#and then the other sister was going to be trapped in a whole different dimension or something

[turrondeluxe]

May i gush aboit an au of mine..? I am aware that i am late, i was asleep,, but its rise and it focuses on mona lisa and venus demilo cause i think the girls need more focuse than just being love interests :<

from what i know they were going to be actual sisters to the brothers in rise! (tho they were not going to be named that. One was going to be Frida, like the artist, if im correct)

[reareaotaku]

Hate, Hate, Hate [Pt. I]

Summary: You are accidentally pushed into a portal your older brother was creating. You have to find a way out or you may never see your brothers again. Though, when you get stuck with a demon-like creature, you find that mission harder than before.

[I don't know how I feel about this...😭 ]

You weren't supposed to go through the portal. That was never part of the plan. It was too late to anything about it now, but Ford knew he had to get you back. He would just have to fix the portal that was destroyed when you fell through.

You rubbed your head as you looked around the empty void. There was nothing. Were you dead? Suddenly there are multiple portals and one even appears behind you and before you can even think about it, you're hitting a hard ground.

You groaned, rubbing your face before pushing yourself up. Great, you were in a whole different dimension or world or something and you had no idea what to do.

----

You had been stuck traveling dimension to dimension, discovering the horrors that you never could have imagined. You didn't know how long it had been... But it felt like months. And now you were stuck in a cave with a book that had been given to you by a creature after saving its life.

You fiddled through the pages, before landing on one that had a triangle creature on it. Bill Cipher, an interdimensional demon. The pages describe him as a creature of ultimate power. And that's when you realized, he could take you home, but you were sure it would come with a cost. And, at this point, you were willing to do anything.

You read the page's incantation... Nothing. Absolutely nothing. You frowned as you looked around, only to be taken a back when the wind picked up and the rocks around you started to floated and suddenly- a creature appeared?

You tilted your head as you stood up. He was a lot smaller than you had imagined? He blinked his eye at you and you both stared at each other.

"Um.. Hi?"

"Why, hello there!"

You smiled at his friendliness. Maybe this wouldn't be that bad!

---

Ford worked day and night to get the interdimensional portal working again. He couldn't sleep with the feeling of guilty eating him away.

Stan was angered by his brother and they tended to avoid each other.. At least for a while. When Stan finally decided to talk to is twin brother, they avoided the topic of their baby sister who was trapped god knows where.

---

"Oh, yes I can help you! But... I need you to do something for me."

"Okay. What do you want?"

He seems to think before lighting up, "A game! Let's play a game."

You were okay with that. You could play a game- That didn't seem to bad.

[baldachinsbrainrot]

DP headcanon - Hallucinations

Fun fact! Did you know that hallucinations can be caused by both flickering lights and vibrations at a certain frequency!

Frequencies below 20 Hz are known as infrasound. Infrasound are frequencies which humans can not hear, but can perceive.

Certain studies suggest that infrasound (IS) can cause both physiological and psychological health issues. These effects include feelings of annoyance or distress, to headaches, dizziness and panic attacks. [1]

Infrasound has before been connected to supernatural sightings. An example is when in a laboratory designing medical equipment, a foil blade was clamped in a vice, causing vibrations which were measured to be about 19 Hz. These vibrations had been bouncing between the laboratories end walls. They caused the staff to feel uneasy, even breaking into cold sweat. They reported seeing grey shapes floating in their view, only to disappear when facing it. [2]

Now the connection to DP

A popular headcanon in this fandom is that ghosts speak ghost speak. This can range from sounds related to the elements of their core to different types of trilling. For this particular headcanon I am going to talk about the trilling.

Hear me out, the trilling ghosts use to communicate are infrasounds. This is why, when ghosts are around, people start seeing things that aren't there. Ghosts can use this to their advantage. Some ghosts, especially ones that want to protect their haunts from humans, start excessively talking or making sounds to make people see things. They can use hallucinations to nudge people towards certain spots or places. They can trap people in a room with seemingly no exit or make them walk in circles in a house either to immediately kick them out or to make them forever walk in circles. There is so much a ghost can do when their voice alone can cause an entire human being hallucinate. They can trap them, torment them or simply make them leave.

Hallucinatory powers would add a whole other dimension to Danny Phantom. How would ghosts utilize it? Considering Danny's halfa status, will he be affected by ghost speak or the hallucinations? How would it affect his friends and sister? There is so much you can do with this

Additional fun part of infrasound ghost speak. Some animals like whales, elephants and pigeons use infrasound for communications and predicting weather. Will Danny become a new type of Disney princess (again)? Or will he put Amity Park's weather forecast out of business? [3]

[doriandrifting]

815 Gate: 008 is 001’s “5 star general”.

Season Two shows us Kali’s crew in the very first episode, but it isn’t until Chapter Seven: The Lost Sister, that we meet 008 and her friends. This is episode fifteen of the series.

Dustin: You're going to crack the case, Steve.

Steve-the-hair-Harrington: *cracks a literal case*

Before this interaction, Nancy says, "The answers are here. Somewhere." A few beats later, Steve drops Dustin's bag and we get a zoom in on it. We see a ghostbuster's pin that references their costumes in Season Two.

So let's go back there, shall we? We'll start on Seventh Street.

"They turn to you, remove their [masks]."

This is not to mention the visual parallels between the Mind Flayer's possession and 008's powers:

Regardless of whether Kali had anything to do with this specific instance, as it was shown to be the Mind Flayer, the parallel is sinister. Character symbolism is also already happening from the moment we see her on screen. She's wearing gloves and covering her mouth—a classic sign that a character is hiding something.

The very next shot after that is this:

One grave reads: “Ashes to Ashes / Dust to Dust / Here lies someone I wouldn't trust.”

Meanwhile in Season Four:

A graveyard with a hand.

Ashes to Ashes. Dust to Dust.

Here lies a sister I wouldn't trust...

The police standing around and not seeing anything directly parallels the abilities we see Kali display in Season 2. Not to mention, the dogs in the neighborhood are clearly seeing something that we're not! Dogs in media are commonly shown to perceive the supernatural, hence why the dogs are barking when Fred and Chrissy get cursed, and yet they're noticeably silent when Steve, Nancy, Robin, Max, and Dustin return as a group. The dogs could see past Kali's illusions.

This is more theorizing than solid evidence but, I think Season Four was Stranger Things' Freddy vs. Jason moment. We quite literally have Eddie vs. Jason, and also a character named Fred who tells us he's rooting against Jason's team winning. They've also cast the actor who played Freddy, Robert Englund, as Victor Creel, and there's a cardboard cut out of Freddy at Family Video. Vecna's hand was inspired by Freddy and a whole bunch of other things, so this isn't a major reach (maybe lol).

Anyway, in Freddy vs. Jason, the townspeople of Springwood have forgotten Freddy Krueger. The ones who do remember him are sent to a mental institution as a government coverup. (I'm not suggesting that is what has happened in Hawkins, but the inspiration is clearly there as Nancy and Robin take a trip to Pennhurst to gather information from the only person who seems to know anything about the case. Henry being taken is also covered up by the government.)

Because no one remembers Freddy Krueger, he's been trapped in Hell and unable to invade children's dreams using their fear. ("Dream a little dream of me" + "Welcome to Hawkins Hell") Freddy sets Jason Voorhees on a killing spree in order to manipulate the children of Springwood into remembering him. Essentially the murders spread a wave of panic and Freddy's name gets tossed around until Freddy's power grows strong enough that he doesn't need Jason and can lure them himself. It leads to a showdown between them, yadayada.

So what does this have to do with Stranger Things? Well, we're told that Vecna is stalking his victims. Dustin says he's trying to build a strong psychic connection with them. We see as much while Vecna's in the Upside Down. But until this season, he never shows any of these vision abilities. He obviously always had them, but it seems like maybe he’s been unable to use them because of being stuck in an alternate dimension. Before this, he’s always relied on the Mind Flayer to physically possess characters like Will and Billy, but we don't see any of that this season. Max says, "All we know is this is something different. Something new."

I think, like Jason Voorhees, Kali was helping build Vecna's psychic connection to his victims. Once it was strong enough, Vecna was able to finish the job himself, opening the gates. This would account for the fact that our victims are seeing visions for awhile before they're actually killed. "Your time is almost at an end." Why not just kill them at that point? It doesn't make a lot of sense. There are also some inconsistencies at the name that Max is called. We also see lurking shots of the characters clearly being spied on, especially Mike. A big one that a lot of people noticed is the one in the junkyard where someone is watching through a car window. Who is watching our characters? Could it be Kali and the "cult of Vecna"? Kali is able to travel through the void, just like El, afterall. And maybe it's a coincidence, but Kali takes El to a junkyard in Season Two to help her train. Again, it seems to me like the writers are leaving a clue.

[edit: Someone pointed out that Kali is surprised by El explaining how she used the void, but I think that there’s reason to believe that she’s lying about that. The purpose of the Hawkins experiment was remote listening using the void. Kali is 20 years old in Season Two, meaning she’s 7 years older than El, but she is somehow completely unaware of the existence of the void? That doesn’t make sense, but El had basically no memory of her time at Hawkins, so it was an easy lie for Kali to tell.]

Besides this, there are so many visual parallels between the opening of Freddy vs. Jason and Season Four—the Molotov cocktail being thrown and setting Freddy on fire, a human puppet on flesh strings (“Master of Puppets” + Vecna’s tentacles making him look like a puppet on strings), etc.

Okay back to connections that I swear can't just be a coincidence (To preface this, I'm not saying the characters are aware of all of these things. IMO, most are just subtle clues being left by the writers/set designs, etc.):

When El goes to visit Kali, she walks into the warehouse and passes a giant Upside Down sign that says "To Paris". Next to it is a spray painted smiley face. This season, Jonathan's wall has a Paris sign and a smiley face balloon, and his tapestry is upside down. (The balloon and smiley face motif also floats around different scenes this season—Like a smiley face balloon by the Christmas lights at Benny's when Lucas wakes up. Another link to the Upside Down.)

El also passes a giant sprayed Magic 8 Ball at the entrance hallway, just like the one 010 was playing with in the lab at the opening of Season Four.

El asks Kali, "Are you real?" just as Max does to El this season.

The sign between Kali and El is a red hand and eye with broken lights that make it read "Spiritual ISOR [eyesore]" instead of Spiritual Advisor:

Downstairs, Axel throws knives at a painted target. It's a person with a heart drawn on it. Next to him is a giant spray painted crown. This is similar imagery to Mike in Will's painting this season.

Axel says something something, "You mean the loony bin," which (offensively) connects to the Pennhurst storyline in Season Four. Kali responds with, "Mick, our eyes, our protector."

Dottie asks to play a game. "Awh, come on. Just one hand." Mick's response is, "One hand leads to two hands, two hands leads to three, and before you know it, I'm as broke as Axel." (This connects to Vecna using his hand to curse people and the motif of four. Also mimics his signature phrase: "You will break.")

Axel has the exact mask from the one they slow zoom in on at Joyce's job:

Something similar happens where we get a long zoom in on a news paper stack. Later we see a piece has been torn out and placed in Will's locker with the phrase "Zombie Boy." The eyes have been crossed out in red marker, just like Vecna's victims losing their eyes. We're never given an explanation for how it got there. We're meant to assume a random bully did it. Some have theorized it was Will's crush who asked him to dance, but that makes little sense. But we are shown that Kali and her crew have a closet where they have a collage of newspaper clippings of all the people they're targeting taped to the wall. They've drawn on clippings in red and black marker. There's Xs through the faces of the ones they've killed.

How did Kali escape before the Rainbow Room Massacre? And why does she nearly verbatim repeat Henry's lines to El while asking her to pull a train? (Also note that while El was in the Rainbow Room, Brenner tells her a story about how she needs to "leave the train station." While Kali isn't aware of the story of Nina, it's another hint from the writers about how this episode is connected.)

"He found his strength in a memory that made him sad, but also angry," Henry tells El in the Rainbow Room. Is it possible that Henry had already gotten to Kali? Where did she learn this? (Both of their speeches are longer, but line by line they parallel.)

To reiterate, we see Kali in a junkyard—the same place we're shown that the California crew is being watched from. These are the only two scenes that the writers chose to take place in a junkyard. Not shown in the screenshot, but there's actually giant "NO."s spray painted on the walls inside the warehouse, always next to Kali. They follow her into the scene at the junkyard, and in the initial shot they obscure El with a bin, so it's just Kali in the background with a big 'ole "NO." in the foreground.

There's a door with a red window spray painted behind Kali like the Creel's door. (Although it's much more prominent when El first comes to the warehouse, we can also see the magic eight ball I mentioned earlier on the right side.)

Kali questions El about what she remembers of her. On the surface this might seem sentimental, but if Kali is working with Vecna, the reason behind this is because she's trying to figure out what El knows about what happened.

One character asks, "Yeah, what about a lullaby? Did you sing her one?" Another allusion to Vecna, but also the idea of singing someone a song, when we know music is a weakness of Vecna.

One character says, "You don't kill their men and expect them to look the other way." Kali responds with, "If they find us, they will release Hell." Another allusion to Hell that we see as a continuous theme in Season Four.

Vecna's army is supposed to be undead, and we get an interesting line from Funshine, "We were dead, all of us. Kali saved us here. And here." He gestures to his heart. Whether this is actually literal is up for debate. Maybe Kali used powers similar to El's and essentially brought these people back to life, which is why they feel they owe her (and by extension, Vecna) their service in hunting down her enemies.

Kali torments El by making her hallucinate Brenner:

Does this not sound exactly like Vecna? Is this not incredibly similar to what happens to Vecna's victims? For instance, Max, when she sees her mother? Not to mention Kali's face is completely devoid of empathy, and the half of her face that we can see is lit in a purplish red glow that is eerily reminiscent of Vecna.

This line is the line. In this scene, Kali is talking about her powers, but it actually takes on a double meaning. Throughout this conversation, she earns a lot of empathy from the viewer, but look at how half of her face is obscured in darkness again. Like El, Kali is only showing us what she wants us to see.

Pt. 2

[musekicker]

Ghost talks to Antauri about his death for the first time.

"So... you're Antauri's sister." Chiro said.

Ghost looked as if she felt just as unsure about this conversation as Chiro did. Understandable. Both of them were new beings to each other. With new knowledge of how things were and had been.

"And you're Chiro. The new leader." Ghost said.

Chiro rubbed the back of his head, thinking about that.

"Yeah... you say new, though it's not new to me. This...  has got to be weird for you." Chiro said.

Ghost nodded.

"You have to have a lot of questions." Chiro said.

"Tons."

So for awhile there were questions. Some of them were easy to answer. Some not so much. And in some moment during these questions, two things happened at the same time that turned out to be unfortunate. Antauri had just entered the room. And then Chiro spoke of a subject he was unaware Ghost did not know about.

"Well, he's been like that since he died-" Chiro said.

"Antauri WHAT!?" Ghost cried.

Antauri flinched as Ghost looked at him so fast he swore her neck was going to break. 

"I hadn't told her yet." Antauri said.

"Oh." Chiro said.

Ghost was still staring wide eyed at her brother. Antauri couldn't help the guilt feeling. His guts would be roiling with the guilt if he still had guts.

"Chiro... if you could give us a moment." Ghost said.

The icy tone must had scared Chiro a little because he did find himself stepping back. Though he stopped to look at Antauri. Antauri nodded, signaling that Chiro should indeed leave him and Ghost to talk.

"I was going to tell you." Antauri said the moment Chiro left the room.

"When!?" Ghost snapped. "Because it's a pretty important piece of information!"

"I did not tell you yet because I was trying to find the best time and way to tell you about what happened." Antauri said.

"I've been back for two days!" Ghost cried.

"There was so much to catch up on both ends. I did not want to stand there and say "By the way, I died, part of it being murdered by a clone of my ex." while-" Antauri.

"A clone of WHO?" Ghost cried.

Antauri knew that was going to be a whole story to get into later. One bombshell of information at a time.

"This is why you're different then?" Ghost asked.

"You waited until now to ask about that? You've been back two days-" Antauri said.

A flash of anger in her eyes.

"Do NOT turn my words back on me. The point is.. well it's.. just that-"

That anger melted away quickly. So much faster then he had ever seen anger leave her before. It morphed into a whole different emotion that hurt Antauri to see in his sister. Despair.

"I wasn't there for you..." Ghost said, voice tight.

Antauri had feared that Ghost would feel this way about this. The reason why he had held back on explaining. But now this knowledge and this fear were out in the open. It had to be addressed.

"To begin with, that wasn't your fault. You were trapped in a whole different dimension. In which time ran differently for you then it did for us." Antauri said.

Ghost opened her mouth. To further debate no doubt. But Antauri held u his hand, not done talking just yet.

"And I honestly think even if you had been here when it happened, things would had played out as they did still." Antauri said. "It was no ones fault. Things happened as they were to happen."

Ghost shook her head.

"You know I don't really take to that kind of stuff about fate." Ghost said.

Antauri nodded.

"I know this. And though I do, if there is anyone in this universe that could defy fate and probably throw it the middle finger, it be you."

Ghost smirked just a bit at that.

"Yeah. That's me. I'll punch fate in the face somehow too if I had to." Ghost said.

"You would... but seriously, please, don't blame yourself for my death." Antauri said.

Antauri paused.

"And besides, as that one movie I remember you liked to watch, I got better." Antauri said.

Ghost stared at her brother a long moment before laughing.

"Jackass." she said with a laugh in her voice. 

Their talk did not quite end there. There were more questions. Such as how he had came back. And how it had felt to die. There were more long silences on both ends and some tears on Ghost's end. Eventually though the subject had to be dropped for the moment. It was getting too heavy to keep talking about.

"Antauri?" Ghost said.

"Yes?" Antauri said.

"Die again and I'll kill you." Ghost said.

Antauri smiled.

"I will keep that firmly in mind." he said.

[frozenfrogz]

The shit my boy has been through is insane.

1. Being abused by his father and living in a home with constant fighting and most likely having to eat a bowl of cereal for dinner a few times a week because his mom is to tired from working trying to keep the family together and like his father is going to cook for them.

2. Getting bullied at school and probably even beat up a few times.

3. Being kidnapped by some freaky 10 foot creature from a whole other dimension and being trapped in said dimension for a week in constant fear and never getting a break from said freaky 10 foot creature.

4. Feeling like an outcast after coming back from the dimension and everyone treating him differently.

5. Getting possessed by a gaint cloud of shadow in the form of a kinda spider. He was so scared and suffered so much during the time he was possessed. He got this giant scary shadow burned out of him which was very traumatic and scary because when it was out of him, he cried so much.

6. The shadow monster came back but instead of as a shadow and just hurting him (technically), it came back in the form of human and rat guts. It hurt his friends and made all the terrible memories he was trying to forget, come back. Also, during that summer, he felt like he was loosing his friends. They suddenly didn't feel interested in doing things they normally did, and they were becoming more distant, which scared him.

7. He fell in love with his best friend. Who is a boy I might add. Being gay in the 80s was a scary thing, and Will is in love with Mike. Mike is also dating Wills sister, so that doesn't make it any easier. He tried letting Mike go, but it wasn't that easy and he still suffers. Little does he know, things are about to get 10 times better for him and his love for Mike.

8. This vecna creep scary monster reveals himself and its revealed to Will that he was behind it all. Vecna hurt his friends and hurt his sister. Vecna destroyed his home and hurt many people.

Even after all of this, he can still smile. He can still smile because of his friends and family. Mike is a huge reason ofc. Mike is about to make Will like...a million times happier after he confesses 🤭

Will deserves the world and anyone who disagrees with that is insane.

[little-mouse-adventures]

I haven’t been able to make much project in my reread courtesy of coursework, but your tags about your own reread and thoughts was really cool so… how has your reread been, which has been your favorite to reread so far, and what are some of your thoughts? I always enjoy seeing them!

😈okay so i have about a million thoughts, all the time, about the Artemis Fowl series.

but this reread - which has been going great, thanks for asking!! - has really reminded me how much of a comedy the whole series is. Not just the deliberate snappy one-liners, but the whole premise of a lot of the books is inherently funny. Like...I'm just over halfway through TAC right now, so most of what's in my head is from the latter half of the series, but the entirety of TTP with Little Artemis being the worlds most irritating ten-year-old and Older Artemis recognizing that, and then doing the bare minimum to change the way he interacts with people is hysterical. (The reason the St. Bart's authorities wouldn't let Butler on the grounds is because they are hoping that if someone tosses Artemis into a trash can for being a smarmy little monster, he might learn something, but no one will be brave enough to do so with Butler hanging around.)

Also, No1. He's probably my favourite character to read about this go, he's just so sweet and lovely, but I noticed this time around that he's apparently around 14. The same age as Artemis. And despite TLC introducing us to Minerva in an attempt to show 'look how far Artemis has come from being nothing but a young genius interested in his own gains!' (which she does, don't get me wrong), the book also shows that a literal demon warlock from another dimension is still so much more of Just Some Guy than Artemis is. Fourteen-year-old Artemis is wondering how he's going to get away with lying to his parents about his various criminal enterprises, and No1 is just thinking "I don't like school, and I wish I had more friends :("

In terms of straight up style of the books, I do find the shift at about TLC from a mostly action-focused series to a more introspective POV fascinating. The first four books are very much written in a sense of "Here is the narrator, telling you that Action A happened, and then Action B. Character A thought X about Action C while it happened." whereas the latter books are lot more stream-of-conciousness of the characters through third-person limited POV, rotating between the main cast. For example, in TAC, when Butler is off in Mexico to rescue Juliet, the entire section about him finding and entering the wrestling ring is written as though we are riding around in his head:

Around the back, he decided. The story of my life....How old do I have to be? he wondered. Come to think of it, with all the time travel and fairy healings, I'm not even sure how old I actually am anymore.

Compare that to AF, when Butler is getting Juliet out of Holly's holding cell and winds up trapped in the foyer of the Manor:

And on any other day, Butler would have moved. He would've been halfway up the stairway before his brain had time for second thoughts. But today he had his baby sister over his shoulder spouting gibberish, and the last thing he wanted to do was expose her to murderous assault fire.

While both are past-tense, and both give us insight into Butler's thought process and desires, the change in perspective from essentially looking in on Butler's thoughts in AF as opposed to the more personal and direct communication of those thoughts in TAC is wild. We really get a lot more sense of the characters as individuals, and I applaud Colfer for handling such a broad cast with different personalities so well in the latter style! It's hard to get different character voices, and when you are trying to really get inside their head, as opposed to just note down what they say, it's a huge accomplishment to do so well.

[1010ninetynine]

venti and lyney are very similar characters. i'm going to talk about sales tmrw but today. i'm going to talk about them in terms of character.

Now obviously they're different people. Venti's arguably the more interesting of the two in terms of lore (not story, i mean like celestia lore) - but people will probably like Lyney more, not just because he's a main dps and a support, and Venti's lost his CC king title, but because he's fontainian. He's connected to a better archon quest and his penchant for the traveler is made very clear from the word go. It would have felt like heaven to me if I'd liked lyney more (and I'll get into my experience with him).

I want to first talk about Venti and what I think defines his character. For me, it's that sense of just wanting to be some guy. Venti's never wanted to be this Anemo Archon of The Seven, and it doesn't show in any place best than when he gave his little speech to us as the Anemo Archon and it was...him telling us to get to know teyvat, rather than speedrun it, a value he cares deeply about, and the immediately after went back to silly goofball. It's what I love about him. He's wise, because thousands of years have left him with a lot of time for thought, but he doesn't seek to be this imposing figure. He seeks to be someone who's not revered, but respected. Like, if someone who saw his heroism personally was like 'you're pretty cool you drunkard' i think that's the ideal scenario for him.

I mean hell, one of his lines when he opens a chest is "Thank Barbatos...wait a minute-" so like. He's really gunning for it.

Compare that to his polar opposite, Zhongli, who liked leading and all but just got tired of it. He didn't actually tire of being revered, he doesn't try to mingle with people as an equal, he's just tired of taking care of every problem Liyue deals with. He still wants to be their dad archon, just a retired one.

Lyney, on the other hand, I think is defined by seeking validation, or more accurately, trying to get paid, whether that be in adoration which means more people coming to his show, or in just straight up mora. So naturally, he has reasons to pretend to be someone he's not, in comparison to Venti, who is naturally charming and sociable, but often has to force himself to be because grief took a bit of a toll.

Call it intuition but i was suspicious of Lyney's socialness being a bit fake when he said that things would be quiet if he and lynette were alone on an aquabus. I, for one, know something. If you are genuinely close to your sibling (as Lyney is to Lynette, by all counts), and as social as you seem, then hanging out with your sibling is a time of great joy. My sister is social, and with me, becomes even more so. I'm not very social, but even so, my sister makes me want to talk.

then he came out and his voiceline literally said "yeah im not actually this social naturally" and i was like FUCKING KNEW IT YOU LIL MAGIC MAN

*ahem* anyway point is he's developed a skill of being charming to survive and also is very pretty and by all counts, I should have fucking adored him.

but here's why i didn't - the ayaka and ei effect

*dramatic pause*

Now, one thing I have very little patience for in gacha games is being explicitly "pandered" to (except when I'm deep into them, like I was with Arlecchino and for a bit, Kokomi) Ayaka's story quest is a prime example of this.

Ayaka's lack of friends, journey to discover her mother's desire for freedom, and all of this leading her to love the traveler, but accepting she cannot leave Inazuma...and all this while I could still pull for her...it was so immersion breaking. And it felt kind of pandery the whole time to me. Like, they're pandering to a male audience with female charas like her obviously, and it's so fucking similar to every other overworked waifu in this game that while her being lowk trapped is a new dimension, it's not one that makes me feel any sort of way cuz uhh i could literally pull for her, and she'd go wherever I'd want her to, and it was so obvious that they were trying to sell her.

Same with Ei's story quest, it was just a shopping date, and while I mean I love evil women more than sane women so I was willing to ignore a lot of the pandery stuff, but what I couldn't ignore was the fact she'd literally tried to kill us right before the beginning of the story quest, and thus the whole quest made very little sense in the grand scheme of things. It was frustrating. I chose to ignore canon and pretend me and ei worked out shit over 4 months or so.

Now, I know what you all are thinking "but lyney's a well written character! his motivations for liking the traveler are well explained (imo no and ill get to that), and he's not a boring snowflake nor a poorly written villain." ok well consider this. I've already had two story quests somewhat dulled for me by the gacha system/poor placement and the supposed romance im supposed to be feeling has been soured, then lyney spends so much of his screentime flirting with the traveler, and I do self insert as the traveler btw, and I wanted his father, and I don't get why they don't just leave the rizz lines to the teapot. Least you can decide who gets to rizz you up then.

Second of all actually, no, I don't get why Lyney cares so much about our trust. Ayaka's reasons made sense, we kind of represented freedom to her, plus she's canonically into good sword skills, Lyney's reasons actually felt more like spontaneous attraction to anything.

And nothing's directly wrong with that, just, he's a fucking fatui member. Soon to be harbinger (supposedly). The traveler is not, in fact, famous for their favorable dealings with the fatui. We kind of caused La Signora's death, we regularly farm fatui insignias for some weird alchemical ritual, oh not to mention, we got on Dottore's bad side too. Childe's adoration for us makes sense, all he cares about is a good fight, he's not entirely in support of the Tsaritsa's actions per say - but his morals take second place to his desire for good fights so he rolls with it. Leaves it up to the players. So he sees a friendship with us as not a big deal.

Lyney on the other hand? Just straight up IGNORES all the implications of flirting with the traveler, at least, so far. And sure, it's nothing serious yes, just a rainbow rose and some on the edge lines but that's the thing, that means he knows he likes us, or he does this with everyone which is its own brand of annoying.

And his fucking magic show. The tricks were cool. But the goddamn dig at amateur magicians...call me a prick who cares too much abt stupid shit but like cmon. we know all mistakes are staged in this show. why are u speaking as if that's something that could organically go wrong. second of all, i don't like someone saying "hurr durr im not an amateur hehe im so fucking cool" like goddammit least favorite behavior.

And it's not like I think Lyney's a worse character than Ayaya or Ei, if anything, he's probably more developed than Ei at the very least. Im just like...specifically annoyed at him for minor details no one really cares about.

Another thing - the fact we decided to serve as an attorney during the archon quest despite no experience was kinda ehh to me. Like Fontaine's laws, known to be complex and silly, and some foreign traveler's gonna be the attorney? I wish we just offered to help gather evidence or smthn it was silly to me.

if you got this far and you liked lyney, uh, i commend you for being open to alternative takes but uh...mind the tags if that wasn't the case, for future reference.

[thebirdandhersong]

okay okay I'm calm I'm calm the thing is. the Thing IS. Bleach works the way Teen Wolf does. the main boy has the BIGGEST heart and that's why the story WORKS even though the last 200 chapters make a girl want to weep with frustration. THE THING IS. IT'S SO GOOD. I'VE NEVER RECOVERED FROM IT. HERE IS MY PITCH FOR BLEACH:

the concept is literally: there is another dimension/world full of sword-yielding Grim Reapers (KNIGHTS !!!!!) and other humanoid creatures who are definitely Not Human. Ichigo (whose name is a homonym for the Japanese word for "strawberry", bless his heart) is a moody, thick-skinned teenager who loves his little sisters SO much and will do anything to protect his family and town. He can see ghosts and one day he sees this girl (not human) who comes into town, looking for a monster called a Hollow. She nearly dies defending him against the monster and transfers her powers to Ichigo, making her temporarily trapped in a human body. So they have to team up to hunt these monsters (and other classmates start to get involved). BUT because transferring Shinigami/Soul Reaper powers is illegal, she's arrested and sentenced to death. Ichigo and his crew have to figure out how to enter this other dimension to rescue Rukia.... and the story goes on from there

he literally has no obligation to her but he risks it all to go rescue this one girl. this is an ongoing trend. Ichigo, Scott McCall, and Percy Jackson are made of the same stuff

pretty incredible female characters. yes, the manga and anime suffer from Chronic Male Mangaka Gaze (with 1/4 cup of Chronic Male Mangaka Perverted Jokes thrown in) and it's gross when it shows up, but on the whole the female characters are well-developed, nuanced, and interesting people who are treated, as. you know. humans and not pieces of meat (99.98% of the time, which is something if you compare Bleach with other shounen manga of the time)

hysterically funny and devastating in turns

incredible worldbuilding. the writer brings in elements from different cultures and languages to create his world. the general feel of the manga is very unique because of this

one of the BEST romances in manga ever developed. it's a very slow burn romance based on trust, respect, compassion, tenderness, and a steadfast friendship (he literally goes to the Underworld to rescue her and she does pretty much the same thing for him and this trend continues). the last chapter ruins EVERYTHING but I won't deign to think about chapter 686

THE THEMES are INCREDIBLE

the vibes are also incredible

I am just SO unimaginably insane about huge ensemble fantasy manga with friendship and self-giving love at its heart

P.S.

[starfoam]

Actually, lemme break down Pokeverse for a sec because a lot of it is just "pick it up as you go along", but that's not really fair to new people. So here's some basics.

The big "trait" of Pokeverse is that Lo's aware of what she calls "timelines", but are actually just blog continuities. She can tell when she's met a "new" muse before (ie the blog remade/rebooted), can distinguish if muses are from different "sources" (muns, but she doesn't know the sources are people), and can recognize when a timeline has "ended" or she's lost connection to it (the blog deleted).

She perceives this as a form of interdimensional travel, and what's more, she can identify who each timeline is anchored around (the main muse of the blog). She calls this person the "focus" - if they die or leave, the whole timeline collapses.

She does not use this to control other timelines. Quite the opposite - Lo is desperate to keep timelines stable and connected for as long as she can, partially because her memories are tied to those connections. The only way for her to preserve her memories is to hold onto a physical object from a timeline that has disconnected, including photographs of that timeline. As such, she keeps a lot of mementos and scrapbooks.

Again, let me be clear - I have no intention of godmodding with this information. This is less about her being omnipotent and more about her being trapped in a form of time loop; aware that she could wake up tomorrow and her close friends could just not exist, with no proof they were ever there. It's about loving while grieving, grappling with the inevitable, and the nature of memory.

This mostly affects her dialogue - she may allude to other muses, lost memories, or in-game events she's witnessed in other blog continuities. Granted, her memory was rebooted a year and a half ago, so a lot of that information is lost. Fun!

Anyway, here's some more stuff.

Lo is from Melemele Island, born and raised. She's 28 as of today (February 20th, 2023) and will be 29 on May 5th. She resides on the island currently, but is capable of teleportation and thus can be anywhere.

She has powers. These powers are pretty tightly defined (super strength, telekinesis, flight, crystal and energy blast conjuration, super healing, teleportation, immortality) but their origin is unclear. She fell down a hole when she was 19, there was a bright flash of light and some "is this eternity or an instant" tomfoolery, and then she pulled herself out. Her powers started coming in a week later.

She acts as a superpowered vigilante named "Luminous", but on Melemele her powers are an open secret. Everybody saw her hair fall out and come back in white, they know.

Lorelei has a baby sister, Kiana, a dad, three moms (her parents divorced and both married women), and an alternate, Lore.

Lore exists because Lo's blog (in 2014) started as a fan-region based on Hawai'i. And then Alola happened. So I soft-rebooted the original blog to be about Alola instead of my (pretty threadbare) fan-region, but later decided to do an event where Lo finds the ruins of that fan-region. Lore, who does not have powers, was the only remaining inhabitant. Lo brought her back to her dimension and now they just kinda vibe. Lore is 19.

Lo's main Pokemon companion is a quadrupedal goodra named Benji. He goes "mrrp?"

There is a... castle? Floating off the coast of Melemele? That only exists when Lo approaches it. It's an interdimensional hub to other worlds, but Lo keeps getting lost in it.

She's a really good cook. Ask her to make you something.

Lore is the one who rebooted Lo's timeline memory by destroying most of the contents of her scrapbook. Lorelei doesn't know.

[seven-thewanderer]

okay sadly I couldn’t get myself in the drawing mood (since very soon I will be going, and I only say very soon - despite there still being a whole day left - is cus I’m probably gonna be really busy tomorrow :T), but I did doodle this, and wanted to give you guys an update that I don’t recall giving!!

So if yall saw my Strayed!AU Moon before, you may be wondering: why is his eye red now and not green?

Well… I decided to change up the lore!

So, alas, no Nexus/New Moon… cus I honestly wanted to get the Moon we have now in my AU, but I didn’t want to kill off Nexus/New Moon, so i kinda just… didn’t add him in the first place anymore

Instead, when Moon lets KC out of his head, he kinda just… dies.

He doesn’t get a reset version of himself, he just dies, and the inner copy is basically locked in a lifeless body. So all Sun & Earth see by that point is just like. Moon’s body laying there, off.

Sun basically still has hope, while Earth tries to comfort him (and Lunar dies in the background-), and kind of Monty has to handle things at this point. So basically he has to try and bring back both Lunar and Moon, while reviving Lunar works out well, but Moon’s situation doesn’t work out well, and Eclipse gets the star, yada yada everyone hates Sun cus of Eclipse & the star, Sun’s basically having like. A breakdown. Cus everything’s going wrong (Moon: dead. Lunar: dead. Everyone hates him except for his new sister, his stuck-in-an-arcade-rn new brother KC, Monty, and I’m pretty sure Foxy. Has to also now deal with Bloodmoon cus he’s staying around more [but mainly Earth handles him cus he hates Sun at the moment], things just ain’t going well for the poor lad Sunny.) so kinda Monty has to take Moon’s role for a bit (and honestly so does Sun at points). Also the daycare doesn’t get blown up luckily but Brainsick does send Sun to a new dimension (instead of Sun and Moon) and so he kinda has to do that all by himself (and he does cus Sunny’s smarter than he thinks he is sometimes) and eventually he makes it back with the help of someone from another dimension idk haven’t thought this far :T

but yeah basically the whole year stuff happens (like Brainsick arriving & taking Bloodmoon to work for him, Lunar getting powers, the Astral Bodies arriving, Tock - aka Forkface/Frank - appearing, Squeaks - aka Francis - appearing later, the discovery of Dazzle, Earth + Monty getting together, and anything else Moon would care to know), Moon was just stuck in his head, on a fuzzy island (cus his mind’s growing fuzzy over the year that he’s trapped in there), staring at the sun. The only difference I guess also about the island (other than it being fuzzy & him not knowing what he missed) is that he can at least move. He just stays on the island cus he tried to get off it and felt like he almost drowned, and realized that if he did drown, there was a chance he’d be dead for good in his head, so he stayed on the island

So yeah after that lore ramble (and it’s messy cus I honestly didn’t think this all through in advance it’s just been a tiny thought sitting in my head that I just tried to expand on right now in the moment of typing all this), basically this doodle represents a point in Moon’s head where he actually starts to rethink everything he’s done, and starts to kind of regret things he did to Sun. He knows he cant change himself instantly, but he knows if he wakes up again, and he sees Sun…

…he wants to at least try to be better to him.

(Also I forgot but wanted to put this: they all live with Monty in this AU when Moon’s dead-ish. Except KC & Bloodmoon of course. But they all live with Monty - Earth, Sun, & Lunar do - and Monty has a bigger house so they actually can have them all live there.)

(Idk if when Moon returns does he just get a new house for him, Sun, Lunar, and Dazzle, or if he gets a new house for them all, including KC & Bloodmoon if they want to visit. Still deciding on that :P)

But ye a TLDR (or an attempt at one. Kinda just a summary of what I was going at):

Moon in my AU isn’t reset, Nexus doesn’t exist ever, and Moon’s basically put in a coma for a whole year.

[that-floating-ghost-key]

i know i made a post way in the past about my different worlds, but I wanted to update it with a bit more details (and add one more because I forgot)

Gala

Gala was my first ever world, it's a area surrounded by a thick fog that is full of magic crystals, strange animal hybrids, and spontaneous fires. Most of the residents are super friendly, and Gala as a whole has a philosophy of helping others so that everyone can live the best life they can ^^

Lorenfall

Lorenfall is Gala’s ‘Sister Dimension’ (basically a dimension of the same exact world but with one event in history being different enough that things don't turn out the same). Instead of settling the landmass that Gala had after The Years Of The Floating City, Lorenfall was founded after the inhabitants of the floating city crashed into an island in the middle of The Misted Sea, aiming to settle there instead. The main thing the change led to was more distrust between the different sections, but at the same time… it was an island, they couldn't exactly easily get away from each other, so the set up a Ringed District system, making sure that people can leave each other alone if need be. (there's a lot of more details, but I wanna move on, feel free to ask any questions tho ^^)

Dieer

I'm going to be completely honest, Dieer came about because of a Warrior Cats apocalypse AU that I made up shortly after discovering the fandom through animations on youtube. The lore of that original AU is that everything was the same until a bit before- something- (can't remember if it was Rusty finding the clans or something else-), but instead of that event happening, the world suddenly gets swarmed with these weird one-dimensional beings, and the clans have to scatter in order to survive, with new clans eventually being formed and settled a few years later. I've started working on it where each clan has their own different lore, and isn't just Shadowclan but not Shadowclan… idk, it's a work in progress.

Conifer Glen

This world came about after I needed to make a short story for a fiction writing class. I made a story of this human being summoned to a magical world just to be hunted down by The Big Bad unless they find *Insert Mcguffin Here*. Idk, it honestly was kind of a last minute thing, but the story kinda stuck with me, and I've been trying to make a world from it when I have time. What I have so far is that, the citizens of Cornifer Glen evolved from trees, and their currently being ruled over by The False Acacia (also known as The Locust).

Cardinal

This world started out as just a place for my Spidersona, Spider-Ink, but I really wanna plan it out more. Only detail I have is that people with superpowers have their powers because of a parasite.

The Island

As I said in the post above… it's literally just the Tomodatchi Life island controlled by an inhuman being (not a demon anymore, still developing her). In the worlds lore, its a pocket dimension made by Alter (the being) in order to trap people there and live off of the energy of their memories :)

Carnyveil(?)

IDK if i like the name, but this is Serv's world! its basically a pocket dimension meant to house this species of shapeshifters that work kind like an ant colony. the Monarch (the first shapeshifter of a colony) makes their own pocket dimension with a theme of their choice, and the Veils theme is more carnival/funhouse/children's play-place type vibes :> I have more details laid out, but I'm thinking of changing stuff up, so I need to have a research day FINALLY GOT THIS DONE AFTER IT DELETED ITSELF, YIPPEE!!!

[david-talks-sw]

Disney Plus shows & structuring episodes

Everyone's always talking about "pacing issues" when it comes to some Disney Plus shows. Where does that come from? Here's me trying to put it into words.

So I've actually been working on this post since the last episode of Book of Boba Fett came out. Then, an editor on TikTok released his 2-hour cut of Obi-Wan Kenobi and that made a lot of buzz. The idea being: if this show feels like a 3.4 hour movie... why not just make it a feature film from the get-go? So I wrote some more. What made me finish this post was a chat I had with my sisters regarding She-Hulk's episode 2.

The youngest asked "what happened in She-Hulk episode 2"? We replied "well, she got a new job, and got a new case" and we started geeking out about Abomination and Bruce and all that stuff. But after we were all done going "and that's so cool/funny too" it occurred to us that literally nothing else of substance happened in that episode other than:

Jen gets fired from her job.

She-Hulk gets new job.

She-Hulk meets new client.

And that's it. Everything else is in the episode is set-up for these two/three plot points. And it takes them about 20 minutes.

For comparison, an episode of Community will use that same amount of time to tell you a whole story with a beginning, middle and end and two subplots.

Whereas the second She-Hulk episode seemingly ended in the middle of the second act.

And that's so typical of a lot of Disney Plus shows. There will be scenes that are literally just filler (I'm using the term very loosely), there to pad the runtime because not much is actually happening in the episode.

Like, in Loki.

Episode #3, they land on a doomed planed, they get off the doomed planet. Filler shenaningans on a train.

Episode #4, they're captured, they escape capture. Filler scenes with Sif slapping Loki.

Episode #5, they land in weird dimension, get out of weird dimension. Filler scenes with variants.

Episode #6, they meet big bad, listen to big bad, kill big bad. Filler scenes with Owen Wilson & big bad's overall weird.

Or Book of Boba Fett,

Episode #1, Boba heads to town and gets attacked.

Episode #2, Boba heads to town, sees mayor, meets Hutt rivals.

Episode #3, Boba heads to town, recruits goons, survives assassination, makes peace with Hutts, heads to town again, finds out Pikes are his actual rivals.

Then Episode #4, is a whole flashback that ends with a meeting where characters we already knew hated Boba say they won't help Boba, shocker.

Episode #5 and Episode #6 focus on Din, A WHOLE DIFFERENT CHARACTER...!

Episode #7, they fight off invading Pike forces, Boba kills his old rival/mentor, cementing his already-claimed position as crimelord. Filler scenes where Din needs to fight big robot + a whole bunch of other minor characters going pew pew.

Note: The first three episodes are intercut with flashbacks that pad the runtime. Episode #3 is the one where most stuff happens, and even then, it's repetitive and the length needs to be filled with the slowest speeder chase ever. Keep in mind, I didn't necessarily hate the show, you can read meta I wrote about it here and here for more detailed opinions.

Even Obi-Wan Kenobi,

Episode #1, Leia gets kidnapped and Obi-Wan hesitates to leave his post and go rescue her, until he finally does. Standard first act. Great.

Episode #2, he frees Leia.

Episode #3, they're about to escape but Vader shows up and Leia is kidnapped again.

Episode #4, he frees Leia.

Episode #5, they're about to escape but Empire shows up and Obi-Wan needs to help the rebels survive. He prepares a trap for Vader using Reva, and uses his past knowledge of Vader's personality to escape with the rebels.

Episode #6, Obi-Wan fights Vader to let the rebels get to safety, and defeats him, coming to terms Anakin is truly dead but there is still hope.

Note: Aside from the repeating beat where Obi-Wan saves Leia twice, most of the time-padding is done through a B-plot featuring Reva... but it barely ever directly impacts the A-plot. This detraction is less problematic than the other examples given further up, imo, and I have no problems with her storyline, in fact it parallels Anakin's beautifully as I write here. They're able to tie it back to Obi-Wan at the end, but throughout it's like I was watching a parallel story.

Now, bear in mind...

... Having those filler scenes isn't bad. By themselves, I like most of them. It's Star Wars and Marvel. I'll always love whatever they put in front of me, especially if it's got Obi-Wan.

And, hey we get character development in them! (although, ideally, the audience should see the character develop throughout a plot rather than being told about it through flashbacks or exposition-on-train scenes)

But it's just that... those scenes don't really impact the plot. And if the plot is basic or even paper-thin, that's when we have a problem because it makes for an unsatisfying viewing experience, as nothing substantial really happened.

And this is nothing more than a structural problem. These episodes aren't being treated as episodes in a series, they're "parts of a 10-hour movie".

Which brings me to the below quote by Erik Kripke (heated though it may be), which sums up my issue.

“The downside of streaming is that a lot of filmmakers who work in streaming didn’t necessarily come out of that network grind. They’re more comfortable with the idea that they could give you 10 hours where nothing happens until the eighth hour. That drives me f—ing nuts, personally. As a network guy who had to get you people interested for 22 f—ing hours a year, I didn’t get the benefit of, ‘Oh, just hang in there and don’t worry. The critics will tell you that by Episode 8, shit really hits the fan.’ Or anyone who says, ‘Well, what I’m really making is a 10-hour movie.’ F—k you! No you’re not! Make a TV show. You’re in the entertainment business.”

So bottom line: before streaming came along, whether it's a

serial TV show (usually hourlongs, each episode builds off of previous episodes, and sets up future episodes), an

episodic TV show (whose stories unfold in simply one episode, like half-hour sitcoms, or a medical/legal/police hourlong procedural shows) or a

hybrid TV show (incorporate length and overall season and episode structure of serialized shows, with the week-to-week component of episodic shows; think Scandal or Supernatural or Lucifer or The Blacklist or anything from The CW, wherein there's a monster/case-of-the-week component but there's also an overall arc that's tackled every episode, and an overarching villain every new season),

the episodes are structured with a teaser, beginning, middle and end, with a cliff-hanger at the end.

This is usually done using a 5-act structure (though there is some variety; some shows will be structured with a "teaser and 4 acts").

Prologue, Conflict sets in, Rising Action, Climax, Falling Action, Resolution. Six storytelling plot elements, classic.

And even with a 3-act structure, like in half-hour serials like Silicon Valley or sitcoms, you still have the same idea.

"Cat gets stuck up a tree, you throw pebbles at it, cat climbs down from the tree".

Basic stuff. It's not a dogmatic must, but that's pretty much it.

And in a serial, all these individual episodes, put together, form a season arc with its own beginning, middle and end, with its own rising action, climax, falling action and a cliffhanger.

This structure makes for a satisfying viewing experience.

Then streaming came along and this became less of a hard rule and more of a guideline. After all:

You don't have commercial breaks anymore, you don't have to split the episode up it into acts, if you don't want to. If you read a script from The Crown, for instance, there are no act breaks.

Also, with streaming comes binge-watching: you're not just watching one episode a week now, right? The episodes are released all at once. So people are consuming the series differently. They're watching the series like it's a really long movie. So the pressure of sticking to the above-listed formats isn't as strong, because the next episode is right around the corner.

But it's worth pointing out that Netflix released a document a short while ago for creators to know what to include in their pitches to them (you can download it here).

This includes an example of a season map.

Okay, so same thing. Rising action, climax, falling action. Great.

And the PDF also shows an example of how to structure your episodes, using Dan Harmon's story circle (Dan Harmon created Community and co-created Rick & Morty):

Even with the story circle, which follows a 3-act structure, there's a self-contained element to the stories Netflix tells; beginning, middle and an end, the characters have an arc.

And while Harmon himself uses it for half-hour sitcom episodes, the diagram shows that even serialized hourlongs adhere to this.

So where's the problem?

The problem is that with many (not all) Disney Plus shows, this structure has been completely abandoned... but the shows aren't even being released all at once!

And this is... not ideal :D

Because the episodes don't follow any particular structure, so by and large you don't have the satisfaction of having seen a full episode with a start, middle and ending. You've just seen a cluster of scenes, wrangled around one or two plot points, with a cliff-hanger.

"Stuff happened and now the episode is over."

And when structure is thrown out the window, that's where the pacing issues come in, right? Scenes that should only be 15-20 minutes tops are padded so they run for 30. Scenes that should only be 3 minutes instead last 10. The episodes don't stick to any particular length. They seem to be paced like hourlongs but then they have the length of half-hours every other time?

Which wouldn't be an issue if the whole show was released at once and you could watch the next episode right away.

Proof: people who binge-watched Obi-Wan Kenobi or rewatched it all from the top or watched a "feature cut" all LOVED it.

So it's clearly not the content, it's the pacing, which wouldn't be problematic if you're watching this like a 10-hour movie.

But the episodes are released weekly!

It's like watching a movie, and after, like, 7 scenes... your parent turns the TV off "okay, you'll watch the rest next week" when you were just about to get to the good part.

*CLICK* turned off.

So the next week you're watching the good part, but you don't have those 7 scenes leading up to it, you're literally just starting there, so it's not as good.

Then right after the good part, one scene later, TV is turned off again.

*CLICK* off.

And you're back the next week opening on them licking their wounds.

It's not just frustrating, it lessens the impact of the movie. It's "keep watching these scene groupings and eventually it'll add up to a sort-of complete story if you wait a month."

That's not an enjoyable viewing experience.

For comparison, Mare of Easttown on Amazon was also a limited serial with a weekly release, like Disney Plus shows. But in those episodes there's a clear teaser, beginning, middle, resolution and a cliff-hanger. Only Murders in the Building on Hulu isn't limited, but it is serialized and released weekly: same deal structure-wise.

THOSE were enjoyable viewing experiences.

So at this point, like, either they:

Keep the "10-hour movie" formula and release the show all at once, so it can be binge-watched.

Format the episodes more like network ones and keep the weekly releases, thus keeping it satisfying to consume.

Because this current release strategy isn't working, if the number of people complaining about "pacing" is indicative of anything.

Of course, they'll do neither, because it totally IS working, isn't it?

After all, the goal isn't telling a story properly or making an enjoyable viewing experience, it's getting more subscriptions, more money. People keep tuning in every week? Yes? Cool. Let's settle for that.

On the contrary, more streaming services are now adopting the weekly release over the all-at-once (but again, they're structuring the shows well, so it's not a problem).

But I'm hopeful.

A friend, yesterday, told me Miss Marvel doesn't fall in this pattern, so hey, Imma watch it, while also hoping that Andor is gonna go about it better too. And I've got a good feeling about The Mandalorian Season 3. Fingers crossed!

Edit: Saw the first three episodes of Andor... same issue. It wasn't three episodes, it was ONE episode, split into three. Like, on the one hand I really, REALLY liked these three episodes (and I am usually "meh" by default on any SW content that doesn't involve a lightsaber), the acting is magnificent, it's seriously all great TOP quality stuff… but it’s paced like an hourlong episode (which is cool) but has only 30 mins length (which is also not bad if all episodes were released at once) and you have to wait a week to see the next episode. Like, don't get me wrong, the pacing is GREAT, in theory. It’s just that it should go hand-in-hand with either/both a longer length, different structure and an all-at-once release.

[val-writesstuff]

In love and shadows -p3

P2 P1

TAGLIST MASTERLIST

The next morning I woke to the sound of soft knocking at my door. “Just a moment please” I hurriedly dressed in pants and a top and opened the door to see Feyre waiting in the hall holding a blackish blue square box in her hands. I held the door open so she could enter and she sat in one of the plush chairs near the fireplace. I sat on the seat across from her and looked towards the floor as I picked at my nails.

“I know being new around here can be a bit nerve-wracking so I wanted to give you a gift.” She held out the box for me.

Gingerly I took the box and set in it my lap. I looked up at her and she nodded at me to open it. Inside was a leather-bound journal of the same color adorned with silver swirls much like the pattern on her arm.

“When I was new at all this I had some struggles and it helped me to write down my thoughts. I hope this helps but I’m also available if you ever need anything.”

“Wait a moment, you were new to all this? Like being shoved into a body that doesn’t belong to you or ending up in a new world?” I looked at the woman sitting across from me. She looked like she had always belonged to this life. Like she fit into it all like a puzzle piece

“I wasn’t born like this…” she gave a wistful smile “I was once human. I fought against a terrible person and I ended up losing my life. Rhysand and the other high lords all donated a small kernel of themselves and I was remade.”

“If you were a human and you died, those two girls, Nesta and Elain, did they die too? I don’t think I died.” I moved to the edge of my seat. The thought that I wasn’t alone in being made into something new.

“My sisters were made differently, and that’s their story to tell. Your story more resembles Amen.”

I thought back to the introductions of yesterday. The woman around my height, with those silver eyes that seems to pierce into my soul. She looked like the kind of person who could kill without thinking about it. She was almost as quiet as I was at dinner, but her voice was surprisingly gentle when she spoke. “What do you mean by that?”

“Some say she’s older than this world, and some say she’s a god long forgotten. She says she slipped in through a rift between dimensions and got trapped here many years ago. Nobody knows what she truly is. She’s not truly fae, she just wears the skin of one.”

I slumped in my seat. So not like me. “I’m not some old god, I’m nothing special. I am er- was, just a normal girl. In my world, there’s no such thing as magic or people with wings and powers. I was just a normal girl…” I put my hands over my face as a tear threatened to slip out.

“You’re right. You’re one of a kind, nobody is like you. But I hope you can still find solace with us here.” she rose and stood beside me with a hand on my shoulder. “One more thing, the journal is spelled. One drop of your blood on the cover will bind it so only you can open it.  I do hope for the best for you.” and with that, I was alone in my room.

After I was sure I would not cry I placed the journal on a nightstand next to the table before I went off to find Azriel. +++++++

Almost two months into my stay here and I’m starting to feel like I can connect with everybody. I spend my mornings with Azriel, learning to fly. Of course, we haven’t actually gotten to the flight part of the lesson plan yet. Turns out having wings is a lot of work. I’m able to hold them up without binding them and I can move them freely now. In the beginning, the pain was excruciating but I pushed forward reminding myself I had endured worse. Thankfully it had dulled recently to more of a distant ache. Cassian keeps asking if I want to combat train with him. If he asks one more time I’m likely to say yes just to shut him up. I enjoy going out with Mor on the weekends but I think my favorite part of this whole place is the biggest of the libraries, with its never ending shelves and its balcony with chairs to relax in. Being able to read in the fresh air is so much better than I ever could’ve imagined, I’m going there as soon as I finish this entry. Thank you again for listening.

With a joyful smile, I shut the journal and made my way to the library. I grabbed the book I was reading and plopped into the chair with a content smile. I got a few chapters in when I heard a faraway gruff voice. I placed my bookmark on my page and put the book on the chair as I rose. I walked over to the railing where the voice seemed to grow louder.

“Of course nobody has seed out, I work tirelessly to sing to these people and all they do is flap around and ignore us, little guys. Why I oughta teach them that us birds may be small but we are not to be messed with.”

With widened eyes, I gazed at the bluebird hopping around at the other end of the railing. Was it speaking? Was I understanding it? I was finally getting used to the new body and now something new was happening, great. Maybe I’m losing my mind and this has all been a weird dream. I ran a hand through my hair and decided the best plan of action right now was to go get some tea.

When I got to the kitchen, Azriel was sitting at the island with papers spread out before him. He’s probably busy with something important, I won’t bother him. I put the water on the stove and leaned against a nearby counter as I waited. Was I going crazy? There’s no explanation for suddenly hearing a bird talk. But I suppose there also hasn’t been an explanation for suddenly waking up in a new world with wings. Mother always said there was something wrong with me, was this it? She would never tell me what was wrong with me, just said I was a mess up. When the kettle finally whistled I practically jumped out of my skin.

“Are you okay?” Without having seen him move Azriel was suddenly just a foot away from me.

“I’m fine, it’s fine.” I turned away and grabbed a mug from the cupboard. With unsteady hands, I tried to pour the water into the mug. Instead, the hot water splashed across my hand, and with a yelp of pain I dropped the mug and it shattered against the ground. I flinched back as Azriel came to stand in front of me, expecting him to shout or hit me. After a few moments, I looked towards Azriel where he stood. He stared at me with a look of understanding as he gently took my hand and refocused his attention on the redness spreading over my wrist and the back of my hand.

“You burned yourself. Let me bandage you.” He was looking at me like I was some helpless child.

“I’m fine.” I pulled my hand away and crouched down to clean up the mess I had made. When I was finished I turned around and he was still in the same spot, watching me.

“Why’d you flinch? I’m sorry if I’ve done something to make you feel unsafe around me.” His voice cracked like he was struggling to get the words out.

“It’s nothing, I said I’m fine.” I snapped before I rushed to my room, passing Mor standing in the doorway. I slammed the door behind me and sat on the edge of the bed. I placed my uninjured hand to my chest. The lights were too bright and my head was pounding. I don’t belong here, I’m not like these people. I should leave, I can find a job in the city and ill take care of myself.

Hurriedly I grabbed a bag I had purchased on one of my outings with Mor and shoved the journal inside. With a quick look around the room I realized that was all I owned, everything else belonged here. I slipped into the hall and made my way towards a large balcony they used when they flew out. I didn’t know how to stay in the air for long so I had to hurry. Just as I was about to leap I heard a voice behind me.

“If you wanted to go into the city you could’ve invited me.” Mor. How did she know what I was doing? She walked over and leaned her back against the balcony. “Listen, believe me when I say I understand being scared. I know what happened in the kitchen, I get it, But you should know that nobody here will ever wish harm upon you.” She paused and rested a hand on my arm. “I can’t force you to believe that, and I can’t force you to stay, but at least allow me to attend to your hand. Please?”

I nodded and chucked off the bag as I sat down. With a swish of her hand, she was holding a first aid kit and began working at the burn on my hand. I winced in pain as she dabbed a cold gel across the swollen skin.

“He was worried about you. He cares about you, ya know? Have you ever noticed the scars on his hands?” I nodded. “You know what caused them?” I shook my head. “Burns. He just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“Oh god. I snapped at him! I was so harsh and he just wanted to make sure I was okay...I’m a horrible person, aren’t I? There’s something seriously wrong with me.” I wiped my wet eyes with my free hand and took a shuddering breath.

“You are not a horrible person, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with you. We all have a past to heal from, you’re still healing.” she held my hand, now wrapped up, in her hands. “You don’t have to tell me what’s wrong, but know I’m here if you ever need a shoulder.”

I threw myself into her arms as sobs wracked my body. She rubbed circles on my back and let me cry for as long as I needed to. I don’t know how long it had been but when I finally had no tears left I pulled away and wiped my face. “Sorry for crying all over you.”

“It’s okay. Do you uh- Would you like to talk about it? Or anything?”

I nodded and for what felt like hours I talked about anything I could think of. I told her all about the pain I received both from my family and myself. I told her about how all my childhood I had wished to be normal, and I never felt like I belonged. I talked about everything up to the bird and I finally looked into her eyes to see how she’d react to it all.

“So you understood what a bird was saying? Was it just the bird or can you understand other animals?” She chewed her lip and looked at me with squinted eyes.

I chuckled softly. “I’m not sure. I haven’t exactly had much experience with animals.”

“Well, we have to try this out! We have to see what else you can do!” With a huge grin, she grabbed my hand and we ran through the halls. I wasn’t sure where we were going but her happiness was infectious and made me forget about my sorrow.

Before I knew it we were crashing through a set of doors into a meeting room with everybody standing around, grim looks on everybody’s face. We both stopped short when everybody turned to look at us.

“Was this a family meeting I wasn’t invited to?” Mor dropped my hand and crossed her arms over her chest.

“Mor I don’t think-”

“What do you need Morrigan?” Rhysand cut me off and I took a step backward to the door as he looked at me. They were all so intimidating.

“She talked to a bird!” Mor declared and gestured to me with a sweep of her arms.

“So she’s a little crazy, we all have our faults.” Amren shrugged as her silver eyes gazed into my own.

“I didn’t so much talk to it as it talked and I stood there dumbfounded because I understood it.” I wanted to hide behind Mor to Escape everyone’s gaze but she had found a spot and had sat down.

“Really? Then what did it say?” Cassian sounded like he was talking to a child rambling about an imaginary friend.

“Well, mostly it was upset about there not being any seed out. Says you all flap around and ignore the little guys, he’s planning revenge.” I picked at my nails and stared at the floor.

“I will make sure we start putting out the finest seed available in the city.” Rhysand held his chest and braced himself on a table as he doubled over in laughter.

My face flushed so hotly I was sure I looked like a tomato by now. I turned to walk out the door before a hand on my arm stopped me. I looked up into those comforting hazel eyes and my shoulders relaxed.

“Please, stay. I would like to hear more about this bird. I’ll make sure my brothers stop acting like asses, I promise.” I nodded and he lead me to a chair near the table.

I looked at a nearby open book as the words on the page seemed to break apart and reform until they turned into words I could understand, and stared I had this strange feeling like what I was doing was wrong somehow. I leaned back in my seat and glanced around the room at everybody staring at me like I had a second head.

“What? Was I not supposed to read? Sorry, I didn’t mean to snoop.”

“You read the book? You can understand it?” Azriel crouched in front of me and gently took my hand, running his thumb over my knuckles. I looked around at the group as they all stared at me. I looked back at Az and shrugged. “Was it supposed to be hard?”

“It’s in another langue, none of us can read it and we’re hundreds of years old.” He paused and studied my face. “Maybe that’s your power.”

“My power? Last time I checked, reading wasn’t power.”

“The bird and the book, you understood them both. The power to understand languages that others don’t.” A small smile pulled at the edge of his lips and I lost myself briefly in his eyes.

“Nobody has ever heard of something like that. It’s not real.” Cassian took a step forward

“And for a few hundred millennium nobody had ever heard of an Illyrian with seven siphons, or a woman who died and was brought back by seven high lords, or a high lady, or sisters remade by the cauldron. Or even a Shadowsinger…” He glanced around the room before his eyes came back to me.

“So what your saying is… Our group is great at defying the world.” Rhysand ran a hand through his hair as he shared a silent look with Feyre. “Okay… It’s getting late. Everybody go to bed and we can come back to this in the morning. Azriel, do me a favor and catch (y/n) up on what’s going on, we’ll need her help with this.” And with that everybody else was off on their separate way. But I still sat in that seat staring down at Azriel, Knowing my life was changing forever.

taglist: @vivihyde0408​ @annabethgranger123​

[aliyah-the-creator]

This is my very first post, so I hope I do good! Please give me some feedback, I would love to hear it.

The Umbrella Academy Life Swap:

The Hargreaves switch lives instead of powers.

• Ben ran away at the age of 13 and got lost in the dimension inside his stomach, the Handler eventually finds him and recruits him to the Commission. He works as a super powered agent that saves his victims from his sadistic partners, Hazel and Cha-Cha. Ben doesn’t come back in a 13 year old body like Five, he’s the same age as his siblings, and Ben does know about the apocalypse and has the eye. And unlike Five, Ben actually tells his siblings about the apocalypse and how he was a super powered assassin that acted as the kidnapper and lookout. When the Hargreaves were 13, Ben had tried to talk to Five out of time traveling because logically, he may not know where he would end up, but Five wouldn’t listen to him and started arguing with him. The fighting got so loud that Vanya and Klaus eventually got pulled into the argument as well and it turned into a fistfight with all 4 of them. All of them ended up with scratches and bruises on their faces, a few chunks of their hair missing, and cleaning the mansion floors and ceilings from top to bottom and every single room without using their powers as a punishment for fighting by Reginald. At 2 am, Ben woke up after a nightmare and felt bad about getting Vanya and Klaus into trouble when they didn’t even started the fight in the first place and tried to go to their rooms to apologize, but he never did because the Horror became restless and angry that it didn’t get anything to eat and wanted to make Ben feel how trapped they felt when Reginald always had them kill people, so Ben’s tentacles grabbed him and opened the portal to their world, which was the apocalypse, and trapped him there for 10 years until the Handler came and recruited him and was never seen after that day again. Because of Ben’s disappearance, Vanya and Klaus blamed Five and his ambition for time travel since it was him who argued with Ben in the first place and Five had never forgotten it. Ben hopes that Klaus and Vanya would forgive Five in time. Ben read Klaus’s book about what happened to his family when he disappeared, he read about Luther running away to Dallas to forget about the Umbrella Academy, about Diego staying at the Academy to keep fighting crime, about Allison’s death and how she’s now mute, how Klaus is trying to get sober and stabling himself, how Five became a professor at a prestigious university and a vigilante, and how Vanya took a dark path into alcoholism.

• Five became a lowly-paid physics professor at community college after he was fired for punching a colleague at prestigious university and he’s also a vigilante, but his fiancé Delores doesn’t like it though. Five met Delores at a professor’s conference in Canada where she was presenting her findings on the science of gems and geodes since she’s a mineralogy professor (someone who teaches the study of rocks and crystals) and where he was discussing the possibility of time travel. Those two immediately hit it off and are now engaged, Five proposed to her by using different types of gems to spell it out. Five uses his powers of teleportation to be a mysterious assassin and hero.

• Klaus is a dancer at a local theater and he has somewhat control over his powers, but if the ghosts get too loud, he smokes cigarettes instead of weed so he wouldn’t be high at a recital. He became friends with Leonard Peabody aka Harold Jenkins when Klaus was 23 after his family abandoned him for writing an auto-biography about him having a power that traumatizes him and what the Umbrella Academy was really like behind the scenes, it’s called “The Ghosts Inside the Umbrella Academy: the life of Klaus Hargreaves”. Harold makes him more isolated by threatening to kill himself and haunting Klaus for the rest of his life if Klaus tries to leave him. Since Klaus never had someone ,besides Ben, care for him and give him a home and food since he was living at a homeless shelter when he met Leonard, Klaus thinks that this type of friendship is normal and doesn’t think twice about it. In his book, Klaus portrays his remaining siblings as people who knew about his drug abuse, but didn’t do anything about it; he portrayed Luther as a hotheaded daddy’s boy who was treated like the Golden child, Diego as a momma’s boy with daddy issues always trying to compete with Luther for everything, Allison as his favorite sister who was taken too soon, who’s death was the final straw that tore apart their family, and who acts as a silent ghost mother since she’s mute (no one believes him that he can see her though), he portrays Five as the cause of Ben’s disappearance and as a heartless gremlin who doesn’t care about his siblings enough to see that his siblings are hurting and have real problems of their own, he portrays Ben as his kind-hearted and favorite brother who was the glue that hold their family together and who’s disappearance drove a wedge between the family, and he portrays Vanya as his ordinary violin playing sister that desperately wanted to belong with their family in any way she could, but turned to alcohol when she learned that her dream of being in the Umbrella Academy was crushed by Reginald and who had the easy life of not being exploited by their father for her powers like he was. Vanya actually confronted him about her portrayal in the book and they said some things that they shouldn’t have, but they eventually forgave each other and Vanya moved in with him and Leonard a month later. Klaus didn’t mind that Vanya and Leonard were dating, but saw a striking difference between Vanya and Leonard’s relationship and Vanya and Sissy’s relationship when Vanya came back from the 60s. With Leonard, Vanya was walking on eggshells and isolated from her brothers and couldn’t be herself around him, but with Sissy, Klaus saw that Vanya was happier and could be herself around Sissy and loves Harlan like her own son. Klaus was the one to kill Leonard with his powers by having Allison choke him to death when he badly hurt Harlan with a gun and tried to drown Sissy.

• Allison dies at the age of 17 when her throat was slit by a serial killer on a mission and now acts like Klaus’s mother by always keeping him sober enough to conjure her and giving him healthy advice, but ultimately going along with almost every crazy idea Klaus has. Since she has a slit throat she can’t talk, but she does sign language instead and like Ben, she ages like Klaus, but still wears the same outfit she was buried in: a yellow and green striped dress with a blue flora printed jacket with red heels and a pair of black leggings. She HATES Leonard Peabody because he’s manipulating Klaus into isolation from their family and she tries to get Klaus out of their toxic friendship, but Klaus always denies Leonard’s abuse. She misses her siblings so much that she’s deeply hurt that she had ignored their problems for so long.

• Diego stayed at the Umbrella Academy because he didn’t know how to be anything else but a hero, he also didn’t want to Mom behind, so he began reading and writing code to free Grace from her restrictive rules that Reginald put on her, but after his accident that had him have scars all over his body and face to the point where he lost his left eye and his face is almost beyond recognition, Diego left the Academy when he realized that there was no point in staying and became a recluse in his good friend, Eudora’s house. Unlike Luther, Diego doesn’t have the monkey body because I just couldn’t see that type of body build on David Castaneda. Diego met Eudora at a local boxing gym, Eudora was impressed Diego’s fight skilled and was shocked to know that he was Diego “The Kraken” Hargreaves because Reginald told the whole world including their city and Luther, Klaus, Five, and Vanya that Diego died in an explosion a year ago when he had his accident. Diego ,of course, was pissed that his own father told everyone and his siblings that he was dead instead of saying that he survived the mission and was just scarred for the rest of his life, but he wasn’t surprised that Reginald did that to keep up his reputation. Him and Eudora immediately became fast friends and roommates at her house since Diego had nowhere to go when he left the Academy 6 months ago and was living at an run-down and moldy apartment. They actually tried dating at one point, but because of their conflicted personalities, they decided to just stay friends and roommates.

• 3 months after Allison’s funeral, Luther ran away to escape his father’s tight gripped and cold stare and the house that reminded him of his lovely yet dead Allison when he was 18 years old. He ended up in Dallas, Texas where he became a famous boxer named King Kong since he’s so huge and muscular, met and married a successful TV salesman named Elliott Gussman, and they adopted an African American baby girl who they named Claire Allison Gussman. Luther decided to take Elliott’s last name ,even though it was Luther who proposed to him, to cut his ties off from the Umbrella Academy and the man who turned 6 children into soldiers and who blamed the death of an innocent 17 year old girl that happened to be his adopted daughter on his 4 sons and 1 daughter instead of the person who killed her in the first place. Luther and Elliott had a happy marriage for 3 years until Klaus’s book came out that exposed the secrets of Luther’s past and made him into a hotheaded bully with daddy issues who followed Reginald around like a eager puppy trying to get a reward and a coward ran away from his problems instead of facing them. Elliott was furious at Luther because when Luther came to Dallas he lied about being from a mob family that did all types of shady businesses and that he ran away because his “family” couldn’t understand and accept him being bisexual instead of telling him truth about his abusive father who raised them to be child soldiers, how his brother Diego would always tried to be better than him to their father’s approval, how his brother Five was too smart for his own good, how he loved his sister Allison more than he should, how he tried to forget about Ben’s disappearance, how he ignored Klaus’s drug abuse, and how he denied Vanya’s problem with alcohol for so long. When Elliott read Klaus’s book about what Luther did and who he was, Elliott immediately started arguing with him about his true identity. Luther tried to deny it, but couldn’t because he loves Elliott too much to even hurt him in a way. Elliott actually threatened to separate from Luther when their arguments gotten too much, but he didn’t and instead drove Luther and him to see a marriage counselor so that they could actually talk to each other instead of just arguing. Luther and Elliott eventually made up, but because of the book, Luther is the one that’s more pissed about it and at Klaus for almost making Elliott lose his marriage to him. Btw, Claire is 6 years old in 2019 and was adopted as a baby in 2013 by the Gussman family when Luther was 24 and Elliott was 30, a year after Klaus’s book was published.

• Vanya was introduced to alcohol at 13 years old when Five and Klaus were drinking 2 cases of beer that Five stole, Klaus persuaded her to take a sip of his beer and she hasn’t stop drinking since. Besides the violin and her pills, alcohol was the thing that defined Vanya and her personality. Vanya thought that no one would care about what happened to her since she was so ordinary and isolated that she dumped all of her pills in the garbage disposal and drinks her problems away. With her new coping mechanism, Vanya’s personality changed from quiet and meek to sarcastic and drunk. Five and Vanya left the Academy for college together, but ended up separated by the time they were 20 because Vanya kept drinking her tutition away. By the age of 22, Vanya ended up being homeless because she got kicked out of her apartment for not paying her rent with the money she used to buy alcohol. She still plays her violin, but only for cash instead of at The Icarus Theatre. She also read Klaus’s book and was upset about her portrayal as his alcoholic sister who had an easy life of being ordinary and never going on missions because she doesn’t have a power that can’t be turned off willingly or that can kill somebody; she cried and drank her misery away for 3 weeks until she confronted Klaus about the book, they both admittedly said things that they regretted, but ended up apologizing to each other in the end. She also meets and dates Leonard like in the show and instead of Allison finding the truth about Leonard, it’s Five and Delores who both tried to convince Klaus and Vanya that Leonard is a snake, but they both denied it. Vanya ends up living with Klaus and Leonard when her and Klaus made up when she’s 23. In my first draft I made it Five and Delores that Vanya ended up rooming with, but I wanted to make Vanya and Klaus isolated further by Leonard manipulating both of them. When the house is attacked by Hazel and Cha-Cha, Vanya is the one that’s kidnapped and tortured by them for 2 days and is rescued by Eudora who arrives with back up this time, but is injured in the spine by Cha-Cha. Vanya takes the briefcase and time travels to October 12, 1963 where she ends up falling in love with a woman named Sissy Cooper, a widowed housewife who accidentally ran Vanya over with her car, and becoming a nanny/second mother to Sissy’s 5 year old autistic son named Harlan. Vanya stayed with them until 1966 when a neighbor reported their “unholy” relationship to the police, so to keep them safe Vanya used the briefcase to go back to 2019 with Sissy and Harlan.

—When Vanya gets back to 2019 with Sissy and Harlan, no one believes her story except for Klaus, who promises to her relationship with Sissy a secret from Leonard, and Ben, who was the only one that was worried about her whereabouts in the first place besides Klaus. Vanya tries to become sober for the sake of Harlan not being afraid of her when she gets drunk and for Sissy and her’s relationship since her late husband was an abusive alcoholic, instead of conjuring the one she loves’s ghost like Klaus did in the show. When Vanya was dating Leonard, he would constantly have her and Klaus practice their music and dance at 12am-6am to train them more and if one of them mess up, he’ll have them locked up in a dark and tiny closet with only one dimly lit lightbulb and they would have to balance on a stool on one leg for the duration of their training. Leonard would also take his anger out on Klaus and Vanya if he had a bad day at his shop, which would leave Klaus with bruises on his arms and a black eye and Vanya with scratches on her back and bruises on her neck. (Trigger Warning for those who can’t handle stories with domestic violence) When the 3 of them were 27, Leonard gotten pissed at how independent and successful Klaus and Vanya were getting in their lives by Klaus getting paid more from his dance recitals and Vanya going to AA meetings more to the point of being sober for 3 weeks that he took his frustrations about losing his control out on them by punching and slapping Klaus and choking and scratching Vanya, but thankfully a neighbor called the police after hearing their screams and Klaus and Vanya were taken to the hospital and Leonard was arrested, but unfortunately Klaus and Vanya bailed Leonard out due to dropping charges against him as an apologize.

Here are the things that I changed

• Klaus and Vanya both cause the apocalypse by combining their powers at Klaus’s dance recital with Vanya’s violin because Leonard isolated them from everyone, manipulated them to the point of denying the abuse he put them through, and because of him trying to kill Sissy and Harlan for taking Vanya away from him.

• Five and Delores tries to explain to Vanya and Klaus that Leonard only liked them to get revenge on the Umbrella Academy and it was him that kidnapped Sissy and Harlan to get them to come back to him, but Five gets stabbed in the stomach by Klaus’s new found telekinesis and Vanya makes Five and Delores’s apartment collapsed after knocking Delores out. When the apartment collapses, Allison , who’s coperal at the moment, immediately grabs both a bleeding Five and an unconscious Delores and saves them from death and takes them to the Academy to be treated by Grace. Delores unfortunately loses her right arm to a huge piece of shrapnel lodged into it that’s cutting the circulation.

• When Ben goes to the apocalypse for the first time, he finds Luther with the eye clutched in his hand, Diego wrapped in black bandages holding a woman with a long black ponytail (Eudora), Five in an Armani suit with his eyes opened, and a red headed woman in a polka dotted blouse and a black skirt holding one of Five’s hand (Delores). All of them are dead and Ben finds out that they’re his brothers by the faded black umbrella tattoo on Luther’s wrist when Ben was inspecting the bodies. The bodies that Ben couldn’t find were Allison, Vanya, and Klaus’s, but after learning about Allison’s death from Klaus’s book, Ben kept looking for Vanya and Klaus.

• Vanya gets her burst of powers when Harlan almost drown in the summer of ‘64 in the lake 10 miles away from the farm. Harlan was playing with a beach ball when it got away from him and he tried to get it while Vanya and Sissy were cuddling in the sand and a wave pulled him under the water. Sissy started crying and panicking when Vanya couldn’t get Harlan to the surface, but after a minute of silence she was shocked and relieved to see Vanya holding Harlan in her arms while she’s floating in the lake with glowing white eyes. As soon as they get to shore, Vanya gives Harlan cpr which transfers her newly found powers to him like in the canon.

• Diego doesn’t show himself to his siblings until episode 3 when Hazel and Cha-Cha attack the house because everyone thinks he’s dead and he’s a recluse. He finds out about the attack from Grace (mom) when she calls him from her bedroom phone since they talk every day so that he can know what’s going on and because of these calls, Diego knows about Ben being back, how the funeral went, and how much each of his siblings changed over the years.

• In episode 1, since the siblings’ lives are switched around, the way they found out that Reginald died is slightly different from canon. Luther finds out from the press badgering him after he won a fight, Diego finds out from Eudora when she comes home after work and turns on the Tv in a flash, Klaus finds out during rehearsal on the radio that him and his group are listening to to practice the recital while Allison is dancing in the shadows behind him when the news suddenly comes on, Five finds out from his phone on social media when one of his students sent him the news link after Five teleports to his apartment after saving a 12 year old boy from being abducted by a creep and almost killing said creep by beating him senseless, and Vanya finds out from a bar Tv when she and Leonard are on a date. She immediately calls Klaus who was immediately going to call her to tell her the same thing when he was done rehearsals.

• Just to clarify, since Vanya spent 3 years with Sissy and Harlan in Dallas from 1963-1966, she is 33 years old and Harlan is 8 years old because he was 5 when he and his mom met Vanya. Even though Vanya spent 3 years in the ‘60s, she was only gone for 2 days with Klaus, Five, Delores, Ben, and Leonard searching for her.

• When the Hargreeves all come back for the funeral, the introduction of them to each other are very different. Diego doesn’t show up to the funeral to keep up the reputation of him being dead. Vanya and Klaus show up together, but immediately split up when Vanya goes straight to the bar making drinks for her and her brothers (mostly for her though) and Klaus goes to his old room to reminisce about his past. Five checks their father’s room and office for evidence of something other than a heart attack, he is the one that thinks that Reginald was murdered by someone, and he also greets Vanya and Klaus with Delores who went with him to meet his family. Luther is trying to get through the funeral as possible by almost avoiding his siblings, but that backfires when Five calls a family meeting to talk about their father’s death and Luther sees a tipsy Vanya holding a mix of vodka and rum, Klaus talking to Delores who is laughing at a funny story Klaus is telling, and Five lecturing the remaining siblings on how their father might’ve been murdered.

• Eudora is more present in the show since she survives the gunshot wound in her spine by Cha-Cha, but she ends up being paralyzed from the waist down in a wheelchair. She helps Five with discovering how Reginald actually died and Diego with stepping out into the world and seeing his family for the first time in years. Like in canon, she is the first one to find Vanya at the motel after finding the message that Hazel and Cha-Cha left on the van when they burned down the prosthetic factory after they got drunk off of Vanya’s “special lemonade” which is just lemonade mixed with wine and vodka. Unlike in the show, Delores and Ben go with Eudora as back up in case something goes wrong and it does end up going wrong with Cha-Cha and Eudora having a shoot out with each other in the parking lot that ultimately ends up Eudora becoming paralyzed by Cha-Cha’s bullet ricocheting off a lamppost and lodging into Eudora’s spine with her laser gunand Ben wrestling with his former partner Hazel in the motel room while Vanya is escaping through the vent with the briefcase in her arms and Delores in tow.

Ben breaks Hazel’s wrist and almost beats him to a bloody pulp for kidnapping Vanya, but he stops when he hears Eudora’s screams from outside and sees her on the ground behind her car and he immediately drives her to the hospital while Hazel and Cha-Cha get away before the police show up. Delores and Vanya get on a nearby bus to escape the chaos and they talk about what’s going on in their lives and Delores talks about how Leonard treats Klaus when they’re alone, but Vanya denies any abuse and opens the briefcase. The last thing Vanya hears is Delores screaming.

• The episode “The Day that Wasn’t” doesn’t exist in my AU and is instead replaced with an episode called “Welcome to the 60’s” where Five interrogates Sissy and Harlan about the past while working on the beat up briefcase to learn more about how to time travel. Eudora and Diego talk about how their long time friendship has become into a sibling relationship and about how Diego can reconnect with his siblings again. Luther and Delores discuss how they both want a normal and ordinary life with their husband and fiancé respectively, but fail to see that things can never go back to way they were. Ben goes off on his own to find the truth about Leonard Peabody, but finds himself at Griddy’s where he sees Hazel kissing Agnes and talks to them about his problems. Agnes gives Ben advice about how he can reconcile with his family by actually giving them time to process him being a time traveling assassin and him telling Five to not feel guilty about causing a rift between him and Vanya and Klaus because it wasn’t Five’s fault that Ben “ran away”.

I’ll continue the rest of the story when I have the time. Right now I just want to post this.

[salmonthestoryteller]

RNM Season 4 Episodes 10-11

There was a surprising amount of good scenes packed into these two episodes.

I loved everything in the interactions between Bonnie and Dallas. As well as their interactions with Michael. Bonnie and Michael’s hug when he came through the gate especially was adorable.  She's like his kid sister and I love it.

Isobel and Kyle are simultaneously adorable and painful.  Their hug got to me, too. And Isobel looking at his picture on her phone.

More Evans twins - I'm really glad to see their connection brought to the forefront again.

I surprisingly approve of the current Echo plotline despite sort of breakup 4.0 when the alien mist had Dark Liz in control.  The alien mist addiction.  Max admitting he was allowing fear to control him when it came to erasing his powers. Echo has spent a lot of the previous seasons saving each other from one physical threat or another.  But rarely has emotional vulnerability been necessary during that. This current plot is much more about emotional vulnerability for Echo, and I find myself enjoying their scenes.

Rosa continues to be wonderful. I loved her scenes with Liz, but I especially loved her scenes with Kyle.

Malex, what can I even say?  Their scenes were pretty much everything I could have wanted.  Including Alex building a trap that caught Bonnie and Dallas. Lol

And the proposal - of course, the proposal took my breath away. Curious if they are going to have Dallas marry them in the pocket dimension or not.  I kinda want him to just so their siblings can give them a hard time about it later.

Alex dying… I'm kind of on the fence with that one. Seems kinda an unnecessary plot with so few episodes left? But also slightly curious about which deus ex machina we're going for to save him.  Max getting his abilities back, Michael getting to unlock healing; Liz’s alien mist?

I… just can't get into the Tezca redemption arc. It just feels too far removed? I appreciated her as a villain, the threat to the main characters that I felt she was capable of making a viewer feel.  But in a sense, she did not really do enough villainous acts on screen for me to feel attached to her redemption.  Her biggest acts are all in a nebulous past that I don't think the show has taken the time to connect the viewers to enough. Most of our flashbacks were on Earth.  What little information we have from Oasis itself is more legendary than a proper full tale.  And the type of time it would take to tell that full story is too much.  It's a whole separate story by itself. So to spend so much time redeeming a character whose entire story is caught up in a tale we do not and will never fully know feels like such a waste of time that could have been spent on other characters.

And, yeah, I still don't feel anything about Clyde as a villain.  His villainy feels too cartoony for me. I'm kinda waiting for him to tie someone to a railroad track.  But he threatened Liz's student!  Yeah, and? Are we forgetting that our first Villain was Noah and he used Isobel to kill three other teenage girls in cold blood?  And I’m supposed to be all - oh, Clyde is so scary for… threatening to kill one person and shoving Bonnie into a pocket dimension he already knew she could survive in?

Look, under different circumstances - in a different show, Clyde might be scary with his obsession to complete his cult's work. But in this show, with the villains we've had, with it literally being just Clyde against like a dozen people, I just feel more disappointed in our Heroes than threatened by Clyde. Like, seriously guys? Do you need Greg to come shoot someone for you again?

Shivani’s descent into villainy on the flipside has been far more real. Far more human and in the present time plot. I'm pretty much expecting her to be killed, and I will be sorta saddened by that.  But I’m not sure I see a different ending to her arc. Especially now that she's joined forces with Clyde.