said, nodding.

"So what, Ozzie and Harriet are keeping a pagan god hidden underneath their plastic-covered couch?" Dean asked. "I don't know. All I know we're gotta check them out." Sam said and he looks over at us and sees our stakes. "So, what about Bobby? He's sure evergreen stakes will kill this thing, right?" He asked and we looked at the stakes. "Yeah, he's sure." Dean said.

Later, the boys make their way into the Carrigan's house while I stayed in the car, acting as backup. I sit there and just wait around for the boys, hoping that everything goes well. Minutes go by and I start to get a bit worried for the boys. I sigh and get out of the car and make my way to the house.

I crouch and walk along the porch when I heard voices. I walk over to the window and look through it to see the kitchen area; where I see Dean and Sam tied up to a chair, both of them were wearing wreaths around their necks.

Then Mr Carrigan starts to slice Sam's arm and Sam begins to scream in pain. "Leave him alone, you son of a bitch!" Dean yells. "Hear how they talk to us? To Gods?" Mr Carrigan said as Madge takes the knife and bowl. "Listen, pal, back in the day, we were worshiped by millions." Mr Carrigan said. "Times have changed!" Dean yells at him.

"Tell me about it. All of a sudden, this Jesus character is the hot new thing in town. All of a sudden, our – our altars are being burned down, and we're being hunted down like common monsters." Mr Carrigam said. "But did we say a peep? Oh…no, no, no, we did not." Madge said as Mr Carrigan adds something to Sam's blood in the bowl.

"Two millennium." Madge said as her husband picks up a tool. "We kept a low profile; we got jobs, a mortgage. Wh-What was that word, dear?" She asked. "We assimilated." Her husband replied. "Yeah, we assimilated. Why, we play bridge on Tuesday and Fridays." Madge said as she holds a large knife. "We're just like everybody else." She said, smiling.

"You're not blending in as smooth as you think, lady." Dean said. "This might pinch a bit, dear." Madge said as he comes closer to Dean and slices his arm. "You bitch!" Dean yells and my heart raced a bit. "Oh, my goodness me! Somebody owes a nickel to the swear jar. Oh, do you know what I say when I feel like swearing? Fudge." She said. "I'll try and remember that!" Dean growls.

"You boys have no idea how lucky you are. There was a time when kids came from miles around, just to be sitting where you are." Mr Carrigan said as he stands in front of Sam with the tool. "What do you think you're doing with those?" Sam asked him, panicked, while Dean looks up at Madge.

"You fudging touch me again and I'll fudging kill you!" He growls. "Very good!" Madge said and she slices Dean's other arm and he groans in pain, while Mr Carrigan grabs Sam's hand. "No! Don't." Sam yells then I duck down and hear the boys screaming.

"Crap." I muttered then I make my way towards the front door. I stand up, pull the hood of my jacket over my head and ring the doorbell. After a few seconds later, I ring the doorbell again as I pull the stake out of my jacket pocket and hold it behind me.

The door opens and I lower my head, covering my face, as a voice asked. "Can I help you?" 

"Yeah, I'm looking for a couple of my friends..." I said and I look up and see Madge standing at the door. I quickly bring out the stake and attack her. I knock her down on the floor and I try to shove the stake towards her chest but she holds it up.

"Honey?" Mr Carrigan called out, concerned, and I hear footsteps coming. I then smack the end of the stake and insert it into Madge's chest, killing her. I quickly get up, shut the front door just as Mr Carrigan comes in and sees his dead wife.

"Madge!" He screams and he looks over at me, in anger, then attacks me. We struggle and fight then he throws me into the living room and I crash into a side table. Mr Carrigan then grabs me around the neck and begins to choke me until I see a wooden stake sticking out of his chest. He screams in pain and let's me go as I look up and see that it was Dean stabbed him. 

Dean then stabs him twice before Mr Carrigan lies dead on the floor. I breath heavily, just as Sam comes in the room while Dean sighs in relief. "Thank God." Sam said, relieved, as Dean goes to help me up to my feet. "You boys okay?" I asked and they nod. "Could be worse." Dean said then we look at the dead bodies. "Merry Christmas, guys." Sam said, sarcastically, and I roll my eyes at this. "Come on, we better go." I said and we leave.

"Okay, how does this taste?" Sam asked me as he hands me a small cup of eggnog. He hands it to me and I take a sip from it and I hummed in approval. "Oh that's good." I said. "You sure? Doesn't need any more of a kick?" He asked me. "No, I think if you do, it'll taste awful." I said then I flip the burgers on the little griddle.

After we dealt with the Carrigans', we made our way to my safehouse where Sam and I decided to do Christmas to surprise Dean whenever he got back from getting beer.

"How's the burgers coming along?" Sam asked me. "They look good so far." I said. "They smell good." Sam said and I smiled as I place the cooked burgers on a plate and Sam grabs the buns and other toppings for the burgers.

We go into the Christmas decorated living room and place the food on the table just as the door opens and Dean walks in, carrying a bag. He turns to us then stops as he looks around at the decorations and the little tree Sam and I picked up and decorated.

"Hey, you get the beer?" I asked him as Sam and I hold up a cup of eggnog. "What's all this?" Dean asked, amazed. "What do you think it is? It's – it's Christmas." Sam said and Dean looks at us, as Sam lets out a deep breath.

"What made you change your mind?" Dean asked Sam. Sam and I exchange a look before Sam picks up another cup of eggnog. "Here, uh, try the eggnog." Sam said, ignoring Dean's question, as he hands the cup to Dean. Dean sips it and looks surprised at the taste. "No, we're good." Dean said and Sam and I smile. "Yeah?" Sam said. "Yeah." Dean said and we smiled. 

"Is that burgers?" Dean asked. "Yeah...sorry it ain't a turkey but..." I said but Dean shakes his head. "No, no, no. That's great." He said and I smiled. "Good." I said.

"Well, uh, have a seat. Let's do…Christmas stuff, or whatever." Sam said and Dean looks at the Christmas tree, which is decorated with lights and car air fresheners. "All right, first things first." Dean said as Sam sits on the couch and Dean pulls up a chair then I go sit on the arm of his chair.

Dean takes three packages put wrapped in brown paper from a plastic bag and holds two of them out to Sam and one of them, which was a bigger package, and hands it to me. "Merry Christmas, guys." He said as Sam and I take the gifts. "Where'd you get these?" Sam asked. "Someplace special." Dean replied and Sam and I look at him. "The gas mart down the street." Dean said and Sam and I laugh.

"Open them up." Dean said to us.

"Well, great minds think alike, Dean." Sam reaches under the couch for two packages wrapped in newspaper, which he gives to Dean. "Really?" Dean asked as he takes the gifts. "There you go." Sam said as I smile. "Come on." Dean said and Sam opens his first gift, which is two porn magazines, and he laughs. "Skin mags!" He exclaims and Dean nods, satisfied with Sam's reaction. "...and…" Sam said as he opens the other gift. "Shaving cream." He said.

"You like?" Dean asked and Sam smiles. "Yeah. Yeah." Sam replied as he nods. Then Dean turns to me. "Your turn." He said and I open it and see that it was a couple of packages of (favorite candy). "Ah, a man after my heart." I said, smiling, and Dean smiles back at me and we share a quick kiss.

"Okay, your turn." Sam said to Dean and he open his presents. Then he chuckles as he unwraps the gifts. "Look at this." He said as he lifts his presents, it's a candy bar and a bottle of oil. "Fuel for me and fuel for my baby. Well...my other baby." Dean said as he looks up at me and winks. "These are awesome, thanks." Dean said to Sam. "Good." Sam said then Dean looks over at me and I smirk.

"Oh don't worry. I got something for ya." I said and he raises an eyebrow. "Oh really? Where is it?" He asked me. "You're just gonna have to wait til later tonight to open it." I said, giving him knowing look. His eyes roam over my body and a smirk quirks up on his lips. "Can't wait." He said and I lean down and kiss his cheek while Sam just rolls his eyes.

Dean looks between us and I notice there's a bit of sadness in his face before he lifts his glass of eggnog. "Merry Christmas, guys." He said. "Yeah." Sam said as he and I lift our eggnogs and make a toast with Dean's glass.

The three of us each take a drink of our eggnog and Dean whistles softly at the taste. "Hey, Dean." Sam said and he looks sad and was about to say something, but he hesitates, then sighs and looks at Dean again.

"Do you feel like watching the game?" He asked him. "Absolutely." Dean said, smiling, and Sam nods. "All right." Sam said and he grabs the remote off of the table and turns on the TV. We start grabbing a burger and began to eat and watch the game, trying to push back the thought that this would be the last Christmas we would have together.

@rach5ive @kitsun369 @itzabbyxx @cevans-winchester

[zalrb]

PLL 2x14 Review - As Per Anon Request

I'm seeing a lot of Ezra in the recap. Is this the episode? Is it finally the episode?

I like how Spencer had to say "It's a set of latitude, longitude coordinates" and not just "coordinates".

Why is that skipping rope sequence like the creepy sequence from Nightmare on Elm Street

this bickering is way too performed, even for their mediocre to bad acting, it's probably some sort of setup they're doing or something.

"He still sounds angry when he talks to me." LMAO Hanna, you outted him cheating to his soon-to-be-wife. Her lack of self-awareness is HILARIOUS. She experiences no consequences.

There are always episodes where I feel like I've missed an episode before it. Also, is there a reason why they couldn't have had this conversation over the phone? Like you have a cell phone, Aria.

"You two make an interesting couple." LOL Troian's delivery.

"It was never a secret, it was private." Despite looking like a desperate housewife, Jenna is a MINOR and you are a whole ass grown ass man who is a police officer.

"Nobody starts out wanting to hurt anybody." I don't know, Alison sure seems like she did. or DOES. because she's ALIVE.

Aww, he built her a rocking chair ... why did Toby build her a rocking chair?

"A took the bait!" the bait that was so obviously bait?

Is there a reason Hanna's quasi hacker boyfriend can't try and trace A's number? Did he try already and I just forgot?

Did Caleb leave? Why don't I remember any of these plot points? Like I thought he came back from California?

And WHY is his hair terrible?

I think it's funny that it's the closest to Damon's

And it's also funny because Toby is Dean

all the way down to them both working construction, and him building Spencer a rocking chair for whatever reason and Dean building Rory a car.

Jackie, she is a sixteen year old child.

Ezra

are you going to kill her?

"I should've told your mother the truth about us at the police station" and in any other world, it would've been convenient because you'd save everyone a trip to the station since you'd already be there. Alas, in this world, a cop can date a minor openly. So.

Caleb wishes he was a teenage dirtbag.

"I'm in love with your daughter." And this is when you kill him.

Oh, Mike's coming downstairs. Punch him! Punch him!

He did. It was a HORRIBLE, WEAK ASS punch.

But he did it.

This scene should be WAY MORE dramatic than it is. Like when Julie's TA shows up at her house? It's a contained moment but it's dramatic

Everyone is just standing around here. Mike punches him and Aria's just like, oh damn

and Mike's the one who leaves?

I hate that twice in a row I have been made to be on the dad's side and not Piper's because ma'am, what the fuck are you talking about?

"She is a teenager. And you were her teacher." Well REALLY.

If I can say anything about Toby is he doesn't just go away. Like Caleb who is passively an asshole.

It's really funny to me that Emily is going on this rogue mission and Spencer, Hanna and Aria who were supposed to be tailing her all get caught up because people want to talk to them. Toby shows up at the house, Hanna's mom says she can't go because her dad is on the way. And this is supposed to cause tension. As if I didn't see Hanna walk out AS her mom was forbidding her to leave the house to go fuck Caleb in the woods. But that took precedence, I guess. I mean, it's only Emily amirite.

And Spencer, commit to the bit. Tell him he's right and you want to be the new Alison, make him hate you so he can stop, and you can leave the goddamn house, and it also makes it angstier. "You have to stay away from me, it's not safe" etc. etc. is too protective. Liz convinced Max that she slept with Kyle. Angel flat out told Buffy that he doesn't want to be with her anymore. Chuck told Blair it was just a game. COMMIT.

Why is Emily the one walking closer, draw them to you.

And why would you reveal that you found nothing? Literally what's the point of that? The person hasn't even SAID anything. THIS IS WHY YOU'RE THE WEAKEST LINK. Now look, they're trying to kill you with a rake.

All of you are pissing me off.

At least Hanna got to hit someone with a car.

I just feel like Mona would've figured it out by now.

[faebriel]

kai faebriel pretty please tell anon number i don’t even know anymore and the audience abt the tangled au thoughts..

okay i wouldn't say i have a perfect list of coherent thoughts happening like i do with some other aus but here are the main points i think. keeping in mind we have magical long haired wilbur and mildly swashbuckling rogue niki.

there's a magical flower in a field somewhere.

the antarctic empire rules over the land with a fist that is unjust only when it is extremely funny. lifetime buddies techno and phil are co-rulers; phil also has his son, wilbur. for the kid of an emperor wilbur is allowed to run around a lot, and he makes a lot of friends - from street urchins to bakers' daughters. stick a pin in that thought

unfortunately, one day pre-teen wilbur gets very sick. distraught, phil orders that the empire is turned upside down to find a cure, and they find it - the flower. it is infused into a tea, which wilbur drinks. his sickness disappears, and his hair turns white-gold.

double unfortunately, this pisses some people off

dream, noted Some Guy of the forest, had been using this magical flower to stay young and exert his power and authority over the forest for almost a century. needless to say, when the flower was taken by the empire, he was pissed. he swears revenge, and when restoring his youth through song doesn't work, he kidnaps wilbur. and teams up with some friends to overthrow the empire (pulled to pieces over the loss of its favourite son) and send the royal family into hiding. oh and he bullies some street urchins which mysteriously disappear and are replaced by a loud fucking chicken in the middle of the forest but like don't worry about it. in the chaos of kidnapping wilbur soot is struck in the head and loses his memories

the relationship between dream and soot is more of a patronage than a parenthood - dream provides protection and manpower while soot provides "strategy" (this started as internal knowledge on the kingdom but now dream just kind of keeps him busy) and of course, magic rejuvenating hair. over the years dream tells soot all sorts of lies about the outside world, and about how they would treat a "cursed" man like him, and soot is mostly more than happy to stay inside, even if something doesn't feel quite right.

and every year he sees a massive show of flame and fireworks from his tower window.

on the other side of the coin - when the empire falls, a young niki loses everything. she loses her parents, her family's bakery, and her home. first she's locked out of the castle, abandoned by her childhood friend, then she's locked out of everything - she ends up fleeing to an orphanage that her letter-friend lives in a kingdom over, carrying a dark, angry bitterness in her small heart that grows as she does. the kids whisper about the anarchist syndicate, remains of the old empire, who name themselves after gods - with a harsh tongue and nothing but memories drenched in perceived betrayal, niki calls herself nemesis.

as an adult, she teams up with fellow orphan and loser jack to generally swashbuckle. they don't trust each other (even if they're both awfully lonely), but they have the same goals. most of the time. like stealing old, relic crowns from decade-dead empires.

nemesis runs into the forest, the manberg guard hot on her tail, and finds a tower. and a man with the longest hair she has ever seen in her life.

soot's life is kind of pathetic. he literally cannot remember the last time he has been outside, his only friend is a chicken he has to hide from dream, he's cursed and would be hated for it if he dared step outside his tower, and everything he could possibly care about exists within four tiny walls. dream has truly managed to convince him that he deserves nothing. but, he's still an opportunist, and he's curious - dream is gone for three days, so if nemesis takes him to investigate the reason for these explosions every year, he'll give her back her dumb tiara. and nemesis does not really trust people as a rule but unfortunately she does silently long for company even though she doesn't realise it (c!niki moment) but also quite frankly wants her satchel back so she agrees.

cue road trip!

this post is already getting so long so here are some miscellaneous thoughts:

i haven't figured out who the snuggly duckling folks are but i know that instead of singing abt money niki is singing about exacting bloody revenge on all people who have hurt her Ever actually

after almost drowning in a mineshaft nemesis reveals that her real name is niki, which throws soot for a loop - he knows that name, which is impossible, but he does. from where? i wrote a bit of this scene actually

they also have a bit of a heart-to-heart afterwards where soot heals niki's hand and manages to wheedle her into talking a little bit more about her history. she had a friend when she was very young, you see, a prince who left her in the fucking dust when times got bad. and she never really got over it, even as the evidence increasingly started to suggest that something worse than abandonment happened to him.

("why don't they recognise each other?" 1. the magical power of aus working when i need them to 2. wilbur's magical dye job also niki's less magical dye job 3. puberty! puberty. has happened to friends of mine. potentially combined with mutual mild faceblindness)

they finally make it to the city and have a wonderful day braiding soot's hair and encouraging people to partake in graffiti and they turn the city upside down until they find someone with old newspapers from the empire (they had to convince them by holding nemesis' wanted poster up to niki's face. even though she had plain blonde hair two dye jobs ago, ugh) and soot does his best to memorise this information while trying not to throw up looking at crude renders of flags belonging to the small territories that cropped up beneath the empire.

betrayal moment so sad, schlatt almost executes niki for being an annoying dormouse, wilbur realises he is wilbur actually and dream has been longcon fucking with him for the last several years, niki gets stabbed and manages to only put together that soot is wilbur about three seconds from dying, she gives him the big chop, fortunately wilbur cries so so hard that his tears are magical too

CHICKEN TOMMY MURDERS DREAM

oh yeah and as it turns out the fireworks/fires are a bit of theatrical terrorism emduo put on in wilbur's name on his birthday every year. after dream dies wilbur and niki manage to track them down to reunite wilbur with his family and also get niki some cool friends :]

there's still some holes here but do you See the vision. do you see these losers sneaking around and reading books and painting with chalk as kingdom dance plays. Do You See Niki Being Harassed By A Chicken

[spyvstailor]

Burn, Baby, Burn - Chapter One

@acapelladitty I wrote a Firefly and Baby Doll buddy comedy, with a dark edge to it. I dunno...it just sort of came out.

If this was salvation, why did it buzz so loud?

Green eyes fluttered closed as the cacophony of the angels sang around him, they blended with the buzzing until they became a low, droning tone. The music set the soundtrack for the orange glow that bathed a pale, weary face.

Pyromaniacs burn out, someone had once joked. Was it the Joker who said that? Even doped up on powerful anti-psychotics as he had been, the green haired man was hard to keep docile.

You're just a match.

Burning.

Burning...

Burning......

Burning.........

Out.

Ashes.

Only ashes and smoke.

“Hey, man, we gotta close up. You buying or what?”

They call me "hell"

They call me Stacey

They call me "her"

They call me Jane

The music of the angels choir morphed into something else entirely and the Fireball Whiskey neon sign blinked out as the man speaking with him pulled the metal bead cord. It clinked against the wall behind the sign, as the man turned to face him.

Garfield turned away, forgetting why he had even entered the liquor store. He wasn't supposed to drink on his meds.

He shuffled towards the door in his scuffed brown Oxfords.

At the door his reflection stopped him and he gazed back numbly at himself, dressed in what he assumed was a dead man's clothes, looking like an old man before his time.

It was probably the chino's that were too short, the argyle socks that showed in the span between the oxfords and the pant hems, and the knit cardigan over a button up that created the effect. The clothes were given to him by the Sister's of the Veil of Tears, and he was very certain they had robbed a corpse for them.

It didn't matter, the cardigan was warm and it was the heat he craved. The world was too cold.

“Dude go!” The man behind him shouted.

Garfield pushed open the door, shoving himself aside, and stepped out into the night.

He found his way to the only place he felt like he was accepted, which fucking sucked, because it was full of lowlife scum and high class whores, and every rogue that ever coloured Batman's bulletin.

The Iceberg Lounge was dim enough, and quiet enough, and classy enough that it wasn't a shit hole, it was just full of shit people.

But Ozzie was warm enough to him, and every now and then the other criminals of Gotham's underbelly would give him a respectful nod.

He was technically supposed to be there, it broke his parole, but it was either sit and rot in a dark booth there, or sit on the edge of his sagging, spring trap bed in his miserable hole in the wall halfway house apartment.

And Ozzie never forced him to pay a cover charge, though he did watch Garfield very carefully some nights through his office window, overlooking the dancefloor.

It was unspoken Garfield would take a stool at the bar if the place was packed.

The criminals in Gotham were an interesting breed. You had your popular clique, your Joker's and your Catwomen and your Two-Face's, but then at the far end of the spectrum were your pathetic losers, your Calendar Men, your Mr. Camera's, your fucking Captain Blimp's. The criminals that were so embarrassing, you felt second hand shame if you stood too close. They were real stinkers, fucking mouldy cheese on the charcuterie board that was Gotham City.

Every now and then you got a glimpse of the top dogs, the cream of the crop and it felt like a goddamned celebrity sighting.

Garfield fucking hated it, but then again his meds made him irritable and exhausted, which naturally lead to him being so tired of everyone's bullshit.

The Riddler built a fucking puzzle box inside an abandoned warehouse and trapped the Mayor's daughter in it?

Whoop-de-fucking-doo.

Poison Ivy infected half of the greater downtown area with a sex pollen that only infected adult men, and only enticed them to fuck trees?

Get fucking splintered assholes.

Oh, Freeze coated everything on the upper east side with ice?

Sarcastic applause, that's never been done before.

Maybe it was time to up his meds? He thought as he drank his soda pop like a fucking child and sat in his old man pants, thinking bitterly of the world like a teenager.

“Who the fuck let this kid in here?!” Someone shouted from the bar, grabbing Garfield's attention and he looked over and up to find a little girl sitting boldly at the bar, swinging her feet in her lovingly polished Mary Jane's.

“Get fucked asshole!” The child snapped at the bartender.

“You can't be in here, kid,” the bartender said. “Where's your parents?”

“Tag teaming your mom, pal,” the girl replied. “I had a rough goddamned day and I just want a gin, okay?”

“Get the fuck out of here! Where's Carson?! Carson! We got a kid in here!” The bartender called for the one armed bouncer. Carson had said he had lost the arm to a fight with Killer Croc, but damned if he wasn't made of harder stuff than to quit his job.

Garfield smiled to himself.

Carson knew and he knew, but the bartender was new since Garfield had been in Arkham.

The poor woman. She was 30 years old, but she small, maybe 4'8” with heels, if she could find ones small enough, and 75 pounds soaking wet. Her face was delicate, youthful for sure. It would be easy to take her for a 10 year old if you didn't look hard enough.

Carson wandered onto the scene with a grin. “It's fine. That's Baby Doll, she's good.”

“She's a fucking kid,” the bartender argued.

“Want me to show you the hair on my snatch, jackass?” Baby Doll demanded.

For the first time since he had gone maniac before Arkham, Garfield laughed, it wasn't just a chuckle, it was drop your head into your hands and muffle your belly laugh, kind of laughter.

He wasn't alone, half of the Iceberg were cutting up, laughing as the bartender turned bright red and sputtered, not knowing how to respond to a petite, 30 year old offering to whip out her puss just to prove she was at least a grown assed woman, despite the clothes that looked like she bought in the children's section.

Oh, the criminals in Gotham were fucked up. He mused as he dried a tear. He had only personally met Baby Doll once in passing, and that had been long, long before the mania, when he was just Garfield Lynns, pyrotechnics expert, working the silver screen dream of burning shit safely and dramatically, and she had just been Mary Louise Dahl, 'child' actor. She was a bit of a brat, but he didn't mind, she wasn't as bad as most actors.

After a considerate moment, he raked a hand through his hair and got to his feet, approaching the bar and the small woman sitting there. He eased down a couple of stools away from her and took a surreptitious look in her direction as she sipped her gin and tonic with the cherry in it.

“Get lost creep,” she murmured, not even breaking eye contact with her phone where it looked like she was playing some kind of game.

“I'm not...we met once before,” he began simply helping himself to a bar peanut and shelling it.

“And?” She demanded, still playing her game.

He moved a few stools closer to her and snacked on his peanut. “You know, if you want people to stop mistaking you for a kid, maybe you should stop dressing like a kid.”

“Great,” she muttered, “I'm getting fashion advice from my 90 year old grandpa.”

Garfield nodded and looked down at his cardigan and button up shirt. “Okay, fair point.”

With a sigh, she set her phone down and looked over at him. “You look like shit, Firefly.”

Startled that she knew who he was, he floundered for a moment, before recovering. “I'm, uh...heavily medicated.”

She glowered a little at him.

“I just...we met on set once, a long time ago. I was rigging the pyrotechnics for a firework scene on your show, Love That Baby? Remember?”

“No, I don't remember you yelling at me for standing too close to the rig,” she returned dryly.

He smiled only a little, pleased she remembered him. Not many people did when he wasn't burning their shit down.

Mary Louise smiled a little in return, but it was still coated with a heavy air of annoyance and she all but rolled her dark, almond eyes. “What do you want, techie?”

“I really don't know, maybe I just wanted to sit beside someone having a worse day than me,” he said.

They were quiet, both of them nursing their drinks, his soda pop having gone flat years ago.

“I have to wear kids clothes,” she finally admitted, brushing her raven black hair behind her ear, “because clothes in the adult section don't fit and I'm not rich enough to get my shit tailor made.”

He knew since her show was cancelled, since she had gone through the whole 'criminal of the week' like he did, that she had fallen from the starlit grace she had been accustomed to when she was actually younger. Back when she was a young twentysomething, playing a ten year old girl on an after school special type show, back when people adored her and her looking young enough to play the part without the union having to adhere to the rules of an actual child actor. She was in the same hole he had dug for himself, only Baby Doll was clawing at the sides of her hole, trying to find her way out and Garfield was thinking of getting a houseplant for his and settling into the earth to wait to die.

He took a long swig of his flat soda and tried hard not to gaze into the flickering flame of the tabletop candle burning on the bar near them and said, “I got my clothes from the homeless bin at the local church, I think someone died in them, so...that's what's going on here.”

“Gross,” Mary Louise said. “You're going to get like cholera or something. You know people shit themselves when they die.”

“Yeah,” he murmured into his soda. “What is cholera, anyways?”

“I don't know, like an old man disease,” she replied. “Why are you still bothering me?!”

At first Garfield thought she was yelling at him, but she was waving her hand irritably at the bartender.

“The talent needs space,” Garfield said to the man. As he glanced over at Mary Louise, he found her smiling a little proudly, that shine of being a star once more lighting up her face and he nodded firmly once at her as though he was agreeing silently that she was still the talent.

Mary Louise sighed. “Sorry I implied you're a pedo. Experience says only one kind of man approaches me at a bar.”

“I didn't...I just...” he faltered.

“I get it,” she said sincerely, gazing at her gin as though mesmerized by the drink. “Familiarity can be a comfort...”

Garfield gazed past her, eyes drawn to the candle flame flickering at the end of the bar, he watched the flame as it danced and pulsed, before closing his eyes tight and dropping his gaze to his own drink, his hands shaking.

“Can I get a whiskey, a double?” He asked the bartender without looking up from his flat soda.

The man nodded from his place a couple feet away.

Baby Doll downed her gin and set it on the bar hard, slamming the glass down. “And give me another one of those?”

Set light to this fucking night, Garfield thought as his whiskey arrived, watch the powder keg go off.

The rest of the night happened in flashes, between whiskey and a couple of shots of something Mary Louise had ordered for them, was colours and lights.

“You do it like this,” Mary Louise was explaining to him a new dance all the kids were doing as he drank deep from his glass of whatever it was he was drinking.

Laughter.

“You're paying for that,” Ozzie said as Garfield stood over a broken stool.

Falling down in the alley.

“Can you introduce me?” The Mad Hatter was asking, eyes looking past him to Mary Louise ordering more drinks at the bar.

A blink.

Putting the Mad Hatter into a headlock.

Laughter.

“No, the Charleston is more like this,” he shouted at Mary Louise over the noise of the dancefloor of some other club.

Falling down on the sidewalk, or was he being shoved down.

Holding Mary Louise back from beating the shit out of some lippy young woman who was shouting back at her, the words lost to the liquor.

Garfield tilting his head back to stop the blood from dribbling out of his broken nose.

“That's...that's not dabbing!” Mary Louise was laughing at him.

Music, so loud it vibrated in his ears.

“No! No that's...no you're thinking of the Deer Hunter!” He shouted.

Laughter.

A taxidermy fish?

“We should steal that orb!” Mary Louise was talking.

Someone falling down beside him on the pavement.

“...I'm sane, but I'm overwhelmed!” They belted into a microphone. “I'm lost but I'm hopeful, baby!”

Knocking over a stand of potato chips.

Wal-Mart?

“That's still not...no it's not...that isn't dabbing!”

Laughter.

“No, he's not! That's...you're just...it's a conspiracy theory! Bruce Wayne can't be Batman! Because he's rich and Batman is...a man who dresses like a bat!”

Falling down on the railway tracks.

“'Cuz I've got one hand in my pocket and the other one is giving a high five!”

Throwing a frozen crab into the bay.

“Okay, but then...which is the one with Robert DeNiro?”

Falling onto a couch.

Death.

His first thought when his eyes cracked open was that he wished for death. Afraid to move, knowing that what awaited him was pain and vomiting. So he lay as still as he could and suffered in silence as his head throbbed.

He needed water and a gun.

Outside the sun was mercilessly shining, the birds were chirping and the sounds of the city were so fucking annoying.

Garfield chanced a very, very slow turn of his head so he wasn't just staring up at the ceiling above him.

Thank God, he was home in his shitty fucking apartment.

His mouth tasted like a leprechaun shit in it with a hint of ash and he really, really needed water.

“Are you dead?” He asked the other presence he sensed in the room with him.

“Unfortunately no,” she muttered from behind his couch.

“Are you on the floor?”

“I think so.”

He grunted as he shifted into a position to get ready to move into a sitting position.

“You're younger,” he sighed giving up. “Get me some water.”

“Get fucked,” she replied weakly.

“Get grandpa some water,” he tried to sweeten her up with a joke.

She snorted. “Go back to sleep, if you sleep long enough it goes away.”

Sounded plausible, he closed his eyes again.

[aspenmissing]

𝙰 𝚅𝚎𝚛𝚢 𝚂𝚞𝚙𝚎𝚛𝚗𝚊𝚝𝚞𝚛𝚊𝚕 𝙲𝚑𝚛𝚒𝚜𝚝𝚖𝚊𝚜 (𝙿𝚝 𝟷)

A girl is looking outside through the glass door and a woman stands outside, being interviewed.

"Um, my daughter and I were in out beds" She says "Mike was downstairs decorating the tree. I heard a thump on the rood and then I heard Mike scream. And now I'm talking to the FBI"

"And you didn't see any of it?" Y/N asks, dressed in formal wear.

"No, he was...he was gone"

"The doors were locked? There was no forced entry?"

"That's right"

"Does anybody else have a key?" Y/N asks.

"My parents"

"Where do they live?"

"Florida" Sam and Dean, in suits, walk out of the house.

"Thanks for letting us have a look around, Mrs. Walsh" Dean says.

"I think, we, uh, got just about everything we need" Sam says. He looks to Y/N "We're all set.

"We'll be in touch" she says. Mrs. Walsh nods and the siblings walk down the steps.

"Agents...." She calls. The three turn around.

"The police said my husband might have been kidnapped"

"Could be" Dean says.

"Then why haven't the kidnappers called? O-or - or demanded a ransom? It's three days till Christmas. What am I supposed to tell our daughter?" The three looks at each other.

"We're very sorry" Sam, Y/N and Dean walk away and Mrs. Walsh turns to go inside.

"Find anything?" Y/N asks. Sam sighs.

"Stocking, mistletoe...this" Sam gives Y/N something out of his pocket.

"A tooth? Where was this?" Y/N asks, examining the tooth.

"In the chimney" Dean says.

"Chimney? No way a man fits up a chimney. It's too narrow"

"No way he fits up in one piece"

"Alright, so, if dad went up the chimney-"

"We need to find out what dragged him up there"

==

Inside a motel, pictures of demons are pinned up on the wall. Sam sat at the table on his laptop when the door opens and the twins walk inside, Dean carrying a brown paper bag.

"So, was I right? Is it the serial-killing chimney sweep?" Dean says.

"Yep. It's, uh, it's actually Dick Van Dyke" Sam says.

"Who?"

"Mary Poppins"?"

"Who's that?"

"Oh, come on- never mind" Sam waves his hand.

"Well, it turns out that Walsh is the second guy in town grabbed out of his house this month" Y/N says.

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah"

"The other guy gets dragged up the chimney, too?"

"Don't know. Witnesses said they heard a thump on the roof" Y/N says and the three shrug

"So, what the hell do you think we're dealing with" Dean asks.

"Actually, I have an idea"

"Yeah?" Y/N asks.

"Uh, it's gonna sound crazy"

"What could you possibly say that sounds crazy to us"

"Um...evil Santa" Sam says, smiling. Y/N snorts. Dean pauses and then nods.

"Yeah, that's crazy"

" Yeah... I mean, I'm just saying that there's some version of the anti-Claus in every culture" Sam shows Dean and Y/N some evil Santa pictures "You got Belsnickel, Krampus, Black Peter" Dean takes the pictures from Sam “Whatever you want to call it, there's all sorts of lore"

"Saying what?" Y/N asks.

"Saying...back in the day, Santa's brother went rogue and now he shows up around Christmas time, but instead of bringing presents, he punishes the wicked"

"By hauling their ass up chimneys?"

"For starters, yeah"

"So, this is your theory, huh? Santa's shady brother?"

"Well, ah- I'm just saying, that's what the lore says"

"Santa doesn't have a brother. There is no Santa"

"Yeah, I know. You're the one who told me that in the first place, remember" Sam says looking at Dean, who looks down, maybe feeling a little guilty. Sam turns back to his computer and sighs "Yeah, you know what, I could be wrong. I ... " Sam sighs again, shutting his laptop "gotta be wrong"

"Maybe, maybe not" Y/N says.

"What?"

"We did a little digging" Y/N says, gesturing to Dean "Turns out both victims visited the same place before they got snatched"

"Where?"

==

Christmas music plays, children are playing, and people wearing costumes are walking around.

"It does kind of lend credence to the theory, don't it?" Dean says.

"Yeah, but anti-Claus? Couldn't be"

"It's a Christmas miracle"

"Hey, speaking of, we should have one this year" Y/N says.

"Have on what?" Sam asks.

"A Christmas" Sam scoffs.

"No, thanks"

"No, we'll get a tree, a little Boston market, just like when we were little"

"I actually like the idea of that" Dean says.

"Guys, those weren't exactly Hallmark memories for me, you know"

"What are you talking about? We had some great Christmases"

"Whose childhood are you talking about?"

"Oh, come on, Sam" Y/N says.

"No! Just...no" Dean and Y/N look at him surprised.

"All right, Grinch" Dean mutters. The two walk away, while Sam stands still. Suddenly he notices a reindeer statue staring at him. Sam looks uncomfortable.

==Flashback: Christmas Eve, 1991==

Reindeers pull Santa's sleigh across the sky on the TV, which is playing ‘A Year Without Santa Claus’. An 8-year-old Sam turns away from the TV and back to the couch, where he starts to wrap two things with newspaper.

"What is that?" A 12-year-old Y/N asks, kneeling beside him.

"Yeah, right. Where'd you get the money? Steal it?" A 12-year-old Dean asks, who's standing by the window. Y/N glares at him.

"No. Uncle Bobby gave it to me to give to him. Said it was really special"

"What is it?" Y/N asks.

"A pony" Sam says sarcastically. Y/N smiles whereas Dean scoffs.

"Very funny"

“What about the other one?" Y/N asks.

"I made that for him myself"

"I bet he'll love it" Sam continues to wrap the presents. Dean then comes over and sits on the couch next to them and picks up a magazine.

"Dad's gonna be here, right?" Sam says, looking up at Y/N.

"He'll be here" she says.

"It's Christmas"

"He knows and he'll be here. Promise"

"Where is he anyway?"

"On business" Dean says.

"What kind of business?"

"You know that. He sells stuff"

"What kind of stuff?"

"Stuff"

"Nobody ever tells me anything" Dean rolls his eyes.

"Then quit asking" Y/N glares at Dean, but he shrugs.

"We wish we could tell you, Sam, but Dad won't let us" Y/N says softly. “So, please stop asking. Okay?" Sam nods. Dean leaves the two and walks to the bed. She shoves garbage and food wrappers off of it and opens the magazine.

"Is Dad a spy?"

"Mm-hmm. He's James Bond"

"Why do we move around so much?"

"'Cause everywhere we go, they get sick of your face" Dean says.

"I'm old enough, guys. You can tell me the truth"

"You don't want to know the truth. Believe me" Y/N says.

"Is that why we never talk about...Mom?" Sam says cautiously. Y/N tenses, side glancing at Dean who tosses the magazine away angrily and stands up.

"Shut up! Don't you ever talk about Mom. Ever!"

"He was just asking, Dean!" Y/N says, standing up and facing her twin brother. Dean begins to head for the door, opening it.

"Wait, where are you going?" Sam asks.

"Out"

"You better stay out there till you calm down!" Y/N says before Dean shuts the door behind him.

"Did I do something wrong?" Sam says, looking up at Y/N.

"No, just, Mom's a hard subject to talk about around Dean. Don't worry though"

"Are you gonna leave if I talk about...Mom?" Sam asks. Y/N kneels down beside him, smiling softly.

"No, I'm never gonna leave you" she says, ruffling his hair. “Ask me whatever you like about Mom.”

==Flashback End==

Sam is still lost in memories as Dean and Y/N walk beside him.

"You'd think with the 10 bucks it costs to get into this place, Santa could scrounge up a little snow" Dean says.

"What?" Sam asks, awakening from his daydreaming.

"Nothing"

"What are we looking for, again?" Y/N asks.

"Um..." Sam looks around "lore says that the anti-Claus will walk with a limp and smell like sweets"

"Great. So, we're looking for a pimp Santa" Dean says "Why the sweets?"

"Think about it, Dean. If you smell like candy, the kids will come closer, you know?"

"That's creepy" Y/N says. Sam chuckles "How does this thing know who's been naughty and who's been nice?"

"I don't know" A man wearing a Santa costume sits outside a small barn. A woman and a boy walk up to him.

"So, Ronny, come sit on Santa's knee" The boy sits "Ah, there you go. You been a good boy this year?"

"Yeah"

"Good. Santa's got a special gift for you" He cackles creepily. Dean looks at Santa and the boy speculatively.

"Maybe we do" Ronny's mother takes his arm and leads him away from the Santa.

"Come on, honey, let's go" A woman in an elf costume walks up to Sam, Dean, and Y/N.

"Welcome to Santa's court. Can I escort your child to Santa?"

"Uh..."

"No. No. Uh, but actually, our brother here" Dean smacks Sam on the shoulder "...it's been a lifelong dream of his" The elf looks at Sam.

"Uh, sorry. No kids over...12"

"No, he's just kidding. We only came here to watch" Y/N facepalms. The woman looks at Dean, who shakes his head.

"Eww" she says.

"No, he didn't mean like that" Y/N says "You see, my brother here is just really nervous around beautiful women like yourself" The elf looks away, blushing.

"Oh, um, thank you"

"And what he meant by watching is that he's watching the Santa because my husband, uh, back home is looking after our daughter" Y/N lies. "And she dreams of meeting Santa so my brother wants to surprise her and dress up as him and he wants to know how to be the perfect Santa"

"Aww, you’re such a good uncle" The elf says, looking at Sam who smiles "Well, I'm sorry for the misunderstanding, please enjoy the rest of your day" The woman walks away.

"You’re welcome, you idiots" Dean laughs.

"Dude, you were like shitting yourself" Dean then suddenly turns serious.

"Check it out" The three watch the Santa leave his chair. Santa walks with a bad limp "Are you seeing this?"

"A lot of people walk with limps, right?" The Santa walks past the three.

"Tell me you didn't just smell that" Y/N says "That was candy, guys"

"That was Ripple. I think. Had to be" Sam says as he looks at Santa again.

"Maybe. We're willing to take that chance?"

==

Inside the Impala, the three are spying on a simple house that is decorated with Christmas lights.

"What time is it?" Dean asks.

"Same as the last time you asked" Y/N says from the passenger seat.

"Here" Sam hands Dean a thermos "Caffeinate" Dean takes the thermos from Sam and tries to pour coffee into the cup, but the thermos in empty.

"Wonderful" Dean throws it into the back seat beside Sam "Hey, Sam"

"Yeah?"

"Why are you the boy that hates Christmas?"

"Dean..."

"I mean, I admit it. You know, we have a few bumpy holidays when we were kids"

"Bumpy"?"

"That was then. We'll do it right this year" Y/N says.

"Look, guys. If you want to have Christmas, knock yourselves out. Just don't involve me" Dean and Y/N share a look. They then return to watch the house. Santa, still in his red cap, but in a green tank top, looks outside, then closes his curtains.

"What's up with Saint Nicotine?" Y/N asks.

"Oh, my God!" A woman's voice shouts. The three jump out of the car and run to the house with their guns drawn. Y/N looks inside the window of the front door.

"Huh" Sam says.

"What?" Dean asks.

"Nothing. It's just that, uh... well, you know, Mr. Gung Ho Christmas might have to blow away Santa" Y/N opens the door. Santa is sitting on the couch, holding a giant bong and a bottle of whiskey. Santa stands up and the three quickly hide their guns.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Dean looks around and realizes Santa's only watching TV. Dean looks at Sam and Y/N, who shrug. Dean starts to sing-badly.

"S-silent night...Holy..." Dean looks at Sam and Y/N, who follow him, shrugging, and both smiling.

".... night" Santa chuckles and sits down to enjoy the show "All is well..."

"...all is dry" Santa also sings along.

"Bright..."

"Round and round..." They try to sing although they don't remember the lyrics.

"The table..." Sam puts a hand on Dean's shoulder to pull him away, followed by Y/N.

==

The three are inside of a large house in the living room, interviewing a woman, who has a bruise on her eye.

"So, that's how your son described the attack? "Santa took daddy up the chimney"?"

"That's what he says, yes"

"And where were you?" Y/N asks.

"I was asleep and all of a sudden" She sniffs "...I was being dragged out of bed, screaming"

"Did you see the attacker?" The woman shakes her head.

"It was dark, and he hit me. He knocked me out" Dean nods.

"I'm sorry. I know this is hard"

“Yeah...um, Mrs. Caldwell, where, where did you get that wreath above the fireplace?" Dean and Y/N look around at the wreath, and blink. They look at each other puzzled.

"Excuse me?" Dean and Y/N look at Sam, waiting for an answer. Sam shrugs, smiling, feeling embarrassed.

"Just curious, you know" Later, the three exit the house and walk back to the Impala.

"Wreaths, huh? Sure, you didn't want to ask her about her shoes? I saw some nice handbags in the foyer" Dean says.

"We've seen that wreath before, Dean"

"Where?" Y/N asks.

"The Walshes', yesterday"

"We know. We were just testing you" Dean says. Sam scoffs. They then drive away in the Impala.

==

Back at the motel room, Sam is on the phone.

"Yeah, all right. Well, keep looking, would you? Thanks, Bobby" He hangs up " Well... we're not dealing with the anti-Claus"

"What did Bobby say?"

"Uh, that we're morons"

"Sounds like Bobby" Y/N says.

"He also said that it was probably meadowsweet in those wreaths" Sam says, looking at his laptop.

"Wow! Amazing. What the hell is meadowsweet?" Dean asks.

"It's pretty rare and it's probably the most powerful plant in pagan lore"

"Pagan lore?" Dean asks.

"Yeah. See, they used meadowsweet for human sacrifice. It was kind of like a... Chum for their gods. Gods were drawn to it and they'd stop by and snack on whatever was the nearest human"

"Why would somebody be using that for Christmas wreaths?" Y/N asks.

"It's not as crazy as it sounds, Guys. I mean, pretty much every Christmas tradition is Pagan.

"No, Jesus's birthday was probably in the fall. It was actually the winter solstice festival that was co-opted by the Church and renamed "Christmas". But I mean, the Yule log, the tree, even Santa's red suit - that's all remnants of pagan worship" Dean looks at Y/N in surprise in shock.

"How do you know that?" Dean asks.

"Where do you think Sam got it from." She asks. Dean looks between Sam and Y/N.

"What are you gonna tell me next? Easter bunny's Jewish?" The two don't reply.

"So, you think we're gonna dealing with a pagan God?" Y/N asks.

"Yeah, probably Hold Nickar, God of the winter solstice"

"And all these Martha Stewart wanna be, buying these fancy wreaths..."

"Yeah, it's pretty much like putting a neon sign on your front door saying "Come kill us"

"Great" Sam reads an article on the laptop.

"Huh...When you sacrifice to Hold Nicktar, guess what he gives you in return"

"Lap dances, hopefully" Dean jokes.

"Mild weather" Y/N looks out the window.

"Like no snow in the middle of December in the middle of Michigan" Y/N says.

"For instance,"

"Do we know how to kill it yet?" Y/N asks.

"No, Bobby's working on that right now. We got to figure out where they're selling those wreaths"

"You think they're selling them on purpose?" Dean asks "Feeding the victims to this thing?" Sam exhales.

"Let's find out"

[pesterloglog]

Vriska Serket, John Egbert

Act 5, page 2672-2674

AG: John, why are you standing around wasting time????????

EB: um, i don't know. you can see my future, can't you?

EB: how much time am i wasting?

AG: Enough to make me wonder what the hell your deal is!

EB: then i would venture to guess i am wasting time because you chose to pester me just now!

AG: Dammit, John.

AG: Stop sounding smarter than me. It is un8ecoming of someone so inferior.

EB: i mean, i was just pausing for a moment...

EB: to look at my trashed movie posters.

EB: they bring back memories, of a life that i guess is long gone now.

EB: but you probably know what that is all about.

AG: Yeah, I know.

EB: it wasn't even that long ago, but it already seems like forever since i was on earth!

EB: it was a pretty nice place, i bet you would have liked it.

AG: It seems a little too sunny for my liking.

EB: well, what about you? do you miss your planet, and your parents and such?

AG: The life I left 8ehind wasn't so hot, to 8e honest.

EB: oh. that's too bad.

AG: Why don't we not talk a8out that!

AG: What are these movies, anyway? They look just awful.

EB: but you see, that is where you are wrong. these films are the finest earth has to offer!

AG: Are they a8out clowns?

EB: no, no. i drew those clowns in my sleep, for some reason.

AG: ::::|

EB: this one here is so great. it is about this street tough renegade who did hard time behind bars, and wants nothing more in the world than to reunite with his loving wife and daughter. but not so fast! he has to go on crazy and dangerous escapades through the sky with a motley assortment of rogues led by john malkovich, who is wise to cage's heroic nature and pure heart. they tether a grumpy police man's awesome car to the plane and smash it, and then later they crash into some casinos. cage gets out of the wreckage and hugs his family, and i usually tear up a little.

EB: that is my working troll title for the movie, i hope it was ok.

AG: John, even though your title is quite amusing and pro8a8ly kind of cute, that movie sounds hilariously 8ad!

EB: yeah, well you are hilariously WRONG!

EB: here, hang on, i will show you.

EB: http://tinyurl.com/hullohumminburr

EB: oh, but you will probably have to use your troll thingy to rewind time or whatever, to before the earth internet blew up so you can watch it.

AG: Is this like the Earth equivalent of Gru8tu8e or something?

EB: i guess??

AG: Man. I am not watching this shitty video. It looks so 8ad!

EB: ok, suit yourself.

EB: but there it is, in case you are ever hankering after some incredible movie magic.

AG: Ok, I will 8e sure 8ookmark it and la8el it "dum8 kid's retarded nonsense."

EB: ok, good idea.

AG: 8y the way! Why aren't you using your computer glasses to talk suddenly????????

AG: This device seems less efficient, and doesn't look as cool!

EB: oh, the goggles are cool and all, but they kind of restrict my vision stupidly when i'm using them!

EB: i should remember to make a new hands-free device, that is less obtrusive.

EB: maybe after i make a new computer so i can install this game.

AG: How will you duplic8 it? Isn't it smashed out there on your lawnring?

EB: yeah, but i can use one of my old previously punched cards.

AG: Oh, gr8.

AG: Uh........

AG: John?

EB: what?

AG: Ok, I will slide you a 8r8k 8ecause clearly your 8lock was just ransacked.

AG: 8ut may8e you want to put that away? Somewhere discreet, where you usually keep it?

AG: There is at least one girl spying on you right now, you know.

EB: put what away? what are you talking about?

AG: Your pail is showing, stupid!!!!!!!!

EB: my pail?

EB: you mean this bucket here?

AG: Yes! Come on, will you take a hint and show some decorum????????

EB: umm...

EB: i'm really not following. what do you have against buckets?

AG: Man! Nothing, really. It's just........

AG: Ok, may8e humans don't really have any sense of shame over this sort of thing?

EB: shame over what?

EB: it's just a bucket! you know, for putting soapy water in and cleaning stuff with.

EB: why, what do trolls use them for?

AG: Oh.

AG: Haha, yeah, of course!

AG: That's what I was talking a8out. Your cleaning 8ucket.

AG: In troll culture we consider cleaning products to 8e really indecent or something!

AG: I am 8lushing furiously a8out it right now. Please try to 8e sensitive to my cultural ways and understandings.

EB: wow... uh. that is definitely pretty odd.

EB: but ok, i'm sorry you saw my bucket. i will just chuck it out the window i guess.

AG: Thank you, John. That is very gentlemanly of you.

AG: Now will you quit shitting around and get on with it!!!!!!!! God.

EB: well i was GOING to but you started babbling at me!

EB: jeez, spinneret.

AG: That isn't my real name, you dope!

EB: ok, then what is it!

AG: I ain't telling you that!

AG: It's a sekret. :::;)

EB: *ROLLS EYES*

EB: all eight gross spidery eyes!

EB: oops i mean !x8.

AG: You don't even need to say that. I can see you rolling your eyes, remem8er?

EB: oh yeah.

[bellia-25]

We had a dnd session and I think our dm was just thinking the whole time “these players are fucking idiots” because we make hilariously terrible plans 

[fryingpan1234567]

SOMEBODY WROTE A RIORDANVERSE X DC HEADCANON?? IT WAS SHORT SO I’M WRITING MY OWN MY TIME HAS COME

I will never not stand by the fact that Jason Todd and Piper McLean are the bestest of friends

Jay and Leo too

Mechanics? Beauty queens? Yessir

Dick and Piper too

#flawlesshairsquad 

Anyways 

Can you imagine like half the JL finding out they’re demigods?

”THAT’S WHY SO MANY ‘ALIENS’ HATE ME,” at least six of them exclaim angrily

Diana is very amused 

They collided when Mount Olympus relocates… right on top of the Daily Planet

That momentary panic when Annabeth steps out of the elevator after some architect work on Olympus and isn’t even in fucking Manhattan anymore 

A very nice man notices her distress and asks her if she’s okay

”Uhh…” Annabeth looked up at him warily. He sort of looked like a god- she wondered if this was some type of test. “I’m… fine.”

”Well hi there, Fine, I’m Clark,” he joked, extending a hand the size of her head to shake

Anyways, Annabeth and Clark were fast friends

CHB didn’t even have to relocate- Gotham and, by extent Metropolis, are literally on the other side of Manhattan. You know who did have to relocate? Percy Jackson 

The gods wanted him close by, and unfortunately that meant Percy and the family were moving into a new apartment 

It’s, like… fine. It’s definitely nicer, being paid for by the Olympians and magically protected

Still. You know what really sucks?

Gotham fucking Prep.

Percy’s kind of used to terrible, but living in Gotham is a whole other story

Oh but Tim Drake

Tim Drake makes things much better

They met on the first day of school. These two idiots saw someone who looked very similar to them, Tim went ‘who are you?’ and Percy said ‘I’m you but I have a sword’ (he wasn’t joking but Tim doesn’t need to know that yet) and they became besties

(When the seven meet all the Wayne’s, Damian said casually aloud “Zhang, if I bested you in ritual combat, would I acquire your powers?” and poor Frank looked ready to faint in horror)

Anyways we know Diana is a child of Zeus (she and Jason fist bump for that one, but Thalia is the extra jazzed one)

Barry is a son of Hermes- explains why he survived the lightning bolt and it gave him speed 

Hal is a son of Athena, which is why the ring chose him. Wisdom. Power. Strength of will.

To the shock of no one, Olly-blond-hair-bright-smile-Prince-Charming-Queen AKA Green Arrow is a son of Apollo 

B… is an Apollo kid as well, believe it or not. Sparkly famous playboy also with the darkest streak ever? Dresses up and fights crazy theater kids every night? Yeah

Some of the JL’s partners are too actually- Selina is an Aphrodite kid, Lois is Athena’s, Dinah is also a daughter of Aphrodite

Jason is Ares’

Dick is Aphrodite’s

Tim is Athena’s

Damian is actually Artemis’- she was under a spell at the time and, horrified, transferred the kid to Talia. It’s a long story, tell ya later

Steph is also Athena’s

Cass is Ares’

Babs is Athena’s

Duke is  Apollo’s

ALFRED IS ATHENA’S

It’s so funny but so in character that every Wayne is a demigod

Did it surprise literally anyone that Harley is Dionysus’ and Ivy is Demeter’s? No 

(You know 90% of Gotham’s rogues are Dionysus’ actually)

Moving away from the who’s what hcs

The seven showed the Batboys CHB, and they were blown away

The littles of the camp were asking how all of them had gone for so long without being attacked by monsters, and Jason and Dick and Tim had to wince and be like “actually,”

There was capture the flag that night, but Jason was sulking because they wouldn’t let him use any type of gun

Dick kicked ass tho

Really all of them but they were split in half- Jason and Tim for red, Dick and Damian for blue

Because the hunters were there as well, they were split in half as well, between Thalia and Reyna

The campers had never had to work with the hunters before. It was weird

And then Greeks v Romans of the seven

Lots of dividing ANYWAYS

The red, Greek, Thalia’s team won, but only barely. Those Romans have good strategy

~

Now the other bit

Percy and Tim

What happened there? Where do they come in?

See, I was writing the bit just for fun where Percy starts at Gotham Prep

And… I accidentally gave them good chemistry

The issue is that it’s terrible writing and I’m too lazy to redo it so essentially here’s what happened:

On the first day of school, Tim Drake stumbled into his first period class ten minutes late, backpack halfway unzipped, Starbucks in one hand and a Monster in the other, running on approximately 36 minutes of sleep from two days ago.

Percy is right behind him, unsure of where to go. He slipped in right as the door was closing.

They both scan the room for threats, a habit of both of theirs, before turning to the teacher.

”Drake. Boy I’ve never seen before,” she says coldly. They both shift uncomfortably, feeling the eyes of everyone in the room. “Care to explain?”

Percy and Tim exchange a look, and as the hyper-intelligent dumbass heroes they are, they simultaneously come to the same conclusion.

”He’s new,” Tim explained, gesturing with his coffee and taking a swig of Monster from the other side.

”And, uh, he was showing me around,” Percy said nervously, reaching over to save the water bottle that was about to fall out of Tim’s bag.

The teacher regarded them both suspiciously. “Name?” she finally asked.

Percy winced. With his record, she probably already knew him, and… well, so much for first impressions.

”Percy Jackson,” he sighed.

As Mrs. Algebra Teacher was typing things into the attendance sheet, Tim leaned over and whispered, “Cool name. I’m Tim, by the way.” He shifted his drinks over to one side and extended an arm.

Percy grinned, shaking his hand. “We make a pretty good bullshitting team. Honestly impressive.”

”Boys,” the teacher interrupted. “Sit down. Since you’re such good friends already, you’ll enjoy afternoon detention together. Don’t be late again.”

They both suppressed groans, but sat down beside each other, knees brushing.

The rest of the school day went by, and they didn’t have any more classes together. Detention rolls around, and it’s just the two of them, because who the fuck else is getting detention on the first day of school.

They talked and flirted the whole time (mostly without even realizing they were doing that second one) and when their time was up, Tim stumbled in front of Percy on their way out, holding his arms out like he was directing traffic, blocking his exit. “Um,” he said nervously, cheeks slowly descending into the color of strawberries, “so I- I’m bi and I don’t really know how to ask people if they’re straight but if you wanted to get coffee sometime that would be cool or even just as friends is fine too because-“

”Tim.” Percy was shocked into laughing, grabbing the Batboy’s shoulders and shaking him lightly. “Chill. Same here. Coffee sounds great, although I can’t promise I won’t fall asleep on you. Caffeine and ADHD don’t mix well.”

”O-Oh.” Tim was sort of dazed, but also really on Cloud 9. He’d never really asked people out before, and they definitely don’t say yes. “I- that’s. Yeah. What days work for you?”

Percy grabbed his hand and slowly started to drag him down the hallway. His mother was waiting, after all, and he also didn’t really want to spend the night in the detention room (even if it was with Tim). “Hmm. This weekend is fine, but I really am new. You’re gonna have to pick the place.” They stopped just inside the front doors. Sally was idled there in Paul’s Prius, and Tim’s motorcycle was still parked where he left it that morning, the only vehicle left in the lot. Percy grinned, and Tim got lightheaded. “You need my number for that, right?”

”Y-Yeah…” Tim handed over his phone, not even remotely worried about what Percy might find out- secret identities, Wayne Enterprises secrets, mission plans. He could take it all and Tim wouldn’t care in the slightest.

Anyways they had a lovely coffee date and held hands and walked around Gotham for a bit for Tim to show Percy around and it was a fantastic time, might write it sometime

For now, I’m tired, this isn’t edited, I’m out✌️✌️

Good morning night or 4am y’all

@high-priestess-of-daydreams

[forever-rogue]

Hot Chocolate Kisses

A/N: It’s nothing much, but it is something so tender and soft. I love Frankie and fluff! Why not have both? Tis a little thank/happy holiday gift from me to you. Enjoy 💕

Pairing: Frankie Morales x Fem!Reader

Word Count: 3k

Warnings: pregnant reader, references to sex, sweet sweet fluff!

FRANKIE MORALES MASTERLIST

MAIN MASTERLIST

»»————-　♡　————-««

"Good morning," the sound of his soft voice accompanied by the feel of his arms around your midsection was enough to make your heart flutter. He placed a soft kiss to your shoulder before resting his head there and humming in content, "how are you, honey bee?"

"Good morning, mi amor," you replied softly, taking one of his hands that had been resting on the gentle swell of your belly and bringing to your lips, pressing a kiss to his knuckles, "I'm perfect. What about you, Frankie? Did you rest well?"

"Like a dream," he pressed a kiss to the crown of your head before reluctantly letting go and moving towards the coffee pot. Once he poured a cup and made it to his liking, he came over, and followed your line of sight out into the yard.

There was nothing but mountains of glittering snow coating the entire neighborhood as far as the eye could see. Small children were already playing outside, all bundled up in thick snow jackets and woolen hats, while dogs ran around their yards barking and biting at soft, fat flakes that were gently drifting down from the heavens.

"Record snowfalls," you looked at him with excited eyes, "which means we are snowed in and work is canceled. Do I even try to pretend to be upset?"

"Hell no," his smile was infectious as his singular dimple appeared and his soft eyes crinkled in the corners the way you adored, "I get to spend the say being lazy at home with my girl? I'm not going to argue with that."

"You know what today calls for," your eyes were wide and bright as the two of you knew exactly what a snow day meant. You'd come up with your own little traditions a long time ago and always pulled them out on days like this.

"You just want an excuse for hot chocolate!" Frankie's tone was lovingly accusing as he crossed his arms over his chest as he took a sip from his mug.

"No!" you insisted firmly, offering him a small little pout, "your daughter is craving some. Ever since you knocked me up that's all I've been wanting! And I don't need any excuse for hot chocolate. Hot chocolate isn't a crime!"

"First of all, this -" he pointed tenderly to the small bump just visible under your sweater, "was a team effort. Secondly, you've always loved my hot chocolate, long before any of this. She had nothing to do with this!”

"Obviously," you stuck your tongue out at him, "but you make it all fancy and gourmet. How can I say no? She's not helping though! I swear it's a craving."

“Your mamá is already using you as an excuse,” he laughed as he rested his hand on your belly. You instantly felt her move and flutter under his touch; she always seemed to be more active when he was around. Even though you were trying to have a seriously teasing conversation, the moment was enough to make your heart melt, “can you believe it, mija? She just doesn’t want to admit she’s addicted to the world’s best hot chocolate.”

“I can quit it any time I want,” you snorted with laughter at his silly antics, “I just choose not to. Now, don’t deny your pregnant wife what she wants!”

“What does she want?” there was a wicked little glint in his eye as you raised a brow at him.

“Well for starters,” you pointed at the cabinet, “some hot chocolate later. But how about breakfast for now? And a warm bath after that? I swear I’m getting as bad as you old man, my back is killing me.”

“Hey now,” he warned with a small boop to your nose, “you’re getting awfully cheeky for someone who wants my hot chocolate. You’re on very thin ice, honey bee.”

“You know I’m only kidding, Francisco,” you gave him a quick kiss as you went to the refrigerator to start gathering ingredients for breakfast, “besides, you’re my favorite DILF.”

“Oh no,” his laughter was a loud, beautiful thing as it sounded throughout the kitchen. You turned to him and shot him a cheeky little wink, “not you too! Everyone’s calling me that lately, I swear.”

“They can look but they can’t touch. I mean, have you seen yourself Frankie? You’re handsome as hell, you’re amazing, wonderful, kind. Everything,” you insisted as you rejoined his side, You could already see the light flush of color in his cheeks as he relished your words, “and you’re all mine. Besides, I’m half the reason you’re a DILF. Where is my recognition in all of this?”

“I love you, honey bee,” he stared at you in awe for a moment before turning so he could kiss you properly. It took you by surprise but it took even less to respond back; kissing him was such saccharine bliss, “you are everything to me.”

“Good,” you beamed at him, “now let’s get this ultimate lazy day started!”

»»————-　♡　————-««

“Those might have been our best pancakes ever,” you wolfed down the last syrupy bite before pushing away your empty plate, “I feel as stuffed as a damn turkey.”

“You’re the most beautiful and radiant turkey I have ever laid eyes on,” he joked as you lovingly groaned at his silly words, “I’ll clean up and you can start the bath. Plan?”

“Plan,” you agreed as you slid off the bar stool and started padding towards the kitchen. As Frankie busied himself with gathering up the empty dishes, you turned around and watched him for a moment, nothing but a gentle warmth radiating throughout your body, “Frankie? You’re going to join me, right?”

He turned to you and offered you his megawatt smile as he slowly nodded, a rogue curl bouncing around and falling onto his forehead. Gods, he was so effortlessly handsome and sweet. You couldn’t stop yourself from rushing over to him, delicately grabbing his face as you pressed a kiss to his lips, still tasting the faint sweetness of the syrup, “what was that for?”

“Nothing,” you grinned breathlessly, “I just love you is all.”

“Oh,” a flush of pink tinged his cheeks as he brought his hands to your face, delicately tracing over your features before pressing the softest kiss to your lips, “I love you too.”

“I know,” you beamed, “now hurry up so we can take a bath!”

»»————-　♡　————-««

You were humming under your breath, sitting at the edge of the large tub as you watched it fill up with warm water. There weren’t very many requirements you had when the two of you had been house hunting before deciding to expand your family - but a large bathtub was one of them. Moments like this made you glad for it; you loved being able to slip into the tub, often dragging along Frankie with you, not that he had any complaints of course. It was perfect for the two of you, and now that you seemed to be growing by the day, it was even better. 

Pulling your favorite bottle of bubble bath off the shelf, you poured some in, inhaling deeply at the relaxing scent. All the stress and worries you had were already dissolving away with each passing second. Once you were satisfied with the copious amounts of soft bubbles, you threw in some Epsom salt for good measure, hoping it would help your aching body. Deciding to make it even more festive, you grabbed the speaker from your bedroom, and turned it on, opting to play some soft Christmas music in the background. It wasn’t like you were going to be paying much attention to it anyway; your conversations with Frankie always seemed endless, no matter how long the two of you had been together. 

“Close your eyes,” Frankie came into the bathroom just as you were finishing getting everything ready. You closed your eyes, making a show of putting your hands over your eyes as you heard him shuffling in, “okay, pick a hand - left or right.”

“Hmmm…” you mused for a moment, “how about left?”

“Lucky guess,” he chuckled as he pulled your hands from your eyes. A little grin spread across your features when you saw what he was holding in his hands, “surprise!”

“Frankie,” his name was but a mere soft sigh as you reached for the soft, cozy pajamas he was holding out to you. You could spy a matching pair for him on the counter, your heart fluttering in delight. It had become a sort of little tradition for the two of you to get new matching holiday pajamas every year. It was just some silly thing, but it still meant the world to you, “I love them. Thank you so much - you remembered.”

“Of course,” he held out his hands to you, slowly hoisting you to your feet, “I wouldn’t ever forget.”

He slowly reached for the hem of your sweater, gently pulling up and over your head and outstretched arms before tossing it on the floor. He followed suit with your bra, unclasping it before letting it join your sweater and doing the same to your leggings and underwear. It was such a small intimate thing, the way his eyes looked over you was nothing short of adoration and reverence. 

“Your turn,” you whispered before starting to unbutton his flannel, taking your time to undo it one by one. Shrugging it off his shoulders, you pressed a few kisses to the soft, golden skin of his shoulder before moving onto his jeans, wicking them down his legs along with his boxers. He made a small sound in his throat before stepping out of his jeans and pulling you into his arms. The gentle coolness of his wedding band on your back was wonderful; a delicate reminder of just how much he loved you.

“You look beautiful,” he whispered as he trailed kisses along your jaw and down your neck, a hand running down your side as he rested it on your waist, taking solace in the gentle swell of your belly. He still couldn’t believe your daughter - his daughter, one that came as a small surprise and blessing was in there. One he had never known he wanted so much until you told him you were pregnant and he broke down crying, as emotional as you were. You, the two of you, were everything for him. 

“Hmm,” you mused, “you’re not so bad yourself. I guess we both got pretty lucky, huh? I love you so much, Francisco. More than you will ever know.” 

He looked back at you with those brown eyes you adored so much, and you could see that they were glossy, close to spilling over with tears. You reached up and touched his cheek before brushing away a stray curl. 

“Come on,” he held your hand as you motioned towards the tub. He got in first, settling down before holding his arms out to you. Carefully, you settled in next to him surprising him for a moment as you occupied the other side. Before he could say anything, you gathered up a handful of bubbles, and blew them at him, watching as they stuck in his dark mop of hair, “playing dirty are we?”

“Maybe,” you splashed him with the warm water, “you have to play nice, I’m pregnant!”

“You started it!” he splashed you back as you squealed in delight, “don’t start what you can’t finish!”

“Oh, it’s on! It’s so on,” you laughed as you tried to move the bubbles closer to your half of the tub, “you’re going down!”

»»————-　♡　————-««

“Do you have enough blankets, honey?” Frankie walked back into the living room, arms filled with a few more big, fuzzy blankets. You looked up from the comfy couch, during the numerous blankets you’d already secured and gave him a big grin. You were already feeling so toasty and warm in your new pajamas after your bath, and this just made it so much better. He snorted with laughter at the sight of only your head poking out, “oh.”

“It’s freezing!” you insisted, digging your arm out and pointing at your feet, “pile them on! The only thing I’m missing is your body.”

“I have a few more things to do first,” he put the blankets down and wrapped them around your feet, “gonna start a fire and then go and make the hot chocolate. You, my little bee, are in charge of finding our first movie. Think you’re up to the challenge?”

“As if that’s a question,” you joked as you reached for the remote, as he went over to the fireplace, “you just need to hurry up!”

"You are getting so demanding," he laughed as he kneeled next to the fireplace and started to pile some of the logs in. He started to hum softly under his breath as you watched him, absolutely in awe of the man you were able to call your husband. The sight of him in the same pajamas as you was endearing and caused you a moment of pause as you pictured doing this next year with him and your daughter. 

You often wondered what she would like, although you both knew that the only thing that mattered was that she was healthy and sound. But a small part of you hoped she'd take after Frankie, to have those gentle chocolate eyes and dark curls. Maybe she'd take after you, or maybe -

"Everything alright?" Frankie turned and caught your distant gaze on him as she started to light the fire. You hadn't realized you'd gotten so lost in your little daydream. 

"Yes," you smiled at him, "just thinking..."

"Thinking about...."

"Its silly..."

"If it matters to you then it's not silly," he insisted, making a small sound of satisfaction when the fire started to crackle away merrily.

"I was just thinking about next year," you admitted shyly, "you know how we do the matching pjs every year? I think it would be fun to do that with the bean next year."

"I love the sound of that," he agreed, "that'll make a great Christmas card!"

"Yeah," you agreed as he brought you a pillow to rest your head on, "you really do think of everything, don't you?"

"Only for my bee," he promised with a wink and a kiss, "I'll go and make the hot chocolate. Classic for you today?"

"Surprise me!"

"Be back," he promised as pointed at the television, "now pick something good out!"

»»————-　♡　————-««

It seemed like it had been a small eternity since Frankie had left to go on his little adventure of hot chocolate making, and you'd long since found a suitable movie. You started it but kept it paused as you waited. But soon you felt a flutter in your belly. A contented sigh escaped your lips as you put your hand on your tummy where you felt her moving around.

"I know baby bean," you told her gently, "I miss him too. Even when he's gone only for a few minutes. You're gonna love him so much, just like me. He's going to be the best papá. We already love you so much. We can't wait to meet you."

"Talking to yourself?" just in time your knight in cozy pajamas came striding back in with two delicious steaming mugs of hot chocolate. 

"I am never alone anymore," you reminded him as he came and cozied up next to you, "I've always got the bean. And we were having a private conversation, thank you very much."

"Please don't let me interrupt," he passed your mug over before pulling blankets over his form and you curled up in his side. You grinned at the full mug, admiring how perfectly he had made it. It was a classic, a layer of mini marshmallows followed by a layer of whipped cream and drizzled with chocolate and caramel syrup.

"Thank you, Frankie," you beamed as you took a long sip, savoring the creamy sweetness on your tongue. You heard a soft chuckle before Frankie reached over and wiped off the whipped cream from your nose, "oops!"

"Good?" he asked as you nodded eagerly. Before he could stop himself, he leaned over and gave you a soft, saccharine little kiss. He lingered against your lips and you could taste the sweetness of the hot chocolate that was clinging onto him. He grinned before giving you a few more pecks, each sweeter than the last, "even better. Now, start this movie and let's get this marathon on the road!"

You clutched your mug to your chest as Frankie brought an arm over your shoulders and you pressed play on your first cheesy holiday movie.

»»————-　♡　————-««

It wasn't long before you felt your eyes start to get heavy as you finished your mug of hot chocolate. You were about to move it to the coffee table, but Frankie beat you to the punch, grabbing it from your hands and setting down before pulling you into his lap.

He wrapped his arms around you as you laid against his chest and let the soft rise and fall of his chest relax and lull you.

Soon enough your eyes closed and everything seemed distant. You didn't even try to fight it as Frankie pressed a kiss to your cheek. One hand was holding yours, your fingers laced together and the other was resting on your belly. It wasn't long before you were completely under the siren spell of sleep and snoring quietly in his arms.

"I love you, honey bee," he whispered ever so gently as he relaxed too, growing more tired by the second, "and you too, baby bee. You two are everything."

»»————-　♡　————-««

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[robininthelabyrinth]

Now I want the story where NMJ is half war god and NHS is half fox spirit, thank you so much xD

based on this tumblr post and Lao Nie’s decision to refer to WRH as A-Han in this one ficlet

on ao3

Nie Zonghui had long ago suspected that his Sect Leader was a madman, but he didn’t really know it for certain until the first time he lost the man while on a bodyguarding mission – his first, and a great honor. 

Supposedly.

“It’s all right,” his father said, looking long-suffering, when he reported back in distress. “He’s an adult, our sect leader, and this is a small city with no major threats in the middle of some idiosyncratic festival celebration for some goddess or another. How much damage can he really do before he sobers up?”

Nie Zonghui stared at his father, then turned to his mother, who was also staring at her husband with an expression of sincere incredulity.

“Lots,” she supplied. “Lots and lots and lots, and that’s assuming he doesn’t get himself killed in the meantime. Why would you even say that?”

“He’s our sect leader, have some respect.”

“I respect the boss bull of the herd, too, but it doesn’t mean I let it go wandering around the fields wherever it pleases!” She shook her head, snorting in a manner not entirely unlike a bull herself. “Well, if we’re very lucky, maybe our cousin will knock up a cow while he’s out and about rather than just breaking things. We could use a direct heir already; he’s not getting any younger.”

“We could use him being properly married is what we could use. I don’t understand why he’s so resistant – ah, Zonghui, you’re still here? Go gather some cultivators and go look for him, but don’t kick up any fuss, and worry too much if you can’t find him at once. He’ll be back to business soon enough.”

He was, if by “soon enough” one meant “after nearly ten days” and by “back to business” one meant “still drunk off his ass and waxing rhapsodic about some girl he met and possibly married”.

“Yes, yes, I’m sure the sun shines out of her ass,” Nie Zonghui’s father said, his face stormy. “You still could’ve told us where you went. Look what you did to poor Zonghui, he’s been wearing down his heels pacing in worry over you!”

“Oh, heels, yes, did I mention that my gorgeous goddess had amazing legs, too?” their sect leader asked with a soppy smile and stars in his eyes, totally uninterested in any of their petty complaints. “She could kill a man with them – oh, but I would die a happy man between those thighs…!”

“Zonghui, go guard the outside door,” his mother told him. “Also, tell his younger sister that she might need to be sect leader sooner than she’d hoped, because I’m going to murder this fucking –”

-

Nie Zonghui was there, too, when ten months later his new little baby cousin was (metaphorically) ditched on their doorstep.

The entire thing was entirely too dramatic for his taste, and yes, he was aware that as a person who chose to dual wield sabers he had very little room to criticize others for being overly dramatic, however correct he might be.

They had been fighting bandits – barely disguised mercenaries, really, probably paid off by the Wen sect to harass them – in what had turned into a particularly bad situation. Three separate regiments had joined together to take advantage of a terrible thunderstorm and ambush them at all once and them with their backs against a raging river, swollen with rain to the precipice of flooding, with no way to retreat except by fleeing on their sabers, abandoning the common people they were protecting and losing all face. 

The sect leader had been raging on the battlefield, saber in hand, but even he had seen that they would need to shortly choose between death and dishonor; Nie Zonghui, close by his side, had seen how his face was split with a terrible scowl as he wracked his brain for more options.

Then there had been a terrible roar of thunder, and then a flash of light that had blinded them all.

Nie Zonghui had immediately noted the anomality of it, thunder first and lightning second, and wondered it if it was some sort of array working against them, especially when the light had not faded away but grown brighter, causing searing pain in his eyes that made him fall and clutch at his face. But he was a good soldier, loyal and true, and he forced his eyes open to squint into the night, looking to see he did not know what.

Through his sun-blindness, he vaguely thought he could see a silhouette not unlike that of a woman, ten feet tall and radiant as the sun, wearing a dress of nine colors and carrying a guandao in her hand that seemed to reach the clouds, but when he blinked again he saw nothing at all.

Or, well, he did see something: all of their enemies were headless, no matter where on the battlefield they were, their bodies dropping like a loosened string of coins where they had been standing and splattering anyone they were fighting with blood as they gawped at the sudden corpses.

Also, the sect leader was suddenly holding something in his arms when he hadn’t been before.

“What’s that?” Nie Zonghui asked, and the sect leader turned towards him. Nie Zonghui squinted, and suddenly wondered if this entire battle had been a very bad dream. “…is that a baby?”

“Yes,” the sect leader said, grinning broadly. “He’s my son!”

“He’s your what,” Nie Zonghui said.

“My son! I didn’t know about him, of course – apparently he came as something of a surprise to her as well – but anyway she thought that it would be more appropriate for me to raise him, all things considered. A baby doesn’t quite fit her lifestyle. What do you think of ‘Mingjue’ as a courtesy name? Good, yes?”

Nie Zonghui suddenly understood why his parents were always cursing all the time.

-

“I don’t see why I need another wife,” the sect leader said. “I already have a son.”

“Don’t you want to give said son a mother?” Nie Zonghui’s mother asked, her arms crossed. “One that isn’t the Dark Lady of the Nine Heavens, the war goddess you somehow managed to knock up without getting killed?”

“She never specified that she was –”

“Someone needs to be Nie-furen,” the sect leader’s younger sister interrupted, “because I am sick and tired of doing the job, and it’s a little difficult to ask a goddess to do it. So you are going to find yourself another one that’s a little closer to the ground this time, you understand me?”

The sect leader nodded and agreed, which was universally agreed upon to be the only appropriate reaction when his beloved meimei said something in that particular tone of voice.

(He did, after a suitable period of time, state that he wanted to make clear that there was no actual evidence that he had knocked up Jiutian Xuannü and that it was quite plausible that the mother of his heir was nothing more than a rogue cultivator of particular strength and possibility even immortality. If Baosan Sanren had managed it, why not someone else?)

At any rate, they brought him several pictures of women that might fit the bill and who would not be too offended at being asked to be a secondary wife – their sect leader swore up and down that he had performed bows with the mother of his first son, rendering him legitimate, and anyway no one was in the mood to see if the maybe-a-goddess would take offense to someone calling her child a bastard – but none seemed to catch their sect leader’s interest.

“Consider visiting a few brothels,” Nie Zonghui’s great-uncle suggested. “Anything to get you back in the habit of thinking about women of a less divine nature – though of course we’d prefer that she be literate.”

The sect leader scowled and stalked off to go night-hunting instead.

“I don’t like brothels,” he said to Nie Zonghui as they made their way through an especially deserted mountain valley in search of something that had murdered all the local mensfolk in the surrounding villages with especial viciousness. “Surely there’s an option in between.”

Nie Zonghui preferred his sabers to either men or women, but he obediently wracked his brain to think of where people in stories and famous songs found their wives. “Innkeeper’s daughters?” he finally suggested.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” the sect leader scoffed, but the very next day, he decided to break his usual habit of staying out in the wild no matter the weather in favor of taking shelter from the encroaching storm in a small inn right at the base of an especially lonesome and nasty-looking cliff.

“We’re always happy to have guests,” the innkeeper said with a somewhat sinister smile – he was pale as a ghost in the guttering candlelight, and his lips looked very red. “My daughter will show you to your rooms.”

The daughter in question was inhumanly beautiful: small and graceful, with a fox’s face and dark hair that fell to her knees.

“Wow,” the sect leader said, staring at her. “You know, I think you could kill me with those nails of yours.”

Nie Zonghui took a look and agreed with the sentiment, seeing that her nails were as long as claws and looked just as sharp, but apparently he and the sect leader had somewhat different interpretations of this sequence of events and plans on how to address it.

Namely, Nie Zonghui pointed out that the lady was obviously some sort of yao or maybe a gui and that she was probably the one seducing the local mensfolk, draining their yang energy and then slaughtering them, and therefore that it was undoubtedly their duty as cultivators – and cultivators of the Nie sect in particular – to put an end to her vile deeds through the swift application of their sabers. Furthermore, he explained, they should take care never to allow themselves to be alone with her in the process, lest she seek to entrance them with her seductive magics and lure them to their undoubtedly violent deaths.

The sect leader’s rebuttal to this line of logic was limited to “I’m the sect leader and if I want to bang the probably-a-ghost, I’m going to bang the ghost and there’s nothing you can do to stop me”.

Amazingly enough, the sect leader did not end up dead the next day – the innkeeper looked just as surprised as Nie Zonghui felt – and instead announced, very happily, that he was planning on marrying her.

“You what,” the innkeeper said, staring at his very smug-looking ‘daughter’. In light of dawn, she was wearing a dress of many colors with a foxfur ruff, and her beauty was almost painful to behold.

“You why,” Nie Zonghui moaned.

“You shut up,” the sect leader told him. “I’ll have you know that my lady here is very clever, literate and well-learned, and she doesn’t at all mind being the second wife. Weren’t you one of the ones on my case about getting a Nie-furen to help managing things back home?”

“I didn’t think we needed to specify that the person in question didn’t murder a lot of people!”

“Isn’t his first wife supposedly a war goddess?” the lady inquired, her clever eyes dancing in amusement.

“Well…yes…”

“Also, all those men deserved it,” she said. After a brief pause, she added, “In my opinion as a totally unrelated observer, of course.”

“See?” the sect leader said, putting his arm around her waist. “No problem. Anyway, she’ll stick to killing bad people from now on, it’s fine.”

The lady smiled. There were many teeth in that smile, and they were very sharp.

“If she doesn’t, I’ll have my first wife discipline her,” the sect leader added and her smile abruptly disappeared.

Nie Zonghui coughed into his hand, but reluctantly admitted that maybe this wouldn’t turn out to be as bad as all that.

-

“Huaisang is a lovely name,” Nie Zonghui’s mother said, being the best of them at diplomacy when she put her mind to it, although admittedly it was something she did only very rarely. “I think we were just expecting something a little different, that’s all.”

“Possibly something a little more fox related,” Nie Zonghui’s father said.

“Please,” the sect leader’s second wife said. “That would be gauche.”

They looked at her.

“…all of my suggestions along those lines got rejected,” she admitted, and glared at the small shrine in the corner as if it had personally wronged her. In this context, it very well might have.

“Is there anything we should keep an eye out for?” Nie Zonghui said, watching his little cousin carry around his even littler cousin under his arm as if he were a sack of potatoes and not a baby that hadn’t yet had its first month celebration. He would have interfered but for the fact that little Nie Huaisang seemed to be notably more in control of his various limbs than the usual infant. “A tail, for instance?”

“Oh, no,” the second lady said. “Nothing like that.”

“Great,” Nie Zonghui said. “I’m glad to hear it.”

“It’s very rare for fox children to achieve a grand plot worthy of a tail in their first lifetime.” A pause. “From what I understand, that is.”

“Great,” Nie Zonghui said. “…great.”

“You’ll take good care of him when I’m gone, won’t you?” she asked, and when they all looked at her, smiled. “Not for another year or two, don’t worry, but I really can’t stay here that long. Sometimes, a girl’s got urges she has to take care of.”

“The sort of urges where we’d need to hunt down a mysteriously appearing fox yao for having murdered a lot of people?”

“I already promised to stop killing people,” she said sulkily. “Although I do think I made some plausible arguments in favor of a little bit of entirely justified murder in connection with the Jin sect and maybe the Lan sect and, oh, the Jiang sect –”

“Please don’t.”

“It’s not my fault your Great Sects are all headed by men who wrong women.”

“You’re not wrong,” Nie Zonghui’s mother said, and Nie Zonghui’s father looked alarmed. “But still, don’t.”

“You’re such spoilsports. But no, as it happens, it’s getting to that time when I need to return home for a while to pay my respects to the older generation.”

“How often does that happen?” Nie Zonghui’s father asked. “Once a century?”

“A gentleman shouldn’t ask a lady her age,” she sniffed. “At any rate, my family home is rather far away and they’re fairly insular, so I’ll probably be gone for at least a decade or so. I’d take the baby with me, but, well, you know, long travel and all. He’s better off sticking with his father.”

“All right,” Nie Zonghui’s mother said. “We understand, and we’ll help take care of him as best we can.”

“I’m glad.”

“We have only one thing to ask of you in return.”

Their second lady arched her delicate eyebrows.

Nie Zonghui’s mother smiled. “You be the one to tell your sister-in-law that you’re leaving your post.”

“…you know, on second thought, maybe I can push my departure out a few more years…”

-

“Before you say anything, I want to be clear right now that I don’t need a third wife,” their sect leader said. “I’m fine.”

“Sect Leader,” Nie Zonghui’s mother said, not unaffectionately. “You’re not allowed a third wife.”

“And therefore – wait, really?” he asked, a little skeptically. “You’re not concerned about me?”

“Oh, we’re very concerned about you,” Nie Zonghui’s father said. “But not in that specific respect. Some celibacy would probably be good for you, at least in terms of increasing your life expectancy.”

“…my sister is lying in wait with a cleaver to make sure she doesn’t have to take on the duties of Nie-furen again, isn’t she.”

“I’m not discounting that possibility, but don’t worry about it, it’s fine, we’ll talk to her. The Lan sect haven’t had a proper hostess in years either, we can just say we’re following their example.”

The sect leader eyed his cousins beadily. “They haven’t had a proper sect leader in years, either.”

“No, you don’t say,” Nie Zonghui’s mother said dryly. “What a coincidence -”

“You have two fine sons,” Nie Zonghui’s father said hastily. “That seems like enough, really.”

“You don’t think they need a mother…?”

“Sect Leader,” Nie Zonghui interjected politely. “While we admit that it may be within your capabilities to be able to find a mother willing to deal with one step-son who has been waiving around a saber taller than he is since he learned to walk and has a penchant for the unyielding, unmerciful and very violent application of the norms of divine justice –”

Nie Mingjue’s presence bolstered the spirit of good men, while his gaze seemed to make evildoers itch. He was the most earnestly good person Nie Zonghui had ever met, and also one of the most stiff and unbending in respect to what he believed should and should not be done.

Unfortunate that his standards didn’t seem to match up to the needs of either human law or diplomacy…

“– as well as another who can scheme circles around anyone and persuade them of anything as long as he puts his mind to it and only doesn’t because he’s too busy lazing around in the sun to bother –”

Nie Huaisang liked to file his nails down to something that looked quite normal, but they grew sharp quickly enough if he wasn’t paying attention, and he had a penchant for pranks. There was nothing quite as unnerving as running into a sudden and unexpected ambush and then suddenly hearing the shrill peal of a fox’s laughter, hidden behind a scholarly fan.

“– but all things considered, we’d really rather you - didn’t.”

His mother and father nodded fervently.

“Good,” the sect leader said, though he still looked suspiciously at them as if he thought they were hiding something. “Good. As long as we’re agreed.”

-

Nie Zonghui walked in on his sect leader pinning the Wen sect leader to a wall, murmuring something in a low voice with a very particular smile on his face, and then he turned around and walked right back out again.

The sect leader of the Wen sect might appear beautiful and young, but he was at least a generation older than the Nie sect leader. Not that that had stopped the latter from relying on their respective positions to refer to him in startlingly intimate terms – my dear A-Han, the sect leader would say with a touch of wickedness that reminded one of his second son and the tiger gall bravery of his first – and while at first the Wen sect leader had taken it as a challenge to his authority, an act of brash insolence, it appeared that they had progressed beyond that.

That the Wen sect leader already had three wives and two concubines apparently didn’t present any obstacles either – except perhaps in what those poor women might have to endure from their husband when he returned from the wretched teasing he was enduring. Nie Zonghui felt a bit of pity for them.

Shortly thereafter, he felt a bit of pity for himself. The Wen sect had long dreamed of dominating the cultivation world and sought to increase their influence with the other sects through underhanded means, with the Nie sect opposing them at every turn. Even if war was not on the immediate horizon, the wise could smell its distant approach in the air - the best estimates said that it would take another decade or two to arrive, unless the Nie sect leader took an especially hard stance.

It appeared, however, that the Nie sect leader had chosen to take a different sort of…hard stance.

Ugh.

Maybe Nie Zonghui could conspire to throw his sect leader into a cage with a live tiger in heat next time he felt in the mood. It’d probably be less dangerous.

Nie Zonghui had assumed that the first person to talk to him about what he had seen would be his sect leader, even if it was only to remind him of the general rule that the sect leader had ultimate power and therefore could exercise his own bad judgment in deciding to fuck whoever he wished, but instead it was the Wen sect leader that found him later that afternoon.

A flush had yet to fully fade from his cheeks, and Nie Zonghui raised his eyes to the ceiling to avoid looking directly at the man in front of him. 

He did not want to know. Others might, given that no one had ever complained about the looks of either party, but he himself had realized long ago that he had no interest in matters of the flesh under any circumstances; he was very content with that conclusion.

“Is there some service this one can provide to Sect Leader Wen?” he asked politely, and it was only when the sect leader flushed again that he realized belatedly that his words could be misconstrued. After all, his own sect leader had probably already made a similar offer regarding the provision of services…

“Your sect leader has a sister, doesn’t he?” the other man asked, his voice tight and his hands in even tighter fists. “I’m not misremembering that?”

“He does,” Nie Zonghui responded honestly, and not without sympathy for the Wen sect leader’s position. He was given to understand that making certain belated discoveries regarding one’s own preferences could be highly disconcerting, particularly later in life. “But she’s rather different in kind than what you may be thinking, so it won’t work out that way. It wouldn’t work even if she wasn’t already married, which she is.”

After a moment of thought, he added, “Also, consider your predecessors.”

The Wen sect leader’s eyes narrowed.

-

Really, it was the sect leader’s own damn fault that he got himself murdered.

[minetteskvareninova]

Minette Watched The Rogue Prince: Assorted Thoughts

- This show is so pretty! I am probably going to announce the Pretty Thing Of The Episode every time. This episode, it’s the Dragonstone in the mist and sunrise.

- I absolutely love most of the major characters, and I have some sympathies even for Viserys. But Otto Hightower can fuck himself.

- Matt Smith wisely realized that with his unimpressive voice and physicality, he can’t pull off the gigachad that Daemon comes off as in the books, and so he instead went for the chaotic little shit, which is actually a valid interpretation of his characters AND something that he’s surprisingly good at.

- The Dragonstone drama wasn’t written as comedy, but it did make me laugh out loud, especially after Mysaria left in disgust. In fact, Mysaria in general made this episode for me. Going from unconditionally supporting Daemon to being done with his bullshit in like five minutes was the best moment of this episode, and this show is basically made out of good scenes. Your honor, I love her.

- I do have to nitpick - her accent was Extremely Distracting. Like, she’s clearly not a bad actress, but her dialogue sounds just horrid with that fucking accent. And it’s not even her natural accent - the actress is part Japanese, but this ain’t Japanese she’s trying and failing to do. I think it’s some sort of fictional Lyseni/Yi-Tish/wherever Mysaria is from in this show, but like... It doesn’t work, at all?

- Laena is not the best child actress I’ve ever seen, but she is super adorable. Her talking about Vhagar being alone, knowing one day she’ll claim it... The tearjerker of the episode.

- A lot of super fascinating relationship moments - Alicent and Rhaenyra, Rhaenyra and Rhaenys (I really can’t wait for her to become Rhaenyra’s mother-in-law), Alicent and Viserys (I love how they developed their relationship beyond “she’s young and hot, he’s old and horny”; again, if Viserys would be satisfied with her being his friend, everyone would be happier), Viserys and Rhaenyra, Daemon and Mysaria, Daemon and Rhaenyra, Corlys and Rhaenys... God, I love everyone in this show. Well, almost everyone. Otto can still fuck himself.

- But I have to at least respect his ability to manipulate Viserys. Like, the dude was smart enough to not recommend his daughter outright, and instead just answered EVERYONE’S recommendation of Laena by “well, they’re not the boss of you, are they?” and making Alicent befriend the old man instead. The man is smart, and though him going to “diffuse” the situation on Dragonstone would be a terrible idea from anyone else, I am sure he actually did want it to escalate, so that Daemon would get in trouble or whatever. Of course, that just means Viserys is an idiot for sending Daemon’s worst enemy to try and negotiate with him, but oh well.

- Viserys’ little Valyria is basically the fantasy equivalent of a middle aged dad’s mini train set or a ship in a bottle. Because Viserys is basically a bumbling sitcom dad that just happened to be made a king of a fantasy kingdom. I love little touches like this.

- Sea Snake and Rogue Prince are going to war together! My two baes are teaming up! Aww, yisss! (Also, did I mention that I love Corlys, because I love him very much.)