#and then got visions of the apocalypse coming to get everyone and the universe was like 'you fix this'

[moghedien]

when I tell you I would commit federal crimes for Michiru's backstory from her pov....

[hp-fanfic-archive]

A-Z AU Rec List

Saw this A-Z list of AU writing prompts and decided to make a rec list based on it! This has a little bit of everything, pairings wise, so hopefully there’s something for everyone.

A: Apocalypse AU Love In A Time Of The Zombie Apocalypse by rizzlewrites [dramione, E, 356k] After Voldemort, there was this. The clock is ticking to create a cure to the unimaginable horror that currently grips the world. Hermione finds herself unwillingly allied with the most hated man in Wizarding Britain. (also available as a podfic)

B: Bounty Hunter AU Bounty Hunter by SnippyandSnarky [drarry, M, 32k] Set after the 7th book. Voldemort is nearly defeated. A familiar bounty hunter is picking off Death Eaters one by one. (also available as a pdf or e-book file)

C: College AU Wannabe Your Lover by Maraudererasmut & shadow_prince [wolfstar, M, 15k] Somewhere in America, Fall of 1997 - Returning to University, James refused to room with Sirius in the wake of The Great Cheez-it Battle of '96. They must adjust to living with someone new, Mr. Potter worried they'd both get scurvy, James unsuccessfully continued trying to court one Lily Evans, Snape got what was coming to him, and Sirius was the most confused of them all.

D: Do-Over (Second Chance) AU Do It All Over Again (Series) by DracoWillHearAboutThis [drarry, E, 468k] All he wanted was a way out. A way to do it all over again, and to erase his mistakes. He stared at the crackling blue flames so hard they imprinted in his vision. At age eleven, Draco receives a letter from the future, which will make him change the path he has set out upon and lead him into a life he'd never dared to imagine. (also available as a podfic)

E: Emergency Responders AU Oh, We Lost Magic by nerakrose [wolfstar, jily, G, 4k] The year is 1985 and Sirius, Remus, James and Lily are working as paramedics in muggle London, living seemingly normal lives…except there's really an awful lot of weird things going on.

F: Fake Dating AU Distractions by morningsound15 [hermione/ginny, T, 86k] Ginny sighed and slumped back in her seat. “You’re letting him win. He’s winning the breakup!” “Everything you’re saying is ridiculous! You can’t win a breakup.” “Obviously you can, and Ron is doing it!” “You’re being childish. Not everything is about winning and losing.”

G: Ghost AU Another Day in the Sun by REwrites [wolfstar, T, 19k] Is it haunted? I suppose that depends on who is telling the story.

H: Historical Fiction AU Blood and Brimestone by calanthe_fic [drarry, E, 42k] The Inquisition claims it reforms and cleanses Prodigals of their demonic heritage, but Captain Harry Potter learns that the Church has lost its way and is worse by far than the devils in Hells Below. (also available as a pdf or e-book file)

I: Investigation AU Caught by Phiso [wolfstar, G, 4k] Sirius Black was the thief no one could catch – at least, not until he met his match in Detective Inspector Remus Lupin.

J: Jazz Club AU A Specter of The Night [+Podfic] by writer-or-whatever [wolfstar, T, 1k] Roaring 20s Wolfstar AU OR The one where Sirius turns up out of the blue as a Jazz singer and Remus is confused and still very much in love.

K: Knitting AU Charmed Wool by winnett [drarry, E, 11k] Draco works for the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Department (MMAD). Tracking down an illegal knitter of charmed jumpers takes him to County Cork where he never expected to find the missing Chosen One. (also available as a pdf or e-book file)

L: Lycanthropy AU seventeen moons by we_built_the_shadows_here [snily, G, 6k] “The scar is small, at least,” Pomfrey says, pulling the bandage snug around the cleaned wound. There’s a pity in her voice that makes Severus want to throw up again. “It will be easily covered.” Dumbledore catches him inspecting it, as if mesmerized. “You are lucky to have survived at all,” the Headmaster says. Severus does not say I don’t feel very lucky because it is stupid and obvious. Instead, he says unsteadily, “I want to press charges, sir.” Pomfrey stills, tightening the bandage to the point of discomfort. “Remus Lupin would be executed,” Dumbledore says. “The Ministry takes a dim view of werewolves who infect other wizards.”

M: Musician AU Bubblegum Blues by reachthetree [wolfstar, M, 5k] Remus actually looks down as she smiles, like a shy teenager in a first kiss scenario, and it gives Sirius deja vu. She’s lived this exact moment before. Only in another life. When Remus lifts the bass, Sirius sees a tattoo on the back of her upper arm, and drops her little notebook on the sticky floor. She’s only known one other person with a tattoo like that. But it can’t be… Can it?

N: No Voldemort AU Sing Me a (Christmas) Love Song by andromedablacc [James/Sirius, G, 1k] James is a famous Quidditch player, and once upon a time Sirius was famous in his own right.

O: Office AU Of Tinsel and Nice Starts by nerakrose [wolfstar, G, 2k] Mysterious clouds and strange coffee abounds. Office romance.

P: Photographer AU Rule of Thirds by bluepeony [wolfstar, G, 2k] Modern AU: Sirius Black, star of the university's football team, only wants one thing: a teensy-weensy, harmless little kiss.

Q: Quidditch Player AU our kiss is as the moon to draw by blackkat [lily/narcissa, T, 1k] “Problems, cousin?” Narcissa calls to Sirius, cool and sugar-sweet. She’s smirking, braid of pale hair coming loose, and Lily should absolutely be cheering for Gryffindor, but she can't help herself. As Narcissa turns into a sharp dive, snatching the Quaffle right out of James's hands as she passes, she whoops, clapping her hands together. “I think this is the part where I'm supposed to call you a traitor,” Remus observes from the seat beside her, as dry as dust, though he hasn’t even lifted his gaze from his book.

R: Receptionist AU They don't love you like I love you by moonlightgalleon [wolfstar, G, 5k] Hospital receptionist Remus Lupin usually invites superheroes as guests for the kids. That is, until he gets the unusual request of inviting villain The Canis.

S: Soulmate AU Amare Series by ABlackRaven [harry/cedric, T, 173k] Cedric feels drawn to protect Harry Potter. Whether this be from Dementors on a Quidditch pitch or the tasks of a life-threatening tournament, he's determined to help him. He can't help but worry about the younger boy. Eventually friendship takes root and potentially…something more? Harry feels drawn to Cedric, safe when he is near. He certainly has no shortage of dangers in his life, from an abusive home life to the growing threat of Voldemort. He cant help the guilt that he puts Cedric in danger by proximity. Eventually friendship takes root and potentially…could he hope for something more? And when the end of the third task goes horribly wrong, will either of them survive? A rewrite of Book 4 revolving around Harry and Cedric.

T: Time Travel AU Escaping the Paradox by Meri [snarry, E, 35k] After Harry is thrown back in time to 1971, he has several choices to make. (also available as a podfic)

U: Undercover AU The Chosen One & The Halfblood Prince by waitingondaisies [Harry & Severus, T, 93k] Severus Snape was discovered as a spy mere days before the start of the school year. Thankfully, Albus had been working on a vague contingency plan for this possibility. It had been inspired by the question, “What would it take for Severus Snape to see that he was wrong about Harry Potter?” The answer? Force Severus to go undercover as Alfonse “Eli” Hopkirk, a sixth year Gryffindor.

V: Vampire AU Immortal Claim by ladyofsilverdawn [snarry, E, 16k] Harry needs Snape's cooperation to solve a case, but navigating vampiric culture and Snape's powerful allure proves more challenging than he anticipates.

W: Western AU Hell and High Water by Krethes [susan bones/pansy parkinson, T, 7k] Pansy is the daughter of the leader of a notorious band of outlaws that's been running this dusty old town for as long as she can recall. Then one day a new sheriff rides into town with her pretty little niece at her side who keeps making pretty little eyes at Pansy and -- aw, hell. (also available as a podfic)

X: N/A

Y: Youtube AU real life has no appeal by orphan_account [wolfstar, G, 7k] In which Remus is Lily's roommate and Sirius, James and Peter break into places.

Z: Zombie AU Love In A Time Of The Zombie Apocalypse by rizzlewrites [dramione, E, 356k] After Voldemort, there was this. The clock is ticking to create a cure to the unimaginable horror that currently grips the world. Hermione finds herself unwillingly allied with the most hated man in Wizarding Britain. (also available as a podfic)

Yes, yes, I know. The first and last list items are the same, but there are only so many zombie and/or apocalypse AUs.

[boots-with-the-fur-club]

So, I may not have won the poll, but I’ve decided to continue on the hand lore anyway! I’m going to tag some people but I want to warn you all this contains heavy angst. Make sure to check the tags for trigger warnings!

Start

@daboyau

@phoebepheebsphibs

@littlemissartemisia

@foxolotlfreak

He had been patting himself down basically every second to make sure those things hadn’t left his fanny pack and then suddenly they just weren’t there anymore.

The heavy feeling in his chest started at that point.

He barely started forgiving himself for causing the first apocalypse, his brothers telling him he had no way of knowing what would happen.

Others were to blame, like Warren or Hypno for taking the key in the first place. The Foot Clan, for asking for them to take it.

Sure Leo’s showboating and carelessness were bad but it wasn’t out of malice. He didn’t want to destroy the world. He didn’t know.

But this time he did know.

He saw the worst things imaginable and knew how it effected the people he loves. All he had to do was to stop those stupid mushrooms from hurting anyone else.

Leo saw the look in Raph’s eyes when he admitted what happened. Raph insists that it was just a mistake, that con artist was grabbing at his fanny pack. They probably fell out afterwards or he took it and dumped it when it couldn’t be sold.

What Leo saw in his eyes made him feel differently.

It was similar to how he always looked at him during their missions after Leo became leader.

Judgment.

He can’t be completely sure that Leo wasn’t just being careless. That one distraction caused chaos and havoc throughout an entire multi universe competition.

Leo feels like Raph feels the worst about the little girl he was protecting at first. He was so sure he stopped them from getting her. How they got past him to the nurse’s office, he doesn’t know.

That hand is a big part of it at least though, that’s clear.

Leo feels more tears starting to come.

He’s lost all credibility now, hasn’t he?

Not just to his brothers, but probably everyone there. There’s nobody else to blame for what’s happening. There’s no way anyone else has screwed things up like he has.

His fingers twitch, rubbing his arms painfully.

He needs to calm down before he starts becoming too rough with himself.

Leo reaches into his fanny pack in order to grab one of the many fidget toys. His mouth forms a deep frown at not feeling a favorite of his in there.

So he lost it too?

Pathetic.

Movement in the side of his vision has him glance towards it.

The hand.

That freaking hand!

It has his fidget toy!

Did…..did it take the container too!?

Maybe he didn’t lose it!

It was stolen!

Hope starts replacing that burden in his heart and he stands up.

The hand starts skittering away, so he quickly starts following after it. He’s too distracted to realize that his brothers are also distracted. They don’t notice him as he leaves.

The hand gets into a room and Leo backs it into a corner.

“Finally! You’re not getting away this time. Maybe if I get rid of you the spores will go away again too!” Leo summons and raises his weapon, smiling out of pure relief.

His expression drops when the hand spreads its fingers, revealing some type of canisters between them.

They fall, quickly releasing “gas” that is all too familiar.

He tries to hold his breath and rushes towards the door he came in through. Leo is only quick enough to see the hand escape and the door close behind it.

Leo bangs on the door as hard as he can. Even if no one hears him, maybe his hands will break through instead.

Luck fails him.

He runs out of time.

The room is filled to the brim with spore smoke as, eventually, even his turtle DNA fails him. He finally has to breath.

Contaminated air fills his lungs with a large gasp.

He shuts his eyes tight and covers the sides of his head where ears might be if he had any.

As long as he doesn’t see or hear anything he should be safe until he gets found, right?

Wrong.

Horrific images flash around in his mind until he’s forced to open his eyes to stop them.

What he sees is absolute devastation.

It’s a war zone all around him. Everything is in pieces. Buildings, roads…..people. Shots are ringing back and forth, some of it looking like it’s from alien tech.

He knows exactly what the spores are showing him and it feels his body with a dread that should have been prevented.

Leo can’t move an inch.

It’s obvious to him that the spores are just showing him what he thinks the bad future looked like. The only information he has about it is what he got out of Casey JR. Admittedly, it’s not that much because his brothers made him promise to stop telling Leo about it.

It was impeding his recovery, Donnie said.

He wishes he knew more so that he could tell the loud, nagging voice in his brain that maybe this isn’t just what he made up to fill in what he didn’t know. That this has the possibility of being connected ninpo memories. That this is exactly what happened and is even more awful than he ever could have imagined.

Kraang appear in front of him.

Fear shoots through his veins. They’re not real. He knows this isn’t happening. It can’t be happening.

“What’s this? The leader of the resistance without his guard dogs? They must have finally abandoned their weakest link after you led that last squadron to their deaths. Culling them was highly enjoyable.” The kraang taunts.

Leo grits his teeth.

“Why can’t you just leave me alone!? Why is it always me!?”

The kraang laughs like he’s just been told the funniest thing in this war torn world.

“Because you deserve it. Every second of all of it! And even more than this!”

He can’t think of anything to retort. He’s so tired of everything.

“No last words? Good. We’ve all long since grown tired of your voice.” The kraang aims his hand at Leo, a light beginning to power up inside.

Fine, it’s all fake anyways. This might as well happen. Nothing he can do about it even if he wanted to. Nobody is coming to help him either.

The kraang keeps laughing the more his laser powers up.

No wonder Lou Jitsu always escapes in his more spy themed movies. Death rays take way too long to work.

He tears up.

Leo wishes his dad was here.

The laser finally powers up. The kraang smiles widely. Something red goes up in front of him.

Wait, what?

NO!

The laser fires.

Leo is suddenly grabbed and tossed away into safety.

He tries to quickly stand up, but something stops him.

Raph’s future clone is on keeping him to the ground, hidden behind a broken building where he can still partially see the kraang from before.

The original Raph had bought time for the clone to get Leo to safety.

Both of them were being erased, disintegrated.

Tears stream down Leo’s face as he stares up at the clone who stares back with a smile.

Leo knows fully well that anything he says right now won’t actually be said to anyone.

He says something anyways.

“I love you Raph. Thank you. For everything. I never told you.”

The clone smiles more.

“Big bros always know. Love ya too, Leo. Tell everyone else for me.”

Leo watches as the last parts of his brother’s clone floats away as ninpo into the air.

He’s suddenly somewhere else, but still in this future hell scape.

Donnie’s arm is around his own and Leo sees blooding pouring from a head wound. Usually it makes them look worse than they are and it’s not actually a concern but this definitely looks like it is.

“Leo…..put me down….”

Leo can’t stop crying.

“I told you I’m not leaving you here!”

That’s not his voice.

Well, it is and it isn’t.

Deeper, rougher, far more strained.

“Put me down!” Donnie shoves himself away from him.

Leo falls over trying to catch him but they both end up on the ground.

Oh, he’s supposed to be hurt too.

He sits up and tries to get Donnie up as well.

“I thought this apocalypse made you smarter. I guess you could never be as smart as me, even when they hit me like this….” Donnie says, staying put.

“Shut up! You’re coming with me! Mikey is just a little further!” Leo screams.

Donnie chuckles.

“You won’t even give me a pity laugh? I’m the funny one, papa used to say so.”

Leo desperately tries to stand.

Donnie yanks him back to the ground.

“Leo. Listen. I need a flavor. F-Favor, I mean. Favor….”

Oh.

Donnie’s not making it either.

“Anything, Donnie.”

“Stay here for a minute. It shouldn’t take longer than that.”

Leo chokes back his sobs as he begins clinging to him.

“Okay. I’ll do that.”

“This might be the brain damage, but I want you to keep talking. Don’t stop until….you know. Tell your dumb jokes, even.” Donnie clings to him as well.

Leo takes a shaky, deep breath, then starts talking about anything and everything.

The night sky is clear above them both.

It reminds him of when they shared a room and their ceiling had those glow in the dark starts.

They used to lay together like this and talk all night because of their shared insomnia.

Leo talks and talks and talks, getting some quiet responses from Donnie until eventually he doesn’t.

He doesn’t stop talking or holding until he’s being physically separated by Mikey and some other resistance members.

Leo doesn’t stop talking still. He wants Donnie to respond even thought he knows he never will again.

Mikey hugs Leo tightly and he finally starts crying so hard he can’t talk anymore.

It’s all over as Leo is placed somewhere else again. He knows this part very well. Mikey is shattering into golden pieces in front of him with a big smile.

Leo doesn’t care anymore that he shouldn’t be able to do anything.

He rushes forward and holds onto Mikey’s arm to try to help like his brothers told him they did before.

A chain wraps around Leo, moving him back to Casey just before Mikey fully disintegrates.

He was stupid to try in the first place.

A dumb decision.

Again.

Again.

And again and again and again and again and-

It never stops.

His brothers won’t let him die.

It’s not fair.

He doesn’t want to be the last one left.

It hurts.

He’s tossing Casey into the portal and Leo is gone right after, right in front of him.

Leo is drifting now.

A black, empty void.

He’s even more tired than he was before.

There’s no one else with him. He can’t even be reunited with everyone he lost, or could have lost.

It’s so confusing.

The prison dimension was pretty similar to this place. It’s even more even empty than that somehow though. Probably because kraang prime isn’t here with him.

Leo is completely detached from reality.

His eyes have dimmed as he sits on the floor, against the wall. He’s running out of time for anyone to be able to do anything.

He can’t hear the shouting coming from somewhere outside, not close by but shouting nonetheless.

Mikey noticed first that he was missing and now the others are in a complete panic. They lost him once and now they’re losing him again.

They don’t know how right that is.

As the situation only gets worse, a hand watches, perched up high on the ceiling like some kind of spider who’s carefully watching the webs its made.

There’s already one prey caught.

Three more to go.

[xalygatorx]

Worthy (2015) | Chapter 31, "What Remains"

Disappearing sporadically in public spaces quickly becomes Cora Dempsey's least concerning problem when suddenly she captures the attention of the forming Avengers Initiative, the World Security Council, and Asgard's fallen prince all in one week. And the universe is only just getting started with her.

Worthy is a slow-burn SFW Marvelverse (films) romance between Loki and a female OC. For additional details on what canon is used, see the Prologue post.

Summary: Cora helps clean up New York before returning to Asgard to find Loki and Thor.

Pairing: Loki x Fem!OC

Warnings: None

Word Count: 2.3k

"Ow, my god," Cora grumbled as her vision flashed again and she had to replant her claymore into the ground just to keep herself steady. The world rocked around her and even though it swerved visually and she got the sensation of a tilted axis, she knew it wasn't real. She scrunched her eyes closed until the feeling of being bent in different directions faded, only peeking when she thought she was on solid ground again.

New York was a wreck. She had a feeling it was even worse than just a few months ago, when Loki had been the one to lead the charge. She looked down at herself and watched her form waver faintly, shaking her head as she disregarded it and moved forward, her eyes hurting when they had to focus on what remained of Thanos. Based on the scorch marks the pavement had to offer, she could only imagine he'd gotten away, but what mattered was his absence and the Gauntlet that he'd left behind, now useless to him with the Soul Gem acting the way it was.

As she approached, a dull glow shone from the jewels within the Gauntlet and Cora glanced toward the green stone embedded in her sword. It radiated a gentle emerald light toward its brothers and the gems seemed to respond in almost perfect time to each other, in perfect synchronicity. She was so engrossed in the connection between the condensed powers, she startled when a loud thud sounded behind her, but she turned to find that it was Thor, landing from a flight with his weapon. "Has he gone?"

Cora's brow furrowed as she watched him walk closer. "I think so. He wouldn't have left this behind if he were still thinking of fighting…would he?"

"I doubt that highly," Thor agreed gravely, glancing toward the sky as the swirling storm clouds slowly began to dissipate. "However, it would be wise to keep watch for a day or two more. There is the potential for reinforcements."

"Did you see him?" she asked, glancing at the scorch marks once more. "He was in tatters… I don't think he'll be coming back any time soon, but you're right. Better safe than sorry."

"Where are the others?" Thor asked as Bruce ambled forward, back in human form and looking more than a little roughed up. "Banner. Are you alright?"

Bruce glanced up toward the sky and then back at Thor and Cora before giving a light shrug of his shoulders. "I've been worse. You two?"

"Fine," Cora answered after glancing at Thor, everyone's eyes going upward as the whirr of machinery could be heard overhead. She could've sighed with relief when she saw Tony beginning to charter down the rest of their team from their higher perches, the first group being Natasha, Clint, and Fury. He gave a small salute before going back for the others and Cora couldn't really remember a time when he hadn't had some snarky comment to offer. Then again, they'd just stopped an apocalypse. What was there really to be said?

"Well… I guess we won. Right?" Natasha supposed matter-of-factly, a pinch between her brows that smoothed when Thor gave her a mostly certain nod. "Except now the city's torn to bits. Again."

"Can the Tesseract fix it?" Cora asked.

"It is more than likely what we must use on the ground… The rest remains to be seen," Thor replied, glancing at Fury uncertainly.

Fury looked around at the damage and sighed heavily. "I'm fairly certain the Council will want as little to do with the Tesseract as possible, simply given what it was used to do last time. Go ahead and fix the street and I'm sure us lowly Midgardians can figure out the rest."

Thor smiled a little and shook his head. "We will be happy to help. Manually, if allowed."

"We could definitely use that kind of help," Fury said with a nod and a faint smirk.

"Incoming!" Tony shouted as he let everyone else down, excluding only Pepper. "I'm keeping this one," he commented before once again rocketing upward, Pepper's laughter faintly discernible over the sound of his suit's blasters.

Cora smiled and looked over, barely dodging as Jane sprinted toward Thor, jumping into his arms and holding on as he spoke to her, having to repeatedly reassure her that he was okay. That they were all okay. She noticed Sif nearby, looking all the more worse for wear, but alive and standing with the help of Fandral under one arm. When their eyes met, Cora gave her an inquiring look, to which Sif just shook her head, silently communicating that, at some point, she'd apparently had worse. Cora both believed and doubted that implication at once.

She didn't quite realize who she was looking for until she found him at the back of the group, already watching her. Cora hesitated before walking over, pausing to hug Steve and Phil, who both came forward to make sure she was fine. "Look at you. I can see it now, modern SHIELD agent with an ancient Asgardian heritage. They could make a movie about that!" Phil mused, once again trying to talk her into a field agent's life.

"Just call me Agent Braveheart," Cora joked with a roll of her eyes.

"Okay, William Wallace definitely didn't have a sword remotely close to this," Phil laughed at her.

"Dammit, man, I'm a warrior, not a historian!" Cora laughed, Phil grinning as he caught the reference. When they glanced at Steve, who clearly and understandably was not following, Cora reminded him of his list and kept going, hearing Phil start to try to explain the series behind her. She walked over and stopped in front of Loki, having to tilt her head back to look him in the eyes. "You alright?"

Loki nodded once, though his face—much like everyone else's and her own, included—was cut to hell. "Are you?"

Cora nodded as well. "I think so. After all, we did it."

"No," Loki said quietly, which alarmed Cora until he corrected her, "You did it."

She smiled and shook her head. "No, without—"

"Without you," he interjected, "nothing would be left. We had all given up. The prophesied Ragnarök would have come to be. You were the exception."

"That's a heavy implication," Cora said, her throat feeling a little dry at the weight of his words. Had her random act of nerve really come down to that much? Even as she wondered, she knew it had.

He smiled faintly, but his eyes were soft as he raised a hand to touch her cheek. "You have proven strong enough to carry it."

Cora smiled and gently placed her hand over his. "So, what now?"

Loki's smiled faltered a little and he contemplated that before answering, "We stay here to do what we may as far as damages go… And then I must go back to Asgard and awaken the King."

Cora's jaw clenched faintly and she murmured, "Can't Thor do that?"

"Only the one who seals away the ruler within the Odinsleep may awaken him," Loki answered simply, allowing his hand to drop slowly to his side. "And I must face what comes of this."

"Loki, what if he puts you back in that cell? Even after everything that you did today?"

Loki grimaced and shook his head. "Then at least I had this taste of redemption," he said, though the rationalization sounded weak.

Cora struggled for words, for some kind of answer, but nothing came. It seemed it was only in the hands of the Allfather now, because there truly was no sound choice but to wake him. Loki frowned down at the woman in front of him and all the turmoil on her features simply for his sake, sighing before he reached out and tugged her close, resting his chin atop her head. "Do not worry over me, Cora. The worst is over."

Cora exhaled somberly and leaned her head against his chest, but still, somehow deep down, she had doubts about that.

Loki took a deep breath to steady his own concerns about what was to come, but those thoughts were cut short when he glanced up at their allies, who were all staring at them apart from Fury, who'd had enough of the nonsense the day had to offer. He squinted at the looks he was being given, his eyes moving to Jane when she spoke. "Okay, Cora, forget everything I said before. You two are perfect."

Cora looked over her shoulder and groaned at the attention. "Oh, come on, guys…"

Loki glanced down at Cora with a quirked brow. "And what did she say before?"

"This is seriously worse than impending doom, can you all just stop?"

And despite it being at her expense, she was glad to hear her new friends laughing again.

Over the next few days, the reconstruction of New York City began in full form, the ground mended by means of the Tesseract's reality-bending abilities, and SHIELD headquarters—which had likely gotten the worst of blows—slowly transitioning from disrepair. After being told that they had done all that was seriously needed, Thor and Loki went back to Asgard, taking the Gauntlet and all six stones with them. The Warriors Three had gone back days ago to get Sif and Fandral on the mend and Cora could only assume that, by now, at least, Odin was back on the throne. It wasn't him she was wondering about though.

"When are you heading back?" Jane asked conversationally as Cora helped her fix and contain some of the toppled equipment and spilled chemicals in the labs, having to be consistently instructed on which ones were okay to clean by hand and which ones would have to wait for the Hazmat suits later in the day.

"When I'm done here, I think," Cora said and the stress she was feeling translated into her tone, much to her distaste.

"I would've already been up there if I were you," Jane admitted, glancing at the other woman thoughtfully. "Then again, maybe it's a good thing. To give them some space for a while."

"I don't know what the better option is, to be honest," Cora sighed as she mopped up a small water spill from a quenching basin. "It's killing me to wait around though."

"You know, I'm kind of jealous of you," Jane admitted after a moment of silence.

Cora arched a brow. "Why is that?"

"Because you're like them. Not completely, but enough that you're an acceptable presence in their world. I got compared to a goat within my first few minutes of meeting Odin, but I'm sure you were at least tolerated. Treated like one of theirs, I mean. That's never going to happen for me."

Cora frowned and shook her head. "Jane, you're more than good enough for Thor. Lightyears past 'good enough,' in fact," she said, making Jane smirk a little in a knowing way. "He knows and values who you are. Nothing else matters, understand?"

Jane gave that some thought and nodded a little. "Yeah. I do."

"Good. Because you're a freaking genius and without you, we wouldn't have gotten the upper hand. Don't you dare start doubting yourself, because I'll be having none of it. None. Got it?"

Jane laughed and raised her latex-gloved hands in defeat. "Okay, okay!"

Cora laughed as well and glanced around to find something else to clean; however, before she could find a thing, Jane shook her head. "Nope. Go. Get out of here so we can both find out what the hell is going on."

"Thank you," Cora said quickly, ditching the lab coat, gloves and goggles she'd had on for the past hour or so for chemical spill cleanup. She hurried from the labs and walked through the halls to the exit, passing a few of her colleagues on the way, all of them knowing where she was going and wishing the best outcome. No one, including herself, however, seemed very confident.

Hurrying out into the mended street, which still had a few scars from the enormous fissures which had been carved into the surface, she took a moment to take in the cityscape, which honestly looked much better already than it had a few days ago. Troops had been sent in to help with repairs wherever necessary and even the World Security Council had shown its face in the meantime. Though they hadn't spoken to her, themselves, they had informed Fury that, given her usefulness in the peak of the Ragnarök, there would be no need to reinstate her sentence. One less thing to worry about.

Cora left behind her claymore in her room at headquarters and hadn't really touched it since the battle with Thanos, still sore from the multiple cuts and bruises that still throbbed on her skin. There was a sense of peace in the air though, she noticed as she went outside, and that was enough for her for now.

She frowned as the zipper of her jacket glittered faintly, but realization soon dawned as she looked up, seeing the first break in the overcast sky in four days' time. She heard a few whoops and cheers from nearby construction sites and cafés that still opened to run, the New Yorkers celebrating having the sun back. It almost felt like another little battle won, entirely.

With a careful inhalation that she breathed out slowly as well, Cora looked up at the sky and gave a small nod. "Ready when you are, Heimdall," she said in a sure voice.

The blue sky warped for just a moment before a familiar pillar of rainbow essence rushed her, enveloping her before giving a strong pull forward, bringing her back en route to Asgard.

Next chapter: Chapter 32, "Choice & Prophecy"

[stoptellinglieslois]

Love fair Act 10

Clark Kent human x Dick Grayson vampire no cape and tights but fangs and might alternative universe.

Clark pov

It's a bit hectic but behind the scenes everyone is scrambling to prepare for the play tonight it's almost show time.

The students will finally perform Tristan and Isolde whose parents and peers are already seated.

As I pull the curtain the audience clap and cheer as the stages are presented, I worked so hard on painting and building the scenery all I want is tonight to be a success.

As the first scene starts I get this uneasy feeling about tonight but I am not sure why, I seem to be absolutely fine and yet I have this strong feeling in me that's telling me to look around I might miss it whatever that is it was here at school.

I watched Conner get fitted in his costume squirming not liking how tight it feels, I started walking not knowing what I am looking for but it was here, I am confused as to what I was feeling I felt nervous like something is going to happen tonight and I am not yet prepared for it to be reveal to me yet.

I stopped walking I am being the narrative in the show. Booklet in hand I take my seat on a stool ready for me on stage as lights go down.

My mind goes black and I am being pulled into one of those memories again. I wasn't able to go back into the present and where I was is a complete war zone I am familiar where I am at this moment this is Richard uncle's castle fire and smoke and carnage every where I turned in each corner.

I ran looking for help screaming help crying being hopeless. Someone grabbed my arm harshly. "Come on I was looking for you we need to flee here as soon as possible right now." It is Richard who pulled my arm roughly we got into a room he locked us in.

"Here take this it's poison try to stay alive I can't bare it if you get killed." I breathed hard the screams and fight outside of this room was no short then the apocalypse and I don't say us staying here would stop the inevitable.

I heard howling it was like there is an army of wolves outside of this room. I hear the ceiling crack as debris falls as chunks scatter down on us the dust came down heavily on us I inhaled some of the dust in and cough to no end in till someone fell down a loud thump beside me.

I pulled out my poison the place is completely dusty at this point I couldn't see in front of me. Richard didn't say anything except coughing his lungs out every breath we took the dust came in it was getting hard for us to breathe.

I heard hissing like a snake and I hurled my poison bottled at the hissing person. the bottle shatters on the being my fear is starting to come true it was still dusty here as more debris fell from the ceiling my vision is a bit blurred, I don't think I used the poison right it did nothing for the intruder we were doomed.

I fell to the floor everything was like slow motion a man with teeth as long and vicious looking sank his teeth into my throat, All I saw was Richard screaming running towards me I was loosing consciousness fast and blacked out.

I was now in the present time sitting on the stool I caught myself narrating out loud I zoned out of there quickly. "As Isolde found a boat that is wrecked by the shore." I blinked as I spoke to the audience this is such a psychedelic trip I am going through as Stephanie came in wearing light pink frock flowing behind her as Conner is on the floor.

As she bent over and said her lines to the audience I started being pulled out of the presence once more. As I felt closed up no air was here I am trapped in the dark small place, I screamed and clawed my way out of the small dark place I had power I had no idea that I had as I dug my way out of I had no idea I was in dirt as climbed out.

And when I got out I breathed in air that I didn't need I didn't need air ? I looked around and saw a man tower over me, Light ash dark blonde hair blue eyes shun like the sky on sunday morning even if it was dark, I sprung into action as I fought the man who brought me forth how as I tried to kill him.

I strangled and he pushed me off with great strength and I landed on my back, I got up swiftly he punched me square in the jaw hard I spat teeth out as blood poured out like a faucet from my mouth.

I hissed at him as I charged at him and tried to claw at him I was angry this man brought me back from absolute peace I was in the ground I should stay in the ground. "Joseph I am your master be still." When he said that I had no patience for him nor his foolishness. I kicked him in the mouth.

I stormed off as he chased me and yelled at me for me to come back I ran wild in the deep forest, I stayed there maybe the man gave up on me and left and I was free from him.

I kept walking I was far from the forest now and found myself somewhere, A small village as I walked in the tavern I let myself in as all eyes are on me each eyes in the room just stared at me these people looked familiar to me some how. "Joseph!" I looked to my left a man around twenty I knew him or saw him before I tried my memory for a name. "Richard." I said to him I think I got it right. His name is Richard. "Goodness are you ok they got my brother Tim we don't know where he is." I liked his warmth and I heard his heart beat which I thought was quite strange to me. "Richard get away from him." A man around my height with dark hair and cool blue eyes yanked Richard away from me.

I felt emotions that I never felt before and they are all clustered together and wanted to come out all at once.

"Throw him out."

"Yes sire."

"No wait !."

I hissed at the men approaching me I advanced on them and that's when hunger broke in like no other, I didn't know what to do I felt this gripped on me like another manifestation all on its own. "Get back demon." A man spat out I had no control of my instinct kicked in. "Richard please help me." I knew what I was doing being deceptive about the feeling of feeding rolled me, twisted me turned me about as a malvoyant being and is taking control I was losing the fight in me fast.

"Don't listen Richard he's turned he's a vampire come away." The screams as panic rocked the tavern as people reacted to the word vampire and that's when I knew I was doomed from the start being here was not good I need to feed though.

"Richard please I am not a vampire nor am I a demon I am your fisherman remember." I was playing with his emotions and pulled a trump card as he pushed people aside to get to me I now recognise the man trying to pull him away it is prince Bruce.

Richard reached me and I pulled him close like hostage and swore multiple swear words something I never did when.... when I was alive. "I swear if you come close I'll drain him and get back all of you." I spat out hissing and was ready to attack as Richard stayed clutched in my arms and the men advancing slowly towards us.

I had a stare down with Bruce who seemed not what he seemed. "I will kill you vampire make no mistake torches." Everyone lit up their torches like a cigarette. "Please don't kill me I love you." Richard whisper low as I clutched him closer to me I never felt more aroused and alive and all of these feeling are wrong.

"Then stay with me forever be with me forever like this my prince." I sunk my teeth in his throat and it is like heaven had fallen into my arms and lifted me up into the night sky. It was short lived as torches hit me and I was lit up and brushed it quickly off before it would engulf me.

I dropped Richard harshly on the tavern floor as Bruce ran towards him. "Kill the vampire." The peasant shouted.

"He's breathing lightly." I walked towards Bruce and Richard. "I could give him life I could make life he won't last long." Bruce stared at me long and hard. "And make him like you never." I watched his body grow cold. "Please let me help you." As Richard found the strength to look at me and pleaded.

I slit my wrist. "Please let him drink from me your highness before he leaves permanently." I said to him more urgently.

"I will kill you." He shouted I had enough of this and kicked him away and I could distinctly hear a dog yelp coming from Bruce.

He was leaving I crouched down and put my bleeding wrist towards Richard. "Drink Richard for your fisherman please." Richard grimaced as he took my wrist. "No son." Bruce shouted people ran from what they were seeing but a miracle happened and Richard drank my blood.

He kept drinking. "No Joseph let him go." The same man I ran away from is trying to pull my wrist away from Richard. "Stop that at once Joseph you are too new." Richard took enough blood turning him into a vampire it is what I wished for.

I was pulled like a rag doll and pushed up against the wall. "You fuck up piss of shit what are you doing." Richard laid comatose on the floor. "He is dying." I told the blonde man. "This human is the son of the lycanthrope you had no business here with them." The blonde man said.

Bruce hurled a torch light towards us I was too slow to move from the flames of the fire, It got me good this time and lit me on fire I screamed as holy fire destroyed me up as I am being forced out of my body and into the darkness my body crumpled to the floor and I was finally finished.

But I still stay there watching Bruce and the blonde man watch each other quietly like a beast, A wolf out of nowhere comes to Bruce's side as they circle around Richard's body.

"The boy is a vampire now even in this state let him be I will care for him are ways are more suited for him."

"Your ways he belongs with me and this country go on blood sucker leave now."

"I refuse to leave what my child left me I have to take care of him now."

"He's my son."

"Yes but he's my son right now he won't be good to you prince."

Vampire and werewolf circle around Richard's half dead half alive body on the floor like a dance. "He is not one of you." Bruce said.

"And he is not a wolf like you."

"I swear to let him be by your side as soon as he learns what he needs to learn from me and I will release him from my grasp." As I was being pulled out of that particular episode my mind wandered back into the present time.

While I was watching the play something was wrong. Stephanie looked at me. "Tristan....." I realise Tristan is supposed to show up for this scene where is Conner oh crap. "Tristan what say you." The audience laughed a little as Stephanie is improvising a bit.

I looked around from my stool where he was. It wasn't like him I know I was zoned out for most of the play but this is crazy. My thoughts are being interrupted by a man dressed up in attire I've seen in my thoughts and memories I shared with Richard.

Black and dark blue tights with a bit of gold long black flowing hair like a raven like silk, As the man waltz in the room as if he owned it blue sliver eyes lighted up on me he couldn't help but smile at me his fangs showing only for me to see.

"Oh Isolde what a delay." I froze in place.

"Oh my god Richard."

End of act 10 on to act 11

thank you for reading

[screamingatanemptyroom]

Please Fix the Story pt 26 - The Higher Realm

The Higher realm continues. So close to the end!

Master post linked here

Enjoy!

______________________________

Time passed, but it was difficult to tell how much. Time worked so differently in the different realms. How long did we really spend trying to save one lower realm? Minutes? Decades? It felt like no time and forever. Adonis and I traveled to lower realm after lower realm, fixing the stories, stabilizing the world before heading back to the higher realm.

Some lower realms were easy, if a bit annoying, such as the high school dramas. In those I would often play the “average” new girl at a school. I would meet new people, and was supposed to go on to have romance, betrayals and coming of age realizations. I quickly realized that befriending all my supposed romantic leads instead of dating them, reconciling with my rivals instead of humiliating them, and pushing towards success all together was a much more satisfying strategy. Fortunately, graduating valedictorian with a happy and psychologically healthy group of teenagers often stabilized worlds that had been torn apart by half-baked character design or infighting between rivals.

I took calculus so many times that I could recite lessons in my sleep, but at least the worlds were saved. Despite our success, however, Adonis was often frustrated. He had his own vision of how we were to save these realms. His plans almost always involved us dating, making the high school romance “successful”.

I refused.

He had been a lot more likable since our first meeting, and I was able to consider him a close friend and ally… but I felt uncomfortable at the idea of even pretending to have a romantic relationship. It was definitely a more difficult route to stabilize the world without a romance, but I chose it every time. Adonis pouted and complained, but couldn’t argue with success, and I was successful.

Some lower realms were more difficult. In particular, zombie apocalypse stories were my least favorites. The worlds often couldn’t be stabilized until a cure was found or humanity’s survival was assured. This meant that Adonis and I sometimes spent decades within these realms, working to build armies, or teams of scientists. There was hardly ever any running water, which meant showering was few and far between.

My unwashed self was made even filthier by my absolute failure at using anything with range. Bow and arrow, guns… anything that would keep me out of the gore, I couldn’t hit even the largest of monsters. Fortunately I picked up a sword with relative ease, which allowed me to fight… but this also meant I got covered in rotten blood and guts.

I hated zombie worlds the most.

Realm after realm. We worked constantly, spending very little time in between in the higher realms. Adonis would often try to use those moments to push his ideas regarding fate and the higher realm’s story, but as soon as I rejected him, which I did every time, he would simply scowl and pull us into the next lower realm to save.

It was getting old.

“How many lower realms are there?” I asked one evening as we recovered from our latest mission, rubbing my sore shoulder where I had taken a blow in the last sci-fi alien battle. The wounds disappeared with the realm traveling, but my mind still could feel the wound, projecting the pain long after I had left that form behind.

Adonis leaned back in his chair, his grin a little too bitter to be a natural expression. “How many unfinished stories are there? Infinite, Bel. There are infinite lower realms. We will never be able to save them all. Not like this.”

“It’s not like there’s a lot of options.”

“There are options. You just don’t want to hear them.”

“What, this fate you keep talking about?” I sighed, closing my eyes, tired. “ It sounds like a terrible idea.”

“It’s not.” His voice was quiet, but the intensity shown through all the same. “It’s our duty. Everyone’s survival depends on it.”

“But what you’re saying is: we follow along some sort of script…”

“Fate.”

“…fate… here, in the higher realm. And that is somehow supposed to fix the lower realms?”

He chuckled. “You’re oversimplifying it, but pretty much. We follow our fate, and the heroes of the lower realms will find their happiness tied to ours.”

“What if they don’t want that ending? What if they don’t want that happiness?”

“Of course they do! Everyone wants a happily ever after with their destined one.” He snapped. My eyes flickered open to study his enraged expression.

“I don’t.”

“You’re selfish!”

I shrugged. “Am I? If you’re right, we submit to fate here, everyone in the lower realms gets an automatic happy ending… but most of those worlds aren’t breaking because they don’t have a happy ending. They need a wider world, different ideas… and what about the side characters, even the villains… what about their happiness?”

“They don’t matter.”

“Why not?” I raised an eyebrow. “Just because they’re the villains?”

“They’re evil.” He stood up, trying to tower over me. An intimidation tactic, one that might have worked before we’d spent countless years fighting in life-or-death battles together.

“Have you met the heroes and heroines of some of these realms?” I laughed. “They’re not much better. I don’t think these roles are as clear as you would like them to be. And I don’t think you and I having a happy ending together, and forcing a simplistic ‘and they lived happily ever after’ on all the lower realms will actually fix them. In fact…” I stood up, and he stepped back slightly at the danger in my tone. “I bet we would break them all the more. Are you really so foolish as to think that saving a universe of worlds would be so simple?”

“…” Adonis was gritting his teeth, his hands clenched so tightly the knuckles were white. But I didn’t back down. Didn’t step back. I knew he wouldn’t hit me. He wouldn’t dare step out of the role he imagined himself to be in. Wouldn’t dare cross a line that might ruin his chances at the happy ending he seemed to crave so desperately.

“…” The silence stretched on between us. We were at an impasse. He wanted to follow fate. He wanted clearly defined roles and rules to follow. And I?

I wanted freedom.

*** Soul transfer 11% complete. ***

It’s been forever since I last saw those words… I thought it had disappeared. For some reason, I felt a deep sense of relief at the glowing blue sentence. Something within me had frozen during these many trips to the lower realms, but finally it was growing again.

“The next world is waiting.” Adonis spoke up, his tone flat. I noticed an odd shifting of his gaze, a reluctance to meet my own, and felt a sense of unease.

I won’t like this next world. I cracked my knuckles and gave him a thumbs up. Well, no sense running from a challenge.

We left.

______________________________

I woke up in a luxurious canopy bed. Staring up at the fabric , I raised my arms and have a cheer.

“YES! NOT A ZOMBIE WORLD!”

On the downside, the setting appeared to be a more primitive era, medieval at best, which meant no running water, but at least I appeared to be noble or wealthy.

At least if I suffer, I’ll be clean while I do it!

“Princess?” A young woman dressed as a servant entered the room, seeming very confused. “Are you all right? I heard you yelling.”

I smiled brightly at her. “No worries. It was just a nightmare.”

She visibly relaxed. “Even so, you seem in a much better mood, if I may say so.”

“Really?”

“Yes, you haven’t broken a single thing this morning.” She, unfortunately did not seem to be kidding. “I’m so glad you’ve accepted your father’s decision.

I didn’t have my character’s memories yet. I needed to accept the mission first. In the meantime, acting too out of character could destabilize an already poorly functional world.

“I’m still… thinking it over.” I spoke up cautiously.

“It’s not so bad, your highness.” She smiled at me. “Most young girls feel a little uneasy when their father arranges their husband. But you’ll be happy. I just know it.”

Arranged marriage?

“After all, Prince Harold is reported to be a true gentleman, a might warrior, and a handsome young man!” She sighed dreamily. “Any woman would be thrilled for a chance to be his bride.”

“I’m. Sure.” I spoke through gritted teeth, the satin sheets crumpling in my grip. Adonis, when I find you, I’m going to make you regret every life decision you’ve ever made… and the ones you’ve only considered making. What kind of lower realm did you land us in? As I plotted my revenge, the mission screen popped up.

**** NEW WORLD: A Divided Kingdom****

This is a romance fantasy story featuring a prince and a princess from different kingdoms, putting aside their differences to save the world.

“I already don’t like this.” I muttered.

The Princess Alaire of the Yenlar Kingdom was a clever, independent woman, horrified at the idea of an arranged marriage. Prince Harold of the Bestion Kingdom felt differently. He fell in love at first sight and vowed to woo the young maiden. The couple was different in almost every way, and seemed destined to bicker and fight.

“Then how about we don’t get married?”

But fate had other plans…

“Of course it did!”

A terrifying beast threatened to destroy both their kingdoms, and to survive, the political marriage had to go forward. Uniting the kingdoms, and therefore their armed forces, was the only way to save their people.

However, despite the happy ending, the first book was not well received by readers and the trilogy was abandoned due to poor sales. The reason given was that the romance was “forced” and unbelievable.

Your mission is to bring a satisfying end to the story, while making ensuring the survival of both kingdoms.

**** DO YOU ACCEPT THIS MISSION? ****

YES? NO?

“Quick question.” I spoke quietly to the glowing words in front of me. “Do I have to marry the prince to ensure an ending?”

The kingdoms will not unite without the political marriage.

“That wasn’t what I asked. I asked if I HAVE to marry the prince. What if I can save both kingdoms without a political marriage?”

The stability of the world is all that matters.

“No lecture on the necessity of fate?”

**** DO YOU ACCEPT THIS MISSION? ****

YES? NO?

I grinned. “Sure. Let’s do it.”

As the words faded away, I jumped out of bed. My head spun slightly as I accepted the memories from the poor princess of the original story.

She had not been happy.

She had dreams, ambitions. The Kingdom of Yenlar allowed for women to inherit the throne, and as the firstborn she was ready to take over from her father, to rule her nation. She had spent her entire life preparing. Studying law, economics, warfare…

And all of it had meant nothing in the end.

She had begged for a political treaty. One that did not involve marriage. The Kingdom of Bestion had refused to even discuss it. They stated that there was too much distrust between the kingdoms to move forward without some sort of permanent assurance. Even the threat of annihilation from the ancient beast of legend wasn’t enough to have them reconsider. That wasn’t the full story, though.

Later she discovered that Prince Harold had seen her at a party. He had supposedly fallen in love with her at first sight, and became determined to marry her. He had learned of her plans to marry a minor noble, one who would support her position on the throne without causing an imbalance of power within the nobility. He had no chance, as far as she was concerned. The threatened destruction of their people was just the perfect opportunity to force the matter.

She had lost all power. Becoming a figurehead, a beautiful statue beside the true king, Harold. He ruled over both nations with an iron fist, treating her own people more harshly, much to the approval of his staff. She slowly became bitter and deranged, watching the destruction of the people and the nation she loved so dearly.

Beyond the end of the first book, when the realm’s story ended, she had attempted to poison him and failed. Harold had been disappointed, but felt that she still had use as a figurehead. They faked a stroke, and kept her mute and weak with poisons. A lovely doll. A perfect figurehead.

…is this a fantasy or a horror? Sheesh, no wonder the trilogy wasn’t going to sell. I shuddered, still standing awkwardly next to the beautiful bed that had belonged to a lovely young woman.

I will change this story. I spoke silently to the memories, feeling a sense of relief that didn’t belong to me as I did so.

First, let’s try to reason with Adonis. He and I had worked together in multiple realms, side by side. We were friends. We may not see eye to eye when it came to our approach towards fate and the lower realms, but he had never forced me to do something I didn’t want. He had always respected me and backed off when I said no, even if it made him unhappy.

Hopefully this time will be the same. I thought uneasily. Hopefully he will listen.

______________________________

“No.” His tone was gleeful, but his face was calm, towing with a silver goblet rather than meeting my gaze.

“Are you joking?” I leaned forward, keeping a gentle smile on my face to fool the guards and our fathers who sat on the other end of the enormous dining table.

“I’m perfectly serious, Princess Alaire. Our kingdoms face certain doom at the hands of the ancient beast. The only way to survive is to work together. We can only work together if we trust each other. The only way the Kingdom of Bestion will trust the Kingdom of Yenlar is with a marriage alliance. It’s out of my hands.”

I reached forward and took the cup from his hands, forcing him to look at me. “Why are you forcing this, Adonis? You know it didn’t work out so well for the originals.”

“Careful Princess.” His eyes glanced over at the nearby guards. “You don’t want anything to destabilize the situation further, now do you? Better to act as a proper princess should.”

“Answer the question. This plan already failed. Why do you think it will work?”

“Simple.” He leaned forward and plucked the goblet back from my hands. “We’re different. You may not want to admit it, but we have spent lifetimes at each other’s side. Growing up, going to school, facing enemies, fighting together… we could make this work. It would be a wonderful ending.”

“You know what happened to Alaire after the first book.”

“I would never do that to you.”

“But you are.” I growled, wishing I could punch him. “You are trying to make me a beautiful figurehead, just like Harold did to Alaira.”

“We would rule side by side.”

“What use is that promise, if you are already ignoring my wishes and forcing me to do this in the first place?”

He shook his head. “You have to trust me. This is the only way we can defeat the monster, and stabilize this realm. We’ll save this world. Together.” He smiled. “It’s our fate.”

I threw a plate at him, forcing him to fling himself on the floor to avoid injury. Walking out, I ignored my father’s shouts of rage. Picking up a bag I had packed ahead of time, just in case, I changed into some light armor, grabbed a sword, and headed out into the forest.

If I couldn’t win by a political alliance, I was going to find another way to save the world.

I was going monster hunting.

I searched Princess Alaira’s memories of the legends and stories, going out in a northern direction towards the area known as Death Valley.

As I marched onward, my thoughts wandered over the time I had spent since I had woken up in the Higher Realm. I couldn’t help but feel disappointed with Adonis. He might truly think that he was saving the world by insisting on going through with the marriage, but his lack of willingness to even consider other options was frustrating. He was the only person consistently by my side through every one of these worlds, someone I considered a friend, and being unable to rely on him served to make me feel all the lonelier.

My mind briefly touched on the assassin of the first realm, Liam. I had thought with his comments and actions that he had known about my mission… that he might be from the higher realm too. But no matter how much I looked for him, no matter how much I hoped to see him again, I never did.

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe he was someone from the lower realm, and I’ll never have the chance to see him, to thank him.

I felt a sense of despair. How long can I keep doing this? Is this why Adonis preaches following our fate so much? Is he as tired of traveling, tired of the missions and the different lives? Is he just hoping to end all this?

I sighed, keeping moving. I’m not that tired, not tired enough to sacrifice my freedom. Not yet, anyways.

It took several days of traveling. Fortunately from my years of experience in zombie worlds, I was well prepared to survival in the wilderness. At least here the rivers were clean, allowing me to bathe occasionally. Finally I was at the entrance of the valley, staring up at the pillars on either side.

There were ominous words carved deeply into the stone.

Only death lies ahead.

I stared at the words silently for a few moments, and then shrugged.

“Still better than marrying Adonis.”

I moved forward.

______________________________

The valley was dark, a deep fog settled in permanently, apparently unaffected by the weather beyond its borders. Dark twisted purple trees rose all around me, their roots tearing through the earth desperate searching for nutrients. The valley was quiet, suffocating in an unsettling silence. My presence there felt like an intrusion, my instincts screaming at me to run away, to escape.

I kept moving.

There were no other signs of life. But I knew at least one other being lived here, the reason why nothing else dared to.

The Ancient beast.

There were no descriptions of it in the legends. Just that it was deadly, enough to take on entire armies. And that it was terrifying.

I feel like I should have seen something by now, if it was so large. I sighed, sitting on one of the trees, staring up at the mountain ahead of me. Shouldn’t it be easier to find an enormous beast that terrified an entire world?

…

Wait.

I looked up, struggling to see the top of the mountain in front of me.

I’m in a valley…

The mountain moved up and down, with regular motions.

There shouldn’t be a mountain here.

It was breathing.

I drew my sword, inwardly despairing. I had underestimated the sheer scale of the monster. I had thought it would be the size of a house, an elephant. Instead it towered stories above me, unimaginably large.

I was doomed.

There was a rumble as the beast in front of me shifted. I couldn’t tell the shape, just an impression of scales and spikes. Slowly, something lowered down in front of me, stretching forward in all directions, filling my vision. I saw teeth larger than my own body, the white of them contrasting with the dark fog around us. As I prepared myself for my death, an eye opened to stare at me.

It was a beautiful dark blue.

“…”

Suddenly, I felt relief. It was incomprehensible. I was standing in front of an ancient beast, enormous and terrifying, and instead of fear and dread… I felt safe.

I raised a hand, almost despite myself. “Hello there.”

The eye blinked. I comforted myself that it hadn’t eaten me yet.

“I think you look awesome. I’m Princess Alaira from the nearby kingdom of Yenlar. I actually came here to kill you, to protect my people… but now I realize that you could crush me like an ant, and that was a bad plan.”

The eye blinked twice. It seemed more confused than anything.

“I have a much better plan, if you would be willing to listen to me.” I let out a laugh, slightly startled at how… villainous it sounded.

*** Soul transfer 20% complete. ***

The creature let out a sound like thunder. I felt that it was laughing too.

______________________________

The wedding was this morning.

I was surprised as I drew near to see the party going. You would think that after I disappeared, they might have canceled or delayed it. I assumed that Adonis had felt sure that I would agree with him in the end. That I wouldn’t be able to let the world end just because I didn’t want to marry him.

Well too bad, buddy. This princess has a different plan in mind!

I could see him, standing on the elevated stage before two thrones, waiting. I couldn’t see his expression from this distance, but I imagine he was barely hiding his worry. Alaire’s father and Harold’s father were also waiting on the platform, their postures betraying their impatience.

“Let’s get this party started!” I yelled.

ROOOOOOOAAAAAAR!

The ancient beast let out a triumphant roar as he flew closer and lowered his head, letting me jump down onto the platform before landing behind me, a large, threatening mountain of a creature.

“Alaire?” The king called out, confused. “What are you doing?”

“Hello, Father.” I also nodded to Adonis, who stared back.

“What is this?”

“Your daughter is a witch!” The King of Bestion shouted, drawing his ceremonial sword. “She betrayed us!”

“Hold on, father.” Adonis held out his hand, stopping his attack. “I’m sure it’s not what it looks like.”

I grinned.

“Nope. It’s exactly what it looks like. I’ve teamed up with the Ancient being. We’re friends now.” I gestured at the monster high above us, who let out a grim chuckle, shaking the ground. “So now I make the rules, got it?”

“…”

“I’ll take everyone’s stunned silence as happy agreement! Now, first rule: Wedding canceled.”

“What?”

“What?”

“You can’t do this!”

The three other royals on stage shouted simultaneously. I simply pointed again at the enormous creature.

“I can do whatever I want. The big scary monster behind me says so. Next, the kingdom of Bestion will surrender to me, as will the kingdom of Yenlar.”

“You want to rule the world?” Adonis’s gaze was… disappointed. I grinned shamelessly. “Nope. But here’s the thing: Our kingdoms face certain doom at the hands of the ancient beast. The only way to survive is to convince the monster not to kill us. The monster only trusts me. So I have to rule both kingdoms.” I shrugged. “It’s out of my hands.”

I threw his words from earlier back at him, and felt satisfied as he winced in recognition.

“We… surrender.” His words were quiet, defeated.

“You unruly child!” My father tried to shout, but a roar from the monster above us silenced him. He quickly surrendered too. I accepted both surrenders, quickly organizing the meetings to bring our governments together under one rule. Fortunately, the princess’s years of study served me well, guiding me smoothly through the process.

______________________________

I had one more confrontation with Adonis, the night before the coronation. He was escorted to my rooms by guards, saying he had a request. I hesitated briefly, but allowed him in, waving the guards behind the door so we could speak freely.

“What was that?” He shouted as soon as they had left.

I stayed sitting, forcing myself to be calm. “I fixed the story.”

“You ruined everything! Even if it stabilizes this world, it will ruin it in the long run.”

“Says you.”

“Trust me.” He threw up his hands as he paced back and forth. “Everything will go a lot smoother if you STOP CHANGING THE STORY.”

“I thought that was why we were here, though?” I sighed, leaning back in my chair and cleaning my nails with a blade. “To fix the lower realms, to save these worlds? That requires change, right?”

He paused in his movements, glaring at me. “Stop acting stupid. These worlds are broken because they didn’t follow the rules. We have to follow them perfectly.”

“I don’t want to though.” I shuddered. “No offense, but if the story is going to require us to have a romantic relationship, I’m finding an alternate solution.”

“That’s what the story requires, you have your role to play. You know the consequences of not playing the right part.”

I sighed. “No, there’s always different paths to take. You’re a good friend, and I’m glad to have you by my side, but that’s different than love.”

“…”

“You clearly don’t love me either, so why are you making such a fuss about this? As long as we complete what we came here to do, that’s all that matters, right?”

“…”

“Right?”

Adonis stepped closer to me, his atmosphere slightly threatening. “Why are you so different from what you are supposed to be?”

“What are you…?”

“Why can’t you just accept.”

His hand grabbed my wrist, the grip painful.

“your.”

He pulled me closer until our faces were inches apart. His bright blue eyes were blazing with anger as they stared into my own.

“fate.”

Letting me go, he walked away, putting some distance between us, before turning back to face me.

“This lower realm is stabilized. We should return.” His smile was cold. “The next mission is a little different from our previous ones. We’ll talk about it later.”

“…”

“And next time…?” He laughed, a bitter sound. “You’ll play your part whether you want to or not.”

THUD.

The blade in my hand threw through the air, stabbing into the wall inches from his face. I smiled cheerfully as he looked back at me, shocked.

“Try touching me again, and I’ll cut off something you’ll miss. We’ll discuss missions and roles again in the higher realm, but for now?” I rang a bell and guards came in, escorting him out. “I have a coronation to plan.”

______________________________

My coronation was held outside so that the Ancient beast could stand behind me. It seemed cheerful, letting out victorious roars and swaying from side to side. The people cheered as well, seeming a lot happier than I expected them to be. I guess they’re relieved that they won’t be eaten by the giant monster? I wondered idly how I was going to incorporate the creature into the day to day life of a monarch. For an odd reason I had very little doubt that the monster would stick around.

However, all my plans came to nothing. As the crown was placed on my head, bright blue words formed in the air in front of me:

100% complete.

**** You have finished the mission! ****

It was time to go.

At little sad, I looked up at the ancient monster above me. “Thank you, friend for your help. I wish I could stay with you longer.”

A mournful cry echoed through the world. It seemed to understand that I was leaving. Before I could say anything more to reassure it, the world around me shimmered and disappeared.

Only to reveal a furious Adonis standing in front of me.

“Happy now, Your Majesty?” He sneered.

“Oof, someone’s still a little angry that I used an ancient monster conquer the world. Believe it or not, I’m sorry that I’ve hurt you. But you know why I did what I did. Let’s talk about it in the morning.”

I walked away, feeling his glare on my back long after I was out of sight.

______________________________

When I woke up, I realized that I couldn't move.

I panicked, struggling to move my arms and legs, only managing to turn my head slightly. Enough to see Adonis’s smug expression as he sat by my bed.

“It’s time for our story to progress, Bel.” His smile was strange, twisted. I couldn’t talk back, I shook my head slightly side to side.

“I’m the hero, you are the heroine. If the relationship between us can’t be advanced by working together, than it must be forged in adversity." He reached down and picked me up, carrying me out of the small cottage I had arranged for myself and into the castle courtyard. Whatever drug he had injected me with was slowly wearing off, and I struggled in his arms, finally able to shout.

“Put me down!”

To my surprise he did, and although I struggled to stay upright, I kept my balance and glared at him.

“What are you planning?”

He sighed quietly. “I’m tired of always being the one to compromise. It’s time for you to make a sacrifice, Bel. I’ve avoided this so far, worried that progressing our story this way would kill you, but it seems that it is our fate that we take this risk. It’s… unfortunate. I do very much hope you don’t die.” He paused, trying to smile at me. “Don’t worry. It’s only temporary. I’ll come and rescue you soon.”

“A sacrifice?” I felt cold, even as I stood in the warm afternoon sun. My thoughts were slow to form, possibly a side effect of the medication. “Why?”

He shrugged. “There’s an order to everything. Rules. Law. They are all that stand between us and pure chaos. No one can ignore them. Not you. Not even me.”

“Then sacrifice yourself, asshole! Why send me?”

He shrugged. “It’s your role to play, not mine. Your fate.”

“Screw fate! I don’t care if you say it’s temporary or not! Friends don’t sacrifice friends!” I was furious, still weak and feeling helpless.

His hand reached out and brushed my cheek, the touch freezing my skin. I wanted to move away but I could still barely move, only managing to glare at him. “Don’t look at me with those eyes. It’s not my fault. If you want to blame anyone, blame the story.”

“Ad…”

“Sorry, you must accept your fate.” I felt a pinch in my arm, the stick of a needle as he injected something into the muscle. Immediately darkness overwhelmed me.

“We all do.”

Everything faded into darkness.

______________________________

When I woke up, I was in a strange world, surrounded by forest. I lay on my back, still feeling weak, fury coursing through my veins.

Adonis and I had worked well together, despite arguing multiple times in the past. But now… any goodwill I had towards him was gone. He had betrayed me. Knocked me out and sent me to somewhere dangerous, somewhere I could be killed, just to follow his precious fate. To get the story he wanted.

“Are you lost?

I looked over at the source of the voice. It was a tall young man with dark hair, wearing grey, non-descript clothing. He kneeled down next to me, and I found myself staring into dark blue eyes.

“Seems a good description for my current situation.” I smiled despite the dizziness. “Nice to meet you, Stranger.”

He grinned, reaching out a hand to help me up. “Call me Liam.”

Liam? Could he be…?

“…Nice to meet you, Liam.” I laughed. “Or should I say: nice to see you again?”

*** Soul transfer 25% complete. ***

[sophieakatz]

Thursday Thoughts: Marvel What If’s Fridging Problem

This blog post contains spoilers for the first seven episodes of Marvel What If and also some key plot points from the Ant-Man movies.

Time… Space… Reality… It’s more than a linear path. It’s a prism of endless possibility…

…but women leading happy, healthy lives, without a man’s feelings being the most important thing in her world? Nah, that’s too impossible!

I mentioned last week in my post about the animated Marvel series What If…? that this show has a fridging problem. If you’ve been following me for a while, you may remember that I’ve talked about the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the “fridged woman” trope before, in my Thursday Thoughts about Ant-Man and the Wasp, but let me summarize:

“Fridging” is a story trope in which a (male) hero’s (female) loved one is killed in order to motivate the hero to take action. This trope is common to superhero comics and films. The problem with this trope is that the fridged woman is more plot device than character. She exists to die; the male character’s emotions are more important than her life.

Now, Ant-Man and the Wasp provides a fascinating commentary on its trope. In the previous Ant-Man movie, Janet Van Dyne was a fridged woman – her only purpose in the film was to die so that Hank Pym would be motivated by his grief to choose Scott to be Ant-Man instead of his daughter, Hope. But Wasp gives Janet the chance to unfridge herself. She’s not only alive, but she plays an active role in her own rescue, and she is also essential to solving all the other conflicts in the movie.

If you’ve seen episodes three and five of What If, then you probably know what I’m going to say next.

THEY RE-FRIDGED JANET VAN DYNE!!! TWICE!!! AND HER DAUGHTER, TOO!!!

*takes a deep breath*

*lets it out again*

In Episode Three, “What If… the World Lost Its Mightiest Heroes?” we follow Nick Fury on the worst week of his life. Apparently, sometime before this episode began, Hope Van Dyne became a SHIELD agent and died on one of their missions. We don’t get to see this; we only learn that this happened when Hank Pym and Loki-disguised-as-Fury argue over Hope’s gravestone. Hope’s death drove Hank over the edge of despair, since he already blamed SHIELD for the death of his wife, and so he decided to ruin Nick Fury’s life by murdering the candidates for the Avengers Initiative.

We never learn why Hope decided to join SHIELD or what the mission she went on meant to her. What Hope felt or wanted does not matter to this story. Hank’s feelings matter instead.

Also, as if it wasn’t enough to fridge the Van Dyne women, there’s arguably one other fridged woman in this story. Remember how I said that this is the worst week of Nick Fury’s life? Everyone who dies in this episode dies because it will hurt Fury; they are plot devices in his story instead of the heroes of their own story. This includes Natasha Romanoff. In-universe, Hank Pym fridges her in hopes of hurting Nick Fury.

I was pretty mad about this. But at the time, I didn’t think it would get any worse.

*

Episode Five pits the Avengers against a zombie apocalypse. Now, would anyone like to guess the origin of this apocalypse? Who is the first victim of the zombie plague?

JANET. VAN. DYNE.

Because the writers of this show can’t help but shove her back in the fridge. And they can’t help but kill off all the women in this episode, too.

Now, I know what you’re going to say. “Everyone’s death is free game in this episode! That’s the point of the whole zombie apocalypse thing!” And, sure, you’re right. Pretty much everyone dies, and if you view this episode in isolation, there’s nothing wrong with that.

But I’m not talking about viewing this episode as an isolated incident. I’m looking at it as a part of a trend, and in this trend, superhero writers fridge their female characters. In this episode, the axed women include Sharon Carter, Okoye, and, once again, HOPE VAN DYNE.

I admit that Hope gets a great speech about her emotions and motivations before she sacrifices herself. She steps up and demands the right to be the hero of her own story. However, her death is ultimately framed as an emotional motivator for Peter – her final words are to tell Peter to “keep smiling.” Later, we get a second round of Hope’s death being about a man’s feelings, when Scott-in-the-jar sees and reacts to her giant zombie form, and Peter comforts him.

(Tell me, What If, why is it possible for Scott Lang to survive as a head in a jar, but not possible for any woman to survive this episode?)

I don’t want to spend too much time on this episode, but we could also talk about Wanda Maximoff. We don’t know what she wants or how she feels, since she’s, you know, a zombie. But her zombification provides Vision’s motivation for all the villainous decisions he makes in this episode. The show also makes a point of saying that zombie-Wanda is just too darn powerful, and so there’s no way for Vision to cure her like he cured Scott-in-a-jar. I guess fridged women just can’t get a miraculous cure.

*

Actually, wait – let’s talk a little more about this show’s claim that there’s no miraculous way to save a fridged woman.

Episode Four, “What If… Doctor Strange Lost His Heart Instead of His Hands?” is basically “Fridged Woman: The Episode.” It is stated in dialogue that Dr. Christine Palmer must die because her death motivates Strange to become a sorcerer. The whole point of the episode is that Strange cannot save her and that he is wrong to try. If Christine doesn’t die, then the universe ends.

This tells me that the writers of this show know what they’re doing. They know what fridging is. They can use the trope and even provide meta-commentary on it. But they don’t seem to have any interest in moving beyond it, even though they could.

Because here’s the thing – I know how Strange could have saved Christine. The Ancient One says that Christine’s death is the only reason why Strange seeks out the mystic arts… but that’s not true. We all know that’s not true. Even the title of this episode knows that that’s not true. Strange would be motivated to seek out the mystic arts if he lost his hands.

What if the Doctor Strange of this reality went back in time, ruined his relationship with Christine so she wouldn’t want to go with him that night, and got himself horrifically injured in the car crash? He’d be prioritizing her life over his own, making sure that she got to live her own life, and he would preserve the timeline by creating the events of the canon movie.

It could have happened. This show is supposed to be a prism of endless possibility. It could be a show about moving beyond tired tropes and exploring new options. But instead, What If doubles down on the idea that the woman must die.

*

At this point, you might say, “Okay, Sophie, but not every episode of What If fridges its women! Did you forget that the very first episode of this show is all about Peggy Carter?”

Here’s the thing: even when the women live, their feelings matter less to the plot than the men’s.

If you want to hear about that, come back next week. This Thursday Thoughts is way too long, and I need a break.

Be good to yourself, be kind to each other, and you’ll hear from me again soon!

[uhlikzsuzsanna]

SPOILER WARNING: Do not read if you haven’t seen all of Season 1 of “Loki,” currently streaming on Disney Plus.

Ever since “Loki” first premiered in June, Kate Herron, who directed all six episodes of the Marvel Studios series, has had to pretend like she knew far less than she really does. For one, she couldn’t acknowledge that the homages to sci-fi classics like “Blade Runner” and “Brazil” that she’d baked into the elaborate sets for the Time Variance Authority — the cosmic bureaucracy tasked with maintaining the sacred timeline — were “meant to be sinister” rather than just “playful and quirky.”

For another, Herron was delighted to see fans theorizing after the very first episode that Kang the Conqueror — a character already set to appear in the Marvel Studios feature “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” as played by Jonathan Majors — was really pulling the strings of the TVA. But until the finale streamed last Wednesday, she couldn’t even hint that those fans were only half right: Majors does play the mastermind of the TVA, but he’s a variant of Kang referred to as He Who Remains. It’s only after He Who Remains encounters Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and his female variant counterpart Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino), and Sylvie plunges a blade into his heart, that the multiverse is reborn, creating the possibility for Kang the Conqueror to emerge.

Again, though: Herron couldn’t acknowledge any of that, even to those closest to her.

“Nothing has prepared me better for working with Marvel than playing tabletop games with my friends,” she says with a laugh. “It definitely taught me how to have a good poker face. You have to hide your hand — and sometimes lie.”

Now, thankfully, all of that is behind her — as is “Loki” itself. Despite receiving widespread acclaim for her assured, ambitious, and visually sumptuous work directing the show, Herron says she has decided not to return for Season 2 of the series.

“I gave it everything — in my soul, in my heart, everything,” she says. “I feel so proud of the work we’ve done. And yeah, I’ll be enjoying Season 2 as a fan.”

She’s quick to sing the praises of everyone she worked with at Marvel, and she says she’s “sure” she’ll work again with the studio. For now, however, she’s ready to take a holiday, and then turn to a project she’s writing herself “that’s really close to my heart that I really want to make.”

“It’s my own decision, but I just feel like my part with ‘Loki’ is finished now and I’m just excited to see where his story goes,” she says.

Before she parts ways for good, however, Herron spoke with Variety about bringing Jonathan Majors into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, what she thought of the shocking revelation about infinity stones and what she would like to see happen in Season 2.

She always knew “Loki” would introduce Kang and the Multiverse…

From the very start, Herron says, she and head writer Michael Waldron knew that their six-episode run of “Loki” would always end with Loki and Sylvie meeting He Who Remains at his citadel, the result of which would cause the creation of the multiverse.

As Episode 6 makes clear, both of these events were massive turning points for the future of the MCU — and Herron still can’t quite believe she got to be the one to make them a reality.

“We were just, like, waiting to be told, ‘Actually, guys, we’ve had a change [of heart],'” Herron says. Instead, Herron says she and “Quantumania” director Peyton Reed participated in casting Majors in the role.

“I was just like, pinch me,” she says. “I can’t believe I was at the table for that, because I know it was such a big decision for them all.”

Herron also decided to have Majors provide the voices for all three “Timekeepers” who are supposedly at the head of the TVA, but are revealed by Sylvie to be nothing more than “mindless androids.”

“We didn’t have someone cast for those voices,” she says. “I remember thinking, well, ‘Wizard of Oz’ is clearly a reference for us. We should have the wizard. It’d be great if it’s Jonathan. So we sent him all the art of the timekeepers. And he just kind of came up with these incredible voices for each of them.”

…but not with a cliffhanger.

The most significant decision of the season, though, may be that it ends with a giant cliffhanger, when Loki discovers he’s in a brand new reality for the TVA in which Mobius (Owen Wilson) and Hunter B-15 (Wunmi Mosaku) don’t even recognize him. But while Herron knew how this season of “Loki” would end, at first, she did not know that there would be any more seasons after it.

“When I started, there wasn’t a discussion of Season 2, exactly,” she says. “It was just that season of ‘Loki.’ As we got deeper into production, everyone was very happy, and obviously there’s so much to explore with Loki. It felt like we should continue the story. So I think the cliffhanger ending came in later in the process.”

Herron says she sprinkled in some hints to viewers that Loki is in a new timeline, like redressing sets to look slightly off, and recasting Eugene Cordero’s TVA receptionist Casey as a hunter headed to the armory in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment. But her favorite bit is that the final line — said by Mobius to Loki — is the same as the first line spoken in the show, by a woman in the Gobi desert, also to Loki: “Who are you?”

“That was kind of the question of the whole first season,” Herron says.

She was just as shocked about the Infinity Stones as everyone else.

In the first episode, Loki discovers to his horror that not only does his magic not work inside the TVA, but Infinity Stones — heretofore believed to be the most powerful objects in the known universe — are just inert rocks there. The revelation sent shockwaves across the Marvel fandom; Herron was right there with them.

“That was in Michael’s script when I first got it to pitch [for the directing job],” she says. “I remember being like, ‘WHAT?! You put me through so much!’ But then I thought, ‘Oh, it’s kind of genius, because it shows how powerful the TVA are. Who are these people? What is this place?'”

Herron especially appreciated how her shock — and the audience’s — mirrored Loki’s own as the rug gets pulled out from under him. “I was quite excited by it,” she says. “It really shows you that there’s a new power in the MCU — and it’s not what we we spent the last decade dedicating our lives to.”

She told Kevin Feige she wanted gender parity among her crew.

Prior to “Loki,” Herron’s most high profile job was directing the second half of the first season of the Netflix dramedy “Sex Education.” She got the “Loki” job thanks to a 60-page pitch memo that filled out just about every detail of the world of the show. After hiring her, she says Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige asked her, “What are your terms?”

“This was the first time I was gonna get to hire my heads of department on a television show I worked on,” she says. “I was like, I’d really love [the crew] to be 50/50 across gender.”

Herron says she wasn’t out to fill any jobs on the film with a specific gender. But, she says, “There aren’t enough women in these roles. They’re out there. It’s a lack of opportunity. It’s not a lack of interest.”

She did end up hiring two women for critical roles that are still rarely occupied by women: cinematographer Autumn Durald (“The Sun Is Also a Star”) and composer Natalie Holt (History’s “Knightfall”).

“I felt like she was inside my mind,” Herron says of Durald. “We have the same taste. And I love the way that she talks about light as a character.”

Herron hired Holt unusually early for a composer, after she’d completed editing the first episode during the pandemic shutdown. She knew that the particular sci-fi film noir look of the show that she was developing with Durald needed similarly unique music, and she liked that part of Holt’s pitch was focusing on Loki’s identity as a character.

“Her music then started to inspire how I wanted to shoot other scenes,” Herron says. She’s especially enamored of Holt’s vision for her dynamic and foreboding theme for the TVA.

“She was like, ‘Oh, let’s have that theme be Kang’s’ — well, He Who Remains, I guess, in our show. But I hope that will go on to be Kang’s theme. That was the real fun of it is that you feel like he’s really played a hand now across the whole show, because you realize that music is his music.”

Herron, Durald, and Holt all deliver distinctive and superlative work that’s nothing like the MCU has quite seen before — and nothing quite like anything previously in their careers, either. And that’s entirely the point.

“I think for us, it was about just showing people what we could do and that we could do it at this level,” Herron says.

The episode in which Loki comes out as bisexual was inspired by Alfonso Cuarón and Richard Linklater.

Every episode of “Loki” features multiple extended scenes of two characters just talking to one another, a rarity in a comic book production. Herron says that cutting Episode 1 together during the pandemic lockdown and seeing the scenes between Loki and Mobius (Owen Wilson) play out so well “definitely gave us confidence” to continue that rhythm for the rest of the show.

That was especially true for Episode 3. Written by Bisha K. Ali (who went on to create the upcoming Marvel Studios series “Ms. Marvel”), the episode is essentially an extended meet-cute between Loki and Sylvie as they get to know each other on a planet doomed for total annihilation.

“Bisha’s reference was ‘Before Sunrise’ and ‘Children of Men,'” says Herron. “And it lit my brain on fire. It was kind of weird. It was almost like a bottle episode in the sense that we’re just with the two characters, but obviously, it’s Marvel, right? So they’re bonding in this Apocalypse, which also feels very Loki at the same time.”

That episode is best known for making Marvel Studios history, when Loki casually mentions that he’s had dalliances with both men and women. Herron says that when she first interviewed for the job, she asked if the show was going to acknowledge Loki’s sexuality, which had long been established in the comics as bisexual or pansexual.

“I think everyone wanted to acknowledge it,” she says. “It was just really about giving a care and consideration and doing it in the right way. I think everyone knew it was gonna be quite a big moment. So it was just really about doing it in a way that felt respectful. And honoring it.”

Herron also confirms what many fans had suspected, that she deliberately made the lighting scheme for the scene evoke the blue, purple and red of the bisexual flag. “We knew what we were doing with that scene,” she says with a smile.

She has a lot of ideas for what she’d like to see in Season 2.

Since Herron will be watching Season 2 of “Loki” only “as a fan,” she is also free to wildly speculate as to what she’d most like to see happen — like how, wherever Loki story leads, “we’ve opened the door” for the character to explore his sexuality with men as well as women.

Otherwise? She says she wants to know where Judge Ravonna Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) goes to when she leaves the TVA in search, she tells Mobius, of “free will.”

“I love her,” Herron says. “Gugu used to always call her an indoor girl, which made me laugh, but she is. She’s in the office, but she used to be this kick-ass Hunter. So I’m like, Okay, well, where’s her path going?”

Herron is also keen to learn more about Hunter B-15’s backstory — since she deliberately decided to hide it in the scene in Episode 4 when Sylvie shows B-15 her repressed memories as a variant.

“I was like, we shouldn’t see her memories,” Herron says. “It’s a character that thought they had power and realizes they have no power. It felt really powerful to at least give her some power in that scenario. The memories are private. They’re hers.” She pauses. “Also as a fan, I’m like, ‘Oh my God, who is she?!'”

“And obviously, you know, Loki and Sylvie?” Herron continues, on a roll. “He’s in a completely different reality. What’s going to happen to him? How will he get back? Or will he get back? And where’s Sylvie? She’s still in the Citadel? And the multiverse of it all. What the hell is going to happen?!”

Herron chuckles at her own excitement. “So I think there’s so many questions to be answered, and so much more road to travel with all our characters,” she says. “You know, I’m really proud that I got to set up Loki’s story here. But there’s so many different aspects of his identity and personality that’s yet to be explored. I’m excited to see where it goes.”

[fakecrfan]

Since you very nicely offered to write me a fic:

Your prompt is: A story about a background character or characters dealing with life after the TMA apocalypse.

It can be set in the OG TMA universe in the post-post-apocalypse, or it can also be set in a different universe that was affected by the events of MAG 200.

Both OCs and characters established in-show are allowed.

This one aligned so well with my interests that I am actually tempted to open my inbox, briefly, in case anyone else has questions like “what is X bavjground character doing after the apocalypse?” so I can make a series out of it and expand on my post-post-apocalypse headcanons.

For now, you can read your fic here, on over here on AO3

---

Sarah doesn't know where she is.

England, she has to still be in England, she thinks. But it's not an England she recognizes. Not the cobblestone streets of London, and not the moors she used to visit on her vacations. The ground is barren, as though all blades of grass but a few have shriveled up and died. There are no trees, houses, or landmarks for miles--just scorched remnants of where they might have been before.

For a moment, the emptiness of it all is a relief after the hotel. But everything is the same on all sides, and she doesn't know where she is or where to go. She's starting to get hungry, too. She never got hungry in the hotel, nightmarish as it was.

She has to sit down for a moment, take a few deep breaths, and think.

Get food. Find shelter. Survive.

Find Alex.

(God, why had she left her child in a hotel room? Little twelve year old Alex who was still afraid to sleep without a night light. He'd begged her to stay, she should have--)

With that in mind she gets up. Doesn't know what direction to walk in, so she doesn't concern herself with trying to pick one. There's nothing to do but walk, keep her eyes open, and hope.

So she hopes.

---

None of our old maps match the landscape, anymore.

The world these days it's... not like in the before times, as I suppose we're calling it. Despite our hopes, ending the apocalypse wasn’t like everyone waking up from a nightmare. The land is...

It's scrambled, I guess. There are patches of the world that--well. They're not the same, but still have infrastructure intact. Electricity, running water, air conditioning. No scorched earth or rubble in these areas. Just a bunch of traumatized people living in an intact town, or city.

When I talk to them, they tell me it's not the city they remember, though. Everything has been switched around, houses and stores not where they remember them. Their neighbors aren't the neighbors their remember.

Those are the lucky ones. And then there's, well... the outside.

Some places have rubble everywhere, jagged steel ripped apart and waiting for someone to cut themselves on it. Some are frozen over, still waiting for the ice they were frozen over with in the apocalypse to melt. Some are scorched to dust. No phones out there, or anything that lets you connect back with home base.

I'm going out there. We need to map it out. We need to figure out our new world, understand it--and we need to get as many people out of the wastes as possible.

Melanie, Georgie--I’ll see you soon.

---

Sarah does find water. That's something. She's hungry still, so hungry, but she knows that the water is more important.

She wonders if she should stay there. She doesn't know if there will be more watering holes in the future, after all, and she has no way to carry it with her. She decides to keep moving on, and hope for the best.

She starts to see blades of grass poking up, along with some sort of metal crap strewn about the landscape. She looks at them a moment--it seems to be bits of an old carousel? Eventually, a giant sit in their shade, for a while. There she takes a moment to look at the horizon, and goes cold.

She recognizes the tower on the horizon.

A  scaffolded tower with two legs beneath it. A sight she'd last seen on a postcard from her brother. The Eiffel Tower.

Is she in Paris? No, that can't be it. It's just the tower out here in the wastes. There are none of the buildings that would normally surround it. It's almost as though its been ripped out of the city and transported here.

Does Paris even exist anymore? Does London?

If she even finds Alex, will there be a home for them to go back to?

---

I have a theory, Melanie. I think lots of people got transported to different places in the world based on what fear they belonged to. Like, a bunch of lonely people were put in the same place, a bunch of claustrophobic people were put in the same place, and so on. All away from the people they knew.

I’m in one of the suburban safe areas now. No one here knows each other. I talked to them all, and all of them remember living in the same house before, but none of them recognized the houses near them or the people in them. When I went from house to house, everyone had a different native language. I talked to a German guy and a French guy who spoke English, but a lot of them… couldn’t talk to me at all.

There was a woman who--she saw me and she lit up. She grabbed me and started talking a mile a minute in Arabic, I think. But I couldn’t understand her, and she--when I tried to talk back to her in English, her face just. Fell. And then she started to cry.

My dad refused to speak it at home, you know. He-- Actually, never mind. It’s not important. 

She ended up shoving me away.

---

Sarah makes it to the ruins of a forest. 

There’s nothing but stumps left of it, along with litter everywhere. She finds water again, filthy brackish water, and she drinks it anyway because she’s so thirsty. She starts sifting through all of the garbage strewn about for something edible. She finds stale bread crusts crawling with ant and eats them anyway. 

She finds a can of beans, and almost cries. When she can’t find a can opener, she screams instead.

---

The death count has gotten to me, honestly.

I’ve found dead bodies even in the towns and cities. Some looked like heart attacks. Some suicides. People who woke up but couldn’t bear the agony they’d just gone through. That’s still not… the worst of it.

I passed a whole field of dead bodies today.

Hundreds of people, I think, all of them lying dead in the soil. But there were... trails. They had been walking, before they collapsed. All walking in the same direction, to where you can still see London on the horizon.

They were alive. They were trying to get help. And they just... starved, it looks like. The walk was just too long.

How many people are going to die from it all, Melanie? How many already have, out where we can't see them?

I left as many jugs of clean water and rations along the roads as I could. I put up signs pointing to London, saying how many miles out they were, where I had stashed food. I gave them your number, so they know who to call to get to the shelter.

I hope it means the next group that passes by won't die.

I hope there is a next group.

---

Sarah can see what looks like a city in the distance before she collapses. 

She tries to get up, but can’t. She’s been walking for days now, it feels like, only sporadically drinking and almost never eating.  There just isn’t enough energy left in her to stand.

She tries to think about little Alex again, running around in his Batman cape, hoping some kind of love or maternal instinct will kick in and give her the last burst of adrenaline she needs to get up. It doesn’t work. Maybe she doesn’t love her own son anymore, really. Maybe it’s just been fear and guilt driving her this far, and that source has already been wrung dry. 

She manages to crawl a few feet, before she can’t even do that. With nothing else left to do, she starts to cry out. “Help! Water, please!” 

She doesn’t think anyone will hear, or show up. But against all odds, in her dimming vision she sees a figure come into view. Backpacked, clutching a water bottle. 

“Help,” she croaks out again. 

The figure gets closer, and she starts to be able to make out the details of his face. He’s her age, or older, with worry lines carved into his forehead and wide eyes. His nose looks eerily like her brother’s nose, and the shape of his jaw reminds her of her old boyfriend, the one who left her with--

She blinks. Maybe she’s hallucinating, or maybe she’s somehow run into a long lost cousin. But then, the man’s eye’s widen and his mouth opens.

“Mum?”

No, no it can’t…

“A-alex?”

No, Alex was a little round cheeked boy. This is a thirty year old man, at least, taller than her. It hasn’t been that long. It can’t be, it’s not--

“Mum?” He’s doing a frown that looks so, so familiar. This has to be a dream. “Mum, it’s--no.”

He sniffles. He steps forward, and steps back. He paces, uncertain.

“No, no,” she hears him mutter. “It’s all fake, all fake. It’s a trap. That’s what they want, the monsters and the face stealers. No one is real. Don’t give them what they want--’’

“Please.” she begs. 

But she hears him walk away, sniffling, and shortly thereafter everything goes dark. 

---

I have a confession to make, Melanie. I was going to side with Jon, back then. I could have lived with keeping everyone here suffering to prevent more of it. But when he said he was going to kill the whole world, not just leave it--that’s what made me snap. 

I couldn’t let the whole world die. Genocide of the entire human species? Anything but that. Surely passing along the suffering would be better, as long as it didn’t lead to the extinction of whole worlds. But… 

I keep finding more dead bodies.

I went back to that suburb I talked about, to restock on all my food. It was a lonely domain before, I think. I’d thought everyone there would be fine, you know. They didn’t have any deadly sicknesses, or twisted flesh injuries. They had food and water and shelter. But when I went back… more of them had died. 

Lots of suicides. Some of them snapped, and started to self injure.

The German guy I talked to had started to starve. He had a pantry full of food and he just wouldn’t eat it. I tried to get him to eat, to move in with someone else, but he said talking to people “made him sick.” 

I gave up, and left. I had to. There were too many people, and too much to do, so I left him. He’s probably dead now, or going to die soon. Because he can’t find the will to live, and I don’t know how to help someone with that.

The Lonely is probably one of the least directly harmful entities, right? This domain was just a suburb, probably the most comfortable you could get during the apocalypse. And yet the victims are still all dying. 

How much worse is it in places without food and water? In the corruption domains that still probably have deadly diseases spreading? In war zones, in flesh factories?

I think about that nursing home we found. All of the patients who'd died of heart attacks a few minutes after they'd woken up. The ones left alive screaming for help where no one could hear them, for days after the fact. All of the ones that died in their beds before we found them. 

I think about that field of bodies I found the other day. I think about the ruins of that Circus I found, people refusing to talk to me or each other--refusing to help because they didn’t believe it was over and thought everyone else was a mannequin. 

I think… I think it doesn’t matter that we saved the world. If people can’t find the will to live, ro rebuild, to trust and help each other again… I think we’re going through a mass extinction event anyway. 

---

Sarah’s in a car, she thinks. Not a moving one. She’s propped up against a seat,There’s something plastic pressed to her lips.

“Come on,” says a woman’s deep, level voice. “Come on. I got you. We’re getting to London. All you have to do is drink.”

Sarah opens her eyes. She sees a dark-skinned woman trying to coax her to drink, holding up a water bottle. 

“Just a sip,” the woman says. “Just enough to make it.”

Sarah closes her eyes, and takes a long moment to consider whether she wants to.

[thelordofdarkreunion]

The Misty Planet

Here we go.  By request, a story (or, in this case, story line) where the Scoundrels meet Deus from the Empyrean Iris stories by starr-fall-knight-rise.  Things play out a little differently here, because this time, the Great Game has begun, and there are now more players...

“The game is afoot.”  -Sherlock Holmes

The view from the starship’s bridge was quite the sight to behold.  A massive red star, glowing with power, shone from outside.  The windows were tinted, of course, to allow the individuals inside to see without damaging their vision.  But, mighty as the star was, it was another structure that the individuals were examining.  The second star.  Smaller, but no less beautiful than the first.  This one, though, had strange, alien structures orbiting it.  Which was why the group was here.  

“So.  We’re the bloody universe’s problem solvers, I suppose,” muttered Thomas Drake, itching his nose with the edge of a black-gloved finger.  

“Well, we were the first to make contact with each other and the other galaxies after the… time-screwy thing.  We also prevented the attack on the Citadel, and found out who was behind it,” replied Shepard.  “Still working on finding the Shadow Broker and why he… or she, possibly, would want to kill the members of almost every government in the universe.”  

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.  We’ll figure that one out later.  One problem at a time,” sighed Krirk.

“I’m good with that,” said Drake.  “Now.  On to business.  Admiral Vir.  Why the hell are we here?”  Vir walked up to the viewing glass and let out a low sigh.  

“Well, basically, here’s the deal.  My crew and I came to the Polaris star, which most of you ought to recognize as it exists in all of your galaxies except one, and saw this weird, unknown structure on Polaris Ab, the smaller star of the two main ones.  We have also discovered a planet nearby.”  Vir went to a console and pulled up an image, taken from the ground of a strange looking alien wasteland.  He let out a deep breath before going on.  “This was a picture taken on a very similar planet that my crew found in the past.  The two seem to be related.”

“I have a bad feeling about this,” muttered Solo.  Cooper gave him a blank stare.  

“Do you ever not?” 

“Occasionally,” huffed Solo.  “When we aren’t going to mysterious planets covered with red mist and big black pillars.”

“I agree.  The whole thing is rather… ominous,” said Shepard.  

“Well, if in doubt, we nuke the whole thing and be done with it,” said Drake.  Vir gave him a long-suffering side glance.  

“No.  We are not going to nuke it,” he said.  “There is too much information at stake.”  He sighed again.  “On that planet, we, or some of my crew and I, received visions of an entity called ‘Deus.’  What Deus is or what it wants we do not know.  However, we believe that these planets are somehow aligned.”  The holographic image changed, showing the Polaris system interlinked with the other strange, red planet, the Drev homeoworld, the Celzex homeworld, and Earth.  “What this place is, who created the massive structure on Polaris Ab, and why these systems are all interlinked is what we are here to find out,” finished Vir.  

“Visions?” asked Cain.  Not good.  Most definitely not good.  

“Yes,” replied Vir.  “Not harmful or long lasting, though.”  The group was silent for a moment, as they decided on how to approach this.  Throughout his career as a ship’s captain, and later, admiral, Vir usually operated on his best judgement.  While occasionally shaky at times, it usually won the day.  However, when wasn’t sure what to do, he usually asked himself one question: what would Captain Kirk do?  Well, Kirk was now here, in the same room, and apparently he didn’t have any clue either.  Might as well find out what he thinks, I suppose.  “Captain Kirk?  You seem to be in these sorts of situations a lot.  What do you think we should do?”  Kirk looked over with a frown.  

“We should investigate,” he said finally.  “I don’t particularly like it, never have, never will, but we have to see what’s going on all the same.”  The group nodded to each other.  

“Cooper and Solo, you stay up here in case anything… funny goes on,” ordered Vir.  The two nodded their consent.  “The rest of us… prepare.  Meet you on these coordinates on planet in 45 minutes.”

Aboard the Apocalypse   

“Right you sorry lot!  We are going planetside to investigate a bunch of alien architecture.  There may or may not be hostiles, but this place gives me the creeps,” announced Drake.  The Third Squad of armsmen looked over to him.  Lucky them.  They drew duty rotation when we’re above disturbing planet central.  “I’ve been around long enough, seen enough, heard enough stories, and watched enough horror movies to know what’s probably going to happen.”  As he said this, a pair of robotic arms locked his armor in place.  The armsmen were gearing up and checking their weapons, but still listening intently.  “You are going to bring full combat gear, full weapons, the works!  The whole works!  Everyone is going to be wearing fully sealed armor, and carry an extra respirator on hand, just in case.  You are also bringing provisions, again, just in case.”  Drake grabbed his plasma rifle and double, then triple checked it.  He then keyed his comms.  “Richter.  Ordelphine.  If for some reason we do not make it back, you are not to send any more soldiers down.  You have full authorizations for Genesis 19 protocols.  Use your best judgement.  I trust you two more than anyone else in this fleet, so do not allow them to override you.  Hopefully it doesn’t come to that.”  On the other side of the comms line, Richter and Ordelphine winced.  Genesis 19 was code for the complete nuclear annihilation of anything on a planet deemed to be a threat.  Drake wasn’t taking any chances here, it seemed.  

Aboard the Normandy

Shepard took up a heavy machine gun and checked the ammunition.  This place reminded him too much of old Prothean planets, and the beacons located on them.  The massive black pillars and the visions Vir and his crew got from being near them were too much like the beacon he had touched on Eden Prime…  He still had nightmares about that mission.  This time, he was taking no chances.  Instead of taking a full team with him, he decided to go with what he normally did, and take three ground crew members.  All were carefully selected.  Garrus, because he wouldn’t trust anyone else to have his back as well as the Turian sniper.  Samara.  An ancient Asari biotic.  None more powerful or calm in a crisis.  Lastly, Mordin.  A Salarian scientist.  The only expert he had at the moment who might be able to figure out what these ruins were.  He hoped it would be enough.  

Aboard the Enterprise

Kirk, Spock and Master Chief stood next to the cylindrical grey transporters of the Enterprise.  The two Starfleet officers stood, checking their phasers and respirator masks, making sure nothing would go wrong once they got planetside.  Alongside them were a group of low ranking redshirts (hopefully they wouldn’t die this time, though Kirk was less than hopeful)  and the massive, green-clad figure of the Chief.  Said figure was currently looking over all of his weapons, making sure they were all there and battle ready.  Out of all the Scoundrels, it went without saying that he was the most physically powerful.  It would be his duty to eradicate anything particularly big or nasty they found on the planet.  If, of course, there was actually anything there.  The fleet’s scanners had picked up no life signs, but everyone was still on edge.  Kirk nodded and the group stepped into the transporter.  

“Beam us up, Scotty.”

Aboard the Omen

Commissar Cain leaned against a shuttle in the Omen’s massive hangar bay.  Of course, as the regiment’s champion of all things strange and alien, he had been chosen to lead the surface party.  He couldn’t say no.  How would it look to refuse to partake in a mission of this calibre in front of not only the Valhallans, but the Omen’s crew as well?  He would lose his status if he did.  So, it was with a very heavy heart that he warily donned his tattered set of carapace armor, strapped on his weapons, and made his way to the hangar.  Sargent Grifen was already there, along with her squad.  At least it was Grifen.  Cain had gone through a necron tomb with her squad and lived.  If he trusted anyone in the regiment with this mission, it was her.  And, of course, Jurgen.  Cain’s aide stood by his side, his ever present smell lingering in the air.  In his hands he held his melta gun, a weapon that had saved both their lives on numerous occasions.  Cain was sure Jurgen had other trinkets hidden in his pouches, in addition to the las rifle slung across his back.  Jurgen was ever prepared for anything.  

Cain looked up and over to where Admiral Vir entered the hangar.  He was backed up by a full contingent of marines and members of the Drev clan, followed by a few of the ship’s scientists.  Vir was wearing his suit of Iron Eye armor, fully insulated against the outside atmosphere.  Inside it, he was one of the group’s resident super soldiers, able to perform feats no ordinary person could ever aspire to.  Vir nodded as the Drev came to ease, resting their spears on the floor, and the marines checked their rifles one last time.  

“Let’s get going then, shall we?”

On the Planet

The Omen’s shuttle had landed in some sort of marshland, brackish water reaching up to the group’s shins.  Red mist stretched as far as the eye could see.  Black plants and a few totally black, dead trees littered the ground.  The Milano was parked nearby, on a larger solid stretch of ground, and Quill lounged outside it while his crew looked merely bored at the lack of action on this strange planet.  The Valhallans filed out of the shuttle, looking apprehensive in contrast to the Quill’s boredom and Vir’s excitement over exploring new planets.  A tiled black road led to some sort of black mass in the distance.  A city, if Vir had to guess.  How exciting!

A high whining sound rang out, and Kirk, Spock, and Master Chief teleported in alongside a contingent of Starfleet red-shirts.  The Chief stood statue still, weapons ready, as the Starfleet operatives joined the crew of the Omen in examining the black plant life that dotted the ground and the spaces in between the road tiles.  

The roar of shuttle engineers pierced the air, and the Normandy’s sleek shuttle made its descent alongside the Apocalypse’s heavy gunship transport.  Shepard, Garrus, and two aliens Vir and Cain didn’t recognize stepped out of the first, while Drake and a full contingent of armsmen.  

One of Shepard’s crew, a Salarian, by the looks of him, made a b-line to the scientists examining the plants, while Shepard and the other two greeted Quill.  The Apocalypse’s armsmen disembarked quickly, weapons at the ready as if they were on an active battlefield.  Drake made a circular motion to the shuttle pilot, who gave a thumbs up and immediately took off.  Drake approached Cain and gave a curt nodd.   

“This is your galaxy, Vir, so you’re in charge, but I don’t like the looks of this place.  I don’t want to spend a second longer here than I need to.”  Cain nodded.

“I agree.  This reminds me too much of some of the… stranger things I’ve seen.”  Vir pointed to the buildings on the horizon.  

“I understand,” he said reassuringly.  “Plus, we need to investigate that way anyway.  Let's move on.”  Vir made a motion to the scientists still crouched along the beginning of the pathway.  Dr. Wilson, one of the Omen’s scientists, looked up and held out a vial of the black plant.

“These are all dead.  But they’re remarkably well preserved…”

“Wilson is right.  Planet is dead.  Was once alive, but now everything here is lifeless.  Strangely well preserved, though,” rattled off the Salarian, almost without any breaths.  

“I’m liking this less and less,” muttered Cain.

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

The group had walked the long titled road in silence, the red mist swirling around them.  At one point, there was a rain storm, and Vir had ordered everyone inside one of the decayed buildings they had finally reached.  Everyone had taken it differently.  Shepard and his crew looked apprehensive.  The crews of the Omen and Enterprise were looking over everything with curiosity.  Master Chief, Drake, Cain, the Valhallans, and the Apocalypse’s armsmen were fanned out, weapons raised, clearing corners and rooms as if they were expecting something to pop out of the dark any minute.  Quill and his Guardians merely looked bored.  Again.  

They had moved on further since then, into the city itself.  Huge black buildings, in varying states of decay, loomed ominously through the fog.  The scientists were all muttering to each other as the took readings, while the soldiers had all unconsciously moved into wedge formations.  Drake’s gunship whined overhead, ready to provide close air support at his request.  Some might have called it overkill and over-caution, but Drake hadn’t lived this long by not taking such measures.  

At this point, Vir was starting to get creeped out.  Everything here was… wrong, somehow.  It was like a faint childhood memory that one knew they remembered, but couldn’t actually remember.  The place was… familiar.  Sacred, somehow.  In addition, it was a decayed city with no signs of life, and no signs of what had happened to it.  

“Anyone know what might have happened here?” he whispered to the rest of the group.  Somehow, it felt wrong to raise his voice.  

“No.  Not the Borg’s style,” replied Kirk.  

“Reapers would have been more thorough,” whispered back Shepard.  

“I have no idea…” trailed off Cain.  In actuality, he had a few ideas.  None of them good.  None of them he could say, either.  

They came to a central spot, the roads all branching into what looked to be a main square.  A large building rose up in front of them, looking distinctly human in style.  

“Should we investigate?” asked Shepard.  

“Yes, and no,” replied Drake.  “I think some of us should stay here, outside, to make sure no one attacks our rear, while others go inside to investigate.”

“That makes… tactical sense,” replied Vir with a nodd.  “Alright.  Quill and Chief, along with some of the Enterprise’s crew and Valhallans, stay here.  The rest of you, follow me.”  

The building, as it turned out, was some sort of massive laboratory.  There were test tubes of strange, glowing liquid, some form of massive, incomplete mech hanging on calves, and endless rows of filing cabinets.  There were huge factory floors, complete with conveyor belts, all decayed and rusted into ignominy, and rooms filled with rows upon rows of vats of sludge.  With every passing room, the entering group got more and more apprehensive.  What the hell is this place?  What were they doing?  Vir wanted to yell.  It was all so very strange.  So very… creepy.  

This went on for some time, the invaders of this strange sanctum touching nothing, until they got to a central room.  The heavy blast doors that should have protected it were open.  Not a good sign.  In the center of the room was a pedestal, and upon the pedestal, a glowing white ball.  

“Safeties off,” hissed Drake.  “If there’s an ambush coming, now’s as good a time as any.”  Vir, Wilson, Kirk, and Shepard walked up to the ball. 

“What the hell is this?” asked Shepard warily.

“I don’t know,” replied Vir.  “Maybe… some sort of artifact?  Communication device?  No clue.”  Wilson reached out.  

“Don’t touch it!” screamed Cain and Shepard as one.  It was too late.  As soon as Wilson’s skin made contact with the glowing ball, a blast of pure white energy rang throughout the room, knocking everyone off their feet.  Soldiers flew in tangles of weapons, and scientists stumbled and knocked into walls.

Cain slid on the floor, and shook his head a moment to clear it of the force the ball had unleashed.  He looked around.  The Valhallans stood up, checking their weapons to make sure they were still working.  Shepard’s team stood up, Garrus bringing his rifle around and Samara glowing with blue energy.  Kril and the Salarian scientist stood up.  Rigaldis, leader of the Apocalypse armsmen, pushed himself to his feet.  All of the aliens were fine.  All of the Imperial humans were fine.  But the rest, the other humans…  Cain checked Shepard’s neck for a pulse.  It was there.  They were all alive, but completely unconscious.  

“What the hell was that?” asked one of the Valhallans.  

“Don’t know,” murmured Cain as he studied the unconscious humans.  With a suddenness that caused the medic checking him to recoil, Vir’s one organic eye snapped open.  It looked straight ahead, completely unseeing, and seemed to have an incandescent white glow about it.  The medic waved his hand in front of Vir.  He didn’t blink.  

“Deus…” he murmured, before falling once more into unconsciousness.  Everyone looked around uneasily.  

“What do we do?” asked one of the red shirts. 

“Don’t touch that,” Cain pointed at the white orb, “But bring them outside.  We can’t leave them here.”  

Outside was calm, or, as calm as a planet filled with roiling red fog could be.  Quill and Master Chief walked up to the group, noticing the bodies flung across many of the soldiers’ backs.  

“What the hell happened?” asked the Chief.  

“One of the scientists touched some sort of strange white orb,” replied Cain.  “It knocked them all unconscious.”

“We noticed some sort of burst of white energy,” said Quill.  “Didn’t know what it was.  Now we do, I guess,” he added with a shrug.  

“What do we do now?” asked the Chief once more.  

“It’s a strange, alien artifact, and they seem to be… possessed,” replied Cain.  He didn’t want to say it, but there was no avoiding it.  All of the unconscious humans had a white glow around their eyes.  

“Hmm,” muttered Quill.  “Possessed… I think I know someone who might be able to help us here,” he announced after a moment’s deliberation.  “I’ll send a message to him.”  

“I need to send a message too,” said Cain.  “We need to call in the experts.”

Stay tuned, because next time, the experts will arrive, and things are about to get pretty cool...

As per usual, none of these characters except Drake and his crew belong to me.  If you have any questions, comments, criticisms, requests, or concerns, please, feel free to ask!

[theworldbrewery]

the power of the curveball

okay, you can’t do this All The Time, because it would seriously lose its potency as a tool in the DM’s toolbox. what I’m recommending here is a tool for the DM who misses the days when their players would excitedly discuss the session when it ends, who wants to know the players are still thinking about it days later and looking forward to the next session with mounting anticipation.

I’ve been running a fairly bog-standard D&D campaign. They’ve had a seafaring arc, a few loose dungeons, and a political ecoterrorism plot. But the ongoing undercurrent of this campaign is that a war between the gods over 3,000 years ago left major scars on the landscape and caused civilization to collapse. Only in the last few centuries has society really begun to recover from the damage.

Now, during this arc, the party has been facing another bog-standard enemy--a cult of an evil god holding a town under siege. So when they made a loose allegiance with an enemy to get what the bad guys wanted first, and went down into a chasm to find it... they were expecting your run-of-the-mill abandoned creepy temple.

What they got is a relic of a bygone era, yes...but a bygone era where technological advancements included an AI Smart Home, cryogenics, biological warfare, and biometric scanners. The further they’ve been getting into this temple, the more they realize they are in a genuine post-apocalypse, barely able to wrap their minds around the science and technology they’re surrounded by.

And I’m keeping the curveballs coming. A roll on the Unraveling Magic Effects table (see Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything) meant the party’s first combat in this place was in an antimagic field. Being tested by the Smart Home security system plunged two of the party members into nightmare visions where they had to kill loved ones and relive trauma to get out.

Every time they use their bag of holding, they run the risk of setting off another bizarre magic effect. The Smart Home doesn’t really understand that the collapse of civilization has happened, that the priests and acolytes have been gone for 3000 years, and is suspicious of these new intruders.

Meanwhile, there’s a party of cultists hot on their tails, which means they better hurry--despite knowing this place is full of secrets, artifacts, and other things to poke at.

Like I said at the start, I don’t really recommend this kind of genre-bending as a constant rule. It starts to lose its sparkle if every time the players arrive at a new plotline the rules of their whole world change under their feet. But I do highly recommend there being a handful of instances where you just...throw them that curveball. Change the rules of the game.

Just make sure your rule-changing is still somehow consistent with the old rules. If you decide to have elemental factions overthrow a democratically elected humanoid government and completely change the political and geographic landscape, it’s a smart idea to hint at small pieces of that puzzle before that actually happens. If something suddenly blacks out the sun, or the party is sent to the Wild Frontier to join the Fantasy Gold Rush, be prepared for these things, and know that there’s no turning back--not for the party, of course, but also not for you. Once you pull a genre shift or have an in-universe overhaul of reality, you can’t take that back.

The consequence in my own campaign has been that last Saturday, for the first time in months, everyone stayed on our discord call for several minutes to discuss what just happened. Y’all, they were and are so excited, I’m walking on air.

[popwasabi]

“End of Evangelion” and the tempting nature of oblivion

(TW: Suicide, Self-harm, Pain, Depression, Mental Health, Death)

“End of Evangelion” is a perplexing movie to say the least.

Not that the original classic anime “Neon Genesis Evangelion” series ends on exactly the most conclusive note itself, but “End” takes everything that transpired in the series and literally destroys it.

The films ends with Earth experiencing the long foreshadowed Third Impact and all of the planet returning to the primordial “soup,” as fans call it, with its main protagonist Shinji Ikari and comrade Asuka Langley Soryu as the only remaining humans left. A pseudo, twisted rebeginning of Adam and Eve’s Genesis.

The film is fairly divisive among the fans to say the least. Some fans consider it a masterpiece for its nihilistic tone and mind-bending illustrations of body horror and others despised it for being too dark and confusing with no clear explanation of anything that happened in the film’s events. Hell, even the movie’s fans have a difficult time explaining what exactly happens in the narrative.

I was somewhat in the middle with it after I watched it the first time not super long ago. It was certainly abstract, and I like plenty of stories that don’t make it easy for me to understand. The animation is definitely the franchise’s best and I enjoyed the character moments between Shinji, Asuka, and Misato. But it was also, as stated before, dreadfully confusing and still to this day hard to makes heads or tails out of with its plot.

But, as with more than a few movies I have revisited this year, 2020 helped me contextualize one aspect I think the story is concretely trying to get across.

(We’ll save discussion of “Rebuild” for another day...)

At my lowest points not long ago, I had this frequent vision that would crawl across my mind.

I imagined being up in the clouds on a beautiful sunny day, but I wasn’t floating or flying. I was plummeting, falling like a bird without wings at a speed that would definitely kill me once I got to the ground. But I never imagined actually hitting the Earth like a meat-bagged, human sized asteroid. I only ever imagined the falling part. The wind reaching a terminal velocity and the air rushing past my body and you know what look I had on my face?

Happiness.

I was confused a bit by why I kept imagining this moribund fall into oblivion over and over again. I wasn’t suicidal, though I certainly have had thoughts of self-harm plenty of times before and general detachment from life. But why the fuck was I so happy? I’m about to die after all!

What I have come to realize in recent years, as I’ve developed a better understanding of my mental health and what makes me tick, it wasn’t that I wanted to die so much as I wanted the freedom that comes moments before it. The feeling of finally letting go and letting fate/gravity do the rest.

Years of my life failing at various aspects of societal expectations and career obligations from not being able to get the girls I wanted to date so badly, relationships ending poorly, not quite applying myself the way I should’ve in college, and working a plethora of unfulfilling jobs since graduation made me yearn for that release. Just that feeling of saying “fuck it all” and giving in to the void.

I wanted to stop feeling out of control. The way the world is structured often feels like you are on a wild, rapid river flowing in one very stark direction but you desperately want to go the other way. You keep fighting and fighting it and realize after a while you are just swimming in place, you tire out and either float where the river wants you to go or you drown. I wanted neither of those things, I just wanted control and unfortunately part of life is accepting that a very large percentage of it is beyond your power to alter.

2020 made this feeling starkly apparent once again as we were hit with a once in a lifetime global pandemic that has killed 2.21 million people and counting. As common people struggle to find ways to handle the loss of loved ones and the fallout from economic instability those tasked with protecting us have more or less ignored the cries of needy. Hell, they’re fucking miffed that we would even have the audacity to ask for $2000 of our own fucking tax dollars to put a band-aid on the situation. Combine this with an extremely volatile two-party system and late stage capitalism, we are about as out of control as ever in terms of how much we actually can course correct our destinies in a period like this.

It is why so many irony-pilled millennials and gen z-ers are posting dank memes about meteors colliding with the earth over the course of the year. We’ve lived through two recessions, two forever wars, and now a pandemic in our lifetimes while paying off our crippling debt with slave wages and yet boomers still wonder why we are near universally depressed as a generation.

(Seriously, everybody needs a fucking therapist right now...and also to dismantle the fucking system that’s making us depressed!)

This is what I feel is the real heart of “End of Evangelion.” The movie is a lot of things, obviously, but, after the events of this year and looking back on the more depressing parts of my life, I feel this film is about the tempting nature of oblivion. Giving up when things are clearly beyond your control so you can get that sweet but twisted, fleeting sense of freedom from it all.

Director Hideaki Anno didn’t feel too entirely different about the state of life when he made this series and certainly by the time he made “End” he was in a very dark place.

So, quick history lesson, “Neon Genesis Evangelion” debuted in 1994 and quickly became a classic among fans of anime and the giant mech vs monster genre. Critics loved it for its exploration of mental health and depression and of course plenty enjoyed the hell out of it for its giant monster/robot escapism as well. Fast forward to the conclusion of the series, critics and fans especially are far more polarized. I won’t try to explain exactly what happens in the ending and frankly I don’t think anyone can, but that confusion led to quite a bit of outcry by the fans.

Hideaki Anno, the series’ director, received tons of hate mail and death threats following the series conclusion. The fans hated how abstract it was, how it had an undecisive ending and chose to dive into the mind of Shinji instead of conclusively describing the events of the Third Impact with plenty going as far as to say he had “ruined” his own series for them. This made him unfortunately quite depressed himself over the ending he felt creatively fairly content with.

(I think it should be clear who Shinji is mostly likely a stand-in for in this anime...)

The fan reaction was toxic to say the least and all too familiar for many creatives who didn’t adequately satisfy the insatiable vapid needs of their fandom. Anno did not take this well to put it lightly. A man who was known as a delinquent in high school and expelled from the Osaka University of Arts much earlier in his life, and dealt plenty with his own bouts of depression, Anno had plenty of his own demons to sort out and quite clearly wanted to explore that mental state in “Neon Genesis Evangelion.”

I’ll be honest and say that I myself was not fond of the ending either when I watched it the first time as a freshman in college, and even went as far as to describe it as everything that was wrong with anime to friends in the years that followed for a while. I felt it was confusing and “fake deep,” existential for no reason other than because it just wanted to and people were “dumb” if they liked it.

When I rewatched it again as a much older adult when it came on Netflix last year, I found it much more fascinating and interesting. A sort of abstract introspective into the mind of a troubled teenager, who I had written off many years prior as a “whiny baby.” Though I wouldn’t say I completely understand it still, I get it much more now and I think it has a lot to say about depression and mental health.

Unfortunately, most fans did not have that reaction back then and as a result Anno made his true conclusion “End of Evangelion” as a response to that negativity.

(You’re welcome, nerds.)

As mentioned before, “End of Evangelion” is an extremely nihilistic film that seems to one up each dark moment as you traverse its spiraling narrative. It’s a film where things never get better. If you go into it blind expecting that big last minute heroic save the day moment, it’s always teased and never comes. Things just end very badly for everyone. Nobody gets a “happy ending.”

While the ending to the original series is strange for sure, it does end on a light note that can be interpreted in a number of different ways but ultimately positive. With the way fans reacted to it Anno decided to write a big “fuck you” to them by, in many ways, smashing his toys so no one could play with them again. He even went as far as to splice in the actual hate mail he received into the movie to quite clearly show to the audience, as their favorite characters met their grissly ends, that this was their fault.

(“Gee, I wonder what that was all about.” ~ a fan walking out of the theater back in 1997.)

In a way though, Anno created something strangely beautiful from that reaction. “End of Evangelion” is about giving up in some ways and accepting our inevitable doom. There are no easy answers, no workable solutions to achieve a happy ending because sometimes in life there isn’t one. Despite last ditch efforts by Misato, Shinji, and the crew of NERV the world still ends through the Third Impact. But tonally it’s not quite pessimistic; it’s actually positive, in a very twisted sense of course.

Set to the song “Komm Susser Tod” by ARIANNE, the film’s apocalypse can almost be described as a celebration. With people “popping” and turning into the primordial soup they all largely have smiles on their faces as they kind of get what they want whether it’s a desire to reunite with loved ones, to be with people they have crushes on, or happiness that they have sought for so long in the embrace of others. Everyone’s depressed! But now they are happy because it’s finally all over, they don’t have to give a shit anymore.

As the planet lights up like a Christmas tree, there are images of suicide and death that rapidly cross the screen in the form of the Angel’s final transformation but again, nobody is truly sad about it. They all have some kind of twisted smile or joy that they get from it. It’s a shocking film, if you’re not already prepared for what’s going to happen, and provocative to say the least.

(Can’t decide if I recommend watching this high or not...)

I had no idea what any of it meant at the time when I watched it several years ago (I watched it well after I had seen the original series), and to be fair there are many ways fans have interpreted what exactly took place in the film and have debated endlessly on its meaning for decades now. But at least in my interpretation, after everything we’ve been through this year, “End of Evangelion” to me is about the sweet release of not giving a fuck anymore.

Whether it’s about Anno feeling that way about his own life or the expectations of his fans or both, the film quite clearly doesn’t care about what people may or may not have wanted for Shinji and the NGE characters and is perfectly fine with the way it all comes “tumbling down.”

(He just wants to be with his boyfriend, guys.)

This past July 4th, city fireworks shows were prohibited in my area because they wanted to limit mass gatherings due to COVID but this didn’t stop people from buying plenty of their own to fire off. In what amounted to a collective “fuck you” to everything and 2020, beginning pretty much exactly at dusk people started firing off their at home lightshows like they were mortar gunners in World War I and did not let up until well past midnight. The entire Southern California night sky was lit up not to unlike the thousands of crosses that filled the screen during the Third Impact of “End of Evangelion” and though it could certainly be interpreted as a moment of people patriotically going “Yea, America!” that night, my head canon was much different. It felt like tens of thousands of people across the region just saying “Fuck it” into the night sky at everything; COVID, our horrendous government, police violence, pending World Wars, environmental disaster, and our collective impending doom from it all.

As these fireworks hit their zenith around 9pm I broke out my phone and started playing “Komm Susser Tod” from the movie and it felt perfect. Everyone just wanted to feel that freedom in the moment, that freedom of not giving a damn anymore. To be removed from expectations, from control, from hatred, from pain and it was kind of beautiful in a sick way.

And that’s what “End of Evangelion” feels like to me now; kind of beautiful in a sick way.

(Not saying the LA skyline looked like this exactly but it felt like it haha...)

There are still many ways to interpret Hideaki Anno’s cult classic, and it’s part of its charm but I think the take away fans should have is definitely not that suicide is ok but that we get it. We understand why people have those feelings and why it feels freeing to desire the void and oblivion. It’s a pity that the series most toxic fans didn’t get that clue through the original finale but Anno, not a person who likes  being shoved around, clearly created perhaps the most twistedly beautiful “fuck you” to that in anime history.

As we enter 2021 all I can say is it’s ok to feel like this, it’s ok to desire freedom from the relentless gloom and doom of the world and people’s prying expectations of what they think you “should” be. No one blames you. At the end of the day, we’re all just trying to survive the apocalypse we have zero control over, so the least we can do is be a bit nicer and considerate of one another. 

At least it’ll make the Third Impact more pleasant whenever it eventually comes...

Happy New Year, everyone! 

Congratulations on surviving 2020! Have fun in 2021...

[of-house-atreides]

Lazy Script Doctor: Loki

I've been wanting to write a fix-it fic for Loki as I've had a few ideas myself, but knowing I probably will never finish it and since my writer's block has been with me for months and doesn't seem to be going anywhere any time soon, I'm just going to give short summaries of each episode and how my fix-it fic would've gone.

I'm not getting paid by Marvel so I'm not about to work hard on this, but I'll do what I can while at the same time not re watching a single scene from this damn series, I just can't do it.

Episode 1:

Loki teleports some place he knows will be safe and empty, maybe some secret room in Asgard or on another planet, where he has weapons and supplies to stay hidden and safe from Thanos and everyone else that will be coming after him. The TVA shows up and tries to arrest him but he fights them off and uses the Tesseract to escape them. But, everywhere he goes, it creates a Nexus events, and he is eventually caught by B-15 and brought to the TVA. Now, scrap all that unfunny and cringy stuff that leads to him in court, Loki is still very much menacing while still elegant and sarcastic. He tries very early to use his powers but realises he can't. He's got one goal, find the Tesseract, burn this place to the ground, and bail. Mobius in this is a woman (because of Disney's no-homo rule of course) and she saves him from getting reset/pruned, convincing Judge Renslayer he could help them find the variant they've been after.

Loki's brought to an interrogation room where B-15 starts playing to him the tape of his life (she showed him Frigga's death, he's pissed) but M (Mobius' name in this) walks in and turns it off. She says nobody should have to see the tape of their life, and sends B-15 off. So they talk, she tells him they need his help in catching a variant, of course Loki refuses, they're both being sarcastic and it's funny and bla bla bla, Loki makes threats which amuses her, eventually Loki asks "what's in it for me?" and M asks "what do you want?" and since Loki knows this will end with him getting pruned either way, he says he wants to see the tape of his life, and especially how he dies, before he gets pruned after he helps her catch the variant. M agrees, they have a deal.

The rest of the first episode is M showing Loki around the TVA, explaining to him how it works and why they do what they do (it's better explained than in the actual show, did anyone understand a damn thing on how the multiverse worked in the sacred timeline? so confusing) so he's gathering as much info as he can to plan an escape but she makes a joke about it (she's smart enough not to trust him for one second and he's impressed by her). A Nexus event starts and she takes him to the crime scene (but not before reminding him that if he tries to escape, everywhere he goes will create a Nexus event and they'll find him again and their deal will be off). So they investigate the crime scene, Loki learns about the variant's M.O, and M confirms that this looks like exactly what the variant usually does. Then Loki asks who that variant is and M finally tells him it's another version of him.

Episode 2

C-20 gets taken, M and Loki go to the fair to investigate, he's still trying to find a way to escape. They do some research and he wants to test that theory that hiding in apocalypses don't create Nexus events. In Pompeii, Loki pretends that he is a God and that he's the one who starts off the volcano and everyone is scared and kneeling to him and begging him for mercy and he's enjoying himself while M is rolling her eyes but then realises no Nexus event was created so they work on that theory some more and try to find out where the variant is hiding. Bla bla bla, they get to Alabama, the variant enchants M and uses her body to speak to Loki before eventually releasing her and enchanting someone else. M falls to the ground. Loki follows the variant who eventually reveals herself to be Lady Loki (will black hair, like the real Lady Loki, not Sylvie) and they fight and the episode would end with M suddenly helping Loki fight Lady Loki but she bombs the timeline then walks through the TemPad portal and Loki and M follow her and end of episode.

Episode 3

Flashback of M when she was on Earth, in New-York, to be exact. She's with friends when suddenly there's an explosion and screams and panic and then M wakes up in Alabama. So she starts looking for Loki and finds him fighting the variant. They go after her and they get to the TVA, fight some more then end up on Lamentis-1.

M is pissed off because of the visions she keeps having and goes after Lady Loki. Loki restrains her (Lady Loki is stronger anyway, so he breaks it up before she gets hurt) and M asks her to undo whatever she did to him. Lady Loki is confused, she didn't cast any spell or anything, so when M mentions the visions LL just says they're her memories, not illusions, but M does not believe it, she is convinced she was created by the Time Keepers and that LL is lying. LL doesn't care, she's pissed that they stopped her from getting to the Time Keepers but the TemPad is broken so now they have to work together to get out of that planet alive.

They don't trust one another and there's tension in the group but Loki is enjoying the chaos while still being confused as to where they are and how they can get out of there alive. Their goal is to reach the Arc in time, before it gets destroyed, and leave the planet. That will create a Nexus event that will lead the TVA to them, LL is not a fan of the plan, but it's either that or death. So they take the train, LL and Loki create fake tickets (because, you know, God of Trickery and all that jazz) while in the train they talk, M is still having visions and LL assures her she's not lying, they're her memories, M starts having doubts but she still won't believe LL, she can't be trusted. Loki and LL talk about their time on Asgard as children, LL's backstory is about the same as Sylvie's in the show. Loki talks about Frigga and shows M some magic she did for him as a child. LL she asks M if she knows what her Nexus event was, she was only a child and they destroyed her entire universe, she wants to know why, M doesn't know but she says she will find out before she gets pruned once back at the TVA. LL and Loki make some kind of sarcastic joke about surviving this just to die once they're back at the TVA. M asks LL what her goal was anyway, what was her plan, and LL says she just wanted answers and revenge. M talks about how what the TVA is doing is right and necessary but LL doesn't agree, neither does Loki.

Before the train arrives, Loki asks LL if Frigga ever told her a certain story, to which she says yes, Loki says it was his favorite story back when he was a child and LL nods and says it wasn't a bad one. (basically, he's telling her what his plan is going to be back at the TVA)

They fight their way onto the Arc and have it launch early so that it doesn't get destroyed. It creates a Nexus event and the TVA finds them.

Episode 4

M makes sure the TVA knows Loki is with her and helped her catch the variant, so they don't prune him too soon. LL is arrested. Ravonna interrogates M under the disguise of a mission report. M says all the right things, and just keeps asking if she can go back to work and interrogate LL. She asks about C-20 and and Ravonna tells her she's dead, that whatever the variant did eventually led to her death, which is weird, because LL told her C-20 was going to be fine in the previous episode, and shit don't add up.

Once Ravonna is satisfied that M wasn't corrupted, she allows her to go interrogate LL. When she gets to the room, B-15 is with her, it looks like they were plotting something. M asks what's going on and B-15 tells her Ravonna had C-20 pruned (she over-heard it after she got curious because she too got her memories back when LL enchanted her back in Alabama). That just convinces M some more that something is up and that Ravonna isn't telling her the whole truth and she wants to figure it out. So B-15 and M go to the archives and try to get files on the Time Keepers. In the meantime, Loki and LL set their plan in motion, just like in the tale Frigga told them when they were children. (Basically, they beat up their guard and then call for help pretending he's not feeling well then just fight their way out of their interrogation room.) Loki leads them to where he knows the Tesseract is, their plan is to steal it and steal a TemPad and just bail but the Tesseract doesn't work here nor do all the other Infinity Stones they find with it.

M gets caught by Ravonna who asks her what she's doing. She pretends part of her deal with Loki was to get him certain answers. She stalls so that B-15 can get out of the archives without getting caught. Ravonna says she didn't agree to it and asks M to go back to interrogating LL but then TVA agents warn her that LL and Loki have escaped and she's suspicious enough of M to have her arrested.

Tesseract still in hand, Loki and LL, on their way out to find a TemPad, eventually cross the path of Ravonna, M and a few TVA agents. They have no trouble fighting them off. In the chaos, M starts fighting against Ravonna (they're supposed to be friends like she was with Mobius) and asks her the truth about the Time Keepers, and are they really all variants? Only Ravonna remains, LL and Loki are about to go after her and help M but Ravonna takes her hostage and threatens to prune her. That doesn't stop LL but Loki stops her as he doesn't want M to get pruned.

"You sacrifice yourself for Thor," M says and Loki gives her a confused look, "that's how you die."

M then starts fighting back against Ravonna but eventually gets pruned, Loki drops the Tesseract to go after Ravonna but she stops them when she says "I can get you in the room with the Time Keepers," so they make her lead them to them.

The Time Keepers tell them a bunch of bs they don't believe for one second and then realise the Time Keepers aren't real but Ravonna stalled long enough for reinforcement to come.

LL and Loki get pruned.

Episode 5

They awake together in some sort of apocalyptic world. They wander around then have to run away from the big purple giant cloud who wants to eat them. They meet other versions of themselves who help them out. Classic!Loki, kid!Loki, President!Loki etc. They all talk about their Nexus event and how they got pruned etc. Loki wants to go look for M but the others tell him it's not safe out there, the only person that roams around out there is 'the woman' who is the oldest person from the void (she's been here the longest, she's very powerful). He wants to go anyway and LL says she'll go with him, they argue a bit because he doesn't need help but eventually agrees to let her come with him. They get attacked by some weird monsters, they fight them off with magic but eventually get outnumbered but they get saved by the woman who turns out to be Frigga.

"Your mom's awesome."

Loki turns around to find M who also helped fight the monsters away.

Big reunion between LL, Loki and Frigga. Then Loki and M have a ("friendship") moment.

Frigga then tells them about her Nexus event (she became Queen of Asgard instead of Odin) and then she tells them about Alioth and what he's guarding. So they figure out that whoever is behind the TVA is hiding behind Alioth so they reunite all the other Lokis and together they defeat it using magic cause dah.

Frigga, M and all the other Lokis start walking towards the house.

Episode 6

The house is empty, dark, dusty, they start thinking it's abandoned. Then Kang finds them, he's calm and serious but not threatening, he doesn't have to worry as he's stronger than all of them.

He admits he didn't plan for any of that to happen, he didn't see it coming, that's what's so annoying with the Nexus events, they can lead to anything, that's why nothing should be allowed to survive from those branches. Some Lokis start going after him but he kills them really easily which deters the others from attacking him.

Kang starts explaining why he's doing what he's doing, why it's a necessary evil, that if he dies, worse versions of him will appear. He explains the real truth about how he created the TVA and why. Then in the end some Lokis agree that he's a necessary evil and others just want to kill him so they fight with each other and basically kill each other. LL just wants to kill him while Loki thinks they should talk about it, plan things out, so she starts fighting him. M doesn't know what to do. In the end, Frigga sacrifices herself and kills Kang in a badass, powerful and emotional scene.

The void is collapsing, the multiverse just goes crazy and LL, Loki and M just wait for their death at the end of time. But before that happens she turns to LL and asks her to help her remember her old life. We don't see it but when LL is done, M looks surprised, hurt then pissed. Without a word she turns towards Loki who's confused and a bit concerned. He doesn't stop her when she reaches for one of his daggers and then there's a flashback of her in New-York as she stabs him. Then we see how she was supposed to die during the attack of New-York but Loki kinda saves her but like sarcastically tells her that it's not safe and she should hide (like it's not heroic or anything). So her Nexus event was surviving the attack of New-York basically.

Loki falls to his knees and she follows him down as she pushed the dagger further in. He's all confused and hurt because he trusted her and she literally stabbed him. He can see she has no regret about what she's done which makes him think whatever he did to her in her human life was pretty bad. "I'm sorry," he tells her, and she's knows he's sincere because they're all about to die anyway. She kinda looks down at her hand holding the dagger and starts realising what she's done but he smiles and tells her it's okay, that he knows he deserves it. The house starts shaking and the roof is seconds from falling over their heads when suddenly the room turns yellow/orange. They turn to see what the source of the light is and it's one of those Doctor Strange round portals and Doctor Strange's music theme starts playing and that's how the episode end.

Post credit scene: they're in New-York at the sanctuary. M is standing in the middle between Loki and LL who are both seating on an armchair. She's facing LL and is turning her back to Loki. They're waiting in silence, we don't know why. Then we see someone approach, we can only see his back but he's wearing the red cape and we all know it's Doctor Strange.

[albatris]

ok ok alriiiight ok so the plot of ATDAO

this post is not, like........... well, it’s not gonna be a blurb or a summary or a nice neat synopsis, this is not Professional Writeblr Business, this is, this is, uhhhh

this is like drunk house party logan rambles

works best if you imagine ur just like “hey man how’s it going” super casual and I grasp you firmly by the shoulders and look you dead in the eye and just ramble all of this without taking a single breath

could I have explained in a nice neat concise "elevator pitch" sort of way? probably. mind ur business. that’s not how we do things here at albatris.org

anyway the purpose of this post is “hey people seem to know a lot about the characters and the worldbuilding and the premise but have no clue what happens in the actual story” so I’m not going to be talking about said characters and worldbuilding and premise in depth

in terms of rambles, that stuff’s been covered! this post assumes you know what Ports are, n what the nature of the ATDAO apocalypse is, vaguely what the MCs are like as people......... though I can fetch this info for you if you like

but yeah if you are coming into this post with zero prior ATDAO knowledge........... deeply deeply from the bottom of my heart: sorry

also if this is your first time experiencing One Of These Rambles

also @safe-in-the-steep-cliffs​ and @siarven​ I am tagging you because you said you would like to be tagged and also hi and also I hope y’all knew what you were in for

anyway without further ado

(visual representation of my approach to this rant, not of how complicated my plot actually is)

(my plot is not that complicated)

ALRIGHT

there are two viewpoint characters! and two plotlines which converge near the end of the story, but honestly there’s a very real possibility I will decide these are two separate books meant as companion stories to each other because I love making things difficult for myself yeehaw

ATDAO’s co-protags are Tris and Noa, best buds four years and counting. their friendship is one of the single most important aspects of the story, n the ongoing love and trust they have for each other despite the way unfolding events force their relationship to change is integral to the themes and making the heart of the story what it is. I will now proceed to not mention this friendship for the entire remainder of this post. they’re bros. that’s all u need to know. listen. listen. I have a lot to cover

so yeah, ur first key player is Tris Greer, whose parents are dicks but whose siblings are chill. most notably of said siblings there is Jacob, older brother by thirteen years, whom Tris believes is just about the coolest person on the entire planet. this plotline kicks off when Jacob gets caught in the midst of a freak car accident that kills a dude and wrecks a street corner and also somehow causes Jacob to just kind of................. blip out of existence entirely and without a trace?

n Tris is understandably horrified and distressed by Very Much All Of This, but hey, at least there are responsible adults who can look into this obviously Port-related weird disappearance and figure this mess out, right?

INCORRECT

the relevant interdimensional authorities are brought in to suss out the situation and these authorities are kind of like “hmmmm idk about this” but are all set to take Tris at least somewhat seriously until they learn the following:

that Jacob had already been reported missing to police in his home state three days earlier

that Jacob was in the midst of several ongoing personal crises and at least one nervous breakdown

that Jacob was allegedly tangled up in some real weird shit that would more than account for a disappearance under suspicious circumstances

that Tris is schizophrenic, prone to hallucinations, confusion, memory issues and quote unquote “letting his imagination and anxiety get the better of him”, and precisely zero people can actually corroborate his story that Jacob was even there are the time of the accident to begin with

and after some back-and-forth and Looking Into The Evidence pretty much everyone in any position of authority comes to the conclusion that this is just Ordinary Regular People Crimes and whatever happened to Jacob had nothing to do with weird apocalyptic energies, and that Tris is (at best) stressed out and delusional or (at worst) lying through his teeth because he knows more than he’s letting on

so Tris is forced to hop pretty quick from “I’m sure someone will handle this” to “no one believes me but I’m sure if I can find some concrete proof they’ll listen and someone will handle it” to Well Fuck I Guess That Someone Is Me

cue bizarre reality-hopping fantasy quest, which is ten times easier said than done when most of the time Tris is terrified enough just, like, going to the supermarket

he enlists the help of his new classmate Shara, amateur paranormal investigator and professional weird-bullshit enthusiast, who agrees to help him puzzle out what the fuck happened to Jacob in exchange for his assistance in mapping out Adelaide’s interdimensional “fault lines” as part of her ongoing quest to track down the source of the apocalypse

she’s got big fuckin dreams, ok, go hard or go home

slso worth noting at this point that there HAS been an uptick in Ports and their related reality-bending strangeness in Adelaide recently which is why this is of particular interest to her currently. gotta find out What Makes The Weirdness Tick, gotta find out Why The Sudden Extra Weirdness

..........and also Kai is there

Kai has no nice neat reason to get involved with the plot, Kai just likes drama and being all up in people’s personal business. Tris brings them on board for one single afternoon like “hey I will pay you some money to come to my house and fix my fucked up phone so I can listen to an interdimensional voicemail” but forgot the apparently key addendum “and then leave”

their first three chapters of knowing each other is basically Tris being like “stop inviting yourself into my house we are not friends” and Kai being like “that’s a rude thing to say to your friend. also your sister gave me the netflix password and I used your kitchen to bake pastries feel free to help yourself”

but yeah so Tris’s story mostly focuses on his quest to figure out where Jacob got yeeted to and how to get him safely home (y’all probably know a bit about The Unreality already maybe?), whilst also dealing with rising family tensions, whatever shifty stuff Jacob was involved with prior to his disappearance, and his own creeping doubts about his perceptions of reality

n I’m also saying flat out it’s not a plot that’s going the “oh the whole thing was just a delusion all along” route because ew

his psychosis is a fairly involved part of his character but the explorations around it are more to do with, like......... the difficulties he has in trusting himself and whether he has the luxury of letting himself get swept into some Big Weird Implausible Adventure when this has extremely different implications for him than it would someone else. n eventually to how his success and survival is not ~in spite of~ but specifically because of the different way he understands and interprets the world and the skills he’s developed

THAT TANGENT WAS A PERSONAL RANT IT WAS NOT RELEVANT I just have words to say on the subject of how psychosis is treated in fiction and didn’t want people jumping to the “none of it is real” conclusion anyway ok moving on

ur SECOND key player is Noa Yun, who has rather a lot on her plate right now. she’s broke as fuck and her mum is sick and her car is making Noises and she’s not getting enough hours at her job at Not-IKEA and everyone is on her back about her failing studies as if that’s a thing she has the energy to care about. feeling rather backed into a corner by life’s bullshit and her financial situation, she blatantly lies her way into a field job at the Department of Interdimensional Instabilities, because A) surely it can’t be THAT bad, and B) what does she have to lose?

so more or less what she’s doing is the equivalent of emergency services for Port-related weirdness, it’s going out and dealing with highly unstable otherworldly energies head on, navigating Weird Phenomena and bendy patches in reality......... it is, among other things, a job that’s relatively easy to get into because no one wants to touch it with a ten foot pole unless they absolutely have to

n the DII is a whole other post, this shit has lots of different functions and levels and branches and corruption and secrets and a tendency to view workers who have to go out and deal with the brunt of the apocalypse head-on as vaguely expendable and I’ve talked about it a bit before and in more Serious Words

things kinda kick off for her when in true Noa fashion she hurls herself into a dangerous situation to help out a coworker, n enters a pretty standard issue “overlap” where the barriers between universes are a little fucky, but hey, she seems to come out of it with nary a scratch, so it’s reasonable to assume everything is fine, right?

INCORRECT AGAIN

she basically gets some whacked-out otherworldly energies latched onto her that are now following her through her everyday life, and it turns out she’s starting to bend the reality around her the way certain types of Ports do, which is! obviously not ideal! she’s not exactly a Port herself, because she’s pretty sure that’s impossible, but it’s clear capital s Something happened to her in that overlap, and she doubts it’s good news. and to make matters even more disconcerting, she’s now being dogged at every step by strange visions of a child who speaks in an unfamiliar language and who seems Real Fuckin Pissed at her

so her thing is basically “I acquired fucked up reality-bending powers against my will and they might be lowkey killing me ‘cause Ports are notoriously unstable like that and also I’m haunted for some godforsaken reason” which all somehow ended up being, like, the least interesting part of her plotline for me lmao

oh and Noa also enlists the help of Shara, Because Ghosts

anyway yeah so her search to find out what’s happening to her re: Weird Children, being a Port-adjacent something-or-other, and whether there’s a way to stop her own unravelling leads her to (rogue computer programmer? mad scientist? general shifty bastard?) Laurence Marrick Thiele, who claims to have suffered a similar affliction in the past and now does some real interesting research on the subject. n this guy. well. he’s got some fuckin stuff going on

he definitely knows more about the nature of Ports than he should. also is he actually researching what he says he’s researching? also what’s with all the weird tech? also did he just straight up murder that guy Avery? all will be revealed later, maybe, if I feel like it

but yeah at about the same time as Noa goes “actually fuck this you’re shady as hell I’m out” she stumbles into, like, The Actual Reality of what Marrick is up to re: manipulating Ports and interdimensional doorways for his own gain, and the various ways this spells bad news not only for her but potentially for the entire city and anyone unfortunate enough to get caught in the crossfire, and she shifts gear to “actually you know what I’m gonna kick your ass”

there are various reasons for this, but first and foremosterly you have to understand that Noa’s got a fuckload of pent-up rage and she will bring it in full force the moment you say some stupid shit like “some people are expendable” or “it’s inevitable for the greater good”

(there’s also a fun ongoing subplot with her work at the DII where she and her team are investigating a string of strange illnesses with bizarre symptoms that appear to be spreading via obscure radio stations so that’s. happening. I guess?)

but yeah the main story here mostly follows Noa’s attempts to undermine Marrick, bastard supreme, and find a way to fuck him up before he goes, like, Full Cartoon Supervillain, n also like........... her attempts to keep up her work at the DII despite her rising paranoia that the teammates she’s growing to care about will notice her increasingly unstable state and the fact that she’s all tangled up with the very forces they’re meant to be thwarting. n along the way discovering the reality of what happened to her in The Aforementioned Overlap Incident and about her visions and such

so that’s all that. did that make sense

n she’s got a whole arc going on about trust and learning to lean on others, like, she comes into this story as a very standoffish person with lots of paranoia, she’s spent much of her life feeling like she can only rely on herself, n she’s. well. yeah, like I said, she’s got a lot of anger at the world and at the various systems that have failed her and her loved ones, n the story puts her in a position to become even more isolated

and her plotline isn’t so much “you have no reason to be angry or afraid” or her learning to Not Be, It’s more, like........... yeah you have every fucking right to be furious and of course you’re afraid! but there are people around you who love you and who will jump at the chance to defend you and who will help you carry the weight of your anger and grief and none of this needs to be yours to bear alone which is extremely cheesy

which applies to both her Weird Supernatural Goings-On as well as her regular ordinary life goings-on

I feel like Alice and Jet deserve a mention for Noa’s plotline but also this went on and on too long already so. well. Alice and Jet exist! yep. they work with Noa at the DII. I have things to say about them. I will not be saying them today

and uhhhhhh

in general, for Tris, his plotline, you wanna think, like, fantasy/adventure vibes which veer pretty sharply into horror, and for Noa you wanna think...... kinda, sci-fi mystery conspiracy vibes with a dash of some superhero bullshit maybe except not really

and that

pretty much is it I think

also the fact that Kai just invites themself into the plot for funsies and then is dragged kicking and screaming into caring about themself and making positive changes in their life means there was no convenient place in this post to be like

"oh there's also a whole major subplot about a time loop"

but there's also a whole major subplot about a time loop

goodnight! thanks for coming to....................... whatever this was! have a nice saturday everyone

[destieltropecollection]

Destiel Trope Collection Day 25: Slow Burn

The difference between living and existing (WIP) | @lucy-is-alive

Rating: Explicit Word Count: 6052 Main Tags/Warnings: John Winchester's A+ parenting, College AU, Sexuality crisis, PTSD, Childhood trauma, Recreational drug use, Angst and hurt/comfort Summary: As soon as he got the chance, Dean left his father behind and went to college. However, he never anticipated that the absence of the person who had disrupted his entire life would make it worse. With the help of his friends, he tries to navigate through the emotional hurricane that comes with complex PTSD.

Celestial | @deservetobesaved

Rating: Mature Word Count: 10585 Main Tags/Warnings: slow burn, mutual pining, fluff, emotional affair, bottom!dean Summary: Dean is in a less than stellar marriage, but he assumes things will work themselves out. At the same time, Mr. Castiel Novak becomes his new co-worker at school and Dean has to rethink everything he thought he had figured out.

Welcome to the Badlands (WIP) | @cr-noble-writes

Rating: Explicit Word Count: 15386 Main Tags/Warnings: graphic violence, dystopian au, fusion, into the badlands au, slow burn Summary: The wars were so long ago, nobody even remembers. Darkness and fear ruled until the time of the Barons, seven men and women who forged order out of the chaos. People flocked to them for protection. That protection became servitude. They banished guns and trained armies of lethal fighters they called Clippers. This world is built on blood. Nobody is innocent here. Welcome to the Badlands.

Profound Kisses | @verobatto-angelxhunter

Rating: Explicit Word Count: 20700 Main Tags/Warnings: Destiel, post 8x07 canon divergent, mutual pining, explicit sexual content, angst with a happy ending, clueless! Castiel, pining!Dean, Top!Dean, Bottom!Cas, slow burn, love confessions, first kiss, french kiss, Sammy knows. Summary: Dean knows he's screwed. He discovers he is in love with Castiel in Purgatory, and now he can't even have the angel in front of him, because he knows it's a one sided love. It’s Valentine's day and Dean tries very hard to hook up as always, but he can't get Cas out of his mind. So he drives back to the motel, drunk, and he finds Castiel trying to help him. Then, when Dean asks Castiel for some experimental kisses and the angel accepts, Dean starts a very dangerous game… finding in Castiel's kisses the most delicious experiences, but also, his own perdition. Will Castiel fall in love with him? Or will he stay emotionless as always?

Hate me, but love me too | @notfunnydean

Rating: Explicit Word Count: 23310 Main Tags/Warnings: Virgin!Dean,f hate spell, hate curse, younger!dean, older!sam, Grace Sharing, First Kiss, First Time, Hate Sex, Dubious Consent, Mildly Dubious Consent, Cas is cursed, (not really MCD but Cas isn't alive in the beginning), Castiel has sex with somebody else in the beginning(and Dean sees it), Heartbreakbut I will fix it! Summary: Dean’s whole life changes when his mother tells him that John isn’t his biological father and he needs to save the world from his sibling Adam, who is the King of Hell. But he can’t do that alone, he needs the best Hunter earth had, Castiel Novak.

Starstruck (WIP) | @peanutbutterjelly-pie

Rating: Teen & Up Word Count: 40860 Main Tags/Warnings: Alternate Universe, Fluff, Slow Burn, Actor Dean, Single Parent Castiel, Pining Summary: From the outside Castiel Novak looks like a regular guy: a good job, two teenage kids, a nice house and a crappy car he’s way too attached to. But there’s one thing no one knows about him: that, over twenty years ago, he used to live next to no other than Dean Winchester – back then a brash and loud-mouthed boy and nowadays a huge movie star and Hollywood’s sweetheart. Castiel never bothered to tell anyone about his childhood friend because frankly, who would believe him? Probably even Dean himself already forgot about his former awkward and weird neighbor, so Castiel seriously doesn’t see any point in mentioning the whole thing ever. But then an interview on national TV happens where Dean reveals way more about his past than ever before … and Castiel - as well as the rest of the world - suddenly realizes that he left a much bigger impact on Dean’s life than he originally thought.

Letter to Dean Winchester (WIP) | @castielsangel-blade

Rating: Mature Word Count: 44182 Main Tags/Warnings: Past Lisa/Dean, Past Aaron/Dean, Past Castiel/Dean, Mutual Pining, Slow Burn, Mentions of Past Cheating, Mentions of Past Toxic Relationship, Gray Romantic Castiel, Asexual Castiel, Epistolary, Bisexual Dean Summary: Castiel writes and sends a letter to Dean Winchester. He wants closure for the toxic relationship they had in high school.

Falling Apart | @cr-noble-writes

Rating: Teen & Up Word Count: 49204 Main Tags/Warnings: minor character death, sam deceased when fic starts, alcoholism, drug misuse, addiction, rehab au, soulmate au, flashbacks, ptsd Summary: Sword & Cross Resident Rehabilitation is a last-ditch effort for Dean Winchester to move past the drug and drinking problems he developed to bury his guilt over the fire that killed his brother. Not to mention the wild visions and smoky, sentient shadows that have plagued him his entire life. It's supposed to be the best Savannah has to offer, but one look at the crumbling tile floors and dangling crown mouldings, and Dean has his doubts. Enter Castiel Novak. He’s rude, aloof, and a total dick from the moment they lay eyes on each other but Dean can’t help but feel a mysterious connection to the man. Maybe he really has lost his mind. But when Castiel starts making appearances in Dean’s vivid visions of the past, he knows there is more to their link than meets the eye. Even if Cas keeps telling him otherwise. It seems everyone at Sword & Cross knows what’s going on except for Dean. Trying to conquer his mountain of guilt and doubt and figure out the connection he is certain he shares with Castiel is only made harder by the “accidents” that seem to follow him. Not to mention his attraction to Gadreel. Whatever secret Castiel is trying so hard to keep, Dean knows he has to uncover it.

Will you be my ten inch hero? | @notfunnydean

Rating: Explicit Word Count: 57468 Main Tags/Warnings: Bullying, Homophobic Language, Abusive John Winchester, Canon-Typical Violence, Smut, giving a baby to adoption (not between Destiel), Rape/Non-con Elements, John kicked Dean out, Virgin!Dean, surprise guest appereance, Minor Crowley (Supernatural)/Bobby Singer, Minor Charlie Bradbury/Jo Harvelle, Minor Rowena MacLeod/Gabriel, two surprise pairings, not Ketch or Mick Davies friendly Summary: When John Winchester kicks Dean out, after he saw him kissing another boy, and Dean sees that Sam has a perfect life at Stanford without him, Dean starts a new life in Santa Cruz. He works at a tiny shop as a cook, has found some friends there, and is overall happy enough. That changes when Castiel comes into his shop and his Co-worker Azara, who has a different man every night, starts flirting with him right in front of Dean. Not that he would be jealous or anything, but there is something about Castiel that makes him weak in the knees. Only that Castiel would never want him back, right?

Roll With It | @saltnhalo

Rating: Explicit Word Count: 72818 Main Tags/Warnings: Fake/Pretend Relationship, Boss/Employee Relationship, Secretary Dean, Alternate Universe - Not Hunters, The Proposal AU, Alternate Universe, Romantic Comedy, Romance, Editor Castiel, Fluff and Angst, Sam Winchester at Stanford, POV Alternating, Geek Dean, Russian Castiel, Sharing a Bed, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Top Castiel, Bottom Dean, Misunderstandings, Tattooed Castiel, Love Confessions, Slow Burn Summary: For two years, Dean’s been slaving away beneath his boss – many label him a secretary, but he fucking hates that and feels like it only applies to someone wearing a pencil skirt, so he insists on his title of Executive Assistant. And for what? In the vain hope that one day he’ll manage to become an editor for Sandover Publishing, and that he’ll see the manuscript that he’s slaved over since college finally realized in print. That’s the dream, anyway. Right now, he’s fucking late. Dean wants to be an editor. Castiel just wants to stay in the country. ‘The Proposal’ – as you’ve never seen it before.

When the Magnolias bloom (WIP) | @flurryflair

Rating: Explicit Word Count: 92951 Main Tags/Warnings: slow burn, angst with a happy ending, mutual pining, human!Castiel, divorce, infidelity, middle aged destiel, explicit sexual content, top Castiel/bottom Dean Winchester, top Dean Winchester/bottom Castiel, POV alternating, unresolved sexual tension, denial of feelings, porn with feelings, anxiety attacks, manipulative relationship, unhealthy coping mechanisms, canon-typical violence, case fic, bisexual!Dean, demisexual!Castiel, semi-canon, minor Castiel/OMC, minor Dean Winchester/Lisa Braeden Summary: It's been ten years since the Apocalypse. Ten years without talking, without knowing one another. Castiel has a company to handle and a wedding to plan, Dean has a broken marriage and a decision to make. They have separate lives, lovers and families of their own, they aren't supposed to meet again, to mess it all up. And yet they do, when they least expect it, and maybe when they most need it. A story about second chances, about hope and resilience, and a love that feels both doomed and inevitable.

Unsung Melody (WIP) | @toomanyships-sendhelp

Rating: Explicit Word Count: 177617 Main Tags/Warnings: Canon Character Death, AU Slaves, Slow Burn Summary: Dean runs a busy bar and grill in Lebanon, Kansas. Semi-retired from hunting, he'll still catch a case when one blows his way or the urge to hunt strikes him again. It isnt until a case that opened decades ago claims another victim and Dean has to get back in the game a little more than he expected.

[dothwrites]

15.12 coda--a parent’s heart bared

Through the blur, I wondered if I was alone or if other parents felt the same way I did - that everything involving our children was painful in some way. The emotions, whether they were joy, sorrow, love or pride, were so deep and sharp that in the end they left you raw, exposed and yes, in pain. The human heart was not designed to beat outside the human body and yet, each child represented just that - a parent's heart bared, beating forever outside its chest.--Debra Ginsberg

---

Castiel sits on Dean’s bed, legs tucked up under him. 

It took him a long time to learn this kind of nonchalance, his body unwilling to bend after millennia of enforced rigidness. It took years to teach it how to relax, to learn how to relax into a space, how to be loose. 

He learned from Sam, but mostly he learned from Dean. How to be excessive. How to stretch out into a space. 

In the past weeks, he and Dean have had to relearn how to stretch themselves into the same space. They’ve had to learn how to fit themselves together, how to file away their jagged edges until they’re something resembling smooth. 

They’re still not perfect. There are still those discordant jangles that strike, the times when the memories rise up, bitter and choking, in the back of Cas’ throat. Sometimes, Dean will look at him and something dark and hard lurks in the back of his eyes, but those times are growing fewer and fewer. 

Mostly, Castiel relaxes into the feel of Dean. Like now, when he sheds his clothing, dropping it carelessly into the hamper, until he’s in just a t-shirt and his boxers. Castiel watches Dean brush his teeth and run his fingers through his hair, just the easy, calm routines of night, but Dean makes them look like a dance. 

Dean turns around and catches sight of Castiel watching him. “What are you looking at?” he asks, but there’s a pleased little smile on his face. Dean likes the attention, same as Castiel likes giving it. 

“Come to bed,” Castiel replies. 

“Take your damn shoes off you savage. And the coat. And the jacket. And the tie.” 

Castiel rolls his eyes, already toeing off his shoes as his fingers work at his tie. “You know that I don’t need to be undressed to find comfort.” 

“Yeah well, it’s weird trying to snuggle up to someone who’s wearing a tie. And it’s just bad manners to put your shoes on someone’s bed.” Dean’s eyes flick over his body, a swift, appreciative dart as Castiel sheds his button down. “Hey there hot stuff.” 

“It’s late and you’re tired,” Castiel says flatly, though not without a small amount of regret. 

“You’re no fun,” Dean accuses, but doesn’t try to argue against Castiel. 

Castiel settles back onto the mattress, the foam easily forming to the contours of his body. Dean follows a few moments later. Tellingly, he slots his body next to Castiel, laying his head onto Castiel’s shoulder. 

Dean is still a man of hard-broken habits, created from a lifetime of fighting and losing and hurting. Even now, he still refrains from asking for or seeking comfort unless it’s the most dire of circumstances. 

Castiel holds back, even though the words crowd on the tip of his tongue. It’s what he’s learned--he has to wait for Dean to approach him, for Dean to drop his walls and allow Castiel to help. 

He doesn’t wait long. 

“So Kaia’s going to Sioux Falls with Jody,” Dean says. His breath wafts over Castiel’s chest. Were this a different night or a different mood, this conversation might end much differently. But Castiel’s learned control--Dean doesn’t need that from him, not now at least. “I guess she’s going to be another citizen of the Wayward Girls.” 

Castiel hums in agreement, unsure of where Dean’s taking this topic. “Jody had a kid the first time we met her,” Dean continues. “A son. Her kid.” His fingers push into Castiel’s side before he continues. “Never figured out how he died the first time, but the second time...Sam put him down.” 

Castiel’s heard the stories. At the time, his vision tunneled by the upcoming apocalypse, he’d expressed what he thought were the appropriate noises of sympathy and changed the subject as quickly as he could, unable to see why he should spend sympathy on one dead human when there were billions of lives at stake. Now, with the memory of Jack’s screams still echoing through his memory, Castiel understands. 

“Losing your kid...” Dean trails off, but Castiel thinks that he’s finally managed to unravel the thread of this conversation. 

Jack is still a tender subject, the edges of the wound not quite healed. There’s too much anger, guilt, love, and worry to tape over and forget. Castiel knows; Castiel understands. But the fact remains that he never wavered in his belief and Dean...

“I thought about being a dad,” Dean says, turning his face so that it’s mostly hidden in Castiel’s lap. The heat from his breath spreads out over Castiel’s pants, turns them humid and damp, but Castiel doesn’t dare to move. After a moment, he settles his hand onto the back of Dean’s neck and lets his thumb rest in the hollow of Dean’s jaw. 

Dean relaxes into the contact. His shoulders loosen, even as his arm wraps firmly around Cas’ waist. “Just, you know. Sometimes. I knew that it was never going to happen, but still...” He trails off and Castiel lets him. He’s had to learn to let things go. To accept that some things, Dean just can’t--won’t--do. 

“Thought that I’d gotten it there for a while.” Castiel knows where Dean’s mind goes--to the year when he was with Lisa and Ben, the year where he tried his best to fit in with civilian life. To give it his best shot at normal. And meanwhile, while Dean was languishing away, Castiel was making deals with the devil. 

Castiel doesn’t care to remember those years. 

“But it wasn’t...It wasn’t...” Dean huffs in frustration. “I always said that it had to be someone in the life. Anyone else, they wouldn’t get it. They wouldn’t...And then, with you, and Sam, and Jack...It just...it worked.” 

Castiel strokes over Dean’s temple. He knows what Dean means. Jack fit into their lives, seamlessly as though he’d always been there, and Castiel had rejoiced, had found different ways to tell Dean--This is it. This is our family. This is where we put down roots.

“And then it got all blown to shit, and...I’m just thinking.” 

“About?” Castiel finally dares to ask, when Dean trails off into silence.

Dean rolls onto his side and looks at Castiel. 

“About kids. Claire, Kaia...Jack...They’re really all just kids. Every one of them...” Dean’s voice grows thick and he speaks through it; for his sake, Castiel pretends to ignore it. “Everyone of them got screwed over by their parents.” Dean inhales, loud and shaky in the silence of the room. “I always promised myself that I wasn’t going to...That if I ever had a kid, that I would...you know. I wasn’t going to be my dad.” 

Castiel’s thumb stutters to a halt before he continues. “He was a complicated man,” Castiel says after a moment, knowing the veritable minefield he’s just entered into. 

“That’s a nice way of saying that he was a dick.” Dean’s laugh is a small, sad thing. “For so long, I told myself that he did the the best he could, but he didn’t. He didn’t do the best he could--He could have stopped. He could have left us with Bobby. He could’ve...shit, I don’t know, but he could have done so many other damn things rather than what he did do. And I always said...I’d do it differently. I’d treat my kid different. I’d be better. And then I turned around and I put a gun to my kid’s head.” 

Castiel’s throat constricts. Seeing Dean, the man that he loves, the man that he had died for, would still die for...Seeing Dean standing there, his only thoughts intent upon Jack, the boy who he’d given himself up for, would eventually die for, and knowing that there was nothing but anger in Dean’s heart...If he slept, he would have nightmares about it. He still sometimes, in the strange suspension between awareness and not, thinks about it and what he could have done differently. Still examines the what-ifs from every angle, just to see--Was there anything he could have done? 

“It’s over,” Castiel says, for Dean’s benefit but partially for his. “Jack is back, and...” He tries to put into words, how much Dean has changed. How much better it is now--the automatic trust. The way that Dean’s eyes shift to his, checking in. The surprising lack of temper, even as sometimes their world caves in around them. It’s so much better, and Castiel needs to tell Dean.

“I let him down Cas. I let him down, Sam...I let you down...And all I wanted to do was to things right. To make it better for him. For all of them.”  

Dean puts a small emphasis on the word ‘all’ and Castiel knows what he’s thinking of--not just Jack, alone and afraid, so much newer to the world than any of them, but also Claire, Kaia, Patience, Alex...All the children they’ve met along the way, battered and broken, who deserved better. 

“So we’ll make it better.” The certainty settles in Castiel, above his roiling doubts and fear. “We’ll fight Chuck...We’ll end Chuck, and we’ll make it better.”

“Yeah?” Dean looks up at him, but it’s hope and not doubt in his eyes. “You think?”

Castiel holds Dean close and pushes away all of his doubts and fears--of how they’re going to kill the creator of the universe, what doing so will do to his boy, how he and Dean will weather the change, of the gloom and blackness slowly gathering at the corners of his vision, a reminder of a deal unfulfilled and a debt unpaid. 

He pushes all of that away and concentrates on what he knows to be true: Dean beside him. Dean, flawed and human but trying, always trying to be better. Castiel holds onto the hope that the past few weeks have given him, holds on so tight and so long that he thinks that it might cut him to ribbons. There’s not another option. Not for them, and not for him. 

“I know,” Castiel replies. 

---

Perhaps it takes courage to raise children.--John Steinbeck