#and that fits so much more to what i experience! i even related to meg's personal anecdote about a meltdown she had as a child

[sherlock-is-ace]

.

[aroaceleovaldez]

what's your opinion on the trials of apollo series? (if you already have a post like this, you could link it below, i just haven't seen it if so)

I think it has an interesting concept and introduces some interesting worldbuilding, plus some nice new characters, but overall it's not executed well and is an unnecessary third series. A lot of TOA kind of ends up breaking the theses of the first series by creating a premise that basically every character involved needs to be retconned to be able to fit within. It also focuses way too heavily on unnecessary cameos and retcons/overcorrecting previous mistakes. Not to mention how much new stuff it introduces that is... not great. Altogether it's kind of a mess. But I can see promise in some of the core concepts.

My two main sort of main "takes" on how I think TOA could be improved is either: a.) remove Calypso from HoO and instead have her be re-introduced in TOA as a tritagonist in a trio with Apollo and Meg, with the focal point of the trio's dynamic being the intersection of their experiences and how they relate to one another - with a lot of emphasis on Calypso being a mirror to Apollo in both being stripped of their immortality and thrown into the mortal world and having been unfairly punished. Then have Calypso join the Hunt in approximately TTT (essentially her way of taking control of her own life again and regaining her immortality) so the finale is Meg and Apollo on their own and Calypso's absence is naturally felt because we're used to trio dynamics in the franchise. It'd be a great way to break the convention of the series while also playing with this feeling of loss but also hope leading up to the final fight in a meaningful way without having to lean so heavily on unnecessary (and poorly executed) character death. Calypso is gone because she got her happy ending, and now it's Meg and Apollo's turn.

or b.) - and this is apparently controversial - instead of having the protagonist be Apollo, have it be Ares. Otherwise the overarching plot is the same. This way you can keep the plot structure but not have to entirely retcon Apollo's character to fit the story concept. It also finally ties up that loose thread about Ares never seeing repercussions for his actions and allowing him to have a positive character arc that way more naturally touches upon events from the previous series. As a bonus it also allows for bringing PJO!Ares closer to how he's mythologically portrayed and examining some of his mythological themes and what exactly he's the god of. Mars is an agricultural god! Having his deuteragonist being a daughter of Demeter would be really fun to highlight that! Mythologically he's usually portrayed as a really good father! Let's allow him to have some character development where he stops being such a jerk!

One of my core problems with TOA is Apollo's character is retconned entirely for TOA to even begin, he doesn't have any actual true flaws that he needs to work on throughout his character arc, and by the end he's literally just back where he started with his characterization in PJatO. It's a total net-zero. Why? Having Ares be the protagonist instead would be a great opportunity to take his currently very stagnant character from PJatO (and the very little he shows up in HoO) and have him change dramatically for the better. Doing so would also fit way more with the themes of the first series.

[yellowocaballero]

related to the previous ask you answered, if you’re up for it - incredibly curious about how you research stuff for your writing. I feel like you’re so good at capturing all these little details of a life with such humour that I’m always going ‘how is yellow meg caballero not x identity’ (which is obviously not true & just the sign of a good writer, etc etc but still). Are you just out here talking to five million different types of people?? And understanding them??

Yes hello hi <3 <-- catching up on ask

I really do have the awful habit of swerving dramatically out of my lane and talking about shit I have no business talking about. I don't even do a lot of research, or at least not as much research as I should. I'm genuinely a terrible person to emulate here. But as for like how it tends to happen.

One half of it is. Patrick Stewart voice Writing fiction.

jaklsjdflksadf the other half is like...yeah, I talk to a lot of people. I like people a lot. I find everybody really interesting, and even if I don't like somebody then it's still interesting to have learned about a new kind of person. Over the internet especially is so much fun - everybody has at least one thing super interesting about them! Everybody has a unique trait or has had an experience totally unfamiliar to me. I also just really have an eclectic knowledge of a shitton of extremely useless stuff, I watch a lot of random-ass YouTube essays, all of it. Baby I got information even I don't care about for days lol.

Some of my characters are based lowkey off people I know. Sometimes they're based off me at different points in my lives, or the kind of person I used to think I was. I think most often they fit into a category of people I've met in my life - for example, for an OC I'm writing right now, she's based off this type of person I know. And in there I look for what I always liked about those people, what I always related to about those people, and how I always interacted with them. They're often kinds of people I don't even necessarily like. You never really want to do "well im writing [marginalized group] so I'll just make them [friend from marginalized group]", but for me once I meet and talk to enough people from that group kind of the experience and perspective that being in that group gives you emerges. The 'why' of the experience stands out, and you can go deep into that.

All that said, I look for the similarities instead of the differences. My MK stuff isn't about being a system (cuz not that.), it's about having a highly stigmatized mental illness, and somebody's relationship with their identity as a mentally ill person, which is something I can understand. Lots of my SW stuff was about...existential dread, lol. I do just know a fuckton of neurodivergent and trans and etc people. And I think we do just project - I'll interpret a character as having my experiences instead of another's, because I'm SUPER loose with characterizations lol. But yeah I'm just constantly talking to people about their experiences and if you do that enough then a bigger, more relatable experience emerges lol. Everybody knows that there's really only like five emotions.

That being said I made a joke in a recent Moon Knight fic about how baby Marc liked baby Steven at first just because he would wake up and his bed would randomly be made. And my sys friend was like "HOW did you know about chore ghost??". So. Lucky accident a lot of the time I think. Thanks for the Q though, I'm happy I succeed at this!

[flightfoot]

Apollo’s Redemption Arc

Apollo was never “evil” per se within the books, not really being actively malicious during the course of the story. He did some stuff that COULD have given him the villain slot (What he did to the Cumaen Sibyl, to Harpocrates, and to Coronis most specifically) but those terrible, malicious actions that led to IMMENSE suffering were only introduced via flashback, and not in great detail. Before that, his worse actions were only referenced vaguely, like him talking about sending heroes to die on quests and not caring, and other things were toned down, like the flaying of Marsyas which supposedly didn’t happen the way it’s portrayed in myths, so it’s up in the air how bad that actually was.

The jarring change in Tyrant’s Tomb came from seeing his more actively malicious actions instead of aggressively uncaring actions and attitude of previous books. During The Hidden Oracle, The Dark Prophecy, and The Burning Maze we learned how he used to watch demigod battles on TV as entertainment, not caring about the suffering they went through. Not to mention how he didn’t care much about Commodus beating his cupbearer for spilling a drink beyond some vague pity and think it was distasteful. He’s mostly chastised for being a bystander during these first three books. The great harm he’s caused more actively was only really emphasized in the fourth book, after he’s already turned around enough that he’s not really considered the same person anymore, something that’s accentuated in the text by Reyna and Meg during the confrontation with Harpocrates.

It appears to be an effort to strike a balance; making sure the reader doesn’t forget Apollo’s screwed up and needs to change, but also never wanting him to come across as a true villain. So in early installments when he’s first starting his redemption and is still a bit of an arrogant prick at times, it just portrays him as being MORE of an arrogant prick at first, along with being uncaring. In later installments once he’s changed and any vestiges of his jerkishness have been swept away, Rick’s able to delve into how bad he’s been in the past. We’re already invested enough in Apollo to not only want him to be redeemed, but to already have seen his growth, to have already gone through a lot of it. It takes a lot of the sting out of his horrific actions in the past. 

Redemption arcs need something to use to redeem a character, something that makes them realize they need to change and provide ongoing motivation for such a strenuous task, beyond just stopping doing bad stuff. Because just not doing evil things anymore ain’t a redemption; that guy who killed Katara’s mother in Avatar: The Last Airbender wasn’t redeemed just because he retired. It takes changing as a person. Often doing some specific redemptive action is also required to sort of ‘solidify’ the character change, to demonstrate that the change isn’t just in their words, that it’s a change that will stick, as well as to bring the audience and those who the character hurt or who were wary of them because of their past, onto their side. Even if the character knows they’ve changed, it’s not like anyone else can see into their heart; they can only judge by what they observe.

One thing that’s needed here is relatability; can we put ourselves in that character’s shoes and see and understand how they view the world? If a reader can do that, can understand that thought process, the redemption arc will be far more likely to work; it might even be required for a truly great one. 

A lot of Apollo’s actions that require a redemption arc (sending demigods off on frivolous, dangerous quests as errands, standing by while people are slaughtered, enacting petty punishments on people who really don’t deserve it, for instance) are written in such a way that the reader could reasonably understand his mindset, though it’d vary by reader obviously, as personal experience and mindset play a large role here. It helps that for a lot of Apollo’s actions we’re inside his head, we know what he was thinking, even if we don’t know the full story of how he developed into thinking that way. With him starting off thinking of demigods and mortals as expendable, we get to thoroughly understand that aspect before changing it. Others are more mixed, like with seeing his thought process concerning the Cumaen Sibyl and her curse. He helpfully explains a piece of his thought process, namely about hoping to find the one true romance that would wash away his past failures, and then how he started hating her when denied what he wanted, and couldn’t understand that her love wasn’t transactional, wasn’t to be bought. 

Come to think of it, he may have had that viewpoint because as a god, he had a lot of capital to trade. Power, wealth, longevity, all sorts of extremely valuable things he could use to ‘buy’ what he wanted. So the idea of being able to obtain love, peace, and fulfillment that way was tantalizing - especially since it wasn’t something he could obtain that way from most of the other gods. He was fortunate enough to have his sister and mother at least, so he DID have some good, healthy relationships, but that didn’t provide immunity from that mindset.

Being thrown down to Earth, being among mortals as one of them, changed everything.

Having good role models helped.

Even way back in THO, Apollo’s touched, nearly driven to tears at his children’s desire to protect him, at their love and care for him. He doesn’t expect it since he can’t provide them anything special.

And it’s not like it ends with them.

TDP: Jo and Emmie’s kindness towards others, their acceptance of those in need, their desire to help even people like himself and Lit, touches him deeply.

TBM: Jason sees worth in him, SAW worth in him, even back in Blood of Olympus, first time seeing him. Even then he risked his father’s wrath to try to get him to go easy on Apollo, because he thought it was the right thing to do. And ultimately he was willing to die in part to save Apollo.

TTT: The camp just accepts him in, weary though they are. Frank in particular expresses concern for him, that he wouldn’t want to live in a world without Apollo.

TON: Any sort of kindness towards him drives Apollo nearly (or actually) to tears (granted this isn’t exactly new). The Jackson’s/Blofis’s willingness to shelter him and Meg despite the danger, treating it as a natural sort of thing that they couldn’t possibly NOT do, Will having gotten clothes for him on the off-chance, on the hope he’d be back and wanting him to have his own stuff - the casual kindness and compassion just continues to drive home to him that THIS is how people should be - including himself.

While Apollo was shown the negative effects of his previous terrible actions, shown why he needed to change, it wasn’t just left at that. Throughout the entire series, he saw, he experienced what being better would actually look like. He wasn’t just torn down, but also built up again at the same time, this time with a healthier view of the world.

That’s one of the things that really stood out to me with Apollo’s redemption arc in particular; while he faces the consequences of his previous terrible actions and mindset, even having them thrown back at him at times, experiencing them from the other side (hello Britomartis); he isn’t treated cruelly by the people around him… pretty much ever. People are temporarily mad at him, but not for more than like, an hour, and they usually come around pretty quickly. (Not counting the people he wronged REALLY badly in ancient times, talking more about current demigods). It doesn’t feel like a redemption arc based around punishing Apollo, but one around changing him.

It’s especially fitting since this whole thing was *supposed* to be a punishment from Zeus, but ended up being far more than that.

I think Apollo put it well here, near the end of TON.

To be honest, though, I could no longer consider my time on Earth a punishment. Terrible, tragic, nearly impossible… yes. But calling it a punishment gave Zeus too much credit. It had been a journey - an important one I made for myself, with the help of my friends. I hoped… I believed that the grief and pain had shaped me into a better person. I had forged a more perfect Lester from the dregs of Apollo. I would not trade those experiences for anything. (TON 373)

[softxhariana]

34+35 live stream

description: ariana’s live stream before debut of 34+35 remix music video.

word count: 2.22k

A/N: little piece based off this live stream that ariana did in the countdown to her releasing the 34+35 remix music video with doja and megan. obvs not included every question but just a few fun bits and harry mentions for you x

also disclaimer, this is NOT real, if u don't wanna read about these two then don't, i’m not tryna act like they’re together it is fiction.

❤ anywayz hope u enjoy luvs xox

❖   "HELLO EVERYONE! thank u for coming to this premier,” ariana smiled sweetly at the camera, as the video cut to a shot of her for the beginning of the countdown.

“we had so much fun making this 34+35 remix video for you, and uhh, we hope you love it.” she continued, playing with her hair. no matter how long she did this for she swore she would never cease to get slightly nervous in these situations. where it was her alone, in front of a camera. but her fans made her feel at ease, and she felt she owed them something, as she hadn’t done many quarantine interviews like other celebs have.

“i thought i would come celebrate and join the countdown with you guys. which is something that I've never done before, but i’m very happy to be here and i was very excited to get some questions from you all...” she held up the sheets of twitter questions she had received, “um that i’m gonna be answering while i’m here so, i cant wait to celebrate this together and countdown and answer some of your questions!” she finished with a smile.

and it was genuine. a real smile that her fans were thrilled to see.

ariana was genuinely so happy and content with her life right now. with her family, her music, her friends, harry. harry her FIANCE!! might she add.

everything just felt perfect, and after all the shit the last couple years had thrown her way, she appreciated the break.

 she got her love back, she was making music that she fully loved, and put her whole soul into, and she had fans who had stuck with her and supported her through some of the darkest times in her life, that were now able to experience her happiness and personal growth with her. so truly, little things like this, felt like the least she could do for them.

“ohh this is a good one because its 34 35 related” she tucked her hair behind her ears, “@noirgrande said ‘ummm its just i wanna the end of 34+35 is it awww shit or nooo shit, i just wanna sing the song right”

“umm it is indeed no shit” she confirmed, smiling matter of factly at the camera before reciting the closing line of the song.

~~~~~~~~~~~

“@arianalocks1223 said ‘will we get to see the track list before the songs release?’” she paused for a second to process - which turned into a few more seconds, she was a bit slow today. she had told harry with full sincerity that she thought it was because she was getting old but he had just cracked up at her absurd statement, and told her that if that was the case he’d still think she was a milf

“you will!” she nodded with certainty, “indeed. ummm... i can tell you them now” she blurted, oops.

“i suppose thats not like... is that against the rules? can i do that?” she turned, to question scooter who was supervising off camera, not wanting to get her label mad at her for releasing too much information, something she has a tendency to do. 

after getting the nod of reassurance from him she turned back to the camera, “so out of ‘POV’, you go into, um, an interlude called ‘someone like u’. after that is a song called ‘test drive’, after that is the 34/35 remix with doja and meg” she smiles lightly, “and after that is a song called ‘worst behaviour’, and after worst behaviour is... a song called ‘main thing’...” she finishes, a shy smirk forming on her face, dimples appearing, “so that’s the tracks.” 

continuing with the countdown, ariana felt her heart warm at the love her fans were giving her and this album. she loved interacting with them and making them happy and proud of her so knowing she had done just that, was an amazing feeling.

“umm hesbloodsline... @hesbloodsline ... i’m really fond of this question because its really to the point, ‘where's the pig and where the fuck is harry?’” she smiled, holding in a laugh.

“piggy’s here, she's great, she's really doing so well and life is really good for her right now, she's really thriving and doing her thing” she ranted, a hint of sarcasm in her voice, “um, i make her big salads everyday that she likes, she's doing really great. she asked me to stop posting her as much because she's actually really offended by a lot of your jokes that you make on twitter, she asked me to have a word with you guys” she continued to joke, well aware that she probably found herself more funny than anyone else did right now.

“she doesn't like the jokes about being eaten, they really hurt her, umm yeh, and she asked me to convey that... no she’s great...” she finally decided to answer, “and harry, is on set today, so um, yeh thats where he is... but don't worry i will tell him to keep you in the loop, i’ve got you” 

ariana unconsciously let a small smile take over her glossed lips when talking about harry. he had been so excited about this new project and seeing him passionate and happy about anything he’s doing, always made her happiest.

~~~~~~~~~~~

“nicole! @nastyctrl. nicole said ‘who helped come up with the concept for the positions music video, love u sm ari’ love you so much to, i love you so much more” she paused, she loved this story,

“um this is actually a really funny story, dave and i had been going back and forth on several different concepts, and i couldn't, like... marry one... i couldn't really, like, really commit to one, i wasn't 100% sold. and it was missing a certain element of empowerment. and i kept, you know, trying to think of things that would make it more impactful cause i wasn't loving what we had...”

“anddd then me and harry were on this huge hike, and he just turned to me and was like, ‘what if you were the president?’ which was like, not at all fitting cause i was dying and complaining the whole time. but i was like,” she tried to imitate a shocked face through her smile and laughed 

“and when i called dave he was like ‘oh... kay, ill call you guys back’ and had the whole production team redo everything, and i had mimi pull completely different outfits and we completely started over cause that idea was what i was, craving and missing. and i was like, wow, thats so perfect” she smiled, shrugging her shoulders, “so yeh, honorary directing credit to harry styles, if you liked that”

~~~~~~~~~~~~

“this is from @borderlinevinyl, who said ‘how much of the album was recorded at your little home studio?’ ummm..” she sang, looking off camera in thought, everything in quarantine had honestly just blurred into one so she was struggling to remember what exactly she recorded where,

“um... a lot of it was... i think i did parts of everything here and parts of things at tommy's i know i did, um, the final chorus ad-libs for positions at home” she began listing in her head, “i know i did all of off the table at home... i know i did the final chorus of my hair at home because we- i-” oops. she had to control the laugh threatening to leave her lips at the lack of subtlety in her correction

“-i got out of the shower and he was like ‘oh your whistles are really here right now’, and i was like y’know what... yeahh they are aren’t they” she laughed as she squinted her eyes and recited that part of the conversation, even trying to imitate his deeper accent.

she had been singing in the shower - as she always did - and harry joining her never seemed to stop her from belting out any whitney or old one direction classic she wanted to. he would even join in sometimes and they'd end up with their own mini concert, dancing around naked, shampoo and conditioner bottles in hand singing their hearts out to everything from high school musical to nicki minaj to fleetwood mac.

while it felt like too bold of statement to make as she truly revelled in and enjoyed everything they did together, showering with him was truly one of her favourite’s. whether it was steamy shower sex that had all glass surfaces in the room fogging up or letting loose and dancing and singing under the pouring water, every moment felt so intimate and sacred. it truly made her feel like they were they only people in the world. 

of course he would claim she was out singing him every time she whistled and would jokingly try to replicate the note but he was truly just in awe off the sounds that came from her mouth (in all senses of the word;)

"-and so i opened ‘my hair’ and just randomly did that” she continued, “um what else did i do here, i did the a lot of the backgrounds and ad-libs for 34+35 here, um, obvious was done at home, a lot of six-thirty was done at home”

caught in her own thoughts she only realised she had probably been droning on for too long when she caught scooters eye across the room and with a blush she shook her head as if to clear it, “this is an annoying answer, everything was kind of all over the place but i did a lot, a lot, a lot of the vocals for the album at the house" she finally finished the long answer, moving on quickly as she realised she didn't have long until the premiere and she wanted to answer as many of the questions as possible.

“ok, second last question from hannah, ever- @everdxystxless, im sorry i don't know how to pronounce that” she laughs looking up at the camera with wide eyes, not sure how exactly how she was supposed to go about pronouncing the username, 

“im sorry, um, but anyway she say’s ‘ari baby, how do you feel about harry getting to do a movie with florence pugh, we know your a big fan of hers, ps. i love you so much!’ well hannah, i love you too” she replies, as she thinks back to when harry first introduced the two, after she had gotten over the initial fangirling, the pair became amazing friends. florence struck ariana as such a genuine, loving person and they shared the same dry sense of humour. plus ariana might of been just a little obsessed with her accent - not that she would ever admit that and scare the girl off.

“and... um, yeah, it literally, made me beyond happy, i was fully like, fangirling when i met her the first time” she laughs as she plays with her hair, “she honestly, probably was like, ‘who the fuck is this girl? what is she doing?’”ariana imitated, a faux scared/weirded out look on her face, playing the part of a mildly pissed off florence - which she luckily had never been on the receiving end of, “im sure i was being the opposite of subtle about it but, no, she really truly is the sweetest, kindest, most beautiful, talented human being” she emphasises, the thought of any news outlets of fan’s trying to spin a ‘jealousy’ story about this making her internally role her eyes,

“midsommar is, like, one of my all time favourite movies, and she's amazing in it, and harry’s like so fucking lucky its crazy. so yeah, thats insane”

~~~~~~~~~

"...so yeah... thank you so much! this was so much fun!” ariana exclaimed as she wrapped up the Q&A, smiling wide at the camera, she knew her fans were going to love the music video and she couldn't wait for them to watch it, plus interacting with them in this way always made her happy.

“i love you guys, i miss you” she reminded, “i am so appreciative of everything you've done for this album, for these singles, for this music. i hope that, um, that this makes you super happy, i hope it makes you smile...we had so much fun shooting it and um, the girls are so fantastic, so i hope you love this and i hope you love the deluxe!” 

ariana didn't know how many more ways she could say thank you and express her gratitude but she still had over a minute and a half so she’d have to come up with something, even if it meant she’d sound like a broken record

“i am so thankful for everything and for the love that you've shown this music i cant even begin to articulate it properly so, thank you! i appreciate it so much” she breathed out all in one, “but anyway, the video should be starting soon, so... i hope you like it, don't refresh! it’ll be here soon... i promise... just don't refresh” she urged dramatically, she was really dragging this out, “but yeh” she got out through laughs “the video should be starting anytime now, i love you guys” she blew a kiss to the camera before moving as close to the lens as possible “byee”.

🖤 there u go!! i hope you liked it, and any feedback would always always be welcomed and so so appreciated pls and thanku x 

[brokedex]

🎥💕💔🏳‍🌈💎📌!! go wild boss

YESSSS thank you for asking!!!

(all of these are answered under the read more for my current hyperfixation, reanimator)

🎥 do you have any favorite scenes from your hyperfixation?

one of my favorite scenes from the first one is when herbert and dan fight rufus in the basement. the swinging light was such a sick choice and the sound design/acting with the rufus puppet makes it so frantic and suspenseful!!

💕 tell us about one of your favorite characters and why you like them!

the titular bride of reanimator!!! gloria my beloved!!!!! she's such a tragic character and I wish she got more screentime. she's very much a return to the frankenstein influence with her similarities to the original creature: someone stitched together from parts who shoulders their creator's high expectations of a person before they're even born!!! neither creator is prepared to accept them as a full person with their own desires and agency and just forces them into a box (the "perfect human" or "perfect lover") then immediately rejects them for not meeting those unrealistic expectations. their violence and anger are results of being born into a world unprepared to accept them. this aspect of their characters also makes them kinda trans-coded to me as well.

on a thematic sense I interpret her as a sort of twisted telephone game of what herbert assumes dan would like in a woman. we've joked about it in the necroprancer fan club (reanimator) server a lot, with herbert panicking: "what women do men like?? ballerinas??? virgins?? LAWYERS??" she's also the deviant yet more desired counterpart to francesca, as francesca is an emotional replacement for meg but gloria is the literal physical replacement with meg's heart!! there's also the subtext of her being the allegorical "marriage-saving child" for herbert and dan. love divorce-coded mad science experiments! all of these expectations are so much for her to bear and I wish she could be allowed to exist as an independent person, but I think her tearing herself apart is still a fitting ending.

I could talk about this for a million years, mad scientists' creations make me cryyyy

💔 tell us about one of your LEAST favorite characters and why you dislike them.

I don't like lieutenant chapman from bride at all. apart from textually being an abuser cop, I don't think he added much to the movie. the acting also felt kinda weird, I feel like he was doing a sort of deadpan performance for most of it, I guess to make him a sort of dr. hill 2? it didn't work for me. I know he acts as an external force acting on dan and herbert to make their lives and building gloria harder, but I feel like he and hill coming back just filled very similar roles and took away time that could be used for better character/main story development. I don't really know why they felt the need to add one villain let alone TWO to bride when they could have had a more compelling story if they just focused on the characters' relationships!

🏳️‍🌈 do you have any headcanons (lgbt, race, neuro, etc) that are important to you?

ohohohoho!!!!! yes! my strongest and most self-projecting hc is herbert being gay and trans because. just look at him. he's also very adhd/autistic to me and I relate to how he approaches social situations and his interests a lot!!

💎 are there any fun facts or trivia that you would like to share?

yes! I'm sorry if you've ever watched either movie with me because I can't stop reciting the trivia. I'll give you a few facts:

• during the shovel scene, the second time herbert stabs hill with the shovel you can clearly see someone using a cup to throw blood on him from the bottom right

• there was originally a subplot where dr. hill could hypnotize people, and though the explanation was cut he seems to hypnotize herbert, meg, dean halsey, and all the morgue zombies anyway

• in the scene where herbert kills the first morgue zombie (played by arnold schwarzenegger's stunt double) with a bone saw, the effect was done by positioning the actor's head above a fake chest and putting hamburger meat on the emerging saw 

📌 how did you find your hyperfixation?

at the beginning of june a few of my friends were getting into it and it seemed right up my alley!! I was also getting into 80s horror as a whole at that time and had just watched the evil dead so I needed more buckets-of-blood popular-with-gays weirdass movies

[mustlovemustypages]

Yuletide 2020 Letter

Dear potential writer,

I truly hope all is well with you and yours. No matter what state you find yourself in, my wish is that Yuletide boosts your spirits and gives you the extra jolt we all could use to usher in the new year. 

Thank you for taking the time to read my letter and thank you in advance if you decide to write anything for me!

Below are my desired fandoms and pairings along with story ideas that I would love to see written. Please don’t feel stifled by my prompts; I’ve also listed my general likes and dislikes at the very bottom of this letter if you decide to go a different route.

Little Women (2019):

Characters: Amy March and Theodore “Laurie” Laurence”

The main reason I adore this adaptation is because it made me see why Amy and Laurie ended up together. They had very similar worldviews and fit so well what the other needed. Both deserved to be with someone that valued them for who they are. With Laurie, Amy was not just financially secure but with someone who encouraged her to express herself creatively, politically, or however she chose. With Amy, while she grounded Laurie in reality and challenged him to be the best version of himself, he didn't have to fundamentally change to make her happy.

Story ideas:

These quotes really show how Amy's perspective on life was different than her sister's: "You are your family's hope." (Aunt March) "I’ve always known I would marry rich." (Amy March) That's a lot of pressure on someone so young. We heard some of Laurie's thoughts, mostly that he didn't think Amy should feel ashamed for wanting that. How would some of that pressure continue even after she got married, and what would Laurie say to make her realize they were in life together as a team and she didn’t have to suffer the weight of the world alone?

The conversation between Amy and Laurie in the painting studio showed just how level-headed and intelligent she was. Laurie, while not wholly agreeing, was respectful and didn't discount her thoughts. It would be interesting to see the impact on their story if Vaughn hadn't arrived, and this had played out more. Would the proposal have happened earlier and/or how would later scenes be altered as a result of further conversation?

What did the other characters think of Amy and Laurie's relationship, and how did it change after seeing them interact more as a couple? It would be interesting to read about Meg, Marmee, John, or some of the other characters realizing they were genuinely a good match for each other.

Post-canon, I'd love to get a glimpse of what kinds of conversations they had. Did Amy encourage Laurie to pursue a career and find what he was passionate about (music perhaps as Laurie mentioned writing an opera)? And similarly, did Laurie encourage Amy to pursue her art? Did they continue to have in-depth conversations about societal pressures and expectations of gender in certain economic classes?

Tenet:

Characters: The Protagonist, Kat, and Neil

Tenet is the first movie I've seen in theaters since Star Wars IX. There have been some mixed reviews, but my love for Christopher Nolan sci-fi films combined with the experience of stepping foot in a theater again made it a wonderful experience for me. Sure, the plot could be confusing at times, but it was fun trying to fit certain puzzle pieces together and oh so thrilling when things just clicked into place in the most satisfying ways.

I adored the dynamic between Neil and the Protagonist. The easy friendship, the banter, the suits... everything. I also loved the relationship between the Protagonist and Kat. It started off as each using the other but transformed into one of genuine care on both sides. Ever the romantic, I definitely saw something more than just friendship between the two and was slightly disappointed the movie didn't explore that aspect more.  

For pairings, I’m interested in friendships between all of the characters. I’d be interested in seeing a romantic relationship between Kat and the Protagonist if you’re up for that, but not between Neil and Kat, nor Neil and the Protagonist. If you really want to give a romantic partner to Neil, I'd be fine with Laura (or an original female character if she’s not the focus of the story), but please, no slash. While I’d be ecstatic to see all three characters together, if you can only find a way to fit in two, that’s wonderful as well!

Story ideas:

Even though Andrei Sator is gone, there are still other players in the game, some like Priya, who want to eliminate Kat or even abduct her with the delusional idea she can continue her husband's work. The Protagonist (and Neil, if you so choose) ensures no harm comes to her, and he realizes that keeping her at a distance may not have been the best idea.

I personally don't buy into the fan theory that Neil is Kat's son Max; however, I do find the idea intriguing and would be up for reading about how that worked. The Protagonist breaks his rule and sees Kat, helping to raise her son Max/Neil and eventually teaching him about inversion.

The Protagonist doesn't have to wait quite as long as he'd thought to see Neil again. It can be the Neil who had already met him and knows about Tenet or the Neil who knows nothing about inversion.

What conversations did Neil and Kat have while the Protagonist was asleep after almost freezing to death? Maybe Neil explained the finer workings of Tenet and inversion more in-depth. Perhaps they discussed the Protagonist. 

Clueless:

Characters: Cher Horowitz and Josh Lucas

This movie set the bar high for teen romantic comedies. How can anyone ever beat 90s Alicia Silverstone and Paul Rudd? Plus, the relationship between their two characters is fantastic. Josh and Cher just bring out the best in each other. Cher shows Josh that he doesn't need to be so serious all of the time and that people are more than their outer appearances. Josh makes Cher want to be a better person, and he believes that she's not just a pretty face. Their banter and playful moments always make me smile.

Story ideas:

Knowing Josh and Cher end up together, this brings a heightened awareness to rewatches. They have so many casual touches and exchanged glances (when did Paul Rudd's eyes get so blue?) that it's hard to miss their natural chemistry. It may take quite some time for Cher's dad to notice anything has changed because they don't act all that different from before. Is there something that makes him finally take notice? How does he react?

Sort of related to the last prompt, there's a moment where Josh decides to go to the dance to keep an eye on Cher and Christian, and you can tell by Mel Horowitz’s smirk he realizes Josh has a crush on Cher. Does he do anything to push it along or play matchmaker just like his daughter?

I've always been curious about whether or not Josh believes Cher's story about being assaulted in the car by Elton and then held at gunpoint. We skip over Josh pulling up to the phone booth and go straight to Cher already being in the car. How did Josh react when she reiterated the story, and does he instantly believe her, or does it take some convincing? I'd like to see if he comforts her and if they both go together to tell Cher's dad what happened.

Cher is obviously very intelligent socially, if not always so much academically. When it comes time to apply for college, what does she major in? And how is Josh a positive influence in Cher's life, encouraging her to be ambitious and not letting negative comments from guidance counselors or teachers dissuade her?

Things I don’t like:

Alternate Universes – For the specific fandoms that I picked, I really like the universes as they are. I’m definitely okay with deviations from canon, but please don’t make Little Women into a supernatural werewolf story or have Tenet take place in a mundane coffee shop setting. (I don’t mind Soulmate AUs or something similar because those can be incorporated into canon with little change to worldbuilding).

Non-Con/Rape/BDSM/Sexual Violence/Graphic Sex – I like my characters to be happy and everything within ships to be 100% consensual, no question about it (mentions of non-con if it occurred in canon is fine). I also prefer plot over porn, especially with one-shots.

OT3s – Two people per romantic relationship, please. Any more than that makes me uncomfortable.

Character Bashing - Unless a character is a bad guy in canon, I don’t want to read hundreds of words about how awful they are, especially if they are one of the characters that I requested. Don’t take it out on the characters. If you hate my pairings, just write gen.

Things I love:

Hurt/Comfort – There is nothing I love more than one character comforting another. The hurt can be physical, psychological, or both.  

Happy Endings – I’m all for the realistic endings… but if they could be plausible AND at least happy-ish, that would be amazing.

Expanded Scenes/Contorting Canon – Feel free to expand scenes and change up the canon to your heart’s content as long as it makes logical sense.

Humor/Banter/Snark – I thrive on this stuff.

Bonding/Building Relationships – Whether it be a friendship or a romantic relationship, I adore reading about two people growing closer together. When characters know each other so well that they can have conversations with just their eyes or anticipate the person’s next move (especially if it’s to the surprise/confusion of everyone around them), my shipper heart is thrilled.

Dark to Light – Seeing a character come out of a bad mindset or situation and get better is so satisfying.

Happy writing and I hope you get the Yuletide gift of your dreams!

- Maddy @mustlovemustypages (on Tumblr, Ao3, and FF.net)

[wendibird]

SPN 15X17 Observations

Well, watching this week went pretty smoothly (and I was actually able to get my little bluetooth keyboard thing to talk to my tablet so I was able to watch on my big TV screen and type up notes fairly easily. :) 

And just to clarify, sometimes my notes as I took them were VERY brief, and in some cases I’ve gone back and added in a few details or explanations to make clear what I meant by what at the time. 

I’ve also come to the conclusion that I don’t always remember to take notes, especially if Important Things are happening. (Do people even like the notes section? Or would you just prefer reading my odd takes on everything after the fact?) 

Anyway, here’s what I have for 15X17 “Unity”. Well, I do have more thoughts drifting around, but I’m always concerned that I’m going on too long as it is. *LOL*  (Under the cut for length and spoiler aversion)

Okay, going in I’ve heard rumors that this is a “Sam Heavy” episode, so we’ll see. *fingers crossed* 

- wow, is Chuck starting in on this world already?

- Silent treatment.

- I wonder if she’s guessed.

- fuck you Dean!

(but I’m not surprised. it just confirms what I’d already suspected about how Dean really feels about Jack.)

Commercial Thoughts:

Yeah, so, I’m firmly in Sam and Cas’ camp here. Jack may not be family to Dean, but he is to them. He’s their Son. 

I also think that though he hasn’t talked about it, Sam regrets his part in the Drama Coffin plan involving Jack last season. Think it’s one of those cases where he realized too late he was on the wrong side, and he doesn’t want to be there again.

As for Dean… I get that he wants to see the people he cares most about make it out of this. (Sam and Cas.) And I get he’s doing the tunnel vision thing. I think he knows that Sam’s right but he won’t let himself admit it.

- Wow….. The fanangels are kinda creepy.

- They’ve lost all their nuance with Chuck. Or my theory is right and Chuck has actually shifted darkside.

- Oh wow…. Amara is really going to bat here.

Commercial Thoughts:

Still not sure how much she’s (Amara) really guessed. She’s acting as though the whole “trapping him” idea is still a go, but what she’d said to Dean, as pointedly as she did, it seemed like maybe she suspected what was really going on and was still trying to give him the option to go a different way.

And even if this is Chuck having shifted dark, it could still be written with more nuance than this crappy villain schtick.

I mean, even in S11 when he’s all but given up on humanity and existence and was going to let Amara win, it was written with there being a depth to him about it.

- Don’t know if Dean’s trying to convince himself that he doesn’t care as deeply to make this easier or what.

- HOw is ADAM still alive?! And she’s an angel?

- Interesting behavior for an angel. *LOL*

- “Then he moved on to our sons.” Hints of Cain and Abel?

- Okay, so the angel kept him alive. (Sure, I can buy that.) 

- Pretty Crystals!

- He’s (Dean) heard those lines before. And Dean’s feeling uneasy about it.

- Amethyst! (Sorry, always had a thing for Amethyst and it’s my birthstone)

- (oh, okay, all of them)

- Ewww….. Open heart surgery

- Rib!

- Dean doesn’t like being rail-roaded.

- Talk time.

- I don’t like this…… (Jack using the rib and starting the suicide-bomb process.) 

Commercial Thoughts:

Okay, so, what Dean said, I’m glad he said it. And I have been getting hints of that feeling from him the whole season, about feeling disconnected because of what they found out about Chuck and their lives. I just… I still think he’s willfully blinding himself to what’s really going on. That even this version of “Free Will” is a script that he’s following. (Well, I think he’s starting to have misgivings about that.)

- Uh-oh! Ideas! 

- I love two researching nerds!

- Were we supposed to understand the Latin? *LOL* I caught “Mortem” in there a few times.

- Yey door!

- “your internal compass is functioning perfectly”

- I LOVE THEM SO MUCH!!!

- Who dat?

- Dead someone or other

- W section.

- Reapers maybe?

- Who’s thinning the ranks?

- Empty!Meg!

- Sam is good! (At bluffing the hell out of an ancient cosmic being.) 

- IT’S A LITTLE LATE TO STOP IT!!!!

Commercial Thoughts:

*FREAKING OUT!!!*

Jack already started it! OG!Adam said that once started the reaction couldn’t be stopped.

Okay, deeper thoughts. Everyone’s playing chess. Still. The game is just bigger.

OG!Adam wants God dead because of stuff that happened. And Billy is following his plan? (Did I get that right?) The plan will make Billy the next God. (Not surprised there honestly.) Her world will be a lot more “orderly” no doubt.

The Empty just wants to sleep. (Honestly, can relate.) 

But everyone’s just using them all as gamepieces again. Dean’s getting that feel from things OG!Adam and Whatserfaceangel said. Sam knows now too. They’re still stuck in someone else’s story. They’re still not gaining true “Free Will”. I’m hoping that the route they take will actually get them off this train track.

- DUDE - WHAT (was in reference to Dean pulling a gun on Sam)

- Go Sam! He’s not letting this one go. (Referring to my feelings on Sam feeling bad about Jack and the Drama Coffin thing from way before, and him NOT settling for Dean’s plan this time, him sticking to his guns and saying what he feels and taking action.) 

- Chuck played her (Amara) too.

- Not again! (Oh Jack, will this forever be your fate?)

- FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!!

Holy shit! That episode!

Okay, it actually did a good job of wrapping up a lot of ideas. Like, big-picture ideas that have been themes throughout the run of the show. 

Also, apparently this was the only world where Cas and the Winchesters broke the mold? Didn’t play by their roles?

Also, minor point but it made me happy: Chuck pointed out how it’s Sam who needed to find things out. Sam who kept digging. I made mention of it last episode how Billy kept going to Dean, because he was easier for her to manipulate. But Sam asks more questions. I think part of it is what Cas said about his internal compass. I think another part is his experiences. He’s been the brunt of the cosmic plot-lines a LOT of the time. So he does keep asking questions because of all the times he hadn’t and things went badly. (Like end of S4 with killing Lilith.) 

And let me be clear, it’s not that I think Dean is dumb. He isn’t. And he and Sam both make decisions a lot based on their feelings. (Sometimes it’s all you have to go on.) But he’s shown a tendency in the past several years especially to be more likely to make them based on anger. And he doesn’t get called on it often. And I don’t know if this is TOO meta (is that even a thing with this show anymore? *LMAO*) but I feel like part of that is written into the script. Of their world. Even when Dean’s wrong he’s often proven “right” by the narrative. He very rarely is made to face up to his mistakes. (Not saying he never is. But it definitely doesn’t seem to happen as often.) And I’m wondering, is that because up till now, he was Chuck’s favorite? We saw that Chuck can manipulate a LOT of things. And events, and even some people. 

How often have we noticed and commented on how the Narrative backs Dean up so much of the time, even when he might be in the wrong? Or even just questionable? Or morally grey? How much of that is possibly now supposed to be due to Chuck’s meddling? Because I’ve also seen it mentioned (and have also noticed) that although Sam winds up the “wrong one” a lot via the narrative, he’s actually HAD to learn and grow because of that. But because Dean is rarely shown as wrong, he hasn’t had to, and his character has stagnated a lot in the last several seasons. Of course, in reality, that’s due to the writing/show-running/powers-that-be making those decisions, but in-show could it possibly be something to do with Chuck? Maybe at first because he liked Dean more? But as time grew on, and he kept trying to set up his Cain and Abel plot with them, maybe it was to reinforce Dean’s self-image that he’s Right? 

And also by contrast, we had the end of last season where so many of Sam’s decisions which had been made with best intentions and best information/resources at the time wound up blowing-up in his face. As if to say "Ha-HAH! That's what you get for thinking you could lead people! That's what you get for thinking you could save Jack! That's what you get for thinking someone like Nick could be redeemed! That's what you get for talking your brother out of the Drama-Coffin plan!" It felt like it was specifically intended to make him severely doubt his own judgement. And it worked. After all that shit went down, one thing after another, culminating with their mother's death, he didn't trust himself. He didn't believe in himself. So he put all his trust in Dean. And Dean was full of RAGE. (I don't blame him. His Mom has been a keystone of his life, even when she wasn't there.) But Sam didn't give the objections he normally would have to Dean's plan to box-up Jack. Even though it was CLEAR how much he didn't like it. How wrong it felt to him.

Basically, what I’m trying to say is, I think Chuck has been nudging and manipulating a LOT of things in order to get the Winchesters to behave how he wants them to. 

IDK. My head is hurting from some of these meta thoughts. *LOL*

SO! Back to what happened in the actual episode.

I thought the format was interesting, focusing in on the different POV characters for their spans of the story until it all came together. (Wondering if this is going to continue into the next episode…) 

I liked that we got a lot of reveals about what is (possibly) really going on, in regards to the grand schemas. Because there are several at play here. But now we're at least getting glimpses of them. 

Even though we didn't see Billy, I thought the reveal about her plans were interesting, but definitely fit with her character as established so far. I know a lot of people are saying she's gotten drunk with her power or she's "turning evil" but I don't think that's the case. It's true that she hasn't told them everything about her plans, but that's because she's also using them as pieces in her game. But her goal is the same as it's always been since we first met her. She has ALWAYS been about the Natural Order. She never liked how the Winchesters (or anyone else) flaunted death again and again. So once she's in charge? Everyone and everything goes where they belong. The demons stay in hell, the angels stay in heaven, souls go where they're meant to, people from other universes go back (even if there's no universe to go back TO. Tough shit, they'd be dead anyway according to her) and those who have already died and been resurrected? They go back to wherever they should be. (At least, I THINK that was the implication made, with Sam asking Dean if he'd be willing to trade HIM to take-out Chuck. Sam was definitely realizing a LOT when Empty!Meg told him what Billy's plan was.) 

This isn't her turning Evil like has been done with Chuck. It's more, her becoming a more extreme version of what she already was. When she got her promotion, she found out a LOT more things. Including this option of events for taking Chuck out and putting things back to how they belong. And it even started with Dean's aborted Drama Coffin plan. Which eventually fails, because Sam, but it then leads to Jack sacrificing his soul to take out AU Michael, which eventually leads to Mary's Death and Chuck's opportunity to manipulate things more and so on and so forth until we wind up here. 

(Also, just wanna say, absolutely LOVED Rachel as the Empty again!) 

And also, having just watched that scene again, can I just say again how awesome Sam is? He straight-up told the Empty that even if he WAS lying, their best bet is to let him go with the book. And it couldn't really argue with that because he was right! (Well, if it had killed him then and there, Dean probably wouldn't have known right away and probably would have been able to carry out the plan. So there is that. Buuuuut none of them knew that either at the time.) 

And in general, I love how Sam just would NOT give up. This is the Sam Winchester I've come to love. He could feel in his bones that this plan was wrong so he was doing everything he could to not only stop it, but to find some other way to get what they truly wanted. 

I also loved his and Cas' interactions. They were supportive of each other and both were trying to find a way to save their son. (Dean has officially forfeited his Dad-Card in my book. Hell, in his book too.) Also, I remember hearing someone from production, or who was maybe on set or something mentioning something about the Holy Grail in this episode? Well, in that scene where Sam and Cas are looking through those old crates and trunks and boxes, when Cas finds the key Sam is holding this really old looking chalice. Wonder if that's supposed to be what that is. *LOL* I mean, the Spear of Destiny (or at least, the head of the spear) was there in the Bunker, so why not I guess? *LOL*

We didn't get a lot of Sam and Jack interaction, but I liked what little we had. Sam made it clear to Jack that he wants to save him. (I'm really hoping we get SOMETHING more of them in the next episode or two but... yeah. Not a lot of time left.) 

I could go on for some length about my feelings on Dean and how he's been this season. But I don't want this to turn into a fully anti-Dean rant. I will say though that I'd definitely gotten the impression before this that Dean has different categories of people he cares about, and in his mind, he also has them ranked according to how expendable they are. And I'm not just talking about Jack here, though he is a major part of it. But at the end of the episode when he and Sam are having it out, Dean says he's basically willing to sacrifice EVERYONE to get what he wants. 

(I don't think he's actually willing to sacrifice Sam for it though. And yes, I know, he was waving a gun in Sam's face. But I don't believe for a moment he had any intention of killing his brother. Not when Sam asking point blanc if Dean is willing to trade him for killing Chuck, and that seems to be what causes Dean to start listening to what Sam's saying. Also, in the past, Dean hasn't been above threatening people to get what he wants. Like with Kaia. Also in S8's "Trail and Error" when he and Sam were talking about taking out the hellhound, Dean pretty much said if Sam even tries to get close to it, Dean would shoot him in the leg. Now, we never got to see if he actually would have or not, but regardless, it was a case of Dean being willing to hurt Sam a little in order to protect him from something he saw as a bigger threat. In that case it had been taking on the trials. In this case, it would have been to win their shot at freedom. At least in Dean's mind. Not saying I approve! Just, I think that's where his mindset was.) 

And this is a far cry from the Dean who, just a few years ago was willing to be a kamikaze bomb in order to save the world. And yes, Dean has mentioned "Saving the world" this season too. And I'm sure he means that too. But when he was at his most emotional, what he was talking about wasn't saving the world and everyone in it. It was freeing him and Sam from being Chuck's entertainment. And he's willing to sacrifice nearly anyone to accomplish that. At least, he was up til now. I hope that they're going to give him a change of heart before the end because I really REALLY would like the show to end with me not despising Dean and what he's become. Yes, I'm a Sam-girl, but I do care about Dean too. 

Also, I feel bad for Amara and what wound up happening with her. Like many other characters, she fell victim to Chuck's manipulations, and now I'm guessing he's even stronger than before. But also, Chuck wasn't the only one manipulating her. And maybe if they, (Dean especially, since she had a soft-spot for him) had actually been trying to find another way earlier, she wouldn't have fallen to despair when finding out the truth. 

Aaaaaanyway, I think I've rambled enough about this episode as it is. Thank you to whoever actually bothers to read all of this. *LOL*

[clumsyclifford]

6, 12, 14, 15, & 21 for the writing asks? -megs 💙

hachi machi okie dokie how many more nonsense rhymes can i say ok that's it great let's go

6. What fic is on your back burner, waiting to be written when you feel your skill matches its potential? answered this one here! i'm SURE there are more though let me check my fic ideas doc (fun fact my fic ideas doc is still called "Malum fic ideas:" from back in the early days of this blog when i was chiefly writing malum because of helen). oh! well. the major league baseball au is still uh, kinda back burner-y. that's another one that i started and then ran face first into a wall known as The Wall of Trying To Realistically Represent A Situation I've Never Been In But Also Include Romance Which Would Not Typically Exist In This Setting So I'm Really Setting Myself Up For Failure Here it's a really annoying wall i know hazel hits it too so i'm just ignoring it for the moment. i also think a castaways fic (the concept, not the song) would be really awesome but tricky because, once again, i've never actually BEEN a castaway, and my knowledge of the topic is pretty heavily based on the book hatchet so like. yeah. i have a lot.

12. Where do you commonly find inspiration for your stories? everywhere! i saw in your answer you said you hear song lyrics and think they'd make good fic titles, i do EXACTLY the same thing (hence the doc "good lyrics for titles"). one day ill make that doc into a prompt list and post it on here and just fuck myself over. previously ive gotten some inspiration from movies but i shortly after completing baby driver au i realized that was a fluke and that in general i am pretty bad at making fics out of movie plots because i am very bad at remembering salient details about movies in the order that they happen. like i started a robin hood (2018) au but barely got anywhere with it because i realized i had never actually understood the plot well enough to write it. i would say the things that inspire me the most are songs (we know i loooove a songfic, mostly bc they make the job so easy by just laying out the plot and vibe for me) and also things that happen to me and feelings i have about those things. unfortunately many of my experiences are not universal (hello jewish summer camp) which may be part of why i've had so much trouble coming up with ideas lately. but as soon as i'm back at school i get the feeling i'll be doing fine again.

14. Share a few sentences of what you’re currently working on? what AM i currently working on? technically speaking i'm kinda sorta working on two things but one of them just doesn't have a good snippet and i don't wanna do a Reveal yet so ill give you this one instead, from a fic i might never even post:

“Oh, I meant to tell you, my mum called earlier, she asked if you’re okay.” Ashton’s mum always asks if Luke is okay. Exactly that way, is Luke doing okay?, like Luke gives off some kind of not-doing-okay vibe. He suspects it’s a leftover instinct from his and Ashton’s mutual breakdown a few years back, but honestly, he’s doing better now. It’s sweet of her to ask, but she could just ask about him the same way she asks about Michael and Calum. How’s Luke? would be fine.

“I am great,” Luke says. “How’s she? Is she okay?”

“Yeah, she’s okay,” Ashton says. “She’s started taking Harry to look at some universities.” He pauses. “University. You know? What the fuck?”

“No way,” Luke says, and tries to work out if he’s meant to be surprised by that. He can’t remember how old Harry is. Clearly almost uni-age. Ashton’s told him this a million times, but Luke can’t keep track when the answer keeps changing. He doesn’t want Ashton to think he’s forgotten, so he just says, “That’s insane.”

15. What are some of your favorite tropes to write? Do they match the ones you read? answered this one here as well! i've managed to get unbelievably long-winded answering every single one of these questions so far so i won't write another answer for this one

21. Do you have any stories you’ve written completely but never posted? Why? Please tell us about them? yes!! i have a handful. let me hunt them down. okay final answer, i have five!

one is an au based on the prompt "we’re at a party and someone asks what your type is and you describe me perfectly while staring right at me” which i never posted because i wrote it a while ago and honestly i don't think it's good enough to post. also i kinda don't like the background character i made jack barakat. i could edit it. but. ehh

one is a fic that is set in the daydream jalex fic 'verse, but the only way it's relevant to that 'verse is because it has ace!jack, and it's highly personal and probably the most projection-heavy fic i've ever written and i never posted it because i'm nervous to be Known like that lol

one is technically emo lashton, but not actually set in the emo lashton 'verse that i've created, and that one is ALSO one of the most projection-heavy fics i've ever written. it's usually the fics that are full of projection but in a specific way that i think isn't really relatable that i write but don't end up posting. it's a good fic honestly i wouldn't be against posting it i just never have. also partially because i'm between two titles for that fic lol

one is.......something that was originally going to be set in a different fic universe (for a fic i havent posted or finished writing lol), but now i don't know if it will necessarily fit in that 'verse, so it's kind of its own very short but complete thing. i never posted it because (1) it's super short, less than 1k, and i don't like to post stuff that short, and also (2) just in case it DOES fit the fic 'verse, i don't wanna give away the ending, lmao

and lastly there's a fic i wrote in an excited haze when sam and meghna and i made the ssf and the aces plans, which is like, ot4 meeting but they're all internet friends. guess what inspired that. i'll never post it because it really wasn't written with the intention of posting it, i sent it to sam and meghna and they were the only people i wanted to read it and they have so <3

writing asks

[gamelpar]

It’s All About Fakes (100 sentence prompts fanfic)

Because I suck a writing even short stories or drabbles, I write 100 sentences prompts for the Fake AH Crew instead.

Some of them are inspired by moments in Let’s Play videos, headcanons, social media posts, or just comes straight out of the blue.

Feel free to take inspiration from the prompts or use them.

Prompts are written from a non-shippy perspective, but each prompt can be intercepted in whatever way pleases.

Also my first work, so let’s see how this goes.

Hey, why don’t you read it on AO3 instead?https://archiveofourown.org/works/24787825

1. How the Fake AH Crew got this far is a hell of story, and you can bet it’s one damn worth telling. (Fake it Til’ You Make it)

2. Ray was a sniper; he could spot bullshit a mile away, so how come he ended up in the Fake AH Crew? (On the Spot)

3. Sitting by the wheel of the red minivan Geoff sighed for the 67th time that day, still disbelieving the fact that they were not on their way to carry through a well-planned heist but rather enroute to the beach for some “splashing and slacking”, as Jack had called it. (Sunday Driving - To the Beach)

4. “The Vagabond says: it’s all gonna be murder.” (What the Vagabond Says)

5. Whether it was the Golden Boy or Gavin; Mogar or Michael; they wouldn’t leave each other behind. (Bois Forever)

6. Lindsay---being an absolute goddess as always---supports Jack in her telling for Fiona, and Jack couldn’t have been more grateful. (Women’s League)

7. Matt screws something up; Trevor is there to help him fix it; then Gavin and Alfredo is there to screw it up even more. (Nice Job Breaking It)

8. It’s Bake a Cake Day (according to Gavin) and it’s Gents vs. Lads (insisted by Gavin) and it will also be known as the day when Geoff’s kitchen met its undeniable demise (because of Gavin). (Bake a Cake Day)

9. Long story short: Michael breaks into an animal adoption center for a cat because Lindsay, and Gavin and Ray tags along because why the fuck not. (No Animal Came To Any Harm Except For Gavin)

10. A heavily tattooed man walks into a bar; later, a mad man and a lady in a Hawaii-shirt joins him. (It’s Not a Joke but the Punchline is Fluff)

11. Lindsay and Jeremy have dealt with shit going sideways longer than most people so they know how to make the best of it. (Failure is an Old Friend of Mine)

12. “I hereby announce that the official Prank Wars Week is in session!” (Oh No)

13. The Vagabond might be ready to die, but Ryan knows he’s not. (Ready as I’ll Ever Be)

14. The Lads---and Geoff---gets drunk as hell one night and starts a sock company. (Socks, There’s Socks Everywhere)

15. A boring Fake AH Crew means a dangerous Fake AH Crew and the residents of Los Santos better prepare for chaos. (Boredom Can be a Health Hazard)

16. Ryan gets hiccups and Ray thinks it’s funny until he gets hiccups, too, and soon everyone is stuck with hiccups and everyone blames Ray for some reason. (The Hiccup Disease)

17. When dawn arrives the Fake AH Crew will never be the same again. (Dawn After Battle)

18. Shopping weekends was nothing Lindsay used to do regularly, until Ryan one time decided to come along; then it became a thing. (Stuff We Do Together)

19. Even after leaving the crew, Ray would still have a home to return to. (Home is Wherever You Make it Be)

20. “No---we’re not twins, we’re not brothers, we’re not related in any way, so please for god’s sake, stop asking that.” (Stop the Questions Goddamnit)

21. Jeremy tried to apply more pressure to the wound but as the time on the bomb was running out, so did the blood. (A Mistake You Won’t Live to Learn From)

22. Someone knocks---no, pounds on the door to Ryan’s apartment at 3AM in the morning and Ryan’s still not that happy to being woken up in the middle of the night even if it is Meg waiting behind the door. (Late Night Visitor   or   Expect the Unexpected)

23. “Hey, guys, Fiona here---you’ll never believe this---but I’m stuck in jail and I need one of you to come and bail me out.” (Let’s Bail)

24. Matt is found alone sitting on top of the roof, watching the sunset, but what Geoff finds is someone who needs to talk and so he decides to be that other someone who listens. (Everyone Needs Someone Sometimes)

25. Gavin gets into trouble, which drags Michael and Jeremy into more trouble, and Geoff just wants to have a fucking drink. (Prepare for Trouble)

26. Gavin makes a statement, and Ryan feat. Alfredo makes it a hundred times worse. (Disturbance of Your Own Making)

27. Being welcomed by the sight of a bloodied and battered Gavin through the open door eliminates any tiredness and annoyance Geoff had worked up to having been woken up by a loud pounding on the door at 2AM. (Bloody Brit)

28. That was the way of the Battle Buddies; if one went down, the other had to keep on going, no matter what. (Broken Promise)

29. Nothing lasts forever, and Ray knows that better than anyone. (Never Say Forever)

30. The remaining Gents as well the rest of the Fakes would always be missing a part of themselves from now on. (Parts & Pieces   or   Next Step is to Move On)

31. The alphabet wasn’t enough to cover every brilliant plan the Fake AH Crew had in store, but they never settled for a single letter anyways. (Seven Ridiculous Plans and One That Actually Made Sense)

32. To the Lads, brighter days ahead is just an illusion they can only dream of in the aftermath of a heist gone wrong which claimed the lives of the Gents. (Miserable Lads)

33. It’s a story from being refused of coffee, to wanting to commit suicide briefly, to Trevor having made room for tea-parties with Jeremy, Gavin and Lindsay in his schedule every now and then. (Shut Up and Have Some Tea)

34. Really, it all started when Ray wouldn’t leave Geoff’s house one night. (A Place for Everyone)

35. Usually things doesn’t escalate this far by playing a simple Xbox-game but having ended up in jail, Michael and Matt doesn’t have much of a say about it and Geoff’s pissed. (Hate the Players)

36. Waking up in a dark room tied to a chair with no slightest idea of what the hell’s going on tends to lead to some anxiety-ridden experiences, especially when it is Gavin who finds himself in that situation. (Blackout)

37. No one wants to be the only sober one left to take care of a drunk crew, but with Ray gone Ryan just has to accept that this is his life now. (Trust   or   Sober One)

38. To think it all started that day when Jack saved a drunk man from being robbed in a dark alley. (Mind Your Manners)

39. Neither Lindsay or Michael would force Gavin to put on a brave face after a nightmare; everyone had fears and it was okay to be scared sometimes. (Sharing is Caring)

40. Matt’s life was just another pile of broken pieces until he met Jeremy, and suddenly he had some glue to put the pieces back together. (Glue   or   Glue My Life Back Together)

41. In the temporary apartment Ray was living in at the moment there was a vase by the kitchen window, always holding five red roses. (A Vase Full of Roses)

42. Geoff’s mood could easily be improved a 100 times better with some nice and warm socks. (Can Never Have Enough of Socks)

43. The crew quickly learned that pairing up Ryan and Trevor together would leave a traumatic amount of battered bodies and large pools of blood behind. (Madness In Me)

44. Michael’s life was like a puzzle; bits and pieces all over the place, some fitting, some not, some missing or broken, some didn’t even belong---and Jack standing there in the middle of it all being the only one who seemed to sense some kind of pattern. (Puzzles)

45. The Fake AH Crew weren’t good guys---they never would be---but that didn’t mean they were incapable of doing good, and they were by far the most decent team of criminals that had ever set foot in Los Santos. (Bad Guys Do Good)

46. Tears kept falling, slowly soaking the photo Jack held in her hand of her and the crew---not wanting to forget, yet not wanting to remember. (Remember to Forget)

47. The pink sniper rifle that hung on the wall would always serve as a reminder for the members of the Fake AH Crew that they were not immortal after all. (We Could Be Immortals)

48. Ryan’s an evil mastermind and that frightens Gavin a little, but the Golden Boy reckon it’s time to beat the Vagabond at his own game. (The Reckoning)

49. Kerry Shawcross crosses paths with the infamous Fake AH Crew completely by accident, and all hell breaks loose. (Welcome to Fake Hell)

50. The blood on his hands belonged to someone he knew---someone he cared about---and Ryan had never been more afraid of himself. (There’s Someone There But it’s Not Me)

51. It’s Pride Month and Jeremy really takes it up a notch when coloring his hair this time. (Rainbows)

52. Watching them Lindsay realized that while each of them all had lost so much, they had found even more. (Less is More)

53. Trevor would be better than Geoff ever’d been at scheduling heists and leading the crew, but he still gets to handle all the complaining from the crew so he isn’t as satisfied as he would like to be. (Point of No Return)

54. When the realization strikes him that he’s the only one left remaining, Jeremy falls to his knees in defeat and can’t stop screaming. (What Remains)

55. Fiona can never seem to stop messing with Gavin in any way possible. (A Step Too Far)

56. “Yeah, they’re all idiots---but they’re my idiots, so don’t you fucking dare lay your hand on them.” (A Bunch of Savage Animal Idiots)

57. Times have never been darker for the Gents as each of them struggles to cope with the deaths of the Lads in the aftermath of an coordinated attack. (Falling Inside the Black)

58. The day he met the Wildcard, Michael’s whole world finally started to make some sense. (Wild World)

59. Geoff’s constant drinking worried Gavin sometimes. (Drunk Concern)

60. Matt didn’t believe anyone would care enough for him to consider him family, nor did he believe he would end up in becoming a part of one. (Lost and Found)

61. Alfredo always wondered who Trevor really was underneath his iron suit of armor. (Armor)

62. Even when stuck in a seemingly never-ending coma, Geoff was never alone. (Not Alone)

63. Alfredo joins the Fake AH Crew with more blood on his hands than most people---including himself---would’ve expected. (Red Sea)

64. There’s a perfectly valid reason why Lindsay, despite not being his roommate anymore, is the only one who has a key to Ryan’s apartment. (Key to the Door)

65. Four times Jeremy and Trevor talked their way out of jail and one time they didn’t. (Another Approach to the Problem)

66. Lindsay tried, and that’s why she was still alive, even though everyone else that mattered to her weren’t anymore. (The Fake Among the True)

67. Fiona was her own knight in shining armor and no tower could ever hold her captive for long. (Green Knight)

68. There were days when Jeremy saw a way out, yet the light would always fade at the end of the tunnel, leaving him in the dark. (No Way In, No Way Out)

69. The others would never come back, and Gavin, walking in the wake of that horrifying truth, felt like an empty shell with nothing left to give. (Empty)

70. Trevor would give his life for the crew just like Geoff and Lindsay had. (Third Time Counts)

71. One time for when each of the Fake AH Crew members showed strength and one time when they didn’t. (No Shame)

72. Jack and Geoff shared a special responsibility for every member of the crew, and Michael was no exception. (Nightmare Terrors)

73. ‘Who’s the creepiest motherfucker?’ is a question rather avoided and unanswered. (Creep Contest)

74. All Michael felt now was a burning anger that refused to flicker and fade, and thirst for revenge than could never be quenched. (Road Rage)

75. The last time they all saw each other the city was burning, wounds were bleeding---figuratively and literally---and they never expected to see each other again. (One Last Time)

76. Jack liked to be up in the early, quiet mornings while everyone was still asleep, but she was seriously going to tackle Ryan into bed if she found out he was still awake at 5AM again. (Go the Fuck to Sleep)

77. He’d said he was going to visit, but Ray always pushed the promise further to its limits every time. (Liar Liar)

78. Five times a heist went to hell and one time when it actually didn’t. (Heisting Hell)

79. Not every backstory of the Fake AH Crew’s members is full of shattered dreams and points of no return. (Wanted)

80. Gavin missed home sometimes, but the Golden Boy didn’t. (Two Sides of a Coin)

81. Jeremy’s admiration of monster trucks stretches way back to when he was only a child, walking past a toy store. (Monster Car)

82. “You can leave if you want”, Geoff said, “No one’s going to stop you.” (Freedom)

83. The Vagabond was almost always in control after the Fall of the Fakes, mostly because Ryan let him. (Dead by Daylight)

84. Perhaps the next mishap won’t be so embarrassing for Alfredo, but life didn’t seem to like him much at all. (It’s Life, What Can You Do About It)

85. Four times Geoff said no to either Gavin, Ryan or Lindsay bringing an animal home, and one time he actually said yes. (Animal Addition)

86. So the members of the Fake AH Crew decides to steal their boss’ yacht again and Geoff’s as usual late to the party. (Yacht Party)

87. The crew goes to get some tattoos, and Lindsay is very sure of which one she wants to get. (Tattoos)

88. When Jack falls sick and can’t make her awesome lunch for the whole crew, the crew makes one for her instead (and Jack appreciates it even if it’s a little burned). (Faking the Chef)

89. The day Fiona joined the Fake AH Crew is a day Gavin will very well remember. (Bully)

90. The B-Team is usually there to clean up the messes, except for this time. (Don’t Leave Your Messes Here)

91. The whiskey burned his throat when he guzzled it, and Geoff wished that the liquor could burn away the pain and memories the same. (Burning Bridges)

92. The Fake AH Crew may look like they’re having the time of their lives, but the outside is designed to hide the struggles and issues that lingers underneath. (Inside Out)

93. With the Gents missing, the Lads stuck in a burning building, and the B-team cornered in a firefight, things does not look good. (Already Over)

94. The Fake AH Crew never failed to be impressed by Michael’s colorful vocabulary of swear words. (Words of Color)

95. Jeremy tries to cover up some traces of his past life from the rest of the crew; it does not go the way he wants. (Known to the World)

96. The Ring had been like home, but he wasn’t earning any money being beaten up every round in familiar surroundings, so Michael left---and ended up in Los Santos. (Ring of Fire)

97. The different paths that every member of the crew took for themselves led each of them to end up somewhere they never intended to be, but somewhere they were meant to be. (Pathfinders)

98. It was safe to say that every member of the Fake AH Crew had at least one weird obsession; some had way too many, and some obsessions were just what the fuck. (Obsessions)

99. The Fake AH Crew heists in style, or they do not heist at all. (Do it with Style)

100. The Fake AH Crew is made up of a selected (un)worthy and unique individuals---each one with their own story of whens, ifs, whats, whos, and hows. (Now That We’ve Come So Far)

[ourmrsreynolds]

ok i saw the greta gerwig movie and she really Did That huh. she really made amylaurie work, which is about the last thing i wanted or expected but honesty compels me to give her props for pulling it off.

i was wrong to worry about florence pugh’s casting, she KILLED it as amy--i found her 10x as compelling as i ever found book!amy, but at the expense, i think, of vast swathes of book!amy’s character? the way amy cuts off laurie’s abortive first proposal with “i’ve spent my whole life coming second to jo” is (1) ok she ain’t wrong jo is a bona fide supernova but (2) it reorients the frame of the whole story around amy being the outsider, amy feeling inadequate and not measuring up, which is ...not what little women is about. little women is the story of how jo march reconciles her sharp tongue, restless spirit, and keen desire for independence with existing as a proper lady in a feminine sphere where she’s not allowed to be any of these things. amy has many trials but she is not divided in the same way between self-actualization and social acceptance; amy is not being suffocated by gender roles; so to frame amy and jo’s not-fitting-in experiences as roughly equivalent is to me a suspect decision. i suppose that’s why they call it an adaptation. in that vein i found this professor bhaer much more bearable than book!bhaer because his selling point is he actually takes jo’s writing seriously?? whereas book!bhaer preached at her to eschew commercial considerations for moral ones and i was like fuck that

consider everything that was cut from this movie in order to retcon amy’s “i have been in love with you half my life.” because i’m shipper trash i made a list of all the shippiest jo/laurie moments in the first half of the book and i think greta gerwig kept maybe one of them?? (it was an amy-related one) meanwhile you have the addition of scenes like amy caterwauling outside the laurences’ window after the lime incident. i don’t mean that gerwig’s interpretation of amy isn’t compelling, i already said it was, give her the best supporting oscar already, i’m just saying there’s no support for this take in the text because amy doesn’t think about laurie that much (and he thinks about her even less). not until Paris does this change. whereas jo and laurie are thick as thieves, consistently acting as each other’s hype man, even when jo’s on the verge of accepting bhaer the narrator notes she’s “forgetting to compare him to Teddy, as she usually did strange men, to their great detriment.” To their great detriment: teddy is the yardstick by which she measures all men and finds them wanting.

traditionally people argue amy/laurie makes sense because they have the most to learn from each other, and the counterargument is “bruh they have zero chemistry.” greta gerwig has put the latter objection to bed, but she had to do a lot of violence to the text to get there. i mean, where is the scene (in book 2, by which time alcott had already made up her mind to sink our ship) when Laurie “absently wound Jo’s apron tassel around his finger” and Jo’s all, “i thought you hated to be tied to a woman’s apron-string” and Laurie responds, “Ah, that depends on who wears the apron!” ...kills me every time

there is one argument against jo/laurie that i will accept, and that is this: there is no reconciling jo’s free spirit with the amount of self-effacement that marriage entails. for a woman in jo’s position marriage is tantamount to an abdication of the self--she can see firsthand that meg, for instance, has no ambitions outside the domestic sphere--and marrying laurie would upset the balance of power between them in a way that remaining “one of the lads” would not. recall what Marmee says about the prospects of a stormy jo/laurie marriage: “I fear you would both rebel if you were mated for life. You are too much alike, and too fond of freedom .... to get on happily together, in a relation which needs infinite patience and forbearance.” Anybody want to guess whose freedom is going to be severely curtailed by their role as a married person? Whose infinite patience will be most often called upon? Short of abolishing patriarchy or coming back blind and disabled like Mr. Rochester (that’s how he got Jane Eyre to marry him), there’s no way for Laurie to meet Jo on equal footing. which is the real reason she turns him down. i think we all know that given half a chance he woulda wheedled her into falling in love with him, but resisting Laurie’s overtures is Jo’s (and Alcott’s) only way of resisting The Patriarchy, and i cannot blame her for seizing it even as it breaks my heart.

if you’re wondering why she went on to marry dr. bhaer after turning down laurie, this article floats the incendiary thesis that she doesn’t?? that strong-willed and defiant Jo was metaphorically murdered and replaced by selfless Beth; that the surface-level courtship/marriage narrative of little women conceals a much more macabre horror story. basically, writing (jo’s primary form of self-assertion) seems to be fundamentally incompatible with a woman’s “proper” role, so alcott up and killed her heroine instead of acceding to the demands of 19th century femininity. this is ... not an invalid take.

i’m glad i watched the movie. greta gerwig is clearly mad talented and i enjoyed it for what it was, even if What It Was = Not For Me. there were moments when i coulda sworn Saorise Ronan was Winona Ryder, focusing on Meg & John’s post-married life instead of their courtship was the right call, and timothée chalomet’s laurie is the fuckboi to end all fuckbois. good job all around

[flightfoot]

Abuse and how it plays into Identity in Tower of Nero

While abuse has played a role in previous Trials of Apollo books, and in the Greco-Roman main series as a whole, Tower of Nero digs into it most deeply.

Identity and recovery from abuse are deeply linked here, with much of the abuse recovery coming from forging an identity separate from the abuser.

Previously it mostly came up in The Hidden Oracle and The Burning Maze, with Meg’s relationship with Nero prompting Apollo to examine his own relationship with Zeus. 

Apollo knew in the back of his head that Zeus was abusing him, that his rage against the Cyclopes for creating the lightning bolt Zeus used to murder Asclepius, for instance, was him redirecting his anger onto a safer target because raging against Zeus directly was so unsafe, but he tried not to let himself think about it too much, and he tried to fool himself into thinking that Zeus DID care about him, that he loved him, at least enough that he’d help him if he saw him in trouble. 

Seeing Meg with Nero, how he manipulated her, how he subtly blamed her for anything bad that happened around her, for anything HE did, while trying to seem gentle and kind; seeing the abuse he went through reflected in this young girl led him to cope with his own abuse better. 

His experiences with abuse, with Zeus treating him as a scapegoat and ‘forcing’ him to punish Apollo if he stepped out of line, with his own feelings about the abuse and his own coping mechanisms and behavior as a result, are a useful reference for understanding and helping Meg through her experiences with Nero.

And helping her cope, separate, and try to grow after being manipulated by Nero for so long? Helps him come to terms with his own experiences.

He’s pretty explicit about the comparisons too. Like when Meg talks about how Lu used to help her pretend to kill people for Nero, helped her how she could, but Apollo’s mostly just horrified that Lu stuck around and didn’t take Meg and run... and yet part of him understood.

And are you any better? taunted a small voice in my brain. How many times have you stood up to Zeus?

Okay, small voice. Fair point. Tyrants are not easy to oppose or walk away from, especially when you depend on them for everything. (TON 57)

Lu may not have been quite as dependent on Nero as say, Meg - at least psychologically. Lu’s not a child by any means. 

But Lu’s only immortal because Nero is, and he can, presumably, revoke that. Nero provides her employment, a home, probably her entire social circle, AND he has the power and the will to go after her and anyone she cares about if she strays, if she tries to defy him. 

In those ways, her situation mirrors Apollo’s even better than Meg’s does - and while he’s angry at her for not defying Nero, he also understands. 

I suspect part of his anger and suspicion at her is also anger and suspicion of himself, for falling into a similar trap.

Still, though Lu has her own baggage with Nero, Meg’s is focused on a lot more, with how she’s grown and changed, and her desire to hang onto who she’s become while separated from Nero, to hang onto her own identity and personality and not what Nero attempted to shape her into. 

It’s to the point that she can barely comprehend who she was under him, how she used to think, what she did.

“I betrayed you once,” she said. “Right here in these woods.”

She didn’t sound sad or ashamed about it, the way she once might have. She spoke with a sort of dreamy disbelief, as if trying to recall the person she’d been six months ago. That was a problem I could relate to. (TON 114)

Meg hasn’t really changed at her core as much as Apollo has - as much as she’s gone through, she at least wasn’t much of a jerk in the first place. Well, relatively speaking, when compared to Apollo. She’s abrasive, but not much beyond that.

But she HAS changed, in large part BECAUSE she’s more able and willing to stand up for herself in ways that she couldn’t do remotely safely while with Nero. She’s broken free of his psychological hold. 

During The Hidden Oracle she was ALREADY rebelling against him, she refused to burn the woods, but... well, she DID go with him, DID believe she could change him for awhile. 

But she broke free after realizing he wouldn’t, escaped and returned to Apollo, freeing herself from Nero’s grasp once more. 

For her, I think the difference between who she was six months ago and who she is now has less to do with her actual personality and worldview - those haven’t actually changed all that much throughout the books - but just in being free, somewhat safe (well, safer emotionally at least), and genuinely cared for. To not be under Nero’s influence to the same extent.

With Apollo... well, it’s a bit different with him. Zeus wasn’t as controlling as Nero, Apollo COULD have kept his space from him before; his sister has been doing that for millennia. But he has still changed a lot, moreso than Meg did, to the point that he’s almost unrecognizeable from who he was when he first fell to earth in THO.

Newly experiencing kindness, regular affection, and just having other people care about him though? He shares that with Meg.

Not that people have never been nice to him before, that’s not the case. But to have people be nice to him who he wouldn’t think would need to be, when he’s vulnerable... there’s a reason he’s been extremely touched when that’s happened even back from THO, and in this book he breaks down pretty much every time.

Meg struggles with needing to retain her independence, the new sense of herself she’s acquired during her journey with Apollo.

“I have to go back,” Meg insisted. “I have to see if I’m strong enough.”

Peaches cuddled up next to her as if he had no such concerns.

Meg patted his leafy wings. “Maybe I’ve gotten stronger. But when I go back to the palace, will it be enough? Can I remember to be who I am now and not… who I was then?”

I didn’t think she expected an answer. But it occurred to me that perhaps I should be asking myself that same question.

Since Jason Grace’s death, I’d spent sleepless nights wondering if I could keep my promise to him. Assuming I made it back to Mount Olympus, could I remember what it was like to be human, or would I slip back into being the self-centered god I used to be?

Change is a fragile thing. It requires time and distance. Survivors of abuse, like Meg, have to get away from their abusers. Going back to that toxic environment was the worst thing she could do. And former arrogant gods like me couldn’t hang around other arrogant gods and expect to stay unsullied.

But I supposed Meg was right. Going back was the only way to see how strong we’d gotten, even if it meant risking everything. (TON 114-115)

Meg needs to keep her identity she’s created for herself away from Nero. But her question about remembering to be who she is now versus who she was back then fits Apollo’s conundrum better, something that is clearly not lost on Apollo.

I knew my anxiety about my own weakness was getting mixed up with my anxiety about Meg. Even if I somehow made my way back to Mount Olympus, I didn’t trust myself to hold onto the important things I’d learned as a mortal. That made me doubt Meg’s ability to stay strong in her old toxic home.

The similarities between Nero’s household and my family on Mount Olympus made me increasingly uneasy. The idea that we gods were just as manipulative, just as abusive as the worst Roman emperor… Surely that couldn’t be true.

Oh, wait. Yes, it could. Ugh. I hated clarity. (TON 225-226)

Meg’s captured, being fully under Nero’s influence once more, with him trying to twist everything to be Apollo’s or Meg’s faults, trying to twist it so that every bit of distress that he puts Meg through is somehow the fault of her or her allies.

She picked up the chair and threw it across the room - but not at Nero. It whanged off the window, leaving a smudge but no cracks. I caught the flicker of a smile on Nero’s face - a smile of satisfaction - before his expression fixed back into a mask of sympathy. “Yes, dear. This anger comes from guilt. You led Apollo here. You understood what that meant, what would happen. But you did it anyway. That must be so painful... knowing you brought him to his end (TON 235)

This kind of manipulation is Nero’s trademark, he uses it for most of the book. Telling Meg what she’s feeling, telling her that she’s feeling this way because of something wrong SHE did, not because of the horrible things NERO did. Trying to rewrite her reality to fall in line with what HE wants her to believe, to think.

Nero makes her change clothes, has her scrub up, even has her get a pedicure. 

Normally this would sound like a good thing. But it’s just one of the ways he tries to rewrite who she is, to break her sense of identity and replace it with one more to his liking. By taking away things that showed her own personal style, he took away reminders of who she is, as well as showing his ability to exert control over her, make her believe she has no choices.

My heart broke. Meg looked elegant, older, and quite beautiful. She also looked utterly, completely no longer herself. Nero had tried to strip away everything she had been, every choice she’d made, and replace her with someone else - a proper young lady of the Imperial Household. (TON 285-286) 

Nero continues to try to twist the circumstances, to brainwash Meg into believing that he’s her savior and Apollo and the others may harm her. But Apollo keeps protesting, leading to this scene:

I tried to contain my horror. “Meg,” I said. “There’s only one person you need to listen to here: yourself. Trust yourself.”

I meant it, despite all my doubts and fears, despite all my complaints over the months about Meg being my master. She had chosen me, but I had also chosen her. I did trust her - not in spite of her past with Nero, but because of it. I had seen her struggle. I’d admired her hard-won progress. I had to believe in her for my own sake. She was - gods help me - my role model. (TON 293)

Ultimately, MEG’S the one who decides. Who fights back. Because she was able to listen to herself, to not be twisted by Nero’s lies and deceptions.

“I didn’t kill my father,” she said, her voice small and hard. “I didn’t cut off Lu’s hands or enslave those dryads or twist us all up inside.” She swept a hand towards the other demigods of the household. “You did that, Nero. I hate you.” (TON 295)

This was the tipping point. When she announced, to herself and everyone else, the truth. The reality. Rejecting Nero’s attempts to rewrite it.

Nero hissed. “Ungrateful child. The Beast-”

“The Beast is dead.” Meg tapped the side of her head. “I killed it.” (TON 311)

I notice here she tapped the side of her head. Of course, she didn’t literally kill The Beast; Nero’s still alive after all.

But The Beast was a psychological trick Nero used on Meg, to make her separate him into two people; the ‘nice’ stepfather, and The Beast that takes over and punishes if she misbehaves. 

She ‘killed’ it, because she killed the concept.

There was never a Beast.

There was only ever Nero.

And now that she’s gotten out from under his thumb? She reasserts her own identity.

Meg had thrown away her sandals, braving bare feet despite the arrows, rubble, bones, and discarded blades that littered the floor. Someone had given her an orange Camp Half-Blood shirt, which she’d put on over her dress, making her allegiance clear. She still looked older and more sophisticated, but she also looked like my Meg. (TON 323)

I like the emphasis on how she looks older, but also like herself. She looks like what Nero made her into still, in a way - she’s still wearing that dress after all - but she’s made it her own, integrated herself into it.

It nicely parallels Apollo’s own situation, with needing to integrate who he’s become as Lester, who he’s grown to be, with his godly identity. Because things WILL be different once he’s a god again; he’ll have power he doesn’t have now, will have exposure to other gods that he doesn’t currently have. So he needs to figure out how to handle that, how to be a god, how to be Apollo while not losing what he’s gained as Lester.

Even if I survived, I would not be the same. The best I could hope for was to emerge from Delphi with my godhood restored, which was what I had wanted and dreamed about for the past half a year. So why did I feel so reluctant about leaving behind the broken, battered form of Lester Papadopolous? (TON 327)

Like Meg was, Apollo’s struggling to get ahold of his own identity before he has to face his abuser again, has to re-enter that old toxic environment. He fears that if the trappings of “Lester” are destroyed, then like with Nero changing Meg’s clothes, that he’ll lose part of his connection to who he’s become.

As Apollo fights Python, his mortal body becomes less and less mortal, bringing him into an in-between, in-flux state that mirrors his internal identity crisis.

“YOU CAN’T HIDE!” Python bellowed. “YOU ARE NO GOD!”

This pronouncement hit me like a bucket of ice water. It didn’t carry the weight of prophecy, but it was true nonetheless. At the moment, I wasn’t sure what I was. I certainly wasn’t my old godly self. I wasn’t exactly Lester Papadopolous either. My flesh steamed. Pulses of light flickered under my skin, like the sun trying to break through storm clouds. When had that started?

I was between states, morphing as rapidly as Python himself. I was no god. I would never be the same old Apollo again. But in this moment, I had the chance to decide what I would become, even if that new existence only lasted a few seconds.

The realization burned away my delirium.

“I won’t hide,” I muttered. “I won’t cower. That’s not who I will be.” (TON 339-340)

Like with Meg before, he’s deciding, affirming for himself what kind of person he is now, who he wants to be, different from who he was before.

Even during the fight with Python, some small part of him hopes Zeus will intervene, will see he’s done enough and help him, save him. But here, that instinct is quashed for the final time.

I had done my best. Surely, Zeus would see that and be proud. Maybe he would send down a lightning bolt, blast Python into tiny pieces, and save me!

As soon as I thought this, I realized how foolish it was. Zeus didn’t work that way. He would not save me anymore than Nero had saved Meg. I had to let go of that fantasy. I had to save myself. (TON 341)

Much like with how Meg hoped back near the beginning of the series that Nero really would change, really was a good person deep down, Apollo kept up the hope in early entries that Zeus DID care about him and would come to save him at any moment. And even in later books, heck, even in THIS book, with Meg still calling Nero her stepfather a few times and the part of Apollo hoping that Zeus will intervene now, it’s hard to break the desire, the belief that that person who SHOULD care about you, surely will now.

But both of them break past that. Meg calls Nero out, rejects his attempts to rewrite reality, and Apollo kills the idea that Zeus might intervene on his behalf.

By the time Apollo’s a god again, he has a firm bead on the kind of person Zeus is, as well as the type of environment Mt. Olympus is, with most of his family just watching his trials and tribulations, everything he and his friends went through, and betting on the outcome. Only Artemis and Hera seemed to take things seriously, seemed to deeply care whether he lived or died.

Not that the others could have interfered against Zeus’s wishes.

As much as we pretended to be a council of twelve, in truth we were a tyranny. Zeus was less a benevolent father and more an iron-fisted leader with the biggest weapons and the ability to strip us of our immortality if we offended him. (TON 366)

Apollo just kind of hangs back for the council session, having little to say to anyone except Artemis, not caring much about what the other Olympians thought, and not really feeling like one of them as a whole. Though that was true even before he actually walked into the room.

I remembered my dream of the throne room - the other Olympians gambling on my success or failure. I wondered how much money they’d lost.

What could I possibly say to them? I no longer felt like one of them. I wasn’t one of them. (TON 358)

And finally, the long-awaited confrontation scene with Zeus. It wasn’t long. It wasn’t flashy. Unlike Meg, he couldn’t attack and get rid of his abuser, couldn’t get out from under his influence entirely. Zeus is King of the Gods; realizing that he’s an abusive asshole doesn’t change that.

But he COULD change his own response to the situation.

My father coughed into his fist. “ I know you think your punishment was harsh, Apollo.”

I did not answer. I tried my best to keep my expression polite and neutral.

“But you must understand,” Zeus continued, “only you could have overthrown Python. Only you could have freed the Oracles. And you did it, as I expected. The suffering, the pain along the way… regrettable, but necessary. You have done me proud.”

Interesting how he put that: I had done him proud. I had been useful in making him look good. My heart did not melt. I did not feel that this was a warm-and-fuzzy reconciliation with my father. Let’s be honest: some fathers don’t deserve that. Some fathers aren’t capable of it.

I suppose I could have raged at him and called him bad names. We were alone. He probably expected it. Given his awkward self-consciousness at the moment, he might even have let me get away with it unpunished.

But it would not have changed him. It would not have made anything different between us.

You cannot change a tyrant by trying to out-ugly him. Meg could never have changed Nero, any more than I could change Zeus. I could only try to be different than him. Better. More… human. And to limit the time I spent around him to as little as possible. (TON 367-368)

Apollo just... let go of any attachment to Zeus. It reminded me of the Cumaen SIbyl, with how she forgave Apollo for her own sake, how Apollo felt that he himself was being erased by that. 

This isn’t a reconciliation; this is simply Apollo putting Zeus as far behind him as possible and trying to let him take up as little space in his life as he can. He may not be able to cut all ties to him, but he can at least minimize his connection to him, his influence over him.

In the end, Apollo doesn’t even really consider what he went through to be a punishment; not really.

To be honest, though, I could no longer consider my time on Earth a punishment. Terrible, tragic, nearly impossible… yes. But calling it a punishment gave Zeus too much credit. It had been a journey - an important one I made for myself, with the help of my friends. I hoped… I believed that the grief and pain had shaped me into a better person. I had forged a more perfect Lester from the dregs of Apollo. I would not trade those experiences for anything. And if I had been told I had to be Lester for another hundred years… Well, I could think of worse things. At least I wouldn’t be expected to show up at the Olympian solstice meetings. (TON 373)

Like with his conversation with Zeus, he’s minimizing Zeus’s control, his influence over himself and his life. 

And in the end, Apollo leaves Mt. Olympus as soon as he can to spend time with all the new friends he’s made, away from the toxic influences of Olympus and of Zeus especially. Reaffirming his new identity, his new self by appearing in his Lester form, the form he’d grown in, that he’d forged for himself.

I just really love how in-depth Tower of Nero went, especially with the way it emphasized the identity manipulation and erasure involved with some kinds of abuse.

[alternislatronemhq]

Congrats, CHRISTIE, you have been accepted to AL for the role of LUCINDA TALKALOT (FC: Alisha Wainwright). Ah, Christie, excellent job! You’ve taken a character that isn’t much more than a name in this verse and brought her to life! I love your portrayal of her and am so excited to see how she adds to our little group!! Please send in your blog (no sideblogs for first characters, please) in the next 24 hours and be sure to take a look at our new player checklist. Welcome home (once again), we’re so excited to have you join the family!

OOC

name — christie age — 20 pronouns — she/her timezone — gmt+3

any questions? — If I could just ignore the fact she was Quidditch captain during her time at Hogwarts that would be amazing just because it doesn’t quite fit my interpretation of Lucinda. Oh, wait, that’s not a question. Pretty please?

IC Overview

name — Lucinda Talkalot faceclaim — Alisha Wainwright age — 27 (9th of January) gender — Cis-female sexuality — Homosexual

patronus — A greyhound – much like Lucinda, the greyhound is intelligent and gentle, though often accused of passivity. What might be perceived as laziness and indifference, however, is simply a very careful and precise distribution of time and energy – after all, why waste your time on something you don’t care about when you could be working on achieving your real goals?

[tw: claustrophobia] boggart — Herself, stuck in a small space with no means of escaping. Lucinda is claustrophobic and usually, she can deal with tiny spaces as long as they provide some sort of an exit, be it a door or a window, but if they are locked or sealed, her claustrophobia gets triggered. It should be noted, though, that even in the event where she manages to keep her anxiety under control, she still would prefer to avoid small spaces altogether.

IC In Depth

personality traits — 

( + ) Intelligent: Lucinda’s intelligence isn’t innate as is that of the Ravenclaws she remembers from her Hogwarts days, the ones who would just understand concepts and ideas with little if any explanation. Lucinda, on the other hand, needs all the guidance her professors provide and makes use of all available books on the subjects she’s interested in. Her intelligence comes from hard work, from days spent hunched over old dusty tomes, from sheer ambition to learn and to become somebody.

( + ) Driven: It’s the Slytherin in her that would stop at nothing to achieve her goals. If Lucinda Talkalot wants something, she’ll get it. She’d wanted to do well on her NEWTs, she’d done it. She’d wanted to become an Unspeakable, she’d done it. The one regard in which her ambition doesn’t seem to help is the social aspect of her life, but oh, well, nobody’s perfect.

( + ) Accepting: Lucy knows what it feels like not to be accepted, be it for her blood or for her sexuality, and she would never want anybody else to feel like that around her. Even though she’s not the best in social situations, one thing one can always rely on with her is to remain open-minded and willing to listen.

( - ) Reserved: Books don’t ask you about your day nor do they require an explanation as to why you did what you did; they’re just there. People don’t work quite like that, Lucy knows, but she still has trouble putting herself out there and speaking her mind. After all, what does she have to offer in conversation? She’s not funny, she’s not charming, and she quite literally can’t speak about her job.

( - ) Single-minded: She tells herself it’s justified, with how important her work is, but the truth is Lucinda is almost cut-off from the world. The downside of her ambition is that she’s so focused on her goals that she can’t see anything beyond them; even with Voldemort, she knows he was dangerous, but she never quite understood just how dangerous. But what does it matter anyway? After all, he’s a thing of the past.

( - ) Tactless: It’s not that she’s not aware of social etiquette, it’s just that she sometimes forgets to follow it. She doesn’t choose her words carefully, instead they slip out of her the same way her mother’s old china had slipped between her fingers when she’d been a child – without meaning to, unrefined and sharp. She doesn’t mean to be rude, by any means, but she’s also never been known to sugarcoat anything.

character biography — 

Margaret Talkalot always had a vision of how her only daughter’s life would go. Lucinda would attend the same school she did – the only school in town – and then would later attend university in the big city where she would meet a nice, hopefully wealthy man who with whom she would have two children, a boy and a girl, and live happily ever after. It’s a manifestation of everything her mother didn’t get, Lucy realises years later – she’d never got the chance to leave their tiny town, her husband had left her soon after Lucinda’s birth and Margaret hadn’t had other children. (But even to little Lucinda, those fairy tales of princes and princesses didn’t sound appealing – at least the princes didn’t)

Fortunately for her, her mother’s plan started to unravel as soon as Lucinda’s eleventh birthday rolled around. A small white envelope held promises Lucy had never even dreamt to ask for and she’d begged and pleaded her mother to let her go. It’d taken a while to convince her but come September 1st, Lucy was on the train set to Hogwarts.

The castle is absolutely magical in a way that had nothing to do with actual magic. She’s sorted into Slytherin and her housemates give her weird looks as she goes to sit at their table, but that’s fine, the kids back home looked at her weird too. In any case, it’s not nearly enough to dampen her excitement and Lucy spends her first year walking on clouds. The following years she wants to try everything, from Quidditch to Frog Choir, and she does, but… it’s not quite what she imagined. She doesn’t have the experience other kids do with Quidditch, and her face flushes every time she has to sing in front of her peers. It’s okay though, because the library is just as magical and soon Lucy starts spending most of her time there.

She gets good grades, she’s on par with the Ravenclaws, and she wishes sometimes that she was sorted into Ravenclaw instead. Perhaps then she would’ve had more friends? But then she sees Ravenclaws during class, with their clever, understanding eyes, and feels inadequate as she struggles to keep up with the torrent of information. She perseveres. So what if she has to work three times as hard as Beatrice Galloway to get the same grades? She’s not scared of hard work. (She is scared, however, of the way her stomach flutters whenever Beatrice smiles at her. Not because of the feelings she stirs inside of Lucy, but because she knows her mother won’t be happy to learn about them. And Lucinda’s already disappointed her by going to a magical school instead of a “normal” one. Can she disappoint her like that too?)

Turns out, she can. At eighteen, Lucinda passes her NEWTs with flying colours and emboldened by that, she tells her mother she’s not interested in boys. Her arguments sound childish even to her own ears (they’re crass, and smelly, and annoying and she just doesn’t like them, okay?), but they’re true enough and eventually, Margaret stops trying to convince her otherwise. She says she accepts it, but Lucy knows better; her mother is still waiting for the day Lucinda will “come to her senses” and settle down with a man.

The knowledge of it weighs down on her heart, but she’s also never been happier, as though her mother had been the last frontier before freedom. And in the Wizarding World, she’s flourishing – she gets an internship at the Ministry and a few years later, she becomes an Unspeakable. There’s a war raging outside her office, but Lucinda is too busy scribbling down test results and experiment proposal to glance out of the window.

Eventually, it all ends and as relieved as Lucy is, she also can’t deny she feels guilty – but then she reminds herself there’s nothing she could’ve done anyway, except perhaps bored Voldermort to death with theories of how the brain functions.

plot ideas —

I’d love to get Lucy involved with the Order at a later point! In general, the way I envision her character arc (which is always subject to change as time goes on, of course) is that a big part of it would involve her getting out of her office and returning to the world as a whole. That includes becoming more aware of everything going on, becoming more involved in it as she realises she does have more to offer than dry facts she’s read in a book.

Getting her a social life! A bit self-explanatory but as established, Lucy isn’t the best at forming friendship so naturally, I’d love to see her put in a situation where she does end up doing that. Especially with people who challenge her way of thinking. (Also I’ll just throw it out there, but she deserves a girlfriend.)

Some sort of work-related plot seems inevitable too considering how much of her life is spent in her office. Whether that would be potential colleagues (chats by the coffee machine are probably interesting when neither party can talk about their job) or maybe someone who knows more than they’re supposed to (in which case I would love to explore Lucy’s reaction and how she would deal with that). Just about all and any workplace plots!

extra —

Some headcanons:

Throughout this app I’ve been referring to Lucinda both as Lucinda and as Lucy, which I personally see like a very Hercules situation in the sense of:

Meg: Megara. My friends call me Meg. At least they would if I had any friends.

Lucy works in the Department of Mysteries, as previously established, but to elaborate on that, she works primarily in the Thought Chamber. I say primarily because due to the door connecting the Thought and Death Chambers, I’m running with the assumption that their spheres of study are also connected and thus Lucinda sometimes has to visit the Death Chamber too.

(Also I really like the irony of Lucy studying brains, but not being good with people. Like, “I understand your brain, but you I just don’t get.”)

Furthermore, since her job is so centred around minds, she’s also picked up a few skills outside of Hogwarts’ curriculum. Lucinda is an Occlumens, though she struggles with Legilimency. She can only perform it under very particular circumstances, including an intense focus on her part and total silence of the room, so she is almost entirely unable to use it outside of the Thought Chamber. [This is, of course, subject to change if you feel like it might be too much power.]

Lastly, she just gets very flustered around women.

[mfackenthal]

The MFackenthal Show and @maxattack-powell!

banner by @whenyourheartskipsabeat

Hello all!  Welcome back to the MFackenthal Show!  I am so glad that you are here today.  If you’re new to the show, I encourage you to go here to find past episodes.  There are only a few.

The MFackenthal Show has officially been green lit for more episodes!  We used to only be able to afford to run the show every once in a while, but the people have spoken - they want to see the show more often!  The funding came through and we hope to give the people what they want!  Do you want to be on the show?  Do you have someone that you want to see on the show?  If so - reblog or comment or send a message to let MFackenthal know!  We’ll see what we can do!  We have this show and two others lined up for you!

I could not be more excited to bring you this next guest.  She has been with the fandom for quite a while.  She was one of the first people I started communicating with on a regular basis.  She has talked me up, supported me from the beginning and though she hasn’t written much lately - when she does drop a chapter - it’s long and it’s worth it!  Please welcome to the stage @maxattack-powell!!!!!  (Insert Cheering here!)

(Megs greets Max with a hug - which means that Megs essentially runs and leaps into Max’s arms.  Max is fairly tall and Megs is barely 5′3″) 

Megs:  Max, I am so happy that you are here!  Can you believe that you’re here today?

Max:  Haha, yes - I can.  But I am honored to be here.

Megs:  Max, sit with me.  For those in the audience who may not know you, tell us about when and why you joined the fandom.

Max: Yanno, I always made my best guess at this before, but I knew you were going to ask me this - so I looked it up.  Did you know that now there’s this Official Tumblr blog called @memories, and it knows down to the minute when someone joined? Let me go check it… *digs through the blogs posts* Okay, it was apparently 07/31/2017 at 1:17:15 PM, which means it must have been on the weekend because of the time of day haha.

As for why ... hmm, well… I found the Choices app one day, when it only had like… three series I think! Anyone else remember that time? 

Megs:  I do!  Because I was playing Hollywood University I think I downloaded choices the day the app came out.

Max: Awh!  Well, I fell in love with The Freshman Series. Mostly because of Chris Powell and Zack Zilberg, and a long time ago I was in another fandom that had tons of fan fiction/art… so I googled “Choices Chris Powell” and any other combination I could think of looking for possible fanfiction. The fandom was almost non existent at the time. There was actually one person, who has long since left the fandom due to fandom dramas - we all know the kinds I’m talking about - but a few others had started posting their works as well… and I got hooked. Eventually I felt the bug to write how I felt TF should play out as well, and here I am *looks back at the “joined tumblr timestamp”* uhh… 20ish months ago!  Haha!!

Megs:  LOL, when you put it that way it doesn’t sound like that long ago ... lets call a spade a spade - that was almost 2 years ago!  That’s amazing!  You have to have seen so much in this fandom!  What is it that keeps you around?

Max: There are so many awesome people in this fandom, in this world we’ve all created for our pixelated loves lol. Soooo many creative minds to follow and enjoy. The content people share, original or repost… it’s great. 

... Unfortunately it is also a double edge sword ... the drama, the jealousy, the rumors, the hate, etc. I’ve sadly seen far too much and it comes in so many forms… it’s unnecessary.

Megs:  I couldn’t agree more!  If you could tell the fandom one thing - what would it be?

Max: It would be that we’re all here because we want to have a good time. No one came here to get ridiculed, to be scrutinized or chastised for their opinions, their likes or dislikes. Real life has enough of that going on. We are all individuals - if you want to be treated nicely, fairly, etc. you must also do the same to others. There is no reason someone must agree with you or anyone else. Live and let live. Embrace our differences as it makes us who we are. Most of the issues I see stem from a simple difference in opinion. That is ridiculous. Everyone’s entitled to their own thoughts. We must build each other up, not tear one another down. No one here owes anyone anything, now go have some fun.

(The room stands up in applause!)

Megs:  You should definitely stand up and take a bow, Max! 

(Max does just as Megs suggests - but she also makes Megs stand up and do the same. Laughing, they both sit back down.)

Awh, Max ... okay, let’s get back to you.  We know that you’d fight anyone for the position of The Chris Powell Appreciation/Fan Club.  And for those who don’t know, Max has been retelling the full The Freshman series, interweaving dialogue and plot from PB but also adding much of her own content.  MC and Chris get a backstory.  Chris gets best friends from back home.  What is your favorite piece that you have written?

Max: Oh geez hahaha. Um… can I just say The Freshman Chronicles as a whole? I’ve written for different fandoms, and I have original WIPs but I’ll stick to the Choices fandom for this answer. I’ve put a lot of time into TFC. Tons of additional story work, research on characters and their backgrounds, PBs and my own OCs. You should see my file folder setup haha. It’s crazy… I have so many docs, pictures and gifs. Most organized by location (Hartfeld, Boston, New Haven, Cherryfield, etc.), then by character… and on some I get more detailed and split them by emotion and situation.

Megs: By what again?

Max:  Emotion and Situation ... Yeah. I warned you it was crazy! *laughs* TFC was the reason I joined tumblr really. Instead of staying a Nonny and only reading others posted works. I wanted to comment, like and reblog what I enjoyed, while I also worked on my own contribution to the fandom. I had a vision for Chris and MC that had more than the game could give, and I wanted to see if i was still any good at writing since it had been years and years… it’s funny to see how different my current posts are from my first over a year ago. Makes me want to go update a few because they could use a little help *awkward laugh*

Megs:  I’m sure we can all relate to that!  Hmmm ... I’m starting to get a feel for this, I think, but what is your writing process?

Max:  Lots of planning, mostly in my head. When I feel like I have a decent concept I might type out some notes or work it into my outline (another crazy thing I have going for TFC because it’s so big haha). But usually, once I hatch out a basic plan on where I’m going… I just start typing. Keeping the general plot and main points I want to hit in mind, I simply start typing… keeping it as organic as possible. It usually works out well. 

Megs:  Do you have any advice for other writers?

Max: First, and most importantly… do it because you enjoy it. Don’t do it for likes, reblogs, popularity, etc. If you’re having a good time dreaming things up and typing them out, that’s what’s important. The rest is just an extra bonus. Also, don’t give up. It’s easy to become discouraged, frustrated, distracted and more… but remember - your creative cells can’t be running all the time. They need to rest just like your body. Take breaks… go read, play games, hang out with friends/family, watch a movie… whatever. Just do something to help you relax, to reset and you’ll very probably find inspiration and/or motivation to continue. Remember, this is for fun. *wink and finger guns*

Megs: So what do you do for fun?

Max: I actually have a few things I do regularly. A big one is making costumes/props for conventions, small productions, etc. I also train and show horses. I do the same with my dogs, but more for competitions and not really any shows. I’ve always drawn, sculpted, painted since I was old enough to hold things with my hands… and about a year ago I started learning how to do it digitally as well. I run (not at all for fun haha) and play hockey (totally for fun), follow comics and watch anime. I've restored houses, cars and old furniture. I like to read as much as I can - that’s an important one. I also play video games. Something I’ve done since I was young… I've even competed, and won, a few gaming tournaments.

Megs:  You don’t know how to be bored do you?

Max: LOL, Megs.  Yeah, um, so there’s a “few” *makes air quotes* of my never ending list of interests haha. Gives me a lot to talk about with people, eh?

Megs: Not that I can understand how you’d have time for this ... but what do you do to help pay for your many activities?

Max:  Oh like, my job? Well that can be a simple answer… like “I work in software” but the more interesting way to say it is I use my MBA, experience in business, the financial industry and technology to improve and stabilize my customers environment through technological solutions that fit their specific needs. *presses lips together* I solve problems by designing solutions. Bored yet? Hahaha.

Megs:  No!  That sounds wonderful!  Who doesn’t want their stuff to be designed better?  Any chance you could start working for tumblr?  Some of us have a few complaints ... tags ... mobile losing our work ...

Max:  I’m not sure they could pay me enough to help them with all of their problems!  But, tumblr, feel free to send me an offer!

Megs:  Seriously - send her a 6 figure offer!

Max:  Okay, Megs, well now I have a question for you.

Megs: Uhhhh, Max, that’s not exactly how this is supposed to go. 

Max:  Yeah, don’t care.  Your fans need to know ... Hoooow do you find the time to read and review so much?! And I know that’s just in this fandom.  I know you read books and you may read for other fandoms!?  Seriously, it’s awesome. We need to clock your page flipping speed haha.

Megs:  *blushes* Oh my gosh, you have to stop!  Here’s the key to how I do it ... I wake up at 5:30am and read for about 30 minutes.  Then I workout and start my day.  I read in line at the grocery stores.  I read on my breaks at work. 

Max:  Oh my gosh - you’re such a nerd and I love that!  Okay, nerd, what is your favorite thing to do, besides reading all the things of course?

Megs: This show, of course!  And, of course, getting people to do silly things on this show with me.  For instance - with as athletic as you are, I hear you can’t jump? 

Max:  Megs, shhhhh.  You told me you weren’t going to bring that up.

Megs:  I did no such thing! (Meg says while laughing) I said I might not bring it up.

Max:  Uh huh.

(Kris Kross’s “Jump” starts playing in the studio)

Megs:  Come on - show me what you’ve got! 

(Megs starts “singing” along and jumping along with the song. Max stays seated.  Megs finally pulls Max up into a standing position. Max plays along and “jumps” next to Megs - getting no air at all.)

Oh, come on Max - put some real strength in to it.  Jump! Jump! Jump!

(Max jumps and gets the smallest amount of air time.)

Max:  *laughing* Megs - I’m tall!  I don’t need to jump to reach things!

Megs:  *laughing* That must be nice.  I got good at this type of jumping because I had to learn to jump up and gently grab things from the grocery so I didn’t knock everything down.

*continuing to jump around the audience - getting everyone to join her* And that’s all for the show today today, folks!  Thank you for watching!!  Have a great night!

[lackcharisma]

meta on dwight's #1 purpose in trials and how his perks could be linked to this ? :-0

Dwight Fairfield and Existentialism:

On Leadership and In-Game Perks 

One could argue that any of the survivors’ purpose is to simply do exactly what their role entails: survive. This is true for Dwight especially, right down to a stubborn, existential level that extends beyond the trials, beyond the Realm, beyond this entirely fucked up experience. I’ll certainly eventually go into more detail about how disturbing and real and deep his experience with schoolyard and after-hours bullying really went, but the main point of my bringing it up here is this: 

Dwight endured. All of it. Despite assertions to the contrary, he survived. All of it.

Now in the role of leadership? Where that comes in directly ties to Dwight’s exact experiences as the the nobody trampled underfoot; the body left behind. Part of his role—a very, VERY large part of it, Dwight personally contributes to chance, and the fact that he was one of the first. If not for firsthand experience of wandering, idle stumblings across a Realm not fully constructed for this batch of players, Dwight would not have been given any respectable leg to stand on.

Perhaps one day I will expand on the Entity’s willful knowledge of this and how It’s choosing Dwight first was neither chance nor a mistake. But let it be known that I have at least said it here. 

Dwight’s unfulfilling and unremarkable existence might signify to some that he has nothing much to live for; curiously enough, fighting for that right is all he ever does. To the Entity, Dwight’s hungry, primitive longing for life—despite having nothing—makes him a perfectly spectacular host to feed on.

Dwight is established as the ultimate example of mediocrity. He is exceptionally good at being exceptional at nothing. Nothing makes you invisible. Invisible is safe. There’s just one catch: 

Invisibility is only useful so long as there are eyes searching for what can’t be found.

One body to play dodge and weave games with the killer, and three others to get the real job of getting out done. Dwight accepts that when you’re not good at much, the best thing you can do is play the rabbit leading chase. 

And this is where his perks come in.

Now what is the purpose of a survivor’s or killer’s unique perks? How are they decided? No one knows the answer for certain, but what we can figure and understand is this: if the Entity feeds on both positive and negative emotions, then the perks and add-ons granted to the killer and survivor will most effectively tap into the individual’s emotions. 

The Entity takes the natural talents, habits, and inclinations of the individual and exponentially heightens these traits. For Meg, they are related to athleticism. For Jake, they are survival-oriented. Tapp’s perks address the grit and skill required to work as a proper law-enforcement officer.

What are Dwight Fairfield’s perks? When a man is good at nothing, what unique skills can be improved on?

Perhaps that which the individual might be lacking—perhaps what one most greatly strives for.

BondUnlocks potential in one’s Aura-reading ability.We have to work as a team, I need you to survive so that I can survive!“ — Dwight Fairfield

This is just about as meta as one can get: even beyond line of sight, the Entity grants Dwight the ability to see survivor’s auras—and let it be noted that “without his glasses, he’s more or less blind.” Despite popular assumption, Dwight Fairfield was not entirely without relationships on the other side, but they were few and far between. Additionally, he often felt even those were lacking a degree of intimacy, a sort of transparency and understanding he really searched for. To form a real, solid bond?

The Entity grants him this, in a weirdly direct and indirect way. Dwight doesn’t need to know where the killers and the enemies are—he’s always had a knack for spotting those from a mile off. Finding others? When you’re invisible, the only thing left to do around you is look around and find other bodies in the commotion.

Prove ThyselfIncreases the repair speed of generators within range of other survivors“Show me what you can do!” — Dwight Fairfield

This is especially interesting considering the Entity’s recent implementation of penalizing survivors for working on the same generator. The Entity is fickle; one must survive but by certain rules. Finish the trial too early, and the feeding It gains for a game is not worth the energy expenditure.

Prove Thyself counters this: a sort of rallying cry if you will. Dwight knows his fellow survivors and team members possess skills he does know. He knows they are tired. They are scared and bleeding. Prove Thyself, despite the name, is not Dwight’s effort to make himself appear more impressive—it’s to remind his fellow teammates what they themselves are capable of.

LeaderYou’re able to organize a team more efficiently.

Something Dwight has, again, always longed for—but consequently failed at. He failed at team sports. Group projects. Even “team-building exercises” in adult and work environments. It was not a lack of trying but a lack of other things: charisma, pizzazz, gumption. Mere appearance fitting of a leader.

Dwight’s firm perseverance and demanding of himself that he get out and survive means that he’s adapted in more ways than one. Outside of a trial, he may be a little awkward. inside of it? Inside it, he commands attention. His ability to remain unseen, to bow instead of break under pressure, and the knowledge and perception gained from sheer force of will absolutely dominates immobilizing fears. Dwight knows where fear leads you.

Nowhere. Nothing.

He’s ready to get back to something.

If—no, when—he gets out, Dwight wants to be able to say he’s earned it.

[shadowsong26fic]

AU Outlines: Other Fandoms Edition

So I know that probably like zero of my followers on this blog even go here but I was watching Person of Interest lately, and I’ve also been reading occasional Supernatural spoilers, because I used to be in that fandom and I occasionally get curious. Especially this most recent season. Naturally, this woke up some old characters/situations/etc. that I used to work with, which I’ve been occasionally toying with in the back of my head when I’m bored and/or procrastinating other projects.

I’ve been going back and forth on how I feel about the one plotline that interests me this season (and by back and forth I mean I was really excited when I first read that a particular character was back; engaged by the summaries/etc. I read from his first couple episodes, the third one intrigued me until I read more detailed spoilers and then I started to side-eye it a little bit...)

And then I read up on last week’s episode. And nope, all my excitement is gone, replaced by Pissed for reasons I’m not sure I can actually articulate. (Though I kind of attempted to in the tags here on my personal blog.)

...honestly, I probably should’ve known better; making this kind of storyline really pay off/work would require a lot of attention given to a tertiary character, and given SPN’s track record with the internal worlds and motivations of characters who are not the Big Three, and the fact that they’ve been ignoring a lot of their established angel/vessel lore, the way Claire’s backstory more or less got completely forgotten...I should not have gotten my hopes up. Sigh.

ANYWAY this is now officially Spite Fic(tm). Here, have an outline of a Supernatural/Person of Interest crossover.

Starring Nick.

...uh, before I actually start, I should probably get some background out of the way.

For those of you who are unfamiliar, Person of Interest is a TV show that ran for five seasons, 2011 - 2016. Without c/ping the opening narration, the basic premise of the show is that, in the wake of 9/11, genius software engineer Harold Finch built a surveillance and analysis program, in an effort to prevent similar future tragedies. Out of fear that his creation would be abused, he designed the Machine as a closed system--basically, all that’s provided is an ID number (usually an SSN, at least for US citizens; but Our Heroes get a green card number in one episode, and a student ID number in another), and the person that number indicates is key to unravelling whatever is going down. The Machine was initially designed to predict mass casualty events/terrorism and provide the (relevant) number to the designated government operatives, at which point human intelligence takes over. However, the Machine also identifies things like…gang warfare/one-on-one premeditated murder (irrelevant numbers). That’s where Our Heroes come in.

The first half of the series is basically a procedural with a twist—each episode, the main characters get an irrelevant number (or more; the record was I believe 38 in one episode). They don’t always know how that person is involved, whether they’re the victim or the killer/perpetrator. In a few memorable cases, the number was arguably both.

Then, in the second half, a rival AI (Samaritan) is brought online, and the series becomes somewhat darker in tone and shifts into a cyberpunk apocalypse story. With a few regular irrelevant numbers thrown in on occasion as well, for good measure. For the purposes of this outline, we don’t care so much about POI B, for reasons I will explain, but it bears mentioning. Especially since Greer is still hanging around and trying to bring Samaritan or something similar online.

Right. On to some memorable/notable/important characters.

Our Heroes are Finch, who, as I said, designed and built the Machine. For various reasons, he’s living off the grid (he’s a very private person). Using a backdoor built into the Machine, as of when the series starts, he receives the irrelevant numbers. But he lacks the skills/ability to intervene directly, so he recruits John Reese.

Reese, then, is Finch’s partner/employee/they are totally married; a former CIA assassin who is now presumed dead, he does most of the hands-on work with the numbers and becomes known as the Man in the Suit who is basically Batman.

Carter! Carter is freaking amazeballs; she is p. much the moral/ethical center of the show, one of their two cop friends who was actually trying to track them/Reese down and arrest him for the vigilante BS for the first half-season or so but then they became friends.

Fusco is their other cop friend; former dirty cop/member of an ring, initially recruited by Reese to work undercover in HR (as said ring is called), basically runs on a combination of Dogged Loyalty (the reason he joined HR in the first place, transfers that loyalty to Team Machine, gets his moral compass recalibrated, and becomes one of the most loveable dudes on the show) and Snark (featuring such delightful quotes as “What was I supposed to say? Sorry, boss, Agent King is really a superpowered nutball. Just ask my buddy, the urban legend.” Also at least once a season, he makes a comment to the effect of “just when I thought you guys couldn’t get any weirder…”).

(Also, he is, as my roommate puts it, Shaped Like A Dad.)

Shaw joins the team in Season 3; textbook (and canonical!) bisexual compact Persian sociopath (note: she has some sort of Axis II personality disorder that is occasionally called sociopathy in-universe, but that doesn’t quite fit); there’s…there’s really not much else one can say without just like summarizing everything she does or quoting ad nauseum.

Root! Root is introduced as a major antagonist; hacker/programmer on Finch’s level who works as a contract killer, her initial goal is to locate and free the Machine, which ends up recruiting her early in Season 3 and becoming…you know that particular kind of reformed villain that becomes the weird family member because yes they’re still kind of awful and murdery, and they did a great deal of damage to you and yours, but you’ve now been through Some Stuff together, and besides, they’re your awful and murdery, you know? So not exactly a redemption arc, but they’re one of the Heroes now and just kind of stick with it. Like Barbossa, in POTC. Or Vegeta. My roommate (referenced above) calls this the Weird Uncle trope. And she fits this trope really well and I love it. Also, she and Shaw are canonically girlfriends as of...s4 or s5, depending on how you look at things.

(Also, not necessarily relevant for this outline, but on the subject of Weird Uncles, one cannot talk about POI without mentioning Elias; our friendly neighborhood Mafia don. No, really.)

And Bear! Cannot forget Bear. Bear is Finch and Reese’s dog, acquired at the beginning of S2 and the most amazing. He also has a twitter! In Dutch!

On to some antagonists, Greer is not our friend. He works for/created a company called Decima Technologies; his goal is to bring an unrestricted AI online and let it run the world for complicated reasons relating to some of his experiences during the Cold War working for MI6. Also he has a very punchable face.

And then there’s Control, who runs the Relevant numbers program for the government. She is an awful, awful human being (fully aware of it, too; she has a great speech in the third season finale about how she’s a Necessary Evil and why) and I love her so much.

Okay, that’s the basics for the POI side of things. I can go on a lot longer if y’all want more details (I didn’t even cover my girl Zoe or Leon or…), but that should be enough foundation for the outline to make sense?

For the SPN side of things--I’m not going to summarize the canon background, due to it being the larger/primary-ish fandom. But in terms of the relevant AU stuff, I’m going more or less with the backstory I established for Nick for The Promises of Angels and Cartography!verse.

Basically, he was a high school history teacher; his wife and son were murdered by a serial killer known as the Chesapeake Ripper

(There might well have been/probably was some demonic involvement, though not in the same way as I think S14 canon established; basically either because a “talent scout” demon like that one s7 episode was already involved or because the Ripper was operating independently and a demon got involved later, he was pointed towards this particular woman and baby who fit his victim pool. Either way, Nick was targeted because he was the right bloodline and accessible, because vessel lines are a thing even if the show has forgotten that.)

(Also, Lucifer later took Nick to kill the Ripper. Signing bonus. So to speak.)

After Detroit, Nick gets picked up by Meg, who holds on to him for a while for a variety of reasons (information that might be buried in his memories from the year he spent possessed; the chance that he might be a new key to the Cage…) until the Leviathan turn up, at which point she no longer has the resources to keep him. She cuts him loose at that point, rather than killing him (mostly because she thinks Lucifer left him alive For A Reason and until she knows what that is, she can’t kill him).

So, at this point, in Promises or Cartography, Nick just sort of wanders around for a while until he runs into Claire or Jody, respectively.

For the purposes of this AU, he ends up drifting to New York instead.

And, with all that background out of the way, NOW we can get to the actual fun stuff.

…no, wait, I lied. One more note: as with p. much all my SPN projects, I am following Logical Time rather than Show Time. Which is to say, when calculating dates/figuring out where the timelines intersect/etc., I’m including the two skipped years (between S5/S6 and between S7/S8).

(That being said, I reserve the right to stop caring about the timeline later and just mashing things together as I think it would be entertaining.)

ANYWAY.

We open in the first half of POI S3, somewhere between “Mors Praematura” and “Endgame” (i.e., Root is in the library, but Carter hasn’t initiated her takedown of HR yet). If my math is right, this puts us either in S7 or during the second gap year for SPN.

It starts as most of these adventures do; Team Machine gets a new number.

“This one may be a bit of a project, I’m afraid,” Finch says. “Nick Cross has been missing for several years. He hasn’t been seen since May of 2009, and there’s been no electronic activity on his identity in that time, either.”

Of course, when they dig into his background, his wife and son getting murdered comes up.

“Any chance he killed them?” Reese asks.

“No, he was cleared at the time. They were victims of a serial killer, and Mr. Cross had solid alibis for three of the five incidents, including the one involving his wife and son.”

(Shaw, at that point, theorizes that Nick’s number came up because he somehow tracked the Chesapeake Ripper down and is planning to kill him. And, if that’s the case, doesn’t really see the point in stopping him.)

(“Start with finding him, Ms. Shaw,” Finch says. “We still don’t know if that is, in fact, what’s going on.”)

(Finch also doesn’t approve on principle, of course, but that is not an argument he wants to have with Shaw on this particular morning.)

(Plus, the Ripper seems to have stopped operating at around the same time Mr. Cross disappeared...so there’s a chance that Shaw’s theory is accurate, just out of date.)

In any case, they reason that the Machine wouldn’t have handed them his number if he weren’t alive and in range; Reese and Shaw ask Carter and Fusco to see what they can pull up, and start doing their own legwork.

Carter ends up being the first to find a lead—while on her regular patrol with Laskey, she spots a guy who matches the description, albeit with a few extra scars, and is acting a little off. Like he thinks he’s being followed/watched.

Reese goes to check it out, and this is where things get, uh, Weird.

See, here’s the thing. I love John Reese, and he is a man of Many Skills.

But, uh.

Being approachable and reassuring is Not Among Them.

Like. Don’t get me wrong. When he’s in Bodyguard Mode, it is exactly the right level of Intimidating. He just…has trouble turning it off.

Look, the dude is a semi-retired CIA spysassin and it oozes out of every pore unless he works really hard to tone it down.

(And sometimes even then.)

And since this is just, like, preliminary surveillance to see if this guy Carter spotted really is their number, and he’s not planning to make contact yet, he’s not really focusing on toning it down.

So, when Nick spots him, guess what this looks like to him.

Yep, he thinks Reese is an angel.

He runs.

Reese: “....yeah, pretty sure that’s our number. And he just made me.”

(If Carter didn’t already, Reese probably also mentions that the five-year-old DMV photo they’re working from is out of date; Nick is pretty badly scarred, they look kind of like radiation burns.)

Of course, it was hard enough to find Nick in the first place, so Reese doesn’t want to lose him again. So, made or not, he continues following. Hoping to get to a position where he can make contact and figure out what’s going on. Or just keep tabs on him until Shaw can catch up and take over.

(Not his favorite approach, but he screwed up somewhere and that’s what he’s stuck with now.)

Nick knows the angel is still on him--and this is new and terrifying; he’s had demons after him a few times since Meg ditched him, but this is the first time an angel’s found him and, frankly, angels are worse than demons in his mind.

(Also he’s supposed to be warded how did the angel even find him--)

(Yeah, Nick has gotten a couple tattoos in his post-Meg life--he’s warded, the same sigils that are etched into Sam and Dean’s ribs; he also has a standard anti-demon-possession tattoo.)

In any case, he has a knife up his sleeve, he just needs to get somewhere more or less out of sight, just for a minute, maybe not even, and then he can throw up a banishing sigil. He just needs that minute.

Reese spots Nick duck out of sight into an alley and heads that way, picking up his pace. There’s a chance he’ll lose the number in there, depending on how many exits there are--

Nick casts his sigil and then books it, not wanting to stick around and see if it worked.

Reese gets there just a hair too late.

“I lost him,” he admits, then catches sight of the bloody drawing on the wall. “...but I think I might have an idea what our number’s running from. And why he disappeared for so long.”

“Yeah?” Shaw asks.

“Looks like he might’ve joined a cult."

“....really,” she said. “Huh.”

“He drew some sort of occult symbol on the wall. Looks like blood.”

“...okay, so he joined a cult.”

“It makes a certain amount of sense,” Finch says. “He went through a horrible tragedy. He could have been vulnerable, especially if he sought but failed to find any comfort in traditional religion.”

Reese takes a picture, and sends it to Finch. “Think you can figure out what this is?”

“Well, it’s hardly my area of expertise,” he says, “but I’ll see what I can do.”

“We’ll work on picking up his trail again,” Shaw says, appearing beside Reese in the alley, as she does sometimes. “Maybe stop by and pick up Bear to help.”

...and now skimming over the next few hours...

Finch spends some time in one of the few corners of the internet he’s not super familiar with, and does identify the symbol eventually.

“It’s for protection or warding. Specifically against angels.”

At which point Shaw busts up laughing at the idea of anyone thinking Reese is an angel.

But that does support the idea that he’s running from whatever cult he got mixed up in.

ANYWAY moving on.

Reese and Shaw eventually catch up with Nick again.

Unfortunately, so have the people who are after him.

(And by people, I mean demons. Two of them.)

(Who recognized Nick, obviously, and had the same ideas as Meg, with regard to his potential Uses.)

(Only they’d rather off him so no one gets to unlock whatever secrets he might be holding.)

Shaw goes up--she’s the better sniper, after all--and Reese makes his way into the alley where Nick is cornered

Firing, naturally, at their kneecaps.

Except.....

Nothing...nothing happens...?

(Well, except now the demon is pissed and gunning for Reese instead.)

(Nick is very relieved to see that this guy is not, in fact, an angel. Angels don’t normally use guns.)

(Of course, now he’s just confused, wtf is going on.)

“What the...” Reese says.

“Maybe you missed,” Shaw smirks, from her perch.

“I didn’t miss.”

“Sure,” she says, aiming at the demon chasing him, getting a solid hit in the shoulder.

Which....also does nothing.

“...well, that was weird.”

She fires again, this time a killshot--yeah, yeah, there are Rules, but under the circumstances...

Meanwhile, Demon #2 has gotten ahold of Nick. Who has frozen a little bit.

(He tends to do this, when stressed/triggered--internalize things, and just go blank. He was more or less catatonic when Meg found him, started gradually coming out of it; when Sam got his soul back that sort of accelerated the process and by now he’s mostly functional, but there are Moments...)

Shaw keeps firing at Demon #1. It’s not killing it, but it’s keeping it pinned down so hopefully Reese can reach and extract their number.

“Finch, we’ve got a Situation here.”

“Yes, I can see that.”

(Finch has hacked into some nearby security cameras.)

“You have any idea what the hell is going on?”

“I’m afraid not, Ms. Shaw,” he says. “It’s only the two of them, I think--no one else is coming though the police will probably be responding to the shots soon--”

“Yeah, Finch, I know. Reese?”

Nick is up against the wall and Reese bodily hauls the demon off of him to engage in a fistfight.

(Did not expect a skinny kid like the demon’s host to pack this much of a punch, he’ll have some fun bruises tomorrow...)

Which snaps Nick out of it.

Demons. These are demons. Only demons. I know how demons work. I can--

He rattles off an exorcism, as fast as he can.

The demons scream and smoke out, leaving their two dead hosts behind--Host #1 may have been dead already, or Shaw may have killed them; Host #2 was already gone.

“Finch?” Shaw says. “Finch, are you getting this?”

“I’m--yes, I see it,” he says.

Reese is about to add something, but the Nick passes out--Demon #2 managed to score a solid hit before Reese got there--and he moves to catch him.

“Damn it--he’s bleeding, pretty bad.”

“Get him to the safehouse,” Finch says. “I’ll meet you there, and we’ll...we’ll figure all this out.”

“Library’s closer,” Shaw points out. “And you said no one else was around.”

Finch hesitates for a moment--more concerned about Root than about their base being compromised, at the moment--then nods. “Fine. Bring him here. I’ll clear off a space for you to patch him up.”

“Copy that,” Shaw says. “Reese, stay with him, I’m gonna get us a car.”

...okay, I’ll admit, the rest of this first New York adventure isn’t super well planned out in my brain. So, skimming through it pretty quick...

They bring Nick back to the library. Shaw patches him up, while Finch goes over the footage he found, trying to figure out what the hell just happened.

Nick eventually wakes up. There’s a Talk.

“They were demons,” Nick explains. “They, uh. They can’t be killed, not with guns. There’s a couple specially-designed weapons, I think. And angel blades. Holy water will burn them, and you can use salt to keep them out. Best thing to do is probably trap them and exorcise them.”

Basically, Team Machine gets The Talk about monsters and so on Existing.

He admits to having been possessed for a year when they ask him why demons are chasing him, though he’s a little vague on further details. He does mention Meg, too, that she held on to him after he was dispossessed.

He asks how they found him--he’d thought his warding was messed up, especially when he thought Reese was an angel.

They give their characteristic vague answer, then ask, “If you’re...warded, how is it they found you in the first place?”

He figures, at this point, that his warding is fine--it doesn’t hide him from demons, necessarily, but even if it did, warding doesn’t stop the bad guys from spotting him by chance. Which is, incidentally, exactly what happened.

Nick also, of course, gets in the usual number questions; “who are you” “why are you helping me” etc., with the added weight of his possession and the fact that they took on literal demons to try and save his life.

Also, somewhere in this mess, Nick wanders off into the part of the library where Root is being held. Possibly while the rest of Team Machine is getting what they’ll need to deal with whatever Climactic Fight will end the episode/section.

(Nick was a high school history teacher, and this is a really awesome library, of course he’s going to go exploring if he’s left alone.)

(Bear is there to keep an eye on him/keep him from leaving.)

(Bear also gets many scritches and pets, as he deserves.)

Anyway, Root and Nick have a conversation; whether she and the Machine are already doing their Morse Code thing or something else is going on...or...something...anyway, Nick gets read in on the Machine’s existence.

(His reaction is more or less “...that does not even make the top ten most unbelievable/dangerous things I know exist, so...all right then.”)

Finch gets back to find them talking about history or something. Bear is next to Nick, who is a lot calmer/more willing to work with them than he was before. Root is just inside the cage wall, idly scritching Bear’s ears as they talk.

(This is actually Important.)

Anyway, eventually there is the requisite climactic fight. Possibly angels are involved--I know Shaw gets her hands on an angel blade at some point...

Point is, things get resolved, more or less. Nick ends up leaving New York.

BUT! Because Root had a Moment with him back there, and Finch saw it, he’s willing to unleash her a little earlier when the shit hits the fan a few episodes later.

In short, thanks to Root kind of sort of Bonding with one of their weirder/more fragile numbers, Team Machine is much better positioned to deal with Endgame nonsense, which means, first, that Carter gets to live (though Reese might still get hella shot, depending on how exactly Root changes what happens with Simmons; but he won’t go on his Roaring Rampage of Revenge); what follows is then that Team Machine is all working on the same page when Claypool’s number comes up aaaaaaand we avert Samaritan. Yay!

(Carter does still deduce the Machine’s existence, of course, gets upgraded to the yellow box and everything. And, remembering the late-S1 drama, strongly advocates for Fusco getting read in, too.)

(She gets her way on that, too. Eventually. Probably before too much longer, even.)

Also, Control does reveal herself, but doesn’t manage to capture Root just yet.

(Which also means Root doesn’t get her implant, at least for a while.)

But apart from that, we can leave this group to their own devices for a while, and get back to following Nick, who is now past his Origin Story, so to speak...

Hokay. So. After Nick leaves New York, he just starts sort of drifting again, and then a few days later, he gets a phone call.

Which he actually answers; in all honestly very few people would reach out to him this way, and he’s pretty sure none of the things that terrify him are on that list.

“Can. You. Hear. Me?”

Nick stares at the phone for a long moment. The Machine repeats herself.

“…no.” He hangs up.

(Look, he knows damn well what that phone call was; Root told him enough when the two of them talked in the library. And he is not interested in letting another near-omnipotent entity screw with his head. Once was enough. He learned his lesson.)

The Machine backs off, deciding to try a less-invasive way of trying to get in touch with/recruit him.

Why is she doing this? Well.

The Machine’s mandate/objective is to protect humanity. When Nick came up on her radar as an irrelevant number she could offer her assets, she noticed some…let’s call them anomalies. In archival data about him, about the two people talking about murdering him…lots of things didn’t add up. Which is why he got pushed to the top of the list, so to speak.

(I mean, assuming she does put a certain level of thought/deliberation into which numbers she sends her assets? If two come up at once that are unrelated, does she need to decide, or do they get both? This isn’t 100% clear in the show, I don’t think; pretty sure all the multi-number episodes do end up being related, even if they don’t appear that way at first, apart from, like, backlogs from when the Machine has to go dark temporarily for whatever reason…anyway, if that is the case, she picked Nick because there was a lot of Weird Shit going on around him and she needed her human assets to sort through it, because she simply didn’t have the tools or parameters necessary to work it out for herself.)

So, Nick’s number comes up, and even more strange things keep happening. The Machine evaluates, and comes to the conclusion that there’s an entire class of threats to humanity that she hasn’t been monitoring correctly. The fact of the matter is, she was programmed with certain blind spots, because Finch had certain blind spots.

But the Machine is now in a position to correct that. She’s aware of the flaw in her system and, thanks to the changes she’s been making since Stanton’s virus and the other S2 arc plot stuff allowed her to start altering her code in a way she couldn’t before…

She can make up for it by adding yet another set of numbers/another protocol. Relevant numbers to the government as always, irrelevant numbers (within their reach, at least) to Finch and his team, “necessary” numbers (i.e., protecting the Machine herself/keeping tabs on other, potentially hostile, ASIs) to Root, and now…we’ll call them “hidden” numbers.

Of course, the next problem is, while there’s a lot of data available about monsters, angels, demons, etc., it’s very hard to sort through what is useful data and what is, frankly, BS. And, unfortunately, she lacks the parameters to do it herself.

Ergo, she needs a human asset to help her figure it out. Teach her/help her define this new dataset.

(And also to intervene when necessary, but that can come later. She’s got a bit of a learning curve ahead of her first, and she knows it.)

But, of course, she doesn’t want to retask any of her current assets—both because they have enough to deal with and because, again, learning curve. Better for at least one entity involved to know what they’re doing, right?

And so, she decides to recruit Nick. Nick, who has already been her window into this hidden world. Nick, who needs her as much as she needs him.

(Kind of like Root, except absolutely unlike Root. Like in that they were both drowning when she approached them, and needed her to give them a framework to cling to, to drag themselves back to the surface; unlike in that Nick is drowning in a very different ocean than Root was.)

Anyway. Eventually, she does manage to talk to him, and explain what she wants.

And he’s still not...100% sure how he feels about working with her, but...well, data entry, right? He can do that. Maybe.

“I don’t know how much help I’ll be,” he admits. “Just because I was possessed for a year doesn’t mean I know everything.”

“It’s still a place to start,” she replies. “Eventually, I’ll figure out the patterns and be able to extrapolate.”

“...okay, then.”

(As it turns out, he knows a lot more than he thinks he does, which is utterly terrifying; he has a lot of subconscious/residual information buried in his mind.)

Of course, eventually, just data entry isn’t enough.

The Machine doesn’t have all the answers/all the patterns down, but she has enough that she’s starting to identify threats/numbers she can assign out.

But Nick...well, Nick is fragile. Mentally, of course, but physically as well--burned inside and out, metaphorically and literally, by a long, incompatible possession.

At the moment, though, he’s the only asset she has in this area. Recruiting others, from among the insular, paranoid hunter community...is going to be difficult.

She spots something she thinks he can handle, especially if she grants him God Mode access and keeps him there.

He stares down at the text message she sent him.

“...I can’t do this,” he says. “I can’t...”

“Can we please try?” she says. “I’ll help you.”

“...I...”

“It’s a demon, I think.”

He thinks about it for a minute. He can handle demons, he thinks. He has before, after all. He understands demons. And...

(he thinks about the feeling of evil still living under his skin; he thinks of blood on his hands and in his heart; about all the nightmares and half-memories; about how he feels too small for his own body, how his thoughts echo inside his head...)

(he wants to do better. he wants to be better. maybe helping...people like him, people who have gone through what he went through...maybe that’s a start. to make up for what he did.)

“...is the host still alive? When I...if I manage to get there and exorcise them...are they still alive?”

“I can’t tell,” she admits. “I’m sorry.”

“I’ll...try,” he says. “I’ll try.”

It ends up, fortunately, being a win for all of them--the demon is thrown enough by seeing Lucifer’s former vessel that Nick has a chance to act; the host is in fact still alive.

Nick spends hours after the exorcism, just...sitting with him, talking. Helping him cope/process things.

“...we should do that again sometime,” he finally tells the Machine, after he goes back to wherever he’s sleeping these days.

So, he starts kind of sort of hunting after that, with the help of an ASI.

Every time he directly engages something, he’s in God Mode. He has to be, because of the aforementioned damage; he wouldn’t survive on his own.

(Probably, at some point, he and the Machine put together something like the Tenebamus Infinitum forum in The Promises of Angels; online support group/community for possession survivors.)

(Sam may or may not find his way there...)

At first, they mostly focus on demons/possession cases. Sometimes ghosts. But they slowly start to branch out into other areas.

They deal with some miscellaneous monsters, faeries, maybe a vampire...good times.

Pretty much the only ones they avoid are angels and pagan gods, because Nick cannot deal.

(Angels for uh obvious reasons; pagan gods because he remembers like two things from his possession with any clarity, and one of them is Muncie, Indiana/Gabriel’s death.)

(The Machine occasionally considers trying to get him into a hospital for a while, the way Root was--she thinks it would help him--but he’s...managing for the moment, so it’s not as necessary, and she does still need him actively working....plus, he’s terrified of being sedated so...this gets put on indefinite hold.)

During this period, though, they do acquire two more Friends.

First--and I’m not 100% sure how they meet; possibly similar to how Nick and Jody meet in Cartography!verse, i.e., a grief support group of some kind.

Anyway, first he meets a young woman, a psychiatrist. Who is familiar, if peripherally, with angel and demon type stuff.

(Other monsters are gonna be a little New to her.)

Her name is Ashley Finnerman.

(Yes, as in Donnie.)

(He was her cousin.)

(After what happened to him, she started trying to figure it out, and eventually did.)

(...honestly, the forum may be her idea. She definitely joins it, not as a fellow survivor, but as a crisis counselor/trained professional who will believe them.)

(Ashley is pretty big on community building in general; yes, she’s a therapist and that’s a start, but she’s only one person. In her ideal world, they’d be able to draw in other professionals--psychiatric because this is an underserved population that desperately needs those resources; medical (as in physical medical/other MDs); legal...anyway, she’s not 100% sure how to go about doing that, but helping out on with Tenebamus is a step in the right direction, in her opinion.)

Ashley is eventually read in on the Machine as well. She has more or less an actual Life outside of it all, so she isn’t as immersed as Nick is, but she’s still definitely part of his team.

And second...somehow, they acquire Adam.

How? ...again, not 100% sure, but probably one of two ways--

One, something similar to Promises, where Nick gets too close to the Cage mouth for some reason and is offered a Bribe. He takes the bribe, with exactly zero intention of following through on his end of the bargain, so to speak.

Two, some kind of straight-up Fairy Tale Bullshit. S6 establishes that faeries can reach the Cage; Nick somewhat accidentally does a favor for a powerful faerie through his work with the Machine, and to repay the debt, the faerie (or possibly a High Up Faerie who has taken ownership of the debt because he helped someone in their court/their child/something or other) restores his Counterpart to him? IDK, something like that.

...I think I like this option. He accidentally does a favor for, IDK, Mab. And she, not wanting to be in his debt, heads down to the Cage.

This works because, a) Mab is probably one of the few entities that can go toe-to-toe with an Archangel like this; and b) Michael is actually on board with springing Adam.

(Not necessarily because he gives a shit about Adam, but he does give a shit about Justice, and keeping Adam down here, especially with Sam gone, is not Justice.)

Naturally, she doesn’t tell Nick ahead of time--he did the favor without consulting her, she shall repay him in kind. Faeries and Obligations, man.

Anyway, Adam joins them, and then Nick doesn’t have to be quite as hands-on because Adam is perfectly capable.

(Adam also, at some point, makes a comment about the three of them having ‘nearly a complete set.’)

(I have no idea how/if they’ll ever be able to find someone to fit in for Gabriel, but three out of four!)

(Nick finds this oddly hilarious, for reasons he can’t quite articulate.)

So, that is what Nick is doing while Team Machine is foiling Vigilance and Greer and Decima and dealing with their Hard Sci Fi end of things.

Let’s bring these two worlds crashing back together, shall we?

(Well, I say crashing together...this probably isn’t the first time Nick has run into the others since that first adventure.)

(If nothing else, he’s stayed in touch, off and on, with Root.)

(And I’m pretty sure the others have met Adam.)

(Maybe that was where Shaw got her angel blade...)

So, timeline for this. Uh...probably at least a year after Nick’s first encounter with Team Machine. For the SPN side of things...ehhhhh I’ll handwave/stop caring and say this is sometime in the latter half of S8. Between the first two Trials. Let’s go with that.

Nick and co are back in New York, probably dealing with something on their end of things. A ghost or something.

And then they get sucked into some Team Machine nonsense.

Control still wants the Machine--or a suitable Plan B--back under her complete, well, control.

Decima is going after some other potential ASI.

(Root is back in town to deal with them.)

Vigilance is involved too, because why not.

(Greer can’t initiate his endgame there just yet, after all, so they’re probably still operating.)

Nick, Adam, and Ashley are pitching in, because they’re here and the Machine needs all the help she can get on this one. Because Reasons.

Meg gets involved--this goes AU in that she escaped Crowley somehow. And one of the first things she does is try to check on her various assets, so she’s trying to track Nick and figure out what the hell is going on with him.

Crowley, of course, is chasing her, trying to get her back.

And, to round it all off, Sam and Dean are chasing him.

(As they approach, Sam starts noticing a weird buzzing feeling in the back of his head. Like circulation returning, or something like that. He decides not to mention it--thinks it might be a new Trials symptom, and he’s already hiding those from Dean, what’s one more secret? Besides, they need to know what Crowley finds so interesting about this place...that’s way more important, right?)

So, all these disparate parties converge on wherever the potential ASI is being held/built.

Root and Nick, of course, are both in God Mode.

(...incidentally, Nick is...nnnnnnnnnot super comfortable with calling it that? He and Adam and Ashley mostly just call it access or full-access.)

(Nick has the same tingling feeling in the back of his head, but he can’t do anything about it right now. He just focuses on the task at hand, and getting himself and his friends through this alive.)

The Machine tips Nick off to the fact that there are demons sniffing around--a couple of Crowley’s minions. Which, of course, Nick and his team can handle, but there’s several of them around and we reeeeally don’t want Crowley getting access to an ASI.

(Especially not S8!Crowley.)

So, Nick, Adam, and Ashley head off to put up wards and shoo off any demons they can, leaving the others to deal with the Decima nonsense/destroy the drives or whatever.

There’s a lot of ground to cover, so they split up.

Eventually, Nick gets pinned down by Decima mooks, trapped in a corner of the facility where he’s trying to finish getting the wards up.

“What...what do I do now?” he asks the Machine.

She runs her simulations, and it doesn’t look good.

And here is where it’s different from, say, “If-Then-Else.” Slash another way Root and Nick are very different people/assets.

Whereas Root is perfectly okay with obeying orders from her God without question, Nick needs to be told his options and make the choice himself.

At some point, he describes Access as oddly comforting. It’s almost as overwhelming, almost as much of a surrender, as consenting to possession is.

But there’s one critical difference.

He doesn’t have to listen to her.

He can say no.

He can hang up.

I mean, it’s generally speaking a bad idea to do that, but the option is still available.

So, his head doesn’t feel as empty with her in it, but a lot of it is still on his terms.

That being said, when there’s no time, or it’s a very immediate “there’s someone behind you” type of God Mode moment, of course, that’s less of an issue.

But something like this, where there’s a fork in the road?

If there’s time, she’ll lay out two or three of the least bad options and let him decide.

“If you go out the door and turn left, you will run into Control. She will figure out you’re tied to me, and she will take you prisoner. She will almost certainly torture you, to get you to give me up. Adam and Ashley will meet up with my other assets, and they will rescue you, but the chances of their success are very slim. There is a five percent chance, at best, that you will survive. It varies, depending on how quickly the others can mobilize.”

“Okay,” he says, and swallows. “And...and Adam and Ashley, will they...?”

“They have better than even odds of surviving.”

“Okay,” he says again. “What else?”

“Turn right,” she says. “You’ll run into the demon who held you captive.”

“Meg?”

“Yes.”

That’s not so bad, he thinks. Meg didn’t torture him too much, and she wanted him kept alive.

“Control will capture Root instead,” she continues. “Sameen and the others will attempt to rescue her. Adam and Ashley will pursue you.”

Control capturing Root, on the other hand, seems like a very bad thing. Still...

“Adam and Ashley?”

“About the same,” she says. “But there is another concern.”

“Okay.”

“If Meg takes you, there’s a chance she’ll find me. And if she does, it’s extremely likely that someone less friendly will, as well. There is also an approximately 17% chance that you’ll wind up in Crowley’s hands instead of Meg’s. And his chances of finding me are a lot stronger.”

Yeah, no. That cannot happen.

“Are there any other options?” he asks.

She pauses for a split second. “Turn right,” she says. “Then at the first hallway, turn left instead of going straight. I’ll have to leave you then--there are several Decima soldiers, but if you manage to get past them on your own, you’ll find Sam and Dean Winchester.”

It hits him like a punch to the gut.

“Your chances of reaching them without my help are better than your chances of surviving Control,” the Machine continues, “but not by much. If you can get there, though, they most likely won’t harm you.”

Unless I’m in full-access mode, Nick thinks, and shivers a little.

“And I can say with approximately 97% certainty that, when Adam and Ashley find you, they won’t harm them, either. I cannot say the same for the demons or Control.”

“They won’t hurt us physically,” Nick finally manages to say. “But I can’t...I-I-I don’t know how I’ll...I can’t shut down, not in here. A-and I don’t know how Sam will react to seeing me, I’ll probably seriously fuck with his head a-and I can’t...I can’t...”

(there’s this running refrain in his head, that Sam Winchester is perfect, and that Nick is the reason that everything goes wrong.)

(the Machine regrets even more not getting Nick more help.)

He takes a shaky breath. “Plus, I don’t know if Adam’s ready for that yet,” he says. “He hasn’t...uh, he hasn’t said anything about wanting to track them down.”

“That’s true.”

He’s quiet for another minute.

“Nick?”

“...I’ll take my chances with Control,” he says.

“I understand,” she says. “Thank you. And I’m sorry.”

(It’s not what she would have advised him to do, necessarily--she would have advised him to try for Sam and Dean; it balances protecting her with protecting the majority of her assets.)

“Directions?” he says.

“Open the door and turn left.”

She guides him down the hallway, advises him where to dodge, where to strike. He picks up a gun at one point--

(he’s hesitant, and she reminds him “you’re in Control’s world now, you have to play by her rules.”)

He gets to the inevitable trap, where ISA corners him and Control is there.

She recognizes, pretty quickly, that he’s in God Mode.

“...now just who the hell are you?”

On the other side of the facility, Ashley’s phone rings.

“Can. You. Hear. Me?”

The Machine also advises Root that Nick has been captured.

She and Finch have finished neutralizing the potential ASI drives; Reese and Shaw are with them; Carter and Fusco are currently working on securing their exit route, after driving off a handful of Vigilance mooks.

“We need to move,” Root says. “Control has Nick. Adam and Ashley will meet us.”

Reese nods once. “Lionel, Joss, get ready. We’re headed your way.”

“Copy that,” Carter says. “Fusco--”

“On it.”

Meg has realized that Crowley is here, so she’s now in the process of finding her own exit. He’s in pursuit.

Sam and Dean got all turned around and manage to get to just the right hallway at just the right time to see Adam and Ashley piling onto an elevator.

“...Dean,” Sam says. “Dean, tell me you’re seeing what I’m seeing.”

(he doesn’t press his hand. he hasn’t hallucinated in almost two years, he doesn’t need to--)

“Adam?” Dean calls.

Adam half turns to them, hesitates for half a second, then follows Ashley into the elevator and the door slides shut.

...and I’ll admit I don’t have a whole lot planned out beyond that. Also this is getting, like, super long. So, quick wrapup, so to speak.

So, Team Machine, plus Adam and Ashley go to rescue Nick.

Sam and Dean track them down.

Adam goes to talk to them, try and get them to back off.

“I have to go rescue my friend,” he says. “But once I’m done with that, we can talk. I promise. We’ll set up a meeting and I’ll tell you...as much as I remember, I guess. But right now, I have to go rescue my friend. Kind of on a clock here.”

“We’ll help,” Sam offers.

“This isn’t really your kind of thing,” Adam says. “This isn’t monsters, this is the ISA.”

“The what now?” Dean asks.

“Like the CIA, but on steroids.”

“...how the hell did you get involved in CIA bullshit?” Dean asks.

“It’s kind of a long story,” Adam says. “Which I will tell you, once my friend is safe. So can you please just...let me do this first?”

“How did...” Sam asks. “How did you get out?”

“Also a long story,” Adam says. “But I’m the only one who came out, I swear. And...” He hesitates. “They...mostly left me alone, after you were gone. If you were worried about that.”

(Sam hadn’t been, mostly because he had been Very Firmly Not Thinking About Adam for a while now, but he’s relieved to hear it.)

Reese steps out. Possibly holding his grenade launcher. “Come on, Adam, we gotta go.”

“Coming,” Adam says, then turns back to Sam and Dean. “I will call you as soon as we’re clear. I promise. Don’t follow us, okay?”

Without waiting for an answer, he follows Reese and they go to rescue Nick.

(Obviously, S&D don’t listen and do, in fact, follow Adam, but I’m not 100% sure where that would go.)

(Other than they do, in fact, manage to extract Nick alive, but it’s a near thing.)

(The fun thing here is, Control actually can’t break Nick. Well, she can’t get him to tell her anything about the Machine, anyway.)

(Yes, everyone has their breaking point so far as pain/torture goes, and Nick is no exception.)

(But he will physically break--i.e., die--before he mentally breaks.)

(And while psychological torture would be a lot more effective, she doesn’t know what buttons to push.)

(When she runs his prints/whatever, she gets the name Jacob White, which is an identity that Finch put together for him, for when he needed to interact with the real world. Since his own identity is...complicated.)

(Yes, that is a reference.)

(I couldn’t resist.)

(Also, the Machine, through Root, gets to deliver her verbal bitchslap to Control at last.)

Uh....yeah. That’s all the actual Plot I have at this point. But some other notes!

My girl Zoe is totally in the know. She may or may not have encountered Bela at some point, or found out some other way, but she does know.

(She never told Harold and John because--well, honestly, why would she? Her stock in trade is secrets, after all. And it never came up, and she wasn’t involved with Nick’s first adventure.)

Elias will turn up at some point. And basically become something like John Marcone, if any of y’all are familiar with the Dresden Files.

Bear’s Plot Armor may be some kind of magic, and I would not be surprised if he could take on a Hellhound and win.

Carter and Jody. Just...just Carter and Jody, man.

Like I said, Shaw gets her hands on an angel blade at some point. She and Dean probably bond. I feel like they would bond.

Also, I think Dean gets put into God Mode at some point. Possibly as his first real introduction to the Machine.

Like...IDK, he and Sam are with Nick for some reason, Nick, as implied above, cannot go into God Mode in front of the two of them, and honestly Sam going into God Mode in front of him would also be pretty devastating, so...Dean’s phone gets to ring!

“Can. You. Hear. Me?”

“...the fuck?”

“Can. You. Hear. Me?”

“Yes, I can--what the fuck is--”

“Two. O’clock.”

::turns and OHSHIT just in time::

IDK the idea just entertains me.

...yep, I think that’s it.

If you’re still here, thank you for putting up with my nonsense/checking this out.

Tune in next time, for an actual serious AU outline of some kind.

(....who am I kidding, these things are never serious XD)