#and rewrites for a new decade i guess

[son1c]

in my movie rewrite, there's a big emphasis on environmentalism. one of GUN's primary objectives is to find an alternative source of energy, because fossil fuels really aren't working out for the planet, and they've deemed solar/wind/etc as failures because they're slow to catch on. what they covet is a limitless energy source that they can milk like a battery for humanity.

10 years ago, they got close to something promising when they discovered a sunken island near the bermuda triangle. but their progress was thwarted thanks to one of their scientists going rogue. she took all of their research, wiped their computers, and ran. GUN has a new guy working on the case now (eggman) but he's eggman so his ego and personal projects are getting in the way of any real progress. that is, until he catches something unexpected with one of his drone's cameras: an artifact that had been recovered from the bermuda triangle research site a decade ago, hanging from some kid's neck. it's annie's key! (sonic is in the picture too, but he's just some blurry blue smudge.)

the truth of the matter is this: the sunken island is angel island and the key will free Chaos. you know, the big water monster guy. that rogue scientist, aka annie's mom, figured this out 10 years ago and stole the key before GUN could use it. i'm thinking also that the key isn't really a key, but some ancient seal thing that just so happens to look like a key. in reality, it's Chaos' mind or heart or something. and the closer sonic and annie get to the island, the more it stirs, and annie starts having some really weird dreams...

i was also thinking that the reason why long claw did all that shit and isolated sonic and etc is because he's The One Living Person who can use the chaos emerald's power and go super. basically he's an extremely dangerous weapon. in my rewritten lore for the movies, only one person has this power at a time and it has been historically used to obliterate entire planets so long claw's species are tasked with finding each generation's chaos controller (lame name but i can't think of something better rn) before anyone else can swoop them up and groom them into being a weapon of war. btw it's completely random who has this power. kind of like the avatar i guess. cuz i want to keep sonic's "just some guy" thing intact, it's important to me.

this would also make shadow showing up way down the line extremely disconcerting because he's not supposed to exist. but i guess no one accounted for artificially made hedgehogs. ha

[mahou-furbies]

Closing thoughts on Magia Record Scene 0

Scene 0 has finally ended! Or the translation I've been following has been completed. To those who don't know, it tells the Madoka Magica story, but the point of view of a new character Mabayu, who for some reason keeps her memory through Homura's time loops and can move while time is stopped. And since we all know how the Madoka plot goes (right?), the main story here is the mystery of Mabayu having lost her memory of why she is already a magical girl.

(spoilers)

First things first, the whole premise conflicts with what I think is one of the core points of the Madoka Magica drama, that is, how Homura had to do her thankless time looping job all alone and became increasingly isolated because of it. But here it's "revealed" that she had a buddy all along, with whom she became very close friends and who is eventually cast as the reason why Homura is able to keep going on in the first place. The whole thing considerably waters down her devotion to Madoka, when most of the story is about how she bonds with Mabayu. And then there's also the inherent awkwardness of inserting a brand new nobody to the story you already know, to whom the characters you've known for a decade become the side cast.

Then again, that is the premise, so you just have to make peace with it if you want to enjoy the story at all. And in fact I like Mabayu a lot, so I'll take it, though I'll have to consider everything a non-canon super AU (even within the canon's actual AUs). There was also the other problem though that some of the stuff was kind of fanservicey, and not in the horny way but in the superficial "let's put the whole cast in maid outfits for no particular reason" way. But I was a fan of some of it, like Nagisa being un-witched in one time loop, so fine.

I don't know how much this is about what the story actually is and how much should be blamed on me not paying enough attention, but in the end I think there's still plenty of holes in the story. Like we learned how Mabayu became a magical girl and what how her personal magic power works, but I didn't understand how her memory doesn't reset through the time loops and why she can move when Homura stops the time. Also the way she erased other characters' memories was inconsistent, she had to cut Sayaka's memory all over again in each loop, but when she cut Mami's, the effect was carried to the next loop. And I guess it was explained how the final resolution worked (duh) but I don't think I quite understood.

That's a lot of complaints but I did have a decent time with this actually, and that is because I really like Mabayu. She's the kind of character I'd really like to see more in magical girl stories: low energy, kind of lazy and self serving, passive and loner but not in an edgy way, and it was interesting to see her grow to be more heroic. She also has a lovely voice, and it turns out the same actor also did Ha-chan whose voice is also great. She also had really good dynamics with the main cast, and I especially like growing friendship between her and Homura, they had good banter with Homura being super serious all the time, and their growing friendship was touching. And she had some interesting stuff going on with Sayaka and Mami too.

And while I complained about the whole premise being about rewriting canon, I also think there were some worthwhile additions. For example in this version Mami used to recruit other girls to become magical girls with Mabayu, and the guilt from that is a major reason for her breakdown when she learns the truth about witches. On one hand I prefer the version of a seemingly strong character actually being weak and emotionally unstable, like she's been through a lot and doesn't need a more noble reason for her breakdown, but I think the Scene 0 version is also interesting.

Ultimately the ending left me somewhat sour with how inconclusive it was. Mabayu cut herself from everyone's memories (including her own), but it feels like there's a ton of stuff about her that's not resolved. Like she's still able to move during Homura's stopped time and doesn't understand why, she's still a magical girl even if she doesn't remember it, becoming friends with Mami again doesn't lead much anywhere if she's going to die to Charlotte in a few days… If the idea is the bittersweet knowledge that Mabayu made a difference in the Homura-Madoka story but nobody can remember it, it doesn't work for me since I didn't really get what her contribution was. Or I guess it was pretty clear how important Mabayu's presence was for keeping Homura sane through all the failed time loops but that was like my number one issue with the premise, so maybe I'm just incompatible with the whole story to begin with.

Still I had a good time following this as the translations came out, I was eager to see where the plot would go and watching a short video every few days didn't require that much from me. Though I do think the story was too long for its own good and especially the early loops could have been condensed.

[sarkyfancypants]

Fascinating observations upon the release of the Borderlands movie

I've been digging a lot through video reviews about the games and the movie and I've caught a few things:

-Non-gaming people were all on the same page about how it's terrible from the outside perspective that the movie is just bad and convoluted and tragically butchered through constant script rewrites to get that PG 13 rating when it originally had the R rating so it is unbiased from the game lore

-However gamers who do know the lore and gameplay were all on the same page about how it is terrible because it does nothing with its source material and only made whatever the hell they wanted and being like a decade late to deliver it

-Borderlands games had a sudden increase of players upon the movie's release very likely because fans wanted to wash out the horrible stench while non-fans probably wanted to actually give it a try, this one is hilariously shocking almost like it was Gearbox/2K's plan all along (it wasn't)

-Everyone who has played the Borderlands game either old fans or new, EVERYONE and their dog are saying Borderlands 2 is the best out of all of the games if we focus on the story, while some comment that Borderlands 3 is pretty fun only gameplay-wise

-There has been a sudden rise in Borderlands gaming/lore video reviews and analysis by people who finally gave the franchise a chance after twelve or so years or people who were already familiar with the game and wanted to revisit the franchise

-The Pre-Sequel is suddenly getting the recognition it deserved u_u

-A lot of people are saying the franchise is dying but idk, it's pretty bad yeah but saying that "it's all over" might be a bit too overdramatic. We'll live (I hope)

And that's it so far I guess. Nothing too special, just something I started noticing and I'm quite amused by it.

[tryslora]

learning sentence level editing

It’s no secret that I hate editing.

I’ve told this story before: When I was in high school, I had an English teacher who told us on our first day of sophomore honors English that she would not give an A for a first draft. She had a rigorous outlining/drafting process that she was determined to teach us. Me, I had undiagnosed ADHD and was a dyed-in-the-wool pantser. So I resolved on that first day that by the end of my time with her, I would get an A on a first draft.

My final essay of junior year AP English (yes, same teacher two years in a row), I wrote about Victorian morals and literature. I read it aloud. I got an A. I only ever wrote one draft.

What that taught me was how to write very technically clean drafts, something that has stayed with me for almost four decades now. Which is great!

What it did not teach me was how to be patient enough to properly edit. And I have never really learned. In fact, that is one of my ADHD sticking points (yes, I know, that’s obvious from my reaction to her statement in the story above). I often feel that a large part of the reason I have never made it as a writer—have never broken into tradpub—is because I do not have the patience to not only write, but then create an outline from the draft, then rewrite, then do it all over again and fiddle with each sentence until it’s perfect.

I’m learning, but I’ll admit, I’m still not there, and I’m not sure I ever will be where novels are concerned. 

But right this moment, I’m feeling very accomplished and proud of myself. I had a short story that every time I worked on it, it grew. Every time I cut it, it felt like it lost its heart and like the taste of the words stopped feeling like mine. My voice disappeared.

I had finally worked out a version of it that was just under 7500 words long, and I thought it was decent. It got no traction, and I was frustrated. I put it up for critique on SFFOWW (a critique group site) while I was active there a year and a half ago. It was chosen for an Editor’s Choice review, and the first half of it got some great comments. Which I promptly had to ignore because I was dealing with other editing problems.

I returned to it recently, because I saw a call I wanted to send it to. The problem was, the call was for stories under 6k, and I wasn’t sure I could cut this story again and still retain its punch. But hey. The biggest feedback I got was about how I handled my descriptions and dialog, and the amount of repetition that slipped into my words. So I absorbed that, and I dug into the story, and I started ripping it apart.

I didn’t edit it, exactly, nor did I completely rewrite it. I printed it. I read it twice. Then I placed it on the desk and went a few paragraphs at a time and started with a blank file and filled it in. Some pieces went in verbatim. Most of it changed. Huge chunks disappeared, and a few new things appeared. Some of it got rearranged. The wordiness disappeared.

Here’s an example…

Before:

"You get one hour," Lana says softly. "One hour with him, and then you're leaving him behind. You're taking your fate and you're setting him free."

After:

"One hour," Lana says. "Then take your fate with you and set him free."

The new version of the story came in under 6k. I did it, and the best part is, I don’t hate it. In fact, this was sentence level revision of a style I had never done before. The closest I’ve come to it is editing flash fiction to be under very tiny wordcounts (or drabbles of exactly 100 words, which gods, those take me longer than writing a short fic!).

I’m not sure I could’ve done this without the editing I did for Into the Split over the last many months. I had to dig into that in ways I have never edited a novel before, and it prepared me to dig even more deeply into this short story.

I’m learning. I guess you can teach old dogs some new tricks.

[perenial]

gene im so glad you said this cause I haven't seen anyone else comparing it to the book as source material for like character and tone but i am So sure that if terry was alive the season would not be like this but i fear good omens fans dont realise how big a factor the lack of terry's influence is?? or like they forget that good omens was never just neilman???

ok before i go any further: i rly don't want to detract from anyone's enjoyment of the season and everything im going to say comes from a place of love for a) the original novel (& season 1 to a certain extent bc it got me back into it lol) and b) tv as a medium so like peace and love on planet let people enjoy things etc etc

but

like u said, terry's influence on the book was enormous – what makes gomens gomens is the balance of his genuine warmth and precise understanding of humanity tempered with neilman's sardonic voice and general like.....savvy approach to storytelling? i guess u could call it? anyway what rly helps the book is that it took them years to write it, passing ideas back and forth and rewriting each other's work until their voices blended seamlessly and a well structured capital-s Story was created. when i praise the book for being self-contained i think a huge part of that comes from the circumstances in which it emerged: two authors with complementary styles writing in a v particular time period where they had both the space to play with their ideas and the constraints of the novel as a storytelling format from which to craft something extremely specific.

adaptations are a tricky business and a tv version of gomens produced literal decades after the book was always going to have some unique challenges, but i don't think that's a bad thing bc the challenges could prove to be creative opportunities to take both the established audience and those new to the story by surprise. my biggest hot take here is that i don't think translating a story into a different medium means it has to follow the original narrative exactly, bc each medium has its own ways of communicating information and these structures, rules and traditions in turn inform what that story is. what matters more than following a story beat-by-beat is capturing what that story is about at its core, what themes and messages and ideas it works through and how.

all this is to say i never expected tv gomens to be a perfect reproduction of the book and if it had it been, it probably would have been worse off for it. that being said, there are parts of the book – like u said, its tone and character – that needed to have some fidelity in order to pull it off, and for the most part s1 did that bc it was still working predominantly within the bounds of the novel & its core ideas. while i did have some issues w how neilman & amazon adapted some details and characterisations, i generally rly liked s1 – it reminded me of why i loved the book and it was just generally fun to watch.

s2 was. not that fun to watch

a few positives before i go ham w the critiques:

the hair & makeup + costumes were fantastic (although i feel like s1 was slightly better re: makeup?)

the sound design & score made some of the more awkward scenes bearable and thats no mean feat imo

david & michael gave incredible performances w what they were given – michael especially managed to salvage aziraphale enough that his complete 180 didnt feel completely tonally dissonant (more on this later)

the detail of the sets is NUTS and i genuinely want to see more of hell bc of how intricate and fun the props look

i actually like gabriel/beelzebub!! their getting together montage worked for me, although they could have spent sliiiightly more time establishing what it is they like abt each other so much + why gabriel wanted to stop armageddon 2.0 so suddenly

the opening scene, although not on par w the novel's & s1's, was visually gorgeous and thematically resonant (although neilman owes me royalties for ripping it off from this shitty fic i wrote back when raphael!crowley was all the rage lol)

now w THAT being said:

like i said yesterday, the pacing was fucking awful. flashbacks are hard to work w at the best of times and the way they were used in this season felt so needless, especially the 40s one in ep 4 that takes up like 90% of the episode. in both flashbacks + present day there were scenes that dragged for no real reason, dialogue that looped back around on itself to stretch out the runtime, and weirdly enough places where there should have been character & plot work where there just,, wasn't any?? for example, maggie & nina's night locked in the café – some parts of the dialogue in later episodes made out that they'd had some rly deep conversation abt how they feel about each other or even that they'd had an affair, but that isn't clear from those scenes in the café. i'm not saying we had to see that conversation in its entirety but that there needed to be more connective details – either in dialogue or direction – that gave that part of the story coherence.

(there were pacing issues w the editing too but i don't want to jump down the editor's throats on this one bc im more focused on writing & direction issues)

the second major problem that i mentioned in my tags yesterday is the protagonist shift, which is an issue that started in s1. aziraphale & crowley are side characters in book gomens – significant ones, yeah, but still somewhat peripheral to adam (& anathema who counts as a deuteragonist imo). this works incredibly well w who they are as characters: they're Just Some Guys who happen to be involved in this epic biblical-level bureaucratic nightmare and importantly, they don't want to be in the spotlight. the arrangement was created so that they could explore what it meant to be themselves away from the Big Narrative; literally any time they get involved in larger affairs is bc the plot is alive and caught them unionising on company time. the last fucking chapter is adam (& god) being like haha u guys are alright keep it sleezy and letting them go. like. hello. neil u let them go.

but then!! tv gomens s1 does something interesting at the end w the body swapping addition that i dont totally hate – it gives aziraphale & crowley the extra bit of character work that brings them slightly more adjacent to their book selves. see i kinda view tv a/c as the younger, less settled versions of book a/c; they're still caught up in the immediacy of being key players and haven't fully realised that earth is their home. i haven't watched s1 in a while but one scene i remember rly clearly is crowley throwing all those astronomy texts in the air and angsting abt when he was an angel; i remember it bc his anguish in that scene feels a lot newer and rawer than book crowley's feelings about falling. when tv a/c do their bodyswap, it gives them the chance to land a blow against heaven/hell in a way that solidifies their allegiance to earth in a way that more closely resembles what book a/c have been abt the entire time (still adjacent, though. not parallel).

the reason why this works is that it does one final pivot to orient aziraphale and crowley as almost-main characters in a manner that makes sense in relation to a) their book selves and b) the position the tv show has placed them in. a combination of factors made tv a/c feel a lot less mature than their book counterparts but at the end of s1 they're sort of facing the same direction the book ended in, albeit through their own flashy late 2010s means.

when s2 was announced i was.......apprehensive bc to me, that felt like a satisfactory ending. i get the impression that amazon saw how wildly successful the adaptation was and was like oh shit we could make way more money out of this and neilman, having all those undead darlings that he and terry killed in the process of whittling the book into a workable novel, jumped at the chance to resurrect all those half-realised ideas. but not only were those ideas probably discarded for a reason, they've either been laying in wait for years unworked or they're new inventions, which means they weren't molded in the way that the book had been. like i said before, book gomens underwent years of rewrites and creative collaboration, and i think that process was what made it so good; s2 didn't have that. even if some of terry's ideas made it into s2, his influence is still missing bc he and neilman weren't in dialogue the same way they were in the book (and in some ways s1 bc i know terry was involved in the process of adapting gomens to screen before his death).

i don't think it's a case of newer fans forgetting terry so much as it is the context of terry's involvement being so removed from the current circumstances that certain aspects & discourses (i.e. is the s2 finale queerbaiting (no), does binge watching change the viewership experience (yes), etc etc) about the show overshadow other discussions that would usually be taking place. and before anyone says it's a case of neilman forgetting terry, i definitely don't think it's that either bc thats. yknow. wildly disrespectful. but also there are larger systems and structures at play than one writer no matter how much beef i have w him and his decisions, bc ultimately he's just one guy (a powerful and wealthy guy, but just a guy) and there's a wider cultural shift happening rn towards rehashing old stories without understanding what made them successful in the first place, and that same culture just doesn't allow for much, if any, constructive discourse analysis

so yeah

[beastimusprojects]

Lets try this one more time.

Going back and rewriting some stuff because I'm not fond of the direction I was going. Specifically, we had a really weird distribution of character time, and just chapters that didn't really do anything. And I ended up with a situation where I didn't have a way to do the stuff I wanted to do without just doing a bunch of talking scenes in a row.

So here's the first 2 chapters, again. I'll try to get chapter 3 done today, but it's where the major rewrites need to start.

Chapter 1: A Beautiful night.

______________________________________________________________

               Phoenix finally relaxed.

               As she watched the moon slide over the sun, she relished the fact that she was now, truly, wonderfully alone. More alone than anyone has been in a long time I think.

               There are, of course, ways to be alone not requiring physical distance, and ways of being together that overcome any distance. But it had been a decade since Phoenix had been together in any of those ways, barring a few times, but those had turned out to be false.

               Physically though, I’m as alone as anyone could be, sitting here 30 miles from the nearest other person. By all rights, trying to get to me now would be like trying to contact the spirits of the dead. She clutched at her necklace, as she always did when she felt lonely. That’s good. Solitude is safety. It’s been a long time. She let out a long breath as she steeled herself up for the thought. A decade, exactly.

               I’m seventeen now, an adult. She looked around at the island. A second chance, I guess, to build something new. A new life. Safe. Out here.

               We can’t do that alone. Its barely more than a barren rock.

               Ok, that’s fine, we’ll have to go into town for a while, but that’s a small risk, we can mitigate those.

               That’s the name of the game, small risks, small contact, don’t get attached to anyone and return to safety quickly. It won’t happen again like last time. She put her head between her knees. I hate you Karol.

               As Phoenix looked up to seen that the moon had finished its arc, leaving only a ring of fire visible in the newly night sky, a feeling washed over her. Not happiness, and not really peace either, but determination. No, it won’t happen again. In mere hours her first scar would twinge, and many more in the coming weeks, reminding her of the worst moments in her life. This time, I won’t just survive.

               She looked for a place to sleep as she breathed in the crisp, cool air of what was ordained to be the first night of her new life.

            And what a beautiful night it would be.

______________________________________________________________

               It was of course, a beautiful night, but even from his perch on top of the headquarters of the Hunters, Orwen saw very little of it. He ignored the brilliant ring of light around the moon, its glimmering reflection in the lake, and he did not notice the glittering swath of stars, like diamonds above. Instead, he looked deeply into a small handheld mirror as he ran his finger across his scar.

               A letter lay at his feet, opened and read, a Condemnation, a sanction for public execution. As a Hunter, this was all he needed. If it had not come that evening, maybe he would have forgotten, no, not forgotten, but moved on. Duty is always to be the driving force of a Hunter. That was rule three, petty vengeance was beneath him, but now, the order was set, Phoenix Alkaryl was to be his next mark. And the hunt would be sweet. He would prove once more that he was the best of the Hunters, that he deserved the title of Nitehawk.

               You know, it’s kind of funny, the Hunter’s Mark is supposed to only fall on the best, but this one is the only evidence that I am not the best, my only failure. “You mean nothing” he told himself he was talking to the scar “until I find her.”

               He was not there in the morning.

______________________________________________________________

               “Dere, I can see you!” Hywel had been sent out to collect the demon again. Ever since he’d been moved to Seeker Headquarters, the thing had been frustrating the living daylights out of him. He shot an arrow up to the top of the wall. I’m sure that my magic is the only reason they brought me here. He was on top of the wall in a second, his arrow in his right hand.

               His left hand was on Dere’s scruff, he always took the shape of a cat, trying to seem cute to distract people. It worked, but only marginally.

                    “Would you believe I was just out for a walk? It’s a very nice night!” Dere exclaimed. It curled up to try to seem cuter. It would be dropping the act as soon as it didn’t think it improved its chances.

               “No, I don’t believe the words of demons, especially not ones who I catch trying to escape.”

               “Oh, you’re always so serious, I was just out for a bit of fun.”

               Hywel took only a little bit of pleasure in stuffing Dere into the carrying cage as he said “oh, and I see that your idea of fun is tormenting people.”

               “There’s nothing else to do in this god-forsaken place.”

               “You see, you say things like that to try to get people to take pity on you, but then we have to remind ourselves that if you were free, your idea of fun would be to grow a thousand feet tall and bat villagers around until they pass out from the pain, when you would then eat them.”

               “”

               “Oh, nothing to say to that do you?”

               “I am not a demon of lies, I’m a demon of greed, it does me no good deny that you just described exactly my idea of fun.”

               After this moment of bluntness, Dere took to screaming profanities for the rest of the duration of the walk back to its cell.

______________________________________________________________

               Chapter 2: And a Wonderful Morning. ______________________________________________________________

               There’s nothing. Here. But. Blackberries! Phoenix was kind of mad about that fact, so mad in fact that she lit the nearest bush on fire with a clap of her hands.

               She took a few breaths, it’s fine, it’s fine, I wanted some meat, but I won’t starve. She walked back to her gondola and rustled around in her bags a little, coming up with some potatoes, onions, carrots, and a head of cabbage. You see, it won’t be that bad once we fry these up a little. She gathered some firewood, there were in fact, trees, so she could get enough wood to make a fire at least. I wish I’d had the sense to get an axe, if we have to build a house, we’re going to need one. Such concerns were, for the moment, however, pushed to the back of her mind as she started chopping vegetables.

               Cooking was one of the things Phoenix enjoyed the most. Fire had always fascinated her, mostly due to her powers. It engrossed her in a way that most things didn’t. Fire, used to make, and not unmake, it hearkens back to a simpler, more complex time, one of less violence, of more love, that is to say, the future, which if we do not make it, will be forever within our hearts. Her father had said that line many times, though she’d never understood, cooking was one of the first things he had taught her.

               Once the vegetables had been sliced, Phoenix roasted them over the fire in her pan.

               I’m going to have to go into town tomorrow, I need to buy more food if nothing else. But if I can get a few sheep and some chickens, I can probably stay here for a while and not have to go back. I really don’t want to go to town right now though.

               She watched the fire and put those thoughts away for now.

______________________________________________________________

               Orwen was known for being fast, but right now he was mostly just frustrated. He had tracked slippery prey before, but Phoenix Alkaryl was one of a kind. A night and a day and he could still only narrow her location to about a quarter of The Sky, a pitiful performance by The Nitehawk.

               Doesn’t matter how long it takes. I will find her.

            He was pouring over a map (the mirror laid just north of Levias) as he sat on the 11:45 ferry from Nerestar and Dorsinli, a convenient service which, 6 months ago, when Nerestar had been in Alliance territory, he couldn’t have used. He was glad the Free Cities were winning the war, if for no other reason than it made his job easier, the Alliance had made it clear they would not sanction Hunter activity in their territory. Now, Phoenix couldn’t be anywhere in Alliance territory, ever since he had killed his last mark, Scout the Seeker, the Alliance had closed their borders to all travel, Phoenix was supposed to be a good navigator, but no one got past Alliance gusters. So at least one thing was in his favor.

               If she’s this far off the map, she probably wanted to disappear. So, she went outward. If she made it all the way to the Outer Rim she could be on any number of islands.

               Oh, we’re here, I’d never thought they were that close.

               As he left the boat, he caught a glimpse down a dark alley of something he’d never seen before. A tall woman, wearing golden chainmail, one side of her face covered in burns, with three of her limbs replaced with prosthetics. Their eyes met, and she smiled with one half of her face. A Valkyrie, they were all supposed to be on the Levian front, the war was picking up steam there too over some drama about the missing prince. He tried to walk quickly away, but as he turned a corner, he felt a hand on his shoulder.

               “Excuse me, you are the Nitehawk, yes? You’re looking for a girl named Phoenix, right? The one who gave you The mark?”

“Indeed.”

“I know where to find her.”

No way, even if they did, why would they know? But if they did know, they wouldn’t tell me. No harm in asking about it though.

“Where?”

“Asera.” Makes as much sense as anywhere else, but no way it’s that easy.

“Why do you know that?”

“We have an interest in her, we’ve been tracking her for a while.”

“And why tell me?”

“You ask a lot of questions.” She raised her eyebrow.

“There is no trust, only favorable circumstance.” Rule 7

The Valkyrie frowned “We can’t catch her without your speed.”

Transparency or an attempt to play to my ego? Well, it wouldn't work anyway.

“Thank you for the information.” He turned to go but felt her hand on his shoulder.

“You misunderstand, I am to accompany you.” That’s not good.

“All right, we leave at once then.”

She shook her head “I have a few matters to attend to beforehand. Meet me by the northern gate.”

Probably don’t want to piss off a Valkyrie, I’ll play along for now, but if anything seems off, I’ll ditch her. “Ok.”

______________________________________________________________

            Guarding Dere was hell, and Hywel had been booked for a full week of it, some sort of hazing ritual he guessed. In every way, the thing was pure evil, you could almost feel badness radiating off it. Even just sitting close to it made you numb, like all the feeling was being sucked out of you. If you met its eyes, they weren’t really eyes at all, just pools of infinite empty blackness, more than just nothing themselves, also threatening to make you into nothing. And its smile was dreadful, you knew it was happy with itself, and when you saw it smiling, you couldn’t even hate it, the hate would drain away before you could replenish it. All you could feel was nothing. A vile creature.

               And then there was its voice. It didn’t make any sound; you heard it in your head. It didn’t say anything of any consequence, but it seemed to know everything about you. Or sometimes it would say the most utterly outrageous things, but that was the trouble, after a while of hearing, you sometimes wouldn’t know the difference.

            It was evil. In its most concentrated and loathsome form. Precisely what the Seekers were out to eradicate. Or so they say. Seems like they mostly are just fighting the war. Capturing and killing things like Dere was what Hywel had signed up for. Though the job mostly consisted of long guarding of the one that had already been captured. He longed to be out with one of the capture teams, or even out fighting in the war, something where he was doing something for someone, where he felt like he was helping.

Sometimes I hate this job.

               We aren’t that different you know. We’re both just stuck here, powerless to really go anywhere. It’s the worst feeling. I know you wish you had the power to go out and help people. You could. All you’d have to do is say the word.

               I’m gonna stop you right there, Dere. You aren’t wrong, we are both kinda trapped here, but we’re here for opposite reasons. You had to be dragged here, because if you were out, you’d go on a murder rampage. I’m here by choice because I want to stop things like you. You are fundamentally evil, and I will never make a deal with you, because I’m not that kind of person.

______________________________________________________________

@brokendarkfairyempressforever

@hijabi-flavored-nerd

Bear with me.

[doodlegirl1998]

I hope you don't mind me asking but what are your views on inko because as much as hori tries to paint her as this overprotective mother I just never seem to get that vibe. I always get the vibe that sometimes she does more harm them good to izuku . So I would like to know how you think of her character and how you would changed her character to seem more supportive i guess?

Hi @bibibbon 👋,

Midoriya Inko is someone who I feel like loves her son but she is not someone I view as a good parent.

She reads to me as emotionally neglectful of Izuku - a key example of this is letting Izuku stay in Aldera while Bakugou was exploding him and destroying his things his whole childhood. To people who try to defend her and say 'Izuku hid his bullying from her', how well do you think a four year old can hide being exploded or having their things destroyed?

Inko also reads as someone who is overly emotionally dependant on Izuku - *insert the scenes we have of her crying and Izuku comforting her here.* Most of these scenes are because of her worrying because of bad things that have happened TO IZUKU such as news of his quirklessness or when he wakes up from a coma after the War Arc. Parents are meant to provide emotional support and be a pillar of strength to their children - with Izuku he seems to be that for his mum because his Dad is MIA. This is an unhealthy dynamic because he should not be his mum's emotional support.

How would I rewrite Inko?

I would have her be a proactive presence in her son's life like parents should be.

I would have it so as soon as Inko realises her son is being bullied by Bakugou she is shown notifying the teachers / bringing this to Aldera's attention.

I would have it so when Aldera does nothing or if they refuse to do anything she reports them and transfers Izuku into a better school (such as Iida or Todoroki's schools - because Izuku deserves either of them as a childhood friend more than a decade of being abused by Bkg.)

I would show Inko confronting Bakugou's parents about Bakugou's bullying and behavior to bring it to their attention. (None of this "Auntie Inko" nonsense from Bakugou like I see some fics use even if Mitsuki is her friend, and that's not confirmed by canon, I can't see any good mum liking her son's abuser.)

I would keep her emotional nature but have her actively try to hide her upset from Izuku on certain things. I.e the Quirklessness diagnosis, I would have her try to reassure Izuku that she loves him and believes in him quirk or no quirk yet him catch her crying at night when she thinks he's asleep. (This keeps the angst but makes Inko look like a better and more supportive mum.)

I would have her have more of a suspicion of Yagi around Izuku and have her bond with Yagi more. - We know Yagi is All Might. We, as readers, know this is an innocent and wholesome mentorship but to Inko this strange man has just popped out of nowhere and is spending all this time with Izuku. That, if Inko knew of it, should raise Alarm bells to a parent. Plus it would be good for Inko to see over time how good Yagi is for Izuku and have Yagi and Inko bond outside of Izuku.

Have Inko learn of OFA - I am forever salty that BAKUGOU learnt of OFA before anyone else, let alone Izuku's mum. And this version especially has a right to know.

Have Inko have more of a problem with UA - UA doesn't seem to keep the parents well informed plus AM and Aizawa's 'teaching' leaves a lot to be desired. Having Inko have more of a problem with it cements her as looking out for her son's best interests and being a proactive rather than a passive presence in his life.

These are seven improvements I can think of at the top of my head. Inko is a character that could use some rewriting to be a good parent but ultimately loves her son.

[tiffanybluesclues]

HELLO! I'm making an obnoxiously long meta about the inconsistencies of Dick's and Bruce's relationship. I'm ALMOST finishes but I need an instance of adult-ish Dick Grayson saying that he didn't want Bruce to be his father pre-flashpoint

Also if you have instances of the writer hammering they're brothers pre-flashpoint that'd be cool as hell too, but I already got at least one instance of it (when dick goes to college)

Thank you in advance!!!! I'm still on the Kory-Bruce meta lmao I'm so annoyed he barely mentions her lmaooo

Somewhere in the decades and decades of pre-Flashpoint DC Comics, there may be an instance where Dick Grayson (as an adult or at least as a teenager) said he didn't want Bruce to be his father, but I've never seen it and I'm kind of glad I haven't because tbh based on what I *have* seen it would be Dick lying to himself.

I'm guessing the page that inspired your quest is this court scene from "Batman: Year 3" (1989)?

– Batman #439, 09/1989.

Maybe it was a modernized explanation for why Bruce took Dick in as a ward instead of adopting him – as opposed to the version in Batman #213 (08/1969), with the court saying Bruce couldn't adopt because he was a bachelor.

Something that speaks volumes to me is that in the same story as the above court scene, in the preceding issue actually, Dick thinks to himself that Bruce was like father to him. There is no internal conflict in this statement, no thought about how he at some point didn't want this. "He was like a FATHER to me and I LOVED him." He follows that up with a sad reminder of the distance between him and post-Crisis Bruce: "...and though he could NEVER bring himself to say it, I know he loved me too."

– Batman #438, 08/1989 or 09/1989.

You're familiar with the college-send-off, so please keep it in mind when you read this scene with [regard to] Bruce and pre-Crisis Jason.

– pages from Batman #376, 10/1984.

Alfred's response makes sense, it's a good explanation. It's also a complete rewrite of history, so these two are lying to themselves – or, more likely, the writers are trying to emphasize the current day stakes and emotions at the expense of the past. With the above panels in mind, let's look again at how Bruce actually reacted when Dick left home...

– pages from Batman #217, 12/1969.

Oh suuuuure, he definitely didn't mope around feeling lonely and depressed at all – and closing up Wayne Manor and moving out was a ~totally~ chill and non-dramatic reaction to Dick leaving for college... lol, okay, Bruce. I guess 159 issues and almost 15 years can make memories faulty.

The following are two pages I saved because of their references to the history that Bruce and Dick share. I want to highlight the page on the left though, because on a single page this comic manages to pay respect to the long history between Dick and Bruce while also disrespecting Dick's role as a surrogate son in Bruce's life.

– pages from Detective Comics #533, 12/1983; The New Titans #61, 12/1989.

That final yellow panel is so rude to me lol, like how dare you say "for the first time" as if like-a-son-to-him Dick Grayson didn't happen.

Comics from the 60s and 70s were probably the peak time for the idea that Bruce and Dick were like brothers. As far as I can tell though, writers didn't really have other characters describe them as brothers. I've seen mentor & apprentice, friends, partners, guardian & ward, knight & squire, and (primarily when there are no other children in the mix) of course Dick is also described as Bruce's heir pretty often.

I feel like, compared to Batman comics, the 1980s Teen Titans comics were more willing to say Bruce and Dick had a father and son relationship. Donna even contrasts her sisterly relationship with Diana to the parent and child relationship of Bruce and Dick during "Who Is Donna Troy?"

– The New Teen Titans #38, 01/1984 (Donna); The New Titans #61, 12/1989 (Alfred); The Brave and the Bold #197 04/1983 (Golden Age/Earth Two Bruce Wayne).

At least they let Earth Two Bruce remain true to Golden Age vibes.

My headcanon is always that he is the Bruce who every Dick Grayson grew up with, regardless of era, regardless of rewrites. Here are some panels that kind of support that – a significant factor in how Dick views Bruce is that he had a "softer" version of him than the man we see now.

– Batman: Gotham Knights #26, 04/2002 (Barbara); Nightwing #134, 09/2007 (Dick in flashback); Batman #437, 08/1989 or 09/1989 (Dick again).

A repeated theme from Dick is that he is insecure about his place in Bruce's life, and in some instances Bruce even made it clear that Dick's role was as a soldier, or at best a partner, and that being part of his family was conditional.

– left: pages from Robin: Year One - Part 2, Part 3, Part 3, Part 4, 01/2001.

right: panels from Robin: Year One - Part 4, 01/2001; Batman: Gotham Knights #43 09/2003; Action Comics #613, 08/1988; same; Nightwing #134, 09/2007; Nightwing Secret Files #1, 10/1999; same.

With that underlying insecurity, and the deep love and loyalty that Dick has for Bruce, I think that by the time he came of age it's likely that Dick actively wanted Bruce to be his father.

The first 20 or so issues of Gotham Knights offered some great material about their familial relationship (leading up to the adoption storyline). In issue #14 Dick writes a letter that he still never send. I swear half the delay in my response was probably me deciding which panels to include from this because it is a gold mine for the kind of meta you're writing.

– panels from Batman: Gotham Knights #14, 04/2001.

& with that I've hit the image limit, but I'll reblog with some panels on the point about how Bruce and Dick were often described as friends (something I saw possibly just as often as ward and heir).

[holidayslinger]

i guess i just jotted down a several sentences sunday that's a bit of a continuation of the little proposal i wrote last night. i've had this bit of, like, buddie talking about how they Could Have Been in another life for a while and in it it's always happening in this exactly situation. i don't think i'll ever write a longer fic but i thought i could make it part of that universe.

buck/tommy but mostly buck/eddie as the platonic soulmateism variety on buck and tommy's wedding day. i hope you enjoy it. please tell me if you do.

"so what are you thinking about, buckley?" eddie steps into the room. he's wearing a suit and his hair is loose and falling into his face. if buck didn't know better, he'd think eddie was trying to show him up on his own wedding day.

"my name isn't going to be buckley in like an hour." he turns around, sucking in a breath. "do you think i chose the right suit? maybe i should have gone with the green."

"the blue is perfect. everyone will be lucky if tommy doesn't rip it off you right there at the alter." eddie adjusts buck's tie ever so slightly.

"right." buck laughs and ducks his head.

"i'm still calling you buck. i am not going to start calling you evan."

"no, please don't. weird." buck laughs.

"are you nervous?"

"oh for fucking sure." buck breathes in. "what if he leaves me at the aisle?"

"tommy? no way, man. he's been in love with you since you met. do you remember what an asshole you acted like? you fucking broke my leg, buck!"

"you sprained your ankle. don't be dramatic." he laughs quietly. "oh god, you're going to talk about that in your best man's speech, aren't you?"

"guess you'll have to wait and find out."

"such an asshole."

"that's why i'm your best friend."

"dad! they're ready for buck!" chris pops his head into the room and then immediately ducks back out.

"well, that's it then. you're about to be off the market."

"i think i've been off the market for a while."

"maybe." eddie brushes some lint off buck's shoulder. "you look great. tommy is a lucky man. you are too. you deserve this."

"you know," buck laughs. "there was a time when - i don't know. i know before tommy i didn't really - " buck waves his hand around. "but i did wonder about us."

"us?" eddie raises an eyebrow.

"you know, yeah. i watched you get shot in front of me and just thought, if i lose him now - " he shrugs. "but then you were fine and you were with ana and i just let it pass. we were both straight - i thought we were both straight, anyway." buck grins. "but in another life - "

"you wish, buckley." eddie rolls his eyes. "but yeah, maybe. maybe in another life the last thought before i thought i was dying was i love him and he'll never know."

"damn, we really could have been epic."

"nah, this is how it was supposed to happen."

"you're right, diaz. don't let it go to your head. would have been fun, maybe, to have a fling, though."

"i'm gonna tell your husband you said that. i'm rewriting my speech as we speak."

"if you tell my new husband i confessed i had a lapse in judgement half a decade ago, i swear to god!"

"hey, you're the one who told me on your wedding day!"

"eddie!" buck laughs. "i do love you, you know. you're my best friend."

"yeah, i'm the best. it's true." eddie hugs around buck and grips the back of his neck, tightly. "you're more than my best friend. hope tommy realizes that he's marrying you, but i'm part of the deal."

"oh he definitely knows that."

"BUCK!"

"when did chris get so loud?" buck snorts.

"he gets that from you." there's a twinkle in eddie's eye. "i hope tommy also knows he's a step dad to a teenager who's angling for a car for his 16th birthday."

"oh chris has already started telling him about it."

"come on, lets go walk you down the aisle before chris goes to get maddie to come yell at you, buckley. or should i say Mr. Evan Kinard." eddie hooks his arm in buck's.

"that sounds so fucking good."

"yeah, yeah it sounds pretty right."

buck grins and lets eddie lead him to the hall where his future husband is waiting.

[virtie333]

WIP Wednesday

Well, I finished my current Damerey WIP last night. The editing may start tonight, but since I have tomorrow off, I may take it easy and watch a movie instead. Or both. You never know.

Anyway, instead of offering you a snippet of the new fic, which I hope to start posting on AO3 on May 9, I'm going to direct you to part of a chapter from one of my first Damerey fics. It was the inspiration for this new fic, and as you can probably guess, it's why this ended up being a rewrite of the sequel trilogy. Because, what if it started like this..?

Another day. Another ration pack. Or two. Rey’s haul that day hadn’t been big, but it would be enough for a meal, however small. She stopped her speeder just outside the limits of Niima Outpost, the sun low in the sky, and carried her load to the cleaning station. As she did so, she noticed three unique shapes off to the south, where visiting ships usually landed. She stopped and stared. X-Wings?

She had seen X-Wing fighters before, on the rare occasion some mercenary or outrider who happened to have one stopped on Jakku. However, it was obvious those models were old junkers, damaged during battle and disposed of by their owners as not being worth the money to fix, and then being taken on by someone who had the time to repair them enough to be travel worthy if not battle ready. These three ships were far from junkers. Sleek, well-cared for, and ready for combat, they had no insignia on them to identify who they belonged to, but there was only one group in the galaxy that used X-Wings effectively these days: The Resistance. Two of the ships were steel grey with blue and red marks on them to individualize them. The third was painted a very distinctive black with orange marks.

Rey continued on to the cleaning station. While she hadn’t found much in today’s scavenging, what she had was unique enough to warrant decent ‘pay,’ and after cleaning the old compressor engine, she was pleased to have earned one full portion for it. Putting the ration packs in her bag, she headed for her speeder, but a small group of humans caught her eye. There were three of them, and though they were dressed casually, she knew immediately they were the pilots of the three X-Wings she had seen. They stood out like a sore thumb amongst the rag-tag throng of Niima.

There were two men and one woman. The woman was young, less than a decade older than Rey herself, and though she was attractive, Rey recognized a hardness in the woman’s attitude; she was no pushover. Which made sense, since flying an X-Wing was not for the faint of heart. The man she was talking to was older, a bit thick around the middle, with a beard and a jovial expression. He did not look like a fighter pilot at first glance, but the way he looked about him with wariness spoke of someone who had been there and done that in his lifetime.

The third member of the group, who was talking to one of the merchants, was probably a bit younger than the other male pilot, shorter but fit, and his demeanor spoke of confidence and leadership. Something told her the black X-Wing belonged to this man. As she watched, the vendor said something that apparently amused the pilot and he laughed. Something inside Rey clenched, and she was immediately confused. Why did this stranger affect her this way? Suddenly, she realized the dealer was pointing at her, and all three pilots turned to look at her.

Panicked, Rey turned and started walking away, trying to be casual about it. She had no clue what they wanted with her or why the merchant had pointed her out to them; she had never had dealings with the man. She turned her head a bit and was dismayed to see the woman and the bearded man following her in her peripheral. They seemed to be in no rush, but their focus was undeniably on her. She was so intent on them she didn’t see the third pilot until she almost ran smack into him. Somehow, he had gotten in front of her and was now blocking her way.

He gave her a disarming smile, his brown eyes warm. “Hey, it’s okay,” he told her. “We just want to ask you a question.” When she stopped and gave him a brief nod, he held out his hand. “I’m Poe,” he told her. “Poe Dameron.”

She looked down at his hand and then back up at him, taking it cautiously. People rarely shook hands here on Jakku. His hand was warm and callused, and his touch was comforting. She bit her lip and pulled her hand back, more than a little confused by her reaction.

She saw his gaze drop to her lips, then he looked up and behind her, motioning to his companions. “This is Snap and Jess,” he told her.

Rey glanced back at them as they nodded, then she faced Dameron again. “Rey,” she said softly.

“I know.”

For some reason, his simple response made her heart beat harder and faster. Why did he seem so familiar? And why was she acting this way around him? Plenty of hot-shot pilots had come and gone from Niima outpost, and several of them had been handsome as sin. None had affected her like this man.

“We’re here looking for pilots to recruit into the Resistance,” he continued. “More than one person pointed out you as the best pilot in Niima, maybe even all of Jakku.” The corner of his mouth tilted up. “Do you have any interest in learning to fly combat spacecraft?”

Rey was stunned. Who had told him she was a pilot? It wasn’t something she broadcasted, and she sure as heck never thought anyone in Niima cared anyway. “Fly combat? Like an X-Wing?” she asked.

“Yep,” Dameron said with a smile. “X-Wings. A-Wings. Bombers. Whatever your talents fit with best.”

Rey was starting to get excited. To be able to travel around the galaxy and fly those amazing ships would be a dream come true. “That would be wonderful!” she exclaimed, but then reality hit her.

Poe had grinned at her reaction, but when her face fell, his did too. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

She blinked and looked at him. “I’m flattered by your offer, but I… I can’t leave Jakku.”

“Seriously?” he said, his expression disbelieving. “Why can’t you leave this dustball?”

Rey hesitated. How to explain something she had a hard time explaining to herself? “I’m waiting for someone,” she said, keeping it simple.

Poe looked disconcerted. “That’s too bad,” he told her. “We really need good pilots.” He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Whoever you’re waiting for is very fortunate to have someone so loyal on their side.”

Rey felt her face heat.

He held out his hand again and she took hold of it more willingly this time. “If you change your mind,” he told her softly, “look me up.” He held onto her hand much longer than a simple handshake warranted, and she didn’t mind at all. With a sad nod, he let her go and turned away. Rey was barely aware of the other two pilots passing her and following him. Slowly, she made her way out of town and toward her speeder. She had mounted it and was getting ready to start it when the roar of engines caught her attention. She looked up to see the three X-Wings lifting off and heading upward toward space. She watched them until they disappeared in the dusky sky, then put her head down on the steering column and cried.

[morningstargirl666]

Hey, just finished my re-read of TBBW and am looking forward to new chapters, any idea of when they will be posted? Keep writing and rocking!

Oh thank you! ✨❤️✨ I've had several asks like this over the past several months and my answer has always been different lol because I always end up writing more.

Not sure how up-to-date you are with what's happening with TBBW so I'll explain: the editing I talked about doing in the end notes of the last chapter I posted? Yeah, kinda turned into a full rewrite.

I started writing TBBW in 2020 and I like to believe my skill as a writer has grown a lot since then and not only that, but the story has grown too. It's evolved into something so much greater than I ever thought it would be. Originally, it was gonna be like 20 chapters? And it wasn't going to be a full canon rewrite, there was going to be time jumps instead, moving onto season 4 quickly - there was no damon murder arc - it was almost a completely different fic. The story that it is now, the one posted on AO3 isn't even a full canon rewrite, more a canon divergence --- but what I'm writing right now certainly is.

I lasted until chapter 5 before I started adding new chapters. As the chapter count stands right now (43, no longer 35) I know its not set in stone because if I've written 8 new chapters already and I'm only on chapter 30, I'm bound to write more by the time I'm done. Elijah, Kol and Rebekah are much more central to the story, with their own flashback chapters and character arcs weaved into the subplots. I've slowed down the Klaroline development even further so it feels like you're there with them, getting to know them, slowly falling in love with them as they are each other. Sam and Kiera are now much more developed and well-rounded characters, with conflicts with Klaus. The Mystic Falls gang are more present, and you get to see Caroline's relationships with her friends and Tyler evolve and twist and strain and bind tighter, depending on the situation.

This rewrite has dozens of new scenes (at this point I've lost count how many), dozens more of extended scenes and dialogue (I'm currently writing chapter 30, which will now be entirely klaroline, set after the 20s decade dance when Klaus drives her home) and the word count is continuely rising. I actually broke google docs and hit the word count limit so I've had to split the rewrite into two docs: PART 1 (Chapters 1-21) and PART 2 (Chapters 22-43? 45? Who fucking knows at this point). I'm on about 280/290k rn overall. And although I'm writing chapter 30 currently, I haven't actually finished 30 chapters --- I've only completely finished around 25 and many of them need editing once this rewrite is finished.

I'm hoping I'll be finished by Christmas, my present to you all. But I can't garrentee it. Whenever the update comes, it's going to be posted all at once and you will be able to devour it to your hearts desire. The new chapters, which I guess were originally going to be chapter 36 and 37, are drafted out a little bit but I gotta admit stuff doesn't really start happening till the end of 37, as I'm basically starting a new subplot arc. It's mostly canon and/or filler stuff to start with, so not that exciting. I doubt they'll take long to finish once the rewrite is done, but I make no promises. After that, I'll be back on my bullshit of regular chapter updates, hopefully. Then the fun really begins.

Whatever the case, when this update lands, I'm hoping to blow your socks off. Jury's out on whether that'll happen, but I guess we'll see.

(It's going to be awesome, hehehe)

[finniestoncrane]

Jealousy

Rogues Headcanons request: rogues who are jealous of their crush with another partner. i'm so sorry anon this post got messed up by tumblr so i had to delete it and i've only now found time to rewrite it ;-; 💜 request info • prompt list • send me a request • kofi • masterlist minors DNI!! 🔞 cw: threats, posessive/obsessive behaviour, violence, yandere bullshit i guess

penguin

oswald cobblepot isn't the type to wait around for someone

someone who obviously doesn't see a good thing when it's standing in front of them

sure he'll pine for a bit

but anyone who doesn't have the sense to know he's the better choice in any situation is too dumb to be with him

however, for the right person (that person being you...)

he might be known to spend nights in his office, avoiding going home to his empty apartment

because it bothers him that you're not there, sitting beside him

curling up to him in bed, waking up to him in the mornings

all the little things that he's missing out on, that someone else now has

it's enough to drive a respectable businessman to some rather cruel efforts to get what he wants

poison ivy

pam likes to think of herself as "above it all"

she's just green, the hue has nothing to do with jealousy

but the sudden, unprompted, and rather intense development of a mini jungle outside of your apartment?

that has everything to do with jealousy

they can bring you a bouequet of flowers, sure, the decapitated heads of something that was once living trussed up in bows

but only she can build you a botanical garden wherever you please

something that keeps living and growing

just like her intense infatuation with you

and the dead weight your carrying around with you will definitely become handy

since they can be mixed into compost for her gardens

victor zsasz

how dramatic can he get? seems like the answer is "very"

new tallymark system: one scratch for every day he's not with you

although, if he really sat down to think about it

his talents could definitey see him go far here, e.g. his skill in the art of disposal

nothing extravagant or showy, no, this has to be secretive, stealthy, surprising

one quick shot to their forehead from a distance

or a pretend mugging, an oddly precise slash to the neck doing the trick

which method of ridding you of this new love of your life would cause you the least amount of psychological damage?

because he's not keen on the idea of waiting around for you much longer

so you have to get over this current obstacle pretty quickly once they've been dealt with

mr freeze

it's likely been a while since he last latched onto someone emotionally

so there's already a deep connection between you, even if it's one sided, and it's difficult for him to look past it

even knowing that you're with someone else

the thoguht of someone trying to take nora from him when she was there infuriates him

and yet here he is, considering doing the exact same thing

it's different though, because he deserves someone nice to love

he's owed someone to care for and to dote after, and to return the favour to him

he'd definitely opt for a romantic gesture to win you over

something magical, like freezing your idiot partner and scooping you up in his arms

and carrying you off to his lair to keep you isolated for decades in near mint condition

riddler

his proclivity for solving puzzles and knowing the answer to everything has kept him awake every night

why are you with someone else and not with him?

why would you ever choose someone else over him?

absolutely bizarre behaviour BUT you just need someone to show you the error of your ways

someone to teach you, to educate you, so you can make better choices in the future

and of course, he's willing to use force if need be

some of his best lectures have been given with a captive audience

sometimes it really is the only way to get people like you to listen

and perhaps, at the end, he'll offer up a little pop quiz, the kind where if you fail it, your head goes pop

how smart is that new partner of yours anyway, hm?

two face

everything comes down to a choice

you just happened to make the wrong one

now harvey might be willing to respect your choices

he's a reasonable man after all

but two face is not taking this absolutely shocking disregard of his feelings well

it's not even up for the coin to decide

it's rampage time

and no one is safe from his intense violence and rage until he has you in his arms

and if that doesn't work, he can always rely on harvey and his brains

that lawyer talk should come in handy when he's arguing his case for choosing him

harley quinn

ok first of all, rude

she's willing to forget about her true love, mr j, and give you a chance

and you're going to pick someone else

hey! it's not her fault she never got around to asking you out

you should have asked her out! you do the hard work, bub!

anyway, her jealous streak is based in a defense mechanism

you are 100% going to be her worst enemy

it's part of distancing herself from you

and a way to avoid any blame on herself for not being quick enough to snap you up

god forbid she's to blame for her own misfortune

mad hatter

jervis is entirely respectful of your choices

it's not your fault that you didn't see him, or notice his affections

and it's not really his fault that he wasn't brave enough to say anything before it was too late

it's just that the universe has decided that you don't quite get your happy ever after yet

every fairytale story requires a bit of drama

a plot twist, to make the sweet, perfect ending more satisfying

he has absolutely no doubt that you'll find your way to him

without the need for any dubious tea or fashionable hats that might alter your beahviour

and then it'll all be the way it should be, you with him

in wonderland together forever

scarecrow

that's fine.

no really, make your own choices, make the wrong choices

the fear of losing you is fascinating and he's fine to hold onto that

but he will be getting revenge, just for the fun of it

see how well your new flame protects you when you wake up from one of jonathan's nightmares

especially when those nightmares feature your new partner

tormenting you, haunting you, terrifying you

oh, wouldn't you like to find safety in jonathan's arms?

well, perhaps he might find the kindness in him to allow that

but you'll have to beg, and suffer sufficiently, first

bane

ok so let's face it no one is arguing with bane or fighting him for your affections

but he's just such a big soft lug

if he saw you, knowing you were happy

even if that meant you were happier with someone other than him

he absolutely would do nothing to disrupt that

his jealousy would be well contained, never cruel or mean-spirited

he just knows that he would love the opportunity to show you what you're missing

the minute he suspects you're unhappy though, he is back on his simping bullshit with you, not brave enough to just ask you out

and you better hope he never gets the idea that your partner is being anything less than wonderful to you

or he'll crush them with one hand

[hms-tardimpala]

Ficbinding: Broken Road by @thegeminisage

The fic: SPN, Castiel/Dean Winchester, M, 109k

A 14.13 Lebanon rewrite. When Dean uses a wish-granting pearl to try and kill the archangel Michael before he can escape the cage in Dean's head, they instead wind up with a newly-resurrected John Winchester. It's been more than a decade since John died, and a lot has changed: Mary is alive, Sam and Dean have what passes for a proper home in the Men of Letters Bunker, and they're living with angels. John doesn't know angels are real, he doesn't know about the fragile new relationship between Dean and Castiel, and most of all, he doesn't know that Dean said yes to Michael, or that Dean's plan to defeat Michael would send him to a fate worse than death. Now Dean must contend with both his father asking questions he can't answer, and his loved ones learning about the darker truths of his childhood, all while constantly battling the archangel trapped inside him. But Dean coming to terms with his history may be the difference between this being the beginning of a journey—or the end.

This fic has been in my to-read list for more than a year because big wordcounts are daunting to me, but boy am I glad I finally read it! It's a treasure of character writing for all protagonists (and it is so hard to find a well-written John and Mary Winchester) and the canon divergence is brilliant. If you know me, you know how attached I am to canon-compliant stories, so finding a way to resolve the big threat of season 14 (a season I really like) in a way that's satisfying to me is no small feat. What I want from fics is to be able to think "wow, I could have watched this story happen in the actual show" and this fic succeeds at that. I also loved the attention paid to Michael's possession of Dean (that the show shoved aside when it was convenient) because I'm a whump lover and possession whump is amazing. Also, as a Deanguy, it's good to read a Dean fic with a great Sam.

So yeah, I loved it! Now let's talk shop.

The bind: This is the third blue book in a row (guess my favorite color). I chose a light blue because that's the color of the angels' grace, white for the wings, and silver because it's a color associated with angels a lot in the show (the blades, the walls and furniture in Heaven, the clothes angel vessels tend to wear). I used this palette because Michael is omnipresent in the story, so I wanted to show it through the binding, and also it's pretty. The white lines can represent a broken road, but I was having fun trying a new kind of superposition, mainly.

This is the biggest book I've made in a while, with 394 pages. It's 17,2x12,3cm and 2,9cm thick. I had a trimming accident and had to reprint it all and try again. That's my reminder not to do maths when tired.

I didn't use many decorations this time, I wanted to keep it sober. The text dividers for the first six chapters are angel wings and an impala for the last one (when Dean gets to drive it again). Wings and a car are both modes of transportation, that's neat. What's new this time is that I didn't do a chapter heading, but integrated the chapter number to the text. I thought about using drop caps, but it was too much. I did however use color, which I've been tentatively adding to my books. I figured what the hell, I pay for the color ink too.

Now, here's the main new thing I tried with this one: putting a title on the cover. I often say "no titles on my books" because I don't think they're necessary since I recognize the books by color and size, and I don't want to buy a cricut. But I didn't want to die stupid, so I tried transfer paper. Which worked, the title came out good, but naturally the transfer substance came with it, around the words, and it's very visible on cloth. I want to be clear: it worked as intended, I just didn't like the result. I think it'd work best with an image than with letters. With letters, trimming all the extra transfer paper would be impossible to do cleanly.

So I'm happy I tried, but still, no titles on my books.

Fonts: DK Plague Master (title and author name), Moonrising (chapter titles), Gontserrat (text). All free on Dafont.

Materials: Blue and white cloth from Schmedt, 2mm grey board, 70g/m² white copy paper, synthetic bookmark and headbands. Silver endpaper bought in a brick and mortar craft store.

Feel free to ask me more about materials and fonts (or whatever), it won’t bother me at all to tell you what I used, I just can't think of anything else right now.

[rjalker]

(1/2) This is kind of a silly question I guess, but I'm being told that theyfab was originally used by transfems as a way of grouping AFAB trans folk in the nineties, starting when Michfest was excluding trans women from their organisation while including aforementioned AFAB trans folk. Further, I'm being told that it's mostly an offline thing, so obviously I won't see any definitions of this online, and I just don't know enough transfems IRL.

(2/2) I don't really know how to argue against this, since it's kind of unfalsifiable, and you seem intelligent, so I was wondering if you knew how to better find resources for this? You don't have to answer this publicly/at all, especially if I'm wrong -- I don't really wanna keep arguing this point with the person I'm talking to, since I'm not a great debater. I've never heard it used IRL and I do live in a queer-heavy area, but I'm not very social so I can't tell if they're right or not.

made with speech to text so there's probably some typos. I'll fix them at some point when I have my laptop on but feel free to reblog before that anyways.

well, I'm happy to tell you that that person is full of absolute shit, and that is completely and utterly made up in one of the most ridiculous things I've heard. This is literally just making up lies to justify using slurs..

Like that's literally all of it is They are literally just lying through their teeth. Whoever the heck said that, just just do not waste another second of your time on them, they are not worth speaking to if they are going to this length to justify using an exorsexist slur.

The trans radphones have recently started just flat out making shit up about the Mitch fest women's festival and claiming that all of the trans people who were not trans women were betraying them, and literally all of it is just a giant pack of fucking lies that they're hoping nobody will do 5 seconds of research to disprove. Because it's literally all just lies.

You just Google Camp trans. I'm sure there's documentaries about it and I know that there are books.

These people are literally just coming up with the most absurd lies in the world to retroactively justify using a slur made up apparently by 4channers.

First they started claiming that it has been used recently by transfems to criticize trans misogyny, now they're like okay well that didn't work because that was easily disprovable so now let's just come up with an invisible and tangible inaudible dragon that nobody can disprove the existence of by just saying that this was a thing in the '90s so therefore history didn't exist yet so nobody can ever disprove this.

There is no other way for me to say this This is just absolute bullshit. Whoever told you this is literally just so full of bullshit I don't even know how they managed to say that without their brain combusting.

This is just a new level of reprehensible. They are literally trying to rewrite trans history to suit their narrative that everybody always forever hates trans women and wants them dead and that's literally not fucking true at all, they are literally erasing decades of solidarity so that they can play the victim and pretend that everybody is always been out to get them.

Do not waste a single second more of your existence trying to reason with this person because there is literally no reasoning with someone who is willing to just make up such blatant lies about actual real queer history to suit their bullshit agenda. Omfg.

When the women's festival banned trans women from entering, the trans people created Camp trans and everybody stayed outside with them in solidarity, and if I remember correctly at one point, the people deemed acceptable did at one point purposefully go in explicitly to give a speech written possibly by the trans women or at least on their behalf to ask them to let them in.

transrad-Fems are so fucking desperate to call non-binary people a slur that they are willing to lie about actual real trans history to paint themselves as the ultimate victim, because they would rather shit on so many actual activists memory and legacies so that they can just keep calling non-binary people a slur without any consequences.

@furbearingbrick looks like the person you found saying this is not the only one. These bigots are literally ready to shit all over actual queer history of solidarity to just keep calling us slurs.

I hope the people spreading these lies die before any of the surviving people who actually attended Camp Trans have to see this bullshit being spread in their name.

You can look up books by Leslie Feinberg on the internet archive, which talks about the women's festival in multiple instances, I forget exactly which books it is though. And like I said I'm sure there are documentaries from people who were there, you can probably find them on YouTube.

It is kind of hysterical to me that these people are claiming that because it happened in the '90s, it wouldn't have been written down anywhere... As the books and cameras didn't exist back then as the writing was invented in 2010. It's just fucking hilarious.

[kickingitwithkirk]

Snow Globes and Forgiveness

Summary: Even though Chucks no longer creating the narrative, it’s not a Winchester Christmas till something goes wrong.

Pairing: Dean Winchester x Sam Winchester

Word Count: 3194

Warnings: wincest, cursing, m/m kissing, frottage, my attempt at flangst

For: @thepromiscuousduck @spnfanficpond Secret Santa exchange 2023

A/N: set after 15.19 & in this AU 15.20 doesn’t happen

A/N II: Apologies to all other participants for taking so long. Between a last minute switch, couldn’t rewrite until after new year & had a rebound of a bad respiratory virus that’s keep me mostly offline last few weeks.

A/N III: once again, brevity doesn’t exist in my vocabulary

*no beta-all mistakes are mine

*divider by @firefly-graphics

*gif credit to creator

Sam Winchester has never been big on the holidays.

Let’s start with a specific Halloween party and his disastrous bobbing for apples incident involving a girl he liked. Then there was that one Thanksgiving he’d been invited to by another girl who turned out to have hands like an octopus and spent the whole dinner, as his brother so eloquently put it, playing footsie with brace-face, not three feet from her dad.

Not to mention, others celebrated, or not, Winchester style; his dad either missed it entirely or showed up with a bucket of extra crispy from the colonel and passed out on a couch. The best was that one Christmas before Dean went to hell a few months later.

But this year was going to be different.

They’d been adjusting to normality reasonably well. Okay, so Dean is the one adjusting better in some respects and said since it’s the brothers' first non-Chuck Christmas, they had to make it extra special. Sam knows this was Dean’s way of trying to make up for all the shitty holidays during their childhood. And knowing his brother, he’s envisioning emulating Mrs. Butters, the wood nymph they accidentally released in the bunker, Jam Packed holiday extravaganza she’d done those few weeks before leaving.

While Dean was getting the tree (Sam would’ve bet more likely grabbing the first one he saw before hitting the liquor store), he sent Sam to pick out ornaments. Sam was trying to make an effort and found himself standing in the middle of a smaller retail chain store's Christmas section, overwhelmed by the sheer number of choices and feeling like a freak for not knowing what to get outside lights and colorful balls.

“First Christmas together?”

Sam’s head swiveled around, “Umm, I’m sorry?” The person who spoke said, “You’ve got that whole I’ve got no freaking idea what I’m doing look, so I took a guess it’s your first Christmas with your girlfriend…wife?”

“Uh, no, no girlfriend or wife.”

“Ahh, boyfriend.” Sam was about to correct their assumption when they continued, “That can be trickery,” and gave him the once over. “I’m guessing he’s not into frills and bows. You should head to the Christmas Market two blocks south of here. There are always booths selling unique or vintage items for the Holiday. Probably find something more appealing than this mass-produced crap.”

After one more glance, Sam thanked them and texted Dean where to meet up with him later, then headed out of the storefront and strolled down the street. He soon hears jolly holiday music and smells enticing scents wafting before entering the colorfully illuminated European style Market and is hit with the sense he’d been here before.

Sam shook his head, feeling ridiculous. Of course, he’d never been here before, but something about this place kept nagging at his memories of familiarity when the irresistible scent of hot, minty chocolate beckoned. After indulging in a creamy, decadent drink decorated with a soft peppermint stick, he walked around, taking in the wares for sale.

At one booth, he found strands of original bubble lights and instantly knew they’d appeal to Dean and his oft-denied inner child; another yielded hand-strung garlands and got popcorn and cranberry ones with instructions on storing them for future use. Sometime later, Sam is laden with so many packages and bags that even his long arms are having trouble juggling them when he sees an elderly woman seated by a table with a simple stand of lights.

The hunter in him was always looking for anything unusual which fit the bill. Smiling politely at the woman when approaching, Sam studied the few antique-looking items and decided they seemed innocuous and relaxed. He spotted an old snow globe, picked it up, and sardonically smiled at how it looked diminutive in his large hand and began examining it.

Sam took time to appreciate its craftsmanship. Its base was silver with hand-worked engravings and an inscription in a language he didn’t recognize. Giving it a shake, Sam watched the artificial snow gently drift over a scene of a log cabin snugly ensconced among evergreens and bare-limbed trees. He got that feeling again. Impulsively, he asked how much he was surprised not to have to haggle over the price.

Carefully taking the globe in her gnarled hands, the woman told Sam that it was crafted in the country of her birth but didn’t specify where. She carefully inserted it into an equally old wooden box, telling him it was explicitly constructed to house the globe to keep it safe during its travels. Sam hears rumbling and glances around, spotting an old pickup parking not far off, and turns back to find the woman has disappeared.

Frowning, he placed the box in a bag, gathered up the rest of his purchases, walked to the waiting vehicle, deposited the items in the crowded truck bed, and then climbed in noticed Dean peering through the cab's back window, “Couldn’t find any more stuff, Sam?” “Couldn’t find a bigger tree, Dean?” His brother says nothing while backing the truck up, “Good thing I got all that to decorate it with then.”

Dean grunted as he set his end into the tree stand and, catching his breath, huffed out, “This would’ve been the time to use some of those witchy tricks, Sam.”

“Or maybe a good time to start working out more and cut back on the burgers and pie?” Sam shot back. “Wadda you talking about?” Dean snapped defensively, “I’m in great shape!” Sam gives him bitchface and says, “Keep telling yourself that Dean.“

Squatting down to affix the supports to the tree, Sam continues. ”You got winded just carrying this down the stairs. We have to face it: neither of us is getting any younger. We had this conversation not long after dealing with Chuck. Yes, we’ll enjoy the everyday things we couldn’t before. But if we’re doing something or on a hunt and get seriously injured, Cas isn’t here to help. And you know Jack is hands-off, so we’ve ….”

“Whatever, Sam.” Dean interrupted, unsuccessfully tamping down his that hurt but not gonna acknowledge it look. “I’m going to take my out-of-shape self and get the rest of the stuff from the car. Unless you’re worried I might, I don’t know, fall and break a hip.”

“Dean, that’s not what I,” but his brother just left, and Sam sighed, knowing he’d put his foot in it again, trying not to express his true feelings. Since they got their freedom from the manipulations of heaven, hell, and all the other things that went bump in the night, the feelings he’d buried and thought were over had come back.

Before he said yes to Lucifer, Dean acknowledged Sam was an adult, and he needed to stop being overprotective. But there is a part, deep down, in both Winchesters that is psychotically, irrationally, erotically codependent. That part in Sam is one hundred percent positive that if Dean found out, he’d be so disgusted by what a perverted freak he indeed was forcing Dean would cut him out of his life forever.

The bunker's door banged shut, and at the bottom of the stairs, Sam paused on the last tread, watching the scene playing out before him in the war room.

“Oh, come on,” Dean grumbles at an ornament, refusing to stay on a branch of the mostly decorated tree. He lets it go, and it begins coming off again. “That’s it, I’m getting my gun.”

Sam couldn’t keep the amusement out of his voice. “Maybe I should’ve gotten some floaters and air fresheners instead?” He can see Dean mulling over that memory, “They were great.” Peering over at his brother, he asks, “Where did you disappear to? Thought you were going to help.”

Sam held up a grocery bag, “A peace offering? I know you aren’t going to change your habits, but I'm hoping we can compromise, at least when we’re not hunting. It’s 90% lean beef, and the pie,” Dean's whole face lit up, “Is made with almond flour and natural sourced sugar.”

Trading the wayward ornament for the bag, Dean states, “You deal with this,” Sam shakes his head when he hears, “Meatman coming to town” and sets about finishing the tree.

After cleaning up, the brothers sit in the library, drinking beer and watching an old Christmas movie playing on a laptop, when Dean casually inquires, “So what’s with the box?” Sam frowned before realizing he meant and remembered leaving the item sitting by the displayed swords. “It’s ahh, well,” Sam stammers as he retrieves the box, sets it on the table, and lifts the wooden lid. Dean raised an eyebrow at the contents, “Something you need to tell me, Samantha?” he snarks, removing the snow globe.

“I’m not sure why, but I'm drawn to it.” Dean frowned at his brothers' words and took a closer look. “What’s the saying?” He asked, pointing to an inscription on the base. “Not sure. I think it's a form of an older Germanic dialect. I was going to translate it later.”

Since nothing is screaming cursed object, Dean shakes it, making the snow swirl before setting it on the table, picking up his beer, and resuming watching the movie. He could feel Sam suspiciously eyeballing him asks, “What, Sam?” But Sam simply sighed, knowing his brother wouldn’t let it go. And sure enough…

“Did Santa ask if you were a good boy this year?”

Sam glances around trying to figure out where he’s at since a moment ago he was in the laundry and now starting at his decades younger self reclining against a headboard reading he hears his, their, name and watches himself huff in displeasure and getting up proceeds to trip over his own feet.

Following himself down a wood-paneled hallway, they enter a shabbily furnished living room, and spots his brother watching his younger self standing by a wood-burning kitchen stove. “Dean?” Turning, green eyes boggle, seeing Sam standing next to his own younger visage.

“What the hell you’d do, Sam?” Dean’s gravelly voice snapped and got Sam’s back up. “What makes you think I had anything to do with this?!” Dean looks at their younger doppelgängers arguing about something when young Sam stomps to a rickety kitchen table, plopping down on an equally rickety chair, crossing his arms, and glaring at its sacred top.

“Man, I forgot how bad your emoing could get,” Dean offhandedly commented, returning his attention to his brother, eyes hooded. “You were working in the library, so it's not hard to deduce you deciphered some curse cause now,” chucking his thumb toward the window, “We’re in the damn snow globe!”

Sam shot off bitchface #37, “It’s not a curse! I determined the words are an idiom. Слова не воробьи, как только они улетели, их уже не поймать.”

“Can you put that in English for those who don’t speak geek?”

“Words are not sparrows; once they have flown they cannot be recaptured.”

Dean got his running it over in my brain expression, “Yeah, I got nothing.” Sam concurred, “It didn’t make sense to me at first. But then I found a maker's mark hidden in the engravings. The records said they were a tradesman and spiritual alchemist.”

“What do idiot words have to do with Nicolas Flamel?” Sam's lips pursed, “Idiom Dean. And you know who Nicholas Flamel was?”

“Yeah, college boy, he created the philosopher's stone, turning metal into gold and some immortality elixir.” Sam waited. “He was in that Harry Potter movie, alright? What does that have to do with why we were here?”

“Okay, hear me out. Spiritual alchemy believers follow various paths to achieve the same goal, believing that, like metal, one’s soul can be transformed through stages of purification.” Sam began explaining the stages, and by the third, Dean heard enough.

“You're saying all the crap we’ve dealt with from heaven to hell has done some kinda colonic on our souls.” Sam began to speak, “Shut up, I’m on a role here. And if we take that idiom literally, one or both of us said something wrong and the idiom-alchy-snow globe Ghost of Christmas Past us to complete this whatever stage with an apology?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

“Great! Let’s figure out where here is, get to apologizing and the hell outta this glass ball.” Spying a discarded newspaper Dean tries picking up found he isn’t corporal. “Seriously?” Tipping his head sideways, he says, “Okay, December 22, 1999. We’re in Michigan..or Wisconsin?”

“Dean, what if it's something so bad there’s no way we can ask for forgiveness?”

That response made Dean's eyes narrow. “Sam, you need to tell me something?” His brother shook his head, but every warning signal in Dean was blaring like the bunker klaxon. He’d bet his entire collection of Busty Asian Beauties that Sam knew why that damn snow globe sent them here, but he was keeping it to himself for reasons.

Dean decided to hold his cards and play ignorant for a while longer. “Dude, what haven’t we done and forgiven each other for?”

Turning his attention to their younger selves made Dean feel a sense of nostalgia, missing how less complicated their lives seemed, even with the daily dose of Sam Winchester teen angst, which he always made up for.

Like now, offering to buy hot chocolate and giant pretzels triggered a memory, and the next moment, Dean was among a crowd wandering through the lighted tunnel entrance, following the loop by the salute to the armed forces towards the live reindeer exhibit.

“I remember this!” Dean exclaimed, “Dad left us in Somerset, Wisconsin, and were you all pissy ‘cause I kept giving you crap about this place’s name- Sam’s Christmas Village.”

“What else do you remember, Dean?”

They make a pit stop at the concessions, and while Sam is paying, Dean pulls out his flask, adding a double dollop to Sam’s. The kid needed to loosen up, then exchanged the cup for a pretzel with a smirk.

“This was the first time we got drunk together. Man, you were hilarious! Kept bugging me to go sledding,” Deans said, “And you fell off halfway down and laid there trying to catch snowflakes on your tongue.” Surrounded by softly falling snow tinted in hues of blues, greens, and reds, the brothers experience a memory trace of what happened that night.

Laughter fills the air as Dean staggers over, flopping on his back next to Sam, smiling at him when Sam’s expression changes and Sam leans over, his eyes' kaleidoscope colors disappearing into thin rings around dilated dark pupils as his fingertips caress the smooth, cinnamon-freckled skin and plush lips he was aching for when Dean pulled him tightly against him, noticing an unmistakable hard bulge pressing into his upper thigh as Sam instinctively started rocking his hips, seeking friction for his growing hard-on.

Dean feels his cock straining inside his jeans, slides one arm around Sam’s waist, another reaching behind him to cradle the back of his skull, angles his mouth up so he can drive his tongue into Sam’s mouth, feeling him suck on it with a sharp pull that shoots straight to his cock when wolf whistles from sledders passing by startled them caused Dean to bolt upright and dump Sam onto his butt.

Abruptly getting up, Dean grabbed the ropes of both sleds and dragged them downhill, leaving his brother perplexed. Scrambling to his feet, Sam rushes after, inquiring what happened, but Dean only responds that they need to head out before the roads ice over too much. The silent intensity of the drive back is broken only by music playing through the Impala’s speakers. Sam initially thinks Dean is concentrating on the road due to his intoxication. But Dean’s chewing his bottom lip signals he’s upset, and the knot in Sam’s stomach tells him to stay quiet.

Shutting the cabin door, Sam opens his mouth to speak, but Dean beats him to it, saying he overstepped boundaries that shouldn’t have been and won’t let it happen again. In a panic, Sam blurts out how his strange feelings for years were crystal clear.

“I love you, Dean, and want us to be together…like together together.” Dean shakes his head, “It’s the whiskey making you talk nonsense.” Sam’s stubborn streak surfaces, infuriating Dean, who shoves him back against the door and shouts in his face.

“Stop acting like a freak and go sleep it off!”

Sam feels like an ice pick is entering the base of his skull, and his stomach twists, knowing he’s the reason the person he cares most about in the entire world; he cares about more than himself is reacting like this, watching Dean disappear down the hallway, slamming his bedroom door shut. He fucked up royally, and suddenly his life was a mess when it seemed all was about to align an hour ago, making Sam wants to scream, to throw up.

Moving on autopilot, Sam shuts his room door, grabs his duffel, and haphazardly throws his belongings into it. Then, opening the window, he slips out and trudges back to town, heading for the bus station. By the time he arrives, his feet are so numb he shuffles across the linoleum flooring to the counter, setting most of his hoarded money down asked for the furthest distinction it’ll take him.

A short time later, the bus pulls out onto the main highway heading west as Sam leans against his window, wondering how everything outside seems so normal when his world has imploded. Dean turns his attention from the younger visage before him to the mature man beside him.

“This is why you ran away to Flagstaff.”

“You were right about me being a freak all along.”

Dean shakes his head, “No, Sam, it was my fault. I tried so hard to keep what I felt hidden, but that night..,” Sam's burst of laughter made Dean bark, “You think that’s funny?”

Eyes that never settled their color, hardened by the decades of horrors they’d lived through, were now gazing at him with unworldliness a thirteen-year-old Dean, after confirming everything in their dad’s journal was true, helplessly watched flame out like dying embers.

“No, Dean. The snow globe brought us back for the dissolution stage, dissolving false beliefs. We’ve been at cross purposes all these years for the same reason, each of us thinking we are the problem and the only way out is to no longer deny our feelings.”

Lifting his hand, Sam hesitated to let his fingertips explore the older, but still, so much loved, freckled skin again when Dean shifted, reaching his still-strong hand to cradle the back of his brother’s skull, angling his mouth up and breathed out against his lips.

“Sammy, we’re good.”

SPN TAGS: @donnaintx @lyarr24 @flamencodiva @lassie-bird @nancymcl @spnbaby-67 @leigh70

Sam/Jared: @idreamofplaid

Dean/Jensen: @thoughts-and-funnies @stoneyggirl2 @akshi8278 @beabutterfly987 @smoothdogsgirl

[thesoftboiledegg]

"One is Silicon and the Other Gold" is a decent concept that needed a few rewrites. The story is a mishmash of zany plots--Leela gets an AI friend, the crew goes to Infyrno Fest, Leela joins a book club, the guys decide to make their own book club, a new character unexpectedly dies--that compete with each other for airtime.

The storylines come together in the end, but I think the writers could've eliminated the Infyrno Fest scenes and focused more on the competing book clubs. If the crew left without Leela and returned a scene later, grumbling about getting scammed, the episode would've played out the same way--but with more breathing room.

Seeing a Fyre Festival parody in 2024 threw me, too. Luckily, you don't need to know anything about Fyre Festival to laugh at the jokes, so I don't think this episode will become too dated.

However, the "Amy hates Leela for no reason because women are catty" narrative is dated. In fact, it's been dated for the past few decades. I thought the writers had dropped it when Leela and Amy worked together in "Children of a Lesser Bog," but Amy was back to mocking her in "How the West Was 1010001," and this episode loudly leans into it.

But despite these issues, I think "One is Silicon and the Other Gold" is worth watching. I never thought about it before, but Leela doesn't seem to have any friends. She has Fry, her parents and her coworkers, but who does she hang out with and confide in? No wonder she latched onto an AI chatbot.

Some of the gags were mean-spirited, especially the crew bailing on Leela to attend Infyrno Fest, so I enjoyed watching her bond with a group of female friends. The competing book clubs were hilarious, too. You can always count on the Planet Express men to be petty and create their own book club with blackjack and hookers...or a "cameo" from my favorite author, John Steinbeck!

Fry being surprisingly passionate about literature was perfect for his character. I loved his reading at the funeral and the way he did the voices. So far, Hulurama's portrayal is less "Look at this dumb idiot" and more "He's a big, lovable kid," which is nice.

I enjoyed this episode, and the Fyre Festival parody was thankfully limited to the first act, but the uneven pacing makes it one of Hulurama's weaker entries. Also, how did nobody mention that Bender is also an AI friend? At this point, I guess he's just one of the meatbags.